Feb 25, 2025
I rediscovered Finnick Odair - he’s Nikolai Lantsov in a different font.
Or a sign of the oncoming apocalypse since it’s been 9 years.
Someone help me I wanna scream
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seen from Australia
I rediscovered Finnick Odair - he’s Nikolai Lantsov in a different font.
Or a sign of the oncoming apocalypse since it’s been 9 years.
Someone help me I wanna scream
alrighty!! hi hey hello, and all of that. i decided to just fucking do this, inspired by @lesbabeths (ur voice is so fuckin nice i can’t get over it) and i’m sorry for my incredibly boring voice and bad mic. enjoy y’all
tagging @raraisqueen @wiccanthewitch because i love you both and i don’t really know anyone else rip
I feel like @lordbettany needs to know about Emily Wilde’s encyclopedia of fairies solely because Wendell Bambleby exists and he is being causally described as VERY HOWL PENDRAGON ADJACENT.
ALSO HES IRISH.
If there’s an adaptation, there is only one person capable of playing him I’m sorry
What is the thing in Cecilys story you are most !!!! to write about? Would she feel the same way about it?
Oooooh so atm it’s just a sketch but it’s THIS:
This fic is written explicitly as a rewrite of the Calydonian Boar Hunt, except in this case the boar is Richard and English Fascism and all its evils. Cecily is Atalanta and unknowingly she is the one who will slay the boar (her father), however similar to Atalanta, this will be both her undoing and her triumph, for this hunt will end in misery and grief.
This sketch will be a painting cecily commissions after the act. The boar’s head in her arms is actually her father’s and from his office in the senate house. She’s purposefully dressed in a 1930s esque chiton with a very accurate spear. I wanted her crown to be a Corinthian helmet similar to Athena’s, but her sun kokoshinik tiara works better here.
Tagging @lordbettany since she’s feral about this fic
Chapter 10: The Show Must Go On!
Summary: Nikolai is faced with a conundrum in the leadership of his beloved Ravka, and Alina comes to him in the night needing more support than either Genya or Zoya can provide. Things escalate quite a bit. taglist: @lordbettany, @malkaleh, @fauxraven
Chapter below the cut
Kirbirsk, First Army Encampment, 3 days later.
Nikolai’s fingers clasped tight around the tin mug of coffee Isaak had handed him hours ago.
With it having gone cold, he found his fingers frozen stiff with the reality of riding for three straight days from the north of Ravka to its western edge. Standing as he did now, he found his toes cracking and popping inside the prison of his knitted socks. It was warmer here, frightfully so, and Nikolai had been quick to remove his scarf and goggles in succession. They were tossed carelessly along with his jacket over the back of his chair. Staring up at him, brows furrowed, was Colonel Raevsky of the 22nd Regiment. On Dominik’s orders, he’d been informed that Nikolai was following the Black General’s convoy. He had been told also, in stilted code, that the Sun Summoner was here.
Raevsky regarded him with a raised brow.
“What do you intend to do, Major?” He asked, crossing his arms. Nikolai sipped his coffee, grimaced, and ran his hands over the mug to strengthen the metal. Placing it on the rim of the oil lamp at his elbow, he turned back to the colonel. It would be easy for him to say that he intended to lead the First Army into the Fold in a victorious charge a la the Light Brigade, but that would be a tactical disaster.
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
He knew, from Dominik and Isaak, that First Army’s entire 24 regiments had been sent from their forts and posts to witness this miracle. However, the need for First Army to be there to witness the actions of such a man as the Darkling confused Nikolai. He knew that the Apparat had helped the Darkling take the throne from his father - Genya’s poison had worked too well.
Good riddance.
But Vasily was hardly the man to lead Ravka. Too many of his father’s ministers would use the power vacuum to seize ownership and legitimacy where they would have none under Nikolai’s rule. For that matter, the idea of Vasily leading his cavalry regiment to witness Alina’s saintly coronation frightened him. She was something far too precious, far too unique to be drowned in the mire and muck of court rule in the hands of the older generation. Nikolai found himself gnawing at his thumb cuticle as he thought all of this over, and flexed his free hand worriedly.
“What would you suggest?” Nikolai threw back, worry creasing his brows. He turned to his coffee and sipped it, relishing in the warmth. Colonel Raevsky glanced over his papers, shifting a few of them across his desk. He unfolded several tactical maps of the Unsea and its markers. Neither man knew what the Darkling planned, and it frightened both of them. “The other regimental leaders are assuming that whatever the General has planned, it’s a diversionary tactic. With our Tsar in such poor health, the cabinet has moved to speak with the war Ministry on whether to take up martial law or not.”
“Martial law?” The cup of coffee fell from Nikolai’s fingers with a clatter , and he cursed. “Has the ministry been informed of this happening-” He waved his hand outside at the general setting up of the second army’s tents in the one space set aside for them. “Was my brother told?”
“Of course.” Raevsky’s moustache quivered as he huffed in evident displeasure over the coffee staining his ottoman rug. Nikolai gave him a dark glare. “And he elected to mention that he wished to delay any sort of troop movement until his father was in better health.”
“For fuck’s sake!” Nikolai ground his teeth. “And-”
“As a result.” Raevsky pressed on, ignoring Nikolai’s curse. He shifted some more files on his desk and then held out a manilla folder stamped with the ministry’s seal. Printed in bold cyrillic across the top were the words: PRIVATE. FOR PRINCE NIKOLAI’S EYES ONLY.
Nikolai’s brows furrowed once again as he lifted the seal’s edge with a penknife and tore open the file. Staring him clearly in the face was a piece of blue carbon papers with more typed words, and a TOP SECRET stamped in the right hand corner. His hands began to tremble as he realised just what he was holding. In the case of the heir being unable to work proactively with the war ministry in place of the Tsar, the ministry had the ability to hand the power of rulership to any of the Tsar’s other sons.
Even if they were a bastard.
Nikolai chewed at his lower lip and began to sift through the files. The papers discussed what would happen in terms of military structure, absorption of Second Army under the crown’s rule in case of the Darkling’s uprising - which had happened! - and who would be punished. Nikolai winced at the thought of having to execute these orders, and turned his head to look out the tent flap. Sparing only a few of them would mean that First Army would bay for blood. The fragile and strained relationship between the two armies could be his undoing. But his going after the Grisha would alienate Alina from him perhaps forever. Nikolai ran a hand through his curls.
“When’s this meeting?”
“So you accept?” Raevsky muttered. “Good.” His eyes brightened, and he slid a box toward Nikolai. Nikolai’s pulse thundered in his ears as his gaze shifted to the box. The Tsar’s rule was legitimised by both the crown on his head, but the coronation ring. Where the Lantsov Emerald was the Tsarina’s ring, the Alta Ruby would go only on the Tsar’s finger. Nikolai’s fingers twitched.
“It’s not like Vasily to not claim power when it’s given to him.” He said aloud suddenly, quickly snapping the file shut and winding the ribbon around it. Fear made him uneasy, and the reality of such a heavy burden on his shoulders caused him to pause. Looking at Raevsky, Nikolai sighed. He needed verbal confirmation that what was happening was the truth. He’d been hunted, shot, nearly died twice, and all to protect Alina from the Darkling. Now power was being handed to him on a silver platter, and he was expected merely to scrape and bow and say yes to the massacre of people who may have allied themselves with a monster who went against the crown? All in order to protect them? Nikolai twitched again.
“His Highness is not in much order to do anything .” Raevsky replied dismissively. “He has abandoned the capital for the fields of-”
Careyeva. Where he goes, as is his veteran’s right - despite seeing no action - to drown out his memories. If only he knew a mere scrap of what the horrors of war can appear as.
Nikolai’s thoughts churned with all the anger of a tempestuous sea, and he glanced down at the box again. He could slip that ring onto his finger, take control of First Army, and go toe to toe with his brother. Rain down hellfire and fury. But the Grisha who had been so effortlessly persecuted even without Fjerdan propaganda seeping into their states like rot, there was still danger. Ravka had only recently become better. If he did not take control of First Army, steer her toward the shore of the nation over the people, he would be no better than his father!
“I’ll do it.”
The words fluttered from Nikolai’s mouth and he stiffened, feeling at once that uncanny dissonance between his mind and body that he hated with all of his heart. He stopped, and glanced down at the ring again. Before his mind could catch up to his body, Nikolai flipped the lid on the red velvet jewel box open and stared down at the Alta Ruby. Men of lesser spirit than him had worn this ring and died wearing it. They’d made Ravka into what she was in this day, yet also doomed Fortuna's wheel to spin ever onwards.
He’d break the wheel.
Let his false father and mother see what their adopted, feckless, second son could do with Ravka under his control. This ceaseless war against Fjerda would end. The Fold would be torn to pieces, cast out with Alina’s holy light. The Apparat wished to venerate her? He’d have to do so from the very depths of hell where Nikolai knew, he would one day bring that monster to.
Nikolai flexed his hand, feeling the bite of the gold band of the Tsar’s ring dig into his flesh. Raising a brow, he met Raevsky’s gaze again, and gave the man a hint of a smile. He glanced over his shoulder to the huddled tents surrounding the largest camp on this side of the Fold, and then turned his head back. Protocols would need to be followed, and he needed new heraldry if the crown was to be his. Nikolai rolled his shoulders back, tucked the manilla envelope under his arm, and reached for his kepi.
“Tell the men by the morning.” He ordered, and turned to leave.
“Yes, Moi Tsar .” Raevsky murmured, bowing his head. Nikolai smiled softly, and left as rapidly as he could. Crossing the expanse of packed earth to his tent, Nikolai watched the soldiers still not yet abed smoke and play cards. Some, he knew, found solace in the whorehouses scattered like small satellites near the edges of the once sleeping town of Kirbirsk, near the single chapel with its blue onion domes and gold crosses. It had been here he had made his first Fold crossing at 17, weeks after saving Dominik from the jaws of death. It had been here that he’d been posted before crossing once again to head back to Os Kervo and the Volkvolny.
Here, had been Alina.
Now, as he raised his head and looked across the sea of canvas tents to the Grisha pavilion with the massive, ink-black tent and the smaller tents hosting the other Grisha orders, Nikolai shivered. The darkness inside him, the shadow summoner he was by birth and from the Darkling’s magic with the stag, writhed . It wanted Alina close. It wanted her safe, free from the Darkling’s corrosive and controlling grasp. Nikolai turned his head away from the pavilion. However, as he did, he felt the darkness within him perk up. Turning back, he saw the tent flaps part and a familiar, little form creep out. Clad in a jet black cape with gold sunburst embroidery and her hair braided, Alina crossed down the set of rickety wooden steps and crept through the camp. The wind tugged at her braid, sending strands flying every which way. She looked sicklier than ever, which caused Nikolai’s heart to tug in his chest. He stopped in his tracks, and then crept closer.
“Alina.” He breathed, watching her turn. In the half light cast by the flicker of an oil lamp, she looked like a saint sent to this place to either redeem his soul, or cast it into darkness. She stared at him a moment more, and then began fumbling with her cape’s hooks. As she unclasped it, he saw not the black and gold kefta of the winter fete, but a milk-white nightgown, simple and unadorned. She gave a weak smile, and shivered. The cold air sliced through her like a knife, and she drew the cape more tightly around her shoulders.
“Come on.” Nikolai murmured, gently throwing his arm around her. With not even a whisper of protest, he helped her toward his tent. Flipping the flaps back, he nudged her inside. Once more, to his eyes, the ornate and redundant heavy tapestries kept the light filtering in at only a weak trickle. The warm Fjerdan pelts were thrown on his set of armchairs upholstered in rich emerald velvet, between which stood an ice cold samovar. With Isaak retired for the night, Nikolai had let things slide a little in his absence. He busied himself with making tea as Alina let her cape drop to the floor in a puddle of ink-black silk and corecloth. Unknown to her, light wreathed her skin and caused her body to glow much in the way fireflies did. She examined the tapestries hanging on the walls of his tent with gentle, prodding fingers. Silence hung over them, crowding in at the edges much like the shadows that pooled about in the tent’s far corners. Nikolai examined his bundle of leaves and let them set about steeping. Raising his head again, he caught Alina’s gaze stuck on the tapestry he ’ d commissioned - the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, cursed to wander eternally through the underworld until the lord of death would be kind enough to let Orpheus guide his lover from the cold and dark of the world below. He had honestly no idea why at the time he’d commissioned it. The artist, while an excellent weaver, had given Eurydice white hair and a gold gown.
For saint’s sake, Orpheus wasn’t blonde either.
Nikolai shrugged and returned to his tea making, while Alina cocked her head to one side.
“Who are they?” She asked, tapping the tapestry he’d just been examining. Nikolai sniffed, and finally seated himself on one of the two armchairs. His fingers dipped into the drawer of the samovar’s table, and he began fiddling with the bag of gears he’d been working on the day he’d been sent to take Alina east.
“Orpheus and Eurydice.” He replied, finally.
Alina raised a brow. “I didn’t learn Greek myths.” She answered, and crossed her arms. In this low light, the white of her nightgown made her look more ghostly than mortal. Nikolai sighed, and returned to his tinkering.
“Orpheus was a mortal man who, given a lyre by Apollo that made it impossible for man nor beast to resist his music, fell in love with a woman named Eurydice. They were both very happily married, until one day Eurydice was dancing with a group of Nymphs, got bitten by a snake and died instantly.”
Nikolai paused in his tinkering to fish out two tea glasses, and made Alina a cup of tea exactly as she liked it - a splash of milk and a hint of sugar. Alina accepted the glass and sipped it wanly, scrunching up her nose. “Sorry.” She apologised quickly. “I’ve been struggling with food… lately.” She winced and scratched the back of her neck. “My powers…” She gestured weakly to the antlers sticking from her skin, and pressed her knuckles to her lips.
“Fucking hell.” She added shortly. “I think…” Tears blossomed in her eyes. “Either I’ll make it through whatever the Darkling’s planned for our wretched little crossing tomorrow, or I’ll die tonight. I’ve still not decided.”
She looked at him then, her eyes dark and wide with an animalistic fear - the kind of glance a creature caught in a trap gave its potential saviour. Nikolai’s brows furrowed and he placed the glass of tea in his hand down onto the table. Standing up, he coaxed the glass from her hand and found that her palm was bleeding from the jagged edges of her grip.
“Alina…” He breathed, touching her cheek. “Why didn’t you have Zoya or Genya tell me…?”
“They didn’t know!” Alina burst out, closing her wounded fingers into fists. She ducked her head and looked down at the rug and rush strewn floor. “I didn’t want them to know. I didn’t…” She broke off again, and pressed her hands to her temples. Blood dribbled down her cheek, and she curled inwards on herself, pressing her chin to her chest.
“I can’t be what you need.” She breathed. “I can’t be what anyone needs.” With all the effort of a dam breaking, Alina’s legs wobbled and she collapsed. Nikolai’s hands reached out and grasped her tight, one hand snaking up into her hair while the other steadied her back. Pressing her face into his shoulder, Nikolai ran his fingers through her curls as Alina sobbed without remorse. They were the kind of sobs that wracked her entire body and frame, with the sick gasps of someone pushed too far over the edge into the dark. Nikolai merely held her tight and ran his hands through her hair. He could do little else, even as his heart tore and cracked under the strain of his lover’s pain.
Oh yes. He thought, brushing his lips against the crown of Alina’s head. I love her. I love her with all of the fire and fury this world has to possess, and I would destroy myself for her.
“You are exactly what I need. You always have been.” He murmured against the shell of her ear, tucking himself to be partially coiled around her. Nothing would touch her as long as he was here. “And for what anyone else needs?” He tilted her chin up, glancing down into those fathomless depths of the rich earthen brown of her eyes, and smiled.
“Fuck them. They don’t need you. They don’t deserve you.” He breathed. “The Darkling wishes to make you his Saint, the Apparat his martyr, my father his little ornament. But you are none of those things, sunshine . And you never will be, unless you wish it so.”
Alina hiccuped, and sniffled.
“You say that, and yet…” Her hand snaked up to the antlers, smearing her blood across the surface. She glanced at him again with those widened eyes, and Nikolai sighed, gently reaching for her hand. He pressed his lips to the bloodied skin, and Alina’s eyes widened, but she did not pull back.
“Yet, you are still wounded. Still someone else’s.” His hands dropped from hers and reached up to the antlers. His fingers skimmed the chilled bone, searching for a hinge, a catch. But David’s work was seamless.
“But this will not be your shackle for long, sweetheart.”
Alina swallowed and looked at him long and hard.
“How can you be so bloody sure?” She whispered.
“Morozova made more than one amplifier. There is another.” He lifted her hand and pressed his thumb and second finger around the expanse of her wrist, which made Alina’s skin prickle with gooseflesh, albeit welcome. “The Darkling contracted a notorious privateer to find it.” His expression was turning wickedly charming, and Alina felt her heart skip in her chest.
“You…?” She whispered.
“Who else?” He murmured, touching her cheek again. “Come west with me, Alina. Leave Ravka behind. As a member of my crew, you would be honoured. Be amongst fellows such as yourself. Grisha. Orphans. Outcasts . We could put a head start on the Darkling, get the sea whip before he even thinks to follow you. Return to Ravka, and…” His ringed hand cupped her other cheek, and she felt the cold sting of the gold.
“...Claim the throne of Ravka. There are two thrones on that dias. Think of it, Alina. Us, ruling, justly and fairly. Two outcasts made into the most powerful people of Ravka. Our dynasty would be eternal. Endless.”
Alina’s eyes widened. She could see it as easily as he described it. And, for the first time in her short life, she didn’t feel fear about such a momentous change. It felt right . Welcome, like she’d felt when she’d figured out how to call the light willingly. Now, she would be stronger than what even the Darkling could offer. He’d called her his Queen, yes, but that had been in a place of subservience. Now, it was an equal partnership being laid at her feet.
“Yes.” Alina breathed, her eyes widening. Without thinking, she brushed her lips against Nikolai’s in a chaste kiss, and pulled back, shock colouring her cheeks. The look Nikolai gave here was devilish, sinful. With a smirk, he cupped her cheeks once more and brought his lips down upon hers. The crash of his cracked lips against her raw ones was not unwelcome, and she smelt his scent of brandy and sea salt against her nostrils as his lips melded effortlessly against hers. Distantly, she felt him pull back, only to lay open-mouthed kisses down the expanse of her throat. His fingers pushed aside the buttons of her foppish and conservative nightgown’s collar, and she heard his voice softly murmur something.
“Tell me to stop.” He breathed.
“Don’t.” She replied. This was all moving so fast, so suddenly. But unlike with the Darkling, who had been all take with nothing given back, this was warm and welcoming. Nikolai gave and ensured none of her was left wanting. She felt his hands skim down her back, lifting her, and her head lolled back. Her hands skimmed up the back of his tunic and fisted in the seams of his shoulders as they fitted together. The height made for some awkwardness, but Alina’s back was soon sinking into the expanse of the featherbed mattress topping Nikolai’s cot.
She quickly lost herself to the passion of the moment, and when bliss came, it was as welcome and filling as she had always read about in the stories Ana Kuya had told her were for older girls. But, as Alina lay tucked against Nikolai’s chest, his arm over her stomach and lips pressed into her shoulder, she realised that this was what love was about. The horrors of the world were far easier to handle when one was given the rock solid support of a lover.
Which, Alina knew as she drifted off into that calm and endless post coital bliss, she had with her fox prince.
End of chapter 10.
Smth smth, Oh I read Hell Followed with us so new art moment!!!!
Since @lordbettany mentioned my fic “Ruleth England Under a Hogge,” is their favorite of my works, here’s a wip concept art I have of Cecily’s Saintly/coronation gown and heraldry!
From the front and back! I hope you enjoy it!
Ruleth England Under A Hogge
Chapter two: What scares me
Ao3 link:
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Summary:
Cecily-Anne, while waiting for her train to Ravka to depart, is forced to contend with some of the more explicit evils of her father's regime. She begins to see how history can so easily be twisted, and in some cases - removed entirely. When the push comes to the shove, she is forced to make a choice in where she will stand for both now, and the future she hungers to see.
Notes:
TWs: mentions of Swastikas, racism/xenophobia in the context of fascist vitriol, violence, and death. PTSD.
Please Note - the memorials mentioned in this chapter have links In the below portion of the chapter notes for viewing.
Tagging @lordbettany @dreadbirate @rovinglemon
Waterloo Station, a week later.
Amidst all the glitz and glamor of one’s royal progress to be wed, Cecily stood alone.
In her mouth was a player’s cut cigarette, and in her hand was her pocketbook. She scribbled out tag after tag, passing them to her fathers’s long suffering valet, Reginald Jeeves. Wondering why the man had decided to stay in the monster's service was like trying to understand why God made sin. Impossible to conceive of, and endlessly exhausting to ponder.
Cecily sniffed, examining her smudged tag for one of the many hatboxes Lehzen had sent from Locke and Co. She groaned. Rubbing a hand over her eyes, Cecily chugged back the contents of a silver hip flask. In the distance, Richard gave pronouncements to a cheering crowd. The princess wondered if patricide in public was a killing offense by the killer. She lifted a lid on a small trunk and sniffed.
“What’s in here?”
“That would be your evening gloves.”
“How much am I supposed to be bringing with me?” Cecily asked, crushing her cigarette under her oxford heel. She sighed, rolling her shoulders back. Her glasses were dirty, so she rubbed them on the edge of her cream silk blouse. The morning’s chill hadn’t quite dissipated, causing her to pull the edges of her short, hussar-style cavalry jacket around herself. All of the outer garments she wore were in her heraldic color of hunter's green, and emblazoned with a stag in rampart on either collar point.
Reading a book on Grecian mythology at the mere age of seven had sent Cecily on a quest to embody the virgin, and extremely dangerous goddess Artemis. Her father expected her to feel akin to Athena, but that birth-story hit too off the mark for her. A massive headache like that and Cecily would’ve been left for the wolves.
So, Artemis it was.
She examined the cuffs of her jacket, two stag-heads with their antlers curled towards the skull. Entirely decorative. The collar of her jacket resembled a set of antlers reaching up to strangle her. She sniffed, again. Why must everything she wore be heavy, cut in a military fashion, and restrictive? Cecily moved to regard her heeled oxfords, longing to slip them off and pad around in her stockinged feet. The stone under-foot hurt her heels and made her ankles swell. So much for fashion’s sake.
Sighing, she returned to tagging her hatboxes. Lehzen hadn’t trusted the maids to do it, since of course. Spies - foreign girls pawing over your English clothes . Sprinkling poisons and itching powders . Clicking her tongue, Cecily snapped the lid back on her pen, and grumbled. “I believe I shall flag even before we leave this blasted island.” She murmured. Jeeves raised a brow. “Nerves, Your Grace?”
“Nerves!” She scoffed. “No, Jeeves. Sheer exhaustion and shall we say-” Cecily gestured to her father. “A desire for some level of contact from him.”
Jeeves inclined his head. “When you wish to remove the high walls around yourself, please, inform me. Until then, I would not advise you to put up with such a strategic failure while you are in such a mood, Your Grace.”
“Strategic failure?”
”Your father chooses to make these pronouncements to hide your evident…”
”Do not speak of that.” Cecily snapped coldly, then tempered her mood. Flexing her gloved fingers, she sighed. “Apologies.”
“As I mentioned, your high walls have made you… irritable. Seeing as you have been also forced to tag your own hat boxes, I would advise I take that over. Please, feel assured that you may find your cabin before anyone comes looking.”
Cecily nodded once, and swept off to the train, her cape whirling in her wake as she strode across the platform. However, something caused her to pause. High above her head, the banners of the House of York fluttered in the breeze. She recognized the White Rose, the Whyte Boar and her own sigil of the Stag, antlers reaching skyward. Yet, there was another banner being unfurled. As Cecily stared up at it, she could only watch in horror as the flag flared out.
The Union jack etched with the same twisted symbol that had spread across Germany like wildfire. That twisted Hindu symbol that’d been taken by Adolf Hitler as his own personal emblem of the National Socialist Party and made…
A monstrosity.
Now, it was on the Union Jack. Cecily’s head turned to the left and she realized with a jolt, the sight of the war memorials to the Great War’s dead being… broken down.
“No!” She gasped, running across the platform to the statue that had originally been at Paddington Station for their war dead. Throwing herself in front of the workers, Cecily’s left arm hit the marble floor hard, and she felt the jarring impact of possible breakage surge through her system. Sobbing weakly, she looked up at the workers with their blackshirts, red armbands, and snarled.
“Not this! NEVER THESE!”
“Y-your highness?” One of the workers, a mere boy, kneeled down to help her. Cecily lurched back, her elbow of her other arm slamming into the memorial’s base. She looked up into the carved face of the soldier, remembering with some briefness, the horrors of the medical tents behind the lines.
“You’ve not seen the trenches, boy .” Cecily hissed, ignoring her broken arm. “How dare you take down these memorials?! How dare you dishonor the dead! Your fathers friends died in service and THIS IS HOW YOU HONOR THEM?!”
The boys lurched back like cornered fawns, all bony legs and unbalanced forms. Cecily bared her teeth, raking a hand into the stone floor. She looked to her right, to the sight of Richard still lamenting the fact that foreign invasion of immigrants had polluted this country. Throwing out all the non-anglos made perfect sense. Renewal.
A sense of rebirth.
Cecily gritted her teeth and the wolf inside her rib-cage surged to the forefront, longing for release, to claw itself free of its flesh prison. Slamming her fist into the stone floor, Cecily bowed her head and sighed deeply. Counting back from thirty only worked on some occasions, so she instead began to wordlessly repeat the Lord's prayer. The BUF wanted a Christian state that would heal the divides of Catholicism and Protestantism, so Cecily went older than modern English.
PATER NOSTER, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.
Amen.
Cecily rose her head again and glared at these boys. The one holding a hammer stumbled further back at the sight of two medals stitched into the front of her shirt: The victory and War medals. A veteran. The one holding nothing, who’d reached for her first, glanced at her in shock and horror.
“Your Grace.” He breathed. “I-”
“Don’t.” Cecily tugged up her armband with the circle and flash, then rose to her feet. Her black uniform with its cape of black satin and wolfs fur collar swished about her calves. She righted her hat and examined her medals for any signs of wear and tear. Then, she glanced at the boys through her bottle-cap glasses.
“Do not touch that memorial again. What others are being destroyed?”
“Euston, the City of London…” The two boys rattled the names off and all Cecily could think of with each beat of her heart, were the dead who laid in graves from the sea to Mons. Those men and boys who’d died in service for God and Empire, now being defiled.
“What of the Cenotaph?”
“Untouched, though King Richard has given an ultimatum that it shall be etched with the flash.”
“What?” Cecily’s voice dropped and she leaned forward. “Speak of this again?”
“Yes, your Grace.” One of the boys murmured. “The original etching is being undone and this’s taking its place, along with a bunch of other party emblems.”
“The wreaths from Remembrance Sunday?”
“Burned.”
Cecily’s stomach twisted. She had laid a wreath at the base of that memorial and watched veterans, now many into mid-adulthood with their BUF armbands, watching her with empty stares. She closed her eyes again, recalling the faces of dead men, the pallor of whiteness.
Death was always with her. Its claws sunk deep into her skin and refused to leave. So, she brushed off her lapels and stepped forward, hearing her leather boots cracking as she moved across the platform. Yet, not towards the train that would carry her to Ravka and safety.
No, she moved forwards over flat concrete and stone like it was the muds and tangled wire of Passchendale with the full intent to murder her father. He had earned it in more ways then one, but this… this sin was the worst. It screamed to many that there was no care for history but the one the BUF said was law. Yet, to Cecily and her veterans, in all states, stated clearly that this was their Last Post. The curtain was falling, the lights were dimming.
Soon, they would be as dead as their friends and foes lying in graves in France and Belgium. Death haunted this island, and its princess.
Cecily crept closer to the podium that her father stood upon, its marble front leveled at the top to allow him to read his written speech. She could see the typed manuscript with his school-boys copperplate in red of the edits he made. The ink, as red as fresh blood, darkened in the grimy light filtering down through the massive glass arch over their heads. Cecily found herself looking up once more to the swastika and boar, then she slipped her hand to the knife nestled at her belt.
The bayonet.
Yet not just anyone’s - hers. She recognized it the moment she’d held it. Now, she would use it to end the life of the man who’d made her life a misery.
“For what has National Socialism given England, I say?”
The crowd of mainly train-workers and party members gave a hearty cry of all of the work projects and social programs. Cecily’s grip tightened on the blade, and a bead of sweat rolled down her face. She would not falter, she would not fail now.
She noted her father’s eyes slide to her, and she straightened instinctively, putting on her most winning smile. Standing tall, Cecily took her position at his side and slipped the knife from the sheathe.
“Your tie’s crooked.” She murmured as she leaned over.
“What?” Richard hissed, glancing down at his tie. In that second, Cecily had driven the knife blindly into his chest. Yet, two things quickly made themselves apparent. The first was that he was wearing armor under the tunic and linen shirt that Jeeves had so carefully ironed.
The second was that the metal of his armor broke steel.
“You-” Richard gasped. Fury turned his face red, then gray, and finally white. Not as white as a corpse, with the greenish pallor of rot and rigor mortis, but fear . For all of his predictions and paranoia of assassination not even Richard, Duke of Gloucester and Ordained King, had assumed his daughter to be a killer.
Cecily twisted the knife in further, desperation and anger fueling her. But, it made no difference. Her father was as unkillable as the Calydonian Boar. His hide was impenetrable. And in her foolishness, Cecily-Anne was to be trampled under his hooves.
Run. Run as far as you can . Some part of her mind was still working as her fog of anxiety lifted and she was met with the true horror of her actions. She was a criminal now, a prime target against the Fascist state of Britain. She had nearly killed its king. She was a pariah.
Lifting her head, Cecily was dimly aware of the sounds of sirens, of screams. The crowd had not rushed her to tear her in two, for they seemed held at bay. Cecily shook her head and looked down at her flesh, curious as to why they were pointing.
Light glowed from her flesh, wreathing her father and she in a golden web of light. Desperately, Cecily tried to swat it away, but it only grew in strength as her panic heightened. “Help.” She whispered.
“You’ll get no help here .” Richard snarled, jerking Cecily’s head back by her hair. The light flashed, growing brighter. It was a spark waiting for the fires of rage that had always thrummed under her skin. The wolf inside her chest howled a war cry. Cecily adjusted her spectacles and spat in Richard’s face.
“I never asked for it, Father .” She hissed. Rage and fear were making her irrational. Dimly out of the corner of her eye, she could see her father’s medical team preparing something. A sedative to control the chaos that was spilling out like a gunshot wound. Cecily looked up once more to the swastika looming over all with its twisted, unblinking eye. She raised her arm in the air in a salute, yet with her fist closed.
Then, in Ravkan, she screamed.
“Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!"
The workers, many of whom had secretly joined communist underground cells in the years before the takeover, surged forward. Complete and utter chaos erupted out, and with it, the web of light around Cecily exploded too, in a wild flash-bang. Cecily felt her father’s grasp on her hair slip. She jerked out of his grasp, and raced across the platform to the train that was waiting for her. She finally felt the pain of her bruised arm that had not broken as she lurched into the first class cabin. Behind her, the doors slammed shut and the train immediately rolled into motion.
From the shadows, Jeeves stepped out of the gloom and bowed.
“Your highness, care for a refreshment while we head towards the coast to board the Ravkan airship that your betrothed sent?”
“Certainly, Jeeves.” Cecily plucked the crystal glass of brandy from the tray and collapsed into a chair. As the train gathered speed, the city of London of stone and steel faded out to become rolling hills and villages. With every passing kilometer, Cecily felt the tension within her recede.
She opened her hand stained red with blood, and found the blade in her palm. Its steel edge was red with blood. It seemed, even with all that - the Boar of Gloucester still bled like a mortal man.
End of chapter 2.
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Post Chapter Notes:
Paddington GWR memorial: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Western_Railway_War_Memorial
Great Western Railway War Memorial - Wikipedia
City of London Memorial (though in this context, the Royal Fusilier's memorial): https://exploring-london.com/2014/09/17/10-of-londons-world-war-i-memorials-6-the-royal-fusiliers-memorial/
Located at Holborn Bar – one of the traditional entry points to the City of London, this memorial was erected in 1922 to the memory of the a
Euston station memorial: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_and_North_Western_Railway_War_Memorial
London and North Western Railway War Memorial - Wikipedia
Waterloo memorial: https://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/waterloo-ww1-war-memorial
Our photo shows just one of the four panels. See Stockwell War Memorial for more information about some of the names on this, Waterloo, mem
Cenotaph Memorial: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cenotaph
The Cenotaph - Wikipedia
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