by Roxie Noir
“I know,” I say, and kiss the top of his head.
We’re quiet again.
“Can I sleep here?” he asks, his fingers on my back. “I don’t dream when I sleep with you.”
I push both of us up, and he looks at me like he’s still waiting for an answer. His eyes are even more bloodshot now. I stand and hold out one hand again, and he takes it.
“Come on,” I say.
In the bedroom I move the laptop off the bed and Kostya just looks around tiredly, like he doesn’t understand what a bed is any more. I walk to him and start undoing the buttons on his shirt, and as I do he takes both my hands in his and leans his forehead down to touch mine.
For long moment he just rubs his thumbs over my knuckles, like he’s trying to think of how to say something.
“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice close to a whisper.
“Kostya, don’t be,” I say.
He laces his fingers through mine, his palms against the backs of my hands.
“Zloyushka, I don’t know what I’m doing,” he says. “I don’t know how to be the king, and I don’t know how to keep my country from disintegrating, and I thought if I could ignore you I’d stop thinking about you all the time and I’d get better at what I’m supposed to be doing, but I couldn’t. And I didn’t.”
This time I can’t stop my eyes from filling with tears.
“I wanted to protect you, and I couldn’t,” he says. “Not even from the Tobov Post.”
“Kostya, you have bigger things to worry about than me,” I say. “I’m fine. The Post can go fuck itself.”
He half-smiles and squeezes my hands in his. A very, very distant bell tolls three times.
“I’m glad you slept with your married professor,” he says.
“I’m not,” I say.
“You wouldn’t have come here otherwise,” he says.
I sigh and let my eyes close, our foreheads still together.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe.”
“You’re the American and I’m finding the silver lining,” he says. “Something must have gone wrong.”
He wobbles a little on his feet, and I tug at his shirt.
“Come on,” I say, softly. “Go to bed.”
I get the last button undone, push it over his shoulders, and ignore the heat pooling inside me. Once his shirt is off, he slides one hand down my back, along my still-open robe, and then pulls me toward him, swaying on his feet as he does.
He kisses me and I kiss him back briefly, my hand on his neck, and then pull away. I stroke his stubble with one thumb.
“Come on, zloyushka,” he says, sounding half-drunk.
“No,” I say firmly. “You’re falling asleep on your feet.”
“I’ll make it fast,” he murmurs.
“Not sexy,” I murmur back.
Kostya sighs, his fingers circling on my back.
“You’re right,” he finally says. “You’re naked and I’m so tired I’m barely hard.”
“Your dirty talk is also pretty lacking,” I tease, shrugging my robe the rest of the way off, and climb into bed.
He gets in after me, and his eyes are shut before his head’s on the pillow.
“Let me get six hours of sleep, and then we’ll fuck slow and hard until you come so hard your hair curls,” he says.
My insides twist around themselves. Kostya barely opens one eye and looks at me.
“Was that better?” he says, his voice slurring.
“You’re filthy for a king,” I say.
He smiles, sleepily.
“I’m just honest,” he says, and rolls over until his face is in my neck. “Sometimes in important meetings the only thing I can think about is what it feels like when you come with me inside you.”
“Kostya, go the fuck to sleep,” I whisper, wrapping my arms around him.
He sighs, but he doesn’t say anything else. I stay awake for a few more minutes and listen to him breathe, then fall asleep myself.
32
Kostya
When I wake up, there’s a moment when I forget everything that’s happened. Hazel’s curled into me, her back against my chest, my arms around her, and my father’s murder, the insurgency, the fighting, everything seems like a long bad dream.
Then I wake up a little more and remember that it wasn’t, that it did happen and I’m probably late for something.
Two more minutes, I think, and bury my nose in Hazel’s hair.
“You awake?” she says, softly.
“Yes,” I say. “What time is it?”
“Eight-thirty,” she says.
“I should go,” I murmur in her ear, but I run one hand down her side from her ribcage to her hip, her skin perfect and soft beneath my hand.
My cock is working again. I was already hard when I woke up, but as I stroke her side Hazel just barely arches her back, pressing herself against me, and my erection throbs.
I need her, so much it’s visceral, like there’s a raging tornado twisting deep inside me and this is the only thing I can do to keep it from destroying me.
I close my fingers around her hip and pull back. She arches again, harder now, and reaches her hand around to pull my head to hers, twisting her torso. I raise myself on my other elbow and we kiss hard, tongues in each others’ mouths, as she rocks against me.
I groan into her mouth and she tightens her hand in my hair. I’m nearly dizzy with lust and want and the pure, primal sensation of need, and I touch the backs of her thighs and then push my hands between them until my fingers are on her slit, already slippery and wet.
She wraps a fist around my cock and I slide my fingers past her clit and relish the way her body gives a tiny jolt, like my touch is electric. Hazel moans as I rub her, and before I know it, she’s guided the tip of my cock to her entrance.
“Condom,” I gasp. “Nightstand.”
“Are you clean?” she whispers.
“Yes,” I say. She’s warm and practically throbbing against me, and my mind is slowly blinking out.
“Then it’s fine,” she says. “I have an IUD.”
I’m not exactly sure what that is. If I were smarter I’d find out but right now, but all I know is that it means I’m about to fuck Hazel skin to skin. I kiss the back of her neck slowly and she sighs.
There’s a goddamn knock on the goddamn door.
We both stop, holding our breaths, as if the knock could have possibly been an accident.
The knock sounds again, louder this time. I roll onto my back.
“Otvali mudak blyad,” I growl.
“Fucking motherfucker,” Hazel fumes, and rolls off the bed. She finds the robe and pulls it on as I get up, putting on pants and at least getting my arms through my shirt.
There’s yet another knock as Hazel heads for the door, and I stay back, just out of sight as she pulls it open.
“Niko,” she says, sounding surprised.
“Good morning,” he says. “Sorry to bother you, but we can’t seem to find the King.”
She pushes one hand through her hair.
“Come in,” she says, sounding like she’s admitting to stealing candy.
I’m buttoning the last button on my shirt as Niko comes in, but if he’s surprised to find me getting dressed in Hazel’s room, he doesn’t show it.
“There’s a problem,” he says, crossing his arms.
I stand. Hazel perches on the arm of a chair, holding her robe closed tightly.
“The populist faction of the USF has taken Yelena Pavlovnova hostage,” Niko says quietly.
Hazel gasps. I stop, one cuff half-buttoned.
“Yelena?” I ask.
“What happened?” asks Hazel at the same time.
Niko looks from me to her and back.
“Yes, Yelena,” he says. “She disappeared from her father’s villa sometime yesterday. No one is exactly sure when, but we received a photo of her with today’s paper about thirty minutes ago.”
“Is she okay?”
says Hazel.
“Relatively speaking,” Niko says carefully. “She didn’t look visibly harmed.”
“Why did they take her?” I ask.
Now I’m pacing the floor. I had just let myself think that things were starting to look up for us, and now a canyon has cracked open beneath my feet, threatening to swallow my whole country.
What the hell could they possibly want with Yelena? She can’t tell them anything, and she certainly doesn’t know anything.
“They’re willing to release her in exchange for a meeting,” Niko says. “They set the terms, but they want to do it on neutral ground.”
Neutral ground is a fucking joke. Right now, there’s no such thing, because everywhere within reach of the USF is dangerous.
I shouldn’t even be considering this. If this is their negotiation strategy, their next step will be worse.
But they’ve got Yelena. Of all people, she doesn’t deserve this.
“I’d be a sitting duck,” I say.
“They don’t want to talk to you,” Niko says, and pauses.
I turn and look at him, and he looks at Hazel.
“They want to talk to you,” he tells her.
“No,” I say.
“Me?” Hazel says.
“No,” I say again, getting closer to Niko.
Like fuck is Hazel going out there, risking capture and possibly her life. Yelena’s a nice girl, but the hell I’m trading Hazel for her.
“Why me?” Hazel asks Niko quietly.
“It doesn’t matter, because you’re not going,” I say.
“Kostya, shut the hell up and let Niko tell me what’s going on,” she says, shooting me a glare.
“I’m not risking your life for hers,” I say.
“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 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.
33
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 castle, 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.