It tastes good, her teasing him. It feels right, like bones that had been floating adrift in his bloodstream were suddenly strengthen and sharpened, falling into formation alongside his heartbeat. Since become the tsarevich heâd led a hauntingly lonely life, surrounded on all sides by people who he could never believe to be friend, as paradoxical as it was. Gods had a bad habit of being on the bitter end of betrayal, and Anton was not in the business of watching the world burn. The truth is, gods arenât meant for happiness. There is a price to divinity, and it came in the name of everything Anton had ever loved: peacefulness, friendship, companionship.Â
But now, with words of his own kiss on Gemmaâs lips, thereâs a tremble in the heavens. Itâs the way she speaks to him, in a way that doesnât make him feel formal, that makes him feel like his soul had final found itâs match. (That is, if you believe in that kind of thing â souls. Anton never had; for if he believed in them, then he knew the twisted dark thing his would be, knotted in his chest alongside blood and ambition. He thinks too much to be able to believe in non-corporeal things.) Itâs in the way she speaks to him, yes; as though he is the boy long abandoned. She doesnât speak like he is one who could go to war in her name, like he can go riding into the night and come back wearing Deathâs cape all to protect her. Crimson truth and the tremor of inevitable bloodshed â she spoke to him like he was the patron to none of it.Â
It was going to be difficult to shoulder, the tenderness seeping into his bone marrow. This is what heâs thinking about in the passing moments since his story passed his lips; he knows that to tell the story was the right choice, an effective one, but itâs made him nostalgic â reminded terribly of the boyhood he had lost far too young. The pain always came in waves, like a festering wound building and building until one moment heâd be breathing and the next heâd be gone. He was okay with it, the loneliness that came with responsibility, with the fact that being king meant heâd simultaneously gained everything and lost everything; sometimes he took to thinking of his loneliness as a testament to his superiority â he would not be here if he was not meant for it, if he could not handle it, but such violent emptiness left him wanting to indulge in more, more more. It left him wanting to take from her, to dive into the life of Gemma Pavlova so deeply he would be lost. It left him near delirious with the hunger for genuine companionship, wanting to ask her What is your fatherâs name? Did he have any special nicknames for you, darling? Did you love him? Devote yourself to his love as deeply as I have given mine to our nation?Â
Instead he is bold. Instead he is dastardly, because to be anything else would be to cut his heart from his chest and toss it carelessly into her unreliable hands. That he could not afford.Â
He pointedly ignores the things she asks of him, fortune, after all, favors the bold. Dastardly thoughts passing through his mind of their own accord and his face, of the same inability to be contained as his thoughts, gives him away before he has a chance to speak; his eyebrows arching at her final words, a smile burning. She asks her questions, and he can still feel his own itching the tip of his tongue, trying to tease his heart up his throat; too bad he was well-practiced in the art of false sincerity. A moment passes, a breath exhaled as he takes a single step towards her. When he speaks itâs languid, each syllable drawn out like a woman across silk sheets.Â
âIf youâd like to test out something more grand, I am humbly at your service.â
Looking at him now, she canât quite make sense of manâs enduring preoccupation with the element of surprise, as if it lends any sort of ferocity to the act or threat itself. Sheâs learned, over the course of many years spent in villages and countries far less sheltered than Os Alta, that the deadliest things often arrive not without warning: wildfires, lightning strikes, plaguesâand yes, even a crown princeâs terrible wit, razor-sharp and strangely humbling. She knows even before the last of her words have leapt from the tip of her tongue that sheâs made a misstep, given him ammunition by virtue of the topic heâs entreated her to discuss, and she steels herself for it, blue eyes gleaming proud and painted lips restrained in a show of neutrality; she waits for him as she does any other thing that will be the end of her, because itâs what a man like him not only demands, but deserves.
Perhaps itâs done her good, being dragged out of the home she grew up inânewly orphaned and picking apart the remains of a nest raided by illnessâand thrust into the light, into Ravkan politics, into a world sheâd always known existed but had been more than content, as any girl of her station would have been, to let it well enough alone, paying it homage in the form of a question or an imaginative thought and little else. Perhaps itâs humbled her in a way she hadnât thought necessary (and isnât that the bane of humility, really?) or possible, to be tossed into a plush lionâs den and left, save for the few mentors sheâd been gifted, to learn how to roar. Sheâd thought sheâd known all she needed to know about the world as a girl, the daughter of a merchant who had seen it all and decided his own homeland was far more suitable, but sheâd been proven wrong in a way that stung, that smarted like a slap to the face. She is well-read and well enough mannered and not terribly naive, but no amount of worship nor tailorâs powder could conceal the truth: Gemma Pavlova is as woefully unprepared for Os Alta as it is her, and it unsettles her like nothing sheâs ever known.
But so, too, does he, despite being more or less removed from the realization that sheâs alone in a place filled with people and their ways she knows little to nothing about; he gets under her skin, the Crown Prince, makes her reach somewhere far within herself for memories long-forgotten and nerve long-dormant, and makes her itch for more all the same. And she supposes, in another life, if he wasnât the Crown Prince of any nation and she wasnât the Sankta his people wanted her to be, that there could have been thousands of different outcomes to their first meeting; she couldâve written him off as a fool, a menace, a royal pain in the ass, they couldâve become friends in spite of it, or perhaps they might have even chosen to never speak again at all. A thousand things that mightâve been, each of which she might wonder about one day, when Anton Lantsov is but a memory and the mark heâs left on her, however big or small, has set in like a scar.
But now, in this moment, only one of these things happens: he steps closer, and she doesnât step away.
(When they write their history books, theyâll neglect moments like this, but one must always remember that history evolves quite differently from the creatures who take part in it; it needs not a thousand years, not alwaysâat times, the span of a mere breath will suffice.)
âAnton,â she croons, taking up his love of suspense and drama like a cross even as her cheeks warm at his words, even as sheâd like to curse him for drawing some form of sympathy out of her for the sole reason of making a fool out of her, even as she wonders if he means it, and if she wants him to (and itâs complicated, the notion, and if thatâs all she knows for certain, itâs more than enough). âThereâs nothing humble about you.â And then she closes up like a book thatâs grown rather tired of having its contents laid bare, lips turned up kindly in a genuine smile. âCome now, what ever happened to being honest with each other?â Playful though it may be, the question rings true.
