Chapter Text
It was quiet when Matthias returned to their latest lodge. Almost unnervingly so.
That wasn’t right. It was never quiet anymore, not like before, not with Nina around.
Nina. Where was Nina?
He set the small pouch of coin he had borrowed from an especially kind shopkeeper down on a table. The lodge was empty of all but the limited furniture it had come with and Matthias and Nina’s own meagre belongings that they had scrounged up over the last three weeks. It consisted mostly of scraps of clothing and food—whatever could be spared.
He frowned, gaze darting across the room, then over his shoulder and out the open door. “Nina?” No response. There was no one there.
Where, once, the notion of being alone would have comforted him, now, it only made him anxious. Where was Nina?
His mind drifted to the soldiers roaming the streets. The Fjerdan soldiers. Elling was a Fjerdan town after all.
“Nina?” He called again, louder this time as panic settled its icy grip over his heart, the beat of it thumping like a drum in his ears. “Nina!”
He whipped back around the way he’d come, shoving himself out of the lodge’s door. What happened? Did the soldiers find her? The lodge didn’t look like it had been raided, so if she had been captured it must’ve been because she went off on her own. Why would she do that?
He darted through Elling, his hair and clothes a mess, eyes wild, probably looking like a maniac, but he didn’t care. Dear Djel, why did Nina leave?
In his frenzy, Matthias almost missed her.
There, walking calmly, alone, down to the docks, was Nina. In his relief, he didn’t stop to consider that he’d gotten there strangely fast.
Oh thank Djel, Matthias was almost panting. He jogged over to her, moving with more ease across the ice-coated landscape than she was.
“Nina,” he gasped. She jolted, whirling to face him, something akin to irritation flashing in her eyes before they settled on relief.
“Ah, Matthias,” she greeted cheerfully. Something about the way she said it, the way she was standing, the way she looked at him, something felt wrong. He brushed it off, blaming it on the way his heart was still pounding, his mind racing. “I was wondering where you went.”
“What are you doing out here? There are soldiers around, it’s dangerous, especially for you on your own.” His breath was slowing, heart calming. Something still didn’t feel right.
“I was hoping to find a means of transport.” She said simply. “Maybe to Ravka, if possible.”
Matthias frowned, reaching for her arm. He must have been delirious from lack of oxygen to the brain, because his hands looked weirdly fuzzy. “I was planning on doing that tomorrow, after getting some rest. How would you even go about doing that without a way of payment?”
Nina smiled. It wasn’t her normal, happy smile—this one was tight, and didn’t quite reach her eyes. It looked more like a grimace than anything. “You’d be shocked. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Matthias hesitated, looking back over his shoulder in the general direction of their lodge, where he had left the pouch of money. He didn’t know what exactly her plan was here, and something still felt off about the situation—almost like he’d been through this before—and the way she was acting, but at the same time…
He’d spent the last three weeks trusting her. He owed her his life. He wasn’t going to give that up now. He turned.
Between one blink and the next, Matthias was on the docks with Nina, standing before a trader. The man was from Kerch, if Matthias had placed the language correctly. He was frowning, watching Matthias out of the corner of his eye as Nina spoke with him.
Nina handed some sort of patch or insignia to the trader. It looked like she was pleading with him.
A pit started to form in Matthias’ stomach as the trader studied the insignia. He had no idea where Nina had gotten it from, let alone what it was or what it represented. And, as much as he ached to trust her after everything they’d been through together, he was starting to believe that maybe he shouldn’t
The next thing he knew, a group of men working with the trader grabbed him.
Struggling against their iron grips, he called for Nina, begging for her to help him, but she stepped back. She just watched as he was forced into sturdy metal cuffs and marched onto a ship.
As the men dragged him away, Matthias caught one last glimpse of Nina’s face.
His heart shattered in his chest when he noticed the small, smug look on her face. The way the corners of her mouth twitched upward, the twinkle in her eye.
She was enjoying this.
How could he have been so naive as to trust her?
He stuttered out one last plea before he was thrown into darkness.