by Vivian Wood
“You don’t even know what’s going on yet,” she says.
“I don’t need to know,” I say. “You’re not meeting with anyone. You’re going home to the U.S., where it’s safe, the second I can get you out of here, and that is all you’re doing.”
I’m terrified. The thought of Hazel putting herself in danger like this, with people who’ve already kidnapped one woman, makes me sick to my stomach.
“They want to meet with her because she’s American,” Niko says loudly over our arguing.
We both look at him.
“That’s what we think, anyway,” he says, his voice quieting. “It’s a show of good faith on their part.”
Hazel chews a thumbnail. A black hole opens in the pit of my stomach, because this is quickly becoming about much more than tiny Sveloria.
All three of us know what the show of good faith is: the USF can kidnap Svelorian citizens with impunity, but the moment they take an American, the United States military will drop the hammer. Fighter jets from the U.S. base in Turkey could be here in twenty minutes.
They would have to be insane to risk hurting an American citizen.
“The idea might be worth entertaining,” Niko says.
“No,” I say. “I’m not sending her to do my dirty work with people who’ve already proven they’re willing to hurt innocent women.”
“How many innocent people are gonna get hurt if this drags out?” Hazel says, her eyes flashing. “You’ve gotten lucky with casualties so far, Kostya, but if you dig in your heels, they’re going to think they’ve got no choice.”
“If we deal with them now, this ends with governmental reform,” Niko says. “If we ignore this, we might risk a coup.”
“I’m getting dressed,” Hazel says, and walks to her bedroom, closing the door behind her. I stalk to the French doors that lead to the balcony and stare out at the sea. Niko follows, and we stand in silence together for a long moment.
“We used to talk about this when we were drinking in the gray district,” he says softly, in Russian.
“We talked about what we’d change, not this,” I say.
“If we allied with the populists, this could be over in a week,” Niko says.
“They killed my father in the street like a dog,” I say. “We should crush them. Annihilate them. Wipe them from the face of the earth.”
“That’s what he would have done,” Niko says.
He doesn’t have to say and that’s why he’s dead for me to understand it.
“Do you know what they want?” I ask.
“They want a Parliament, mostly,” he says, and we look at each other. Then I look back at the Black Sea.
We’ve always talked about this. It’s the twenty-first century, and as small as Sveloria is, a hereditary monarchy as the sole form of government seems quaint at best and dangerous at worst. I could never breathe a word of it to my iron-fisted father, but it’s been in the back of my mind for a long, long time.
“I’m willing to talk,” I say.
“They want Hazel,” he says.
“That’s out of the question,” I say.
The bedroom door opens.
“Get me a meeting with Captain Ovechkin,” I say quietly, still speaking Russian. “Keep it quiet. Bring Dmitri and Sergei.”
Niko nods, and Hazel walks toward us, looking professional in black pants and a button-down shirt.
“Let’s go at least hear what they’ve got to say,” she says. She sounds less angry, but there’s steel in her voice. “I’m willing to go if it means an end to this.”
I just nod, and we leave Hazel’s room.
The day feels endless. Hazel, Niko, and I are in a windowless meeting room for hours with old men who advised my father and various people from the State Department on the screen in front of us.
We argue. We hash out plan after plan, then go back to arguing. We imagine every possible scenario, change a detail, and argue about it all over again.
Intelligence comes in: the group who has Yelena now isn’t the group who kidnapped her. That was the volki, the wolves, the same people who murdered my father.
“Not even the populists support the volki,” Minister Arkady points out. “No one does. They’re fighting an extremist, losing battle.”
The USF is fracturing fast, but there’s a delicate balance: if we do the right thing, we repair the country and make it strong. The wrong thing, and we rend it in two.
The half of the room that wants to send Hazel out — the half that includes Hazel — slowly wins. They’re convinced that it’s the safest for everyone, the best way to open negotiations.
Across the table, I catch Niko’s eye. I can tell we’re thinking the exact same thing: we spent years in the mountains fighting people like the volki. They’re fanatics who won’t give up, American military or no American military.
Everyone else in this room is lulling themselves into a false sense of security, telling themselves over and over again that this is safe, this is fine, this is an acceptable risk to take. These are men who fought with my father twenty years ago, but since then they’ve sat in comfortable chairs, getting fat on caviar and vodka.
I nod along with what they say, acting agreeable. Let them think their arguments are swaying me.
At four in the afternoon, after more than six hours, I stand.
“We’ll take a break,” I say, and look around at the blinking faces. “Come back here in two hours and we’ll work on the details.”
I leave the room first. Someone calls after me, but I ignore them, quickly going around a corner and down a staircase, taking the stairs two at a time, until I’m nearly in the basement, where I stop.
No one is following me. Good.
I walk into another hall. I turn a corner, and then the wooden doors of the chapel are in front of me and I swing them open.
Three men are standing inside, bathed in the light of the stained glass. They turn toward me as I enter.
“Captain Ovechkin, thank you for coming on such short notice,” I say, and shake his hand.
“Of course, Your Majesty,” he says.
“Sergei, Dmitri,” I say.
The door opens again. Niko walks in, and Sergei crosses his arms in front of his chest, a pleased look in his eyes.
“All right, your highness,” he says. “What shit are you getting us into now?”
“It’s top secret and probably dangerous,” I say.
Sergei and Dmitri both grin. Captain Ovechkin looks like he doesn’t mind.
“We’ll do it,” says Dmitri.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Hazel
When we reconvene at six, Kostya and Niko aren’t there. The generals, the Americans on the teleconference, and I all look around at each other.
I wonder where the hell they are. They’re both normally punctual to a fault, the first to get annoyed if someone else is three minutes late.
After five minutes of silence, Chief Minister Arkady clears his throat.
“We’ll just begin,” he says, and begins laying out his thoughts on the plan for tomorrow.
It’s another ten minutes before Kostya and Niko come in together and silently take their seats. They don’t offer an explanation, and no one’s going to demand one of them, so we just carry on as though nothing strange just happened.
Slowly, we hammer out the plan. I’ll be driven to the meeting place, an empty lot in the gray district, in a squadron of bulletproof cars, escorted by members of the Royal Guard. There will be snipers on the surrounding rooftops, the whole nine yards.
The leader of the USF Populists, Pavel Vasilovich, will meet me there. We get Yelena first, and once she’s safe, Pavel and I talk. I’ve got a list of what Kostya’s willing to do and a matching list of demands, and it’s safe to assume that Pavel has the same.
We exchange our lists. We shake hands. We both leave, and I come back here, safe and sound.
Sitting in this meeting room in the middle of a fortified cast
le, it all sounds so reasonable. Just another political discussion, nothing to get worried about. We meet, we exchange, we leave.
I know better. Right now, someone is going through the armory, looking for a kevlar vest that will fit me, but my real protection is believing that the other side isn’t dumb enough to shoot an American.
That’s what we’re banking on. Everyone seems convinced, but even though I try to act like I’m not bothered, I’m nervous.
It doesn’t help that Kostya’s said about two words since he got back, almost like he’s not paying attention. He just nods and agrees to everything everyone says, a total one-eighty from this morning.
Around nine, he excuses himself again, along with Niko, while I run through my script for the thousandth time. I’ll leave at eight in the morning. Arrive eight-thirty. Perimeter cleared, snipers in place, everything checked and double checked.
I’ll get out, talk to Pavel. Niceties, then real discussion, and I’ll be out of there by nine-thirty. By ten in the morning, I’ll be taking a bubble bath back in the palace.
I don’t get out of the meeting until late that night, and Kostya and Niko are still God knows where. Something is going on with the two of them. I don’t know what it is, but it’s making me uneasy, especially right now.
So instead of going to bed I wander around the palace aimlessly, trying to get lost, trying my best not to think about all the things that could go wrong in the next ten hours.
I’m not exactly afraid. I’ve seen my mother defuse a lot of tense situations. Growing up a diplomat’s kid, in half a dozen different countries, I’ve walked into more than one situation where I didn’t belong. I know that words have real power, and that people would almost always rather talk than shoot.
It doesn’t mean I’m not nervous.
I end up by the drawing room where Kostya told me about murder holes and heads on spikes, and I wander in. I keep the lights off, because I’m not sure I want to be found, and I sit on a high-backed, ornately carved couch with the most uncomfortable upholstery I’ve ever encountered. It’s facing the crazy-eyed portrait of Maksim the Second, and we stare at each other in the dark.
I’ve learned more about him in the past week. He’s remembered as a fierce defender of the homeland, a man who fought off invaders and put their heads on spikes. Turns out that’s just the tip of the Maksim iceberg.
Deranged is probably the right word. When there were no barbarians to decapitate and display, he ordered hands cut off thieves. Army deserters were drawn and quartered, usually while he himself stood there, watching. He suspected his wife of adultery and had her locked in the dungeons of another palace for three years, and she finally died of neglect when he forgot about her.
He wasn’t even sixty when he died suddenly, vomiting blood. Historians agree that he was probably poisoned, but there were so many suspects that we’ll never know who did it.
Now I’m sitting where he sat. Looking out at gardens that were once festooned with heads, and tomorrow I’m going to have a good, peaceful, by-the-book exchange with the people threatening Sveloria. At least I hope it’s peaceful.
Footsteps echo through the hallway. Someone walks to the open door of the drawing room and stops, leaning in the doorway. I can tell it’s Kostya from the way he moves.
“There you are,” I say.
“You’re just sitting here in the dark?” he asks, his voice low and quiet, and it sends an electric shiver through me. Despite everything that’s happened today, I keep thinking about this morning, about his hand on my hip, about how he turns my mind to mush with need. About how right everything feels when we’re together.
I look back at the crazy-eyed portrait on the wall.
“Maksim and I were having a moment,” I say. “He doesn’t really approve of me, but he’s a painting, so he can go fuck himself.”
Kostya closes the door behind him with a long, loud creak.
“My father wanted him there,” he says, glancing at the portrait. “Probably to make sure people knew that heads on spikes were never too far from his mind.”
“You disappeared,” I say. “I was looking for you.”
“I had to take care of some things,” he says.
I wait for him to elaborate, but he doesn’t.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he says, walking over to me.
“You know I don’t believe you, right?” I ask.
He holds out one hand, his face nearly expressionless, his eyes burning.
I stare back, and I feel like a pinned bug again for the first time in weeks. There’s something suddenly different about his mannerisms, a total one-eighty from last night.
Kostya’s not asking me to take his hand. He’s telling me. I take it.
He pulls me to standing, then takes my face in his hands, our bodies pressed together.
“Hazel, nothing’s gonna happen to you,” he says, his voice low and gravelly, those eyes boring into me.
I swallow.
“You mean tomorrow?” I ask.
“I promise you’ll be okay,” he says, not exactly answering my question. “I swear.”
“Kostya,” I say, because I don’t actually know what he’s talking about.
“There’s no fucking point to being king if I can’t protect you,” he says, putting the pad of one thumb on my lips. “It’s nothing but castles and cars and bureaucracy and bullshit if I can’t keep the people I love safe.”
My heart does a tiny flip in my chest, but I take a deep breath.
“What are you talking about?” I ask through his thumb.
“I’m talking about you,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, but I feel like I missed a couple sentences of this conversation or something.
“Start over,” I say. “What’s happening?”
His eyes just barely crinkle around the corners.
“I’m being the fucking King,” he says, nearly smiling.
“But—”
He shuts me up by kissing me hard and despite myself, I kiss him back, my hands around the back of his neck as he presses the small of my back so my hips lean into him, pressing along his delicious, hard length.
Then I put both hands on his chest and push, just hard enough that he stops kissing me.
“Wait,” I say, a little breathless. “No. You have to tell me what’s going on, Kostya. Pull your ‘I’m the King’ shit with other people.”
His eyes crinkle again in his almost-smile.
“You know the English poem, ‘You carry my heart in both hands,’ or something?” he asks.
“Maybe?” I say.
He puts his hand over mine and presses it to his chest. There it is, the steady thump-thump of his heart.
“I may as well tear it out of my ribcage and hand it to you,” he says. “I already feel like I have, like it’s raw and beating and at any second you could squeeze it or drop it and I’d be finished.”
Thump-thump.
“I won’t,” I whisper.
“I need you to trust me this once,” he says. “You can have this—” he squeezes my hand over his heart— “as collateral, and if I’m lying to you, step on it or throw it in a fire. Do whatever you want. Just trust me.”
Now I’m afraid, because that’s not what someone says when they’re going to follow the plan you’ve laid out together.
“No,” I say. “I don’t want collateral, I want—”
“Please,” he murmurs.
I close my eyes, feeling the thump-thump under my palm. I take a deep breath and remind myself that there’s a good chance he knows what he’s doing.
Not that it changes how afraid for him I am, or how desperately I want him to be okay.
“I trust you,” I whisper.
“Thank you,” he says, and kisses me again.
My mind’s a maelstrom. I wish he’d tell me what’s going on, and I have a bone-deep bad feeling that it’s dangerous. I wish tomorrow were over already. I wi
sh we were waking up in my bed again, tangled up together, sunlight streaming in through the window.
But then Kostya deepens the kiss, and he presses his rough fingers to my spine, under my shirt, and slides them up notch by notch, and I force myself to let all that go. I focus on his tongue winding around mine, his heartbeat under my hand.
Suddenly, there are voices speaking Russian right outside the door, and I freeze. Kostya pulls his head back but his hands are still on me as the door opens and the lights flip on.
Two young men step inside and stop mid-sentence, staring.
Kostya growls in Russian, glaring hard enough to melt steel.
The men duck their heads, muttering apologies in Russian, and flee, the door closing behind them. He kisses me once more, briefly, and then strides to the window and yanks the shades shut with one quick, forceful motion.
He looks around for a moment, like he’s trying to find something in the dark, then goes to one corner, bends, and comes up carrying a long, thick wooden beam. His forearms bulge as he fits it to the notches in the back of the door, barring it completely.
“There,” he says, and pulls me to him again. “Anyone who wants to interrupt now had better have siege equipment, because they can knock until their knuckles bleed.”
We kiss again, hard, his lips nearly crushing mine. I bite his lip as he pulls away, his hands already unbuttoning my shirt, and he growls at me.
I tear my half-unbuttoned shirt off, and before it even hits the floor Kostya’s already shoved my bra over my breasts, then over my head. He pushes me against the wall next to the door, the plaster cool against my back as he kisses my neck, his teeth just barely brushing my skin as he works his way down.
I make a noise through my teeth, and then he does bite me.
“Yahoo sea’s tibia,” it sounds like he says, chuckling softly.
My fingers are fumbling at the top button of his shirt, and it finally pops open.
“What?” I ask, moving on to the next one.
“I want to devour you,” he says. His mouth is on my collarbone and he’s unbuttoning my professional black pants, pushing them over my hips, and I kick them off as he pinches one nipple between his fingers and flicks his tongue over the other.