Chapter One
Valya
Fifteen years earlier
It’s late. Beyond the cracked door to my room, the Novak estate is mostly quiet except for the occasional creak of the ancient house as it settles around us. The window is open to let in a cool breeze on this late-August night. I’m sitting on my bed, legs crossed, surveying the bags and boxes around me.
Who knew that eighteen years could be packed away so neatly? Tomorrow—or today, actually, I realize when I glance at my watch and see that it’s after midnight—I’ll move into my dorm at Pinnacle College. When my dad and I visited last year, I fell in love with the small college tucked away in the mountains. It’s five hours away but a world apart from Oakwood City, and even though I hate leaving my dad, it’s something I have to do for myself.
I need to get out of Oakwood City.
I need to get away from him. Andrej Novak. Shaking my head, I try to banish his name from my brain, afraid that thinking of him will somehow summon him.
My packing finally done, I gather my towel and plod down the hallway to the bathroom. While most modern houses have en suite bathrooms, the Novak estate is over a hundred years old and parts of it—particularly the part where the staff stays—has never been updated. The bathroom closest to my room still has the original hexagonal tile floor, pedestal sink, and a clawfoot bathtub which I loved when I was young. Thankfully, there’s also a glass-walled shower that I use now, draping my towel over the cast iron radiator and stepping beneath the warm spray of the water.
I emerge some time later and am standing in front of the wood-framed mirror, brushing my hair, when the sound of raised voices reaches me through the thin walls. Going still, I strain my ears to listen. Men’s voices. Someone yells, then something crashes, probably in the foyer. I imagine that ugly bust of Miloslav Novak that sits in the front hall shattered in pieces. I imagine Stannes Novak standing over it, eyes glassy with alcohol, chest heaving with rage. I imagine his son crumpled at the base of the pedestal, face and heart closed off to the world as he takes his father’s misdirected anger and absorbs it, turning it into a part of himself. A part that he can later use to hurt anyone who dares to try getting close to him.
Five years ago, I would have gone to him. A couple years ago, I would have waited for him in my bed, anticipating the sound of my door opening in the dark. Now, though? I stand frozen, waiting for the voices to fade and hoping not to hear the telltale creak of floorboards outside the bathroom. The summer has been relatively quiet with Andrej interning at his father’s company and partying with the Oakwood Boys on the weekends. All I have to do is make it through this last night unnoticed and then we’ll never have to see each other again.
After a few minutes of silence, I wrap the warm towel around myself and tiptoe back down the hall to my bedroom. The room is dark and quiet, and I turn, closing the door gently and locking the sliding bolt my dad had installed on the inside of the door for me. As soon as I do, though, the cloying smell of smoke reaches me, and I whirl around, my back to the door.
Moonlight from the open window barely illuminates Andrej’s form in the dark. He’s sitting on the edge of my bed, a bag of what looks like frozen vegetables pressed to his face with one hand, a glowing cigarette in the other. He’s shirtless, the moonlight practically reflecting off of his pale, lean torso which is speckled with dark bruises.
Neither of us speaks for a long moment. I stare at him across the small room, unable to decipher what he’s thinking as he looks back, his face a mask of indifference.
It’s hard to imagine that he was once my best friend. That I was once able to read every emotion behind those dark, impenetrable eyes. My father and I came to live here when I was just seven, not long after my mom died, when my dad was offered the butler position by the elder Mr. Novak. As the only two children on this sprawling estate, Andrej and I bonded almost immediately with no regard for the difference in our social status.
In fact, our differences were what brought us together. He taught me how to ride horses and how to swim, and I taught him how to cook and climb trees. He brought me along on his vacations to the beach at Haven Falls, and my dad and I took him camping with us on the rare occasions my dad could get away.
When we were twelve, we taught each other how to kiss, though not very well.
When we were thirteen, his mother died, and I taught him how to grieve a loss so great that it felt like you would rather go to sleep and never wake up than live another day.
No one taught Stannes, though. Andrej’s father gradually turned his grief into rage that he then took out on his son. It changed Andrej. The tighter I held onto him, the harder he pulled away, until one day, we woke up as strangers. No, not just strangers—enemies. He hated me for reasons I never understood, and when we got to high school, he managed to turn the entire student body against me.
What I never told anyone as I endured their torment was that their leader still came to me sometimes, but only in the dark, only when no one was watching, usually after a particularly brutal fight with his father. It was times like those when we were stripped bare and I could see past his mask and get a glimpse of the boy I still loved, the one he tried to keep buried. In the dark, we would connect, physical release the only comfort he accepted from me. I would hold him, try to love away his pain, fall asleep with his head against my chest, only to wake up alone the next morning, feeling empty and drained. Andrej always made sure the days after those nights were the worst for me.
That’s why I asked my dad for the lock on my door. That’s how I’ve gone almost a year without one of those late-night visits.
Until now.
Andrej takes a long drag on his cigarette and says around the smoke, “Weren’t you going to say goodbye?”
I clear my throat and clutch my towel to my chest. “Goodbyes are reserved for people who will miss us.”
He gives a small, humorless chuckle. “So, no one then? Except your poor father, I suppose.”
I know he’s trying to get a reaction out of me, so I don’t give him one. Instead, I change the subject. “Is your eye okay?”
“Yes.” He gestures to the frozen vegetables with his cigarette. “This is just my new fashion accessory.”
“Are you okay?” I try.
“Fine,” he answers. His eyes flick to the lock on my door, and I wonder how many times he’s tried to come in over the last year. I shouldn’t care, because the fact of the matter is, I do know how many times he’s hurt me. How many times I’ve been tripped in the hall, had my books stolen and my locker trashed, been made fun of and called names, had my reputation destroyed by malicious rumors.
I shouldn’t care about him.
But I do.
And that more than anything is why I need to leave.
“What are you doing here?”
He takes a drag of his cigarette before speaking. “It’s my fucking house. I can do whatever I want.”
“Well, I’ll just leave you alone, then.” I turn and fumble with the lock.
Before I can even slide it open, Andrej’s hand comes down hard against the wall beside my head. Instinctively, I turn to face him. He presses his other hand to the door, trapping me. In the process, he dropped the vegetables, and I can see his eye now, swollen and red. He’ll have a shiner tomorrow. I reach up and touch it gently, and he closes his eyes.