MasukFor several breaths, Naska did not move. Neither of them did, actually.Both just stood in their places . With the study stinking of blood-wine and cold glass and old paper, more snow drifting past the windows in that soft, relentless way it had been doing all morning, as if the sky had simply decided and would not be argued with. Somewhere beneath the desk, the fallen ledger lay open on its spine, pages bent, accounts exposed to the cold air. And Mykhol stood in the middle of it all, still facing the door his parents had left through. His expression suspended into something unreadable. Something thick and metallic.Naska kept her head bowed. Arm ringing with pain wanting to be soothed. But she did not dare touch it.She just waited until the silence had stretched long enough to become its own kind of instruction. Then she lowered herself carefully to the carpet.Her knees protested when they touched down. The study floor was cold even through her skirts, and the glass had scattered
*Naska*Naska lifted her head once more, looking back to the closed door, as if expecting someone to burst through. Looking for her. Needing her.But then again, she also didn’t expect anyone either. Because she hadn’t been told to wait for her. Actually, she hadn’t been told to do much nowadays. A fact that made her feel even more the fool to stand here now. Waiting here in Lord Charles’s study with her hands folded so tightly her knuckles ached.But orders had become slippery things since that day—passed between servants in whispers, interrupted by bells, rewritten by panic, carried from the throne room to the back corridors in pieces. And now, Her Empress was leaving for Dawny by first light tomorrow. And Lord Mykhol… was to remain behind. Once, there was a time, Naska would have felt happy by the idea. She would have seen it as her chance – have him home. Even pride herself on the fact to have Mykhol all to herself. But that was back then. And this was now.Now snow was fal
*Anastasia*“Ana.”My name pulls me up out of a place with no floor. I blink once , heavy and languidly stupid, only to find myself transported back from wherever I just went. I have been staring out at the tall arched windows of the throne room again. Heavy flakes drift past the glass — unhurried, enormous, each one distinct for a half-second before the next arrives and the next, a steady, relentless fall that has been going on long enough that white is beginning to gather along the outer ledges. Collecting in the grooves of the stonework. Settling on the sills in soft, improbable lines.I do not know how long I have been watching it.Long enough, apparently, for Mykhol to say my name as if it may not have been the first time he did.I blink again and finding the throne room reassembling itself around me back into neat and predictable patterns. Ancient wood beneath me, the pearl-inlaid armrests biting crescents into my palms where my fingers have been clenching without permission.
*Anastasia*For a moment I can do nothing but look on. Her name burrows against the paper like a brand, burning deeper the longer I stare at it, the ink dark and deliberate against pale cream. I cannot look away. Cannot make my eyes move on to whatever waits beyond it.Queen Belinda.There it is. Written so neatly. So deliberately. Every stroke measured, every curl chosen, as if even the front of an envelope were a performance she had rehearsed until it revealed nothing she hadn't decided to give. That poised control reads even here — in the particular elegance of the B, in the precise tail of the d — the way her red lips are always painted to the exact edge of her mouth and no further. No warmth bleeds through. No softness escapes by accident.She would never allow it. Not toward me.But then—Why?My pulse stutters hard enough that I feel it in my throat. A skip, then a surge, then something that settles wrong — too fast, too shallow, as if my body has already understood something
*Anastasia* “And what do we have here?” Mykhol’s voice slips over the courtyard lightly, like a thin layer of ice grown over the stone. Slick and simple, but deadly if not prepared, not cautious. Yet equally as expectant as the very chill around us. He speaks as if nothing were amiss at all. Yet his eyes do not lift. They have yet to look back to me. Because they are still on Nugen. His vermillion eyes roll up and down Nugen, in long slow strokes. Taking stock of it all, every detail. The sight of Nugen still on the ground near the frozen fountain, between guards. His uniform dirtied from the struggle. Blood drying on his lip. Mykhol looks at him with a stillness that feels almost intimate. As if he is drinking the sight in without needing to touch it. His smile remains as it was, never growing wider–but something in him settles at the image the longer he watches. Recognition. And I’m sure Nugen feels it.I see the change in him at once. His whole body goes tighter. I see it i
*Anastasia*For a heartbeat, I cannot feel. Anything. Not the cold.Not the numbness spreading from my fingertips, past my wrists, up into my forearms like water climbing cloth. Not the wind catching at the loose silver strands over my eye, lifting them, letting them fall, lifting them again. No, not even that. Because my mind refuses what my eyes are– What am I even seeing?My gaze catches on details instead. The scrape of his boots against stone. The flash of silver armor. The blood at the corner of his mouth. The way Fulcan's gauntleted hand is twisted into his sleeve.Each little piece. Separate yet…together they make no sense. None of it does.Because this is Admiral Nugen–A scar over one eyebrow.The steady voice that always seems to have an answer before I have finished asking the question. Always there. The only one now who is still left…And he doesn’t belong between guards. Does not belong hanging limp between Sir Philo and Sir Fulcan like a common vagabond hauled in f
*Ana*The wind snarls with a bone-shattering snap, its howl echoing off the marble columns like a wounded beast. It cuts through velvet and wool and fur, no matter how tightly I clutch my reinforced cloak around my shoulders. She is hell-bent to reach into every tender space with vengeance, her ic
*Naska*Naska's pale red eyes flicked upward at any movement by the entrances, her pale fingers tightening around her glass until her knuckles went white. Each flutter of fabric, each shadow crossing the threshold, made her heart lurch with desperate hope—that it would finally be him. That, at last
*Bruno* The scent of wine and roasted meat turned to ash in Bruno's mouth the moment he saw him.Through the ballroom's towering glass doors, past the writhing mass of silk-draped nobles and their glittering jewelry that caught candlelight like fractured stars, a shadow had fallen across the moonl
*Ana*“Mykhol,” I breathe, still dazed by the sight of him. Joy bubbles up from somewhere deep in my chest, effervescent and overwhelming. "You came!" I laugh—the sound bright and giddy, spilling out before I can contain it—as I take a step forward on unsteady legs. "It was getting so late, I almos







