those men. Like everything else, feelings were backward in this place. It would be my normal to fight them, to force them to be something they weren’t, but a part of me didn’t have the energy. Another part of me, the one I forced into tight clothes and the desire for acceptance, didn’t want to be normal anymore. Touching the heart-shaped stone in my ear, the other in D’yavol’s possession, I finally understood Gianna’s words. In this world, things weren’t black and white. I preferred yellow anyway. Tuning Yulia out as she stomped at some poor creature scurrying across the floor, I absently walked into the doorless bathroom. I took a shower, and I didn’t feel anything but curiosity. A tone-deaf curiosity that bloomed with the memory of rainbow-colored vomit, unrealized Russian words, and men lying dead in the snow. The house after dark held a certain charm, like the haunting creak of a door in the night, a sudden breath of air extinguishing a candle’s flame, and the sensation of being watched through the cracks in the walls. I was grossly exaggerating the situation—regarding the first two at least—though knowing a devil lurked around any corner amplified every little sound, and it didn’t help I stood in his bedroom. It was undeniably his. His smell was everywhere, and the sheets were black. I shouldn’t be in here, but its secrets drew me in from the hall after I wandered the mansion for an hour. Even though it was the worst idea I’d ever had, just like Moscow, I wanted to delve into the dark alleys of Ronan’s mind. And finding something to help me escape wouldn’t hurt. A phone, the internet, a Ouija board—anything to contact the outside world.