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Zoya pulled her cloak tighter around her as she crept through the hallways of the palace. Tolya was on duty tonight, so she’d have to endure his incredulous looks, but unlike his sister, Tolya never made comments- a fact that Zoya was endlessly grateful for. She didn’t meet his eye as she approached the entrance to Nikolai’s chambers, but he simply nodded at her and stepped aside, allowing her to enter.
The king’s quarters were lavish to the point of absurdity, a series of spacious rooms with gleaming marble floors, plush furniture, and fireplaces as tall as she was. Nikolai sat on one of the couches in the antechamber, sorting through an array of correspondence, he looked up at her with warm eyes as she walked over.
They sat in comfortable silence for a while, writing out letters and reading increasingly dire reports from the First Army. They rarely did this now, with Ehri in the palace they had to at least pretend to be nothing more than colleagues, a king and his general. Eventually she sighed, tossing a letter onto the table in front of them.
“Do you think the earl of Udova would stop contradicting me if I lightly threatened him ?”
“No, he would only call you a witch and accuse you of running ‘his’ country into the ground.” she sat next to him and absentmindedly leafed through the letters, scanning the contents. Her chest grew tight as she noticed the royal seal of the Shu on a lengthy letter regarding Princess Ehri’s dowry.
Nikolai eased the letter from her hand and pulled her toward him, “If anything, Ravka is running me into the ground,” he murmured. His breath fanned over her as he cradled her face in his hands, his hazel eyes dark as his gaze dropped down to her lips. He was so close she could feel his body heat through her kefta.
She moved closer, her voice low “Enough about Ravka.”
He flashed her a small smile and leaned forward, capturing her lips in a searing kiss. It had only been a few days since the last time they’d done this and yet she had missed him more than she cared to admit. The papers wrinkled beneath them as he pushed her back gently until she was lying on the couch with him hovering over her. His lips were warm as he kissed down her neck, and she moaned when he sucked on the tender spot below her ear, wrapping her legs around his waist to pull him closer.
This is weakness, she thought to herself, this is what it feels like. But as Nikolai’s hands pushed her kefta off her shoulders she couldn’t find it in her to care.
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Zoya panted as she came down from her high, Nikolai’s face was buried into her neck, his breath hot against her flushed skin. Thank the saints the council room in the Little Palace had thick walls, they hadn’t been as careful as they should have been, but Nikolai had a way of making her forget about the world around them. Even now as he pulled back to look at her, her mind focused only on his tousled hair and swollen lips. He leaned his forehead against hers and closed his eyes, these moments were so rare now that they struggled to let each other go after.
Preparations for his and Ehri’s engagement party were underway and as a result, she’d barely seen him in the last few weeks. She found herself longing for time alone with him, for things to be as they were. When she would spend long nights, in his bed, wrapped in his embrace. But things were different now. After all, the monster was gone and so she had no more feasible excuses to visit his chambers in the late hours.
“We should get dressed before someone comes in here.”
His arms locked around her, “Wait, not yet. Can we just stay here a minute? Just a for minute we’re not a King and his general we’re just us,”
She swallowed hard trying to will away the tightness in her throat, his hazel eyes pleading “One minute.”
He sighed in relief, pulling her closer to rest his forehead against hers. He’d been staring at her during meetings all week, so much so that Genya had commented on it. She should’ve ended this weeks ago, it was reckless what they were doing. Ehri was already looking for a way out of this marriage and they couldn’t afford to give her one. Ravka needed this alliance, she knew that. So why was it so damn hard to stay away? You know why, Juris laughed in the back of her mind and she reared her head back.
“Time is up.”
He pressed a kiss to the underside of her jaw and pulled away, beginning the process of dressing themselves, “You don’t wear your perfume anymore, the one that smelled of wildflowers,”
“I had to,” she replied, sliding off the table, “you were starting to smell like me, even David noticed.”
His fingers closed on her wrist and he tugged her back to him, “I hate this, I don’t want to just have ten minutes with you every week,” he ran a hand through his hair and let out a huff, “I’m sick of not seeing you everyday, I’m sick of pretending I don’t want you. Zoya, I -,”
“Don’t,” She tore her arm away and walked toward the door, they were heading into dangerous waters, “Don’t say it. This is how it has to be,” she paused to look back at him one last time, “and there’s no use wishing things were different.”
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Genya was in her room when Zoya got back, sitting at the edge of her bed inspecting her nails.
“Finally, I was just about to go looking for you,”
“Whatever it is Genya, it can wait until after my bath,”
Genya’s eye narrowed slightly, “You look flushed, out for a late night stroll were we?”
Zoya ignored her moving to her dresser to get a change of clothes. But Genya had never taken no for an answer.
“Zoya,” she said haltingly, “we need to talk about you… and Nikolai”
A rush of defensiveness rose in Zoya’s chest, “I didn’t realize you were so invested in my personal life Safin, or is it the king? Perhaps David should be worried.”
“Stop it, you know I don’t mean it like that.”
“But,” Zoya prompted.
“But what the two of you are doing isn’t going to end well for either of you. Nikolai needs a wife, a princess with a hefty dowry, ” Genya dropped her gaze to Zoya’s duvet and picked at a thread, “and your affair won’t help him find one.”
Zoya knew that, of course she did, but she’d be a liar if she said her chest didn’t ache at Genya’s implication. Moving toward the window she stared out at the grounds of the little palace, buying herself time. She knew what would come next.
“I know what Ravka needs,” she bit out, her eyes burning, she didn’t dare turn around for fear of what Genya would see on her face.
Silence engulfed them for a long moment before Genya stood from the bed and approached her, laying a hand on her arm.
“I’m sorry Zoya, I know the two of you-”
Zoya turned, cutting her off. Her features schooled into a cool and collected expression, “I’ve toyed with enough men to know when they have run their course, Safin. It’s fine.”
Genya looked at her with guilt in her eye and pulled her into a hug before leaving. Zoya let out a sharp breath and closed her eyes tightly against the tears that threatened to fall. It was always going to end this way she told herself, it was foolish to get attached, and it was idiotic to have fallen for him. But how could she not have?
After all it was Nikolai, the man who so loved Ravka he had given everything, done everything in his power to save it. Nikolai, with whom she’d spent long nights exchanging sharp quips to get through paperwork that only brought increasingly dire news. Nikolai, who was the golden hero of her aunt’s stories. And it was Nikolai who had seen the very worst she had to offer and loved her, not in spite of it, but for it.
But he is not yours to keep, she thought. A part of her hated him for tearing through down walls so easily, walls she had spent years building. She had learned to keep people at arms length early on, it was safer that way, safer not to care than to risk being hurt again. But Nikolai, he had ruined her. How could she go back to living without this? Without the one thing in her life that gave her peace, that made her happier than she’d ever been? It didn’t matter, she would do it anyway, she would do it because for him and for this saints forsaken country she would burn herself to the ground.
She swallowed the lump in her throat and moved to the bathroom, she needed a bath, if she was gong to do this she needed to wash his scent off of her skin. Tomorrow, she promised herself, tomorrow she would end things with Nikolai. After all this was Ravka, there were no happy endings here.