98● “Look at me,”

98● “Look at me,”

HARPER PETROVSKY

The silence, after I speak, doesn’t fade. It stays there, trapped in the room, caught in everyone’s throat. I remain between the two of them, my arms slightly open—more out of reflex than pose. If I lower my hands now, I feel like one of them will try to take up the space again. And I don’t want that. I don’t want to be pushed to one side or used to prove a point.
My heart is racing, and I hate that it is. I hate it because it makes it seem like I’m losing control when, in truth, I’m just tired of having to defend myself all the time—tired of having to choose the right words for men who think they can read me and guide me. I look at Dmitri first. He’s standing still, his jaw tight, his eyes fixed on me with that mixture I already know: protection and possession blurring together. He wants to pull me away. Wants to take me out of here. Wants to solve it his way. And his way always leaves marks.
“You can’t talk to me as if I were an object,” I say, quieter than before. My voice still trembles, but I don’t back down. “And you can’t use ‘protecting’ as an excuse to do whatever you want. When I arrived, you simply ignored me, and now you think showing up in my room out of nowhere will erase something. We’ll have this conversation later—not now.”
I don’t wait for any reaction from Dmitri and turn to Alexander. He’s quiet, watching. And that about him bothers me; he always has a ready answer.
“And you,” I say bluntly, without hesitation, “stop acting like I’m something you need to test and shape.” My gaze stays locked on his. “I’m not going to be fitted into your way of doing things.”
His face hardens slightly, but he doesn’t answer. At least there’s that—he doesn’t cut me off.
“You two,” I continue, now speaking to both of them. “If you want to argue, do it without putting me in the middle.” A breath goes in and out. “Don’t use my body and my life as an excuse.”
Dmitri moves a step, instinctively, as if he wants to pull me to his side. My hand rises at the same instant, firm, palm open.
“Don’t even think about it.”
He stops. You can see the command reach his body first, then his face. He obeys—and along with it comes a strange feeling in my chest, half relief, half anger, because stopping for me isn’t the same as stopping because he understands.
“Look at me,” I say to Dmitri, and this time his name stays only in my gaze. “I chose to come back to this house. I chose to face this. I didn’t choose to be treated like property—neither you nor anyone else will dictate what I do or don’t do.”
Dmitri swallows hard. For a second, his expression changes, and you can see the fear there, hidden. Fear of losing me, fear of not being the only one. That fear can quickly turn into aggression, and I don’t want that.
Alexander takes the smallest step forward, as if reclaiming control of the conversation. My face turns to him before he can even open his mouth.
“If you want to protect me, respect me,” I say. “Respect what I say. Respect it when I tell you to stop.” My gaze moves from one to the other. “The pressure of taking a seat surrounded by enemies is already suffocating me. I don’t want that coming from you, too.”
I walk toward the door, widening the space for an exit.
“So here’s what I want from both of you,” I continue, without hesitation. “I want you to leave my room—I need that. I really need to rest for tomorrow. I’m tired of so much arguing.”
The silence weighs heavily, but it doesn’t break me. It only confirms that they heard.
“You want me to arrive whole at the Summit?” I ask, without softening the words. “Then start here. I’m not walking into that room already exhausted on the inside.”
I step aside, opening the way out, and gesture toward the door with my head.
“Now leave,” I repeat.
Dmitri stares at me for a second, far too long, his chest rising heavily. Then he turns his face away, passes Alexander without looking at him, and walks out—leaving the air filled with the enveloping scent of his cologne, which makes me breathe in deeply, storing it in my memory, but I do not step back.
Alexander, on the other hand, remains in the room, standing there, watching me, the corner of his mouth curving into a faint smile—one I haven’t seen much during this time he’s been with me.
“Stay prepared like you are now; tomorrow will be the ball of your investiture,” he finally says, straightening the crest on his ring finger as he leaves the room.
The air is still heavy because of what happened. Because of what I said. Because of what they heard.
My hand moves on its own to the doorknob, turning it to close the door and lock it. The click is soft, but I feel it through my whole body. It’s not fear that they might come in. It’s the need to have, at least for a few minutes, a place where no one decides for me, where no one measures my tone, where no one tries to move me to one side or the other.
My back rests against the door, and my breath comes out longer than I was allowing before. My legs tremble a little—not from weakness, but because I held everything in for too long: the anger, the courage, the knot in my throat, the urge to scream, and the urge to cry that I refused to let surface. Being firm in front of them cost me. Not because I’m incapable, but because I’m not used to being firm without paying for it with my body afterward.
Dmitri’s perfume is still in the room. It lingers in the air as if he marked his exit the way he always marks everything: without asking permission. That scent pulls me to places I try not to visit. To his touch. To his silence afterward. To the way he looked at me as if I were the only thing that mattered—and, the next minute, ignored me as if I didn’t exist. It’s a contradiction that hurts. And I know it hurts because I let it.
But Alexander’s sentence lingers even more than the scent.
“Stay prepared like you are now.”
That’s what he has always wanted. I only understand it now, with an uncomfortable clarity. Alexander doesn’t want me to be obedient. He wants me to be capable. To assert myself. To say “no” without apologizing, to say “leave” without trembling on the outside, to face two Kireevs and not retreat even a single inch. That authority… he’s been pulling it out of me since the beginning, even when it seemed like nothing more than control, even when it irritated me. I thought he wanted to shape me in his image, but maybe what he’s always done is push until I stopped yielding.
Except, in the middle of all that, there was that second.
That second when I thought he was going to kiss me.
The memory betrays me, just as my body betrayed me—with the feeling that the space was too small, with the vanity table at my back, with his hand on my waist, with his low voice near my ear, with the warmth of his breath so close to my mouth that I almost forgot there was a Summit, a seat, a whole world outside. I remember the way he stopped before it happened, always before it happened, as if he were holding back something he didn’t want to let loose. I remember my impulse to close the distance. I remember the almost.
And the worst part isn’t remembering.
The worst part is realizing that I wanted it.