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"Is that a gun or are you really happy to see me?"
Her chuckle is warm, a low giggle; her gaze hooded, prettily so as she blinks her lashes slowly at him. Her hands are fisted around the front of his shirt, pulling him to her or huddling herself closer to him, Matthias isn't sure - what he knows, though, is that she's turned seduction into an art form, and if there's a pang of jealousy clamoring inside his head over all the men she must have used all of her tricks on before to hone her craft, he forces himself to bury the feeling way down.
She's just a mission. She has to be.
He smiles at her, lets her pull him down to eye-level as she tugs at his shirt, meets her kiss halfway as he dips his head to press his mouth against her eager lips. She always kisses him like she wants him to spill all of his secrets away, and Matthias now knows that it's actually been her plan all along.
He presses the gun to her stomach more firmly and watches as her eyes widen in, he must admit, perfectly crafted surprise, a flicker of fear and confusion and a dozen other emotions that are just as fake as she is. Her green eyes are no longer sparking with mirth but gleaming with unshed tears. "Joran, what - what's happening?"
She tries pulling away from him but Matthias tightens his hold on her hip. "Tell me who you're working for, Mila," he asks slowly, speaking her name - her alias - with a low hiss. General Brum doesn't know who she is, her real name, or even who she works for, even if he has his suspicions that she's a Ravkan spy. Mila told him she was Kaelish; another lie.
"Stop it, you're scaring me," she starts sobbing, and he'll give it to her, there are tears rolling down her cheeks and the slope of her nose, and a less trained agent might just believe her. But he doesn't. "Joran, why are you doing this? Stop it, stop it now."
She struggles against him, hysterically hammering her fists against his chest, and Matthias clicks the safety off so she knows he means business.
He's so amused by her refusal to drop the damsel in distress act that he doesn't see the blade until it's too late and she's pressing it against his neck.
Beauty like the edge of a sharp knife, he muses as they both stand still, Matthias trying to hold his breath, and Mila sucking in her stomach against the barrel of his gun.
"Who are you working for?" she asks, porcelain to steel in less than a second.
Istamere, WANDERING ISLE
one year ago
She was a redhead in Istamere.
Zoya said it suited her, the deep copper waves framing her face making her emerald eyes pop. Nina had frowned. Shouldn't I try to blend in? she'd asked her handler.
There's nothing subtle about you, dorogoya. Embrace it.
He stuck out like a sore thumb more, anyway.
Despite the civilian clothes - a deliciously-fitted suit, a nice dress shirt made from the softest cotton from Cofton, Nina assumed as she picked his pocket - his entire being screamed military. That in itself had caught her attention first; his plump mouth and big blue eyes and gigantic hands as he drummed his fingers impatiently on the table and the things these hands could do only came second, as an afterthought.
He was so large that everything around him was dwarfed, including the people sitting with him at the table and the furniture; his knees bumped against the table, and his impressive frame threatened the integrity of the chair he was sitting on. Although he seemed relaxed, the corner of his mouth twitching every now and then in polite amusement at whatever his companions were saying, Nina could see his eyes rapidly scanning the place, cataloguing everyone's comings and goings, constantly on alert.
His gaze landed on her as she entered the ballroom at the arm of - who was he again? the ambassador's son? the ambassador's private secretary? Nina couldn't remember, and it didn't matter. The man flaunting her around was just her way in. Nina had spent the past week flirting with him, letting him believe he'd hit the jackpot scoring a girl like her, playing coy when he'd finally asked her if she'd do him the honor of accompanying him to the winter ball. At the end of the night, they'd both get what they wanted: for her, military intel into Kaelish forces on the Southern Front; for him, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to cop a feel before the sleeping powder she'd put in his drink kicked in.
Nina was more amused than vexed that the big spy dismissed her as a threat so easily. She could see it in his eyes: they only briefly took in her features, scanned them in his robot brain, then dived in the scandalous cleavage of her dress before he disapprovingly shook his head. He'd put her in his brainless babe mental file, she just knew it, and he wasn't really wrong. Tonight, she was Mila Jandersdat, a sweet farm girl who'd been lucky enough to be plucked from a life of hard labor to spend one unforgettable night amongst the elite. Her date had paid for the dress, for a night to remember and tell the boys about around coffee in the break-room tomorrow; she was harmless, except for the havoc her perilous neckline would wreak.
From what she could observe, the spy wasn't a threat to her mission, either. A glaring spot refusing to blend in as he was, Zoya surely knew who he was. If she'd not warned Nina about him, then it was likely he was not worth mentioning.
She followed her date around, beaming so much at everyone that her cheeks hurt. An older man unabashedly groped her ass and Nina forced herself to giggle and bat her lashes at him; her date wouldn't want her to make a scene. By the time he finally guided them to their table, Nina's feet hurt as much as her pride.
He glared at her as she took a seat beside him. It felt as if her mere existence bothered him. Once again Nina caught his gaze travelling to her breasts, but up close she realized that she'd mistaken his disapproval with repressed hunger. His nostrils flared, his breathing so heavy it fanned across her cheek, and his eyes were midnight blue now, not the clear sky shade she'd noticed earlier.
Her date instantly forgot about her the moment he sat and joined the conversation the other men were having, as they themselves forgot all about the spy. There were only him and her then, him glaring at her, her giving him a sweet, bashful smile. "I'm Mila," Nina said softly, toying with her fingers in her lap. Mila wouldn't offer her last name to a stranger, especially not a rich, important stranger who couldn't care less about the flavor of the night. Mila wouldn't try to shake his hand, knowing it wasn't her place.
He offered neither.
"Mila," he echoed, testing her name. "Pleasure to meet you."
It was a lie - as fake as the name on his invitation as she'd later find out, stealing it from his breast pocket and putting it back nicely with a pat to his chest with a sleight of hand Zoya would be proud of. Her date had kissed her on the cheek, apologizing for leaving her to her own devices for a little while as he needed to step aside for business and would she mind terribly if he left her in very good hands?
He didn't even know the spy's name. He'd handed her off to him like a property, as men like him - men who thought themselves important - often did. It served her mission well: the spy was so much more handsome, in this steady, stoic way, chiseled jaw and large hands that could probably span her waist no matter how not-tiny it was, arms strong enough to lift her up without breaking a sweat, and Nina was sure she could persuade him into a nice tumble. He was a diplomat, according to his fake papers: the guards would let him bring a tipsy farm girl to any of the guest rooms on the second floor - only a floor below the general's office, where she needed to be - without protesting much. From there on, she'd just need to spike his drink instead of her date's and be on her way.
She leaned into him, put her hand on his knee, and giggled. Flipped her hair, stroked her hand up his thigh, and bit her lip. He was pulling her up from her chair in no time.
But he dragged her to the dance floor instead of leading her to a secluded room. Nina gasped as one of his hands firmly settled on the curve of her hip, possessively bringing her close; but it was the gentleness with which he held her free hand in his that truly took her breath away. Hands like his, big and strong and calloused, were not meant for such softness; and yet here he was, holding her like she was more than just a simple farm girl to tumble in the hay.
"I don't know if this is very proper," she told him in a low voice, just above a murmur.
He let out a chuckle, the first genuine thing about him. "I don't think you care much about being proper," he said, no judgment in his voice, only an assessment of character.
Did Mila care about being proper? Surely not. Sweet farm girls still wanted to get out of their misery, and smiling and flirting and sleeping with rich men was one way to do it. There was no shame in that, Nina reckoned; back in Ravka, this would have been her life if she hadn't caught the eye of the Grisha Triumvirate, if Zoya and Genya hadn't taught her how to use her skills.
So she did just that. Used her skills to test him further, to bring something genuine out of him again. Nina inched closer, her breasts brushing his front, her curves molding against his flat, hard chest. She watched his Adam's apple bob, saw the flush in his cheeks, and took pleasure from his reaction to her.
He'd deemed her harmless, and he'd been wrong. Nina could do more harm with her smile or her eyelashes than the most trained soldier could with a rifle or a sword.
Nina never cared about propriety, either.
She felt him shudder as she swayed to the music, so dangerously close to him despite the slow song that did not allow such closeness, that he could not hide his response to her. Men. They were all the same. No matter how smart, how rich, how dangerous they could be, they all fell for the easiest, oldest trick in the spy playbook. Pathetic.
Despite her bravado, Nina couldn't pretend that he did not have some effect on her, too. The warmth of his big hand on her body, the feel of his hard muscles, the clean scent of his cologne. Everything about him screamed power and money, and yet she could hear something behind his accent - something about the way he didn't properly speak Kaelish, how his soft vowels sounded in his mouth. Combined with the blond hair and blue eyes, Nina suspected he was Fjerdan. Was he a son of the sea, raised in Elling? Or a mountain man from Hjar? She couldn't be sure. All she knew was that he lacked the ease of assuming different masks that came so naturally to her.
For whatever reason, he made an impression. Months later, she'd remember him more starkly than any other. How ill-suited for this job, this life, he was. How he was always the same, no matter the situation, no matter where and how they met.
It was both unexpected and refreshing. Nina almost found it charming, as incongruous as it was in their line of work.
That was a dangerous thought - almost.
She almost followed him into the night.
He almost kissed her, his lips hovering at the corner of her mouth instead of pressing against her own with a last-minute deference for the man who'd brought her to the party as his trophy.
They almost let themselves feel something real.
She presses the knife to his throat, just hard enough to draw a single drop of blood. Nina watches the way it trickles down and coats the blade with glazed eyes, remembers all the times she's had her hands wet with blood, the caked crust it leaves under the fingernails, how it never seems to wash away no matter how hard she scrubs her skin under boiling water. This is why she likes poison better, it leaves no trace.
"Don't pretend this is about the job," Nina hisses, mad at him suddenly. Mad at this fake nonchalance he's wearing like a child dressing up in their father's too-big coat.
It's never been about the job. For months now they've danced around the truth: that they stand on the edge of a cliff, on the verge of a precipice, each time they meet. That neither side offers comfort nor freedom, not in the way they do for one another.
That they've been holding on to something that was dead and gone before it could ever properly start.
"The job is all there is," he tells her stubbornly.
Nina only sighs. "Fine." Then she releases her hold and drops the knife. It clatters down to the ground and echoes in the silence that stretches between them as his eyes widen and he instinctively tightens his fingers around the trigger, his mouth twitching into a guilty grimace as he realizes it. "Then do your job."
Novokribirsk, WESTERN SIDE OF THE SHADOW FOLD
six months ago
She was a whirlwind of white and gold in the Novokribirsk night.
It was her hair that struck him most - the white blonde, the short bob, her hair cut at chin's length. Matthias almost did a double-take (what was she doing here?) quite not believing his eyes.
But hers were still the deepest of green, and he'd recognize them anywhere, even if he lived up to a hundred years old and went half-blind.
Her frame was engulfed in an ivory fur coat pristine as snow, her fuzzy hood and scarf almost covering her face. But he could still see her cheeks reddened from the cold and those piercing eyes scrutinizing her surroundings. Gone was the young, naive country girl she'd been the first time they met: she looked far more at ease on her own than grinning like an idiot at some fool's arm.
What was she doing here, though?
Matthias didn't know who she was, but he knew that someday, he'd have to take her down. Somehow, that chagrined him, although Matthias couldn't figure out why.
In Istamere, he'd paled upon her entrance, a traitorous instinct, a weakness. His eyes had landed on her and she'd taken his breath away. She was nothing less than magnificent and he couldn't help wanting her, even though wanting was a luxury he couldn't afford and had only ever occasionally indulged in.
He'd learned long ago to live without the things he wanted. But he'd wanted her.
Wanted to sift his fingers through her gorgeous red curls, smooth his hand down the waves cascading down her back, feel the heat of her body as he'd pull her close. Wanted to bury his nose in her neck, press his lips to her pulse point, feel her life thrumming through her, forget about all the lives he'd led before. He'd wanted her and he'd hated himself for it.
For as long as he remembered, wanting had always come twisted with disappointment. He'd wanted to avenge his family, and all he got was this deal with Brum and a shitty job he could never get away from, a job that took and took and took away at his soul with every secret he uncovered and every life he stole. He'd wanted to find a purpose, and he'd become nothing but an assassin for hire.
Someday Brum would order him to kill her, and he'd do it. There was no point in indulging the fantasy of the sweet scent of her skin wrapped in his sheets or her arms wrapped around him.
He hadn't told Brum about her yet. She hadn't been a threat to his mission in Istamere, and he hadn't known for sure that she was a spy. Matthias only dealt in absolutes: either he had proof, or he didn't and he wouldn't go to Brum with a mere hunch.
But there she was again, their paths seemingly destined to cross when he least expected it. Novokribirsk was big enough for the two of them though - as long as she weren't here to protect the man he was tasked to kill. Then they'd have a problem.
In the end, she beat him to it. Matthias only had time to catch sight of her white coat, the lapels of it soaked red, before she dissolved into the night like a shadow.
She'd never manage to wipe it out.
Djel knew Matthias had tried many times before until he'd learned to accept the blood and the shadow and the dark were all he was.
(She never even saw him.)
(Brum chastised him about the exuberance of the method, and yet couldn't argue with the results.
Matthias still didn't say a thing.)
"Do it," she taunts him, taking a step closer to him, pressing herself tight against his weapon. "Your boss told you to do it, so do it. Isn't this what you do?"
She's a distraction, Matthias. Soldiers do not let themselves get distracted.
He should do it. Do it quick and be done with it, with her, and move on. And yet Matthias feels his grip loosen along with his resolve. "As if your boss didn't give you the same order," he barks, because it's easier to get mad at her than at Brum, or at Fjerda, the motherland that never cared for him and that he was ready to die for, or at himself for falling for her.
Before he can overthink it, Matthias leans down and kisses her. He licks what he can only assume is defiance from her mouth, and he groans lowly. He thinks - no, he knows, deep in his bones, down to the very tip of his fingers and toes - that he wants to kiss her more than today, their lives, the rules, allow. That one day he'd like the chance to kiss her until his mouth is bruised with it, until he can recognize her by scent and feel and taste alone, until he's had his fill and he's sick of it but can't keep coming back for more like an addict seeking a fix despite knowing the next one might just kill him.
But she's kissing him back, sharp teeth pulling his bottom lip in her mouth, digging and nipping and biting viciously like he loves, her arms wrapping around his neck, her fingers pulling at his hair, and somewhere along the line Matthias drops his gun and gets lost into her like he always does.
Koba, SHU HAN
three months ago
There might have been a line somewhere, like a strip of paint splattered on melted asphalt under the scorching sun or drawn in chalk like children playing hopscotch, that divided who they were before this and who they will be in the aftermath, in the afterglow. It divided the enemies and the lovers, the agents sworn to countries who would let them fall into the abyss of oblivion and the people they were behind the masks and the aliases and that made each other come alive.
There might have been a line - and it would be so easy to cross it, so easy that they might as well jump over it. Less of a line and more of a cliff, toes nudging the empty air, defiance and fear and exhilaration racing.
Nina had never played hopscotch. She had no memories of ever playing, or being a child, for that matter.
But defiance and fear and exhilaration, she knew, and she craved. Even fear meant you were alive.
And she only felt alive when she was with him. When their eyes locked across a crowded room, when they danced around the edge of something good and real, when he stretched himself out atop her, big and large and overwhelming, reminding her that he could break her into a million little pieces with his bare hands if he wanted, but every stroke and every caress proving her that he would never.
Sometimes Nina feared that all she knew was the fight. And there had been a thrill to it, a sickening need for the adrenaline, the surge of power, the reclaiming of her body and mind through the meticulous planning and executing of a mission, from the control it simultaneously took and gave her. Everything soft and sweet had been slowly driven out of her by the war and the lies and the scars, but here, now, as she stroked her fingertips along the pale skin of his stomach dotted with the white and red crisscross of old scars she didn't bother asking about because he'd inevitably lie, Nina felt like if this was crossing the line, then he was the only one she wanted to step over the edge with.
And yet it cost her something, Nina realized with sudden clarity. She thought that climbing into bed with - with whom, exactly? the enemy? the competition? - would be easy, a simple equation of tension and release, an itch that needed to be scratched, a one-time thing to get him out of her system. But every time he murmured sweet nothings into her ear, Nina felt like a thief, like she was stealing something from him he would have gladly given her if she'd been brave enough to ask for it.
She didn't know what to do with the sweet roll of his hips, with the soft sigh he'd breathe against the skin of her neck as he buried his face there as he came, quietly, just a few off-rhythm thrusts - except dig her nails into his back and claw at him, leaving half-moon indentations in their wake, marking him, hoping to hurt him perhaps, same as every Mila he uttered twisted a knife into her heart. She wasn't Mila and he wasn't Joran, and Nina foolishly dreamed this could belong to them only.
That was the problem with allowing yourself to yearn for something you had no business even wishing for in the first place. It made you greedy, and greed might be a good lever, it'd never served Nina well before.
She was greedy for him, though. Greedy for more, more of him, all of him, the gentle caress of his stubble grazing her cheek as he kissed her temple, the delicate way his brow furrowed in concentration, how it relaxed when he let go. Greedy for his mouth, the silky wisps of his short hair between her fingers, that cedar scent that wrapped around him and made her long for the stillness and the quietness of woods and wonder if he did too.
There might have been a line. But it was probably swallowed down by the swamp surrounding the little love nest they'd carved in the middle of nowhere, his massive shape curled around hers doing nothing to keep off the perpetual heat but Nina wouldn't have it any other way.
Lines, just like rules, were meant to be broken anyway.
"Nina. My name's Nina."
He falters in his rhythm, the hand curled around her hip squeezing tight, his long fingers spanning wide across her back. He's beautiful like this, Nina muses, with his lips parted and his brow knitted in effort, like it takes all of him to do this, all of his focus, all of his strength, narrowed down to a single mission: giving himself to her.
His mouth crashes against hers, but his lips are infinitely soft. He's kissing her like he remembers every single time they've done this before, like he's committing them to memory, like he wants to keep making new memories. She'd give up anything for this - for the chance to be with him a moment longer, just another day, even if it means betraying her country.
It betrayed her first, anyway.
His free hand tangles in her hair, curls around the curve of her throat, cups her jaw. Maps her, learns all of her soft spots, rounds out all of her sharp edges, like he's making this thing with sharp teeth and claws she's been all of her life melt - no, shed. She wants to do - to be the same for him. "Matthias," he says between kisses.
But what she hears is, I'm yours.
Nina's never belonged anywhere, but she wants this - to belong with him.
I'm yours too.
Ketterdam, KERCH
a year later
The Slat might not be much, but it was home.
The room was cheap and the floor creaked and the bed was barely big enough to fit the both of them, but then again, Matthias was a giant and Nina was pretty convinced that no bed, nowhere, would be big enough anyway.
Besides, their whole world fitted in that room. Him and her and the baby sleeping peacefully in the crib beside their bed. Nina craned her neck and snuck a peek; delighted in the baby's rosy cheeks, her tiny puckered lips and the soft heave of her chest.
Matthias tightened his grip on her, pulling her closer as he buried his nose into the slope of her neck, breathing her in. "Röed fetla," he sighed softly, his lips inching higher, trailing a path of kisses along her jaw line to the spot just behind her ear. Little red bird. The only name that would ever matter to her, one given by him. "She's just fine. You must rest now."
Nina laughed softly, not too loud as to not wake the baby. She rolled into his embrace, playfully brushing her nose against his own. "I don't want to rest."
He rolled his eyes. Then he wrapped his arms around her back and rolled them until she was lying on top of him, curtains of her red hair falling across his face. He loved her hair as fierce as her, loved it so much it'd prompted the nickname she loved hearing from him, especially when it was murmured against her skin, so the red hair remained. "And what is it that you want, then?"
"Mmmh. Waffles, a warm bath, and you."
"In that order?"
She nipped at the jut of his chin, kissed the dimple it created in his cheek as he smiled. "I mean, maybe I'll need a bath after you, so...waffles first, then you." He groaned, let his hand dance down the line of her spine to the roundness of her ass, then to the cleft between her thighs; it was her time to moan. "Fine. You, then -"
There was a knock at the door - a quick rasp that's too sharp to be the girl next door. It almost sounded like the thump of the cane of that mysterious boy with the nice vests but the terrible haircut.
Kaz always had an odd job to offer and enough kruge to pay, if not for loyalty, then at least for regular service - and with a baby now, their secret little flower, and without the support of their handlers (traitors didn't get any sort of special retiring benefits, especially when they defected), they needed all the kruge they could get to carve a life for themselves into this world that kept trying to carve at who they were, deep down where it mattered.
But not right now. Kaz and his secret agenda could wait. Kruge could wait.
They didn't want to, not anymore.
the end