Theodora
own home is simultaneously a complete surprise while making perfect sense. His family home—his family estate, more accurately—is a perfect representation of what one imagines when one thinks of the British aristocracy. A beautiful stately home, well-kept and comfortable, yet with a certain old-world glamour to it.
I don’t meet his parents straight away, but he wastes no time introducing me to his sister.
She looks exactly like him. Tall, elegant, her skin the same smooth, creamy brown, a sharp intelligence in her brown eyes. Her hair is long, almost to her waist, an explosion of curls black at the roots then threaded through with warm gold strands.
Where Zachary’s style is old-fashioned and scholarly, her style seems to be a more elevated, feminine version of his. When I meet her, she’s wearing a knitted top in a pale shade of brown, a dark plaid skirt and thigh-high black socks.
“Theodora, this is my little sister, Zahara.” He gestures from me to her.
“Oh, it’s Zahara all of a sudden, not ungrateful brat?” she asks, but her tone is more teasing than accusatory.
He rolls his eyes and continues as if no interruption had occurred. “Zahara, this is—”
“Don’t be such an idiot—I know exactly who this is!” She fixes me with a look of utter delight. “The famous, the revered, the one and only Theodora Dorokhova.” Without waiting for me to say anything, she launches into me with a hug. “I could not possibly be more excited to meet you at last!”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you too,” I answer, my voice muffled by the faceful of fragrant curls I get when she hugs me.
“Can I show her the library?” Zahara asks her brother as she frees me from her hug. “Please, Zach? You can show her the rest of the house, and I already know for a fact you’re going to hoard her for yourself, not to mention how Mum and Dad are probably going to be obsessed with her the moment they get back home—and it’s not like I’ll be here all holiday anyway, so you’ll get to—”
“You can show her the library,” Zach says, removing his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Jesus, Zaro. It’s not like she’s your girlfriend.”
“I’m sorry—is she yours?” his sister replies with the speed of a striking eagle. Then her eyes widen, and she turns to look at me. “Oh—you’re not, are you?”
I shake my head, but my eyes meet Zach’s, and there’s a defiant expression in his eyes.
“I’m… not,” I answer cautiously, tearing my gaze from his.
“The word ‘girlfriend’ could never accurately describe what she is to me,” Zachary says in a tone of such complete earnestness that his sister and I can do nothing but stare at him, taken aback.
“If you say so.” Zahara shrugs, and then she takes my elbow and leads me away.
The Blackwood library is exactly as I would have expected from Zachary’s childhood library. A long, rectangular chamber, glossy floorboards, and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with leather-bound collections. No pulp fiction or colourful covers are to be found in the Blackwood collection.
As I slowly walk along the shelves, tracing the gold-engraved spines, my fingertips brush over encyclopaedias, classics of English and French literature, volumes of poetry and an impressive collection of non-fiction books ranging from philosophy and politics to astrophysics and theoretical mathematics.
If the Blackwoods ever partake in thrillers or the occasional Regency romance, they must keep those particular books in a different part of their estate.
At the head of the room, a set of three French windows cast thick columns of light over an enormous pedestal desk that looks straight out of Victorian England. A leather seat stands like a throne by the desk, which is tidy apart from a closed laptop and a small pile of books.
“It’s not the Spearcrest library, of course,” Zach’s sister is saying, hopping onto a corner of the pedestal desk and crossing her legs. “But it’s not too shabby.”
I turn to give her a surprised smile. “The Spearcrest library? But you don’t go to Spearcrest…” I try to remember if I ever saw Zahara in Spearcrest. I’m certain I would know if Zach’s sister attended the same school as us. I realise he never really mentioned it. “Do you?”
She lets out a little sigh. “It’s a complicated story. I just started this year.”
“Oh. I didn’t know.”
“Nobody does. Aside from Zach and his weird friend.”
Zach, of course, might have a multitude of reasons for not telling anyone his sister is in Spearcrest. Being a Young King, I suspect, comes with drawbacks as well as privileges—something that’s bound to happen when you’re a ground of young people acting like a crime syndicate or a city-state. So it doesn’t surprise me that Zach might wish to keep Zahara’s presence in Spearcrest under wraps.
What doesn’t make sense is him telling Iakov Kavinski. Why would Zach tell one of his fellow Kings and not the others? No, if Iakov knows, then the rest of the Young Kings must know.
Just like they’ll know about me staying at Zachary’s house over the holidays.
Several days ago, when I arrived home from Spearcrest, my mother greeted me with two pieces of news: that a formal invitation had arrived for me to holiday at the Blackwood estate and that my father would not be coming to visit during the holidays as he does most years.
“Some business problems are keeping him away,” my mother explained, “and besides, you’ll be spending next Christmas with him anyway.”
The reminder that I would be moving in with my father after the end of Year 13 makes my gut churn as if I was about to be sick. My mother and I never speak about me moving to Russia—if it’s bothering her, if it worries her or makes her sad, she doesn’t show it.
Then again, it might not bother her the way it bothers me. She was only twenty when she herself was shipped off to Russia to marry my father, and it wasn’t until she was in her forties that she moved back to the UK for my education and to spend time with her ailing father.
In all my life, I never heard my mother complain about any of it, not even once.
Maybe she doesn’t mind. Maybe it’s just her stiff upper lip.
When she told me I should go spend the holiday with the Blackwoods, I was pleased but not surprised. My mother is well-versed in the art of cultivating her place in British high society, and it doesn’t get much higher than the Blackwoods.
“Will Papa not mind if I spend the holiday away?” I asked her.
“Of course not. Why should he? Your papa would be pleased to know you are nurturing such powerful connections. And he trusts you—we both do. You’re such a good girl, Theodora.”
When I was younger, being praised by my parents meant the world. If they called me clever or obedient or good, I thought it meant that I was loved.
I know better now.
So I accepted the Blackwood invitation and came. I came because, for once, I didn’t want to be good, obedient Theodora, Theodora the doll, the puppet. I came because I wanted something for myself, I wanted to be selfish and unwise and maybe even a little wild.
I came because of that night in the Spearcrest library, because Zachary told me to ask him if I wanted his kisses, and I do want them. I came so that I could ask him, just as he told me to do, just as I assured him I never would do.
A lifetime spent doing the right thing—why should I not, for once, just one time before I go to Russia, do what I want?
Except that I arrived here to find myself face to face with Iakov Kavinski. A Young King, and more than that, a Russian. If Iakov knows I’m here, his father might know too. His father and my father are two sides of the same coin: two powerful, dark-hearted men, one turned towards the side of law and society, the other turned towards the side of crime and corruption. But the world of the ultra-rich in Russia is a small one.
I’m here now, and it’s too late to go back.
But I haven’t done anything reckless yet. I haven’t done anything to draw my father’s ire. All I’ve done is make it more difficult for myself to remain the perfect, obedient daughter. But that’s what I must remain while I’m here. What choice do I have?
“Hey, are you alright?”
A gentle hand suddenly cradles my arm, and I turn, blinking slowly. Zahara is standing by my side, a frown of concern on her face. I smile.
“Yes, I’m so sorry, I was deep in my thoughts.” I shake my head. “That was so rude of me, and I didn’t hear what you said. I’m so sorry, Zahara.”
“Oh, don’t apologise. I was honestly just having a rant.” She squeezes my arm. “Are you sure you’re alright, Theodora? You look pale, and you’re shaking a bit.”
“I’m just cold,” I say, moving away from her. “I’m completely fine, I promise. I’m always cold.”
I look around, desperate for a way out of the conversation, a distraction. My eyes fall on the small pile of books on the magnificent desk, the embossed title gleaming in the cool daylight.
“Oh! Your copy of Peter Pan is beautiful.”
Zahara laughs and saunters over to the desk to pick it up. “That’s not mine. It’s Zach’s.”
“I thought he hated children’s books.”
“He does. But he’s obsessed with this one.” She hands me the book. “You should see his annotations. They’re like the scrawlings of a madman.”
I take the book and turn it in my hands.
It’s a first edition copy, with the olive-green clothbound cover and the gilded illustrated frames around the title. The pages are soft with time as I flick through them, Bedford’s painstakingly rendered illustrations bringing the story to life with a wealth of details.
If I owned a first edition of Peter Pan, I would have never dared to write so much as my name on the inside cover. The book is too beautiful, and at over one hundred years old, too old to be sullied by my penmanship. Zachary, though, seems to have felt no such compunction. His sister wasn’t far off when she described his annotations as the scrawlings of a madman, although that might be partly due to Zachary’s slanted, spidery handwriting.
Flicking through the pages, I find the places where his annotations are most dense. His notes hint at a rather dark interpretation of the whimsical story: he seems to fixate on Neverland, Peter Pan’s shadow, and, more than anything else, James Hook.
Chapter five, and the passage of Hook’s first on-page appearance, is so heavily annotated that his words cover every margin, and some notes are even squeezed tightly between the lines. My eyes slide over the underlined parts: In person, he was cadaverous and blackavised; his handsome countenance; his eyes were of the blue of the forget-me-not and of a profound melancholy; he was a raconteur of repute; the elegance of his diction; a man of indomitable courage.
Zach’s notes read: Dark, handsome, sad, brave and well-spoken. A villain—but a melancholy villain. A complex character, not just a pirate. He’s missing something, a part of him—his hand a metaphor? Missing his old life/the real world?
At the bottom of the page, he’s written in small letters, Does she see me in him? This is crossed out and replaced with, Does she see herself in him?
I remember, all of a sudden, Zachary at the Halloween party in the trees, drunk and dressed like Hook. He called me ‘angel’ that night, and he was drunk enough to be acting a little reckless. He told me he dressed as Hook to amuse me.
I told him I used to have a crush on Hook.
Laughter bursts from my chest like a bird from a cage, startling me as much as Zahara.
“You’re right,” I answer her questioning look. “The scrawlings of a madman, truly.”
