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Zoya paused just inside the doorway of Nikolai’s chambers to watch the trio of simpering noblemen finish dressing him. It was a bizarre sight. Nikolai had dressed himself for as long Zoya had known him and probably would have done the same today as well, if it wasn’t such a grave social error for the king of Ravka to dress himself on his wedding day.
Nikolai looked up and saw her. Carefully, he disentangled himself from the noblemen. “Thank you so much for your help,” he said in his smoothest politician voice. “But I believe Commander Nazyalensky needs to speak to me for a moment. You may leave.”
The noblemen simpered and bowed for almost five minutes before they left. Finally the grand doors swung closed behind them and Zoya and Nikolai were left alone together.
They stood separated by the width of the room, staring at each other, neither of them quite knowing what to say. There was a distance between them now that there had not been before, not during the early years of Nikolai’s reign, not during their time in the Fold. No, the distance was new and it was insurmountable.
“Well,” Nikolai said after what felt like an unfathomable amount of time. “Is everything going alright?”
“We’ve only had to escort two people out for public drunkenness too rowdy to be acceptable,” she said. “I’m sure the number will rise as the day goes on.”
“It just has to stop at twenty-five and I’ll be a happy man,” Nikolai said. His tone was light and laughing. If Zoya hadn’t known what a good actor he was she would never have considered whether he was anything but excited for his wedding, as it was she wasn’t sure he wasn’t actually excited. “What’s your bet?”
Tamar had started a betting pool about how many drunk people would have to be escorted out over the course of the wedding festivities. “I didn’t place a bet,” Zoya said. She hadn’t had the heart to do it, which had worried Tamar especially since Zoya was pretty sure the bet was entirely meant to cheer her and Nikolai up.
“Oh,” Nikolai said. For a second he looked crestfallen then his mask settled in place again. “Well, then you should make sure that only twenty-five people get escorted out so I can win.”
“I’ll do my best,” Zoya said, her voice flat.
Nikolai just looked at her for a moment then he turned on his heel and strode to the window and stared out it, hands clasped tightly behind his back. “You know,” he said. “When I was gallivanting around the high seas as Sturmhond we had a cook who liked to hand out advice unasked. Once he told me that getting cold feet was the easiest way to tell that you shouldn’t be marrying someone in the first place.”
Zoya crossed the room to stand before the window, next to him but separated by a few feet. “Are you?” she asked. “Getting cold feet?”
“I don’t know,” Nikolai said. “Kind of hard to tell if your feet were never warm in the first place.”
“This was your idea,” Zoya said.
“Not originally.”
“No, but you chose Ehri.”
“I did,” Nikolai agreed. “You’ve never told me how you feel about that.”
Horrible, absolutely horrible. But that wasn’t what he was asking. She shrugged trying to seem nonchalant. “I don’t think we could have found a match that was completely risk free, but this marriage most likely will solve our Shu Han problems as long as Ehri doesn’t decide to do something drastic.”
“I don’t think she’ll try to kill me if that’s what you’re suggesting,” Nikolai said. “She’s not stupid. She knows that if anything happens to me she’ll be on the top of the triumvirate’s list of suspects, and--though she won’t admit it--I think she knows marrying me is the only way to keep from meeting a sticky end of her sister’s making.”
“I know,” Zoya said. “This is going to work.”
“It has to,” Nikolai rubbed his eyes and yawned.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
“Just tired,” Nikolai said. “I barely slept last night.”
“You know you can’t sleep tonight,” Zoya pointed out. The monster had been subdued in recent weeks, but Zoya suspected that said more about Nikolai’s strength of will than anything else, especially since they were still chaining him up at night on his request. Since they obviously couldn’t chain him up or drug him into oblivion on his wedding night, the only precaution they could take was for him to simply not sleep.
“I’m not going to fall asleep,” Nikolai said after a moment. “You don’t need to worry.”
“Forgive me for being worried about you dozing off and then turning into a bloodthirsty monster and eating your bride,” Zoya snapped. Perhaps she’d intended it to be something of a joke, a line of their old banter, but it came out brittle.
She and Nikolai stared at each other for a stretching moment then, almost as one, they looked to the ornate clock affixed to the wall counting down the seconds until the wedding would begin. They had minutes.
“Nikolai-” she said, uncertain about what she was going to say.
“Zoya-” he said at the exact same time.
And then one or both of them had closed the space between them and they were kissing. It was not a particularly gentle kiss; it was rough and desperate. They clutched at each other, their hands tangling in their carefully arranged hair and clothes. It was a kiss that tasted of loss and regret and finality. Nikolai would not cheat on Ehri, regardless of how he felt about her, and even if he would, Zoya refused to be the other woman. This was their first kiss and their last, and they both knew it.
Eventually they ended up just clutching each other. She pressed her forehead against his shoulder and he did the same--he had to bend over a little, but she wasn’t that much shorter than he was. They did not speak; there were no words for this. They simply stood, breathing each other in. Nikolai was wearing a different kind of cologne so he didn’t smell like himself, the realization was like a knife to the guts.
Someone rapped sharply on the door. They jerked back to the real world and leaped apart. Zoya was full of raging, spiraling emotions. She wanted to punch something or scream. Maybe even burst into tears.
“Yes?” Nikolai called, his voice rough. He looked as fragile as Zoya felt. It was one of the only times Zoya could recall seeing him without any mask at all. He ran both hands through his hair, messing it up even more than Zoya had.
“It’s time to leave,” Tamar called. She didn’t open the door, providing them both with a small but invaluable amount of privacy. “But I can stall for a couple more minutes if you need me to.”
“Stall,” Nikolai said. He still hadn’t managed to get his voice under control. “Thank you, Tamar.”
They listened to Tamar’s footsteps fade as she hurried away, no doubt leaving Tolya standing outside the door. Zoya looked into one of the room’s full-length mirrors. The updo Genya had put in her hair was ruined, but Genya rarely used products if she could help it. Zoya could pull the pins out and brush it out before the wedding started and none of the audience would be any wiser. “You should fix your hair,” she told Nikolai, her voice was as rough as his. “I’m going to go fix mine.”
“That sounds good,” Nikolai said. “I’ll-” He paused, rethought whatever he had been about to say. “That’s good,” he repeated.
They stared at each other, each waiting for the other to say something, but there was nothing to say here. Nothing at all.
After what felt like forever, they both nodded seemingly as one, then Zoya turned and left the room before something happened to make it even harder.