Prince and the Throne (Fedosian Wars #2)

1. Friends and Lovers

one

Friends and Lovers

The weather turned wretched with icy sleet, and the wind howled like a pack of wolves. The scenery outside was completely white and the carriage rocked, the doors rattling with the strength of the gale. Sofia had been leaning against the window, trying to make out where they were, as though she’d know, when her door swung open and a sentinel with a black cloak came in.

Crouched, he shed his frozen cloak before plopping down on the powder blue velvet seat across from her. He shook his white curls, releasing the ice and snow, though his hair was white with or without the winter’s kiss, and lit the silver pipe he brandished from his pouch while muttering, “I hope you don’t mind, Lady Sofia.”

A hundred sentinels were traveling with the prince to Sarostia, and though she didn’t know most of them, she knew Ignat. His wavy hair and arched brows were so blond they appeared white, and Ignat was one of the few favored by his captain. He darkened his eyelids with black mineral powder, jarring against his pale complexion. The black was now smeared and looked as though Igant had rubbed soot on his face.

“How are you doing on this fine day, my lady?” He smiled, and whatever he was smoking smelled sweet with a tang of spice.

“Aleksei sent you?” Sofia yet again found herself asking about Aleksei rather than speaking to him.

“Why, my lady? I’m an excellent company if you’d give me the chance.”

“Where are we going?” she asked when she felt the carriage turn.

“We’re turning into an inn, my lady.” He tapped his pipe on the side of the door. “The light is falling, and we can’t travel through the night in this weather.”

“Is your captain outside?” Sofia asked. “He shouldn’t be. His bones are mending, and he’s injured still.”

“It’s not my call, Lady Sofia.” Ignat shrugged. “But he’s with the Chartorisky. If your concern is truly for his wellbeing, take comfort that he’s not outside.”

He was mouthy like this and gave Sofia cause not to like him. They’d been on the road for nearly three weeks, and she’d spoken with Aleksei less than a handful of times. He was more often in the Chartorisky carriage than not, and he wasn’t there to see Daniil. They’d quarreled, Zoya and Sofia, for all the sentinels to see and hear and Aleksei hadn’t taken Sofia’s side.

When she would bring it up to Aleksei, he’d say, ‘She’s a friend,’ and look confused as to why Sofia was displeased but he wasn’t dense. He just didn’t want her anymore was Sofia’s guess, and to be fair, he’d already said as much before they even left Krakova.

Sofia knew Aleksei had been with the queen when she brutalized him so badly it took a hundred and seventy nails and splints and two months of Baltar’s care to put him back together, and she wanted to give him the time and the space to heal without suffocating him. She’d understand if that was all, but that wasn’t all because he was always with Zoya.

“You look sad, my lady. Anything I can do to help?”

Sofia turned from the blizzard outside and looked at Ignat who wasn’t Aleksei. “No,” she said.

“If you’re upset with the captain, it might be helpful to tell him why.”

“He knows.” Sofia sighed because her heart ached. “How far to Sarostia?”

“We’re riding through the province of Sarostia.” The many gold tassels dangling from the cabin roof swayed, and Ignat reached up and held one as though it was a flower. “But we should reach the Red Den tomorrow if the weather lets up.”

“The duke’s wife is Chartorisky?” Sofia asked.

“Duchess Elena is from the House of Chartorisky,” he said.

“They are all beautiful, aren’t they? The Chartorisky women?”

“Their men, too,” Ignat said. “And so are you, my lady. I find everyone is beautiful in their own way, like the crystal flakes of snow.”

“You thought Queen Kseniya was beautiful?” she asked.

“In her own way, she was,” he said. “But she did many hideous things.” He puffed his cheeks and cocked his head, studying her. “My captain, he’s not good with women.”

“Oh, I don’t believe that.”

“It’s the truth, as witnessed by how he’s made you sad. I’ve never made a lover sad, but I’ve also never loved. The heart complicates things, the poets say, but perhaps they have it the other way around. Maybe love makes us stupid, leaving us unable to solve the simplest of affairs.”

“He doesn’t love me,” Sofia said out loud, the harrowing truth slowly dawning like the sun on a cold grey morning.

“I don’t know. I can’t see into another man’s soul,” Ignat said. “But it’s possible he doesn’t know what that is. We don’t end up as Imperial Sentinels, as killers and harlots, because we were abundant in love.”

“How did you end up here?” Sofia asked.

“I’m my father’s gift to the queen. I should be flattered, I suppose.”

“Who’s your father?”

“Lord Fedya Pulyazin. My mother was a servant, so I don’t count.”

“That’s a big name,” Sofia remarked.

“Sure is.” He smiled.

“Can you perform water alchemy?” she asked.

“A little.” His eyes were grey but not dull, as they were full of lively mischief. “Every boy tries to impress his father, I suppose... Though you might find me abrasive, I like you, Lady Sofia. So, here’s my unsolicited advice. The Chartorisky are an alley of the Shields. Lady Zoya and the captain have known each other since they were children. She’s familiar, she’s safe, and the captain doesn’t offend her when he’s short with her or when he refuses her. You’re none of those things, my lady, and I don’t mean that in a bad way.”

Sofia watched the silver pipe twirl in his fingers, waited, then asked, “And where’s the advice?”

“That was it,” he said. “Information framed in a useful way is advice.”

“I see.” She saw nothing and sank into her seat feeling like the weather, whiny and cold.

Ignat remained with her till they were pulling into an inn and stepped out then. It had been less than an hour, but the day had fallen breathtakingly quick, and it was nearly dark.

Taking her book and satchel, Sofia exited the coach and saw the inn was two floors and large by the number of windows alight. It had a watchtower, she supposed, because a single light flickered high up like a torch held by a giant, but what they watched in this weather, she didn’t know. Probably nothing but darkness and the slush of the last rain of fall turning into the first snow of winter, visible only in the lanternlight. All else was blindness.

Sofia didn’t know where Aleksei was and went ahead into the inn alone. A servant greeted her and took her cloak. The hall was large with multiple fireplaces, and she saw sentinels and assumed Aleksei had sent them ahead to vacate the place and inspect it for assassins and what not. They’d been sitting and eating but all rose when Niko entered.

“It’s nice,” he said, handing his cloak to Eugene who’d come in with him, and taking off his gloves. The prince went to warm his hands by the fireplace without telling the curtsied servants and bowed sentinels they could rise. They remained frozen in place till Niko turned around and said, “Oh, please continue. Don’t mind me.”

The entourage poured in after the prince, and the kitchen did their best to rush out the food. Niko took a table by the fireplace and the Chartorisky siblings joined him. Zoya laughed often and touched Niko a lot, and Eugene eyed the girl each time she did it.

So close to the den, it was clearly a Shield inn, and the red banners hanging from the walls, the dark wooden furniture, and the bare brownstone floors made the hall dim despite the candles lit on every table, the light from the fireplaces, and the oil lanterns.

The dining hall fell short of accommodating the full numbers in the prince’s entourage, and soldiers sat on the floor, but Sofia’s table remained empty. She’d been reading by the fireplace and drinking wine after a dinner of roasted goose and potatoes when someone came and stood by her. A sentinel, she knew. Not Aleksei, she also knew before looking up from her book.

“Do you mind if I sit with you, Lady Sofia?” He was pretty with curly brown hair and brown eyes, perfect everything including his skin. “I’m Dominik, my lady.”

They hadn’t spoken before, but Sofia knew who he was. “Where’s your captain, Dominik?”

“Outside,” was all he said.

“Doing what?”

“Forgive me, my lady, but the captain is not in the habit of reporting to me.”

Sofia returned to her book, but seeing as there was nowhere else to sit, she said, “You can take the chairs if you want.”

He took that as he could sit at her table but she didn’t want to be rude and said nothing. He said her name after a while, but she pretended not to hear him because the hall was loud with all the chatter.

“Sofia.” He leaned in, his hand on her knee.

She lifted her gaze from her book and found him smiling. He retrieved his hand because she’d frowned. He studied her for a moment, his brown eyes keen. Then he laughed. “You didn’t request my company, did you?”

“No.”

“Misunderstanding, forgive me, my lady.”

“Who told you I wanted to see you?” she asked as he got up.

“Can’t say, my lady.”

After he left, Sofia narrowed her eyes at Zoya a few tables over, and the blonde girl laughed. The Chartorisky girl was playing, as she seemed to do often, but it said much that Aleksei’s men didn’t know she was supposed to be his. She’d lost the appetite to be in the company of others and asked the servant to show her to her room.

After taking a long, hot bath in the tub, Sofia sat on the large bed in her nightgown and brushed her hair. Though the weather outside sounded terrible still, it was warm inside with logs crackling in the slow fire.

“Do you need anything else, my lady?” one of the servants asked after they drained the bathwater and cleaned up after Sofia. The place was well serviced.

“Yes, can you go tell one of the sentinels Lady Sofia is asking for Captain Aleksei?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“That will be all. Thank you.”

The women left. The room had two beds, a larger one for the lord and a narrow one against the wall for the valet. There was a wooden trunk between the beds, which Sofia inspected hoping to find something someone left behind, but it was empty. She took a candle and passed the time by looking at the books on the small shelf. No codex, but she found a Shield soldier’s handbook—not Imperial Sentinels—and looked through it.

Containing the mundane affairs of a soldier’s life, including how to care for horseshoes when traveling through rocky terrain, they’d gone through the trouble of producing such things and distributing them to inns.

Next, she went through Shield military law and found a surprising amount of liberty, including the right to challenge the commandership of a superior officer for those whose birthright allowed it. For the common soldier though, every punishment was death. Desertion, death. Mishandling of equipment, death. Theft, death. Cowardice, of course death.

She put the book away when her door opened. Aleksei had knocked, a far cry from when he broke into Papa’s house, twice, to be with her.

“Did you ask for me?” He left the door open but took off his exoskeleton and shook his hand, making Sofia wonder how cold it must be to wear so much metal in winter.

“Did you eat anything?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he lied.

“Out in the blizzard?” she asked.

“What do you want?”

She wanted him to eat something but that would mean he’d leave the room, so she said, “I want you to sleep.” At this rate, she was turning into the mother he never had. She wished for them to find their way back, for him to return to her, for her not to have him in reins like this, but if she let the lead go, he’d wander off further and further away from her till she lost sight of him, and he’d never come back.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“Please.”

He sighed as though she was burdening him but closed the door, hung his cloak, wiped his boots before crossing the room, and sat down on the valet’s bed. He sat for a while, staring, then went to the washing table.

“How far is Sarostia?” Sofia asked. She hadn’t forgotten Ignat had already answered her but wanted to make conversation with Aleksei and couldn’t think of anything else.

“We’re in Sarostia,” he said, wiping his face. “But we should be at the Red Den tomorrow if the weather allows.”

“That’s the duke’s fortress?”

“It’s a Shield fortress the duke oversees. It’s right at the border of Elfur. I believe you can stand on the wall and see it.”

“Did Niko ever tell you how he killed the queen?” Sofia asked.

“No, and please don’t say such things in the den.”

“Of course not, Aleksei. I’m not stupid.”

“Didn’t say you were.”

Sofia let it drop. The last thing she needed was a quarrel with him over semantics. “A sentinel approached me.” She withheld the name because she didn’t want him in trouble, should there even be one, but she had to know if he even cared. “He asked if I wanted company.”

“Did you?” he asked.

Sofia got up and marched to the washing table. “Aleksei.”

He looked up from cleaning his nails with a bristle, and she slapped him across the face. She hadn’t held back either and his cheek turned red with her handprint. Her palm and even the tips of her fingers stung.

He stood there for a while, looking down, then tossed the bristle and turned for the door. Sofia ran around him and blocked the door as he grabbed his cloak from the hook on the wall.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But you shouldn’t speak to me that way.”

“Hit me more if that makes you feel better.” He waited. “All right, then, goodnight, Lady Sofia.”

For all the saints… She dropped her hand from the door handle and moved out of his way.

The door closed behind him. This was done. She felt it. She knew it, but she couldn’t believe it. She blamed the archmage for erasing her from Aleksei’s memory because their relationship couldn’t and didn’t recover from it. Aleksei may claim the love remained but he treated her like a stranger, and to him, she was.

For a long time she stood by the door, then put on her boots, draped her cloak over her nightgown, and stepped out into the corridor. She took the stairs down, passed through the dining hall now nearly empty, and walked out of the inn.

Branches had bent with the weight of the snowy slush and the shrubbery along the bank lay on the ground as though the weight of the world sat upon their backs. The river flowed loudly, and it wasn’t too cold as the dawn broke grey and silver, promising more moody weather but calm for the time being.

Sofia sat with her back to a birch tree, her father on her mind. Not Papa, but her father whose face she’d forgotten. Moriz of Dohnan, he’d been an Elfurian graf , count—she remembered that. The invisible stranger, not so invisible then, kept her company. The shadow sat beside her, the snow under him undisturbed. The archmage had called him a darkling, but she was yet to learn what that was.

“Why did you kill my uncle?” she asked.

“Yelizaveta gave us his name.”

“I’m not her. She was my mother.” Even phantoms confused Sofia with Lady Yelizaveta, another testament to how little she mattered. Her mother had been loved. The archmage loved her. Papa loved her. Count Moriz of Dohnan loved her… It was unfortunate she’d died bringing Sofia into this world, and a pity none of the love had been inherited by her.

“We love you.”

“You don’t exist.”

But he did though. The archmage and the synod were still very much dead.

Dogs barked, probably from the inn as the royal entourage had none, horses nickered, and sentinel voices echoed as they had been throughout the night. Two hounds ran by her, one turned and wagged its tail but the other found her cloak by the river, and excitedly barked—they were both good boys.

The one who’d found her came to receive his pats from her, while the other barked and barked, sniffing her cloak. It was still somewhat dark, the sight just returning to the world, as Charger blew past Sofia, and the captain of the sentinels jumped off his horse by the river, grabbing the cloak from the hound. They’d been calling her name and looking for her all night, but she was having a moment, throwing a tantrum as though she was five years old and had run away from home.

She could have called Aleksei but just watched him instead. He was showing her he still cared and that she’d frightened him. His mind was so frenzied he didn’t see her less than twenty yards away. Was it wrong that it pleased her?

“Give us the boy’s name. He doesn’t love you.”

The dog didn’t sense him, but Sofia turned and frowned. “Don’t ask me such a thing again. Matter of fact, be gone.”

Without another word, the shadow vanished in the silver light.

The water was deeper than it appeared and Aleksei struggled with the current for a while, falling and losing his cloak, before it occurred to Sofia that Niko had nearly drowned when he was a child and that she was frightening Aleksei more than she meant to, making him relive a nightmare.

“Aleksei!” she called.

He didn’t hear her over the current. She got up and approached the bank, and stood there calling, the dog at her feet barking, till he saw her, and marched out of the river, drenched, and grabbed her by the throat, screaming, “What is wrong with you? What is wrong with you!”

They stepped backward together, and he shoved her and slammed her against a tree, the hand with the exoskeleton around her throat. “What is wrong with you!” The scarlet eyes were bright but the expression dark. The alchemy on the vambraces glowed as though he meant to kill her.

“What is wrong with you!” He shook her by the throat till he realized what he was doing and dropped his hand, breathing, “Fuck.”

Aleksei shivered. Not from the weather but from distress. He sat in the tub for a while, his head on his knees, then got up and got dressed. The room had one small window by the beds, the light through it pale, and the candles were still lit. Sofia sat on the bed and watched Aleksei as he mumbled to himself, tossing this and that, looking for something. She’d given his uniform to the servant to be cleaned and dried, and he was in cotton trousers, strapping his vambrace to his naked arm as he didn’t have a shirt on, but he let that drop to the floor and came to her.

He bent and kissed her, desperate.

“Aleksei,” she whispered as he continued down her neck. “Aleksei, stop.”

Anxious and his breathing strained, he knelt in front of her and pushed up her skirt. Sofia put her hand under his chin and lifted his face to her, her other hand holding the back of his head.

“Aleksei, get up.”

He’d cried and his eyes were wide. “Is this not what you want? What do you want?”

She wanted what they had once, love. But it was gone now, wasn’t it? Sofia would always love him, this was true, but Aleksei’s love had been so innocent because it had started when he was a boy, before the world hurt him so much that he no longer knew what it was. That, they couldn’t replace. So this was done. By being here, unfairly asking him for what he couldn’t give, she was just hurting him more.

“I’m sorry I frightened you.” She dropped her hands from his face, but he was still knelt in front of her and they looked at each other. “That was unfair and I won’t do it again. Let’s try and be friends at least.” It hurt her to say it. “We’ll meet the duke and I’ll be an ally, but afterward, I think it’s best I go to Lev.”

Silent a while, he nodded. “Thank you.” He rose.

“Mmm.” Sofia’s throat clamped, and the tears she held back drowned her words. She took a pillow and a dry wool cloak, went to the valet’s bed, and laid down turning her back to the room.

“Did you not want the larger bed?” Aleksei asked, but she pretended to be asleep and didn’t answer. She was crying and didn’t want him to know.