Skandal by Lindsay Smith Page B

further.
    “Yulia.” He leans back from me, head bumping against the wall. “ Bozhe moi . I’m so sorry. Again.” One hand flops against his nightstand until it lands on his glasses. “Sleeping pills. I’ll take them tomorrow night—I promise.” He closes his eyes for a moment, but then he opens them again, without meeting mine. “Yulia, I want to ask you something, but I … I’m not sure how.”
    There is a pulse thudding between us, and I’m not sure whether it’s his or mine. I miss this—this closeness, this heat between us that evaporates my fear. I catch my lower lip in my teeth and feel my skin melting into his. “You can ask me anything.”
    He nods, smiling to himself, like he’s embarrassed of his own foolishness. “It’s about what you did in Berlin.” He traces a slow circle on my arm. “Your hands. Pushing out all those emotions…”
    And like that, our heartbeats fall back out of sync. I back away, suddenly aware of the impropriety of me being here, in this warm and sweat-dampened bed, though I come here more nights than not. What would Papa think? asks the voice in the back of my mind. Then I realize the question’s absurdity. If Papa were home already, which he clearly is not because he is off somewhere doing whatever maddening things I’m afraid to know about, he wouldn’t possibly care.
    Valya clears his throat. “I wondered if it could work in reverse. If you could draw away the pain from me.”
    I stare at my palms, curled around my legs, imagining there is a beast inside them, just waiting to open its jaws. What he says makes sense, but where would I put these things? I’d draw them into me, but would they stay there, lurking under my skin? Pacing like a caged animal?
    He bows his head, cheeks darkening. “I’m sorry. It’s too much to ask.”
    “No. It isn’t that.” I jerk my knee away from him. Suddenly the heat of my own skin is unbearable to me. “But what if I—What if it doesn’t work that way—?”
    The look he gives me makes me want to melt. Makes me want to give in. But there are holes in my memories that I’ll never recover. I can’t just fill them with Valya’s pain.
    His hand hovers near my shoulder, like he’s deliberating between clapping my shoulder or pulling me into an embrace. “There’s something else troubling you.”
    I can’t suppress the bitter laugh that bubbles out of me. What isn’t troubling me? I study Valya through the fog of exhaustion. I can’t tell Valya about Sergei’s warning, not yet. It’s not that I think Valya’s the mole—not willingly, anyway. But what if, when Rostov ripped open the wound in Valya’s thoughts, he left something else behind?
    “Maybe,” I say, my mouth thick with sleep. “Maybe it could work. Do you remember what you did for me on the train?”
    He nods with a wince. “I helped you recover some of your memories that your father suppressed. I could have permanently damaged your mind. This is different. What if you could just draw out the emotions, not the memories themselves?”
    Every now and then, I stumble upon another gap in my brain where the past ought to be, and I wonder whether it’s another memory scratched out by my father, or something I’ve simply forgotten. “So I wouldn’t be trying to recover your memories. Just ease them—remove whatever these strong emotions are you’ve attached to them.”
    He watches me for a few moments, expressionless. “Like you did to the Hound. Drawing out his emotions.”
    “Right. But without the—the using them against you part.” I smile weakly, but neither of us finds it funny.
    Valentin’s hand hovers near my shoulder, wanting to land on me, but he pulls away. “There are things that should have stayed forgotten, Yulia. I’d managed to keep them buried for years. But now they’ve been dug up and it’s unbearable.”
    “I want to try.” My voice wavers as I stare into his glinting glasses lenses. If the resurgence of Valya’s