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She whimpered as the memory overtook her dream, removing the pleasant strangeness of the unconscious mind with something that she tried to keep as far away from her as she could. There were times that Genya thought that if she just faced all of her memories, then she would be able to really process them and move on with her life in the way that she knew she deserved. Every time that she actually tried to test that theory, she once again felt like she was drowning in an abyss.
Before anything could progress further than it already had, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She was woken from her slumber with two brisk shakes. Her eyes flew open and she sat ramrod straight in the bed, prepared to fight off whoever had once again broken into her chambers.
It was only then that her mind caught up with her and she realized that she was in the room that she shared with her partner, and not the rooms that she had been given when she became a serving girl for the entire royal family instead of a gem in the queen’s crown. “What’s going on?” she mumbled, worried that something had happened with the students. They hadn’t been at war for a good long while, but that wasn’t the kind of thing that left a person.
“Nothing is wrong with the students, or the palace, or Nikolai. It’s just…” her awkward, sweet David paused and stared down at his hands. She had seen those hands trip and fumble over wedding rings, create the most wonderful inventions of their day and age, and teach younglings how to use their gift. His hands were his life and in many ways, they were hers as well. He tilted his dark brown doe eyes up at her and then finished, “You were having a nightmare.”
“Did I wake you?” she asked, her voice once again breathy and soft. She leaned back on the bed as her hand searched for his knee. She wasn’t going to be able to have his body pressed against her or his lips on hers, not after the dream that she had just had, but she still wanted him close.
David shifted on the bed so that he was laying beside her and his calloused palm was pressed flush to hers. “You did, but that’s okay. I don’t like it when I wake up and you’ve already been up for hours.”
“We have meetings in the morning, we should both try and get some rest. It’s not like nightmares are something abnormal for either of us,” she murmured. She wished that she had been able to change that, that she could reach with her talented fingers down into their minds and smoothe out the imperfections on their very brains. That was, unfortunately, beyond even her.
He let out an unsure noise and then scooted towards the edge of the bed. Genya sat up and tucked both of her legs underneath her body as she watched him. He shed the pants that he slept in and then dressed in the peasant roughspun he always donned underneath his kefta, despite it not being a requirement anymore. “What are you doing?” she asked as he fumbled with the latch of his belt in the dark of the night.
“Oh, oh right,” he nodded. “I was just thinking. You had a nightmare about when we had to run away from the Darkling, right?” he asked.
She could feel the blood seeping from her cheeks and leaving her as pale as the cream robes she had been forced into her entire adolescence. “Yes,” she breathed. She knew that she had been speaking in her sleep or he had somehow had the same dream as her, that was the only way that he would know what she had been thinking of.
“I was thinking of something that might help us both feel better. It always makes me feel better, at least,” he explained with a shrug.
She looked at him for a moment longer as she tried to figure out what was going on in that captivating brain of his. She had fallen in love with him for his mind, the wonderful things that he could create, first. He wasn’t what she was used to looking at since she worked with highly-curated nobles and he had barely spoken a word to her the first several months she had known him.
Genya let out a small sigh and then shimmied her way over to the edge of the bed the same way that he had. She removed her chemise and left it with his sleep clothes before she found one of her simpler gowns and pulled it on easily. She then turned to him and motioned for David to show her what he had been speaking of.
They broke out into the hall, their hands pressed against each other like they always were when they weren’t teaching or on other official business. The halls of the palace were abnormally silent. The only noise that they could pick up on was the whispers stolen from teenagers getting up to no good. They remembered wanting to do that when they were that age, so neither of them broke it up or said anything.
Genya let a small breath escape her mouth when they stepped through the gardens and she saw where they were headed. “David,” she whispered, unsure that she was going to like where it was all going.
“Just trust me, okay?” he asked. “I promise that it has a very high likelihood of making you feel better.”
That, by itself, had already made her feel more like herself than anything had in a good long while. She loved David in the way that someone did when they knew that their soul meant was specifically for one other person. She had loved others and she was sure that she would continue to love others as their life continued, but she loved him in the here and now.
They walked through the doors of the stable and then he trailed towards the end. “You’ve ridden before?” he asked as he picked a saddle up from where the hands had placed them when they had turned in for the night.
“I have,” she nodded. “I may not have trained with the other Grisha, but the queen wanted me to know how to ride so I could be beside her when she and Vasilly went out,” she explained. It hurt to bring back the memories of when she was loved like a daughter instead of scorned like a demon or cherished like a tool. She wanted to be able to feel like that again someday, but she knew that it was never going to happen. That kind of thing wasn’t reserved for girls like her.
David handed her the saddle and nodded his head towards a mare with beautiful brown dappling over her rump and an auburn main. “Are we going to get in trouble for this?” she wondered.
“Who would get us in trouble for it? We’re the bosses now,” he explained, ducking his head as he walked over to his own stallion. The horse was known amongst their students for being hard to ride if you were too cocky and often got used as a hazing tool to the newcomers.
She didn’t mention that, assuming that he knew what he was doing. He was a grown man and he led an entire school of teaching along with being one of the only surviving members of the Sun Summoner’s army, after all. They both saddled their steads and then led them from the stable so that they were standing out on the open road.
David grasped the reigns of his horse and then slung himself into place before he waited for Genya to do the same. She handed him the reigns of her own stead and then buttoned her skirt so that it was shaped into pants, which would allow her a much more comfortable ride into the wilderness. “Do you have a plan for where we’re going?” she asked once she was sitting atop her mare.
“I think we need to just run. No place, no destination, no time,” he explained with a shrug. She opened her mouth to ask him what he really meant by that but he didn’t stick around to hear her. He spurred his stallion forward and began to disappear into the night. She laughed when she noticed that his hair had fallen into his face because he hadn’t styled it when he had woken up.
Genya spurred her own horse into action and soon she had caught up with him. Both of their steads seemed to be happy to run wild in the night with riders that weren’t directing or slowing them. They cantered all the way through the vast fields where the group training took place during the day and then darted through the beginnings of the woods bordering the Little Palace. When they came across a brook, both of the horses stopped so that they could drink.
Genya only then noticed that her heart was thrumming with excitement, her nose and ears were nipped with cold, and her entire body was vibrating. She removed herself from the saddle at the same time as David before she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him like mad. “I’m so lucky to have you. Thank you, David.”