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The sun was bright and low in the sky when Nikolai rapped a knuckle against Dominik’s front door. It was a common picture — a boy in common clothes, a common house, a routine he’d started when he was twelve and carried almost every day since — but it was later in the day than usual. His fault, really, for using his chemistry studies as cover. Sometimes the books were actually interesting, interesting enough for the clock to chime without his notice.
Dominik pulled open the door, looking surprised like he did every day, even though they’d been using the same secret knock since they were boys. He had a tired tug to his big brown eyes, but there was relief there too, like it’d been ages since he’d seen him. In a way, it was true. They’d had class together in the morning, but Nikolai was only himself in slivers there, only when the tutors’ backs were turned, only for the length of a wink or a stuck-out tongue or a silent laugh. The rest of the day was practice in careful restraint. The business of being a prince.
Here, he had only to be Dominik’s friend. And that was a role as easy as breathing.
“You’re late,” Dominik said.
“I leave you alone for a moment and you do this,” Nikolai said, stepping through the doorway to scrub a hand over Dominik’s mop of brown hair. It was freshly shaved around his neck and ears, and extremely crooked. “Who’s done this to you? Were you attacked by a rogue barber? Should I call the guard? A medik?”
Dominik hid his smile in his shoulder and ducked out from under Nikolai’s hand. It was not difficult, since Nikolai had hit his growth spurt first. But Dominik’s voice had deepened quicker. It cracked as he touched at his scalp and insisted, “It’s not that bad.”
“No, it’s not,” Nikolai permitted. A crooked haircut would match Dominik’s crooked front teeth, his crooked smile. Perhaps he would’ve said so, if not for the house and the uncharacteristic quiet of it. There was something delicate in the air, something fragile and held. As they rounded the corner, he saw why: Dominik’s mother and father were sat by the fire, a letter discarded beside them. They looked up when Nikolai entered, but their eyes were withering, cold.
Nikolai’s mood plummeted like a felled deer. He shot Dominik a look, and Dominik didn’t meet it, simply grabbed Nikolai’s elbow and tugged through the home and out the back door.
Nikolai allowed it, too busy reeling through potential problems he could’ve caused and potential solutions he could offer. He didn’t even know where to start. “What did I do?”
Dominik kicked at weeds as he walked toward the shed on the edge of their property. It was a tippy wooden thing, but sturdy enough to hold supplies and hay and two boys when they didn’t want to be in the house. “It’s Sebastian.”
Sebastian had been drafted a year ago. Like most families, they’d had trouble adjusting to the absence of their eldest son. Dominik missed him especially. Little brothers weren’t meant to be without their big brothers. Vasily sometimes spent a week away on trips or studies, and even that distance was strange, like losing one’s shadow, or maybe like being the shadow left behind.
“What happened?” Nikolai asked.
Dominik shoved the door open and Nikolai followed him, taking a deep inhale of cool dry-dirt air. Dominik went straight for their usual spot, a speckled little corner of haybales where they hid a cup and a bottle of kvas. “He’s being repositioned, at the front.”
Nikolai’s stomach sank as he pulled himself up onto the hay and flopped back against it. The edges of the straw dug at him through his clothes, but he barely felt it. It had taken Dominik only days to stop calling him moi tasrevich, but it had been harder to sway his family into informality. Eventually they’d given up bowing in his presence, but they never truly got comfortable with him. So it wasn’t him they were upset with; it was the crown. Somehow, that felt no better.
But if he was going to be held accountable for his father’s war, then the least he could do was try to use his sway for good. “Whose command is he on?”
Dominik crawled up beside him and said nothing. Just poured himself a drink, took a careful sip, and then passed the cup to Nikolai.
Nikolai held the tin cup hostage. It tastes better in tin, Dominik had said with so much certainty, the first time they’d drank together. That was older-brother wisdom. Sebastian had been the one to sneak it to them in the first place.
The thought brought with it an unexpected homesickness. He did not want Sebastian to die. And if he didn’t want Sebastian to die, he couldn’t fathom how badly his family didn’t want to lose him. “Whose command?” Nikolai repeated.
“Nikolai,” Dominik said.
“I could try—“
“Stop.”
“But if it’s Kezhek’s battalion, I know—“
“Nikolai.”
“—I could ask Vasily—“
“I know why they call you Sobachka.”
That was unexpected enough to stop the wheels turning in Nikolai’s head, or at the very least, pause them. He knew why everyone else called him Sobackha. Puppy. Because he was small. Cute. A thing to be kept on a leash. But he wasn’t any of that when he was with Dominik. “Why?”
“Because you stick your nose in everything.” He grabbed the cup out of Nikolai’s hand and choked down a sip with a wince.
“Everything?” He feigned chest pain. “Dominik the Wounding.”
Dominik flashed a bare smile, not enough to reach his eyes, not enough to dimple his cheek. Nikolai didn’t like seeing Dominik upset, and pushing the conversation would’ve only made it worse. Still, he itched toward understanding, toward action. Often, they talked about things, real things, life and death and family, hopes and dreams and fears, and it was wonderful. It was wonderful to listen to someone and then respond back, the way people do, the way well-behaved princes don’t.
But if Dominik didn’t want to talk about real things today, that was okay too. There would always be tomorrow, and in the meantime, he’d keep planning. He’d spend all night thinking of ways to get Sebastian into a role that didn’t involve being the first to die. War was dissolute, but people were predictable. He could figure out who to talk to. He could find a way to spare Dominik the pain. It’s what he’d been doing since the day they’d met, when Dominik had taken the whipping Nikolai had earned.
He’d cheered him up then. He’d cheer him up now. “I don’t know how you could say I stick my nose in everything when I haven’t even asked about Liselle yet.”
A blush darkened Dominik’s cheeks and he scratched his bitten fingernails along his jaw. “Liselle?”
“Freckles. Braids. Seated on your doorstep twice last week. I know you know her.”
“She’s my neighbor.”
“I’m aware. She’s also freckled and braided and regularly seated on your doorstep.”
“We’re friends.”
“Friends.” Nikolai drew the word out. He took the tin cup back, took a long sip, took a moment to let the silence swelter.
But Dominik was firm. He was like that. Stubborn. Sensitive, too. It worried his parents, but Nikolai found it refreshing, like the soft cold of a freshly fallen snow. He spent so much time around people who spent their lives trying and failing to be things they weren’t; he had to respect someone who lived his feelings with absolute certainty. “Friends,” he repeated. “What do you know about girls, anyway? I’m your only classmate and all your neighbors are your cousins.”
“I know plenty about girls,” Nikolai protested, words coming easier now that Dominik’s mood had started to thaw. “Remember Carolin? The merchant’s daughter from Kerch? She was a year older and she wore those little bangles around her wrist and—“
“—and she kissed you under the western balcony.”
“And she kissed me under the western balcony.”
“She was a princess, Nikolai.”
“Kerch has no princesses. You should pay better attention during our studies.”
Dominik rolled his eyes, a process that involved his entire upper body. He sagged into the hay, shoulder bumping Nikolai’s. “She’s from a rich, powerful family. She might as well be royalty.”
“Even if she were a princess, princesses are still girls.”
“Like princes are still boys?”
“Yes.” With twilight falling through the gaps in the mold-eaten wooden slats above them, he believed it. He’d seen plenty of royalty step down from their thrones, cavort with their subjects for the length of an hour, only to return home and have the very same subjects massage their aching feet. Nikolai was never one to turn down a foot rub, but it wasn’t like that for him. Slipping into peasant roughspun was more comfortable than putting on pajamas. Wandering unattended through unpaved roads was easier than sitting still in oversized palace chairs. He didn’t even mind slapping at mosquitoes. His body liked working. His mind liked the task of solving endlessly after the problem of survival in a life with so few resources. Above all else, his heart liked the task of a common life, the constant reminder that everyone, no matter how poor or peasant, was as real as him.
And, of course, he liked Dominik. Dominik, his only real friend.
Dominik, who was staring at him. Studying his face from top to bottom and back again, gaze unreadable. For a moment, Nikolai wondered if he’d answered wrong. There’d been more talk today of his royal blood than usual. Maybe Dominik had finally decided to be uncomfortable about the fact that his best friend was also the prince. Sometimes it seemed that it’d only be a matter of time.
But when Dominik opened his mouth, it wasn’t that. He asked, softly, “Do you ever think about who you’ll marry?”
Nikolai laughed, relief or kvas warm in his throat. “Saints, no.”
“Really?” Dominik asked. His voice was strange, veiled.
It was unnerving and exciting. His heart beat with slightly more intention, enough to make the cool air in the shed feel sticky. He could not bear the thought of a door left open and unexplored, no matter what might lay inside. “Not in any specifics, but I’m sure she’ll be lovely. After all, I am Nikolai the Handsome.”
“You don’t get to name yourself.”
“Don’t I? You try. Dominik the…”
He considered for a moment and then snatched the cup back. “Deft.” Nikolai smiled, but Dominik just took a sip, a swallow, a swipe at his lip, and pressed on with an ounce more bravery: “Will you get to pick? Or will your family arrange it?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. He was second-born. Perhaps not even a true Lanstov, if the whispers were to be believed, emboldened, and someday brought before the court. But until that day, he was still a prince. Would he marry a princess? Would he have a choice? It could be strategic. It could end a war, save Ravka. It could be happy, maybe. But he didn’t know any great men who were remembered for their happiness.
He knew only that he was happy right then, in a drafty shed, with hay scratching at the back of his legs, sharing a tin cup with a dusty peasant boy. It was maybe the place he was happiest.
But by his side, Dominik looked lost.
“If I must marry a princess, perhaps she will know other princesses, and then we can endure all the royal proceedings together,” Nikolai offered.
Dominik shook his head. Put the cup down and clasped his hands in his lap instead. They were calloused country hands. Sometimes Nikolai couldn’t help but remember those welts across his knuckles, his wrists, his arms. He’d promised he would never let it happen again, and he’d kept that promise, so Dominik had taken Nikolai’s punishment only that once. But it was still such an easy image to conjure.
“What is it?” Nikolai asked. Dominik shook his head again. Was it still Sebastian? Was it Liselle? His mind was syrupy from the spirits, and all he could think of was the day when they’d chased ducks through the back garden of the palace. Nikolai had unknowingly crushed a frog under his foot, and Dominik had simply stood there, shaking his head until he burst into tears.
He didn’t want Dominik to cry. But more than that, he didn’t want it to be his fault. He took Dominik by the wrist. His pulse pounded under the bracket of his fingers, and Nikolai’s rose to match it. “Dominik the Troubled?”
“I will not marry a princess,” Dominik said, choking on nerves and tears and a valiant resolve.
“You don’t have to. It was just a joke. I was joking.” But Dominik was not amused. He was worried, and it made no sense. Nikolai prided himself on being good at puzzles, and he had been solving Dominik for years; he thought he knew all his seams, all his secrets. He did not know Dominik could still surprise him.
Dominik cleared his throat. The muscles in his wrist flexed as he gripped his own fingers tighter. “I will not marry a girl at all.”
The speeding of Nikolai’s heart settled into a gentle seasickness. He dropped Dominik’s wrist so he could place the cup in his hand, and Dominik gulped until the glassiness left his eyes.
It was long enough for Nikolai to figure out the right thing to say: Then I shall help you find the most eligible of bachelors. But when he opened his mouth, something unsanctioned came out: “Well, good. For once, the ordinary circumstances of your birth are on your side.”
Apparently, Nikolai could still surprise himself, too.
Dominik looked over at him, and whatever he saw there put a crease between his brows. Nikolai wanted to smooth it away. Instead, he smoothed his own features, pushed any doubt from his face.
But Dominik was good at puzzles too. They had been tutored together, after all. Learned from the same teachers, learned from one another. They taught each other languages, real and imagined. Nikolai taught Dominik origami, the art of taking something flat and tricking it into standing up as if it had a backbone. Dominik taught Nikolai consequence, the art of keeping the wild parts inside for the sake of someone else.
It made sense, then, that Dominik be the one to see through it.
“Could a prince not marry another prince?” Dominik asked.
Nikolai pinned on a smile and bit his cheeks to keep it in place, shrugged loosely like he hadn’t sometimes wondered the same in the dead of night. “That’s not how the stories go.”
“You’re the second son. It wouldn’t be your job to… have an heir.”
“Have you seen Vasily?” Vasily was many things. A deft swordsman, a talented hunter, the important son, destined for the throne. But handsome he was not. “Like any woman would sleep with him. Ravka would sooner appoint you king.”
Dominik choked, a laugh catching him mid-swallow. He elbowed blindly at Nikolai as he spluttered and coughed and gasped through his giggles. Laughter rose in Nikolai too, popping like bubbles, bright and freeing. He grabbed the cup away before Dominik could spill it in his fit and clapped a steadying hand on his shoulder as he recovered. “Don’t die now, just as your reign begins,” he managed.
With flush cheeks and eyes brimming from laughter, with his first full breath, Dominik picked up his head and said, “Dominik Lanstov does have a ring to it.”
Nikolai couldn’t disagree. Right then, he couldn’t do anything but stare at Dominik’s broad, lopsided smile, the first real smile of the day, and contemplate just how badly he wanted to put his mouth right on it.
And maybe he shouldn’t’ve. But this was the antique clock he’d turned into a calendar, the chemistry books he couldn’t put down. Curiosity and catalysts and making something new.
He could not walk away from an open door.
It was quick, clumsy, only the sweetest notes of the kvas left on their lips. Nikolai pulled back so quick his head spun. For once, he could think of nothing to say.
He didn’t have to. Dominik just nodded once, definitively, and leaned in again. Goosebumps seized Nikolai as their mouths met once more.
It was as easy as breathing. No; easier, as breathing had become somewhat difficult.
“Dominik the Deft,” Nikolai said.
He grinned and ran a shy hand over the back of his sloppy haircut. “Nikolai the Handsome.”
They were still kissing when the palace bell chimed. Dinner was at half-chime, which meant it was time for Nikolai to leave his “studies” in the “library” and join his family in the dining hall.
“You should go,” Dominik said.
“One more moment,” Nikolai said. “Just one more. Trust me.”
Nikolai had credited Dominik with teaching him about consequence, but it wasn’t until now that he truly understood. The tilt of a head, the responsive tip of a jaw. A hand there, a leaping heartbeat, a shiver, a flush of warmth.
Consequence was a push, a pull, a game. And here, now, they were masters of it.
Night had fallen by the time Nikolai headed toward home, but it felt like waking up. He would be a late, but it would be easy enough to fool his guards, to pretend he had slipped away into a distant corner of the library in pursuit of some knowledge or another.
Except his guards weren’t waiting for him; Vasily was. He looked furious. He looked delighted.
He seized Nikolai by the scruff of the neck, dragging him off to be scolded in private. “Already tumbling peasant girls,” he sneered.
He did not confirm it. He did not deny it. He did not touch his lips, though they still felt warm, betraying.
“You’re worse than Father.”
He was not; he would not be. But right then, he could not figure out how to protest. He’d left his thoughts in the empty tin cup, in Dominik’s hands. “Please,” he said, his voice weak, his cheeks blazing, “Don’t tell anyone. Dominik will be punished for it. He may be sent away.”
Vasily laughed, though nothing was funny. “Is that meant to bother me?”
He released Nikolai, who skipped dinner and went right to his room.
I will never let it happen again, Nikolai had promised the first day they’d met. He saw the welts on his hands. Felt the callouses against his cheek. I will do better. I vow it.
It was a promise he’d made Dominik, but it was a promise he’d made himself too. He vowed it once more. Took out a slip of paper and scrawled a note on it, knowing that if Dominik wasn’t permitted back to class tomorrow, he’d find some way to get it to him. He was Nikolai the Clever. Nikolai the Crafty. Nikolai the boy who loved his friend enough not to make this mistake again.
I will find a way to make it right, he wrote. I will fix it. Trust me for one more moment.
He folded up the note, sealed it with a kiss like a boy in a storybook, and hid it under his pillow. As he stared up at the ceiling, he imagined standing in a chapel, dressed in his finest. An international affair, his family there alongside dignitaries of every type. He imagined a princess walking up the aisle, and then a prince. He imagined a ring of emerald and gold, and he imagined slipping it onto a hand of rough, lean fingers and farmer’s callouses.
Then he crumpled the thought, crushed it, stomped on it. His life was not safe. His family was not good. His future was not one for love, real love.
And he would not allow Dominik to be hurt again.