#it all changes after novokribirsk | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ellewritesalright · 1 year

Text

Nine Long Years - Part 4

Nikolai Lantsov x Rietveld!reader, Kaz Brekker x sister!Rietveld!reader (platonic)

Part 3 --- Masterlist --- Part 5

Synopsis: After watching your brothers die, you found yourself working on the Volkvolny. In the many years since then, you somehow became the queen of Ravka while your brother somehow survived firepox and life in the Barrel, rising through its ranks. In disguise during a diplomatic trip with your husband Nikolai, you meet Kaz Brekker for what you think is the first time, only to find out that he is your long-thought-dead little brother.

Author's Note: Hi there! This one is a little nicer and less sad so hope you enjoy. Next part won't be out for a while I'm afraid. I've got a lot of work to do as the semester is almost done so I gotta grind w that.

Warnings: mentions of death, angst but also fluff, unconsciousness, blood, mentions of sickness, panic attacks, firepox, mentions of the Hertzoon con.

Word Count: 5,570

..........

FOURTH YEAR

It was getting easier to pretend to be newlyweds. Every second spent with Nikolai kissing your hand or resting a palm against your waist only served to endear you to him, especially when he would grin at you like a schoolboy. You were still masquerading as the Ivanovs, Pytor and Ilse, and you called each other such when in the company of strangers. But when you were alone, no matter how weird it felt, you started calling him Nikolai.

It happened because of an inquiry he made on the road to the village you were currently stationed in. He glanced at you from under his cap, a curious smile playing at his lips.

“Why do you keep calling me Sturmhond?” he asked.

"What else would I call you?" You retorted.

"My real name, perhaps?"

"Doesn't sound right," you said. "Sturmhond suits you."

"You're not wrong, but remember what I told you when you found out?"

"Sturmhond at sea, Prince Nikolai in Ravka.” You raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you really want me to call you 'your Highness' now? Even though we're miles and miles and a gargantuan Shadow Fold away from Os Alta?"

"No need for that formality. Just Nikolai will do." He smiled at you. "Except when we're around others. We have appearances to keep up, you know."

So, despite how difficult it was and how odd it felt, you called him Nikolai when the two of you were alone.

At present, his cap was tucked low over his face, trying to hide the changing colour of his eyes. He was more different every day, and you took the quiet of dinnertime as an opportunity to look him over. His jaw and mouth remained the same, though you doubted they had been tailored in the first place; his nose was straightening ever so slightly, but it still looked like he had seen his fair share of fighting; his hair had all but turned blonde, save for a few red highlights; and now his eyes were becoming murky. You hadn't figured out their real colour yet, but you thought maybe they would be a dark gray or a chocolate brown.

Whatever they were, they would undoubtedly complement his admittedly handsome face.

"Lost in my eyes, my dear?" He asked, catching your stare.

You cleared your throat, eyes darting away. Honesty might be best in this situation. "Just wondering what colour they really are."

You had no qualms saying this aloud as your dinner was a picnic at a secluded park on the edge of town. There was hardly anyone around, and the closest people were far from being in earshot.

"In that case, I think I'll leave you in suspense," he said.

"If that's what you want." You combed your fingers through the grass beneath your hands. "Tell me again when we should meet Tamar and Tolya."

He received a message that afternoon through an informant in his network. The twins were safe in Novokribirsk, somewhere you were supposed to be very soon if your navigator–Nikolai–would have a bit more focus on the destination and not the journey.

"No later than Saturday," he said, sprawling out in front of you. When he laid his head in your lap you rolled your eyes. “They’re staying at one of my associate’s homes. We’re to meet them there.”

It was Thursday now, and you had been without the twins for a week, not a couple days as Nikolai had initially said. You missed Tolya's bear hugs and Tamar's quick wit. Nikolai was a decent stand-in for both of them, though your relationship with him felt different from your relationship with the twins. You would never go to Tolya for comfort like you would with Nikolai, and Tamar's teasing and jokes didn't get on your nerves unlike those of a certain privateer prince. Additionally, if either twin wanted to rest their head in your lap you would have accepted them with a smile, but you only felt a quick bout of cynicism for Nikolai.

His eyes were shut, and you figured he must still be tired from comforting you the other night. He looked peaceful, like he could be content laying there forever. A strand of half-red-half-golden hair peeked out from his cap, begging for attention as it splayed across his forehead. You tucked it back into the brim with delicate fingers, tracing along the bottom of his cap. When your hand dropped he opened his eyes in a languid sweep. His smile was soft.

“Read to me?” he asked, his hand fumbling for the basket where the Old Ravkan book was waiting.

In all your boredom the two of you had already finished the book and started it over. You were halfway through, and you held the light, malleable book in one hand as you lost yourself in the words. Your other hand was resting beside you until Nikolai brought it close to him, his fingers dancing across your palm, twisting the ring--his ring--on your finger and interlocking his digits with yours.

A feather-light brush of something against your knuckles made you lose your focus as you reached one of the more interesting parts of the story. You expected to grow angry at him for making you pause, but when you glanced down and saw him grazing your hand against his lips you didn’t know what to feel.

He had kissed your hand before in a crowded town square or during dinner at a pub, but it was only ever when you were in public, only to keep up appearances. This was different. There was no one around, no one to be suspicious of two people in a park, so why was he being so affectionate?

Of course, it was obvious why. Nikolai liked you. He had expressed this to you on several occasions, but you had always brushed him aside. His feelings were there, a shadow behind every single one of his actions, even when he was being less obvious. There were the winks and flirtations, but then there were the times he gave you a genuine smile, told you to keep safe when you had to be apart, or held you close as you sobbed into his shoulder. He was quietly expressing his fondness on the regular.

Perhaps--in your own way--you’d done the same. You straightened out his cap, made him button his jacket to the top to keep away the autumn chill, and read to him in your shared bed each night. But those were all completely normal things, you were sure of it.

You knew how he felt about you, but you didn’t know how to feel about him anymore. Worse still, if you felt some kind of affection for him, what could you do about it? Your extended reprieve from the Volkvolny didn’t change the fact that he was captain and you were his second. It would be wrong to start a relationship with him.

And then there was the fact that--above all--Nikolai was a prince. He had duties that he would one day have to return to, and there was no place for you in his life when he did.

But the more you thought about being with him the more right it felt.

That realization scared you more than anything else, but you couldn’t stop it from spreading like weeds in a garden. Some weeds are quite pretty, a voice in your mind argued.

He looked up at you with those murky eyes, a hint of interest in his brow. “Why have you stopped reading, my dear?”

The pet name was an unintentionally cruel stroke, a sweet utterance that only added insult to injury. You pulled your hand from his and began packing things in the basket. “It’s getting late,” you said. “We should go back to the inn before nightfall.”

“I didn’t think you were scared of the dark,” he teased, sitting up to help you. There was a worry in his voice even if he tried to cloak it in humour. He knew your secrets now, your past, and he might have thought that had something to do with your eagerness to sleep with a roof over your head, but that was far from your mind at that moment.

You weren’t scared of the dark, only what could happen in it. People lost their wits at night, got swept up in any hint of tenderness, and you were determined that it wouldn’t happen to you.

When you got back to the inn you went to sleep on the edge of the bed, keeping your distance from him. He noticed it–because saints knew he always noticed everything–but he made no mention of it. He kept to his side, and you kept to yours. Simple.

……….

On most days, there wasn't much to do in these Ravkan villages, but–luckily for you and Nikolai–one of the days you were stuck happened to fall on a fete celebrating Sankta Lizabeta. The village you were stopped in had bright, floral decor, and children crowded in front of a travelling puppet show. Nikolai insisted that the two of you watch the puppets perform, even going so far as to hold your hand so that you would remain with him. He flashed you a smile as you leaned against him to get a better view through the crowd.

The puppets were ridiculous, and you grew confused as you tried to follow whatever grandiose plot they were trying to convey, yet the children packed at the front of the crowd seemed entertained. Leaning against Nikolai was necessary to stave off the weariness that accompanied this convoluted story.

It was once you rested your head against him that he whispered to you. "Are you tired? We can go to our room and rest."

"I'm fine," you said. "I just have no idea what the puppets are trying to say."

He chuckled. "It's the story of Sankta Lizabeta."

Nikolai muttered narration into your ear as the puppets kept on, and he drew some smiles from you with his commentary.

"Understandably, Lizabeta was pissed, so she thought 'bees will solve all of my troubles.'"

"Never mess with a woman and her bees."

"Quite an overreaction on the northern village's part. They should've just understood that summoning bees isn't a party trick."

The show finished and Nikolai tipped the performers with a shiny coin, then you took your leave.

It was a small village, but the walk down to the inn was not brief, especially not when Nikolai was taking his sweet time–no wonder you had yet to make it to Novokribirsk. He still had his hand in yours, and he made you trail along with him as he strolled down a hill. You felt a nagging sense to pull at him or drop his hand and go ahead without him, but you didn't.

It might have been his slow pace that landed you in trouble. Or it could have been the fact that he was distracted. He was once more bringing your hand to his lips, his stare on your face as he pressed a quick kiss to your skin. Then he kissed your hand again, this time for a moment longer. He was testing the waters, seeing how much he could get away with before you made him stop. He had barely pressed his lips to the inside of your wrist when you heard it.

The clambering of rickety wheels came suddenly. A carriage with no horse or rider came burning down the hill towards you. Nikolai glanced back, noticing its descent a split second before you did. In the moment he acted as quickly as he could, shoving you to the side of the path.

He couldn't move himself fast enough, though, and the carriage struck him. He was knocked beneath it, smack dab between the wheels, and it continued on without crushing him, thank the saints. The carriage was gone by the time you rushed to his side.

Nikolai was sprawled on the ground, his eyes shut. He wasn't moving.

There was a familiarity to the situation as you kneeled over his unconscious body. The smell of death creeped up your nose and into your head, muddying your thoughts.

But now was not the time for death. You fought off a sob as you shook his shoulders, trying to rouse him awake. When that was unsuccessful you felt for a pulse that could not be found, watching to see if his chest was rising and falling. It wasn't.

Years ago, when you were a sailor on a few trade ships before the Volkvony, you had witnessed otkazat'sya sailors revive people who had almost drowned by pumping their hands against the unconscious person's chest and breathing into their mouth. That sort of thing wasn't necessary on the Volkvolny because of the corporalniks; they could start a person's heart with the wave of a hand.

You were not Grisha, though, so you would have to help Nikolai the otkazat'sya way.

Laying one hand over the other on his chest, you began pumping with quick and hard motions. You kept a focused eye on his face, checking for any twitches of life. After thirty pumps, you bent over his face, plugging his nose and breathing into his mouth. It wasn't how you imagined being this close to him for the first time, but you did it nonetheless, giving him two large breaths.

You were no stranger to death. It seemed to dog your life, stealing your parents and brothers from you without hesitation. What you had done to warrant such grim circumstances, you didn't know. Maybe you were an abhorrent person in another life. Maybe the saints decided to torment you for their own entertainment. You couldn't explain why death always accompanied you, but today you were determined to banish it. Nikolai wasn't going to die on your watch, you wouldn't let him. You kept pumping.

Every second that he lay unconscious you got more desperate, your hands pressing harder and harder as you tried to restart his systems. You pushed back his cap as you bent to breathe into his mouth again. His golden hair shone atop of his head, the red completely gone. There was a cut on his forehead just above his eye that was slowly bleeding, but you couldn't bother with it now. Your vision was clouding with tears and you blinked them away as you kept on. They dripped on his cheek as you breathed into his mouth again. Then it was back to pumping.

"C'mon," you said, more to yourself than to the man before you. "You can't leave me now." Your arms were starting to tire, but you kept on anyways. "Nikolai, you stupid, impossibly aggravating prince, wake up."

His body jolted, and then he was coughing, his eyes crinkling as his face scrunched up in discomfort. A weight lifted off of you and you pulled him into your arms, squeezing him tight. He grunted at the ferocity of your grip and you eased up, muttering a quick apology.

"Thank the saints, you're alive," you said, kissing the crown of his head in a moment of relief.

"I didn't know... you cared so much about me," he rasped.

He struggled with his breathing a bit, the wind knocked out of him, but it was good to know that the accident had not knocked the humour out of him. You let yourself chuckle at his joke, pressing another kiss to his head.

"Never scare me like that again," you ordered, rubbing your eyes. He noticed this and grabbed your hand.

As though he wasn't just nearly crushed to death, he continued where he left off during your walk, bringing his lips to the inside of your wrist in a soft kiss.

"Yes, dear," he said.

You used your sleeve to dab at the bloody cut on his forehead. It wasn't too deep, but it would need to be cleaned properly once you got back to the inn. He gave you a smile. "You're improving."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You're getting better at saving my life."

You frowned. "I shouldn't have to improve at that."

He only hummed in response, shutting his eyes and leaning more of his weight against you. "I think you bruised my ribs."

"I save your life only for you to complain? Next time I'll leave you alone, then."

"But what would you do without me?"

"Relish in the return of quiet."

"Sounds boring."

"Sounds peaceful."

He winced as you helped him sit up, and you wished you'd been blessed with the abilities of a corporalki healer so that you could make his pain vanish like a street magician with a coin. He was barely sitting by the time another carriage came along, this time with a horse and driver. with its open top and drab rectangular shape, it was really more of a cart. It stopped beside you, the driver peering down at you two with pity in his eyes. Half a dozen tiny heads leaned over the side of the cart to stare at you in fascination.

"The carriage that hit your husband probably belonged to old man Arkezny. He never ties up his horses, then they get loose and his carriage takes off whichever direction it pleases," the man said after you told him of your accident. "You can come with us. We pass the inn on our way home."

The driver and his rambunctious children had been at the fete all day, all of them watching the puppets just as you had. Nikolai made conversation with the litter like a professional, even despite the injuries that had him leaning against you as though you were a sturdy column; you were neither, and every time the cart lurched you could feel him tense up in pain, though he did not show it on the outside. He kept laughing with the children and telling them stories about sailing--under the pretense that Pytor Ivanov was a merchant sailor, not a privateer called Sturmhond.

When you arrived at the inn you thanked the kind man profusely, and he merely smiled in return and headed home with his family.

Despite the subtle pain you saw on his face, Nikolai made no complaints as you helped him to your room and made him lay back in bed. You borrowed some supplies from the innkeeper then fetched a bowl of warm water and a cloth for his wounds. Nikolai was patient as you sat beside him and cleaned up the blood from his forehead, employing what little experience you had soothing your brothers' various cuts and scrapes.

"You're wonderful, did you know that?" He grinned at you as you dabbed along his cut.

You only hummed in response, forcing yourself to focus on your work and not get caught on his words.

"Truly," he drawled, "you're wonderful, clever, and kind." Nikolai reached for your hand as it swept the last bit of blood. You met his soft stare. "And you're the most beautiful person I've ever had the pleasure of meeting."

"Nikolai," you tsked quietly, as though in a weak admonishment.

He interrupted before you could state your point. "I like when you say my real name."

"Did that carriage give you a concussion?"

He chuckled. "No, rather the opposite. I'd say it knocked some sense into me."

He played with your fingers, traced along his ring that was still on your hand. You hadn't taken it off once since he slipped it onto your hand in that pub; you even kept it on as you slept. He smiled at it, his eyes glancing up at you.

You realized then how close you were as you sat there beside him, leg pressed against his and his fingers entwined with yours. You could feel his breath lightly warming your face, creeping down your neck and making your chest flood with heat. The heartbeat in your ears was louder than the whip of wind when the Hummingbird was in mid-air.

Nikolai leaned forward slightly, getting even closer to you in a movement that would have made his injuries sting. But he didn’t show any pain, he was only staring at your lips with hooded eyes. His hand went to your face, his thumb tracing along the apple of your cheek in featherlight strokes. And when he spoke it was a whisper.

"Tell me to stop," he begged. "Swear at me in Kerch. Call me a fucking scoundrel again. Please."

"Isn't this what you want?" Your voice was so breathless you felt you ought to be ashamed. But you weren't. Cold shame didn't bother you when you were burning under his vulnerable eyes and the slight press of his thigh against yours.

"It is," he said, searching your face. “Saints, it is. But I need to know you want this too.”

You took a second to look at him. He was already quite a handsome man, but he was a beautiful, devilish sight with his cheeks flushed and pupils blown out. You wanted to remember this moment; if only you could capture the air between you and decorate yourself with its passion again and again.

But you took too long to respond, and he pulled away. He hardly dropped his hand and turned his chin before you grabbed his face and kissed him. It was tender, if quick, and you were pleased to find that Nikolai's lips were as delicate as you'd imagined them to be.

"I want this too," you said as you briefly pulled apart. "More than anything."

"You've no idea how happy I am to hear that."

He grinned, pulled you close, and kissed you again. He held your kiss for longer, and when you pulled apart he kept you close still, his forehead pressed to yours. You took a second to look at his eyes, noting how they’d settled into a green and brown mixture. You never would have guessed they would turn out hazel.

“Your eyes are very nice,” you said quietly.

He smiled bashfully, his forehead slipping from yours as he bowed his head in a modesty you’d never seen from him. “Thank you.”

“And your hair…the blonde suits you.”

His cheeks grew rosy. “What else do you like about me?”

You traced a finger along his lips. “I quite like these.”

“That’s good, 'cause I think they go quite well with these,” he said, his thumb brushing along your mouth.

“I think so too,” you said. “Though I will say, your mouth can be impossibly irritating sometimes.”

He leaned back, meeting your eyes. "So far you've called me an idiot, a twat, impossibly irritating, and a fucking scoundrel. It's a good thing I like you, else I could have you locked in a Ravkan prison for saying such treasonous things."

You swept a hand through his hair, pecked a kiss on the tip of his nose. "I never said anything you didn't deserve."

"Perhaps." He flashed a diplomatic smile. "I may need an apology though. My pride is a bit bruised.”

“Will a kiss suffice?”

He hummed, gently thumbing at your lips again. “Only one way to find out.”

……….

It took another day in the village for Nikolai to recover, but once he was more mobile and not completely dependent on you, you continued your journey to Novokribirsk. It took all day with one stop for lunch, but you finally made it to the city.

You had a cheery reunion with the twins. Tolya gave you the tightest hug you’d ever experienced, and Tamar laughed as she brought you in as well. She was a little more gentle, but only a little. They both missed you, and they missed Nikolai of course. They didn’t squeeze him quite as tight as you warned them of his injuries.

“We’ll have him fixed up after dinner,” Tolya said, poking at Nikolai’s gold hair. He looked at you. “Quick thinking with the manual heart pumping, Rietveld.”

You nodded your thanks, and the four of you made your way to get food. Nikolai and Tolya fell into step beside one another ahead of you and Tamar stuck beside you, updating you about what she and her brother got up to while you’d been separated. They seemed to do pretty well by themselves, but she said they missed you and your shared captain as the trifles of sibling life drove her up the wall a couple of times.

“And how about you two, how did you fare?” she asked.

You blinked at her. “Fine. Yeah, it was fine.”

“That’s good,” she said, eyes narrowed just slightly.

“Rietveld!” Nikolai cheered over his shoulder. “Tolya doesn’t believe that there was a fete at the town we stayed in the other day.”

“I only said I couldn’t believe you let me miss it!” Tolya defended himself. “I love a good fete, especially a fete for saints. They always have the best food.”

“Well, I promise you didn’t miss much,” you told the heartrender.

“Only my near-death.” Nikolai gave you a teasing pout that evaporated into his shimmering grin. You quickly glanced at Tolya, spotting an odd look he threw to his sister. “And a rather fun puppet show. But otherwise, I agree with my second.”

You watched Nikolai turn back around and continue a new topic with Tolya, listening as best as you could from your slight distance, but enjoying the prattle nonetheless. He looked back at you a few times, smiling brighter than the sun every time he did.

You didn’t notice how long you kept staring at Nikolai until Tamar let out a scoff from beside you. When you snapped your head to her she gave you a suspicious look.

"What, is there something on my face?" You asked.

"Actually, yeah," she said, and laughed when you rubbed at your cheek. "Saints, Rietveld, I only meant to point out that you're grinning."

"Am I not allowed to grin?"

"You're allowed. But it's a little funny that you're grinning at the same time that your heart is beating incredibly loud. Even more funny that both these things happen whenever your travel companion up there glances back at you."

You pursed your lips. "He's looking back at both of us, just making sure we're all still together."

"I assure you, he's not looking at me." She tilted her head at you, lowering her voice just a touch more. "Did something happen between you two?"

"No."

"Your heart skips when you lie."

"Tamar," you whined.

She raised her hands. "I don’t judge. If something happened–perhaps something romantic–I'm happy for you, both of you."

The arrival at a restaurant halted the conversation, but you gave an appreciative press of your hand to Tamar’s shoulder.

……….

After dinner the four of you stayed with the associate of Nikolai's. But your host only had two free single beds, which you insisted Tamar and Tolya take. That left one couch and a few blankets on the floor of the living room for you and Nikolai, but neither of you minded; there seemed to be an unspoken agreement between you that you would be sleeping together from now on, so if that meant you were sleeping on the floor, then so be it.

The pair of you laid out the blankets on the floor after the others had all gone to bed. You paused for a moment, your eyes following Nikolai as he fluffed his pillow. You absentmindedly carded a finger through his golden hair.

“You really have to go red again?” You asked him.

He set down his pillow and turned to you. “Yes, my dear.”

You sat down on the blankets, glancing at Nikolai. “I suppose that’s alright. Sturmhond is pretty handsome.”

“I’m glad you think so. You’ll be seeing him for a while after tomorrow.”

You didn't mind that, his tailored appearance was just as attractive as his true form, though you were a little attached to his hazel eyes and blonde hair. But he was returning to an image you were also familiar with, so it couldn't be bad.

“So," you began. "Tamar knows about you and me.”

“I figured she would.” He eased onto his back, beckoning you to join him. "Was she tough on you?"

You shimmied nearer to him. "No, she was fine, just teased me a little."

"Couldn't be worse than Tolya's reaction."

"Tolya knows?"

"He's a heartrender too, remember? I don't imagine he wouldn’t know." He drew his thumb over your knuckles. "He kept quoting poetry and saying I should speak the passages to you to 'further your attraction to me.'"

"Please don't ever quote one of Tolya's passages to me."

"I can't make any promises. One of his poems was actually quite sweet."

You sidled up to Nikolai, hugging around his middle and relishing in him and the warmth he emanated. You pressed a kiss to the underside of his jaw. "Let's hear it, then."

His words reverberated through your head as you lay there on his chest. The rumbling gave you peace, and you closed your eyes. You'd never been as calm and content as this. You might just have to thank Nikolai for the tranquility he brought you. But before he finished his poem, before you could tell him how peaceful he made you, you drifted off to sleep, only Nikolai on your mind.

..........

FOURTH YEAR - KAZ

The streets of Ketterdam weren't particularly crowded as Kaz made his way to the Crow Club. He passed by the Fifth Harbour, stopping for a moment to stare at the ships and schooners. He would still be early for his work if he stayed there for a couple minutes. Besides, it hadn't been a spectacular week of business at the Crow club, just the usual, and he knew he wouldn't be missed if he was only on time and not fifteen minutes early as he usually was.

He was glad to have a job and a place with the Dregs. His job was fine, not great, and he worked hard to make himself known among the liars and cheats whose world he had entered. But Kaz wanted more.

He was thirteen and hungry. He hadn't felt the pangs of starvation since joining the Dregs, but he felt a similar ache as he watched men like his leader, Per Haskell, build his empire on the backs of people like Kaz. He saw these men and he saw their weak spots, the tremours in their brows and the softness in their hearts; they would topple one day, someone just had to pull the rug out from beneath them.

But Kaz was patient. He wasn't his brother, rushing into Pekka Rollins trap under the pretense that he and his siblings could make a fortune off their small inheritance. Kaz had a determination that would see him through. And one day, he would be strong enough to be a leader with riches his siblings never could have dreamed of.

Kaz surveyed the rotting docks and run-down schooners bobbing in the water of the Fifth Harbour. It was a shame the spot wasn't nicer; properly fixed up, it would be a great location for tourists and merchandise to flood into the Barrel. It killed him a little to wonder how much money there was to be made here, how much potential was being overlooked.

He watched one of the ship's masts as it nudged side to side in the wind. It was blustery nights like this that he pictured his sister on one of those schooners, sailing away to a brand new life. He often wondered where she left for after the Queen's Lady plague had run its course. It did him no good to dwell on the matter, but he couldn't help the morbid little curiosity.

The first thing Kaz did once he was off the sickboat and on dry land again was go to the office she worked at. He stood outside all day and night, waiting for her to go in or out, but she didn't show. Of course, Stadwatch saw a grimy little boy outside the glimmering building and cleared him away. Still, Kaz went back every day that week and watched for his sister.

He tried to file a missing person's report with the Stadwatch, tried to find anyone who might help him find his only remaining family, but no one took him seriously. When he told people his story they all seemed to come to the same conclusion. His sister either moved on and sailed away, or she trifled with the wrong people and was dead in an alley somewhere.

But Kaz knew his sister, knew she was the most sensible person in Kerch; she would steer completely clear of any swindlers or brutes, especially after what happened with Hertzoon--or Pekka Rollins, as Kaz had discovered. She didn't have Jordie around anymore to talk her into trouble. No, it was more likely that she was halfway across the world.

It was four years now since the scam, the sickness, since his sister left, and Kaz found himself in the Harbour more and more. Sometimes he passed it by, other times he would sit by the nearest building and look at the bobbing masts as though they were trees waving in the breeze. He would sit there and wait for a ship to come in that might carry her.

If she came back, Kaz could shrug off the name he gave himself and be a Rietveld again. His family could move back to the countryside, or they could leave Kerch all together. He didn't care. He just wanted his sister back. He just didn't want to be alone anymore.

..........

A/N: Thanks for reading! Feel free to like, reblog, and comment if you want to read more, I really appreciate the feedback! The next part will take a little while. If you want to be tagged please comment on this part or send me an ask. Otherwise, I hope you have a great day/night :)

Part 5

Taglist:

@babyblue-chaos @mischiefmanaged71 @red-ace-in-space @gabby10100 @rosexdenis @tayswiftlovebot @cecebridgerton @houseoftwistedspirits @gxdsmonsters @sweet0pia-uwu @starrynightsil @ell0ra-br3kk3r @knmendiola @lyria-skyfall @adharanotfound @kato-ptris @unicornfairytail @milkshake0 @inluvkai @wwwlusspace @for-writing-shit @stickyfictioninwriting @4-everm-0-re @reidwritess @fallonaurr @meg-the-second-greatest @justsomecreaturewandering @madnessinwrighting @goldenpoison @theghostofshadows @bilesxbilinskixlahey @wolfmoonmusic @nyctophiliiiiaaa @avengers-assemble123456 @catzpawn @angelhxneyy @alinasmcu @itshardtopickaname @pomagranteseeds @tvdfandomlover @redroomwidows @minamay118 @luvly-writer @riot-in-my-soul @bl6o6dy @katiemrty @wolfiealina @mysticalfuncollectorus @beauty--is-terror @6000-fandoms @pansexualwitchwhoneedstherapy @bleucoffeecup @almostjollypizza @halfofagayallofaqueer @lollulroofl @demonstookmysoul @blathena @carelessreadersstuff @thatwhorethatlikesbooks @losers-club6 @earth-to-lottie @unwanted-15 @riot-in-my-soul

#nikolai lantsov x reader #nikolai lantsov x you #nikolai lantsov fanfic #kaz brekker x sister!reader #kaz brekker x reader #grishaverse fanfic #nine long years

631 notes · View notes

thanflowers · 2 years

Text

i do think elspeth would be a relatively easy target for the duckling tbh. like she’s just so sad and lonely for her first few years at the little palace, any notice she gets from her seniors at all shocks and delights her, even if she doesn’t understand where it’s coming from. plus she’s just so grateful to have a safe place to learn and master her abilities, if the duckling himself paid her any mind it would floor her. she even looks up to him, in a way. so yeah. her loyalty isn’t difficult to win.

#poor sweet trusting bambi of a woman #it all changes after novokribirsk #hc: gv.#headcanon. ( who i will be when i wake after enduring )

2 notes · View notes

thebadgerclan · 2 years

Text

Shadow and Bone Masterlist

FIRST MASTERLIST HERE

** indicates smut

Rags To Riches Masterlist

The Dark Prince Masterlist

Aleksander Morozova x reader

Day With Family- A day spent with your family...

Unknown- Your daughter is sick, and the cause is unknown...

Flowers- Aleksander loves to give you flowers...

What Are You?- “What are you?” is a difficult question...

Morning- A morning romp followed by a revelation...

Changed- You have made him a changed man...

So This Is Love- Of course you feel the same...

Desire**- He desires you so deeply...

Reality- Your reality was once a far-fetched fantasy...

Stifling- He means well, but he’s still driving you crazy...

Capable- You are more than capable to sit on his council...

She Knows- You’ve discovered his secret...

Unsure- All he wants to do is love you...

The General’s Daughter- It isn’t easy being the General’s daughter...

One True Queen- Long live the One True Queen...

Hope- Hope has arrived at last...

Most Precious- He will never sacrifice that which is most precious to him...

Empress-What makes an Empress?

Divine- Aleksander believes you are divine--akin to a Saint...

Difficult Day- It’s been a difficult day...

Departing**-Before your husband departs...

Injured- When you’re injured, Aleksander drops everything to get to you...

Healed- You heal from your ordeal in Novokribirsk...

Wedding Bells-The many weddings of Aleksander Morozova...

Enraged- You’ve never seen your husband this enraged...

Bow- All will bow before the Queen...

Early Morning**- You’re woken in the early morning, but you don’t mind...

Returned-Aleksander returns from Novyi Zem...

The Only Thing He Has Left- You are the only thing he has left...

Broken (TW: TORTURE/SUICIDE)- He is broken...

After- After the Civil War, you carry on...

The Price- Merzost always demands a price...

Unaware- Some at the Sanctuary are unaware of who you are...

Over- It’s all over...

Home To You- Your husband returns to the Sanctuary...

Want You**- He’s plenty rested, and Aleksander wants you...

Time- Time will have to heal this wound...

Question- The most important question...

NSFW Alphabet**

Obsessed**-He’s obsessed with the taste of you...

Amplifier- Aleksander has yet to touch you...

Burn The World-He will burn the world to get your back...

I Can See You- Secrecy is necessary...for now...

Appetizer**- He needs to taste you...

Heated Looks- Aleksander doesn't like other men looking at you...

Worst Fear- His worst fear is realized...

Burnout**- Aleksander's working his way to burnout...

Letters- You find Aleksander's letters...

Kaz Brekker x reader

Touch- He’s ready...

Haircut- Kaz’s reaction to your new haircut

Wanted**- To Kaz, you are always wanted...

Feelings- While your feelings about Kaz are clear, your brother’s are not...

Mistake- A simple mistake causes a fight...

Man and Wife- Your marital status isn’t just pretend anymore...

The Bastard’s Sister- You don’t need your sight to be dangerous...

Brick By Brick- Brick by brick, you will destroy him...

Sister- No one knew that Kaz had a sister...

Reunited- After 15 years, you are reunited with your brother...

Jesper Fahey x reader

Need You Now**- He doesn’t care that there’s a party, he needs you now...

Sir**- An evening with your Dominant...

Something New**- Jesper wants to try something new...

Near-Death- A near-death experience yields an unexpected result...

For Once- For once, you’re on time...

Avoiding- Avoiding him seems to be the best option...

Bite**- Whether it’s intentional or not, it’s turning him on...

Touch Me**-Your fiance comes home after a long week...

Bored- An extremely poor choice of words...

NSFW Alphabet**

Try**- He just wants to try it...

Matthias Helvar x reader

Rougher**- Your husband wants to try being a bit rougher...

Challenge- Being with you will be a challenge, but one Matthias is willing to take on...

Most Men- In this regard, he isn’t like most men...

Three Weeks**- You have your husband after three weeks...

Sooner- Your wedding takes place a bit sooner than expected...

Intended- He no longer wants to be your intended...

Beautiful- You are beautiful, marks and all...

Nikolai Lantsov x reader

Genuine- For the first time, his feelings are genuine...

Feisty**- Sometimes, you can be a bit too feisty...

HCs: Being His Personal Guard and S/O

Homecoming-The Prince returns...

Ten Years- Ten years on the throne...

Certain-Your feelings are finally certain...

Outdated- An outdated practice comes to light...

Jealousy-Jealousy is a heady thing...

Deliriously In Love- Nikolai is deliriously in love with you...

The Feast of Sankt Nikolai- You celebrate the Feast of Sankt Nikolai

With Child- The Queen is with child...

Wolf of the Waves- Sturmhond returns to his beloved Wolf of the Waves, and to his beloved wife...

Misinformed**- You had no idea it was meant to feel good...

Moi Tsar- After the attack on the Spinning Wheel...

Every Moment- Your husband occupies your mind every moment...

Coronation- The Coronation of His Most Royal Majesty, King Nikolai Lantsov...

Aftermath- In the aftermath of the coronation, you have time to process what happened...

NSFW Alphabet**

Mourning- The funeral of Dominik Vertov...

Return**- The Prince’s return to Ravka..

Salvation- You are his salvation...

Justice- Justice is served...

Heir- The heir to the throne...

Husband and Father- Nikolai Lantsov...husband and father...

Ravish**- He will never tire of ravishing you...

Hatred- A visit from the Dowager Queen...

In Sickness and Health- Your husband cares for you in sickness and in health...

Protect You- Even the demon will protect you...

The Panther and The Fox- Sturmhond needs a job done...

Objection- You can’t marry him...

Queen of the Ice- Before his wedding, a ball is to be held...

Heartbreakingly Gentle- He’s always so gentle with you...

Danger- Nikolai loves to put his life in danger...

Surprise- You surprise your husband while he’s away...

Someday- Someday, you will be his...

Safe and Sound- He'll come home safe and sound...he has to...

All Mine**- After a run-in with his ex, you remind Nikolai whose he is...

Brace- For months, you'd braced for his death...

Sparring**-You watch Nikolai spar...

Kings and Queens**- The coronation ball of King Nikolai and Queen Y/N...

Nina Zenik x reader

Coming Soon

Inej Ghafa x reader

Coming Soon

Alina Starkov x Aleksander Morozova

Abandoned-He won’t leave her...

Nikolai Lantsov x Zoya Nazyalensky

The Weight of the Crown- The crown weighs on Zoya...

She, Queen of the Kings (Zoya-centric)- Zoya, The Dragon Queen, Queen of Kings...

Matthias Helvar x Nina Zenik

Coming Soon

Jesper Fahey x Wylan Van Eck

After Everything- After everything, he can’t imagine not having Wylan by his side...

Goat- Jesper leaves out one crucial detail...

Jesper Fahey x reader x Wylan Van Eck

Whole Heart- Wylan returns from a trip to Shu Han...

Learn**- Wylan wants to learn how to pleasure you, and Jesper is more than happy to teach him...

Enough for Three**- His only request was that the tub be big enough for three...

Nina Zenik x reader x Matthias Helvar

Dating Them HCs

Zoya Nazyalensky x reader x Nikolai Lantsov

Part of the Job- It’s an unknown part of the job...

Alina Starkov x reader x Aleksander Morozova

Coming Soon

Kaz Brekker x reader x Inej Ghafa

Coming Soon

Other

#thebadgerclan masterlist #half blood princess masterlist #masterlist

393 notes · View notes

auroras-nsad-prose · 2 years

Text

masterlist <3

hi!! you can call me aurora or a or whatever tf you want. i love reading, writing, short chapters, taylor swift songs, and ofc obsessing over fictional characters. reading wise, i love just about any young adult series, but my fav by far is the grishaverse :,) while the six of crows duology was my fav, zoyalai completely and wholly has my heart :,)) im also a big fan of the raven cycle and the secret shanghai universe, among many other things!

im currently working (very inefficiently) on a ya wip. but more importantly, i post fics on ao3! below is a list of fics i have uploaded with descriptions and links to them, which will be updated accordingly. i mostly write zoyalai, but i am trying to branch out. i will write all the angst and all the hurt/comfort, i just will not write smut.

if you have any requests or just want to chat , feel free to message me!

grishaverse:

right where you left me

zoya nasyalensky/nikolai lantsov, 1 chapter, 7k words, tags: angst, hurt/comfort, grief, post-ROW

if there was one thing Zoya learned in her life, it was this: with great power comes even greater loneliness. OR, the moments in Zoya Nasyalensky’s life where loneliness hit her like a storm.

this pain wouldn’t be for evermore

zoya nasyalensky/nikolai lantsov, 1 chapter, 1.5k words, tags: emotional hurt/comfort, fluff, nightmares, post-ROW

“bad dreams were not a rare occurrence for the king and queen of ravka. after battle after battle, war after war, fighting demons and darkness incarnate; nightmares were simply a given. but the king and queen were always there, side by side, ready to fight the other’s mind off with soothing whispers and warm hands. that is, almost always.”

swaying as the room burned down

zoya nasyalensky/nikolai lantsov, 5 chapters, 8.5k words, tags: canon divergence, angst, blood and violence, hurt/comfort

ROW SPOILERS!

Zoya and Nikolai have been dancing with their hands tied for as long as they’ve known each other. Zoya knows that they can never be together, never be more than king and general. However, it seems that the wedding of her friends Genya and David has softened her heart (if only for a night), and she decides to indulge in her king’s requests. But, neither Nikolai nor Zoya could have predicted that a bomb would be the thing to tear them apart from each other.

(Or, an angsty zoyalai-centric rewrite of Genya and David’s doomed wedding because I said so >:))

covered in you

zoya nasyalensky/nikolai lantsov, 13 chapters, 40k words, tags: (loose) cottagecore au, childhood friends to lovers, angst, unhealthy relationships, implied child abuse, hurt/comfort

zoya, a young girl in the village of novokribirsk, is a secret but powerful air nymph. when her secret is one day discovered by aleksander, a mysterious newcomer to the village, zoya finds her life on a sharp turn for change, power, perhaps even love. of course, things get complicated when your childhood friend you haven’t seen for years on end finally returns home for a visit.

on the ropes

zoya nazyalensky/nikolai lantsov, 1/1 chapters, 6k words, tags: AU-Cirque du Soleil, enemies to lovers, greatest snowman vibes

a cirque du soleil AU in which zoya nazyalensky is an aerial performer and she’s been partnered with the renowned dancer, nikolai lantsov. written with @noirshadow for the grishaverse reverse mini bang ‘22

the raven cycle:

come home to my heart

blue sargent/richard gansey iii, 1/1 chapter, 2k words, tags: fluff and angst, angst with a happy ending, introspection

blue and gansey get into their first real fight.

#writing #yabooks #yafantasybooks #grishaverse #six of crows #zoyalai #zoya nazyanelsky #nikolai lantsov #fanfic #kanej #leigh bardugo #zoya nazyalensky #soc #youngadultbooks

30 notes · View notes

cheekygreenty · 3 years

Text

Little Witch - Part 25

The Darkling x Reader

The black kefta hung from the tent hook elegantly, its blue thread glistening in the rays of the morning sun. The night had been swept away from you in the blink of an eye with the bright light peeking into the tent like an unwelcome guest. The big bed was also empty, Aleksander's side cold and vacant with no trace of his signature warmth. His scent still lingered though, the thick sheet soaking in his presence as much as you.

The kefta felt particularly heavy as you lifted it around your shoulders and clasped its belt around your waist. You would be boarding the skiff any minute now ready to play along with whatever plan Aleksander had. Truth be told, you would follow him to the ends of the earth and back. He was your silent stone to lean on, the shoulder you wanted to cry on. His company brought comfort and security to you that nobody else had ever given you, not your parents or siblings, nobody. Whether that be plainly down to Merzost or your love for him, you didn't know and didn't care.

'promise me you'll run and hide'

Aleksander wasn't selfless or humanitarian, he always put his life goal ahead of everyone, ahead of you. But this time he was begging you to run, to save yourself if something happened. But what could possibly happen on the skiff of all places? The words were meant to be reassuring no doubt, but they felt like a goodbye and that hurt. It's just a normal skiff journey to Novokribirsk you kept telling yourself despite that daunting dread pooling in your stomach.

Alina had arrived not long ago, his signature black carriage carrying the cuffed Sun-Summoner and bringing her to her tent. You hadn't yet had time to see her, so now you walked with determined haste, ready to give her a piece of your mind as you whipped the tent flap opened.

She stood dressed in a black gown still void of a black kefta no doubt, her hair neatly styled in a regal updo with glittering jewels hanging from a golden chain. But that wasn't what caught your eye, it was the Stag antler sticking out from her collarbone, the skin red and irritated. Her usually expressive face was blank, no emotion visible on her pale skin. Despite her state, you could basically feel the buzz of her power from where you stood. The amplifier was doing its job.

Her eyes found yours with a sharp glare and anger flooded her whole being. With her quick demeanor change came the clenching of her fists and a slight spark of light, small and pathetic you thought, does she not have an amplifier?

'You betrayed me' She stood up and took a couple steps towards you so you did the same, coming face to face with the living saint.

'I did no such thing. Now sit down before you hurt yourself' You seethed and she faltered, sitting down with a defeated sigh.

'Are you here to take my light too like he did? I'm sure there's enough to go around.... you know if you'd have asked me and told me everything then this never would have happened.'

'What are you talking about Alina?' Your angry expression shifted into one of slight confusion at her words.

'Don't act like you didn't know. I know you're not innocent, Baghra told me as much.'

'Don't listen to a word that wrench says.'

'Then who can I trust? Huh? You? Aleksander?' She threw her hands up in desperation and leaned her head back against the wall. ''I can't trust anyone, only Mal....but his life is being held over my head like a bargaining chip.' Her voice broke toward the end of the sentence but she recovered, squaring her shoulders and looking ahead at the tent wall again. 'Even though I can't physically to anything, you two still have your insurance don't you?'

'You need to stop speaking in riddles Alina, the Apparat has rubbed off on you too much.' At his mention, her eyes squinted at you in anger, seemingly aware of his situation back in Os Alta.

'Riddles? Do you prefer lies?'

'No. I choose to omit the truth and say what one wants to hear.'

'I would know'

'Why do you keep saying we took your light? We gave you the Stag' You circle back to her previous accusation, not caring for her petty allegation.

'No, he took my light with the Stag. I can't do anything, nothing. He took it all and is using it against me. Just like you told him to right?' You pause, what.

'Excuse me?' You stared at the girl incredulously. Aleksander did what? 'Alina if you are lying to me I will burn Malyen to a mere ember.'

'Don't you think I would have done something to you right now?' Her voice sneers at you with a poison you've never heard from her before but then it softens to a pitiful infliction. 'Did you not know?'

'Of course I didn't!' You shoot up out of the chair, knocking it over in the process. She just accused Aleksander of taking her Grisha power, of stripping her from the one thing the Saints gave her, light. What you did was nothing compared to this, you never took it all, that would be immoral, sinful. But he did.

'I was wondering why you didn't just take it yourself, I mean you wouldn't need the Stag in the first place.' Because he didn't trust me enough that's why I didn't do it.

'How did he do it?' You stared impatiently at her, your feet feeling restless and your whole body on edge. The anger started to bubble in your gut, slowly raging fire throughout your body.

'He had David use Merzost to join us together using the Stag antlers. He took everything from me. I swear.' She looked petrified, broken. It made sense now why you could feel the power and she couldn't use it, why the antlers didn't quite fit around her collarbone, they didn't belong there. 'How do I fix this?'

Her pleading eyes stared into yours, begging for a solution you didn't have. You turned your head away, deep in rageful thoughts when a loud voice echoed over the rest, she could be lying. This was Alina Starkov after all, she could very well be lying about it all. But it would fit with Aleksander's hints here and there, his need for your validity of loyalty. It made sense.

You once again looked to her, eyes glaring into her own, and whispered with honesty 'I don't know.'

Just as you said aloud your sorrowful admission, the tent flap opened with a whoosh and the man himself entered donning his signature poker face. You took your steps backward, silently excusing yourself from the situation. You could feel his inquisitive stare on you but you ignored it, instead opting to quickly look at his hand. Saints. There, embedded into his hand was a bone fragment of the Stag. You bit down the gasp of horror and clenched your fists. How did I not see it yesterday?

You averted your eyes to Alina's once again and gave an almost missable nod and left.

What in Saint's name is he going to do and how can I find out before my conscience gets the better of me?

*****

You stared at the skiff and watched as the foreign diplomats boarded, each with a slight sheen on their brow. The Fold was an exhausting fear, one children and adults alike shared.

You looked to your left and spotted Aleksander and his troop of Grisha heading your way. While he spoke to Alina, you chose to stand alone and think, think of all the ways right now could go wrong. There were too many possibilities to count.

As the sea of keftas got closer, you walked on board, ignoring once again the look shot your way by Aleksander and Zoya alike.

Your steps were loud in your ears as your feet dragged on the wooden deck. Your head was still swirling with thoughts and scenarios, Aleksander being at the forefront of all of them. Why did he not tell me? Why is he doing this? What is he doing? It was a never ending turmoil.

The whirlwind of your mind was momentarily broken by the movement out of the corner of your eye. Alina was being chained to the deck, all freedom diminished. Aleksander stood behind her, unclasping her cloak to reveal a stunning golden kefta. You could see their lips moving and you could hear their voices, but your brain refused to process anything. You were shell-shocked, your eyes glued to his hand and the antler sticking out of it.

The skiff moved and jostled from side to side on the sands, the Squallers raising the winds to fill the sails. He dropped his hand but your eyes followed its movements. They flicked a sliver of light momentarily and you swore your stomach turned over and inside out. He must have felt your burning gaze on him because he looked up and searched for the target of your stare but it still wasn't enough to break your eyeline.

He appeared at your side suddenly , the same hand reaching for yours but you moved away on instinct. He moved to in front of you, gripping your chin up and forcing you to meet his eyes. They were cold and disconnected, like they usually were when he was deep in his revenge plans. It scared you, it always did.

'Why didn't you tell me?' You said calmy depsite the storm in your mind.

'It's for the best' He whispered, thumb carassing your cheek.

You roughly shoved his hand aside and walked away, choosing instead to stand next to Alina. You could sense her power on him but you could also hear the Merzost aspect calling out to you, begging to be taken into your grasp.

Before Alina had a moment to register your presense, the skiff entered the glorious sands of the Fold. As the shadows wafted in your hair and loomed between your fingers like water, your worries dissapeared and your head cleared. Your lungs breathed the familiar air in and out, spreading the feeling of home throughout your body.

Your eyes shut on their own accord, basking in the Unsea feeling as long as you could manage before all hell broke loose.

____________________________

Part 26

Heyyyyy besties guess who's back!!!!!!!!!!!

Masterlist

Taglist (tell me if you want to be added to the Little Witch taglist!!) @theonelittleone @searching-for-gallifrey @0-artemis @lostysworld @xceafh @fire-in-her-veinz @patdsinner33 @cleverzonkwombatsludge @wizardwheezes @aleksanderwh0r3 @tomhollandisabae @hotleaf-juice @justmesadgirl @exo-1204 @houseofdupree @oberonpascal @eireduchess @lunas1x1 @adoringb @grisha-of-shadow-bone @rosiethefairy @carlywhomever @allisjustok @keepdaydreamingbb @luciadiosa @azkahanif

#the darkling x reader #the grishaverse #the darkling #aleksander morozova x reader #aleksander morozova #ben barnes #kefta #grisha #shadow and bone #alexander #alexander morozova #alina starkov #fanfic #general kirigan x reader #imagine #black general #general kirigan #series

79 notes · View notes

bitch-biblioklept · 3 years

Text

The Darkling x f!oc

Masterlist

Chapter-14 Change of Plans

Chapter Summary: After hours of ineffective court, Serephina and Aleksander finally get some time alone. A much awaited discussion of important matters occurs amidst the fear of espionage.

Word Count: 3.1k (lmao I really outdid myself)

CW: low key smut, badly written smut and reckless use of comas

Lyubimyy: dear, favorite

“I seem to have forgotten how tiring life in Os Alta had been,” Serephina sighed as sat down on the swing outside in the balcony. She seemed to be glowing in the setting sunlight. Was it him or had she gotten more beautiful in the time away from the palace?

“You get used to quiet more while you are away from here,” he admitted. “Sometimes I wish we could have a quiet life.”

“We could never have had a life quieter than this had we never fought.” She said. He nodded. “We might still be running for our lives like we had used to. Maybe Grisha would have been extinct by now.”

“You’re right.” He said, sitting down beside her on the swing. The gentle motion brought a strange sense of calm to him. “Most of what we did was worth all this.”

“It is,” she said, leaning against him as she tucked her ankles under herself. Her warmth gave him comfort, seeing her back in the palace, in her rightful place with him, beside him, and he was practically exploding with joy. “But I think all of it would go into waste if our lovely king isn’t deposed soon.”

“Soon, moya milaya soon.” He promised. “All the pieces are in place, waiting to be moved. Which reminds me, I am going to have to leave for Tsibeya to hunt for the stag, so we can start with the…” Aleksander left it at that, suddenly all of his mother’s scorn catching up with him on his plans.

“What?” She prompted, rubbing his arm.

“There’s a lot of things that have conspired while you were away,” he started. “For one, my spies told me General Zlatan was the one behind your attempted assassination. And he had help on the inside. Someone from the Grand Palace supporting him.”

“Let me guess, that is the Apparat?” she said.

“Well, obviously.” He said. Sere leaned away from him and placed her legs over his, making the swing sway mildly. His hands rested on her calves, stroking her soft skin exposed from under her skirts. “Who else could it even be? So there has been a change of plans.”

Aleksander was quiet for a long moment, looking into those brown voids he could get lost in. She narrowed her eyes, brow furrowed in confusion and then her eyes comically widened. “You can’t be serious, Sasha.”

“Well, it’s not like Novokribirsk left any useful options for us.” He shrugged. “Besides, I spent a lot of time thinking about it. Imagine the power we could hold if we could push the fold to the Fjerdan and Shu borders; how much safer Ravka would be for Grisha.”

“And if they find something that they can use to travel in the fold?” She asked. Her eyes had that darkness when something she didn’t necessarily like made too much sense to be ignored.

“That would take long enough and till then perhaps we could find a better way to tackle them.” He said. “Besides it’s not like they can spy on us that easily after that. Espionage will go down once the land routes are blocked with the fold. And traveling via the True Sea would take too long for the information to be useful.”

Serephina was silent for a few minutes, her dark eyes staring blankly at his hands resting on her calves. “And how are you planning to do that?” She finally asked.

“That’s where the stag comes in.” He said, glad to have an opportunity to finally discuss his plans. This was one of the only two rooms which had walls specially made with soundproof fabrics and foams that didn’t allow any sound to escape. This was as far as they could be from spies, yet they always talked softly.

“Are you sure you can do this?” She asked, her eyes brimming with concern. “I don’t want to lose you just to make this country safe. You remember what happened when you initially tampered, right?”

“Yeah, I know. I nearly died, but I’m still here aren’t I?” He sighed, holding her hand. “And we have even gotten a sun summoner this time. Everything will be fine.”

“What of the King?” She asked.

“He shall take ill soon enough,” Aleksander said, his voice sounding coldly detached even to himself.

She raised her brow at him, impressed. He was glad Sere didn’t ask how because he couldn’t bear to explain Genya’s sacrifice to her. Even though he had taken caution, he was still in no power to stop a king, much less so for a servant of the Queen, be a Grisha or not. Yet, he had offered her a way out, and he was almost certain she would take it, but instead she chose revenge.

“Leave the Apparat for me though,” She said, her irises turning the color of rising sun, red as the dawn. And when she grinned, her fangs showed, terrifyingly beautiful to look at. “I have always wanted to tear him down.”

“Done, mi ’lady.” He said, bringing her hands to his lips.

Serephina blinked, her eyes returning to the lovely brown and her gaze fixated on the door. Sure enough, a gentle knock came from outside. “Mama?” Drystan’s voice said.

“Come in, dear.” Her musical voice said.

Drystan entered, his steps hesitant and awkwardly smiled, showing the brand new kefta that had been made for him. Aleksander’s heart lurched, threatening to burst out of his chest as he saw his son wear his color, his kefta. Even most of the detailing was similar.

“You look lovely!” Serephina squealed, rushing up to him. Aleksander could only watch, for he was frozen at the lovely sight. The two most important people in his life were here, in his palace, his home, the place they built from rubble, wearing his color, their faces glowing with joy… if there was paradise, this was it.

“Wow,” he heard himself say. “This was meant to be for you.”

“Thank you, papa.” Drystan said, smiling at him. His grey eyes were so full of delight, so innocent, with his rogue curls falling to his eyes, a dimple appearing on each of his cheeks just like his mother… Aleksander promised himself that whatever happened, he will not let Drystan suffer. Not like he had, not like Serephina had. This was his family, his world, and he would keep them safe.

“I went to the fabricators’ workshop,” Drystan told them. He was so excited to be in the Little Palace, unused to the buzz of the palace and to the number of servants that would do just anything that he’d tell them too. “Everything is so big here, there are just so many people, so many paintings! Mamochka always told me things, but I couldn’t even imagine this grandeur! Papa, did you really build this place alone?”

“No,” Aleksander said, smiling for what felt like the nth time that evening. “I had some help. Your mother is quite resourceful.”

“Would you show me around some day when you have the time?” Drystan asked. It hurt, in some ways, to think that he would think that the Darkling wouldn’t even have time for his own son, but in some ways he was proud.

“Of course, lyubimyy.” He promised. “We could go now,”

“But Feydor said he will take me to the lake,” Drystan pondered. “Besides you must be tired. We can go later.”

“Did he now?” Serephina laughed. “He has grown so much! I remember Feydor being a new soldier and just lifting everyone’s spirits with that lovely smile of his, oh how the days have passed.”

“Okay, then in the morning.” Aleksander promised. “I will say it’s the most lovely to look at in the early hours of the dawn.”

“Sure, papa!” Drystan said. Then he glanced around the room, his curious silver eyes landing on the portrait. “That’s the two you,” he said. “I have always wanted to get a portrait of me.”

“You know, this was only a few days before everyone was told that I with a child.” Serephina said. “So in a way you have a portrait of yourself.” He chuckled.

“I meant a proper portrait, mama.” Drystan comically rolled his eyes. Aleksander laughed, a proper laugh. His chest had never quite felt this heavy yet relaxed at the same time.

“I can arrange that if you wish to,” Aleksander said. “We have quite the few talented painters down in the fabricator workshops.”

The boy grinned, obviously happy to be granted his wishes. “Feydor would here to get me any moment, I should go back,” he said.

“Yeah, of course.” Serephina said. “Just be careful, there are enemies hidden in the palace too.”

“I can protect myself.” Drystan said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Sure you can,” Serephina said. “But none of it would be useful if you aren’t observant. Keep an eye out for anything suspicious.”

“Stop worrying him,” Aleksander assured. “Feydor is one of best soldiers. Drystan will be fine. Besides he can protect himself.”

“Exactly,” Drystan said. “See, papa understands. I’ll see you for dinner mama, bye!” then the boy rushed out of the room.

“I will have a room prepared for him by tomorrow,” Aleksander assured. “It’s too risky even here for him to be wandering from one room to other just to get to a bathroom.”

“His room should be soundproofed too.” Serephina decided. “But first I’d try my old clothes and see how many of them will need much altering.”

“I shall be more than happy to assist you darling.” He said, wrapping his arms around her and following her like a tail. She blushed, putting her warm, nimble hands over his on her stomach. “I certainly think I’d make a lovely handmaiden for you, Lady Kirigan.”

“You are already my favorite handmaiden, Sasha.” She said, but then she pushed his hands away. Now let me get to work before it gets too dark. I hate to work under the lamplight.”

“I think you are forgetting that you are a walking source of light.” He pointed. “Why would you need a lamp?”

“Well, I can’t glow and put my mind to stitching at the same time.” She countered. “Stitching uses up a lot of my instantaneous brain functioning power to be anything decent.”

“Yeah, I have noticed.” He said. Sasha had always adored the way her brow would scrunch up in concentration when she sewed back the occasional broken buttons of his old kefta or when she had initially helped him in getting the original style of the kefta. Occasionally, a tiny part of her pink tongue would poke out from her pursed lips, making her appear like a hyper-focused child.

Serephina turned and looked at the window for a long moment. “It will be dark soon I am not going to stich anymore.” She decided. “I’ll look for clothes tomorrow. Let’s go for a walk.”

Everything seemed to have changed. Even though the arrangement of the Little Palace was the same, the people had changed. Nothing was the same. Fifteen years passed soon, too soon. Ivan had just started as a soldier, and now he was the Darkling’s most trusted guard. Same for Feydor. Some of the older oprichinik had already retired, now she didn’t even know most of them.

Some of the children who had just arrived when she left, now they were all proper soldiers, healers or even teachers. She had never even seen most of the younger kids before this day.

Most of all, she missed the little prince, who had always cooked up a storm with his energy, talking about ships, enjoying his time in the fabricator workshops, and just causing her to run all over the Little Palace behind him. Without Nikolai everything seemed too quiet, and it was eerie. Speaking of Nikolai, he had grown so much too, he has been in Ketterdam for his studies, though she highly doubted he’d actually be interested in too much of the history or the political sciences that princes were supposed to learn.

“Everything’s changed so much,” she remarked. Sasha looked at her sympathetically, but didn’t say anything.

“Come, I’ll show you the new war room,” he said, holding her hand and leading her away from the Dome Hall.

The room was filled with maps and old books, some of them which held secrets no one else could ever figure out. The grand table with the laid out map of Ravka was still there, as were most of the nicks and knacks. Instead of the large tapestry with the eclipsed sun, the wall now had a dark door.

“What’s in there?” Serephina asked.

“My chambers,” he said. His eyes looked like pools of liquid silver in the dull lamplight, he looked so immensely sad. His heart pounded erratically too, and his scent changed from that of cloves to a dully bitter one. “I really loved the quiet here.”

There was a small room with a sitting area and doors leading up to other ways. The hexagon seemed stifling for some reason. “This is where my oprichinik stayed.” He explained, as he walked away from her to a door as plain as the others. “This is where I slept.”

The room was another hexagon, but a lot larger than the other one. There was one bed on the corner of the room, and the rest of the room mainly consisted of shelves by shelves of documents and leather bound books. Some of them she recognized as Ilya Morozova’s journals… some she recognized as hers. There was a large table with two chairs matching it, and the few papers that lay there were organized properly. A half empty bottle of whiskey with a half filled glass was there on the table. The room smelled of cloves and the strong stench of kvas.

“This seems… desolate.” She softly said.

“I never got used to the absence.” He said.

Serephina closed the distance between them and kissed him. “I’ll never leave you again,” she promised. Sasha rested his forehead on hers, his breaths heavy, his pulse dancing in it’s own rhythm. She stood on her toes and looked at him in the eyes, holding his face in her arms. He hadn’t shaved in days and the stubble scratched her hands, but it felt divine. And kissed him, kissed him like her life depended on it, kissed him like they were the only two people in the world, kissed him like he was the air she needed to live.

His arms wrapped around her, pulled her close, impossibly close. She placed each of her foot on his like she always did and he bent forward, taking control, nibbling at her lower lip, urging her to open her mouth. He kissed her intensely, tongues fighting, teeth clashing, and walked behind, pulling her with him till the back of his knees collided with the bed. Aleksander let himself fall back, with her falling on top of him. They had to pull back to breathe.

Serephina looked magnificent with her skin flushed red, and she fell on the bed beside him, unbuttoning her kefta. He followed suit, his body was on fire, the woolen kefta was stifling, and all he wanted to was rid of it, so he did.

The air in the room was dense with tension as they stared into each other eyes, hearts and souls. She pushed him down gently, and hovered over him for a short moment as she kissed the corner of his mouth. Her head moved sideways, leaving open-mouthed kisses all over his jaw. A few strands of her hair fell on his face, tickling him. He grabbed her jaw, stilling her movements. Her eyes had darkly clouded with lust, a mystified expression on her face.

Aleksander took his chance and flipped them over, on hand pinning both of hers over her head and the other one stroking her face. “Stay still,” he said, his voice hoarse. He unbuttoned his undershirt and dumped it somewhere on the floor. It was a sight to behold, for him and his eyes only, Serephina lying still save for her rapid breaths, looking at him with a hungry gaze as she licked her lips.

Bending over, he planted a kiss on her neck, going up in slow and deliberate motions, taking his time to get reacquainted with her taste. He stopped at the base of her ear, his deep breaths hitting the shell of her ear. Her body tensed in anticipation, and she gasped as his lips met her warm skin, and her back arched, giving him the opening he needed to get his arms below her.

His mind may have forgotten the way the knots of her dress ties worked, but his muscles hadn’t. His fingers easily threaded through the silk straps, loosening the black gown she had adorned. He kissed her shoulders, her skin already warm with lust.

Sasha was gentle with the dress, teasingly slow as he took the silk off of Serephina. The moment he sat up to finally rid her of the dress, she forgot his command of sitting still and sat up, her ankles tucked under her and she pulled him by the buckles of his trousers, effectively drawing a surprised gasp from him.

She kissed the smooth skin over his stomach, slowly going up leaving feather-light kisses on him, earning delicious shivers from him, and the occasional aroused gasp. His heart was erratic with emotions, a hint of bitterness that was well masked by the strong feelings of love, lust and delight.

“I love you,” she whispered against his skin, just as she reached the base of his neck. “I love you so much.”

“I love you too,” he whispered, his voice soft. Sasha’s silver eyes had turned almost black, but they were still bright with emotion. “I missed you so much.” He said as he gripped her chin, and planted a slowly deliberate kiss on her lips. His other hand rested on her shoulder, running his fingertips gently all over her hot flesh.

It was only time before she found herself sitting on his lap with him inside of her, as the sound of skin slapping filled the room. His hands were on her ass, squeezing into the flesh as his nails stung oh-so wonderfully. His skilled mouth was on her left nipple, not wanting to leave any of her sensitive spots unattended. One of her nimble hands were in his hair, scratching his scalp while the other one gripped his shoulder like a vice, definitely leaving an imprint.

They fell on the bed, blissfully spent after chasing their highs. His usually perfect hair was disheveled thanks to her slender fingers, and she took his time to admire his naked form glistening in the afterglow. Sweat lined his face and neck, but he had never been more beautiful. His hand was wrapped around her, their skins sticky from their previous ministrations.

Tag List:

@edithsvoice @imma-too-many-fandoms @cynthianokamaria @kamiiyou @carlywhomever

#shadow and bone #the darkling #aleksander morozova #general kirigan #general kirigan imagine #shadow and bone imagine #the darkling x f!oc #the darkling imagine #the darkling x reader #ben barnes

52 notes · View notes

mhevarujta · 3 years

Text

Zoya and the Darkling [Rule of Wolves Spoilers]

It’s a pity that fandoms mostly focus on romantic/sexual relationships, because The Darkling and Zoya have one of the most epic dynamics in the Grishaverse. The way they affect each other is so complex.

Zoya did not go to the Little Palace after being tested in the usual manner of Grisha travelling across Ravka to recruit children with powers. She was a young girl, a child really, living with a bitter and broken mother, in a home where her Suli inheritance was not appreciated, in a country that would condemn her both because of the power she let her demonstrated AND because of who she would have been without it. She was basically sold as a child-bride and her mother deluded herself into thinking that her daughter would not be raped by the old man she was marrying so that she’d feel better about herself, not to mention that she poisoned Zoya with her fears and made her afraid of her own heart. At the wedding her power broke loose and her aunt took her to a hard journey to the Little Palace so that Zoya would be tested and have a chance at a better life.

Zoya was taken in and she was separated from her family, but her aunt was ALWAYS in her heart. She started training and she was stronger than most, she was also driven and resilient. She arrived at the Little Palace when she was 8-9. When she was 13, she was the youngest one to be chosen as part of a group that would travel with the Darkling to Tsibeya to find the white tigers of Ilmisk because one of them was supposed to be an amplifier. By that age, Zoya was half in love with him already and she lived for his rare appearances at the school. She was the best, she had fought to be so, and he wanted him to see it. The Grisha were focused on hunting the female tiger, but the amplifier was a male one. He tried to kill the female’s cubs and Zoya gave them the protection of her body, she got scars that she never had tailored and she almost died, and killed the tiger to defend the cubs; not for the sake of power.

It wasn’t HER turn to get the amplifier, but since she killed the tiger only she could claim it. And THIS brilliant scene happens:

Some part of me always feared that he would send me away, banish me forever from the Little Palace. I told him I was sorry.

“But the Darkling saw me clearly even then. ‘Is that really what you wish to say?’ he asked.”

Zoya pushed a dark strand of her hair behind her ear. “So I told him the truth. I put my chin up and said, ‘They can all hang. It was my blood in the snow.’”

Nikolai stifled a laugh and a smile played over Zoya’s lips. It dwindled almost instantly, replaced by a troubled frown. “That pleased him. He told me it was a job well done. And then he said … ‘Beware of power, Zoya. There is no amount of it that can make them love you.’”

The weight of the words settled over Nikolai. Is that what we’re all searching for? Was that what he’d hunted in all those library books? In his restless travels? In his endless pursuit to seize and then keep the throne? “Was it love you wanted, Zoya?”

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t think so. I wanted … strength. Safety. I never wanted to feel helpless again.”

“Like calls to like” fits the Darkling and Alina, but it also fits Zoya and the Darkling… in fact it fits Zoya and Aleksander even more so. Both were powerful and KNEW it. Both eventually learned to be unapologetic about it and saw it as their safety net. Both were taught that power would give them safety, survival, fulfillment in some ways, but not love. And yet, as much as they denied it and hid their hearts they DID want to be loved more than anything.

Zoya only rises thereafter. She gets her rank, she is one of the most valued Grisha in the Little Palace, she is admired for her strength and beauty, she armors herself with arrogance, and ruthlessness. But she has not friends. Both her and the Darkling are surrounded by people, they are admired, but they don’t have people close to their heart. The Darkling always cared about Baghra as much as he could still manage and Zoya cared only bout Liliyana and Lada (an orphan girl that her aunt had taken in).

The Darkling SAW her. He saw how she tried like no other, he saw her pain, her anger and he considered these to be things that he could use to control her and to push her towards the direction he desired. And despite not being appreciative of her devotion when he had it, he missed it when it was gone.

When Alina got in the picture everything changed for Zoya. Yes, Zoya had feelings for the Darkling and I DO believe that her feelings and vanity would have been hurt to some extent by the intimacy in the way he approached Alina, but the primary problem was Zoya’s sense of injustice. Zoya had tried for YEARS, had trained hard, had sacrificed to be where she is. Alina never asked for any of it, but from Zoya’s perspective Alina would have been an untrained Grisha who got all the status, power and recognition that SHE had fought for without even trying. Until then, Zoya had been praised for wanting power, but when her anger is not convenient anymore, the Darkling punishes her for it and does not have a second thought about her.

And yet she remained loyal as always.

Even more so than rank, the Darkling and Liliyana were Zoya’s safety-net. And in ONE MOMENT, by genociding Novokribirsk, Zoya’s own mentor, the one who gave her safety and who was meant to create a haven for the Grisha, a person who KNEW her and who KNEW that she had family there, showed that he had no care for her, not care for human life and she wiped out the last people that Zoya loved.

He left her broken inside. In Siege and Storm, Zoya was at her lowest. She has to plead to Alina to have a position in the second army and she has to reveal a part of her heart; not just her loss of Liliyana. Her voice BREAKS when she says that the Darkling could have warned her of his plan; her pain at the idea that he did not give a crap about taking EVERYTHING from her is raw and cutting.

But she is not a quitter. She adjusts, she pulls her pieces together fast, she is a warrior and she stays on the right side without a question.

Then the Darkling attacked the very Grisha he was supposedly fighting for and killed half the people that Zoya had EVER KNOWN. And she still keeps fighting.

Enter Rule of Wolves. There is SUCH DEEP IRONY in this book and the way Zoya and the Darkling’s arcs interconnect is a prime example of Leigh’s amazing writing.

The Darkling had told Zoya that they would change the world and he completely stopped paying attention to her the moment the potential of Alina’s power blinded him to anything else. And yet, when he returns Zoya has gained the kind of power that could eventually rival his own. But he STILL thinks that he should be the one to rule Ravka. He still thinks that he is the best option for the country. And once more, he criminally underestimates Zoya and overestimates himself.

Who else is vengeful and afraid of his own heart, I wonder…

Aleksander considered Zoya weak for the very same things that were his own fatal flaws.

But unlike him, Zoya SAW her flaws. The Darkling shut himself off more and more in order to save himself from pain. Zoya eventually opened up her heart to grief and pain to become the person her country needed and to embrace her power. She opened the door, when the Darkling did not manage to do so. She showed more courage than he did… and he SAW it.

Aleksander hoped to become the savior during the battle, he wished to demonstrate how only HE could save Ravka. But seeing Nikolai and Zoya defending the country is the first time it registers that there are others who are up to the task and who may be better suited than he is.

And he becomes essential in Zoya being accepted as a saint and in her rise to power partly because he wants to gain her favor but also because he finally sees all her potential, all she can achieve, how a Grisha queen of such power might give the Grisha the haven they need, when he clearly can’t.

And what is left for him to do? What does he want? He wants to serve the country he loves in a way that will affirm his sense of self-importance (he wants to offer something that no one else can) and he wants to be loved. So his new objective is to stop the blight.

The blight was created because of his own power. This man who hunted down and ruined the life of a young girl (Alina) in order to force her to be his balance, so that he could freely use his power in a very imbalanced way, finally realizes that HE is responsible for his power and that HE can be the only one to balance it and himself. So there is a new path he sees ahead of him: he can sacrifice himself to stop the blight and in the process Ravka might finally see that he always wanted to protect the country… and it might love him back. He KNOWS that he has committed crimes, he does not seek redemption, but he desired for all he has done to matter. And it can’t matter if he is not at all responsible for its country’s well-being and if everyone hates him. He has lived so many lifetimes without happiness or fulfillment and they would all have been wasted.

But he can’t achieve this by himself. This man who always thought that he could do things alone, and who took away everything Zoya had fought for, NEEDS her allowance for his centuries-long life to gain a scrap of meaning. He needs her allowance to be appreciated and loved.

I can’t be the only one who sees what a beautiful twist of fate this is.

At the same time Zoya herself understands the Darkling. She understands how anger and using power as a coping mechanism can corrupt. Knowing herself and seeing how he turned out are essential in her becoming a good ruler. He is the cautionary tale of what she could but will never allow herself to become.

When he explains his plan, she KNOWS that he’ll be in eternal pain and she has does not mind that his will be his fate. But when she sees the aftermath of his sacrifice and when she feels the kind of pain he’ll be experiencing for eternity, it leaves her shaken. She feels that pain in her own heart and this is not a fate that she wishes even on him. Genya and Alina are very much willing to let him rot but Zoya, who also believed that she could forgive him, feels that she has to.The Darkling has not redeem himself. He is doing penance. But as Genya mentions, there’s a fine line when one has to do the math of how much a person has to pay and of how much pain they have to feel before their punishment stops being just and they become victims instead. Zoya, being afraid of becoming him, knows that learning to show forgiveness is the only way forward, it’s the way for her to keep her heart open and not become the avalanche.

Zoya Nazyalensky has become everything that Aleksander Morozova, the lost boy, wished to be. Poweful, eternal, with friends, with a true partner, holding the best position a Grisha could imagine without forcing her rule and finally giving their people a true chance without comprominsing them.

The Darkling was hoping that Alina would have been his balance. We are told how she might make him a better man and she might make him a monster.

But at the end of the day it’s Zoya who allows the Darkling to become the closest thing to decent that he can be at this point.

It’s the Darkling’s life that allows Zoya to see the lines that she will not cross and how to not become a monster.

And it’s Zoya’s ability to forgive him and her willingness to save him that becomes the backbone for the next phase of the Grishaverse, whenever Leigh decides to write it.

The way their paths entangle will always be at the core of the story.

_______________________

@myfriendscallmeraba I’m tagging you because you asked for it. It’s very encouraging to have someone interested in my ramblings.

#shadow and bone #rule of wolves #row #zoya nazyalensky #the darkling #aleksander morozova #sab meta #row meta

151 notes · View notes

stromuprisahat · 5 months

Text

Siege and Storm- Chapter 13 (Leigh Bardugo)

I can interpret show!Zoya's change of alliance easily. She was present on the skiff, she saw Aleksander move the Fold, she was jealous he's no longer interested in her, so she switched sides for the one that served ~her~. Fuck the army and the guy, who doesn't favour me anymore,- let's save MY aunt (and thwart a strategic move I don't care about even though I'm familiar with its purpose) and get rid of the dick, who humiliated me by replacing me by another.

Selfish? Yes.

Short-sighted? Absolutely.

Yet it DOES make sense.

But book!Zoya?!

There are rumours Novokribirsk is Darkling's fault, but no survivors. All Grisha are blamed (and hunted) also, hell, even the capital wasn't safe for them! Her aunt's dead (due to her own idiocy)- sad. How does any of that translate into "Let's kiss the ass of the girl I've hated since the day one (and who stole Daddy's attention and made him take my amplifier)"?!

Is it because she got let down by the Darkling- "her" spot on the sun (Pun intended.) given to another, who never did anything for it, her amplifier (She TOOK from others.) confiscated, and even if Darkles weren't to blame for the Fold and pogroms after, he FAILED TO PREVENT IT?!

Is it because Alina's in the Crown's favour now, so she's the safe option?!

Is it the math of The Fold made by a Darkling expands = another Darkling's fault => join the opposite force?!

All I can come up with is either selfish, childish or both.

Her distaste towards Alina's caused by Darkles too, isn't it? If HE didn't want Zoya to adore him, she wouldn't mind the undeserving girl, who got everything with zero effort... even this aspect of her enmity is discredited by her actions. While I can understand hating you're working hard for less appreciation, than someone, who has everything falling into their lap, abandoning the blind leadership FOR the undeserving rival's beyond me.

Why doesn't Zoya aim for leading position herself, if she believes herself to be SO good?

Why doesn't she cooperate with Sergei (Oh yeah, he's Corporalnik and she haven't left the world of high school cliques yet.)?

Why does she switch someone she doesn't idolize anymore for someone she despises, instead of looking for a secret third thing?!

How does her tragic loss translate into "I'll back up the incompetent girl I hate"?!

Sure, Alina's THE Sun Summoner, but Zoya's not a religious person, and Sergei's points about Alina being unfit to lead the Second Army are justified.

#Grishaverse #S&S Chapter 13 #Zoya Nazyalensky #Alina Starkov #The Darkling #grishanalyticritical #Liliyana Garin #The Righteous Gang™#Siege and Storm #Grisha trilogy #V #books #quotes #Leigh Bardugo #anti Zoya #ish

33 notes · View notes

where-theres-smoak-2 · 3 years

Text

I just read the Darkling prequel Demon in the Woods and I had a thought. It’s probably not a very relevant thought but its a thought none the less. So spoiler alert for Demon in the Woods and also Shadow and Bone both book and series. So if you don’t want to be spoiled stop reading now and just keep scrolling past.

In the prequel it tells the story of The Darkling as a 13 year old boy. Its established that he and Baghra are always on the move and that they have to hide their identities even from other Grisha. One of the things Baghra warns Aleksander is to never let a grisha touch him because then they’ll know he’s an amplifier and that would put them in danger (spoiler alert he lets a grisha touch him and it puts him in danger). It’s pretty obvious that this nomadic lifestyle makes him feel very lonely as they never stay long enough anywhere for him to make any friends. And even if he ever does make friends well eventually he and his mother move on and leave them behind. In the story he and his mother arrive at a grisha village where they are welcomed by the Ulle (the ulle is the chief) who invites them to stay through the winter until spring. Whilst at the village Aleksander who is going by the name Eryk does make a friend, Annika, but she discovers he’s an amplifier when he takes her hand to help her up after a bully the Ulle’s son Lev uses his squaller power to push her to the ground. Later that night she lures him up to a lake and tries to kill him with a rock whilst they are swimming, Lev shows up and upon discovering the reason Annika is trying to kill him decides he wants Aleksander’s bones for himself and so it ends up being this three way fight between them that ends with Aleksander using The Cut for the first time and killing both Annika and Lev.

The first thing I found interesting is this, if we are assuming that the showrunner’s are planning on keeping this short story as his canon backstory then I can’t help but think about that scene where Aleksander is explaining the cut to Alina in episode 2 and he says he would only use it as a last resort like that ambush. The way he talked about it seemed like he was thinking back on a memory and before reading Demon in the Wood I just figured he was thinking back on the Fjerdan ambush. But now I can’t help but wonder if he was also thinking back to this moment when he used the cut for the first time after being ambushed and nearly killed by someone he thought was a friend.

The second thing that interested me was that after he and the now dead Annika and Lev are found he tells the Ulle that they were attacked. The Ulle and the village Elders believe that its a nearby otkazat’sya village that has done it. Baghra and the Ulle launch an attack on the village and after we get this exchange between Baghra and Aleksander:

When he could find the strength, he asked, “The village?”

“They would not give up the riders who attacked you, so we killed them all.”

“All?”

“Every man, woman, and child. Then we burned their houses to the ground.”

He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

She gave him the barest shake, forcing him to look at her. “I’m not. Do you understand me? I would burn a thousand villages, sacrifice a thousand lives to keep you safe. It would be us on that pyre if you hadn’t thought quickly.” Then her shoulders slumped. “But I cannot hate that boy and girl for what they tried to do. The way we live, the way we’re forced to live—it makes us desperate.”

It is worth pointing out that Baghra was aware that Aleksander was lying about the attackers when she and the Ulle retaliated against the village. She knew the villagers were innocent. I can’t help but see the similarities between this situation where Baghra took part in the slaughter of a village full of innocents and the Darkling’s attack on Novokribirsk. I said in my review of the shadow and bone book that one of the things I was frustrated about was I didn’t understand why the Darkling had killed a village of innocent people with seemingly no motivation unlike in the show where he did have a motivation that I could understand. I can’t help but wonder now if it stems back to this. As a young boy his mother slaughters a village out of love for him and to protect him. On top of that when he himself is feeling guilty about his part in the loss of these innocent lives Baghra makes him believe that it was ok not to be sorry because it was a us or them situation. I think that line ‘I would burn a thousand villages, sacrifice a thousand lives to keep you safe’ is really how the Darkling feels about the grisha. Especially when you couple it with this quote from the prequel:

He understood then. The Grisha lived as shadows did, passing over the surface of the world, touching nothing, forced to change their shapes and hide in corners, driven by fear as shadows were driven by the sun. No safe place. No haven.

There will be, he promised in the darkness, new words written upon his heart. I will make one.

It was at this moment at the ripe old age of 13 that Aleksander makes his vow of creating a safe place for the Grisha. It really shows just how much time he has spent trying to achieve this goal, I mean he really did dedicate his entire life to this cause. And all of it stems from this early trauma he suffered when a young girl and a young boy tried to kill him out of desperation because they felt weak and hunted and felt like if only they had the strength of an amplifier they might be able to survive. I do think this was a pivotal moment in making Aleksander who he was. I do think this influenced his decision to attack Novokribirsk or at least I suspect it wasn’t far from his mind when he did.

Also the things that we get taught as a child do stick with us. In this moment Aleksander is being taught that when you love someone and when you want to protect someone then its ok to commit terrible acts against others. Further more he is taught by the Ulle’s and the Grisha villagers’ actions that when someone does you wrong it is right to seek retribution for those sins. Whilst Aleksander knows that the people of the nearby Village were innocent he also knows that the Ulle and the Elders of the grisha village don’t know. So he is watching and learning from their response to a situation where they believe someone has killed two of their children. So knowing this think back to Novokribirsk. In the show he says to Alina that those men had tried to kill her and this was their retribution. Knowing this backstory, again if they are keeping it as canon in the show, makes this moment make even more sense for Aleksander’s character, he believes that he was right and just in his actions because as a child he was taught that this is the response you should take when someone hurts or tries to hurt someone you love and care for. It also worth noting that in the flashback in episode 7 Aleksander says to the soldiers that he doesn’t want to hurt them and that he is approaching peacefully. This shows that as time has gone on he has thought maybe there is another way of dealing with this sort of situation that doesn’t involve violence. But then when they kill Luda and he kills the King’s men in return he finds himself back in that same place of killing in retribution of the death of someone he loves. I feel like this only cemented the idea in his head that killing out of retribution is the correct or best way of dealing with it because when he tried it a different way the outcome was still the same.

I mean I could be reaching with all of this, but I feel like this backstory really helps explain Aleksander’s actions when it comes to Novokribirsk and gives even more nuance to his character. I mean between this as a child and then Luda later in his life its no wonder he’s gone a bit dark. Poor guy is just not catching a break.

#the darkling #general kirigan #shadow and bone #shadow and bone spoilers

82 notes · View notes

persepholline · 3 years

Text

I've read that article about the romanticization of the Darkling and while I absolutely understand people who are pissed off/sad and I agree that it's shitty, I find LB's attitude towards Darkles stans very funny in a "girl what are you doing" sort of way because it's so petty like I've never heard of a bestselling author writing a portion of their fans into their books as a crazy cult before, it clearly hit a nerve

I'm new to the fandom but the feeling I get is she wrote something problematic ten years ago and became very embarrassed about it afterwards so she turned on the fans that liked it as a way to absolve herself. Especially since fandoms in general have become a lot more focused on discussion of what constitutes healthy/acceptable relationships to write about. And in a way I get it I had a huge Twilight phase in high school and afterwards I was super embarassed about it because of how problematic and cringe it was. But now with distance and more maturity I'm able to both still see why it was problematic and also why I was drawn to it (mostly the very unhinged representation of female desire) and like...it's really not the end of the world and no it never made me believe that breaking into somebody's room at night to watch them sleep was actually ok in real life lmao. This feels so obvious to me but apparently it needs to be said.

(More under the break this is turning into an essay, I've been thinking of this a lot recently)

And of course it's good to have these discussions about how historically romance tropes have echoed social dynamics of men's shitty behavior being romanticized and excused. But these days they often are so simplistic and focused on chasing clout that they become this weird new puritanism and moral panic about oh now women are reading novels it's going to make them hysterical or something

So you have these weird assumptions that you can't like a character and also be critical of their actions, or enjoy certain parts of a character and not others, or wish they were written differently and like them more for their potential (which I'm sure stings a bit for an author lol) - it assumes that if you like a character it means you would approve of their actions in real life, or that people just stupidly reproduce whatever they see on TV. That tendency to treat fictional characters like real people is the thing that actually worries me, to be honest, because it indicates a lack of distance and critical capacities regarding how stories are used and received. But people - fans and authors - are so scared of being called out as problematic and harassed for it that they're going to shy away from any nuance.

And yeah I think that it's good that standards of what constitutes an ideal relationship are evolving and becoming more feminist and communicative and all that and we definitely need more of that. But not all fiction has to be aspirational! Sometimes you just want to read about fucked up shit, because it's cathartic or fascinating, even healing at times because with fiction you are absolutely in control and can choose when to close the book. Toxic relationships in fiction can have an appeal specifically because they go to extremes of feeling that we don't want to go to in reality, in exactly the same way as horror movies or very violent action movies - which I don't see a lot of people besides fundamentalist Christians argue that they turn you into violent psychopaths (and that feels very obviously sexist). And for women, who are often taught growing up that love is the purpose of life, the "saving someone with your ability to love" can be a power fantasy in the same way that being a buff superhero who saves the day with their capacity for incredible violence can be a power fantasy for men. Still doesn't mean those women are going to fall in love with actual murderers or that those men are going to start beating up people at night. And love is scary, and weird, and weirdly close to horror at times, with all the potential for loss of self and being vulnerable and overwhelming feelings and potential for being horribly hurt and it should be possible for stories to explore that without anybody screaming about how this is going to Corrupt the Youth or something

And I mean I get it LB wanted to write a cautionary tale for teenagers, but it just did not work for reasons a lot of people have already written about - the fact that the Darkling is the leader of an oppressed minority and is the only one with a real political agenda to end that oppression in the first trilogy, the fact that he helps Alina come into her own power while her endgame LI is someone she keeps herself small for, that she's shamed for wanting power after growing up without any, a generally very wonky conception of privilege, and a lot of other stuff with yucky regressive implications to the point where stanning the villain actually feels liberating and empowering which is a surefire sign that the narrative is broken (unless it's a villain focused story lmao). But of course that Fanside article makes almost no mention of the political dynamics, it's all about interpersonal stuff which is an annoying trend in YA, there are those massive events happening in the background but it's made all about the feelings of the hero(ine) ; war as a self-development quest (which is kind of gross). Helnik is kind of an example of this too - I like them, I think they're fun ! But Matthias spends a big part of the story wanting to brutally murder Nina and her kind, and he mostly changes his mind because he finds her hot. Like you don't feel there is some sort of big revelation that his entire moral system and political framework is completely rotten ; it's all better because of feelings now.

As a teenager that kind of sanctimonious bullshit would have annoyed the hell out of me ; I read those books in my early twenties and I found the ending so stupid I wouldn't have trusted any message or life lessons coming from them. And I liked reading/watching dark stuff as a teenager, as a way to deal with the very intense inner turmoil I was dealing with - and I turned out fine ! Meanwhile I've seen several times women in very shitty relationships being obsessed with positive energies and stories ; they were so terrified of their life not being perfectly wholesome they ended up being delusional about their own situations.

Like personally I think the Darkling is a compelling, interesting, alluring character and also a manipulative, murderous piece of shit and that Alina should get to punish him (like in a sexy way) - but he's also the end result of centuries of war, oppression and trauma and reducing that to "toxic wounded boy" feels kind of offensive ngl ESPECIALLY since the books don't offer any kind of systemic analysis or response to oppression beyond "the bad guy should die" and "now the king/queen is a good guy our problems are solved!!!!"

In Lives of the Saints, we see how Yuri is abused extremely badly and almost killed by his father, and so when his father dies when the Fold swallows Novokribirsk, he thinks the Starless Saint has saved him. Later in KoS/RoW he's turned into this fanatic who explains away all the Darkling's crimes. The other followers talk about how the Starless Saint will bring equality for all men. Then the Darkling comes back and actually thinks his followers are pathetic, which feels again like a very pointed message to his IRL stans. Which is absolutely hilarious to me. Like oh no, if he was real he would not like you and think you're pathetic ! Yeah ...but he's not. Real. Damn right he would not like the fics where Alina puts him on a leash. I'm still going to read them. What is he going to do about it, jump out of the page ? Jfjfjjdhfgfjfj

Anyway I think the intended message is "assholes will use noble political causes for their own gain and to manipulate people" and "being abused/oppressed is not an excuse to behave badly." Which. Sure. But that's kind of like...a tired take, honestly ? A big number of villains nowadays are like this ; either they've been bullied as kids, or they're part of an oppressed group, or they have "good ideals but too extreme". This is not surprising because a lot of mainstream heroic narratives present clinging to the status quo as Good and change as chaotic and dangerous. And like sure in real life people often do bad shit because they're wounded and in danger. But if you want to do a story like that, you have to do it with nuance, talk about cycles of violence, about how society creates vulnerable people to be exploited, about how privilege gives you more choices and the luxury of morals, etc. The Grishaverse does not have this level of nuance (maybe in SoC a little bit but definitely not in TGT). So it kind of comes off as "trauma makes you evil" and "egalitarianism is dangerous" and "if you're abused/oppressed you're not allowed to fight back". And ignores the fact that historically, evil generally comes from unchecked privilege.

I guess my point is that there are many things I like about LB's writing, she knows how to create these really exciting character dynamics, and the world she has created is fascinating. But these stories are not a great starting point for imparting moral lessons. And her best characters tend to be, at least in canon, the morally grey ones. I hope one day she'll be at peace with the fact that she wrote the Darkling the way she did and leave his fans alone but in the meantime I'm just not going to take this whole thing seriously I'm sorry

#darklina #the darkling #alina starkov #aleksander morozova

78 notes · View notes

sheikah · 3 years

Text

Look. If what the Darkling did is so horrific on its own, so unforgivably evil that Darklinas deserve all the fandom abuse we've received for years... then why did the show need to make him 1. Never tell Alina he planned to give her an amplifier and instead deliberately keep her in the dark about it (when in the book she was always in on the plan, it was only that *he* wound up being the one to kill it after their falling out over Baghra's reveal). 2. Turn the amplifiers into some body horror nightmare instead of a piece of uncomfortable jewelry? Jessie Mei Li said she was told it was done to show what a "violation" him putting the amplifier on her was. I agree it's a violation; but if indeed it is one, shouldn't that be clear without the added nastiness? It's horrible on its own right? So let the audience decide that for themselves maybe. 3. Have him withdraw Alina's light and allow Ivan to kill the skiff passengers while in the book Alina uses the Cut on the boat and leaves everyone on it except for Mal to die (a power move I will always respect lmao she is so savage for that and I stan unconditionally).

There are also some things they did to make him more sympathetic, like the Zlatan plot that adds motivation to the Novokribirsk massacre, the backstory with Luda, and Ben's emotionally-vulnerable portrayal overall. But the above changes were designed to show how eeeeeevil he is. And if they had to work to make him more evil, I feel like that kind of demonstrates something about the nature of the way his character was written to begin with that should maybe explain why he appeals to so many fans. He has never been simply a mustache-twirling [fandom discourse buzzword] one-dimensionally evil villain.

#and i could also talk about how while they in some ways worked to make him more evil #they worked to make other characters LESS problematic than they were on the page #but im not gonna touch that discourse lmao #the darkling #aleksander morozova #sab spoilers #the sacred texts!

81 notes · View notes

alinastracker · 3 years

Text

Infuriating: Part Two (ao3)

Part One was Mal and Alina’s camp love story. Now it’s Zoya and Nikolai’s turn.

For Zoya Nazyalensky, it was hate at first sight when she met Nikolai Lantsov at Kamp Keramzin. But as she learns who the spoiled blond really is through the years, Zoya has to sort out feelings she never expected having.

Before

Zoya Nazyalensky hated Nikolai Lantsov.

She hated him before she had even known his name. Perhaps hate was a strong word for someone she had only one, brief interaction with. But Zoya had always been more inclined to feel more intensely than most children, and so she found it a perfectly fitting description.

Zoya was bouncing in the back of her aunt’s beat up SUV the entire way to Kamp Keramzin. Up until two weeks ago, she had been preparing to spend another miserable summer with her mother and her alcoholic boyfriend, hoping that her father would visit her in between business trips. Then one afternoon, Aunt Liliyana had stopped in for an unexpected visit. Zoya had hoped she would take her back to the tiny coastal town Liliyana called home, at least until school started up in the fall, but she had come with something even better: a registration pamphlet for Keramzin.

Her mother had scoffed. “You know I can’t afford that shit.”

But you can afford the drugs, Zoya thought but didn’t say. Despite everything, she loved her mother. She wanted to make her proud. But it seemed like nothing Zoya did was ever good enough for Sabina to turn away from the allure of the drugs and the liquor, or worse, the abusive men she brought home.

“I’m paying for it,” Liliyana said. “That is, if you want to go?”

Zoya had absolutely wanted to go.

Though now that she was here, hugging her aunt for dear life, she found herself filled with nerves. She knew Liliyana had scraped together nickels and dimes to send Zoya to camp. Looking around, she could already see, just from the state of their clothes, that the other children here had more than she did. Could she even survive a whole summer away from her family? Maybe she had been naive, hoping to escape.

“My little storm,” Liliyana sighed. “This is going to be so good for you. Free that troubled mind of yours.” She tipped the young girl's chin up, locking eyes with her. “Remember, you are Zoya Nazyalensky, and you are worthy.”

Zoya tried to hold the thought in her mind as she walked past the line of other cars and parents dropping their children off for the summer, her duffle bag of belongings slung over her shoulder. A bored driver waited in a car near the front of the line as a blond woman who reeked of money patted the head of an equally blond boy who looked to be around Zoya’s age. The expression on his face was as sour as spoiled milk.

“It’s not fair,” the boy huffed. “Vasily doesn’t have to—”

“Your brother has his horses, and you will have this.”

“I was fine at home! I wanted to spend the summer on—”

“Yes, on your little gadgets.” The woman sighed. “And how well did that work out last summer? Mrs. Ivanov’s dog needs anxiety medication now.”

“The thing with Feliks was an accident!”

“Regardless, you are here because of your own actions, Nikolai. This is your last chance, or next year it’s boarding school. No more hijinks, do you understand me?”

The boy — Nikolai — pouted, but grumbled out a semi-respectful, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good, now run along.”

Zoya, realizing she had stopped to listen, picked up her pace as naturally as possible. Mentally, she scoffed. How privileged this boy was, huffing and puffing. Didn’t he know how much her aunt had sacrificed just to send her here? How thankful Zoya was, and she hadn’t even stepped foot in the place yet?

She decided then and there that she would stay far away from the spoiled brat.

So naturally, he was put into her group for orientation. There were six of them in total, and as they went around introducing themselves, Zoya wasn’t sure she liked any of them. One girl, Marie, seemed tolerable enough, she supposed.

“Nikolai Lantsov,” the blond boy said when his turn came. A couple of the others exchanged glances that Zoya couldn’t interpret. If Nikolai was surprised by their reaction, he didn’t show it.

Her turn came, and she tried to remember what her aunt had told her as she said, “Zoya Nazyalensky.”

One of the boys frowned. “Nazyalensky? That’s a mouthful.”

She was half-ready to show him what a mouthful really was when Nikolai said with a casual shrug, “I like it.”

Maybe the boy wouldn’t be so bad after all—

Nikolai had turned to her then, a frown tugging at his lips. “You have something on your shirt, Nazyalensky.”

Zoya looked down at herself and sure enough, there was a stain, likely from one of her grandmother’s meals that were almost always served with a rich sauce. Most of her clothes had some kind of stain or little holes from the sheer number of years she’d owned them.

She was back to hating him.

Their first summer had been more of the same. Nikolai would say something almost nice, only to follow it up with something that made her want to punch him. Zoya ignored him as much as humanly possible, but like any invasive species, he kept popping up.

Regardless of the ever annoying Nikolai Lantsov, Zoya loved every second at Keramzin. She wrote multiple postcards to her aunt with updates, and even a couple to her mother. Despite not being as well off as most of the other kids, Zoya always kept her aunt’s parting message close to her chest.

You are Zoya Nazyalensky, and you are worthy.

And she quickly learned that half of being popular was believing that you should be. She walked through camp with her head held high, and if that made her a little intimidating to the others, so be it. At least when it came to her age group, Zoya found herself holding court. The girls wanted to be her, the boys (and some of the girls, too) wanted to kiss her — all the more so during her second year at Keramzin as she further grew into her looks. She was naturally gifted at most of the camp activities. Everyone wanted her on their team for games like kickball and tug of war. She could swim laps around everyone in the lake. Finally given the opportunity, Zoya simply thrived.

As the years went on, the only one who matched Zoya’s popularity at Keramzin was Nikolai, much to her dismay. But unlike Zoya, Nikolai hadn’t had to work for his level of adoration from the other campers. He wasn’t good at most of the activities, but everyone still wanted him on their team. He didn’t need to be good. Rather, Nikolai capitalized off of his good looks, his money, and his natural charm — though Zoya would dispute him having any of the latter. But she couldn’t deny his money. His father was some big shot in the business world, the Lantsov name apparently rather well known. And, as much as she wanted to deny it, he was attractive. Golden blond hair, hazel eyes that always held a wink of something mischievous. He was annoyingly smart and worldly, though she would never tell him that. She would never tell him most of her deeper feelings regarding him. For him.

Because despite her best effort, Zoya found herself by Nikolai’s side again and again every summer, like clockwork. Despite being well loved, neither of them had really bonded strongly with the campers in their year. It didn’t help that he was the only one who could handle her jabs and withering glares, laughing them off as if she couldn’t possibly mean anything she said. But she definitely meant every word.

Mostly every word.

Instead, they had found themselves entangled with a group that had formed in the year below them. Alina Starkov and Malyen Oretsev, the two most oblivious people to ever live. Genya Safin, so naturally gorgeous and put together that Zoya had let her jealousy convince her she hated the girl at first. But then Genya had shown her how to do her hair in more ways than Zoya's usual ponytail, and helped her make something out of her meager clothing selections, even going as far to stitch up holes in some of her more worn tee shirts. Why she looked at David Kostyk of all people with puppy eyes she would never understand, though Nikolai was rather obsessed with the genius boy, too. Nadia Zhabin, one of the funniest people she had ever met with an incredible amount of wit. Mikhael and Dubrov, two textbook definitions of himbos.

And if the group had looked up to Zoya and Nikolai as their cool older friends, at least for a couple years, they pretended like it didn’t go to their heads.

Zoya tried to explain to the girls why she hated Nikolai during one of the camp’s Sleep Under the Stars nights, ditching her group to pull her sleeping bag over to where Alina, Genya, and Nadia were camped out.

“He’s arrogant, spoiled rotten, and downright infuriating,” she’d said.

Genya had been the one to bravely raise a brow and ask, “Are you sure you don’t just have a crush on him?”

“Absolutely not! I can't stand him.”

Zoya had kept up the same attitude, even as her traitorous hormones had begun to notice the strong line of his jaw, the hard muscles of his back when they were swimming at the lake. He was still an asshole — even if it was mostly accidentally. He was still spoiled. Cocky. Often deserving of a good punch to his pretty face.

Until her fourth year of camp, when everything in Zoya’s life changed.

When Zoya was called to the camp’s main office one day halfway through the summer, she assumed someone had ratted about her sneaking off into Maxim’s cabin last night. He was a year older and quite the kisser. But as soon as she had seen the look on Mr. Botkin’s face, she knew something was terribly wrong.

“Miss Nazyalensky, I’m so sorry to have to share this news with you,” he said in his thick accent, his face softer than she had ever seen it. “Your mother called. There was an accident involving your aunt.”

Zoya barely heard the next words out of his mouth. Drunk driver. It happened fast. Funeral in a couple days. Can’t afford the bus ticket for home and Novokribirsk, so—

She ran out of the office after that, all the way back to her cabin, ignoring other camper’s worried glances and calls for her. Of course, her stingy, selfish mother would only pay for one ticket. Zoya knew the woman expected her to stay at camp and use that one ticket to get home at the end of the summer. But screw that. Zoya would use it to go to her aunt’s funeral, even if she had no way home afterwards.

Zoya was in the middle of stuffing her bag, too frantic to care about folding her clothes or being gentle with fragile items, when the cabin door opened. She barely noticed. Zoya couldn’t stay here another second, the place she had come to love more than her own home, the place she had only been able to attend because her aunt had paid for her stay the past four summers.

Her thoughts were as panicked as her packing. Had Aunt Liliyana been driving home from an extra shift when she had been hit? Or from her first job to the second she had taken on? Would she have needed to do either of those if she hadn’t paid for Keramzin? Was her aunt gone because of her?

Zoya ignored the footsteps, assuming one of the girls was coming to grab a hair tie or change into a swimsuit. Or maybe one of them had seen her run from the office and had come to ask about her. She had no time for that.

But the hand that gently — albeit firmly — closed around her wrist, halting her movement, definitely didn’t belong to Alina, Genya, or Nadia.

“Zoya?” Nikolai said, his voice taking on a gentle tone she’d never heard from him before. “What’s going on?”

Zoya pulled away from him. “I don’t have time to pander to your needs, Lantsov,” she snarled.

Never deterred by her icy demeanor, he perched on the edge of her bed. “You’re quite capable of working and speaking at the same time, if all those insults you’ve thrown at me over crafts serve as proof.”

“Fuck off, Nikolai.”

He sighed. “Zoya, please,” Nikolai said, bringing her to a momentary pause. Please was not often found in his vocabulary, not in such a genuine manner. “The others are worried, too.”

The words came out in a tumble as she stuffed the last few items into her bag. “My aunt was in a car accident and now she’s dead and the funeral is in a couple days and I have to go but my mother will only buy me one bus ticket so I have to decide between going home or going to the funeral and of course I’m going to the funeral, I’ll fucking walk the miles home if I have to but I just have to go—”

Nikolai took hold of both of her wrists now, and only then did Zoya realize the zipper she was hopelessly trying to close was stuck. “Breathe, Zoya.”

She shook her head. Tears had been building behind her eyes since Botkin had said the words your aunt was in a car accident and at any moment they were going to spill over. She couldn’t cry in front of Nikolai Lantsov. “I can’t,” she whispered, and cried anyway.

Nikolai let go of her hands, taking a moment to carefully zip up her bag, before he pulled her into his chest. Later, Zoya would curse herself, but all she could do in that moment was let Nikolai hold her as her body shook with sobs.

“I’ll call my driver,” he murmured eventually. “He’ll take you to Novokribirsk and home to Pachina and anywhere else you want to go.”

“No—”

“Yes. I’m stupidly rich, Zoya. Let me at least do something good with it.”

The next morning, a friendly older man named Igor waited for her in a brand new Rolls Royce outside the gates of Keramzin. Botkin took her bag to the trunk while she said goodbye to the friends that had walked out with her. It was the most vulnerable she had been with them, and were the situation not so heartbreaking, she knew they would have teased her about it. Instead she only got hugs and promises of texts and pictures. To everyone’s surprise, she saved Nikolai for last.

“Thank you, Lantsov,” she murmured into the crook of his shoulder. Were she not so miserable, she might’ve noticed how good he smelled for a sixteen year old boy in ninety degree weather.

“Don’t be a stranger, Nazyalensky.”

To Zoya’s surprise, she wasn’t.

Now

Zoya Nazyalensky still hated Nikolai Lantsov.

At least, she pretended to, because admitting the truth was much more terrifying.

“Are you even paying attention, Zoya?” Genya sighed.

No, she wasn’t, because she was watching Nikolai bend over to tie his shoe, marveling at his ass. How he had only managed to get hotter through the years was a sin, and nineteen was already looking to be his best year yet.

Genya shifted, purposely blocking her view of Nikolai’s tight behind. “Focus! This is only going to work if we’re all on board.”

Zoya waved her off. “Yes, yes, I’ve got it. I’ll send Oretsev into the shed for you when the time arises. I still don’t think this is going to work. Both of them are too stubborn for their own good.”

“I don’t know,” Nadia countered. “They’ll never get over their problems if they keep avoiding each other. Never underestimate the power of forced bonding.”

“Exactly!” Genya said. Out of all of them, Zoya knew Genya wanted this plan to work most of all, convinced that Mal and Alina were destined lovers. And sure, the feelings between those two had been obvious — until last summer when they’d shown up hating each other. Personally, Zoya thought love and fate and all that sappy nonsense was utter bullshit. But she cared for Alina, too, so fine, she would help with this silly plan, even if she didn’t believe in it.

When they finally pulled it off a week later, however, Zoya couldn’t regret it more.

“Find somewhere else to sleep, I want the room to myself tonight!” Alina had barked as she stomped away from the activities shed, Mal grumbling off in the other direction.

“Wonderful,” Zoya deadpanned. “How long until she cools off?”

Genya bit her lip, shrugging. “I don’t know. I think we should give her the room tonight.”

“We should what?”

Nadia nodded in agreement. “Yeah, we can sneak into the boys cabin. I can probably con Mikhael out of his bed.”

“I’ll just sleep with David,” Genya agreed.

“And what about me?”

The two of them gave her quizzical looks. “You’ve shared Nikolai’s bed before, Zoya. I’m sure he won’t mind,” Nadia said.

They were right, of course.

The dynamic of her relationship had changed with Nikolai after the year her aunt died. She had spent the rest of the summer in bed most days, barely able to get herself dressed. Surprisingly, her texts with Nikolai had been the bright spots of her days.

The service at Keramzin was horrible, so he must have been sneaking into Botkin’s office — the one building with wifi on the grounds — to send her stupid photos and relay all the goings-on of the day. Lost tug of war, again he’d captioned a photo of himself covered in mud. Another day he wrote, Group is discussing Alina and Mal’s “ship name” which is apparently something people do for couples????? (which they still aren’t, btw) Idk, Genya and Nadia are pushing for “malina” which is just so lazy to me. Oretskov is much more sophisticated, and as a woman of taste, I think you’ll agree.

For the rest of that summer — no, for the rest of that year, most of her laughs and smiles had been brought on by Nikolai Lantsov, which was absolutely fucking mind-boggling.

nikolai: nazyalensky you will not BELIEVE

zoya: this better be something actually unbelievable, lantsov

Nikolai proceeded to send a video of his brother, Vasily, getting absolutely yeeted off of one of his prized horses with the caption “MERRY FUCKIN CHRISTMAS TO MEEEEEEE.” Zoya only responded with you are going to HELL, but she laughed so hard her stomach hurt, so she supposed she’d be joining him.

Zoya worked her ass off during her junior year to be able to afford Keramzin in the summer. It felt good to be back with her friends after the painful year she'd had since losing her aunt, and she had found herself being excited to see Nikolai most of all. Though nothing on the outside had changed — Nikolai was still a pompous rich boy and Zoya still took jabs at him at every opportunity — there was plenty changing under the surface.

A week before the start of holiday break during her senior year, Zoya's phone lit up with Nikolai’s stupid face. She had made his contact photo one she'd taken over the summer after Dubrov had smashed an egg over his head, yolk dripping down his face. Zoya had a policy of not answering unplanned FaceTime calls. But for whatever reason, she made an exception, answering with a scowl on her face so he at least understood the offense.

“What the hell are you FaceTiming me for, Lantsov?”

“Hello to you too, Nazyalensky.”

Nikolai looked to be in the treehouse in his backyard. When he had first called her from the place, she had laughed, because what eighteen year old still had a treehouse? Then he had showed her around the place. It was more workshop than treehouse, a number of little inventions and other products of his mind scattered around the wooden structure. Couldn’t you have found a room in your mansion for this stuff? she had asked. Nikolai had shrugged. “I like being outside. And away from everyone.”

“Only psychopaths FaceTime with no warning.”

“Noted,” Nikolai said, entirely unbothered. “Anyway, what are your holiday break plans?”

“I’m working and finalizing uni applications.”

“Can you . . . not do that?”

Zoya’s glare would send most people running, even given through a screen, but Nikolai only waited for an answer. “I need the money for Keramzin.”

“What if Keramzin was taken care of?”

“Why are you even asking?”

“Ah, right. I was hoping you would come on holiday with me.”

She laughed, because surely he must be joking. But his face was serious. “What?”

“My family is going to Bora Bora. Sort of a work thing for my father. Anyway, all the families are going, and I got my mother to agree to me taking a friend, so . . .”

“You’re seriously asking me to go to Bora Bora with you?”

“Uh, yes?”

Zoya shook her head. “I have to work. And do my uni shit. Why are you even asking me of all people? You have other friends.”

“None of them are as pretty as you, Nazyalensky.”

“You know flattery doesn’t work on me, Lantsov.”

Nikolai frowned, bringing the phone obnoxiously close to his face. “Please, please, please? I’ll go absolutely mental if I have to spend the whole week on my own with these privileged, white assholes.”

“Nikolai, you’re a privileged, white asshole.”

“Exactly! So you’ll come along then?”

“No.”

Naturally, Zoya went.

At first, she thought it might actually be a good decision, going with Nikolai. They sat next to each other on the plane ride there — in first fucking class — sharing Nikolai’s AirPods as they scrolled through stupid TikTok videos. It was strange, seeing him at this time of year when she had only ever seen him during the summer months. But it was nice, too.

And god, Bora fucking Bora! It was beautiful and warm and somewhere she never would have visited on her own. Certainly not staying at the fancy hotel that they were at, a stretch of the beach rented out for this company thing of his father’s. Privileged white asshole friends had their purposes, it seemed.

But she too quickly realized exactly why Nikolai had chosen her to come along.

She’d come back out from using the restroom on their second day there to find Nikolai standing with his father, another older man, and a girl that had to be around her and Nikolai’s age. Zoya had just decided to wait for him at their beachside table, having no desire to get caught up in whatever rich people things they were surely discussing, when she was waved over.

Had they not all turned to look at her, she might have ignored him. Instead, she put on her best friendly face as she joined the group.

“This is Zoya, my friend from camp.” As casually as if it were normal for them, Nikolai slung an arm around her. “We’ve been close for years now. Zoya, this is Rose, and her father, Ruslan.”

Rose glanced between the two of them, looking slightly disappointed. “Oh, I thought . . . Well, nice to meet you.”

Zoya smiled, seething on the inside. Nikolai’s father didn’t look too happy, either.

As soon as she got Nikolai alone, Zoya turned on him. “What the fuck was that, Lantsov?”

Nikolai sighed, “Look, Zoya—”

“You brought me here to what? Be the pretty thing on your arm?”

“No! I mean, that’s a benefit, yes. My father wants to set me up with that girl and I’m just not interested, so I thought—”

“So you thought, bring your poor camp friend! She’ll have to be grateful to live the rich life for a week!”

“That’s not it!”

Zoya shook her head. “To think I thought you actually wanted me here.”

“I do!” Nikolai stepped toward her, and damn the rocky wall at her back for not allowing her to move away from him. He took both of her wrists in his hands, just as he had that day in her cabin. But this felt different, intimate in a way that sent heat rushing through her. “I want you here, Zoya.”

Was he looking at her lips, or was she looking at his? Was he leaning in, or was she? The heat must be getting to her, because she didn’t let herself think the way she was thinking about him right now. Nikolai was cocky and spoiled and maybe she had allowed herself to begrudgingly become his friend, but this was something else entirely. Zoya couldn’t let him kiss her, so she didn’t, tugging out of his grasp and stalking down the beach. He didn’t follow, and she prided herself on being strong enough to resist his pretty hazel eyes and his stupid kissable looking lips.

Strong enough sober, anyway.

On their last night in Bora Bora, Zoya and Nikolai joined the rest of the kids on the trip, who indeed were privileged white assholes, for a boozy bonfire on the beach.

“So, your name is Zoya Nazzzalienski?” one of the boys slurred, screwing up her last name so badly she knew he wouldn’t have said it right sober, either.

“Nazyalensky,” she corrected sharply, too many drinks in to play nice.

“Mm, it’s a mouthful,” Rose, the girl Nikolai’s father apparently found ideal for him, said.

The other boy nodded. “So foreign.”

“She’s just as foreign as you or I, asshole,” Nikolai snapped.

Zoya was surprised to see actual anger on his face. Part of her wanted to punch him for playing the white savior, but another part was incredibly turned on by the way his eyes had darkened.

Vasily, who was as insufferable as Nikolai had described him throughout the years, laughed, disregarding the look on his brother’s face. “Aw, calm down, Niko. He didn’t mean anything bad about your little girlfriend.” Vasily covered his mouth in a mock whisper, “My brother has always had a thing for charity cases.”

Nikolai seethed beside her. “Watch your tongue before I remove it.”

“It’s okay, Nikolai,” Zoya said coolly, resting her hand on his arm. She needed no one to fight her battles for her. “I know your brother is still learning how to socialize with people, his usual company being those horses of his and all.”

The group cackled as Vasily flushed, but said nothing. Zoya stood, leaving them to their drunken bullshit. Nikolai followed.

Halfway down the beach, he stopped them. “Fuck, Zoya, I’m so sorry. I knew they were assholes but I didn’t think—”

Zoya cut him off with her lips.

“Oh,” he breathed when they pulled apart. It was the first time she had ever seen him speechless.

From there, they found their way to Nikolai’s room, stopping every now and then to continue their fervent kissing. The luxurious four poster bed became a mess as they sprawled onto it, working off their clothes, rattling the headboard well into the night. Zoya left Bora Bora with love bites on her neck and the best orgasm of her life.

After waking up sober with an ache between her legs the next morning, however, the first thing out of her mouth was, “It was just sex. It didn’t mean anything.”

Nikolai paused, then nodded. “It didn’t mean anything.”

So yes, Zoya had shared Nikolai’s bed before. Bora Bora had been the first, but not the last. They had spent last summer, their first as full on counselors — and therefore having the much nicer cabins that came with the position — fooling around whenever the flask came out. Drunken fuck buddies, that’s all they were. That’s all they were supposed to be.

But that was before the voicemail.

Zoya hadn’t told the girls about said voicemail, though, and apparently none of them had caught on to her and Nikolai subtly avoiding each other these past two weeks of their last year at Keramzin.

Before she could think of an excuse, the devil himself came around the corner.

Nikolai smoothly avoided eye contact with her. “Just passed Oretsev. Guessing the plan didn’t go over too well.”

Genya sighed. “Don’t you dare say I told you so,” she grumbled.

He held his hands up in defense. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Perfect timing, Nik,” Nadia said, and panic rose in Zoya’s chest. “Alina’s demanding the room to herself tonight, so we’re castaways.” She sang the last part in the tune of that god-awful song that was plastered all over TikTok. “And Zoya needs a bed. You don’t mind sharing, right?”

Nikolai’s perfect face flashed with his own panic for the briefest second, fast enough that she might have just imagined it, and then he broke into one of his charming smiles. “‘Course not.”

That was how Zoya found herself in Nikolai’s bed a few hours later, the damned thing too small for any real space between them. She knew they were sharing the same thoughts. He could offer to take the floor, but then their friends would know something was off. And when Mal ended up leaving his bed to go camp in the woods for the night, they let Mikhael, who had given up his bed to Nadia, jump into it. Both of them pretending they were fine, that they might get any sleep like this. Neither of them had spoken much tonight, let alone the last two weeks, besides casual greetings and Zoya’s usual snide remarks in group settings to keep up pretenses. Nothing of the suffocating weight that had been crushing their relationship since New Year’s Eve.

While most college freshmen she knew had spent the night getting wasted, Zoya had worked a double and was so exhausted, she hadn’t even made it to midnight before passing out. She had woken up to a missed call and a voicemail from a very drunk Nikolai.

“Hi Zoya, it’s Nikolai!” He paused to laugh. “Guess you know that. Happy New Year! I’m so drunk.” Another pause, the sound of the phone hitting the ground as he dropped it, muffled music somewhere in the distance. “Oops, dropped the phone. Fuck, I had a really shitty night. My father won’t stop getting on me about choosing a major already, but he can piss off, because he wants me to do business and follow in his footsteps, but god I’d rather jump off this mountain. Did I mention I’m on a mountain? Nothing crazy, just snow and skiing and rich people nonsense. Anyway.” Another pause, accompanied with a hiccup. “You’re probably wondering why I called and I don’t know I just — It’s New Years and my family is pissing me off and the people at this party suck and I just want to kiss you. That’s what you do on New Years, right? You kiss someone. But I didn’t kiss anyone, ‘cause you’re not here. And if you were here, it still wouldn’t be right, ‘cause I don’t want to kiss you like in Bora Bora or camp last summer. I want to kiss you and shout about it to the world. I want to kiss you because you’re mine. I want it to mean something. I want—”

Zoya never learned what else he wanted, because the messaging system cut him off. She had listened to that voicemail about a hundred times since then, still not knowing what the fuck to say or feel. Exactly two messages had passed between them the next morning, and not a single one since.

nikolai: sorry, ignore the vm. was rather plastered, haha

zoya: right, ok

Now she had her back pressed to his front as if nothing had happened. When Genya popped up, apparently unable to sleep either, and suggested they go check on Alina, Zoya thanked the damn saints.

That is, until they barged in only to find Mal standing in nothing but his boxers, constraining an insane erection (wow, he was bigger than she’d guessed) and Alina hiding under the covers, clearly naked. Zoya was going to kill them.

“You little liar!” she spat. “You conned us out of our beds so you could get dicked down?!”

Genya seemed thrilled at the turn of events, and maybe Zoya would be too, if she wasn’t spending her night pressed against the chest of the boy who had confessed to — to something and left her brain endlessly screaming about it since.

Her anger at Alina and anxiety about returning to Nikolai’s bed must have shown on her face as they left their cabin behind, because Genya stopped them before they could reach the boys’.

“All right, what’s going on with you?”

“Yeah, come on Zoya, you should be happy for them,” Nadia said. “I mean, the plan worked.”

“I know it did and I am happy for them!”

Genya raised a brow. “Yes, you sound so very happy.”

Zoya let out a frustrated huff, and right there in the middle of the night, she finally spilled about everything that had happened between her and Nikolai. They knew about the friends with benefits kind of situation they had going on last summer, but in addition to not telling them about the voicemail, she had never mentioned Bora Bora, either.

“What the fuck, Nazyalensky!” Nadia whisper-yelled when she finished.

“You’ve been keeping all of this in for two years?!”

Zoya shrugged. So Alina wasn’t the only one with a secret. She had never shared what had come between her and Oretsev in the first place, after all.

“I can’t believe he took you to Bora Bora,” Nadia moaned. “Missing out on Nikolai is now the only time I’ve regretted being a lesbian.”

Genya patted Nadia’s back in comfort, but said, “And y’all never talked about the voicemail? Seriously?”

Zoya groaned. “Can we please talk about this tomorrow? It’s like, one in the morning.”

They agreed, albeit whining as they did, and when they made it back into the boys’ cabin, Zoya climbed into Mikhael's bed with Nadia.

The next morning, the three of them kicked Mal out of their cabin bright and early.

“Seriously?” he groaned.

“Sorry, dude,” Nadia said. “Girl emergency.”

He and Alina shared a hesitant look before Mal dropped a careful kiss to her lips, as if he hadn’t been railing her a few hours ago, and left.

Alina watched him go, then turned to the three of them with a growl. “Okay, I know I lied, but you had to kick him out so early?”

“Surprisingly, this isn’t about you, though we will get back to that.” Genya sat cautiously on her bed, as if the bodily fluids might have jumped from Alina’s bed over to hers. “Zoya shared some very interesting news with us last night.”

With a sigh, Zoya relayed the story all over again. The next hour was just a lot of screaming about the free trip to Bora Bora and Nikolai’s — in Alina’s words — very obvious love confession, which resulted in the three of them telling her she was the last person allowed to speak on obvious love.

“This all comes down to two things,” Genya said as they got ready, since they still had campers to take care of today. “How do you feel about him, and what are you going to do about it?”

Both were valid questions, but Zoya scowled anyway.

In true Zoya fashion, she spent the next week thinking about her answer. Every time the girls bugged her about it, she glared until they shut up. But it was good that they knew, because they helped her avoid him when she needed to, not that Nikolai was making it hard. She supposed her ditching him for Nadia’s bed hadn’t been very encouraging.

When she finally came to a conclusion, Zoya switched shifts with Dubrov one afternoon so that she was working one on one with Nikolai. Considering the shift in question, Dubrov had been more than happy to trade places.

The spot Zoya and Nikolai had found themselves in was shitty, so there really was no better place to finally have it out with each other than the horse stables on mucking duty.

When she reached the stables, Nikolai was already at work.

“‘Bout time you got here, Dubrov,” he said without looking up. “I was going to bring some horse shit back to the cabin for you if you didn’t — Oh.” He had finally looked up. “You’re not Dubrov.”

“No,” she said. “Not Dubrov. I switched shifts with him.”

Nikolai blinked. “You took mucking duty on purpose.”

“Yes.”

“Zoya would-die-before-letting-a-horse-sniff-her Nazyalensky chose—”

“Yes,” she growled. “And if you don’t shut up, I’m going to push you into the shit you're scooping.”

Nikolai shut up after that, and minutes passed as they worked in silence.

Unsurprisingly, Nikolai was the first to break it. “Why are you here, Zoya?” he asked quietly, as if he was scared of the answer.

Zoya swallowed the lump in her throat. “We can’t keep going on like this. Pretending New Years didn’t happen.”

“No, I suppose we can’t.”

She cleared her throat. “Nikolai—”

But he cut her off. “Must we do this here? Break my heart, Nazyalensky. Just don’t do it while I’m standing in a pile of literal horse shit.”

Break my heart, Nazyalensky. But the problem wasn’t Nikolai’s heart, it was her own. Zoya had always had a problem with feeling too much, the good and the bad. Her complicated relationship with love only made it worse. She thought of her mother, who’s love Zoya had tried so hard to earn only to come up short again and again. Aunt Liliyana, who she had loved more than life itself, taken from her far too soon. The desolation she had felt afterwards, wondering if she could ever dare love someone again. She had no positive examples of romantic love in her life, either. Liliyana had always been single as far as Zoya knew. Her parents had divorced, and Zoya could only ever watch as her mother brought toxic and abusive men into their home again and again. She wasn’t sure she even believed in love, or if she deserved it.

But then she thought of the people here at Keramzin. Of Genya and David, a couple that made no logical sense, but her gorgeous friend looked at the genius boy as if he personally hung the stars in the sky. Nadia, writing her love letters to her girlfriend back home. Even Mal and Alina, as oblivious they had been, were so clearly in love they were sickening to look at. They were all young, so maybe none of them would make it in the end, but wasn’t love still worth something even if it didn’t last a lifetime? Could she have something like what her friends had?

I am Zoya Nazyalensky, and I am worthy.

Zoya stalked across the stables and pulled Nikolai — pompous, entitled, infuriating Nikolai — into a fierce kiss.

Once he got past his shock, Nikolai kissed her back with just as much force. The tension between them finally snapped now that she had made her decision. They didn’t need to talk about it, Nikolai just knew. He always knew. This kiss was the answer to the voicemail she had never given him. Nikolai had wanted to kiss her. He’d wanted it to mean something.

And Zoya wanted it, too.

“Fuck, Nazyalensky,” Nikolai breathed between kisses, taking her bottom lip between his teeth. Zoya hummed her approval. “If we hurry . . .”

She understood, so as hard as it was to pull away, she did. They worked as if their lives depended on cleaning out the stables as fast as humanly possible. Had they not been literally handling shit for the past twenty minutes, Zoya would have gone straight to Nikolai’s cabin. Instead, she went to her own, aware of each passing minute as she changed and washed up.

Zoya had only taken one step into the boys’ cabin five minutes later before Nikolai pounced. Closing the cabin door, he pushed Zoya against it and kissed her like a starving man. She moaned against his lips, the surprise and force of it sending heat straight to her core. Her hands found his golden hair, his hands found her ass, and though they had been here before, it felt different. Besides being completely sober, the difference was in the way they held each other, like they had no plans of letting go. It was the way they kissed, desperate and deep, but knowing there were so many more on the horizon.

Nikolai scooped her into his arms, bringing her to the bed. The lack of space was no issue now. His lips started their descent down her neck, and she knew from experience that her makeup routine would have an extra step for the rest of the summer.

“I don’t know how much time we have before the guys get back,” he murmured. Zoya nodded, ready to tell him he’d better hurry up and fuck her then, when Nikolai continued, “But I’m still going to take my time licking you until you scream.”

Oh.

Clothes were discarded, and Nikolai moved down her body, murmuring about how he couldn’t wait to mark every inch of her. Then he was between her thighs, and quickly made good on his promise. Zoya couldn’t believe his tongue could be this good at something other than talking about himself.

“Fuck me,” she groaned.

Nikolai popped his head up. “All in due time, darling.”

Growling, she pushed his head back down, and before she knew it, she was screaming into his pillow as her orgasm quite literally left her shaking.

Nikolai shifted, but before he could crawl back over her, Zoya used her weight to push him onto his back, taking her place on top. He still had his damned boxers on, so she quickly fixed that problem. His cock sprang free, and god, she could be drooling for all she knew. Never would she let him know that she mentally referred to his member as massive.

Needing to taste him, Zoya dipped her head and dragged her tongue up the length of him. Nikolai swore, then swore some more as she sucked him into her mouth. She would also never admit how much she loved sucking dick. There was something powerful about it that turned her on almost as much as it did the men she took into her mouth.

“Zoya,” Nikolai breathed, and she understood the warning in his tone. With a sigh, she let him fall from between her lips with an audible pop. Their limited time meant she’d have to wait until next time to let him spill inside her mouth. Shame.

Nikolai supplied a condom from his bedside drawer and Zoya rolled it onto him. Before he could get her on her back, she straddled him, making her intentions clear. He raised a brow, surprised, but didn’t object. Zoya braced one hand on the headboard, the other twining with one of Nikolai’s, and lowered herself onto his cock. They moaned in unison as she took in every inch of him.

Her rhythm started slow but quickly gained speed, her hips rolling and her breathing ragged as she brought herself down on him again and again. As she bounced, so did her tits, and Zoya didn’t miss the way Nikolai kept staring greedily at her chest. When looking wasn’t enough, he sat up as much as he needed to get his mouth on her breast, taking her nipple between his teeth and soothing the bite he gave it with his tongue afterwards. That damned tongue again. When Zoya tired, Nikolai was happy to take over even from underneath her, thrusting his hips against hers over and over.

It was perfect. It was glorious. Zoya was an idiot for waiting three weeks to figure out what she wanted. And she knew she wanted this — not just the fucking, but the exasperating boy beneath her, too. All of him. All of it. She had told Nadia that love was for suckers, and she supposed she should have known that included herself, considering how much she loved giving blowjobs.

It was perfect, until the cabin door opened and in walked Malyen Oretsev. He made it halfway inside before he caught sight of them on Nikolai’s bed and froze.

Nikolai groaned. “Malyen, does your timing always suck so much?”

Mal visibly swallowed, and Zoya realized he was making a concentrated effort not to look at her tits. Maybe she should be embarrassed, but she wasn’t. Smirking, she said, “Payback’s a bitch, Oretsev. Now scram and tell everyone else to stay gone for a while, too.”

He nodded, still avoiding even the smallest glance in her direction, and ran out the door faster than she thought him possible.

Nikolai sighed. “Did that ruin the mood for you?”

In answer, Zoya lifted herself until only the very tip of him was inside of her, then took all of him in one swoop. Their moans mingled once more.

Breathing hard, she asked, “What do you think?”

Nikolai moved so suddenly, Zoya didn’t have time to process it until she was flat on her stomach. Behind her, Nikolai slammed his full length into her so hard, so deep that she thought she might come from that one thrust alone. He leaned forward, letting most of his weight settle onto her, pinning her down. It was oddly comforting.

Lips beside her ear, Nikolai whispered, “I think that I’m never going to have enough of this. I’m never going to have enough of you, Zoya Nazyalensky.”

Her twelve year old self never would have believed it, but she didn’t think she’d ever have enough of Nikolai Lantsov, either.

One Year Later

It was the start of the summer holiday, and for the first time in seven years, Zoya wasn’t making her way to Keramzin. Instead, she was lazing on the sofa in the flat she shared with her arrogant, spoiled (and funny and smart and a bunch of other things she would never admit out loud), always infuriating boyfriend.

Said boyfriend strolled into the living room, handing a piece of mail to her. “Looks like the lovebirds made it to Russia safely.”

Zoya groaned as she read the postcard written in Alina’s neat handwriting, the only evidence of Mal being with her the sloppy signature next to hers. “They just got there and they’re already sending out postcards? Saps.”

“Absolute saps,” Nikolai agreed, lifting her legs to make room for himself beside her, letting her feet settle nicely on his lap.

After a stressful second year of university and having their first summer outside of Keramzin, they planned to do absolutely nothing all break long. Except they both had internships starting next week. Nikolai had settled on an engineering major, though he was still dabbling on what to do for his minor. Zoya was studying climate science and had an internship with the local news station’s weather team, though she had no intention of being the kind of meteorologist that reported the forecast for the masses each night. How dull.

Nikolai had given his father an ultimatum at the end of camp last summer. He would stay at the university his father had chosen for him if and only if he accepted his choice to pursue engineering — and let Zoya move into the flat. Otherwise, he was withdrawing and enrolling into Zoya’s uni, which was not exactly the first, or hundredth, choice of the wealthier class.

Surprisingly, his father had agreed, but the joke was on him. Nikolai was never going to switch universities, because Zoya was transferring to his. Not in the name of something as sappy as romance, but because it had an outstanding climate science program and — most importantly — her excellent grades and extracurricular activities had earned her quite the hefty scholarship.

But at least for this first week of the summer, they were staying in their flat, vegging out as they caught up on Netflix and fucking until their neighbors complained on NextDoor.

“Should we do pizza tonight?” he asked, gently rubbing the soles of her feet.

Before she could answer, her phone rhythmically buzzed on the table. A FaceTime call from Genya. When Zoya went to answer it, Nikolai frowned. “I thought you didn’t do unplanned FaceTime calls.”

“It’s Genya,” Zoya said, as if that explained everything.

The red haired girl’s face filled the screen, albeit a little grainy from the less than stellar reception at Keramzin. She could see David beside her, nose in a book as usual.

“Guess what!” she whisper-yelled, a grin on her pretty face.

“Botkin has finally admitted his past as a secret ninja assassin?” Nikolai piped up from beside her. Zoya scowled in his direction.

“Oh, hi Nikolai. And no. Look!” Genya flipped the camera, and two children came into view, a boy and a girl studying a piece of paper together. From the look of it, they were in the crafts room.

“I haven’t forgotten what twelve year old campers look like, Genya.”

She turned the camera back so Zoya could see her eye roll. “No, smart ass. It’s Alina’s map!” Genya whispered the last part, apparently not wanting the kids to hear her. “She must have left it for a camper to find. And I swear, these two are like Malina incarnate.”

“Oretskov,” Zoya and Nikolai said together.

Genya very casually flipped them off. “Anyway, I wish y’all could see them. Running off into the woods and all that shit they used to do. It’s uncanny.”

Zoya shook her head. “No thanks, living that storyline once was enough for me.”

Nikolai, always thinking of the important things, asked, “Hey, what’s our couple name?”

“Zoyalai,” said Genya and an off-screen Nadia in unison. The latter continued, “And don’t try to give us shit about it, because there’s no way you’re coming up with something better out of Nazyalensky and Lantsov.”

Nikolai frowned. “Nazyalsov? Lantensky?”

Zoya wrinkled her nose. “Okay, fine, you guys win this round.”

She couldn’t deny it. Zoyalai had a nice ring to it.

#zoyalai #zoya nazyalensky #nikolai lantsov #zoya x nikolai #zoyalai fanfic #grishaverse fanfic #fanfic #writing #zoyalai fic #posted this on ao3 a few days ago and forgot to post it here lmao #anyway if any of yall enjoyed the first part and are interested in a zoyalai part!!!#or if you're just here for the zoyalai lmao #can be read without reading part 1 but you'll understand some of the events more if you read part 1 #okay enough rambling pls enjoy xx

57 notes · View notes