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“You know I don’t like it.”
Berkut rubs the bridge of his nose, frowning deeper than normal. “I know. You hate fighting.”
Rinea is perched by the window, hands in her lap politely, watching the world go by outside. But, there is a little furrow to her brow, a crinkle to her nose. She’s upset. Possibly even angry. She won’t look at him, and it’s making him mad. He hates when she gets mad, hates it hates it hates it, and he absolutely loathes it when she gets mad at him.
He continues writing on a paper. The sound of scrawling fills the study, and he scowls deeply as the sound, coupled with her silence, begins to irritate him. He picks up the paper and crumples it in a fist, for no particular reason at all, except that he wanted to. It wasn’t like he was far into the letter anyway. He can just start it over, and do better again the next time. He’ll focus better once he’s had a discussion with Rinea. He can’t sit and work while she’s over there, frowning and upset.
“It was only a suggestion.” Berkut tosses the paper into a bin nearby. “No need to get so worked up.”
Rinea looks at him at last, but the look is less than kind. It’s a glare that she gives him, rather than a smile. Berkut would be lying if he said he didn’t like it when she looked at him like that, however. These looks––annoyance, dissatisfaction, anger––are ones that only he gets to see. Outside of his private company, her face is politely blank, ready to turn into whatever expression she thinks her company will want to see. She is only free with herself when she is with him, but even then, he knows she has limitations set on herself. She will not show him the true extent of what she feels, because it is not polite or proper, not what her parents raised her to do.
Her parents raised her to shut up and be agreeable, and he doesn’t like them that much.
“Why in the world would I want to march to Zofia with you?” Rinea questions. “Why would you ask me to go right into the heart of a war?”
He looks away from her, into the corner of his study. “I thought you might want to.”
She gets up from the windowsill and brushes the creases out of her heavy skirt. She crosses the room to him, hovering in front of his desk. “Why would I want to?”
She’s close, her disappointment looming over him. Disappointed, disappointed, Rinea is always disappointed with him these days. It’s all because of this war, because she doesn’t like the way he so eagerly takes on whatever task will bring him the most recognition. She doesn’t like his warmongering ways, but if she doesn’t care for it, she should just turn a blind eye. War is the essence of who he, a son of Rigel, is. And this war is exactly what he has been looking for all his life.
Berkut fiddles with a glass decoration on his desk, and he struggles to not let his lips twist into a pout. “I don’t want us to be separated.”
She takes a seat in a chair and folds her hands up again. “I don’t want that either.”
“So, I thought-” He swallows and tries to plan out his words carefully. It’s not something he’s good at. He doesn’t have a smooth tongue or polite bearing like that ridiculous Ezekiel. “I thought that you would be able to overcome your distaste for fighting to accompany me.”
Rinea is quiet. The frustration doesn’t entirely melt off of her, but her brow smooths. The crinkle in her nose is gone. She looks more pensive than anything, and Berkut notices her hands twisting, doing that little anxious habit where they rub and wind together. She’s quiet for a really long time, and so while Berkut waits, he pulls another paper from his desk and starts to pen the letter again. No point in sitting idle when there is work to be done.
“I suppose I understand,” she begins after another few minutes. “And, well, taking my leave of the court here for a few months wouldn’t be so bad.”
He dips his quill into the inkwell. “Yes, the gossip has gotten rather ghastly in the past while, hasn’t it?”
She cracks a tight, yet amused, smile. “I was called a ‘harlot’ on my way to breakfast this morning.”
Berkut grips the quill until his knuckles turn white. “Tell me who said it. I’ll have them beheaded.”
“I’m never able to tell if you’re joking or not,” she replies.
He’s serious. Completely so. But if it makes her feel better, he’ll let her think it was an innocent little quip.
“I’ll accompany you to Zofia,” she agrees. “Are we going to be sleeping in tents?”
“For the journey, yes.”
He speaks calmly, but his heart is fluttering, and he’s beating back a grin with everything he has. He and Rinea, alone together outside the prying eyes of the Rigelian court, for months. No more nagging when they try to hold hands, no more being told that they are indecent for offering a kiss to the other when they part. Just the two of them, alone.
And, well, probably at least two hundred soldiers, but that’s beside the point.
“I’m not looking forward to that,” she admits.
“We will be in the height of luxury once we reach the Zofian capital. Chancellor Desaix will arrange something nice for us. Perhaps I could request the king’s room itself.”
Rinea grimaces. “How many orgies do you think he had in there, though?”
Berkut gags. “Oh, gods. You’re right. Different room, definitely.”
A little laugh shakes Rinea’s shoulders. No sound leaves her, though. She told him one time, about an instance where she allowed herself to laugh aloud at a joke made at the dinner table. Her mother had lashed her over the wrists for an hour that night, insisting that proper ladies did not laugh unabashedly. Now, she only giggles inaudibly, demurely, always looking to her wrists when she is done.
“I’m hoping that you’ll feel a little more free, once we’re outside the court’s influence,” Berkut tells her. He finishes his letter, giving it a looping signature, and then folds it up to be sealed later.
She stands and extends a hand to him, her smile gentle. Her fingers rest on his cheek, and Berkut closes his eyes at the touch. It’s soft, gentle like sweet grass that brushes against his cheeks when they steal away to lie down in the gardens. He gives a little sigh, but nothing audible, because he’s not a sap. But, he still lets her know that he likes it.
“Maybe so,” Rinea muses. “I’m admittedly excited to duck out of public view for a while. Will I have to attend any meetings in Zofia?”
Berkut grabs her hand and turns his face to the palm. In the private of his study, where there is no one to gawk at the scandal, he gives her a kiss. He tries to make it as gentle as possible. He tries. He tries to do what he once saw his father do to his mother. He’s really trying. He wants to try. He wants Rinea to look at him and think, “How lucky I am,” like he does when he looks at her.
Her palm is comfortingly warm against his lips. It smells a little like the crocuses she ran her hands over in the gardens a couple of hours before, and a bit like nervous sweat beneath that. It’s a nice smell, all in all. Nice, like everything about Rinea is. He finds himself not really wanting to pull away, even though he intended for it to only be a quick and fleetingly romantic peck.
His lips linger a moment longer, then he turns his head away. He looks back to the desk, quiet, feeling the back of his neck burn as Rinea sinks her fingers into his hair. He looks up at her.
“Sorry,” he says.
She smiles. “Whatever for, my lord?”
It’s starting to feel a little too good, so Berkut grabs her hand and pulls it from his hair. He’s got things to do and places to be, and he won’t lounge around and be rubbed like a kitten. “For doing that.”
“I liked it,” she reassures. “So. Meetings?”
“Not a one,” he tells her. “All you need to do is provide me with your company. It’ll keep me from tearing that dog Desaix’s throat out.”
“My lord Berkut, that was almost romantic,” she quips.
“I should have left the throat part out, shouldn’t I have?”
“Perhaps.”
They linger there for a moment, staring at one another. The air around them turns into something softer, more familiar, and they slowly, very slowly, lean in. The study is private, empty, his own personal domain that nobody can intrude upon. There are no stuffy old ladies here to slap Rinea over the wrist, no other generals to scold Berkut for being improper before his wedding day. There is only them.
Rinea’s hand slips back to rest against the side of his head. Her eyes, as calm as a winter lake, are focused on his lips. Berkut takes the hand that she holds out to him, wrapping it up between his own. He tilts his head back as she leans down further, shuts his eyes, and waits.
There’s a knock on the door then, and the two pull apart from each other suddenly. Rinea walks all the way across the room, refusing to look at him. They were so close.
“What?” Berkut snaps towards the entrance.
“Your uncle is waiting for you so that dinner can start,” a guard calls back. “Pardon the intrusion.”
The mood is flown out the window, and Berkut scowls. Rinea waits politely by the door while he puts the lid on his ink, sets the quill aside, and gets his coat from a hanger. She stands poised, ready to walk back out into the halls that will scrutinize her for simply existing. Calm, as though she had not been offering him romantic nothings twenty seconds before. A perfect girl, so quiet and demure, ready to be whatever anyone wants her to be.
Berkut really hates it.
“My apologies,” he tells her as he passes. “I’ll see you in the morning?”
She opens the door for him with a polite bow of her head. “Yes, my lord. I look forward to accompanying you to Zofia in the coming weeks.”
Back to such stiff formality.
Berkut scoffs and grabs her hand off of the doorknob, brushing his lips over her knuckles fleetingly. A soft gesture, he hopes. Maybe a reassurance that she never needs to be so fakely composed in his presence. There are so many things he would like to communicate in this one gesture, but he doesn’t really know how to do it.
But despite that, Rinea still smiles when he lets go of her hand, and he knows that he’ll keep learning how.