Chapter 491: You Have The Magic, And That’s Fine

[FROLO]

Before today, Katya had nothing.

Just speculations.

Desperation.

But today gave him something even more dangerous.

A reason.

Not just any reason.

A reason to hope. To hold on.

Because in the middle of the chaos and murder and explosions, Vladimir was still in there. He knew it.

The way Sergei had touched him, how he’d held him so delicately. How he’d leaned in.

Katya knew that wasn’t a man who had given up on life or even the concept of home.

And as he walked back to the booth where the chaos was, he knew it was just a matter of time before he got his boyfriend back.

Before Sergei found his way home.

So Katya would wait.

He was tempted to go after him. To demand he come back, but over the last months, Katya had learned something so important.

Sergei was desperate to detach.

And he was doing a very terrible job at it.

The pain, too much, too targeted. Yet Katya had not backed out even once.

Perhaps it was stupid of Katya Romanov to hope, but without hope what else did he have?

"Well damn, you must have really been having quite the bathroom break, Katya... The Blackwaters and the Krylovs have lost everything they brought to the expo," Greg said casually, and Katya listened.

All the months of waiting for Sergei, and he’d heard so many names.

The Blackwaters and Krylovs were just some of the many on the list. And in silence Katya helped Greg pack up their station while Yaroslav packed his.

For a moment Katya couldn’t help but wonder if Yaroslav had known his father had come to the expo. That his father was the reason the submissions had been blown to bits on the other side of the expo event.

He wondered if Sergei ever reached out to his son.

Katya was desperate, but he wasn’t desperate enough to question a son on whether his father had reached out or not.

Maybe Sergei had reached out to Yaroslav.

That was his only child after all.

And maybe he would come back.

So many maybes.

That evening, as Katya slept on Sergei’s bed, he wondered what their future would have looked like if things had worked out.

They would have been happy, really happy.

Sergei would leave and come back.

He smiled a lot.

But something changed the day they left for the palace, and to this day Katya didn’t know what happened.

All he knew was that Sergei didn’t come home, Zhenya had been sighted at the hospital and everything else that followed was what the general public was aware of.

Sergei had murdered the president and brought his head to a press conference.

That was all.

Katya had tried to dig. Because he knew his Vladimir.

He knew the man didn’t just wake up and go to work while dreaming of pizza in the afternoon, only to make a U-turn and never come home again.

Something had happened inside Aslava Hospital.

Something had triggered his Vladimir so much that he abandoned his humanity.

And gods, Katya was desperate to know what it was.

What was so bad that Sergei sacrificed everything.

Everything.

Fuck.

And like clockwork, the days went by.

Katya going into work. Katya returning to Moskowsky penthouse. Katya waiting for Sergei.

Katya trying to call the contacts. Even the hidden passage inside Sergei’s closet, Katya had tried to use it.

And he only got the same people he saw every day when he came back from work.

The Moskowsky operatives.

And it was lonely.

So very lonely in the huge penthouse.

Until the lights started flickering inside the penthouse.

The first time, Katya thought he was being paranoid. So he’d called technicians who changed the lights and fixed every cable.

Still the lights flickered.

Katya even had the men downstairs come and check it all out. There was nothing wrong with his lights.

But he’d noticed something else too.

The days when the operatives stayed in the penthouse keeping watch, the lights didn’t flicker.

Not once.

There was a time Katya insisted they stay at their post for a week.

And in that week the lights didn’t flicker.

Yet the very next day, they began flickering again.

Not just one room. The entire penthouse.

Katya even opted to rely on artificial bedside lamps, and even those flickered.

Which was why Katya was now at Svet and Andre’s apartment, staring at the ceiling. Looking at the lights.

He’d been checking them out for three hours now.

The flickers at the penthouse always began at six in the evening.

It was nine.

"Maybe I have ghosts in my home," Katya sighed in defeat.

There was no reasonable explanation for what he had had to deal with, honestly, and that made it even harder for him to explain the first thing about this penthouse.

"You don’t have ghosts. It’s probably you being blind because you’ve been staring at the lights for too long," Svet teased, and gods, how Katya wished it was just that.

Him being paranoid.

Not waiting for shit that didn’t make sense.

Maybe his brain was playing tricks with him.

"Go sleep now, before you start seeing things again. You have work tomorrow, Romanov," Svet said, and Katya just gave her a thumbs up.

Then he got up and went to his room. They all had rooms for each other in their homes, rooms that were different from the guestrooms.

It was a concept they had agreed on since they were kids, and it grew on them anyway.

"Please don’t flicker," Katya sighed as he got in and locked the door.

He wasn’t sure what to look out for or even hope for anymore. All he knew was the fact that things had to be a tad creepier than they always had been.

His driver had suddenly changed careers and was now a dancer at a high-end club, which made absolutely no sense.

The man just upped and decided to leave.

The woman who always sold him tacos suddenly relocated to a different part of the city.

The supermarket he went to buy fruit from suddenly had lots of fruit. Fresh fruits. Way too fresh. Katya started being suspicious that they were smugglers.

And fair enough, Katya went looking for their background. Turns out they were agricultural produce smugglers.

People were just being weird around him, and he was getting creeped out with every passing day.

He didn’t tell his friends, though, because he knew his crazy friends would go demand answers where there was obviously no rational answer. But hell, Katya had so many questions.

Sighing, he went into the bathroom to take a much-needed shower.

And when he was in there, the lights began flickering again.

Just great.

He stepped out, not willing to be blown to bits, dried himself up in silence, and went to make himself congee.

Still, he didn’t tell his friends. What was he supposed to say?

The ghosts followed me into your house. I’m sorry?

Maybe they were right.

He was overthinking.

Exhausted.

And needed sleep.

So one coffee later, he returned to his room.

The first thing that met him when he cracked the door, ready to go to bed?

Rainforest.

Sergei’s scent.

Too fresh.

Was he here?

Was he—

Katya saw a note on the bed, with a bouquet of lilies and a small citrus fruit... Katya’s scent.

"Goodnight, little wolf."