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Fedyor didn’t know a single Ravkan who hadn’t lost a close family member. Be it from war, sickness, accident or infirmity, loss united everybody: Grisha and Otkazat’sya.
In that regard Fedyor was strange and perhaps blessed. His grandparents had passed before he was born, but his cousins and siblings had all survived into adulthood. Often Fedyor thought the only reason he’d escaped bereavement was that he’d been the one to leave them.
Taken from his family by testers as a child like most Grisha, Fedyor had been raised at the Little Palace behind the Grand. Living in the shadow and, as it was often said: ‘the pocket of royalty’, he’d learned first how to bow and use appropriate cutlery. Then he’d been taught to read and write, ride and fight. Lastly and most importantly, like all Grisha, Fedyor had been educated in the history, theory and application of the small science.
The manipulation of matter at its most basic form had manifested in Fedyor as an ability to light up a room, to turn a frown upside down. And yet in spite of his boyhood talent for spreading joy, Fedyor wasn’t a Healer.
In service to their leader, General Kirigan, he’d closed airways, atrophied muscles, spiked stress hormones and even induced a few comas. Though Heartrenders rarely fought hand to hand, Fedyor’s palms were bloody.
As a result of his position, he’d travelled extensively and been greeted with both respect and hostility. When it came to his own family, Fedyor had missed the weddings of his sisters and the baptisms of their children. Still he’d sent home money and correspondence regularly enough to warrant a niece named after him and a mother who sang his praises to whomever would listen.
Fedyor’s father, however, considered men who didn’t work with their hands to be charlatans. More than once Fedyor had explained that he was nothing without his hands, but it was a fool’s errand. Deep down he knew: that his father’s problem was not with his lack of calluses, the gilded palace where he lived or the fine red kefta that he wore. The real issue was Fedyor’s heart and who it beat so desperately for.
Sitting on the Palace steps, Fedyor could see the covered wagons in the distance, but he couldn’t feel them. The hammering of his own heart was interfering with his ability to focus.
Usually it was Fedyor’s mind, throwing up options like a juggler at the circus. Currently there was just one ball in the air and he never wanted it to drop.
“What are you doing?” Sergei asked, bumping Fedyor’s shoulder with his knee as he passed, “You only ever look angry when you’re concentrating.”
“Trying to get a headcount,” Fedyor admitted, wringing his hands and forcing a smile.
“There’s no point, not at this distance, but I understand why you need to try.”
Sergei’s hand – the back of it raised and glossy with scars – gripped Fedyor’s shoulder. You couldn’t possibly understand, Fedyor wanted to tell him, You were never given the chance. Instead he ignored the other Heartrender’s pessimism and squeezed his hand in return.
Sergei had lost a loved one already: an Inferni named Marie. Pretending to read a Shu dictionary, Sergei’s breath was shallow and irregular, clearly thinking of her. Assassinated whilst impersonating the Sun Summoner, Marie’s face had been veiled as her body was carried away. Witnesses had wept and cursed only to sigh with relief at her reveal. One heart amongst dozens had sank as Sergei held his hand to his chest as though praying. Marie had accidentally set him on fire that morning when he’d asked to spend time alone with her.
The best comfort Fedyor had been able to offer was distraction. He’d fought Sergei in the pavilion, raced him in the pools and even taught him to play the piano.
Fedyor remembered telling him: “No greater honour exists than dying in service of a living Saint.” Now the very thought of it made him wince. Fedyor almost wanted to apologise.
Instead he tried again to count those arriving by wagon, but couldn’t isolate anything. Even the hearts of the horses, larger and pumping blood to trotting limbs, sounded to him like one huge engine.
“You could force the horses into a gallop,” Sergei suggested, not quite seriously, “But flogging a dead horse is already how this waiting feels.”
Nadia leaned against him, sighing in agreement. “It’s worse than listening to the casualty reports.”
Exact figures were a luxury they couldn’t afford, but estimates had been gathered for whatever had happened on the Fold.
Survivors of the deluge confirmed that the village of Novokribirsk had been consumed entirely by darkness. The man who’d damned its populace, General Kirigan, had been swallowed up with them. His beloved Sun Summoner was said to have fled, alongside her otkazat’sya tracker, and a band of Kerch criminals.
Perhaps to keep from crying, Fedyor had laughed when he’d first heard. “It’s like a play put on by the Komedie Brute! Three guesses who’s playing the Madman and his Lost Bride.”
Now the time for jokes had passed.
The entire affair was a tragedy, particularly for those left behind on the skiff. Listed as Grisha and First Army soldiers, Fjerdan ambassadors, Shu delegates and an envoy for the King – all were now dead or missing. Lost with them was any hope of a united Ravka: decades of diplomacy, cooperation and integration torn asunder. And probably eaten by volcra .
Kirigan’s promise of a world in which Grisha lived without fear had disappeared with him. Once more their kind were worthy of capture and execution – an ungodly abomination rather than a blessing from the saints. Behind the high walls of the Little Palace, the best of them were safe, but the rest?
Word had spread that Grisha stationed with the Second Army at Kribirsk had entered the Fold at great risk to their lives. Told to retrieve survivors or die trying, the impossibility of success had seen the mission named ‘death by darkness’. Sergei had joked that it was cleaner than a firing squad... yet no one had laughed.
Before everything had changed, Fedyor’s last mission had been to bring home a missing Heartrender.
For weeks he’d followed leads, lost hope and missed home. Eventually he’d found her alive, unharmed, but not alone.
Sharing waffles with a Fjerdan witch hunter,’ Nina had appeared free from danger, but Drüskelle were specialists in their art. Hunting in groups, they threw bolas to trap a Grisha’s hands, employed spreader bars as shackles to keep them defenceless, and then trafficked them back to their homeland. There, at the Ice Court, Grisha were tried for ‘witchcraft’, found unfailingly guilty and put to death.
Disguised in the humble dress of a Fjerdan, Nina had sat with a murderer and she had laughed, her heart beating a contented rhythm.
Fedyor, as not to arouse suspicion, had effortlessly sedated the Fjerdan and then stepped into the tavern. At the sight of him, Nina’s heart had raced and her face, far from relieved, flushed with distress.
Fedyor informed her of his rescue mission and that the unconscious Drüskelle reported to the very worst of Fjerdans. “Are there more nearby?” he’d asked Nina, ready to fight as many as it took to get her home, “Is that why you haven’t killed him?”
Gulping, Nina had stood and stepped as close to Fedyor as she could. “He’s with me...” she’d whispered desperately, looking up at Fedyor from beneath her lashes.
Nina clocked the table of fellow Grisha behind him and swallowed a gasp.
“He’s…” Fedyor had been slow to understand how Grisha and Drüskelle could work together. Then he’d remembered that they were people too, with needs and dreams. “Your heart is pounding,” he’d sighed, looking Nina in the eye with both pity and disgust, “Is it for him ?”
“He’s changed,” she’d insisted, heart beating with fear the way Fedyor’s was now.
“They don’t change,” he’d told her, because Fjerdans were raised on superstition as much as breast milk. Grisha were not men or women, but demons to them.
“Bring him to the General with us and I won’t name you a traitor…He must die for his crimes.” Fedyor had practically begged her, both of them teary eyed and tense. “ Nina… ”
In the end she’d chosen the Fjerdan.
Weaponising the tavern goers against her fellow countrymen, Nina smartly named the Drüskelle a slaver. The unconscious man was doomed to a life of imprisonment.
In the moment, he and Nina were granted the protection of a large bounty and the escort of a crew bound for Ketterdam. How she planned to save her lover once they arrived there was beyond Fedyor’s imagining. Part of him had hoped she managed it only because prison was too good a place for such a Fjerdan.
“Bring me one of theirs,” Kirigan had told Fedyor, but he’d failed to capture a single traitor, neither a Fjerdan or Nina.
Returning to the Little Palace, Fedyor had been glad to find the General away so that he might delay the delivery of bad news.
Upon hearing that the General had taken his best Grisha and his Sun Summoner with him into the Fold, Fedyor’s gratitude had turned quickly to regret.
The opportunity to watch the Unsea disappear was once in a lifetime. Now, knowing that the opposite had happened and Kirigan had fallen, Fedyor should have felt spared, but he didn’t.
The loss stung like embedded shrapnel, all the worse come the evenings.
Whenever sleep evaded him, Fedyor went to the chapel and prayed, most often to Sankt Demyan, the saint of the newly dead. Fedyor had begged Demyan to name the Grisha he’d taken from Novokribirsk. He’d prayed too for Demyan to welcome Kirigan as much as the innocents, and offered his thanks for those allowed to live.
Fedyor imagined that whoever was sitting within the approaching wagons had been praying too. Surely they knew as well as he did that survivors of a massacre were both treasured and cursed, the best news and the worst.
Fedyor could feel the desire to put others at ease bubbling up within him like a fountain.
Despite all the worrying and impatience, he'd done his best to comb his hair the way he always did, made sure the creases of his kefta were up to standard. The comfort of a friendly face and well maintained surroundings was the most that he could offer.
It was spring, but the Little Palace was dressed for a funeral. The main staircase engraved with vines and flowers was also adorned with real ones. Unfurling lilies, roses and fragrant wisteria all grown in the hothouse had been laid amongst an array of tall candles lit in honour of fallen friends.
Fedyor preferred to imagine that the display was for a wedding – each flame a heartfelt blessing rather than a tombstone for graves with empty coffins.
"A part of me,” Nadia said softly, her head still on Sergei’s shoulder, “really, really hopes that our General will just step out of a wagon and proclaim this all some grand prank."
"He never had much of a sense of humour," Fedyor replied, the most he'd said in hours.
"No..." Nadia sighed, “I guess they had that in common, Kirigan and...” She stopped and Fedyor was glad. That name would stay locked away until he knew he was all right… or not.
Before Nadia could turn to offer empty assurances, Fedyor jumped to his feet and approached the first wagon.
Standing at attention, he was ready to offer a helping hand, open arms or a shoulder to cry on. The other Grisha in their rainbow of keftas hung back so as not to crowd anyone. A suggestion had been made that they wear black in mourning, but the colour belonged to General Kirigan. So they’d fashioned armbands bearing his insignia and some amongst them wore veils.
Fedyor hoped that his lack of face covering didn’t betray the anguish he was feeling. Welcoming the survivors with warm embraces and kisses on their cheeks and foreheads, Fedyor’s hands and lips were searching.
The expectant atmosphere reminded him of another time when Grisha had enveloped one another with love: the presentation of the Sun Summoner.
Whenever Alina had displayed her power, those around her had reached out, if only to touch greatness. A myth made flesh, they’d been told all of their lives that she alone could destroy the Fold.
As Grisha had embraced Alina as one of their own, Kirigan had said: “Welcome home.”
Now he was dead, she'd abandoned them and the Fold had grown larger still. Grisha clung to one another in their grief and Fedyor could hardly breathe.
Staring at the empty interior of the final wagon, his mind, no longer juggling options, had dropped the one thing keeping Fedyor going: hope.
His first thought was to curse Sankt Demyan. His second was to get out of the open.
The hearts around him had slowed to a rhythmic drumming whilst Fedyor’s heart beat like the wings of a hummingbird.
People called out to him, their tones consoling, but he barely heard a word they were saying. His head was awash with worst case scenarios and desperate hopes. His body burned with panic: lungs rapidly bloating and emptying, hands trembling, stomach flipping. Should anybody touch him, he’d hurt them without meaning to. The responsible thing to do was hide.
Before he could lose all composure, Fedyor stumbled around the back of the wagon. Unbuttoning his kefta, he crouched there with his head between his knees, breathing deeply.
Crying in company had never been an option, not even as a boy.
In his early days at the Palace, Fedyor had run away often into the surrounding woodland. There he’d found a fountain and imagined its water was made up of the tears of homesick children. Writing to his mother, she’d reminded him of Sankta Marya. A Suli girl who’d traveled often between Ravka and Shu Han, she was the patron saint of those far away from home. Fedyor had since taken her with him on many missions and made it his business to welcome all who came to the Palace. His first kiss and countless more had been at the fountain.
Home had found him and the prospect of having lost the key to it made Fedyor want to run away again.
Not that his weak knees and heaving chest would have taken him very far. Fedyor pressed a hand to his heart and tried in vain to calm himself. With a loud snap, the flap of the final wagon opened once more. Jumping to his feet, Fedyor turned away to wipe his face. The last thing he wanted was for a First Army grunt to see him crying.
"Your neck’s as red as that kefta,” a mocking voice said and Fedyor spun towards them.
"You absolute bastard.”
Fedyor grabbed Ivan by the belt and pulled him into his arms.
For every survivor he’d embraced, Fedyor had been gentle in case of injury or trauma. With Ivan, he crushed him as though he wanted to hurt him. Ivan allowed it, no doubt only because they were shielded by the wagon.
Stiff from driving, his hands hovered at Fedyor’s back whilst the rest of him slowly softened. Ivan, as always, was the first to draw away whilst Fedyor cupped his face, taking inventory.
His brows were still almost permanently furrowed, the cheeks shadowed and covered in a week old stubble. Ivan’s mouth, which was most often downturned, twitched as if to say something, but didn’t. His posture, even in private, was erect and rigid, hinting that any wounds suffered on the Fold had been healed and erased. Still Fedyor felt certain that something had changed.
Pressing their foreheads together, he scolded him:
“You could have written.”
Ivan sighed. “There were no words.”
Hand lingering over Fedyor’s armband, Ivan's thumb ran over Kirigan’s mark. Though his expression was blank, his heart sounded broken.
Fedyor leaned closer to him, depositing a trio of quick kisses: one behind Ivan's ear, another at his jaw and the last on his chin.
Over his lips, Fedyor paused.
It was a playful game of restraint, and though Ivan remained impassive and predictably silent, the rushing of his blood would have been a loss for him. Ivan’s body, if not his mind, gave in to distraction.
Fedyor inched closer to claim his prize just as Ivan turned his head. On high alert, as always, he was startled by laughter on the other side of the wagon. There would be no relaxing for Ivan until they were alone and out of uniform. Fedyor kissed his cheek and stepped back.
“Come on,” he said, moving towards the laugh. As Fedyor turned, a cold hand slipped inside of his open kefta. The other crept up his back and into his hair, gently gripping and pulling. Fedyor let out half a gasp only for his mouth to be captured by Ivan’s.
For weeks, the best and worst of Fedyor’s dreams had been partings and homecomings. He had always preferred the latter – making a ritual of waiting up, looking irresistible and then taking good care of his weary soldier.
Ivan, he knew, morbidly enjoyed the time before a prolonged separation. The opportunity to make love in a manner Fedyor wouldn’t easily forget was never wasted on Ivan.
Drawing a moan from Fedyor, he kissed the same way he did everything: with an intense sense of purpose and utter confidence that he was the best man for the job.
Ivan was also the first to stop because Fedyor never would. In spite of the years, he still couldn’t believe his luck.
Nobody else was permitted to touch Ivan: not Kirigan, not the Fold, not the volcra, not death.
Ivan was everything to Fedyor and he knew without having to ask that he was more to Ivan even than that.
Stepping out together from behind the wagon, they found Adrik holding a pocket watch aloft as though timing. The other Grisha showered them in a gust of fragrant petals.
Though Fedyor blushed, Ivan dropped his arm to lunge for Adrik. Flinching, the boy handed over the watch without a struggle and Fedyor was glad when Ivan pocketed rather than tossed it.
At the elder Grisha, Ivan pointed a warning finger. Most struggled to take a Heartrender with flowers in his hair as seriously as was warranted. With hands raised in defence or else rolling their eyes, the crowd parted and headed towards the stairs. Ivan stared at the ground where they’d all been standing, his hands held out before him.
Fedyor moved to dust the petals from Ivan’s shoulders. Flinching out of reach, he stared wide eyed at Fedyor.
“Let’s get inside,” Fedyor sighed, pressing a soft hand to the Ivan’s neck.
“Yes…” He eyed the clouds as they walked, head twisting and tilting at every cry of a bird, every high pitched laugh or raised voice. Fedyor felt desperate to hold him.
“So… did you choose the last wagon on purpose to make me sweat?" Ivan turned his head, brows knitted.
"It is best manners for others to go ahead," he said, matter of fact as ever. His voice sounded softer than he looked and was always measured.
"I expect nobody wanted to sit with you for that long..." Fedyor said and Ivan almost smiled.
"Only you,” he replied, “And General Kirigan on occasion…” Fedyor felt the beating of Ivan’s heart quicken as his ascent up the steps slowed. “He’s gone… forever . Do you feel it, Fedyor?” Ivan’s grief ran wild, blood rushing to extremities so that he could lash out or flee. “War with Ravka was over. No one could oppose our power. Enemies cowered before—”
" I feel it. We all do,” Fedyor insisted, gripping Ivan’s elbows and kissing his temple. The General of West Ravka, Zlatan, had been amongst the dead in Novokribirsk. Word had reached the Palace that he’d meant to murder the Sun Summoner and every Grisha on Kirigan’s skiff. Several public funeral processions had been held for him.
“There will be justice for the General,” Fedyor promised Ivan, “We are all testament to his ambitions. War will end and Grisha will be free to live and to love.”
Ivan released the breath he’d been holding and began again up the steps.
Fedyor tried to make light of things. “But first, come,” he said, “You are home and the best of a bad situation is no more herring." Ivan dropped Fedyor’s hand and shook his head.
"I would eat all of the peasant fare in the world,” he swore, “if only for our General to return." Holding back a smile, Fedyor placed a hand at the back of Ivan’s neck again.
"Most certainly,” he agreed, “If only necromancy were as easy as consuming a thousand smelly little fish, we'd have ourselves a third army —” Ivan slapped Fedyor’s hand away and knocked over a candelabra.
"You would jest? Now ?” he demanded, rage held back like water behind a dam. “Your armband ?” he asked, reaching to tear it from Fedyor’s sleeve. “Do you mean it? Or is this just fashion? Tell me Fedyor, what have you done in the General’s absence, but eat sweets and craft garlands?” Ivan tore flowers up from the banister. “I expect you’ve all sat around the piano and waited for your friends to return like children at a summer camp.” Fedyor glanced at Sergei who hung his head and held his burnt hand to his chest again.
“Friends ?” Fedyor repeated incredulously, a hand to his own heart as though the muscle was aching. Everyone had stopped to stare at them. Ivan grabbed for those closest and took their armbands too. He swept Nadia’s veil from her head and threw it to the ground. “Ivan, calm down,” Fedyor begged, “Our General would not want—”
“You do not know what he wanted!" Ivan snapped, jabbing a finger at Fedyor. "But I did, and what I know is… that if our General had taken you to the Fold, neither of you would have made it back.” Eyes shining, Ivan’s mouth twitched and his chin trembled. “For that at least… I am glad.”
Fedyor reached out, but Ivan held his hands together in warning. Storming through the parting crowd and up the stairs, his heart hammered until he was out of sight.
“I think,” Sergei said, clapping Fedyor on the arm, “that was his way of saying he loves you.” Fedyor had thought so too. Surprising for a man who despised public displays of affection.
“He took our father’s watch,” Adrik said softly. Fedyor turned to see the boy standing with Nadia, blowing on her burnt veil.
Beside him Genya was dusting off David’s cloak where he’d fallen after Ivan grabbed him. Adjusting his lambswool ushanka, her pale hands lingered over David's brown ears. He blushed and looked away, saw Fedyor watching them, mumbled something and then hurried off up the steps alone. Genya watched him go with a sigh.
“I am sorry,” Fedyor said a little louder than was necessary, speaking practically to the driveway at large. “Ivan is very passionate… mostly about herring.”
“You’re out of your mind,” Genya told him, squeezing between Fedyor and Nadia to take his arm, “To joke with Ivan at the best of times. You’re lucky he only tore off your armband and not your head. Even I can’t fix that.”
“But you are wrong,” Fedyor said and Genya raised her perfect brows at him, “Ivan would never hurt my fat head. It’s his favourite part of me… Maybe his second favourite.”
"What’s his actual favourite?" sweet Adrik asked, but Nadia whacked Fedyor before he could say something crass.
“You’re terrible," she warned and Fedyor laughed.
“I think you’ll find I'm quite lovable… Though perhaps some would disagree with that right now.”
Fedyor didn’t immediately seek out Ivan. The years had taught him that distance served as the best salve for his frustrations. Follow up treatment most often involved fighting in the pavilion, drinking (celebratory or commiserating) and then wrestling of a slightly softer kind.
Unfortunately the pavilion was empty – all desire for a fight gone out of everybody at the sight of friends brought back from near death.
The kitchens too were empty as the majority of otzskaya staff had fled. Amongst the drinks that remained, Ivan’s preferred bottle of kvas was missing and there was a small stack of coins on the bar.
Fedyor pocketed them and then walked the grounds scoping out Ivan’s favourite spots: the main hall, Kirigan’s war room and private quarters, the library and anatomy rooms, the Lake, the banya and the Summoner’s Pavillion. Spaces which for weeks had been haunted by absence and uncertainty rang now with laughter and conversation or contained within them the quiet sounds of breathless kissing.
The candles on the front steps had all but gone out, the grounds still marked with footsteps like some kind of battle stratagem. Fedyor picked several flowers from the staircase, meaning to press them between the pages of a book. Since boyhood he’d collected things as a way of remembering the important moments of his life. He would write to his mother and siblings and paste in dried flowers, make leaf rubbings or add crude little drawings. In spite of Ivan’s anger, Fedyor wanted to remember him standing with petals in his hair.
With flowers in hand, he walked the busy halls back to the dormitories. Doors hung open as people came and went, trading tales and rooms, laying out bedding and building forts. They were desperate to be close to one another. Ivan had accused Fedyor of acting like a child, but so many of them were still children.
“A man with flowers is either in trouble or a saint.” Genya was leaning against the wall outside of her packed room. Her embroidered white kefta was unbuttoned and unbelted, open to reveal the simple kirtle she wore beneath. She was as soft and beautiful as the lilies Fedyor was holding. “You’re welcome to share with us,” she offered, “If you’d rather not sleep alone that is.”
“I’m flattered,” Fedyor replied, painfully aware that Genya’s consent was not often respected. “Unfortunately I’m not your brooding brunette of choice.” Genya narrowed her blue eyes at him. Fedyor changed tact. “I’ve also grown quite accustomed to sleeping like a starfish. They can grow back severed arms if I'm not mistaken.”
“So if Ivan is in your room,” Genya sighed with a knowing smile, “you’ll be quite alright.” The last place Fedyor had thought to look now seemed the most obvious. Still, he felt nervous.
“Beauty rest may be superfluous to you, but sweet dreams are not.” Fedyor leaned to kiss the back of Genya’s hand. “Good night, dear heart.” She combed her fingers through his hair, brushed some pollen from his kefta and then turned Fedyor towards his door.
“May waking be better than a dream tonight. Sleep not at all.”
The room Fedyor shared was sweltering. For a moment, he worried that he’d left a fire unattended. Then the steam of the bathtub cleared and he saw Ivan sitting on the edge of the bed. Wearing nothing but his amplifier and a towel, he looked up at Fedyor with clear eyes.
“Don’t just stand there,” he said, assertive, not quite inviting, “You’re letting the heat out.”
“I wasn’t aware I shared a room with Baghra,” Fedyor replied to no smile from Ivan.
“She drinks more than I do,” he said, moving the unopened bottle of kvas to the bedside. “I don’t want to numb anything.” Fedyor wondered just what he was feeling. Stepping over hastily discarded items of clothing, he extended the flowers towards Ivan. It was unlike him not to carefully fold things and so Fedyor did it for him. Hanging both their keftas on the back of the door, the sight brought tears to his eyes.
“Are you drunk?” Ivan asked after his sniffling. Fedyor shook his head and looked at him as he inhaled the scent of the flowers. “Where were you?”
“Searching for you.” Fedyor pulled off his own boots, picked up Ivan’s and placed them together by the wall. “I felt sure that you wouldn’t sleep here. I thought—”
"That I’d want to be alone? Impossible in this place.” Ivan groaned from between his fingers, head in his hands. “And the last thing I’d want after…” The Fold , that impenetrable darkness . Fedyor thought No flowers grow there. Ivan had gone to great pains to brighten the room with the light of candles and lanterns. Fedyor had questions, but the answers could wait.
Shrugging off his braces, he moved to place the flowers in an empty vase, unlaced and removed his shirt and hung it with Ivan’s. After his reaction to touch on the steps, Fedyor felt it was better for Ivan to come to him.
“The sight of home...” he began, “I imagine it was much to behold after time away–”
“Stop,” Ivan said, grabbing Fedyor’s hand and pulling him to sit on the bed, “You have a habit of drafting people’s apologies for them. It is not my place to say what you’d have done.”
“Vanya…” Fedyor pressed the back of a hand to his cheek and it was burning. “There is nothing to apologise for. At least not to me. Adrik may be owed a watch and I think you almost tore David’s arm off, but he could probably build a new one.”
“The watch is in my pocket and David… He ought to train more.” Ivan leaned back and Fedyor forgot what he was saying. Ivan's torso was marred with a trio of round, purple bruises left as though by bullets. One was so close to his heart that it hurt Fedyor to look at it. All of them could have been soothed by a Healer, but Ivan, being who he was, had no doubt refused them. When Fedyor moved to touch him, Ivan grabbed his wrist and stared up at him.
“It wasn’t the palace or the armbands or the clapping. It was you, Fedyor, with that loving welcome I did nothing to deserve. I failed him—"
"You survived ," Fedyor insisted, lifting his other hand to the back of Ivan’s neck. His skin radiated heat from the bath and the warmth of the room. Ivan released Fedyor’s hand and shrugged off the other, shaking his head and rubbing his knees.
"Survival was not my duty, Fedyor,” he said, eyes on the floor, head bowed, “I made a vow to die in defence of our General and all that he stood for."
"You made vows to me too,” Fedyor reminded him, turning Ivan’s head by the chin, “before the Saints, and I to you – to honour and love you all the days of this life and beyond .” Fedyor kissed Ivan, holding his face in both hands. He grabbed Fedyor by the wrists and pressed him back into the bed.
“I should be dead,” he sighed and Fedyor realised just what had changed: Ivan’s eyes. They were still hooded and hazel, but the light had gone out of them as though Ivan felt he was living on borrowed time. He rolled to lie flat on his back and Fedyor propped himself up on one elbow to look at him. Dehydration had drawn Ivan’s veins to the surface: his neck, biceps, forearms and abdominals, all blue and pulsing. Fedyor could hear the rushing of his blood and wanted to redirect it.
“You should drink something.” Stroking with soft and slow fingers, Fedyor drew patterns on Ivan’s skin as he’d done more times than he could count. Ivan’s eyes closed and his lips parted. Breathing slow and even, the rhythm of his heart dropped from normal to resting.
“The General’s spirit lives on,” Fedyor whispered like a lullaby, “You did your best by him.” Ivan nodded sleepily, enjoying the gentle touch of Fedyor’s hands. His own laid open as Fedyor traced the lines of his palms before looping back up his arms, across his shoulders and down his chest. Ivan projected toughness, but sensitivity lived in his skin and the way disorder felt so intolerable to him. “You will do better for me,” Fedyor said, lowering his face to Ivan’s stomach. “Did you ask to keep these marks so I could kiss them?”
“ Fedyor ...” He lived for the disapproving way Ivan said his name. “The real reason…”
“Yes, of course,” Fedyor said, mimicking Ivan’s stern tone, “The real reason that you kept these bruises is as a constant reminder of your negligence–” Ivan grabbed Fedyor’s hand before it could wander, but Fedyor slung a knee over him. Trapped between Fedyor’s legs, Ivan looked up at him. Though he refused to give in to smiling, Ivan’s eyes glowed with adoration and the hand holding his wrist moved to intertwine their fingers. Fedyor’s free hand caressed the bruise beneath his heart. “You know, this one looks a lot like a third nipple.” Ivan smiled and grabbing for Fedyor’s other wrist, rolled them so that he was under him.
“That is not why,” he sighed, eyes darkening, “After attacks from the volcra...my chest, back and arms all needed long sessions of healing.” Ivan named the places where Fedyor’s hands and lips had just been. “And I couldn’t take another second of hands other than yours on my skin… so I kept the bruises from the bullets meant for Kirigan. Shielding is not brave when wearing something bulletproof.”
“You are brave,” Fedyor insisted, kissing him, “And I am terrible.”
“But quite lovable.” Ivan heard everything. Often he was angered by the sounds of chewing or teeth scraping cutlery. Other times he’d hear Fedyor playing piano from all the way in the pavilion. Ivan kissed him and didn’t stop until his towel and Fedyor’s slacks lay forgotten on the floor.
“These weeks without you…” Fedyor’s throat was hoarse and his lips felt raw.
“Torture...” Ivan agreed, resting his head on Fedyor’s chest. “The General should have let me go the moment I married you.”
“I’m sure a few wanted him to.” Ivan had proven himself twice over. Fedyor too, out of fear he’d been chosen to serve only because of Ivan. He defended Fedyor’s strengths whilst Fedyor made a case for Ivan’s softness.
“A man in love is no good to a cause,” he said as though quoting someone, probably Kirigan. “But my heart is yours.” Fedyor kissed the top of Ivan’s head and listened to his breath.
“Perhaps every prayer of mine, every coin in the fountain was for you… Ivan?” The only time he didn’t look angry was when he was sleeping. Fedyor slipped out from under him to blow out the candles one by one. He left the lanterns burning and hung Ivan’s towel up to dry. More petals drifted down onto the floor and Fedyor smiled.