The Toll {Book 2}

12. The Popovs- Ferdinand

The house my parents were staying at was on the corner of a well-to-do road. It was a small building, probably mostly used only for the husband when he came to do business in the city, but still opulent. Martin eased the motorcar to a stop and helped Hannabella and Nadia down. I followed, half in a dream, staring at the three stories of brick that rose ahead of me. Something about it looked vaguely familiar, but my mind couldn't attach the proper memories to it. It was too focused on the way my stomach churned and how boiling hot I felt as I thought about my family and what might wait for me behind those doors.

Martin bounded up the steps to the front door and rang the bell. After a moment, a footman answered the door and Martin greeted him in Flaunsian before showing him his government papers and explaining the situation. The man looked skeptical at first, until Hannabella stepped in with her stage smile and her operatic voice, and the power of celebrity quickly changed the tides as the man blushed and went breathless at the sight of her. He stepped back to invite us in to wait in the foyer. We filed in and he disappeared into the depths of the house.

I shivered even though it was warm in the foyer, and stared at the crystal chandelier lighting us and the twisting oak stairway that led a velvet trail to the upper floors. The sound of a piano floated from one of the hallways that lead further into the house, reminding me of my mother and sister playing duets back at home. They loved to show off for our friends, playing the most complicated pieces they could get their hands on. It used to bother me, all their practicing, but now I'd give anything to hear those false starts and banging notes once again.

The piano music here came to a trailing stop. A few seconds passed in silence, with Martin tapping his fingers on his legs and smiling at me, before the footman returned. He spoke to Martin, who turned to us to translate what he had said. "The master of the house is waiting in the sitting room for us."

Martin took the lead, walking across the dark floors and whispering things in Flaunsian to Hannabella, who trailed after him. Nadia loosely twined her fingers around mine, but I couldn't help but feel we were being funneled into something horrible. The sound of gunfire echoed in my head, only shadows of memories, but bringing with them vague images of men shuffling toward a scaffold. It felt like doom awaited us. But I shook my head to dislodge those thoughts. This was a happy time, not one of sorrow.

The footman pulled open the folding doors to a bright room. A Flaunsian family of four sat in chairs around the room, looking quaint and domestic with their tea and cards. I knew I should recognize them, but I hadn't time to process their faces. My eyes swiveled over to the piano, where a young woman sat on the bench, her blonde hair parted in the middle and swept behind her head, pearls dripping down a white lace dress, and blue eyes that I'd never forget since the day my mother had handed me a squirming bundle and called it my baby sister.

"Katya," I whispered, my face going cold.

Katya had been talking to someone, laughing, but as she saw me, her mouth froze. Like seeing a ghost, she shook all over, and then she bolted upright. "Mother! Father!" she squeaked out, her arm rising slowly to point at me.

My gaze shifted to the right of the piano, where an older couple sat on a divan. Here were two people my heart could never see enough of. Mother with her soft arms and dewy eyes, and Father with his large mustache and tanned skin. Mother went rigid and she gasped, grabbing Father's hand.

"It's Dinny," she said.

Katya bounded across the room and straight into my arms, where she forced a gush of air from my lungs with her impact and we stumbled backward a few steps. I wrapped my arms around her and picked her up off the ground. Mother and Father rushed to join the embrace. Mother grabbed my face in both her hands and I nearly burst into tears at the feeling of her soft fingers brushing at my too-short hair. Father, normally a man with a face more akin to marble than flesh, smiled and choked back on tears while he squeezed my hands. I'd never seen him so much as smile more than a handful of times, and yet here he was wiping his wet eyes and patting my cheeks gently.

"We thought you were dead!" Katya said, pulling me toward the divan. Mother and Father sat on either side of me.

Mother held her handkerchief to her lips. "We tried so hard to get someone from the Flaunsian government to send in troops to look for you. We even tried to hire mercenary soldiers, but no one would take our offers. They said there was no chance that you'd still be alive in that place, and that it was wasted money and too high a risk of their lives." She kissed my cheek. "This is a miracle. A perfect miracle."

Father, not used to talking, but perhaps driven to speaking by the special occasion, cleared his throat. "What happened to you, son? Where were you?"

I plastered a smile on my face, not wanting them to see the hole that that question opened up in me. I couldn't tell them about my time spent with the Vigilant Men, or what I'd witnessed in Rumonin. It would only hurt them, perhaps beyond what they could endure. I wanted, more than anything, to just be Ferdinand again, and the memories of the battles and dead had to be put away for that.

"I just managed to keep my title a secret," I said. It was a half-truth. I had kept it a secret, for a short time. "Nadia helped me. She kept me alive, even when I thought it was the end."

"Nadia?" Mother asked, cocking her head.

I nodded my chin in the direction of Hannabella and Martin, who stood with Nadia by the door. They hadn't interrupted our meeting yet, but they kept glancing over, too curious to keep thier gaze elsewhere. Nadia smiled when she met my eyes.

"But who is she?" Katya demanded. "I don't remember seeing her at any of our parties? Is she a baroness?"

I shook my head. "No. I danced with her, before the war."

"At the National?" Mother asked.

"She came from the other company. The one I'd just joined."

"O-oh," Mother said, her eyes locking onto Nadia. I knew she'd see the perfection that I saw everytime I closed my eyes. Nadia's gentle smile that spilled over with the warmth of her heart, her elegant form even in the borrowed dress, and her tender hands, clasped now in front of her, but always ready to smooth away the worry in the middle of the night with a caress. How could Mother not see all that when she looked at Nadia?

I took Mother's hands. "You thought I was dead, but I can say the same of you. I went to our house, and it was destroyed. It was hard to hope."

"We left just before it became impossible to do so," Mother said.

Katya cut in, her voice sharp with bitterness. "Some of the Vigilant Men guards let us bribe them, as long as we looked penitent and poor when we crossed over the border. They took almost all my possessions. As if they'd have any use for my hairbrush!"

"It was made of gold, kitten," Father muttered, but Katya forged on.

"We had a horrible trek through all this mud and wildlands that gave me such blisters that they haven't even healed all the way yet." She lifted a booted foot as if to show me the evidence. "We could only eat three biscuits a day, and by the time we reached Flauns, Mother and Father were barely able to walk."

I looked to my parents. "I'm so sorry."

"Katya exaggerates," Father said. "It was hard, but we were some of the lucky ones."

Katya pouted, but then moved on. "Anyway, the LeClaires took us in and we've been having a marvelous time here in Flauns. Those stupid Vigilant Men can't stop us from living."

At this point, I finally looked at the family that had taken mine in. They sat around a card table near the hearth, watching us politely. I now recognized them as friends of the family, though their Rumoni wasn't perfect. It was mostly the daughters, who spoke it nearly fluently, that connected our two families. Katya had them over many times.

I rose, crossing the room to thank them in what Flaunsian I could summon up. The father laughed, tears in his eyes, while pounding my back. The daughters translated what they could, about how he was just glad to have helped some of those in need, and how he hoped this good deed would counteract some of the horrors in the world at the moment. I listened for as long as I could, but soon I only wanted to return to my family. Perhaps sensing this, Mrs. LeClaire distracted her husband by beginning a conversation with Hannabella in Flauns, and then I was free to head back to Mother and Father. But, before I did, I gathered Nadia to my side. Here was my family, complete and safe. My parents and sister, and my love. I had nothing else to fear, if they were by my side.

Or, at least that is what I tried to convince myself of so desperately.