Zoya’s face fell and she asked, “By choice?”

I closed my eyes and slightly shook my head. “No,” I admitted, “made to. Forced to.”

I heard Zoya sigh. I felt her warm breath on my face. My answer rewarded me with another kiss on my hand. As if some invisible barrier had been torn down between us, Zoya shifted closer until I could feel the heat of her body seeping into mine. A deep blush ran up her neck to fill her cheeks and face. I decided at that moment that she was the most beautiful female that could have ever existed. She, a Georgian, of an enemy race I had vowed to always hate. But with that flush, brown eyes, compassion, and tender grace all the hatred fell away.

Zoya lifted her leg to place it over mine, moving closer until her head lay next to me. “I know you do not like Georgians, Valentin, but my grandmama would tell me the story of the Tbilisi monster. Have you heard of it?” she asked. My lips curled up at her Georgian accent fluidly wrapping around the Russian words.

“No,” I replied.

Her brown eyes became lost as she explained, “I was only five years old when my family was killed.” My eyes dropped to the scars on her shoulders and hip. Seeing my attention focus on these, she stroked along my face and said, “The day I too should have died.” My stomach dropped just at the thought of Zoya being dead. But I refocused on her words as she carried on, “I have no more memories, I believe, from that age. I think it is because I lost them all to trauma. I think when a horrific event has tarnished your soul all the lighter days prior to that event are the brighter for it.”

Zoya’s eyes dulled for a moment but brightened when her lips pulled into a small smile. “My grandmama loved to tell me stories. And I loved to hear them. She knew this, so she would often tell me stories. But there was one she would tell me over and over again. Every time she told it, I would always find fault.”

I listened to her talk of her family with such happiness. At that moment I could have listened to her always. Her voice changed as she recalled her family. I never had that. Even with Inessa, I was always fighting for us to survive, stealing to help us eat.

“Valentin?” Zoya pushed. I snapped back to the present. “Are you okay?” she asked. I pressed my cheek to the hand she had left under my face. “Tell me about the monster,” I asked.

She smiled again. “Legend has it that the monster, who is as tall as the trees and as broad as an ox, lived in the deepest parts of the Tbilisi forest. For years he had been spotted by the children in the town. He would live on his own in peace, but the children all wanted to see him. But when they saw him, they would laugh at him and make fun of him, call him ugly. They prodded him with sticks, hit him with rocks, and ran screaming past where he slept to keep him awake.

“Then one day everything changed. The monster fought back. The monster waited and waited in hiding for nasty children to run by. As they passed his hiding place, he jumped out and caught them, bringing them back to his house. In his house he had a cauldron. The captured children were placed inside and cooked alive, into a hot monster’s stew.”

A laugh came from her throat, instantly seizing my fucking heart. She shook her head. I could see the water glistening in her eyes. “My bedroom overlooked the Tbilisi forest. At night I would search and search for the monster in the woods. I never saw him of course, but I didn’t know that as a child. He was my obsession. I thought of him day and night.” Zoya’s eyes dipped, and she said, “I wanted to see the monster. I wanted to speak to him. I wanted to ask him why he’d done such an awful thing. I wanted to speak to him to ask if somebody had hurt him, and inquire why he was so angry and sad. I wanted to tell him that if he tried to be nice, if he didn’t hurt and eat the children, then people might come to like him, that he could make friends. I wanted to tell him that even if he didn’t look like the rest of us, even though some found him ugly, he wasn’t. He was just different. But of course, I never did see him.”

Zoya dabbed at the corners of her eyes with her thumb and laughed again. “My family laughed at me as I searched the edge of the forest, shouting for the monster day and night. My brothers would often hide behind the trees and jump out, making me scream as they chased me over the lawn.” Zoya paused.

Zoya edged closer, until her forehead pressed against mine. Her fingers traced over my scars that ruined my face. “Valentin, to me, you are the monster of Tbilisi Forest. You have done cruel things. But just by looking at you, at that collar on your neck, the scars on this face, I could see it was because horrid things had first been done to you. Someone had you under her control; she had the means to make you act so cruelly, to hurt you and believe you were a beast.” Her hand pressed over my heart. “I believe it goes against the grain of who you truly are, in here.”

“Zoya,” I murmured, and she smiled.

Swallowing, I pressed my hand against her cheek and whispered, “Do you realize how much you’ve just fucked up?”

Zoya froze and paled. I held her head tightly in place and stated, “You are really from Tbilisi, not Kazreti, as you have argued for many days.”

Zoya exhaled a shaky breath. Her hand on my face began to shake. Her skin turned cold when I said, “Zaal Kostava is from Tbilisi, Georgia. His family was killed; all the bodies were accounted for but one.” Her head flinched as she tried to move away, but I held it still in my large hands. Taking a deep breath, I rasped, “All but a younger little girl, a younger girl called Zoya.”

Zoya’s eyes closed. My eyes closed, too.

She was Zaal’s sister.

The man I was commanded by Mistress to kill.

14

ZOYA

I had never ever felt my heart beat so fast. As I lay here, trapped in the grip of the man I thought I had grown to understand, my heart beat too fast and too strong.

I could feel my body shaking. I could feel my blood turning to ice as it sluggishly tried to infuse my muscles with strength.

Crystal blue eyes watched me, like a hawk watches its prey. I chastised myself for my emotional naivety, for my abandonment of logic and my seriously misplaced trust.

I tried to pull back, but Valentin’s grip was too strong. Please, I tried to say, but no words fell from my mouth. I had been so wrong. It wasn’t the collar. This man was a heartless monster. Whatever had been in the collar only heightened the blackness scarring his soul.

I gave up the fight, lying as still as I could. I closed my eyes, seeing Zaal’s happy face in my head—the brother I’d just condemned to death.

My breathing quickened in sorrow, then my world was blown apart when the monster said, “Her name is Inessa.” I held my breath, my mind confused. Who was Inessa? What was he referring to?

Then he continued, “She is my sister, though she hasn’t remembered that fact, or even her own name, since she was four.” I blew out a breath, slow and controlled, shock filling every cell of my body. My frantic heart began to slow when I realized, I realized he was confiding in me. He was telling me about himself.

“Valentin,” I said softly, my near whisper sounding like a scream in the deathly quiet room.

Valentin’s hands ran to the back of my head as though he was trying to bring me as close as possible. I let him take comfort from my proximity. But when I saw a tear roll down his stubbled cheek, my heart broke in two.

“Valentin” was all I could say. I swallowed at the grief in that single solitary tear tumbling to the mattress. “Where is she now, your Inessa?”

Valentin’s hold became rigid, but he managed to explain, “I do not even know how to make you understand. She is being held captive, like we all were. But where the men were trained as fighters or, worse, killers—”

“Like you?” I asked, the question tumbling from my lips without thought.

Valentin’s eyes shut painfully, but he nodded his head. “Yes. Like me.”

“But your sister?” I pushed.

Valentin edged back, his hands sliding from behind my head. He took a grip of my hand, though, like before. No, not this time. When I saw his eyes, they were like nothing he’d shown me before. Vulnerability and despair shone in their depths, and absolute defeat.

“The females are taken down a different path. They are drugged with a serum that makes them sexually subservient. They are driven mad from within, if a man doesn’t fuck them like an animal.”