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Zoya doesn’t have to turn around to know that his eyes are on her when she leaves the room. She had caught the wounded look on his face as she got up to leave, but it wasn’t nearly enough to stop her from fleeing, her dress a wave trailing behind her. She has no idea where she’s going, only that if she stayed in the ballroom a moment longer, she would have lost control. She traipses through empty hallways now, a blur of cerulean in the moonlight, searching for an escape. It appears in the form of a door to the palace gardens. Zoya opens it and steps outside, instant relief washing over her as fresh air fills her lungs.
Tonight was a mistake. She never should have come. She had assumed that her feelings had subsided by now, after she’d spent weeks avoiding Nikolai and dodging his questioning glances. She had stayed away. She had tried to make herself insignificant in his life. And yet…
Leaves crunch behind her and she freezes, shutting her eyes. If she feels tears stinging, they’re gone before she can acknowledge them. She does not turn around but she knows it’s him. The hesitance in his steps gives him away, slow and unsteady like he’s trying to hold water between his fingertips.
She’s not surprised that he followed her.
“Your bride is waiting for you.” She refuses to open her eyes. She is incapable of looking at him. Every time she does, she sees him standing at the end of an aisle, beautiful bride at his side. She sees his eyes searching the room for her, her heart stopping. She sees him saying yes anyway. She appreciates the harsh coldness of the wind now, it sends a shiver through her and distracts her from the pain, if only for a moment. Tonight was a rehearsal. She can’t imagine the ruins she’ll be left in after watching the actual wedding.
When Nikolai speaks he sounds tired. The kind of tired that lingers. She can see it now, even with her eyes closed; his shoulders weighed down, streaks of gold stolen from his eyes. “She can’t even look at me,” he says.
She opens her eyes then, still avoiding his gaze, and moves to the veranda overlooking the garden. It seems to be even more beautiful at night than it is during the day, or perhaps she only sees it that way because she’s searching for some beauty in the world right now. This world that has been so cruel to her, broken her heart yet again.
She swallows, shallow breaths finally morphing into some semblance of normality. Nikolai hasn’t moved and she’s grateful for it. If she had to look at him it might be harder to turn away, to deny herself, to be selfish. She wants to ask him to leave, to step closer, to never speak to her again, to kiss her as if his life depends on it. Instead she says, “ And ?” Her own voice sounding foreign. “You know, for all your talk of being charming, you don’t seem to be doing a very good job of charming her. Have you lost your edge?”
If he hears the slight tremble in her voice, masked with a bitter laugh, he doesn’t let on. “Impossible,” he says, softly. She must know him far too well because it’s his use of that one word that finally makes her look at him. She hadn’t heard him move but he’s standing beside her now, his shoulder just barely resting against hers.
Zoya scoffs, clutching the shawl she had stolen off Genya’s chair tighter around herself. He’s unbearably close. That she finds the strength to not reach out for him, to fight every part of her screaming to touch him— something to be marveled at in this stillness.
“My mistake,” she muses. This is good. This dance is familiar. “I suppose you can’t lose what you’ve never had, can you?”
The moon casts a half-crescent shadow over his face. He looks beautiful— he always has, his features heavenly sculpted— but now, standing in his finest suit with a crown holding down golden curls, he looks so much like a king. If she ever forgot that, if she ever let her mind wonder what if , it still remained. She turns away before he can meet her gaze, but not before he makes of show of clutching his hand to his heart in mock pain.
“You don’t think I’m charming?” His voice is soft, playful almost, and yet she can still feel the weight of it. He’d followed her out here. Maybe she wanted him to. His shoulder brushes hers as he turns and lets his eyes scan over her face, searching. The humor in his voice almost tricks her into thinking nothing has changed between them. Oh, how she wishes that were the case. She craves the simplicity that their relationship had once had. But she knows better.
Zoya smiles. She suspects that he knows just as well as she does that it is not genuine, but they both drink it up just the same— a sugary, self-inflicted poison. “I think your ego leaves no room in that head of yours for charm.”
“I suppose I’ll just have to prove you wrong, then,” he says. Without any warning, the moment is over.
Maybe in another life , she thinks, but all she says aloud is: “You should go back inside. There are already rumors. Ehri might start to think-“
“I would hope she knows better than to listen to gossip,” he says, softly, his eyes trained on her. It’s taking all of her willpower not to turn to him. Her efforts are for nothing, though, because he moves to stand in front of her, in the small space between her body and the balcony. “You’re my general, Zoya.” He bends to meet her gaze and she turns away again. “We will have to be alone together at some point,” he says with a frustrated sigh, but there’s no anger in his voice. If anything, it sounds like a plea.
She swallows. “At some point, yes.”
“Can you not even look at me?” Nikolai asks, begging and distant all at once. As if stepping back and moving closer in the same breath.
She looks up at him then, the first time she’s really seen him since she stormed out. It happened a few moments ago but it feels like a distant memory, pulling on her heart. The only thing fresh in her mind is the pain. She wonders how long it will take for that to seem faded. Maybe it never will. Maybe just as roses grow wild in the garden, the pain will wrap itself around her heart, it’s thorns only ever getting sharper. The pain grips harder but she tells him, “For months now, Ehri has been searching for a reason not to go through with this marriage. How do you know that your being here is not giving her exactly that?”
“I’m afraid I have made a terrible mistake in proposing to her,” he says, fear uncharacteristically clinging to his voice. Nikolai always said he wanted to marry for love. He had said it with a seemingly unwavering conviction. She had believed him so easily, had been so caught off guard when he’d announced he would marry Princess Ehri. It had taken her weeks after to realize why, to recognize the sinking feeling in her chest as her own heartbreak.
His words seemed now to hold up a mirror to some deep part of her. A part better buried.
“No, you haven’t,” she says, firmly, watching him flinch. “Yes, she is… extremely stubborn. But she is also compassionate. Kind. Strong. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Ehri will make an excellent queen.”
Nikolai huffs out a bitter laugh. “Yes. One I do not love and who does not love me.” He holds her gaze as he says it. Zoya has to swallow a sharp breath.
She tries to pinpoint the exact moment that she realized her feelings for him were not one-sided, but she comes up blank. Even though neither of them have ever dared to speak it aloud, it has always been there, and they have always found ways to gracefully dance around the elephant in the room— at least, it had seemed graceful in the moment. Now this feels anything but.
She looks at him questioningly then, feelings written on her face with a lapis-like clarity. She could kiss him right now if she wanted to. Saints, does she want to. But she knows how that story would go. Her eyes move between him and the garden and back again. He opens his mouth to say something but she cuts him off, her head shaking as her lips draw into a thin line. “I will not be your second choice, Nikolai.” The thorns prick at her heart. “I refuse to let you turn me into something I am not. I refuse to turn you into someone that I know you don’t want to be.” She forces her head to keep from falling, from looking away, even now in her confusion, in her anger.
Nikolai steps closer then, and she takes a step back in reaction. The distance between them stays as it was. He drops his shoulders. “Tell me what to do then,” he says, softly, so foreign she wouldn’t recognize his voice if she weren’t looking right at him. “Tell me what I can do to erase you from my mind. To stop my heart from—“
She cuts him off with a single shake of her head. “Don’t.”
He leans closer still and she takes another step back. She feels nearly as broken as he looks, older than all his years, younger too somehow. The tears sting stronger now, burning her eyes, but she refuses to let them fall.
“Zoya, stop,” he says, reaching out for her. She lets his hand find hers, hold her in the darkness just once. She can close her eyes and commit this moment to memory. The garden. The roses. The moon. His hands warm and his eyes shining. When she remembers it, she’ll only see that. She will forget the ache in her heart. “I have to say it,” he says, his body a few inches away, breath warming her cheeks. She can feel the appetence in his precise movements. ”Just once. Or else I might be driven to madness— not to be able to be near you, to hold you, to... When I cannot even bring myself to stop thinking about you.”
“Nikolai-“ she says, pleading. If she hears it out loud she might come completely undone. “Please,” she doesn’t bother to hide the quivering of her voice, she doesn’t care if he hears her begging. There’s no point trying to be equanimous now.
But he shakes his head. “I love you.”
She slips free of his grasp but doesn’t move away, frozen in place. Some sadistic part of her clings to his words, finds solace in them, revels in each syllable.
“I do,” he says, desperately, nodding to himself only a breath away from her. “I don’t know how to stop myself. I don’t know that I could stop myself, even if I wanted to.“
“Nikolai,” she says, firmer. She feels the anger reach her fingertips, sees clouds gathering from the corner of her eye. ” Stop .”
“I don’t know how,” he says, and she’s never heard his voice the way it is now. Never seen him laid so bare in front of her. She’s never wanted to reach out more. If this were another world and she were a different person she would do it in an instant. Ravka be damned. What good has protecting it ever done her, anyway? All she has to show for the years she’s devoted to this country are fractured pieces of her heart, the storm brewing at her fingertips.
But she is not a different person. She’s the same one she has always been and her loyalties remain the same as they have always been.
“Then learn to,” she tells him. “You have a duty to your future bride and as your General... as your friend , Nikolai, I will not allow myself to become the cause of your broken marriage. I will not be responsible for sending this country to its death.”
The moon reflects in a tear as it rolls down his cheek. Lightning cracks somewhere in the distance. “I’ve told you I love you and you’re sending me back inside?”
“If you’d like I can send you over the balcony instead,” she attempts bitterly— the distance is necessary. Then, a forced smile that is unconvincing even to herself.
“I’m still your king.” It’s his turn to look away from her. It feels like a relief to not hide the pain written so clearly across her face as his eyes look over the sea of hydrangeas below them.
“Then act like it,” she says finally, drawing his attention back to her. His eyes rake over her as if seeing her for the first time. He looks at her the way he would a stranger, then nods slowly.
“I’m glad to see you’re unaffected, Commander.” My ruthless Zoya , he had called her once. How long ago was that? Maybe they’ve spent a lifetime in this garden tonight. She wonders what might have happened if they’d stayed in the Fold all that time ago and never returned to Os Alta. She pictures a different life for them both. It may only be an illusion but it feels as warm and comforting as homecoming.
Her imagination, as vivid as it may be, doesn’t take from the anger burning in his eyes. She fights his flames with her own. “One of us has to be reasonable,” she says. “You can antagonize me all you want, but I am right.”
He shakes his head, shoulders straightened and eyes watching her expectantly. “You think that you’re being noble, but there’s a difference between fear and nobility.” She can tell from his tone that her words had hurt him. That he’s hoping to sting her like she had him. If only he knew he didn’t need to put any effort into it, being around him knowing she could never have more was painful enough.
She winces. Her whisper an unconvincing whisper: “Leave.”
His feet carry him closer to her. Closer still, until she can feel him against her. His forehead pressed to hers and she shivers. Her body is covered in thorns. “Why are you so afraid of this?” he asks, quietly. He doesn’t wait for an answer before jumping to his next question. “Why fear it when it could be the best of us?”
There might have been a time when she could have told him that she’s terrified of the intensity and depth of her feelings. Of Ravka, of the damnation she would bring Nikolai, of him. She would tell him sometimes she fears she would destroy the world if only he asked her to. Nikolai would have dismantled each of her fears and convinced her that they could have everything. But if the moment ever existed, it has long since passed.
Whatever answer he is looking for, he finds it in her silence. “I won’t do it,” he whispers.
“The balcony is still an option.”
“I won’t believe you to be the monster you’re trying to make me think you are,” he says. She wonders if he’s always been this good at reading her. If he has, the thought unsettles her, terrifies her all over again.
Despite everything she has said tonight, despite the pain in every moment that is sure to follow, she’s glad to know that he doesn’t see her that way. Thank you seems largely inept a thing to say, so instead she says, “I’m sorry.” It’s a whisper just loud enough for him to hear but it carries the weight of worlds. “Truly. I’m sorry for-“ She trails off.
His hand is on her cheek now and she wants, so badly, to reach out for him. Everything, she wants to say.
“Breaking my heart?” he asks instead, eyes glimmering with something so familiar it nearly kills her. There’s no malice in his voice but it still hits her like a blade.
She doesn’t have time to hide the extent to which she is wounded by his words from overtaking her features before she hears herself say, as if from a distance, “Something like that.” Nikolai’s fingers move as if he might reach for her again, so she catches his hand in hers. His thumb brushes over the back of her palm and she feels her breath leave her body. She lowers their interlocked hands, sharply pulling hers away. “I’m sure your heart will recover soon enough,” she says, not meeting his eyes.
“And yours?”
Zoya offers him a smile. She wants him to ask her to say, she wants to be able to tell him she will. She wants everything to be different.
Some things will always be impossible.
Vines curl around her heart and squeeze it until there’s no air left for her to breathe. “Goodnight, Your Majesty.”