Praise for The Lure of Their Graves

“The Lure of Their Graves is a master class in writing the conclusion to a duology. Unique, heart-stopping and utterly brimming with angst, Laura R. Samotin is the queen of drama and romance. This is a book that kept me up all night reading. Once you start, you will not stop. The Lure of Their Graves is a tale of new love, old flames and the growth of friendship between a group of unlikely allies. Never have I read a duology before where I desperately wanted it to be a ten-book series. If you are going to pick any series up and read it, do yourself a favour and make it this one. One word: unreal.”

—Ben Alderson, author of A Betrayal of Storms

“With The Lure of Their Graves, Laura R. Samotin has crafted a sequel that is tense, tender and utterly immersive, balancing a cast of deeply traumatized but stubbornly resilient characters, a rich fantasy world grounded seamlessly in Jewish mysticism and a plot that never stops moving—and holds fast to the transformative power of love to persevere against impossible odds.”

—Shelly Jay Shore, USA Today bestselling author of Rules for Ghosting

“A darkly riveting sequel, The Lure of Their Graves dives even deeper into the true-to-life complexities of religion, politics, and trauma, while still offering the smooth balm of hope, found family, and love. An eternal flame of a book.”

—Maddie Martinez, author of The Maiden and Her Monster

Praise for The Sins on Their Bones

“Samotin’s breathtaking debut is a Gothic, deeply Jewish tale about love’s power to both wound us and set us free. Passionate and gruesome, heart-pounding and poignant, this story will be carved into your very bones.”

—Allison Saft, New York Times bestselling author of A Far Wilder Magic

“I really enjoyed this read—sweeping yet intimate, gory and chilling, and impossible to put down. The point at which the story begins—after Dimitri loses the war to Alexey—was a great choice, and I appreciate how carefully Laura R. Samotin delved into the depths of trauma, depression, and grief, while still leaving room for humor and hope.”

—Samantha Shannon, New York Times bestselling author of The Priory of the Orange Tree

“With wildly tangled webs of queer love and desire, a thick and rich magic system rooted in Jewish mysticism and religious wrestling, a snarky but affectionate found family, trauma, agony, and emancipation, there’s nothing more a reader could want.”

—S.T. Gibson, Sunday Times and USA Today bestselling author of A Dowry of Blood

“Samotin’s debut is both epic and intimate, both sharp and sumptuous, both painful and ultimately hopeful, with Jewish magic in its bones. Novo-Svitsevo will linger in my heart for a long time.”

—Rebecca Podos, Lambda Award–winning author of From Dust, A Flame

“The Sins on Their Bones is a book that will break your heart and then fuse it back together, stronger for having been broken. It’s a story of agency and abuse, about what we deserve and what we owe ourselves, about finding the strength to forgive ourselves and to accept the forgiveness of others. Samotin is a powerful new voice in the genre, with this queer dark fantasy that reminds us that there is always, always a light in the dark.”

—Kamilah Cole, national bestselling author of So Let Them Burn

“Emotionally devastating and tenderly nuanced, The Sins on Their Bones is a story of trauma, survival and hope, set in a world of dark magic and courtly intrigue.”

—Frances White, Sunday Times bestselling author of Voyage of the Damned

“The Sins on Their Bones is a novel of grief flayed open with surgical care, a story like a broken bone healing stronger than before. From war-torn shuls to opulent palaces to hidden rooms with cold secrets, Samotin has created a queer Jewish fantasy world that feels real enough to step into. The journey is dark, but never lonely.”

—Lauren Ring, World Fantasy Award winner and Nebula finalist

“Intense and visceral, with a romance that showcases the restorative power of love on the wounded, this stunning debut will leave you spellbound from the first page.”

—Aden Polydoros, author of The City Beautiful and World Fantasy Award finalist

“A heart-wrenching tale of love, loss and the long, difficult road to healing, The Sins on Their Bones is an unmissable debut from a powerful new voice.”

—K.M. Enright, Sunday Times bestselling author of Mistress of Lies

“Set in an imaginative, lived-in world steeped in Jewish mysticism, The Sins on Their Bones walks a tightrope between darkness and light, between heavy themes and levity, between escaping the monsters from your past and becoming one in the present. Get ready to fall in love with Samotin’s characters—even the villain! Especially the villain.”

—Genoveva Dimova, author of Foul Days

“Gothic and glorious, The Sins on Their Bones is the dark Jewish fantasy I’ve been craving. Novo-Svitsevo will stay with you long after you’ve finished the last page.”

—Natasha Siegal, author of Solomon’s Crown

“Rich in wrenching intimacies, The Sins on Their Bones is a paean to healing and endurance against all odds.”

—Foz Meadows, author of A Strange and Stubborn Endurance

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BOOKS BY LAURA R. SAMOTIN

The Cursed Crown Duology

The Sins on Their Bones

The Lure of Their Graves

The Way It Haunted Him

The Shadows have Teeth Duology

with Ben Alderson

The Shadows Have Teeth

The Darkness Bites Back

Published by Random House Canada

Copyright © 2025 Laura R. Samotin

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems. Published in 2025 by Random House Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.

Random House Canada, an imprint of Penguin Random House Canada Limited

320 Front Street West, Suite 1400

Toronto, Ontario, M5V 3B6, Canada

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Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

The authorized representative in the EU for product safety and compliance is Penguin Random House Ireland, Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street, Dublin D02 YH68, Ireland. https://eu-contact.penguin.ie

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: The lure of their graves / Laura R. Samotin.

Names: Samotin, Laura R., author.

Description: Series statement: The cursed crown series; 2

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20240516842 | Canadiana (ebook) 20240516869 | ISBN 9781039007611 (softcover) | ISBN 9781039007635 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.

Classification: LCC PS3619.A45 L87 2025 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

Ebook ISBN 9781039007635

Cover design: Talia Abramson

Text design: Talia Abramson, adapted for ebook

Cover images: Matrioshka / Adobe Stock

Map design: Talia Abramson

Map images: Map: (mountains) Madele, (banner) ale1969, (border) Oleksandr Babich, (corner) dmitroscope, (crown) terentyevner55, (compass) lublubachka / all Adobe Stock; (texture) Scott Webb / Unsplash

Interior image credits: Ashe Arends

a_prh_7.2_151808727_c0_r1

To the readers who’ve torn themselves open,

and those who’ve stitched up their hearts.

Set me as a seal upon thy heart,

as a seal upon thine arm;

for love is strong as death,

jealousy is cruel as the grave.

שִׂימֵנִי כַחוֹתָם עַל־לִבָּךְ כַּחוֹתָם עַל־זְרוֹעֶךָ כִּי־עֵזֶה

כַמָּוֶת אָהֲבָה קְשֶׁה כַשְׁאוֹל קַנְאֵה

Song of Songs 8:6

You are fair, my beloved,

and there is no blemish in you.

כָּלֶךְ יָפָה רַעְיָתִי וּמְוּם אֵין בֶּךְ:

Song of Songs 4:7

A Note to Readers

The Lure of Their Graves is a story about endings and beginnings—those that hurt and those that heal. In doing so, it centers complex reactions and adaptations to trauma that some readers may find challenging. I hope this book brings you catharsis. I hope it treats you with care. But if you feel vulnerable, I trust you will save it for a time when it will salve your wounds instead of opening them up. My author website contains additional information and resources.

Dimitri Abramovich pulled a fur blanket tighter around his bare shoulders, shivering in Rav-Mikhailburg’s deep winter chill.

He stared at the ceiling, his body leaden and his heart pounding against his ribs. Vasily was fast asleep, his arm thrown protectively across Dimitri’s lap. He hadn’t allowed Dimitri to sleep alone since they’d been reunited, and Dimitri was more grateful for it than he ever could have expressed. He hadn’t even needed to ask. Vasily had simply known.

The fire crackled in the corner of the room, the light casting shadows through the gap in the bed’s curtains, which they really should have drawn tighter to keep in the warmth but never did. Dimitri had had to dash out of bed one too many times, to retch into the sink in their bathroom, for them to fully close themselves in.

The gap provided enough light for Dimitri to see the cards he held in his shaking fingers.

He got stacks of them each day; embossed visiting cards with the names of nobles or foreign dignitaries who were seeking audiences with the Tzar. Ladushka would hand them over in the order in which she’d arranged the meetings. They meant nothing more than what his day would look like. He didn’t even need to take them, really—Ladushka just knew he liked to admire the stationery.

This time, though, three of them were different.

Three of them had portraits sketched on the back.

A beautiful woman with long hair and a knowing look in her eyes. A curly-haired man with a kind smile and a square jaw. An androgenous person with a curtain of hair threaded with jewels and a shrewd, sharp expression on their narrow face.

Aziza Timurova.

Lukas Marks.

Yullyan Sakvin.

The names that Ladushka had offered him along with these cards were seared into his memory. Three ways to avoid another war. Three ways to save his people. Mere weeks to act before someone else made a move and it was too late.

He shuffled the cards forward and backwards, as if that would make this better. As if there was anything that could make this better.

Vasily twitched next to him, mumbling something in his sleep, and Dimitri quickly slid the three offending cards into the middle of the pile, rubbing his thumbnail across the edges. He tried to breathe past the mounting panic, but it wasn’t helping.

Not when he kept looking down at the cards in his hand, and then at the man sleeping next to him.

The tonic that Mischa made for him had lifted the cloud that had hung over his mind since the war, but in the months since Alexey’s death, Dimitri wondered if maybe even medication wasn’t enough to fix what was wrong with him. He put down the cards for a moment and reached for the bottle of pills he kept stashed under the pillow, popping the cork with his thumb. He had been exhausted every day—they’d all been—but he’d felt settled. Crawling into bed with Vasily every night had been a balm and a blessing, and he had felt steady for the first time since leaving Alexey’s side. But then it had all come creeping back in around the edges; nightmares about Alexey and what Dimitri had done, fear of what was coming, the knowledge that these shreds of peace he’d gathered up and pulled around himself like armor would never be able to last.

The pill leached the taste of raspberry and sugar under his tongue and took away some of the reflexive impulse that he still fought against to find a bottle of vodka. He focused on counting Vasily’s breaths, feeling the expansion of his ribs and the shift of his hips in his sleep, constantly seeking the closest contact he could with Dimitri even when he was unconscious. And instead of being here and focusing on the now, instead of grasping the moment that they’d all fought so hard for him to have, he was wasting it by falling apart.

He reached down and picked up the cards again, thumbing through them, balancing the stack against his dead arm so that he could flip through the three with portraits over and over.

Which of them would end up claiming him for their own?

Vasily would’ve gotten a line in between his eyebrows and demanded to know why Dimitri hadn’t woken him if his anxiety was building to a fever pitch, but Dimitri wasn’t about to interrupt yet another night’s sleep for Vasily. The spymaster was working more than any of them, flat out from the time he woke up until late into the night, his only break the time he spent wolfing down food or in bed with Dimitri. His court all spent so much time taking care of him, and what he was able to do for them paled in comparison.

He wanted to make sure they were safe forever, and he knew deep down in his heart that such a thing was impossible. That it wasn’t a promise he could make. That even though he had returned from the dead for them, even though he would give his life again for them, he didn’t have the power to change the whole world to ensure they never got hurt.

Especially since, to keep them all safe, he’d have to break Vasily’s heart. And his own.

A map of the continent was burned into his memory, along with the pins that Ladushka had stuck in three countries. Urushka. The Free States. Atreus.

Neighbors, potential enemies, possible allies. Ladushka had laid out the reality of their situation, her flaxen hair in a severe twist and her mouth pressed into a thin line. The Urushkins to the east—with their notoriously arid soil—were their biggest problem, with border incursions reported almost daily, a test to see how good their defenses were and whether a breach would go unnoticed long enough for an invading force to seize the agriculturally rich far east of Novo-Svitsevo. The likelihood that he would be able to muster a full force to defend their extensive border was slim, not when the army was still decimated from the war, but that land provided too much grain to lose, and if he allowed it to be taken without a fight, it would only invite the same from other enemies.

Like the Free States. His father had always doubted that the republic to their south would ever invade—it was too small and too rich to want to bother—but Vasily’s rebuilt spy network had intercepted messages from the president of the republic to the reclusive monarchy of Atreus, setting the stage for a request for a military alliance.

And why would they need that if not to exploit the instability of their neighbor to the north? Economic growth frequently begat military expansion because money could pile only so high before it spread outwards and pushed at borders. Here Novo-Svitsevo sat, not even two years out from a devastating civil war, with an unstable throne and a dead Tzar come back to life, full of resources that could be an asset to economic development. Full of metals and minerals that could make bombs—or anything else.

And full of practitioners of the Holy Science, a country with the kinds of knowledge that Atreus—with its closely held yet notorious manufacture of the magic that Alexey had unleashed on Novo-Svitsevo—was rumored to deeply covet. There were whispers that the monarchy consorted with demons, just as Alexey had done. And if magic required human conduits, there was now no other country with a populace more willing and able to serve. An invasion would absorb a resource of Novo-Svitsevo’s that the Free States had no use for, but together in an alliance with Atreus, they could leech Dimitri’s country dry.

Ladushka had laid it out for him in the same stark tones she always did, not masking her concern and desperation. And then she told him that there were three possible ways out.

All of them involved him being sold off again, married for the good of Novo-Svitsevo. But the thought of lying next to anyone who wasn’t Vasily stole his breath and crushed him.

His life and his body hadn’t belonged to him since the moment the rest of his family had been killed, and not even before that. The freedom he had now was borrowed and he knew it. He should be grateful to have ever had it, but that didn’t make the prospect of losing it any less terrifying.

“Dima?” Vasily shifted on top of him, his eyelashes tickling Dimitri’s skin as he blinked awake. “What’s on your mind, darling? Are you working already?” He poked at the visiting cards on Dimitri’s lap.

Vasily’s voice was gravelly from sleep, but when Dimitri turned his head to meet the other man’s gaze, he knew that Vasily was as alert as ever. Like Annika, with her years of military training which had led her to serve as Dimitri’s top general, Vasily had the uncanny ability to wake from a dead sleep ready to act. It was something that Dimitri himself had never mastered, despite the war.

Dimitri let out a sigh, knowing that there was no path forward but the honest one. At least the cards with the portraits were hidden in the stack. Vasily would find out about them soon enough, but that didn’t need to be this moment. He could have one more shred of peace. “I’m thinking about the future. And how much I don’t want it to come.”

Vasily stilled, his broad palm resting on Dimitri’s chest, covering the scar right over his heart. “The future isn’t happening right now, Dima. Do you need a reminder to anchor yourself in the present?”

His hand slipped lower, under the covers, his fingertips dusting the ridges of Dimitri’s hips. It would be easy to surrender to this, to take what Vasily was offering. But right now, all it stirred in him was a vague sense of revulsion that one day soon he’d have to let another person touch him in the same way. That he’d have to try to love another person like this. That the hands on him wouldn’t always be Vasily’s, callused and warm and so good at grounding him.

He would do it. Of course he would. But he didn’t know if he’d survive it.

As if he knew what was on Dimitri’s mind, Vasily stopped his attempt to tease Dimitri and sighed, the sound deep and sad in the quiet of the bedroom. A log snapped in the fireplace and Dimitri winced. It was a commonplace noise now that it was cold again, but it also reminded him of the sound of his own bones breaking.

They never talked about this—the two of them in their own bubble, pretending at marriage. And ordinarily, Dimitri would savor every moment that he could seize, but right now, the only thing that he could think about was how much it would hurt to end it.

“Dima.” Vasily kissed his temple. “Did you take the pills?”

Dimitri nodded, mute with the panic and disgust creeping their way up his throat.

“And it’s not helping?” Vasily sat up, the covers falling over his chest and pooling in his lap. Pulling aside the bed hangings let a rush of cold air in, but also more light. It was easier for Dimitri to panic in the dark, he knew, but right now the flicker of firelight reminded Dimitri of being dead and being devoured, and he wanted to bury himself somewhere he’d never have to think about any of this again.

When he remained mute, Vasily got out of bed and pulled on a pair of pants, throwing a dressing gown on over his bare chest. “Come on, then.”

He reached into the bed and pulled Dimitri out of the covers like he weighed no more than a wet kitten, cradling Dimitri to his chest. Dimitri’s right arm went reflexively to wrap around Vasily’s neck for balance, but his left merely lay limp on his stomach, hanging loose. The long scar from his wrist to his elbow prickled, the only sensation he had in that limb anymore.

Maybe it would make more sense to cut it off completely.

“Stop.” Vasily tilted their foreheads together. “I can tell what you’re thinking about. I know it’s hard for you to feel it right now, but you’re every bit as gorgeous as you always have been.”

“Vasya,” Dimitri protested as he was carried into the bathroom, finding his voice. “Stop lying to me.”

Someone else would be looking at this ruined body soon and he wouldn’t be able to hide. It would be another wedding night, except this time, he wouldn’t be twenty years old and beautiful. He was a decade older and his skin was mapped with scars, so many that he couldn’t count them. He limped everywhere because his joints hadn’t healed as well as they could have, to Mischa’s immense frustration.

No one would desire him like this. No one could desire him like this, and having to face his spouse’s revulsion would only make his own shame all the worse. No one could desire this ruined body except Vasily, whose love and trust he sank into every night, impossible to ignore or hide from, and he was going to have to let Vasily go.

He was going to have to let Vasily go.

Dimitri couldn’t help it. As soon as Vasily put him down on the bench next to the claw-foot tub, stepping away to fill it, Dimitri leaned over the sink and vomited until his throat burned and his ribs were sore, and when Vasily knelt in front of him and begged him to say what was haunting him so that he could share the burden, all Dimitri could do was bite his tongue and start to cry.

“what did she tell him last night?”

Vasily didn’t know whether to be mad at Ladushka, devastated that Dimitri wouldn’t confide in him, or both. Because he knew as soon as Dimitri had started falling apart the night before that it had something to do with the conversation the day prior, when Dimitri had walked out of his council chamber with shaking hands and refused to meet Vasily’s eye.

He hadn’t pushed Dimitri to tell him what happened, because he knew from experience that it would only make things worse. But not knowing was the bane of his existence—information was his weapon and his curse and his salvation—so here he was, cornering Annika and Mischa in an attempt to figure out what was plaguing Dimitri.

“Look.” Mischa was leaning against the desk in Alexey’s old study, which Vasily had claimed for his own out of spite and convenience. “You can’t kill me for what Lada is planning. You know she’s her own woman.”

They held their hands up like they thought Vasily was going to come at them, and it only made his stomach twist even more. Vasily looked to Annika, with her feet tucked under herself as she sat in a wingback chair. Her eyes were narrowed at Mischa, her mouth in a flat line, and it made him feel at least a little bit better because clearly she didn’t know either.

Although that might be worse, because if Ladushka hadn’t wanted to tell Vasily and Annika, it meant that it was something they’d both object to, and there was a very short list of things that could be. Vasily wondered if he’d have to turn his continent-wide spy network inward, gathering information on his friends instead of the machinations of all their enemies.

That would be a huge fucking inconvenience, and he didn’t want to have to bother. Intimidation would be easier instead.

“Mischka,” Vasily said slowly, glaring at the court physician like he was trying to figure out how to take them apart, “tell me what you know.”

They stared at the ground, one arm tucked across their ribs, picking at the chest binding under their shirt in a new nervous tic that hadn’t existed before they’d had to put Dimitri’s dead body back together.

It was far too long before the doctor spoke.

“She asked me how healthy he was.” Mischa’s voice cracked. “How much he had healed, physically and mentally. Whether he was in a place where he could…”

“Where he could what?” Annika’s voice was dangerously flat.

Mischa closed their eyes.

Vasily choked on the words when Mischa said nothing. “Where he could marry again?”

“Yes,” they confirmed.

Hearing it out loud was a punch to the gut, even though Vasily had spent the last few months knowing it was going to happen. There was no way that Dimitri could stay as he was, unmarried and unattached, and Vasily himself had been the one to uncover the concerning communications between Atreus and the Free States that hinted at an alliance.

“Vasya?” Mischa’s voice was far away, and Vasily blinked, realizing that he was clutching the back of the chair he was standing behind so hard that his fingernails had dug into the leather, puncturing it. “You have to breathe.”

Vasily was usually the one coaching someone else through the process of beating back panic, and the reversal tilted his world askew. Annika unfolded herself from her chair, her face ashen, and came up behind him to lay her chin on his back and wrap her arms around his ribs, squeezing him tight.

“I knew it was coming.” His voice was hollow even to his own ears, devoid of inflection. “And I know it’s the right thing to do.”

“Oh, Vasya.” He felt, more than heard, Annika sigh. “Knowing that something horrible will happen doesn’t prepare you for the thing itself.”

She rubbed her small hand in soothing circles against his chest, and Mischa pushed off the desk to cross the room. They walked over the rug where they’d laid Dimitri’s body out, where they’d murdered his half brother Ivan. The palace cleaners had managed to get the bloodstains out, but Vasily wasn’t sure why he hadn’t instructed them to burn the carpet instead. Because thinking about that night brought him back to the recitation of every horrific injury that Dimitri had suffered in the last minutes of his life, and knowing that someone had hurt him so, so badly only made Vasily worry, What if it happened again?

Because that was the fear that thrummed through him when he couldn’t sleep at night, when he watched Dimitri out of the corner of his eye while pretending to be engaged in other conversations, staying hidden and out of the consciousness of the rest of the court at Rav-Mikhailburg. That with this next marriage, Dimitri’s spouse would be more subtle. That Dimitri would be better at hiding it.

That someone would hurt the love of his life, the reason that Vasily had clawed his way through hell and back, and that Vasily would never know. That he would be unable to save Dimitri this time.

“Vasya.” Mischa had knelt on the seat of the chair in front of him, and their hands were cupping his face. “None of us want this. Lada doesn’t want it either, I’m sure. But we all knew that there would only be so long before we’d have to let him go again.”

Mischa tilted their forehead to his, and he sank into the warmth of two of his closest friends in the world encircling him, even if it didn’t make his heart beat any slower. He had the vague awareness that he was shaking, and he gave in to the pressure behind his eyes and let a tear escape in a way he never would have if Dimitri were there.

Because he had to be strong for Dimitri. Dimitri could never see him falling apart, not now. Not when Dimitri was only held together by a single thread. Not when Dimitri was getting worse day by day.

“Why did you tell her that he was healthy?” His voice shook, even with his friends there to steady him.

Mischa gripped his face a tiny bit harder, the twitch a cue that they were as unsettled as he was. “I didn’t.”

“Thank the Lord our God,” Annika breathed from behind him. “Because I don’t think he’ll survive it. Not now. Maybe not ever. And we all know he’s been through enough for many, many lifetimes.”

“That’s not the point.” Vasily stepped away from the both of them, shrugging out of their hands. He started to pace, raking a hand through his hair. He stopped in front of the window, looking down at the first frost of the year coating the bare trees in the courtyard, icicles sharp and deadly enough to kill a person.

It felt like there was a shard of it in his chest, stopping his heart from beating. Preventing him from drawing breath.

He placed both of his palms on the glass, watching the heat of his body melt the frost that crept up the panes. It was a reminder that he was still alive. They were all still alive. He had nothing to fear from the memory of cold hands ghosting across his face, his neck, dead lips against his and eyes as deep red as arterial blood.

Vasily was good at ignoring his old fears. He had no idea why it was so difficult to let this one go.

“What is the point?” Mischa sounded annoyed now, but Vasily didn’t turn to look at them. “Enlighten me. Because even if Anna wants to wrap Dima in wool and protect him for the rest of his life, he’s the Tzar. We can’t protect him forever. His job is to protect the rest of us, and he knows it.”

“And that’s the problem.” Vasily’s throat was tight as he turned around. “No matter what we say, if Dima thinks the right thing to do is to marry someone who doesn’t love him, who he doesn’t want to touch him, he’s going to do it. If Lada plants those seeds in his head, Dima will let them grow.”

He could already see it—Dimitri’s rule in the time since Alexey’s death had been harder, more restrained. He’d imprisoned all of Alexey’s inner circle until they’d recanted their beliefs and then ordered their execution regardless, claiming there was no way they could be trusted not to lie to stay alive. He’d had Vasily send spies out to report on restive pockets of Alexey’s supporters across the country, and Vasily had an enormous and ever-growing list of persons of interest to keep tabs on. The unfeelingness that Alexey had taught him, the iron that Alexey had threaded through his spine—it was still there. Alexey’s death hadn’t melted it away. And while it was likely best for the country, it was hard for Vasily not to long for the man who, years ago, had almost bankrupted the country feeding peasants and trying to implement universal access to education.

Annika’s eyes were tightly shut even as Mischa’s narrowed at the accusation that Vasily knew was clear in his voice. “And she already talked to him, I assume,” Annika said. “Mischka told her that Dima wasn’t ready, and she mentioned it to him anyway.”

“It’s not her fault.” Mischa blew out a breath. “She came to me after their conversation and said she knew it had been a misstep, but she wanted to prepare him for the…eventuality. She told him she’d try to buy him time if he needed it, but that it couldn’t wait forever. Maybe not even months. Maybe we only have weeks. Because it’s inevitable, you know that, right?”

In that moment, Vasily had never hated anyone more. His fists curled impulsively, and he had to take a deep breath in to settle the anger that flooded through his chest.

He and Dimitri were supposed to be inevitable. Not this.

“I’ll talk to him.” Annika pulled on the end of her hair, tied up over her shoulder. “Vasya, it makes sense that he wouldn’t tell you. He wouldn’t want to upset you. And obviously…”

She trailed off, a stricken look on her face. Like she could tell just how much this was breaking him.

He couldn’t take it, looking at the two of them, seeing their pity and their pain written across their faces. So he did what he did best—he buried his fears and fled.

The rest of the afternoon, once he’d returned to his empty office, passed by at a glacial pace. Dimitri was holding an audience in the throne room, and Vasily stayed far away from most of court life. Those who knew him as Mikhail Haleyvin, the commoner whom Alexey had made his general, were mostly those who had supported Alexey—and many of them were now either dead or gone. For the rest of the court hangers-on, the servants and staff and minor nobles, “Mikhail” had quickly managed to fade into the background.

Some now knew him as himself, a special adviser to the Tzar, who was among his trusted confidants but who alone had no defined role. But given Vasily’s ability to navigate the palace almost entirely unseen, thanks to the hidden passageways built into the walls and the seclusion of the royal wing where Dimitri and his friends kept their rooms, he mostly managed to stay out of sight and thus out of mind for most of the nobility who haunted the palace. Ayla and those closest to her in the guard corps were the ones stationed around the private royal wing, and while the circle of people who knew about Vasily’s true identity was bigger than it had ever been, it was still small enough that he felt safe to do the work he needed to. Even if now it came with a bit more time spent applying makeup and false beards.

But that meant that he spent large chunks of the day separate from Dimitri, and the only access he had to the other man was the ability to brush against the connection they still maintained, that neither one of them had wanted to cut, if such a thing were even possible. They shared dreams at night, where they were far more comfortable than during the day, living in a world that was still out to hurt them. But there was also something more, a tether between them that hadn’t faded in the time since Vasily had called Dimitri back from death.

Vasily hoped it would never fade. Soon, it was going to be the only thing he had left of Dimitri. It was going to be the only way he could comfort him, stroking an invisible hand against Dimitri’s soul, feeling the love reflected back against his own.

So he sent a tingle of warmth through their connection and bit his lip to stop from smiling when he got a rush of BoredomFrustrationLoveYou back. Dimitri seemed steadier in the light of day, which didn’t surprise Vasily. Dimitri had, after all, died in the dark. And nighttime was when Vasily’s own demons always came for him.

The letter in front of him was difficult to decode, the Free States apparently having committed to using a constantly rotating cypher that didn’t follow the standard rules of cryptography. He’d spent the better part of the week trying new ways to crack it, and it was only now that he was learning its secrets. He was glad that he’d had his spy copy the letter and send it on instead of bringing him the original. It certainly would have been noticed if it had deviated from its route for this long.

Even though the information scared him, he couldn’t help but feel a flair of triumph every time a sentence revealed itself. The Free States were a federation of countries which had banded together under a rotating presidency, giving the powerful and the wealthy a chance to pick who ruled them. Vasily wasn’t under the illusion that the average citizen of the Free States was any more able to pick their leader, election or no, than the peasants of Novo-Svitsevo. But it made his job harder, given that the leadership of their neighbor to the southwest was constantly changing as the different parties vied for power. Some of the candidates in the last election—the one that had taken place during the war they’d been busy fighting against Alexey—wanted nothing more than to keep the Free States exactly as they were, free and rich and out of the business of any of their neighbors.

But then there was President Marks.

Vasily had learned as much about her as he could during their time in Wilnetzk, half out of needing something to do and half out of a drive to understand something about the woman who was, knowingly or not, allowing a deposed foreign monarch to hide out in her capital city. While they’d never met, he knew from his sources and her actions that she was a shrewd politician, rising from relative obscurity to the head of her party in a span of a quarter century. The problem, though, was that her ambition had apparently turned outward.

Hence the initial letter Vasily had intercepted to the ruler of Atreus, His Royal Majesty Sakvin, proposing that President Marks’s son, Lukas, visit Atreus to commence discussions with the leader of the Atrean army about an official beginning to a military exchange between their two nations.

This particular letter was from later in their planning, and Vasily chewed the skin around his thumb as he untangled the administrative details of Lukas Marks’s trip. The fire wasn’t nearly warm enough, and he shivered slightly despite the heavy wool of his suit jacket and the blanket he’d tossed around his shoulders, but he was too close to decoding the message to stop now just because he was uncomfortable.

His pencil scratched against the page of the notebook he was using as the details fell into place. Lukas—young at the tender age of twenty-five, but already being groomed to take over his mother’s political dynasty—would depart Wilnetzk in three weeks. He would be received at the border of Atreus by Yullyan Sakvin, the second child of the Royal Majesty, who was a few years younger than Vasily himself and by all accounts a rake who was far more focused on pleasure than on any meaningful occupation. Yullyan had probably been pressured into participating in this particular event because it was more about entertaining a foreign dignitary than doing any meaningful politicking—or because their parents thought there was some chance of Yullyan and Lukas forming a connection.

Vasily knew that the meeting couldn’t be allowed to go ahead. Ties were always harder to break once they were already made. But rational thought had little power over him these days; instead, a chorus of I want him, he’s mine, I can’t give him up echoed through his mind every time he ran through the possible ways in which the meeting could be prevented.

Because there was one excellent option, and it was the one that Ladushka had apparently hinted at. Lukas and Yullyan could be distracted with a summons to Rav-Mikhailburg, an invitation that would be read as exactly what it was—Dimitri, offered up on a silver platter.

It would be the distraction they needed, and it would likely net them an ally out of things too. Because while Novo-Svitsevo was still somewhat in shambles, it was a vast and lucrative territory, something that hadn’t changed even with the ravages of the war. The western provinces still provided access to the ocean to export grain and agricultural goods, and the population still outstripped that of the rest of the continent. Novo-Svitsevo would rebuild, and it would be an asset to any ally with time.

All they needed was for Dimitri to form that alliance with the one thing that only Dimitri could give.

Vasily tipped his head back against the leather of the chair, rocking backwards and propping his boots up on Alexey’s desk. He was absurdly grateful he hadn’t known Dimitri when he was brought to Chernitzy to be sold off to Alexey Balakin. Picturing him young and vulnerable, the way Ivan had been when Vasily had come to know him, sent a pang through his heart. He didn’t know if he would have had the strength, no matter the stakes, to leave Dimitri there with a stranger. To trade him for security, even if it was for a whole nation.

Vasily had once thought that he would give up anything to win. Anything to keep his country safe. And now he knew the truth of it—that he’d been lying to himself.

He’d found the one thing he wouldn’t give up, and he hated that deep down, he knew if he asked, Dimitri wouldn’t let him go either.

But they had their duty to the country, to the people, to each other, and it was all more important than the love between two men. So Vasily shoved his hurt down, tore the page out of his notebook and went to find Ladushka.

Dimitri knew as soon as he walked into the dining room that things were tense. The atmosphere was taut and everyone was frowning, looking down at their empty plates and studiously ignoring each other. It wasn’t like his friends to be so withdrawn—usually, when he walked into dinner late because he was busy with court business, he interrupted the middle of a meal they’d started without him, banter and jokes and jibes flying across the table between friends who had become family. His family.

Except now, there was the kind of uncomfortable silence that made his knees weak, sending anxiety through every one of his nerves because he knew there was going to be a fight. It was the same instinct that Alexey had honed within him, the uncanny ability to walk into a room and know, without a single utterance, that something terrible was about to erupt.

It had been bad when that instinct had been focused on his former husband. It was worse when it was triggered by his friends.

“What’s going on?” He fought to keep his voice even as he shrugged one-handed out of his court jacket, the clasps and rigid fabric stifling him. When he’d stripped down to his cotton undershirt and could finally breathe again, he picked a chair where he could see everyone’s faces. The dining room, a little jewel box of a room where he liked to hold private dinners, was lit overhead by one of the new electric chandeliers that Annika had taken to having installed throughout the palace room by room, and the fireplace threw off enough warmth that he was comfortable for the first time in hours.

The throne room had been cold, or maybe it was just the memory of crawling to Alexey on his hands and knees that always sent compulsive shivers down his spine.

“Nothing,” Annika said far too quickly, which made him immediately suspicious.

Mischa picked up their glass and downed an enormous volume of wine in an impressively short period of time, and even Ladushka was averting her eyes instead of meeting his with her usual direct gaze.

“Anna, we can’t hide it—” Vasily began, which immediately raised Dimitri’s hackles. It was too much like the time, not even a year ago, when he’d come in off the roof of their townhouse in Wilnetzk and been told that his illusion of security was about to be shattered.

“It’s not hiding,” Annika bit back, crossing her arms. “You don’t know. It’s unconfirmed.”

“Do you think I, of all people, want this to be true?” Vasily waved a piece of paper in the air, and Dimitri fought the urge to lunge for it. “Seriously, Anna?”

Dimitri cleared his throat as Annika opened her mouth to say something back, because if he didn’t make this an order they were going to keep fighting and he wasn’t ever going to find out what was wrong. “Someone please just tell me what’s going on.”

Mischa reached into their suit pocket and removed a small bottle, rolling it across the table to Dimitri. He looked down at the blue glass, at the familiar pills within, and knew that if Mischa had brought his anxiety medication to the dinner table, this was bad. He wordlessly opened the bottle, flicking away the cork and shaking a pill out onto the table, placing it under his tongue and waiting for the medicine to soothe away the worst of his nerves.

“Let’s have food,” Mischa said, reaching out to catch the bottle as Dimitri rolled it back. “Nothing serious was ever discussed well on empty stomachs.”

“That’s not going to make him more likely to eat.” Annika frowned in Mischa’s direction. “You know he can’t eat when he’s nervous.”

“That’s gotten better,” Vasily broke in, and before Dimitri knew it his friends were arguing about the current state of his health and his recent weight gain as if he wasn’t even in the room.

When servants brought in the first course, he was glad that it was something liquid. The smooth cream of the mushroom soup, accented with a sprinkling of chives, warmed him from the inside out. It helped to speed along the working of Mischa’s medication, the tension slowly receding from his limbs despite the way that Vasily’s mouth was still set into a tight line, the furrow between his eyebrows too deep to mean anything other than he was afraid and unwilling to show it.

He finished the bowl and then sat quietly through the next course: a soft cheese spread over bread that he knew Mischa would have ordered the kitchen to make as part of their campaign to put meat back on his bones. Annika carried most of the conversation, clearly trying to divert Dimitri’s attention with an update on the new classes that the orphanage of Rav-Mikhailburg was offering to the children from across the empire that she had taken into her care. Mischa was chiming in gamely, trying to make things less awkward than they already were, but Vasily just continued to eat mechanically and stare out the window into the gardens, even though with the way night fell so early in the winter the glass merely reflected the scene inside the room.

Ladushka was looking back and forth between him and Vasily, and that’s how he knew this news wasn’t just bad for Rav-Mikhailburg. It was bad for them.

When the third course was brought out, whole roasted quails for each of them with a healthy helping of mashed potatoes, which Mischa tried to feed him at nearly every meal, Dimitri was as settled as he could be with whatever was hanging over his head. He stared down at the quail, the meat already cut into humiliating pieces and rearranged over the carcass, and said, “Now someone tell me what’s going on.”

“Vasily intercepted a letter.” Ladushka’s answer was immediate, the impatience clear from the twist of her lips. She always hated having to wait to discuss strategy. “I mentioned potential candidates for marriage to you several days ago, Dima. But that was before this new information, and now the need is urgent.”

Dimitri’s stomach bottomed out at that, because of all the things his chancellor could have said, that was among the worst. Dimitri would rather fight a thousand zemonyii, would rather face death again, would rather do almost anything else than let Vasily go.

He didn’t know if he could do this.

“Dima,” Vasily sighed. “Lukas Marks, the son of President Marks, is going to visit Atreus in three weeks. He’s there to discuss a military alliance, and that means things are moving faster than we thought. Yullyan is going to meet him at the border, and there’s probably a reason why they’re being sent. They could be considered a good match for Lukas. It could be a way to strengthen diplomatic and military ties at once.”

Dimitri tried to speak, but nothing came out, panic choking his throat.

“We all know that you will be marrying again,” Ladushka said. “And so I think that it is important we get to one of these players first. And I have a plan.”

The room started to spin around him.

“Go on, Lada.” Vasily was wound tight next to him, a muscle feathering in his jaw. He knew about this, it seemed. He wasn’t surprised. Just resigned. Even though Dimitri had tried to hide it from him, the necessity of it, Vasily had found out.

Of course Vasily had found out.

“I think it will look like too desperate a ploy if we begin to send out requests for marriage to all of our enemies,” Ladushka replied. “And so I think we should host a regional summit, to be held here in Rav-Mikhailburg, on the topic of the continent’s overall security and well-being. Framed as a chance for Dima to reassert himself, it will be a show of strength, while simultaneously looking like a concession to the fact that we cannot possibly mount our military might against any one of them, let alone two or all three of them as allies. They will remember the wealth of our country, which has been impacted by the war but not enough to show, and the eligible heirs in question will come as delegates.”

Vasily nodded. “And then Dima can meet them covertly.”

Ladushka dipped her chin in acknowledgment. Mischa was looking down at their food, not moving a muscle. Annika had gone ashen and cleared her throat before speaking. “When?”

“Three weeks,” Ladushka said, the words clipped. It was the only sign that this was hurting her too. “In order to be effective, we must disrupt the meeting that Lukas and Yullyan have planned. Otherwise, we risk them forming an alliance, which preempts our efforts to stop a growing threat.”

Three weeks. Three weeks.

He’d thought they would have time, but that had been a foolish notion, hadn’t it? Because he never had time when it mattered. The reality of being the Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo was that nothing in his life was his own, not even his heart.

His hands curled around the edge of the wooden table, every muscle in his body taut. He didn’t know if he was going to cry or scream or bolt out of the room, his heart beating as frantically as if he was a rabbit caught in a trap. And from the panic, from the fear, from the deep sense of loss that was already opening within him, something reached for his pain and whispered, I will take this from you.

“Oh,” Ladushka said, her eyes going wide, and then everyone was staring at him because the quail on the plate in front of him was slowly shriveling, the meat drying up and falling off the bones, the carcass shriveling and crumbling into dust.

“Oh, fuck,” Vasily amended, standing up and reaching for Dimitri.

But Dimitri didn’t know whether Vasily made it to his side or not, because with a rushing sound in his ears and a sickening swoop behind his navel, blackness crowded the edges of his vision and his consciousness blinked out.

So, Alexey’s voice whispered to him in the darkness of the void, you can wield it too.

“Dima, wake up.”

He came back to awareness in his bed, his head pounding like he’d spent the whole night prior downing shot after shot of vodka. His right arm was weak when he tried to reach up and brush his hair away from his eyes, so Vasily beat him to it, his fingers cool on the overheated skin of Dimitri’s forehead.

“What happened?” He shook his head and blinked his eyes open, wincing in the light thrown off by the fire. “Did I pass out?”

Vasily was sitting next to him, his thigh pressed up against Dimitri’s ribs, his weight dipping the bed so that Dimitri’s body instinctively curled around Vasily where he sat. Mischa was on his other side, their fingers on his neck.

They clucked their tongue at him. “You did one better than that. You used the Holy Science and then you passed out, directly into your mashed potatoes.”

“I used—” His tongue was thick in his mouth, and the headache made it hard for him to think critically. He tried to sit up, but both Vasily and Mischa shoved him back to the bed, one of them holding each of his shoulders. “What are you saying?”

When he got his eyes to focus on Vasily’s face, he realized that there was terror etched across his features. His skin was washed of color and his mouth pressed into a thin line. Despite Mischa’s attempt at levity, Vasily looked like he was close to crying.

“Vasya.” Dimitri cleared his throat. “What did I do?”

“You—” Vasily looked away, his hand drifting down Dimitri’s arm to intertwine their fingers. “Shadow came out of you, Dima. The way Alexey wielded it. It only stopped when you lost consciousness. It’s been hours, and you only just woke up.”

A deep, yawning sense of loss and fear echoed through the connection they shared, the emotion saying everything that Vasily didn’t want to admit out loud. I thought I was losing you. I thought you were dying again.

Dimitri squeezed Vasily’s hand, working his thumb over the edge of his sweat-slick palm, trying to tell Vasily that he was still here, still alive, because that was the most important thing to him right now, making sure that Vasily was all right. The tension in Vasily’s shoulders eased minutely, and Dimitri felt like he could breathe again when Vasily bent down and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

“I think you have inherited Alexey’s powers,” Ladushka said from across the room. When Dimitri turned to look at her and struggled to raise himself up on his arm, Mischa sighed and helped pull him up against a pile of pillows. Vasily shifted to brace Dimitri’s other side, leaning against the headboard and wrapping an arm protectively around Dimitri’s shoulders. “I am not sure how, but it seems clear that you are able to wield the same kind of magic that he could.”

“Except it’s not deliberate.” Annika was standing with her back to him, staring into the fire, her fingers clenched around her upper arms so hard that her knuckles stood out through her skin. “Alexey used that power to harm people, and Dima isn’t going to?”

The way it ended like a question made Dimitri wince—that she couldn’t trust him enough to know that whatever this was, whatever was happening, he wasn’t going to use it to prey on others the way Alexey had. That now, something had shifted that made her question whether he was still fundamentally good.

There was a beat of panic when he realized he apparently had magic of the kind that Alexey had, and he couldn’t control it—and that he was in a room with everyone he loved in the world. But before he could ask, Vasily shook his head.

“No,” Vasily said. “I can see the look in your eyes, and before you tell us to leave, know that Ayla was arguing with us about that and succession and a lot of other fuckery, and none of us are abandoning you when you need us. So ask something else instead.”

Dimitri let the gratitude and relief he felt wash away the panic.

“How did this happen?” he managed to rasp out instead, his throat raw like he had been screaming. “I don’t—I didn’t want this. I didn’t do anything to ask for this.”

“You were stressed.” Mischa laid a reassuring hand on his thigh, and Dimitri was at least glad that they and Vasily weren’t so scared of him now that they wouldn’t touch him. “I could see it, the way the medication didn’t help enough to truly calm you down. The…what Lada said was clearly too much for you. And it triggered something.”

Dimitri resented the implication that he couldn’t handle his own mind anymore, so much like the long, lost months in Wilnetzk where he could hardly breathe without feeling like he was being strangled.

“It’s not a slight on you,” Mischa continued, clearly attuned to the fact that Dimitri was growing more panicked by the second. “It’s just something that’s happening to your body. And frankly, this makes sense. There’s something in you that’s preventing your body from healing fully—your arm should have recovered and your hip should be better than it is. All of your scarring is ten times worse than it had ever been with any of your other injuries, and I thought it was just from the fact that, well, you came back from the dead. But maybe it was something more.”

Vasily made a choking noise next to him but covered it with a cough. Ladushka kept staring at him like he was a puzzle she was tasked with figuring out.

“So how do we get rid of it?” Annika finally turned to face him but didn’t meet his eyes. “We can’t let whatever poison is inside Dima do what it did to Alexey. The Holy Science, whatever was living inside Alexey—it made him so much worse than he’d ever been when he was just a man. It’s a perversion, a corruption, a sin against God, and we can’t let it overtake Dima. We can’t.”

She was whispering by the time she was done talking, like she was admitting fears to herself instead of to the rest of them. And then he saw, in the creases of her face and the way her eyes were glassy, that it wasn’t that she was disgusted by him, but that she, too, was terrified of losing him. So he reached out to her, slipping his hand out of Vasily’s, and she crossed the room in three quick steps to take it, sinking down onto the bed too, grasping his hand like it was her only proof that he was there and well. Ladushka got up to join them, settling down at his feet with her legs tucked underneath the folds of her skirt, and he closed his eyes and let himself sink into the safety of being surrounded by the four of them, everyone quiet and still for several blessed moments.

“Let him sleep,” Mischa said gently from his left. The bed shifted as they got up, and then the rustling that followed sounded like Annika and Ladushka getting up too. “Vasya, let me know if anything happens to him overnight. You know where to find me.”

None of them questioned Vasily sleeping in here every night, the way that their clothes hung side by side in the wardrobe, the fact that the glasses Vasily wore to read at night were on the bedside table along with the mugs of tea that he brought to bed.

They all knew. They all saw.

They had all agreed to go along with this summit anyway.

Dimitri didn’t want it to happen. He wanted someone else to stop this. He wanted someone else to tell him that there was another way. He wanted to go to sleep and forget all about this and wake up and learn it was all a bad dream. The summit. The magic.

Vasily let out a tired sigh and pulled away, and when Dimitri wrenched his eyes open again, Vasily was stripping out of his suit and pulling on a nightshirt that he’d left on a chair that morning. He banked the fire and snuffed out the candles around the room, the smoke curling through the air and floating over the bed.

Someone had already dressed him for bed, so Dimitri struggled under the covers on his own, rolling over so that Vasily could join him. He was rewarded with a large hand on his stomach pulling him back into a firm chest, Vasily nuzzling into Dimitri’s hair as he held him close.

Dimitri bit his lip, the question bubbling out of him before he could stop it. “Are you scared of me?”

“No, darling.” Vasily chuckled, the sound warm and reassuring. “No matter what you can do, I could still take you in a fight.”

There was a pause, long enough that Dimitri wondered if Vasily had fallen asleep, but then he started talking again. “I’m not scared of you. I’m scared for you, love. Because there’s so little I can do in the face of things like this.”

“But you did more than anyone else ever could. You brought me back,” Dimitri whispered. “You brought me back to life.”

Vasily swallowed audibly. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

Dimitri twisted his head to claim Vasily’s lips in a kiss, because he couldn’t stand the pain in his voice or the fear he could feel in Vasily’s heart, and this would take his mind away from it. It was the one thing that Dimitri knew he always did well, making Vasily feel good, giving him the space to forget everything that he carried for the both of them each day.

Vasily groaned and parted his lips, his hand sliding up beneath Dimitri’s shoulder to flip him over so they were facing one another, then rising further up to cradle the back of Dimitri’s neck. Dimitri let himself be held, his good hand finding the hem of Vasily’s nightshirt and wandering underneath, admiring the musculature that he now knew was honed through exercises done every morning without fail. When he reached Vasily’s chest, Vasily broke the kiss to move away long enough to pull his nightshirt over his head, then divest Dimitri of his.

There was nothing like the feeling of Vasily first settling over him, one strong thigh parting his legs and broad hips pinning his to the bed. Vasily was always tender with him, now, and Dimitri was able to let him be gentle, because he had finally let Alexey’s way of loving him go.

It had always been too much. It had also, always, never been enough.

“Vasya,” Dimitri whined as Vasily teased him with the lightest ghosting of a touch, making him shiver. All he got in response was Vasily nipping his earlobe and then laying kisses under the crease of his jaw, down his collarbone, until he brought his mouth to tease across Dimitri’s chest, making him moan.

“You scared me,” Vasily admitted as he reached into the drawer in the bedside table for a bottle of oil. “You scared the fuck out of me, Dima.”

He was tender as he opened Dimitri up, aided by the way Dimitri was so drained of energy that his body held not even the slightest hint of resistance to the intrusion. Each one of his strokes in and out of Dimitri’s body was careful, hesitant, enough so that Dimitri canted his hips up to get more pressure. When his hand started to scrabble at Vasily’s shoulder, needing more, Vasily relented and slicked himself up, sinking into Dimitri in the same hesitant way, like Vasily was afraid of breaking him.

Dimitri wrapped his legs around Vasily’s back to force him in deeper, moaning with the change in the angle. “Come on, Vasya,” he urged, sinking his fingernails into the muscle of Vasily’s back. Because he wanted to be as close as he could to Vasily, who loved him; Dimitri wanted to become a part of him and never let him go. He wanted to exist like this, suspended in a perfect haze of pleasure, knowing that he was safe in Vasily’s arms. Knowing that he could trust the man he was giving himself to with the entirety of his heart.

It would never be like this again, not with anyone else. It couldn’t be. He wouldn’t let it be.

“Dima,” Vasily panted, the snapping of his hips speeding up as he neared his climax, the way his mouth fell open mirroring the tension coiling at the base of Dimitri’s spine. Vasily slid a hand under Dimitri’s hip, changing his position just enough that with his next thrust, he caused a cascade of pleasure to ripple through Dimitri’s core, and before he knew it Dimitri was coming untouched, his vision whiting out and every bit of tension and stress fleeing from his body. Vasily pushed into him twice more before he groaned through his own release, filling Dimitri with heat and making him whimper when Vasily pulled out, leaving him achingly empty.

“Darling,” was all Vasily said before he gathered Dimitri into his arms, hugging him so tightly that it stole Dimitri’s breath away. He could feel the minute shake of Vasily’s shoulders that told him the other man was crying, and he couldn’t tell whether it was from the idea that their nights like this were numbered or the fact that Dimitri now carried the same kind of rot that had corrupted Alexey. He couldn’t bring himself to ask. He made himself try to forget. Instead, all he did was bring his good hand up to stroke Vasily’s curls and say a silent prayer to the Lord their God that somehow, he wouldn’t have to break Vasily to save Novo-Svitsevo.

Vasily’s walk back to the palace from Dimitri’s favorite sweet shop was freezing. The wind, accompanied by fat snowflakes, bit at his cheeks and nose and exposed hands, which were clasped around a large box full of treats. Ordinarily, he’d take a moment to appreciate the way that snow could make Rav-Mikhailburg softer around the edges, more like a dream than a place that they ruled, full of people who needed to be cared for and protected. But now the cold just felt like Alexey’s lips on his and Vasily could only shudder at the comparison.

When Alexey had ruled, there had been a pallor over the city. Now, there were children shrieking with laughter in the streets, young people walking arm in arm even though it was the depths of winter, carriages rolling past with the rich and cultured on their way to the latest play or opera. Vasily tried to enjoy it, the fruit of their labor, but everyone else’s joy merely made his own chest feel far more hollow.

It was a relief to make his way back into the palace. He forwent the effort of sneaking in through the tunnel hidden in the basement of a tailor conveniently located next to the palace wall, and instead walked in through the front gate. The guards had seen him enough that they recognized him as an inhabitant of the palace, and they merely nodded to him and waved him through. Still, the idea of being seen and known made his skin crawl. Vasily so much preferred anonymity. Life still felt safer that way, like nothing could touch them, not unless he let it.

It was after dinner and the halls were mostly empty, and as he brushed the snow off his coat, he began heading to Dimitri’s chambers. Dimitri would likely still be awake, working on decrees or a speech or puzzling over how to respond to a particularly challenging letter, but he could likely tempt his Tzar into sharing a bath with him and then retiring to bed early. It wasn’t just that he was exhausted. It was also that something deep within him wanted—no, needed—to hold Dimitri close and know with total certainty, even if it was just for a few hours, that he was safe and well.

He needed that, because now there was a very real chance that his nights with Dimitri were numbered. That he only had a few more weeks of comfort left to give.

Vasily made it up the stairs and to the royal wing of the palace, passing Ayla, who discreetly waved him through. But he should have known better than to relax, because the door to Mischa’s room flew open as he passed and the doctor’s arm shot out to drag him inside.

“Mischka,” Vasily complained once his heart had stopped beating frantically and he’d regained his grasp on the box of rugelach. “I want to go to bed.”

“Well, don’t we all,” Mischa replied, rubbing at their eyes. “Except we can’t exactly sleep when our Tzar is exhibiting signs of a potentially deadly connection to the middle realm, and none of us know how to stop it. Also, maybe he could level the palace or destroy the world. Who the fuck knows what he can do.”

There was an exasperated noise from the bed, and Vasily peered into the depths of the room, which was ringed around the edges by shelves bearing jars full of what Vasily had always presumed were medicinal ingredients, but which could also have merely been very strange decorations. Annika and Ladushka were sitting on the bed, each with a stack of books in front of her.

“Mischka is forcing us to do research, even though I told them that this should not be our concern now.” Ladushka blinked owlishly at him, her hair in an uncharacteristically messy braid. She and Annika were both wearing nightshirts, like they had also been abducted into a deranged version of a party where children slept in the same room for fun. “It does not matter if Dima can wield the Holy Science if we are all dead because of a Urushkin invasion.”

“Yes, Lada, but we aren’t going to be able to stave off a Urushkin invasion if Dima uses shadow powers he can’t control every time he gets upset,” Annika said, biting her lip and sinking further into Mischa’s pillows with the weight of the enormous tome on her lap. “So I see Mischka’s point about needing answers.”

“We all need to research fast and figure this the fuck out.” Mischa pointed to a stack of books on their bed and then to Vasily’s chest. “I don’t want to have this happen again. What if he actually kills someone next time instead of just shriveling up a tiny chicken? Am I the only one worked up about that?”

“Quail,” Ladushka interrupted, frowning. “It was a quail.”

Mischa threw their hands up, smacking Vasily in the face with the trailing end of one of their long sleeves. “I could give a rat’s ass what it was. Dima would destroy himself if he accidentally killed someone with the powers he may have inherited from his dickbag of an ex-husband. The guilt would eat him alive. And, quite selfishly, I don’t want it to be any of us. I didn’t make it through a war to die like that.”

“We have no proof that is going to happen,” Ladushka countered, “whereas we have ample proof that the Free States and Atreus are pursuing an alliance, and that the Urushkins are testing our borders, and that all of this is happening right at this moment. You could be worrying about something inconsequential in the scheme of the movement of nations. And besides, you were adamant that Dima losing consciousness would cease the issuance of magic from him, and that you could accomplish that quickly with an injection of sedatives.”

“So what, you want me to tail him everywhere, ready to stab him with a syringe in case he loses control and starts to murder people?” Mischa snapped. “And then what, we keep him unconscious for the rest of his life?”

Vasily resigned himself to the fact that he was likely not going to get that bath and early bedtime with Dimitri. He shucked off his coat and vest and shoes, deposited his box on Mischa’s desk, rolled up his sleeves and crawled onto Mischa’s bed to settle in between the women.

“There was a single mention of a marriage and Dimitri could barely handle it.” Mischa clambered up onto the bed and shoved Vasily over, tucking their body into the space between him and Annika. “So how, pray tell, are you thinking he’s going to get through an entire summit with the candidates for his hand in marriage? In just a few weeks?”

Annika sighed from her side of the bed, snapping her book shut and tossing it to the foot of the mattress, where it sank with an impressively loud thump. She slumped down across Mischa’s lap, her head landing in Vasily’s, and he didn’t ask for permission before undoing the tie holding her hair into a twist and raking his hands through it, scratching her scalp and making her smile. He needed to do something with his hands so that he didn’t reach up and strangle himself, which was all he felt like doing whenever he thought about this fucking summit. “Lada’s idea of a summit was a good one. But Mischka’s also right.”

Vasily turned to Ladushka, slinging an arm around her. She was rigid for a moment but then relaxed into him, letting her eyes drift shut. It was clear from the way the left lid was twitching that she was beyond exhausted, and Vasily made a mental note—with a twist of guilt in his stomach—to pay half as much attention to his friends’ well-being as he paid to Dimitri’s. It was hard, when Dimitri occupied so much of Vasily’s mind and heart, to keep space for the others, but they were just as much his family as Dimitri had become and he couldn’t let them down.

“He can’t actually meet a new spouse if he’s going to lose control of both his nerves and his apparent magic.” Mischa gesticulated wildly again. “Because then we’re going to have a fucking international incident on our hands when he kills the child of a foreign dignitary, and then a fucking medical incident when he passes out and cracks his skull open. I’ve operated on a dead Dimitri one too many times, people. I’m not doing it again because we put him in a position where he’s going to get hurt.”

Vasily chewed on his lip. He tried to be professional, to put aside his love for Dimitri for a moment, but it was nearly impossible. Still, he needed to make the effort. “As much as I hate to entertain the idea, we need to figure out these powers, since we have no way of knowing whether Dima accidentally losing control again could have far bigger implications. Especially if we need him to be in the right frame of mind to…to entertain suitors.”

None of them prodded him for how he was feeling, even though his voice was wavering as he choked out the words. Annika only reached out and squeezed his calf comfortingly. He closed his eyes and tried to clear his throat.

“I think I can get him comfortable with the idea of suitors,” he continued. “It’s just not a lot of time to prepare him. But Dima is resilient, more than any of us give him credit for.” He tried to say it clinically, like he was talking about preparing a spy or assessing a mark. Thinking of it that way made it easier than knowing he was talking about the one man he’d ever truly loved.

Annika hummed her acknowledgment and Ladushka’s shoulders lost a little bit of their tension. “I am glad you will help,” she said, relief evident in her voice.

Vasily raised an eyebrow. “Did you think I’d refuse?”

Ladushka looked down, blushing, and Vasily didn’t know whether to be hurt or not that his friend had thought his selfishness ran that deep.

They all sat for a minute, silent, the tension returning to the room in a way that made Vasily’s skin crawl. Eventually, Annika began to idly turn the pages of her book again, even as the rest of them stayed still. Vasily was convinced that she wasn’t reading, especially given that her eyes were closed.

“I think there is an element of Dima’s reluctance that none of you have taken into account.”

Ladushka’s wary observation was so unexpected that Vasily startled. “What is it?”

She gave a yawn that she tried to stifle, her jaw ticking with the effort. “I have always suspected that he does not think about romance and sex like the rest of you. That in some ways, Dima is more like me. Sex without love is not the default to Dima, you see. Perhaps it is not even his preference.”

“Hmm?” was all Annika managed, sitting up out of Vasily’s lap, a bemused expression on her face.

Mischa blinked owlishly. “Could you explain, Lada? I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

Ladushka gave a long-suffering sigh and sat up, brushing loose strands of hair out of her eyes. “You all think with your genitals first.” She stared at Vasily and Mischa in particular, and Vasily felt himself flush. “People like Dima and I are different. It is quite common, you know, for people to have varying relationships to sexual desire and attraction. For as long as I have known him, which is the entirety of our lives, Dimitri has only rarely expressed attraction to another person, at least in any sense that was not academic or speculative, if he wasn’t already familiar with them and enamored. With Alexey, those feelings and familiarity bloomed rapidly, over the course of a single night.” She stared at Vasily, pausing for a moment. “But then you, Vasya—that courtship was much more of what I had come to know from him as his pattern of attraction. Where friendship came first, then love, and then desire.”

All the breath left him at once, as things clicked into place in his mind. “Oh.”

Dimitri had come to his marriage with Alexey a virgin, and Vasily had assumed it was because his parents had wanted him to be chaste for a future spouse. But it had always struck him as odd—as gendered as the bias was, it was undeniable that most royal or noble offspring who weren’t able to bear children behaved as young people did, without much care to arriving at the marriage bed untouched. Dimitri’s older brother Fedyenka, set to inherit the throne, was well-known for his exploits through every reputable brothel in Rav-Mikhailburg. And no one seemed to care one whit, not even Dimitri’s parents. Insisting on chastity for their youngest son was, therefore, hard to explain away.

This, though—this made far more sense. That there hadn’t been anyone who had captured Dimitri’s heart, and therefore there hadn’t been anyone who had earned the privilege of knowing his body. That those two things were intertwined for Dimitri, the same way that Ladushka had always said she would sooner stab herself in the eye with a letter opener than have to touch another person intimately. That perhaps sex was most attractive to Dimitri in the context of something deeper, something more, and he hadn’t been ready for that step before meeting Alexey.

“Oh,” he repeated, because the enormity of it struck him, the fact Dimitri may have loved him long before Vasily had known it.

“Oh,” Ladushka echoed back, a soft smile on her face. She patted Vasily’s knee. “You see, now.”

“Yeah,” Vasily said, shaking his head, wanting nothing more than to go back to Dimitri right then and there and kiss him senseless. But there was work to do. “It makes sense that he would be…worried about being forced to do something he isn’t comfortable with. At least we could insist on a long engagement so he could get to know the other person before a marriage?”

Ladushka frowned. “That would be counterproductive to the purpose of trying to obtain an alliance treaty. The marriage would likely be a condition of the treaty signing itself.”

“We can’t make him…” Annika trailed off, then pulled her knees into her chest, her brow furrowed. “That’s…that’s assault. He’s not an animal to be bred, Lada, even if it’s important. He’s got to be willing.”

Vasily’s stomach soured. “He wouldn’t have to. Not if his spouse agreed. Alexey and Dimitri were going to adopt children, right? No reason that couldn’t be a solution to the problem of heirs here too, even if he were to marry someone capable of bearing their biological children. As long as the person was willing to go along with a chaste marriage, be it forever if Dima wasn’t interested in them in that way, or just until they were sufficiently comfortable with each other that attraction developed naturally.”

“I’m not sure Dima would care about himself enough to choose the spouse best suited for his desires, as opposed to the one best suited for the country. We all know he tends towards forgetting his own needs.” Mischa looked faintly ill at their own pronouncement, and in the ensuing silence, the four of them stared at each other across the bed.

“That was what happened, wasn’t it?” Annika said quietly. “He forgot himself for eight years. And we didn’t do anything to stop it. We—I didn’t even notice it. Or maybe I did, and my mind blocked it out because there was nothing I could do. It was his husband. We’ve all shared our guilt over the war, but we were guilty of letting him suffer in silence for far longer than that.”

Nausea rose up in Vasily’s throat. Even if none of the three of them had truly understood it before that moment, he lived with the guilt of having known Dimitri’s pain from the moment they met and done nothing to convince the other man that he deserved better than Alexey Balakin’s abuse. Because Dimitri had loved Alexey. Because Vasily hadn’t wanted to risk his place at Dimitri’s side by angering him. Not until it had mattered for the rest of them too.

“I’m going to bed.” He brushed off the hand that Annika laid on his arm and the half-concerned, half-guilty look that Mischa shot him, and stood up off the mattress, scooping up the box of treats for Dimitri but not bothering to grab the rest of his clothes before he made his way out the door. He’d collect them in the morning, or Mischa would absorb them into their wardrobe the way they had, to Vasily’s consternation, in the past.

The only important thing right now was to get back to Dimitri and remind him that he was safe and that he was loved, and that even if they were going to be forced to make hard choices for the security of Novo-Svitsevo, Vasily would never again stand by and watch as Dimitri was hurt.

That, at least, was something he could promise.

Alexey Balakin returned to life for the second time as ice made flesh.

Every step back to the mortal realm was a struggle, every bargain made with the angel of death stripping the last remains of his humanity. But when he opened his eyes, Alexey did not mind.

That last vestige of humanity was, after all, what had allowed Mikhail Haleyvin to kill him.

The first time he had performed the ritual, he had been fighting alone in the dark. It had been him and the void, and the chasm between where he was and what he could become. He had known that was his battle and his alone, and when the time had come, he had won, wresting a new beginning from God Himself.

This second time, he was more attuned to the realm in which his soul hovered. It wasn’t darkness, but a miasma of souls, some the mortal dead and others the demons pushing to enter the world of men. They swirled around him as he clawed, inch by inch, bargain by bargain, back to the light.

All he thought about was how, when he returned, he was going to end Mikhail.

There was one insistent soul nudging against his own, following him through the dark, as laced with fear and anger and pain as his was. Another soul pervaded with the Holy Science, chipped away around the edge by sin or something worse. He wondered in quiet moments who it was, but every time he reached out it drew away. Some other holy man or mystic, perhaps, but it hardly mattered to him, focused as he was on his ultimate goal.

It was all worth it, in the end, for the moment he opened his eyes.

Morozov—or what had once been his chancellor—peered over him, the candlelight flickering across his coal-black face with a pointed snout and dagger-sharp teeth. His eyes still shone an intelligent green, human enough that Alexey was reassured that he had not devolved into a mere beast.

“Master,” Morozov ground out, his voice like gravel.

“Morozov.” Alexey sat himself up, examining his hands and then the rest of his limbs. Still covered in the chemicals of the resurrection dome and the dried remains of his own blood, sitting among a pile of broken glass from where Morozov must have crushed the dome, he knew that he was far from the commanding figure he had once been. His muscles had weakened and his body had taken on a wasted appearance, like clawing his way back to life this time had taken far more from him than his body had had to give.

He touched the hollow of his throat.

Trusting people had always been Alexey’s greatest mistake.

“What happened?” His voice was dry with disuse, and he had to search to remember how to speak in a way that made sense in this world.

“Moy Tzar,” Morozov said, sinking into a low bow. “I apologize deeply for my failure to protect you from the traitor. You were betrayed by Mikhail Haleyvin, who must have been corrupted by the enemy. He plunged a blade into your throat, which banished the presence of God from you. I brought you here, to your estate at Chernitzy, as we had discussed in the event of your death.”

Alexey groaned as he pushed himself upwards using the edges of the dome, the broken glass cutting into his palms. But he hardly noticed the pain as he got to his feet, panting, the exertion of standing after so long making him dizzy with the strain.

The first time he had come back to life, it had not been this hard.

Alexey cursed as he stepped out of the dome and onto the cool marble of the floor in one of his disused parlors. He was glad that he had had the foresight, when he became Tzar, to send Morozov to set up a resurrection dome at his ancestral estate. He had dismissed it to himself as a concession to paranoia at the time—after all, who would be able to harm him?—but in the end, it hadn’t been paranoia but prudence.

He padded, nude and soaking wet, through the halls of his estate, leaving bloody footprints with every step. He shivered as he walked, and it was a thousand times more violent than it had been in his second life. Now he felt like he was immersed in the waters of the Nevka at midwinter, frigid to the point where moving was tortuous, every movement thick and sluggish. Where before his joints were stiff as he worked, now he could tell they would be entirely resistant to his commands.

It didn’t matter, though. He would be wielding the power of the Holy Science against his enemies, and willing body or not he would reduce them to dust.

The bedroom he had shared with Dimitri was as they had left it the day they had departed for Rav-Mikhailburg years prior. There were books still stacked on his side of the bed, and an open book covered with a discarded necklace and a pair of earrings on Dimitri’s. A pang went through him at the sight of the bed they had shared before everything had been ruined, the place where he had first learned Dimitri’s body and soul. Each night of those early days flashed through his memory, every remembrance more painful than the last. They had all been supplanted by his husband crawling into bed with him with hatred in his heart.

He regretted killing Dimitri, but what he regretted even more was that Dimitri had tried to kill him first.

Alexey turned away from the bed and made his way into their bathing chamber, the tap groaning in protest when he went to fill the tub. His instructions to Morozov, should he need to utilize the resurrection dome, had been to dismiss all of Chernitzy’s servants so that they might have privacy. Undoubtedly, though, Morozov’s own appearance would have taken care of that on its own.

But Alexey didn’t mind the solitude, stepping into the scalding water and feeling his shivers ease. It was easier this way, to sit in quiet contemplation without the bustle of other people and their curious eyes all around him. It would be difficult for him to root out spies and maintain secrecy if peasants were crawling about the estate merely to keep things free of dust. He was more than capable of bathing himself.

He would need time to recuperate and test the limits of his power once again, and he was sure that by now Dimitri’s supporters had made some attempt to claim the throne. He wondered if Ivan had managed to assert power, perhaps by killing the rest of Dimitri’s court, still held in the dungeons, and executing Mikhail—if he had, it undoubtedly would be easier to return to Rav-Mikhailburg. They could have their wedding, and Alexey’s second triumph over death would no doubt lend his rule further credibility. In turn, Ivan warming the throne for him would have increased the boy’s own legitimacy.

Soap washed away the sticky remnants of his rebirth, and when he dipped his head under the water, he closed his eyes and let himself float, so much like the feeling of the space between life and death where he had spent the last months. When the water cooled and the shivering began to plague him again, he got out and dried himself, choosing a pair of loose pants and a tunic, wrapping a heavy dressing gown over them. He avoided the mirror after a single sidelong glance, unnerved by the sight of how gaunt his cheeks were, how his once-dark hair was now streaked with silver.

There was a scar at the base of his throat, the only visible imperfection on his body. He touched a finger to the thick, ropey line, wondering what had been done to cause such damage, where before nothing had been able to mar him, not arrows or daggers or the best of his own efforts.

He ventured back down the stairs to the parlor he had loved the most during his mortal life, the sun streaming in through the opened curtains illuminating the delicate gold patterning on the walls and the upholstery in shades of pink. Morozov appeared like the zemonyii knew where he was without having to ask and draped a heavy blanket around Alexey’s shaking shoulders.

“How did he do it?” Alexey asked when Morozov came to stand before him, tail swishing and clawed hands hanging at his side. “How did he kill me?”

“I cannot touch it, Moy Tzar.” Alexey wondered if he would ever get used to Morozov’s voice now, something from the depths of Gehenna itself. “But it is wrapped in a cloth in your study, and you may see it. I removed it from your throat before putting you into the dome, but I am afraid that I was able to do little more than that. It burned when it touched me, and I cannot look at the object without losing my vision, at least for a time.”

Alexey’s stomach hollowed out, the memory of Dimitri and a scrap of paper which seemed to light him on fire bubbling up to the forefront of his awareness. He furrowed his brow, wondering if it were possible—if Dimitri had somehow outplayed him, had somehow corrupted his general and put Mikhail up to murdering Alexey should his own attempt fail. Perhaps Dimitri had turned Mikhail on their journey back to Rav-Mikhailburg, bewitching him the same way that he had once made Alexey forget good sense.

He could hardly blame another man for falling for Dimitri’s charms.

“Bring it to me.” Morozov bowed and left the room, his taloned feet clicking on the parquet floors. Alexey stared out the window, his mind blank and his body cold, until Morozov returned several long minutes later, bearing a parcel wrapped in leather.

“Be careful,” Morozov cautioned in what sounded the closest to a command the other man had ever dared to give him. “It could do you grave harm, Moy Tzar.”

Alexey scoffed, because what more harm could the object do to him? It had already killed him once, and it was unlikely to do so again. He put it in his lap and unwrapped the leather binding, revealing a cloth parcel roughly three-quarters the length of his forearm. When he drew the fabric apart, he hissed as his fingers touched whatever was inside.

It burned, but he was so cold he couldn’t bring himself to mind despite the pain. Pain was nothing to him now, after all he had endured.

The object hurt to look at, but not enough that he couldn’t see what he was holding. It was a length of bone—human or animal, he couldn’t tell—with lettering inscribed on it in midnight-black ink. He ran a thumbnail over the letters, wincing, and the edge of his nail sank into divots. The letters weren’t written with ink, then—they had been burned there, scored deep into the bone.

He traced the word, counting the letters. When he got to the end, recognition shuddered through him.

He was holding a bone inscribed with the Name. The most powerful ingredient in any exercise of the Holy Science, what he had invoked himself in preparing for his own resurrection. Mikhail had stabbed him with this, and now Alexey understood why he had died. Somehow, a peasant from Voloski had been able to find the secret name of the Lord, and then had fashioned a bone into a dagger and used it to kill him.

None of it made sense to him, except that in his absence, Dimitri must have begun to learn the Holy Science and had convinced Mikhail to assassinate him. Maybe Dimitri himself had fashioned the bone dagger.

Somehow, the thing that hurt most of all was the thought that, for all his trying, all his begging and pleading, he had never gotten Dimitri to pay attention to the Holy Science. It had broken the two of them apart, ended their marriage and torn Novo-Svitsevo to shreds. And yet the moment Dimitri was no longer with him, he claimed the power that Alexey had been trying to hand him.

That, more than anything, was what cut to his core.

Alexey rewrapped the length of bone in the fabric, then the leather. He handed the bundle off to Morozov with instructions to leave it in his office for later study. Alexey would have to run tests to determine what kind of animal bone Mikhail had used to fashion the weapon—perhaps that was important, somehow, to the ability to use the Name as a means of harming those protected by the Holy Science.

With Morozov gone, Alexey was left to stare into the fire and contemplate exactly how he was going to proceed. He needed information—that was the first step in retaking the throne from whoever sat on it now. He prayed that it was Ivan, who at least had the correct name and would likely be overjoyed at his return. Alexey would prefer not having to fight his way back into the palace, but if he had to, he would.

Life and death. Alexey would meld them together into an unstoppable rule. And this time, he would make no mistakes.

Dimitri sat at the head of the council chamber, looking at his advisers and not hearing a single word they said.

Ladushka was listening attentively, at least, the pen in her hand flying across the page as she took notes on the report that the minister of their infrastructure repair program was giving. Dimitri had heard the word roads repeated enough in the first few minutes of the session that he was sure that was what they were continuing to talk about. But he couldn’t bring his mind to focus, not when he was nudging around the edges of his soul like bothering a loose tooth.

This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening.

The power that had come out of him had frightened him more than he cared to admit. He had seen Alexey displaying hints of the same kind of power in the time before his coup, but never without intent—he’d taken great joy in showing Dimitri that he could murder bugs and rats with careless ease, and it never failed to make Alexey angry when Dimitri responded not with pride but with horrified nausea. But it wasn’t something out of his control, and he’d been able to wield it with precision, unlike what had happened to Dimitri.

All he could think about was what could have happened—whether, if he hadn’t passed out, he could have hurt or killed his friends.

And with every moment that went by, he was more and more terrified that Alexey had somehow ruined him for good when he had murdered Dimitri. That somehow, by coming back to life and spitting in the face of God, Dimitri had become just as bad as Alexey had been.

You will suffer more than any living man has suffered. The prophecy from nearly a year ago kept ringing in his ears. He’d thought that it had meant the moment when the angel Gavril had flayed open his arm, and then he’d been convinced it referred to the pain of withstanding the examination of God and His archangels. But now he was beginning to fear that actually, he hadn’t yet gotten to the point in his life which the prophecy was talking about.

Because what would make him suffer more than being the reason one of his friends was dead?

And the worst thought of all, the thing that had plagued him the most, was if he truly cared to examine his own fears, it wasn’t that he was worried that he’d kill any one of his friends.

No, the true fear came from fearing that he’d kill Vasily, in particular.

It was a horrifying, selfish thought. And it pained him that somehow, he and Vasily had become so closely intertwined that it was his life Dimitri valued above anyone else’s. That Vasily was the one who Dimitri would save without question if he could only spare a single member of his court.

And moreover, Dimitri wasn’t even sure if he should fear the power he’d inadvertently gained. Because thinking about Vasily brought another possibility to mind—that if he learned how to wield this power, he wouldn’t need a marriage alliance to keep his country safe. He’d be able to do it on his own, the same way that Alexey had wanted him to all along—it was the reason that Alexey had wanted Dimitri to be the one to undergo the ritual in the first place. With that kind of power, Alexey had crushed Dimitri’s army. Dimitri, if he learned, could do the same to any enemies that stood in Novo-Svitsevo’s way.

If he gave in and did what Alexey had always wanted. If he finally, finally, let Alexey win. Because what was there to lose, now? He’d spurned God once, and he had no doubt that was more than enough to keep him out of heaven when he died permanently.

“Moy Tzar?”

The question made Dimitri blink back into awareness, shaking his head to clear the lingering thoughts. The minister was looking at him with a quizzical expression on her face, like she had been completely fooled by his carefully schooled expression into thinking that yes, he was paying attention.

“Minister Georgievna is wondering if you would perhaps like a tour of the restored bridges at Gorki, the way you toured a few of the neighboring towns over the prior few weeks,” Ladushka supplied smoothly, because of course she hadn’t missed that he hadn’t been paying any attention at all. “But of course Minister Georgievna realizes that there are extraordinary demands on your time.”

Dimitri shuddered. He remembered Gorki. Not the bridges that had been blown up—and which had apparently been fixed, now—but the way Vasily had cried that night in their tent. He remembered holding Vasily as the other man shuddered and tried to convince Dimitri that he hadn’t meant for so many civilians to die, that it was never his intention to kill their own people. And nothing that Dimitri had said could convince him it hadn’t been his fault, and that of course Dimitri didn’t blame Vasily for what had happened. No one could.

“No,” he said as firmly as he could manage. “I don’t think I have the time in my schedule for such a tour. It’s too far from Rav-Mikhailburg, but I would appreciate a written report that I could review. If you’d excuse me.”

He stood up and the rest of the room stood with him, including the minister, who looked nonplussed at the abrupt dismissal.

“La—Chancellor Zakharova will continue the council session. I have something else I must attend to urgently.”

Dimitri nodded to Ladushka, who nodded back and sat down, pen in hand, ordering the minister to conclude her report before they moved on to discussing the reluctance of the western provinces to pay the newly increased tax rate.

Outside, in the hall, Dimitri swallowed hard and took several deep breaths to slow his heart rate. His anxiety was worse now that he was worried it might lead to a sudden outpouring of power that could kill anyone in the vicinity, but he didn’t know what to do about the vicious cycle of that fear making the anxiety itself more acute. He pulled Mischa’s pills out of his pocket—they were faintly crumbled, as he couldn’t always easily open the bottle one-handed and kept them loose in a handkerchief for instances like this—and took two, knowing that he was condemning himself to a very long afternoon nap.

There was one place that he knew he’d likely be able to get at least some information about controlling the magic currently winding its way around his spine and through his heart. He took a turn to the right, following the corridors that he so rarely took, heading to the study that Vasily had claimed for his own even after being offered other choices. Mischa had rolled their eyes and said something about dogs pissing on things they wanted to claim, but Dimitri had understood wanting to prove to Alexey’s ghost that they were the ones who had triumphed.

Vasily wasn’t in the room, which was a relief—he didn’t want to have to explain what he was doing and why, and he had no doubt that Vasily would be adamantly opposed to the idea of Dimitri poring over Alexey’s journals. The door creaked open to reveal a fire burning high in the grate—Vasily must have spent the morning working here before leaving—and the small demon sleeping in the now significantly larger birdcage by the window. Dimitri had ordered a servant to supply fresh cream every day and lined the bottom of the massive enclosure with velvet pillows that warmed in the sunlight coming through the windows. The rest of his court still didn’t understand what, precisely, he was tending to in the cage, but none of them pressed too hard. The creature cracked an eye open and chittered in greeting, but then went back to sleeping in its sunbeam.

Dimitri crossed the room to the bookcases, finding the row of Alexey’s journals. He reached for the one he knew contained the time immediately after Alexey’s resurrection and opened the pages.

Seeing Alexey’s impeccably neat handwriting sent a pang through Dimitri’s chest. He remembered when most of these entries had been written, Alexey sitting next to him while Dimitri worked through decrees or notes from his council, Alexey casting an eye over Dimitri’s shoulder occasionally to make sure he was doing what he was supposed to, then returning to his own notetaking. Alexey had always been meticulous about keeping a journal, and Dimitri had envied him the dedication—his nightstand was full of journals he’d collected but deemed too beautiful to write in, or books full of randomly dated entries because he lacked the discipline to write every day.

The edge of the book crackled, and Dimitri looked down in horror to see that the corner of the page he was holding had turned black, tiny wisps of power curling from his fingertips like extensions of his very veins, burning through the page like slow-moving fire. He dropped the book and the shadows vanished, almost like they’d been startled, and as he turned his hands over in the light from the window, they looked ordinary.

From the cage, a prrp caught his attention, and he found himself staring into the wide green eyes of the winged demon. It cocked its head at him and then launched itself onto one of the higher perches, butting its head against the cage’s bars and making another insistent noise. He stiffened but reached a tentative fingertip out to brush the downy velvet of the demon’s head, scratching between its ears. The tendrils of shadow emerged again, reaching for the demon and twining around its body. Dimitri almost jerked his hand back but stopped because the demon purred.

“Do you like that?” The demon was arching its back and stretching its wings, acting like a cat might luxuriate in a favored human’s attention. The demon chirped in response, and Dimitri scratched harder. The shadow bridge between them grew stronger and more solid, more like ink than wisps of darkness, and Dimitri bit his lip. “Is that feeding you or something?”

The demon flopped over on the perch and stretched its legs out, and Dimitri scratched its stomach until he started to feel light-headed, spots intruding on his vision. He pulled back and the shadow tendrils dissipated, leaving the demon purring happily, looking plumper and glossier than before.

Dimitri hadn’t known that this magic could…feed, if that was what it was doing, instead of only kill. And that unsettled him enough that he stumbled back from the cage, picking up the journal he’d dropped and tucking it into his jacket.

He did his best to breathe deeply and steady his heart rate, and with a few moments of leaning against the bookcase, he was able to recollect himself. The magic within him felt, perhaps, a little less insistent, a little less like it was testing the edges of Dimitri’s boundaries, and so he straightened his clothes and swept his hair back into place with a hand and walked out of the room.

When he closed the door to Vasily’s study, he turned left and headed down the corridor instead, making his way to the interior courtyard of the palace. The royal stables were built into one of the walls, and the smell of hay and horses calmed him as he strode in. The stable hands stopped their work and bowed to him, and the head groom appeared out of nowhere to do the same.

“Moy Tzar,” he said, bowing. “My apologies, but we did not expect you this afternoon. Your horse is not yet saddled. If you give us a moment, we will ready her for you.”

“No need.” Dimitri waved him off. “I just want to spend some time with her. I’ll be in her stall.”

He took sugar cubes from the jar on the nearby shelf and made his way to where Malishka was hanging her head over the stall door, already snorting in anticipation of a treat.

“Hello, girl.” He patted her velvety nose and couldn’t help but give a small smile when she pushed her enormous head into his chest, making him stumble backwards. “Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”

He offered her a sugar cube on the flat of his palm, and when she accepted it, he opened the latch on her stall and slipped inside. With it closed behind him, he sank down into the hay, confident that here, at least, no one would bother him for a few hours.

Malishka shifted in the stall and then folded her legs, lying down. Dimitri took advantage of her offer and scooted close, lying against the warmth of her side, scratching her between the ears. She was a hunting horse from the finest breeding stock of Chernitzy, known for producing some of the best horses in the nation, but Dimitri hadn’t had time to take her on a hunt in years. Still, she didn’t seem to mind, even if it had led to grooms riding her more often than Dimitri himself. He still loved her as much as he had the day that Alexey had first presented her to him, before they had truly come to know each other, an early gift that Dimitri had treasured far more than the diamonds his future husband had draped him in. Alexey had noticed and gifted Dimitri another horse for each birthday, but Malishka was the only one that Dimitri took with them to Rav-Mikhailburg. He’d spent many a night sitting with her just like this at their Chernitzy estate, telling her his fears and hopes and the dreams he had for his life with his husband-to-be, how he wanted their life together to turn out, all the pleasures he wanted to share with Alexey.

The best part was that Malishka couldn’t speak, so she couldn’t tell him what an idiot he’d been.

Here, he was alone and free of judgment, and the stable hands knew to stay well enough away from this stall at the end of the stable when he came in for a bit of privacy. He sighed and tilted his head against the horse’s neck, winding his hand through the coarse strands of her mane and breathing in the musky smell of her hide. “I’m going to have to marry to save Novo-Svitsevo, and I don’t want to. All I want is Vasily. And now I’m terrified that Alexey ruined me, and that I’m going to hurt or kill someone I love with power I never asked for and cannot control. I came back to life but lost my body and my freedom and now potentially my soul as well. I don’t know what to do, Malishka. I’m terrified. And telling anyone will only make it worse, because there isn’t a fix for it, is there?”

It was the first time he’d said it all aloud. He knew that if he ever voiced it to Vasily, the spymaster would contort himself into devising a solution that would ensure that Dimitri would never have to marry anyone at all, no matter what it did to the empire’s well-being. Vasily would burn the world down for him and never once regret it.

Dimitri couldn’t let him do that, no matter how badly he wanted to. No matter how much the idea of tying himself to another stranger terrified him. He was the Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo, something that hundreds of thousands of soldiers had died to ensure, something that had caused untold suffering because no, he couldn’t give this up. Not to Alexey.

And that meant that because he had seized the throne once more, he had to do everything needed to keep it, to hold the country together, even if it tore him apart inside. He could pretend it all away and insist it wasn’t happening, but if he sat with himself, he could recognize that impulse as denial. And his denial of the truth had never been good for him, nor for Novo-Svitsevo.

He pulled the journal out of his jacket, thumbing through the pages. Alexey had written extensively about his efforts to master the powers he’d been resurrected with, and Dimitri traced with his finger the passages about meditation and clearing the mind of volatile emotions. He could do it, if he tried, he was sure—he could at least tamp down the magic, even if he couldn’t control its actual use.

Malishka snorted and craned her neck to nose at his jacket, interrupting his thoughts and making him snap the journal shut. He watched her lip the fingers of his left arm, nausea twisting his stomach when he couldn’t feel the sensation at all. “I don’t have more for you,” he said, running a hand up the back of one of her ears. “I’m sorry.”

He felt on the verge of saying that more and more these days, that he had nothing left to give. But that was not the way this life worked, and he would give and give and give for Novo-Svitsevo until there was nothing left to take.

“Tell me about this summit.”

Dimitri had gathered his courage and found Ladushka in her small office off the council chamber, sorting through the stack of reports delivered by the ministers at the morning’s council meeting.

She looked up and arched an eyebrow. “Are you sure it is a good idea to discuss that now?”

He caught the subtext—Are you sure it’s safe for you to be around me when we talk about this?—but after concentrating on deepening his breathing and having confessed his fears to Malishka out loud, he felt steadier. Sometimes voicing his fears was enough for him to feel some relief. It was merely a shame that the only person he felt like he could truly talk to these days was a horse. Everyone else would try to fix a problem that had no solution, and there were more than enough problems in the country that needed actual attention.

Dimitri was the Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo, and he was stronger than this. He could handle this. No matter what happened, he would survive it and the country would prosper because of him. His people would be safe because of him. He could be fine. He would be fine. He repeated it to himself over and over as a talisman, and prayed that if he said it enough, he would come to believe it.

“Yes,” he replied, impressed with the steadiness of his voice. “Yes, it’s a good idea to discuss this now.” He pulled out the chair on the other side of her broad oak desk and dropped into it, picking a bit of hay off his breeches. “I want to know what your plans are and what we think we can accomplish.”

Ladushka cocked her head at him, and for a moment he thought that she would see right through him, the terror that he was shoving down in order to have this conversation. But if she did, she merely ignored it, nodding once and shifting the reports away. She opened a drawer and pulled out a sheaf of papers, passing them over to him.

“Arms deals?” He raised a brow, scanning her line of neat handwriting. “You want the summit to be about arms sales and trade?”

“Among other things.” Ladushka steepled her fingers under her chin. “With the massive expenditures of ammunition during the war, it is plausible that we would now need to broker arms deals with other nations to replenish our stock of bullets, rifles and the like. But it will also serve as a good opportunity to demonstrate some of the scientific advancements we made during the war—increased explosive power and longer-range artillery chief among them. The nations of the continent will all be eager for the inventions we developed and then tested through the war.”

Dimitri narrowed his eyes, racking his tired brain for the details that his new minister of defense, Resnikov, had conveyed to him in their latest meeting. “But we don’t have a shortage of ammunition or anything else. We restored any production capacity that was destroyed. Our problem is a dearth of soldiers and the fact that we have exhausted our national will to fight, not a lack of bullets.”

The corner of Ladushka’s mouth tilted up in a rare grin. “And who, precisely, will be telling the delegates of the other nations that? I for one was certainly not intending to include a tour of our storehouses in this summit. It would not be a very attractive venue for hosting some of the most powerful people on the continent, would it?”

He nodded appreciatively. “Deception, then.”

She shrugged. “We can always use more contacts with varying suppliers of goods we cannot efficiently produce. It is not so much a deception as a useful, believable pretext. It is far more likely that delegates from other nations will attend if they believe there to be economic gain in it for themselves.”

Dimitri tapped a finger against the edge of the desk as he scanned the rest of the plans, outlining various activities that the Novo-Svitsevan throne would host for the delegations from Atreus, Urushka, the Free States, and a number of smaller nations meant to serve as a disguise for their true aim.

“And then, during the summit, I will…meet the others.” Dimitri swallowed hard, repeating I am stronger than this to himself over and over. “And then what?”

“And then you will decide to whom you will extend an offer of marriage.” Ladushka leveled him with a look. “Although, you will have to be prepared for everything that entails. And I suspect that will be the most difficult part of this for you. I am here, you know, to talk, Dima. I am uniquely placed to understand.”

Ladushka had been promised in marriage to a lord from the north of the country, a man ten years her senior whom she had never met. Her parents had arranged the match when she was a mere five years old and had stuck by their intention to marry off their daughter even if doing so was to deny her preferences in every way. Dimitri had watched Ladushka suffer in the months leading up to the initial date set for the wedding, which she had managed to hold off for as long as possible. He’d gone off to Chernitzy before it happened and waited breathlessly for every letter informing him of yet another ploy that she’d contrived to delay the marriage even more. In the end, it had not been her own cleverness that had saved her, but the war. With her parents on the wrong side, and all of them otherwise occupied with far more pressing matters, she was finally able to break free.

He wondered if he looked the same way she had, pale and drawn and as though constantly, uncharacteristically, on the verge of tears. Waiting to be owned, at least in part, by someone of a higher status whose rule would be law. Dimitri wouldn’t be in such a terrible position—as the Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo, he was equal or greater in rank and status to each of the matches Ladushka had proposed, and he would meet them first—but it still meant he wouldn’t be able to be his true self.

He wouldn’t be able to be with Vasily, at least not in any way that didn’t turn the man he loved into a shameful secret. Vasily didn’t deserve that—he deserved to find a person who could love him freely, openly, and not have to hide it. He deserved a family and a future that didn’t involve hiding in Dimitri’s shadow.

And some traitorous part of Dimitri wondered if he didn’t deserve the same. The chance to be adored for all of himself, to be honored as a full person and not a title, to be seen as the love of someone’s life and not a means to an end. Now that Vasily had shown him what that was like, Dimitri feared that it would be more difficult for him to give up than he’d realized. When he’d married Alexey, he hadn’t known. This time, when he married, it would be with a clear-eyed view of everything he had willingly lost and would never get back.

The void he sensed within him pulsed, and Dimitri realized he was getting upset enough to awaken the power. He drew in a shaky breath, biting his tongue to distract himself, another tactic mentioned in Alexey’s journal. Blood started to leak into his mouth along with the pain, but it centered him enough that he felt the power recede.

If Alexey could control this, so could he.

There was a tugging on the tether that still bound him and Vasily, a sense of concern nudging against his soul. He responded with a soothing brush against the connection, a sign that all was well, because, at least in this moment, it was.

Dimitri could master this. He could master what came next, and then he could make sure everyone was safe.

“Dima?” Ladushka’s furrowed brow made him wonder if she had been talking without him hearing the words. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” he breathed, because he was. He could do this. “Tell me everything you know about these suitors. I should know what they’re like before they arrive.”

Joining Ladushka for strategy sessions about the summit provided enough distraction that he was able to forget about his worries for a few merciful hours at a time. She and her staff were meticulous planners, arranging everything from the invitations and the ideal composition of the seating arrangements to the colors of the napkins for the state dinners and what those would signal. They had been working feverishly for a week now to ensure that Rav-Mikhailburg was prepared to host the delegations for the duration of the summit—nearly a month.

“Remember,” Vasily cautioned one afternoon, tapping a pen against his lips in a way that made Ladushka’s eyes twitch. “No meat tough enough that it needs a knife. Everyone’s got to think that the latest in Novo-Svitsevan delicacies is meat soft enough to be cut with a fork.”

Ladushka gave a long-suffering sigh. “You must stop focusing on what Dimitri cannot do and focus on what he can.”

“It’s not ridiculous to think about how it’s perceived.”

“Our Tzar came back from death itself.” Ladushka glared at him. “Do you think that on its own is not impressive enough? The reality of his body now is what it will be. The more you focus on it, the more it encourages him to think about it as a disadvantage. And while certain things may be harder for him now, it is merely a difference.”

Vasily’s cheeks heated with an embarrassed flush, and he looked out the window at the flakes of snow drifting down from the slate-gray sky. “He’s really conscious of it.”

“Of course. Because those he loves are always paying attention to it. It highlights that it is something noticeable and worthy of pity. Act as though it merely is, and you give him the permission he is unconsciously seeking to act as though it is not different at all.”

“When did you get so insightful, Lada?” he grumbled, but he reached out to squeeze her hand all the same.

“Since I spent the better part of my life knowing I was different.” She cocked her head. “Not for the way my body functions, but for the way my mind processes facts and figures and emotions differently than the rest of the world. I saw it as a disadvantage because of the way my tutors and peers treated me for being what they deemed cold and insensitive. But now I know it is merely a different way of being—one which, in this case, has lent me a distinct advantage in my current position.”

Vasily ran his hand through his hair, somewhat taken aback. “I hadn’t ever noticed, truthfully.”

Ladushka’s answering smirk made him realize he’d been had. “Precisely.”

“Your point is made,” Vasily said, chastened. “So I’ll watch the way I act around Dima, and if you see me doing something unhelpful, you’ll let me know, yeah?”

“Of course.” Ladushka reached across the table and reciprocated his earlier gesture by giving his hand a squeeze. “I know it comes from nothing but love with you, Vasya. I did not mean to criticize. But the way we treat him will alter the way he sees himself, and the way he sees himself is paramount.”

“Exactly,” Vasily said. He steeled himself to broach the topic that he knew they needed to discuss, but it made his skin crawl every time his mind touched it. “He needs to believe in himself because he needs to win someone’s heart. And we need to know who to steer him to. So tell me what we know about these suitors.”

Ladushka nodded and pulled open a drawer in her desk to retrieve a thick stack of papers. “I was not planning on directing Dima towards anyone—any of the three would solve the political problem we are now confronting, because each represents a point of our vulnerability. It is akin to taking a leg off a stool—with one removed, the entire structure collapses. None of them would be in a position to attack us with any of the others joined to us in an alliance. But I am happy to give you the details I have about each of them, so that you may have your spies fill in any holes you find.”

“Thanks.” Vasily took the first sheaf of papers from her, his eyes skimming the biographical details of Lukas Marks.

“Lukas is temperamentally the best match for Dima.” Ladushka stuck a nail into the sheaf and directed Vasily to turn the pages, where he found a charcoal sketch someone had done of Lukas. He looked, startlingly, like Vasily himself—curly hair, a square jaw and dark eyes—and even through the haze of jealousy that consumed him, Vasily had to admit he was handsome. “He is the son of the president of the Free States, as you know, and is twenty-five years old. He completed a university degree in law before working in his mother’s office as an aide to the minister of justice. By all accounts, he is both intelligent and affable, and his family holds a vast amount of wealth thanks to ownership of a company dedicated to transoceanic shipping of volatile goods.”

“Bombs?” Vasily’s eyebrows arched.

“Bombs,” Ladushka confirmed. “He will surely be eager for the legitimacy of a royal marriage, as his family is new to wealth and power. And his mother would be inclined to support such a deal, since it would bolster her future reelection campaigns and would personally benefit the Markses’ enterprise—open access to the western provinces would provide a number of additional deepwater ports to anchor their ships in during passages to the far north, without the fees we would normally impose on foreign vessels. And, of course, we have a significantly more robust shipbuilding industry than the Free States, which would provide ships on favorable terms to the family of the Tzar’s husband.”

It made sense, but Vasily hated thinking about Dimitri as a card to be traded. “Is he—” Vasily had to pause and moisten his lips. “Is he kind?”

Ladushka sat back in her chair, a flash of hurt crossing her face. “Vasya, I watched Dima for longer than you did. I know more about the hurts he has sustained in his life than you do. Do you truly think that I would attempt to match him with someone who would hurt him the way Alexey did?”

“Did you know that Alexey was dangerous when you met him?” Vasily countered. “I don’t mean when it became obvious that there was something wrong with him. I mean in all the time before.”

“He—” Ladushka looked down at her hands, her fingers twisting together. “Dima never had me over to Chernitzy once Alexey laid claim to him.”

Vasily immediately realized he had uncovered a secret hurt of Ladushka’s and guilt pooled in his gut. He opened his mouth to apologize but she raised her hand. “I do not blame him and I never have. I think, in a sense, it was Dima’s way of surviving, being cut off from everything he knew between one instant and the next. He reinvented himself not as the Tzarevitch from Rav-Mikhailburg but as the young master of Chernitzy, forming a new group of friends, centering his time around his husband-to-be and their provincial affairs. We wrote to one another, but perhaps seeing me would have been too much for Dima when he was trying to hold himself together.”

“You’re a good friend, Lada.” He wished there was more to say, more comfort he could give, but Ladushka merely shook her head. “I didn’t mean it. I trust your judgment.”

“We will see how the potential suitors act when they arrive.” She still wouldn’t look at him, and Vasily cursed himself for letting his own anxieties cause him to be rude to her. “The second is Aziza Timurova, the crown princess of Urushka.”

Vasily took what was clearly an effort to move the conversation away from herself and flipped through Aziza’s dossier. “She’s beautiful.”

“A renowned beauty, in fact.” Ladushka gave him a minute to look at the sketch of a young woman with long, richly toned hair framing her face in loose curls, with wide eyes and plush lips. Vasily could only imagine how she would look in person, in color, up close. “But more than what she looks like, Aziza is known for her intelligence and political savvy. There have been rumors for some time that she, in fact, is the one who makes most of the political decisions in Urushka, given her father’s advanced age and potential mental decline.”

“She’s young for that, being the oldest child of elderly parents,” Vasily noted, reading through her file. “Only thirty.”

“She is now,” Ladushka replied. “Plague hit the imperial city over a decade ago, and Aziza’s older siblings all succumbed. She has a number of younger siblings now, from her father’s third wife. Aziza’s own mother died with most of her children during the plague.”

An unpleasant stinging behind Vasily’s eyes reminded him that he, Aziza and Dimitri all had the same unique horror in common. “If they share a similar grief, maybe they could help each other heal.”

“Possibly,” Ladushka conceded. “Urushka sees notably little rainfall, and given the changing climate in the region, they have suffered more drought than usual. Their crops have been failing and they are now forced to import much of their food, at least until a more permanent solution can be found; their attacks along our eastern border betray their desperation. Aziza would be inclined to pursue Dimitri because the trade agreement we would form for the homeland of the Tzar’s wife would be significantly more advantageous than it is now. But I worry the most about her, because while uniting our two countries would be a politically and economically powerful move, it would also pair Dimitri with the suitor most likely to steer Novo-Svitsevo to their own purposes.”

He snorted. “Dima’s clever enough to avoid that.”

“Not if he falls in love with her.” Ladushka’s rebuke was soft, but it hurt. “And an additional complication is the rumor that Aziza is a personal admirer of the Holy Science, claiming that it can be used for the good of her people. While she does not appear to be as…inclined as Alexey was, the idea that this would be difficult for Dimitri to manage personally is foreseeable.”

Vasily drew in a long breath through his nose. “I agree. And the last?”

“Yullyan Sakvin.” Ladushka shuffled the papers around and handed Vasily the third file. “Second-oldest child of the imperial monarch of Atreus, but apparently the most beloved of their parents. Their older brother is already married, and so Yullyan is the highest-ranking unmarried royal in the line. Known for their…sarcastic attitude.”

Vasily couldn’t help but laugh at the distaste on Ladushka’s face at that pronouncement. “Snarkier than Mischka, you’re saying?”

“Reportedly.” Ladushka pulled out the sketch of Yullyan. “They, at thirty-two, are the oldest of the potential spouses, but not old enough that it would cause concern. The Atreans have long sought the protection of wealthier and more powerful countries, vulnerable as they are, a small kingdom with no natural borders, nestled in the middle of more powerful neighbors, so Yullyan’s parents have been looking for an advantageous marriage for them. Their eldest son eloped with a noble of much lesser status, so they are likely keen for Yullyan to marry royalty to help stabilize the country, as they have no other children with which to bargain for allies.”

Yullyan had a sharp chin, pointed nose, outstanding cheekbones, and light, straight hair falling around their shoulders. Somehow, in the sketch, the artist had managed to capture an abundance of mirth, and Vasily wondered if it would really be so bad if Dimitri ended up with someone who could make him laugh at least once in a while. “We know Atreus is involved with magic. What’s Yullyan’s attitude?”

“They do not appear to be a personal practitioner.” Ladushka ghosted a finger over the portrait. “But their acceptance of magic may, like Aziza’s, come to be useful if it is something we cannot rid Dima of. Or it could be a problem for Dima in attempting to form a bond between them.”

It was a complication that Vasily hadn’t foreseen. He didn’t think there was any chance they would be able to figure out how to rid Dimitri of his newly manifesting curse in the span of a fortnight.

“So this is the three of them, then.” Vasily spread the sketches across Ladushka’s desk and stared at the people who, in two weeks’ time, would be arriving to see if they could claim Dimitri Abramovich for their own.

He must have looked utterly devastated, because Ladushka gathered all the papers up and bound them into a hasty pile, stuffing them back into the drawer.

“How are you fairing?” She stood and rounded the desk, settling into the chair next to Vasily’s. “Because I can see that this is more difficult for you than you have admitted to us aloud.”

Vasily looked into her crystal-blue eyes, creased with concern, and wondered if he could be braver in front of Dimitri if he spilled his fears to another one of their friends. “I’m worried I won’t be able to let him go. I’m worried that when he remarries, he’ll cut us out like he did when things were bad with Alexey. I’m worried that he’ll choose the wrong person, that it won’t be enough to keep Novo-Svitsevo safe, that we’re doing the same thing his father did by selling him to the highest bidder, just not for money but for political influence. I’m worried it’s wrong. I’m worried it will destroy us all, when we’ve only just started to knit back together.”

His fingers picked at the hem of his suit jacket, his nails worrying at the stitches. It was too much to look anyone in the eye when he was confessing his deepest fears, his secret shame. That he had fallen too far in love with Dimitri Abramovich, that he would never recover from this, that in letting Dimitri fall in love with him in return he had made everything thousands of times harder than it needed to be.

Vasily worried that he had already begun to hurt Dimitri in a way that could never be repaired.

“There is nothing to be done about your own feelings.” Ladushka slumped down in her chair, which caught Vasily off guard because she rarely let her posture be anything less than perfect. She pulled her braid over her shoulder and unpicked the tie at the end, running her fingers through the strands. “Attempting to fight them is the fastest way for you to lose your mind, Vasya. You will merely need to accept the heartbreak.”

Vasily swallowed against the lump that rose in his throat. “I feel like my purpose in loving him was entirely to bring him back and then let him go.”

“Maybe.” Ladushka bit her lip and didn’t say anything more. She merely reached over and took his hand, and together they sat for a long, long while, staring out at the snow falling and coating Rav-Mikhailburg like pale ash.

Vasily ate dinner alone in his room, totally unwilling to see anyone else after his conversation with Ladushka. He didn’t want to see Dimitri, because he was afraid that he would either break down in front of him or say something ill-advised that would make Dimitri want to cancel the entire summit to spare Vasily’s feelings.

He didn’t know how he was going to get through the next few weeks, let alone the next several months, of having to watch Dimitri fade further and further away from him. He looked at the bottle of vodka sitting on his table next to the stew he was forcing himself to eat, and before he thought better of it poured himself a large measure.

The alcohol burned a path through his chest, but it faded to a pleasant warmth as he poured and downed a second.

In an hour, he was thoroughly drunk and feeling somewhat better about things. He had almost convinced himself that he had a halfway decent chance of moving on from Dimitri, that he could meet someone else and fall in love again and build a life for himself that didn’t revolve around someone completely unobtainable. That he would be able to rip his own heart out of his chest, cleanse it of Dimitri and sew it back in successfully.

The knock at his door was unexpected, and after he shook his head to clear his drunken haze, he wobbled to his feet. It was Ayla standing on the other side, worrying at her lip. She looked nervous but not enough for anyone to have broken into the palace, so Vasily let the hand that had reflexively gone to the pistol holstered at his ribs relax.

“My brother, ah…” She winced. “I probably shouldn’t be interfering like this, but he’s been crying? For the last hour. We can hear it in the hall, and I think he’d appreciate it the most if you’d be the one to go to him.”

“Yeah.” Vasily ran a hand through his hair and wished he wasn’t nearly as drunk as he was. “Of course.”

The walk down the hall was quick, and Vasily slipped through Dimitri’s door. The fire was out in the parlor, but from the cracked door to the bedroom, Vasily heard the telltale strangled sounds that Dimitri made when he was trying to stop crying quickly.

He tipped the door to the bedroom open wider, stepping inside. The fire by the bed was too low, the air too cold, the room too dark, but he didn’t want to take the time to fix any of those problems when Dimitri was clearly in need.

“I’m sorry.” Dimitri was enveloped in a mass of blankets that he’d dragged off the bed and into the corner of the room, his head pressed to the glass terrace door. The collar of his nightshirt was crinkled, like he’d been wiping his eyes with it, and the sleeve of his shirt had been rucked up on his left arm, the scar tissue red and raised, like he had been clawing at it. “I made a racket, and someone went to fetch you, didn’t they? You’re allowed to have time alone, you know.”

He hiccuped as Vasily knelt down in front of him, wiping his cheeks dry and pressing a kiss to his forehead. “I’m always here for you, Dima.” He sat down and shifted so that he could pull Dimitri’s head into his lap, tugging the blankets around them both. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

Dimitri shuddered and sniffled. “All of it. The summit, the marriage. But more than that, finding out the magic Alexey had is in me too, wondering if I should learn how to use it to protect everyone from myself or if that’s just the first step on the road that Alexey took.”

Vasily stroked a hand through Dimitri’s silken hair. “The last one is the easiest. If you can learn how to control it, that will make you—and everyone else—safer while we try to rid you of it entirely. I don’t think there’s any harm in trying. You’re not going to turn into Alexey. The fact that you’re scared of that eventuality makes me surer than ever that it isn’t truly a risk. I promise, Dima, I won’t let you live with this burden forever.”

“I’m sorry I brought yet another thing upon us,” Dimitri mumbled. “That we have to deal with this now too.”

“You didn’t ask for it.” Vasily hated the way that Dimitri was still, to this day, apologizing for things that weren’t his fault. Things that others had done to him, that he was the victim of. “You never did. There’s no need for you to apologize, so stop.”

Dimitri closed his eyes again, but at least he didn’t apologize, just moved his hand up to tangle in Vasily’s hair and bring him down for a tender kiss.

“I know we have to deal with this,” he whispered against Vasily’s lips, sitting up. “With all of this. But can we just please pretend like it isn’t a problem, at least for tonight?”

Vasily tilted their foreheads together and wondered how long he could spare Dimitri for. How long they could go on pretending. How much damage it would do to the both of them.

“Sure,” he said, against his better judgment, because he was weak for Dimitri Abramovich and always had been. “Whatever you want, darling.”

He submitted to being moved to the bed and pushed against the pillows so Dimitri could crawl onto his lap, the chill of the air combining with the icy cold of Dimitri’s fingers creeping across his chest and causing gooseflesh to break out across his skin. Dimitri clearly wanted this, sinking onto Vasily with a moan and barely any resistance, his head tipped back and his eyes closed in bliss.

Vasily let him take what he needed, the bond between them thrumming with pleasure.

Afterwards, panting and sweat-slicked, Vasily wrapped Dimitri in his arms and held him close, trailing a hand down his back and then stroking it back up, feeling his way along the ridges of Dimitri’s spine.

“Vasya,” Dimitri whispered, breaking the quiet in a plaintive way that cracked Vasily’s heart in half. “How many more nights like this do we get?”

Vasily counted off the days until the summit in his head, then wondered with a callousness that shocked him if it would be best to stop fucking his Tzar before or after he had to meet potential new spouses. “Not enough,” he answered honestly, because with Dimitri here, like this, against his heart, he couldn’t bring himself to lie. And for a moment, he considered what he’d do to keep this, what ways he’d debase himself and dishonor them both and imperil the future of Dimitri’s marriage in order to keep experiencing this.

Being like this, with Dimitri, was the only time in his life he could remember truly feeling whole.

“I hope you know,” Dimitri said, his voice wavering, “that what I said to you is still true.”

Vasily’s hand stilled on Dimitri’s back. “What’s that?”

“That if I was free to choose—” Dimitri sniffled and swallowed hard. “That if I was free to choose, I would have chosen a man like you. I would choose you. I still would, each and every time.”

We were inevitable, you and I, Dimitri had told him when he’d come back to life, sharing Vasily’s body and soul. And for a long time, Vasily had clung to that, wondering if they would be able to defy the odds and somehow stay together. But now he realized, with a creeping sense of dread, that the inevitability was only in their meeting.

God or fate or whatever force controlled their lives had never intended for them to stay together. It wasn’t in the cards.

“I’d choose you too,” Vasily said, and pushed all the feeling he had, all the love and grief and regret and fear he felt, across the tether that bound them. It was echoed right back, and finally his composure cracked.

The first tear escaped from his eyes at the same time that Dimitri started to sob, so disconsolate and broken that it pierced Vasily like a bullet, tearing him to shreds.

“I know, darling,” he murmured over and over, holding Dimitri fast and running a hand through his hair, trying to calm him but knowing this was grief that needed to be let out. “I know. I know.”

Dimitri eventually exhausted himself and hiccuped, his eyes red and his throat raw when he composed himself enough to speak. “I can’t ask of you what I want to, Vasya. It wouldn’t be right.”

“Stop.” Vasily put a finger to Dimitri’s lips. If Dimitri asked him to stay, even after his marriage, Vasily would agree in a heartbeat. And Dimitri was correct—it wouldn’t be right. “Let’s sleep, love.”

They curled around one another under the covers, legs intertwined and Dimitri’s head on Vasily’s chest, Vasily’s hand splayed over his ribs. And Vasily closed his eyes and let himself drift off to sleep, lulled by the slow, steady pulse of Dimitri’s heart, beating in time with his own.

The fact that Dimitri woke alone felt like a loss almost too great to bear.

He wished that he could spend the rest of his life here, hiding in bed, trying to escape the reality that Alexey had been vanquished and the throne won, and he still had to leave Vasily for someone he didn’t love in the least.

There was no possible chance, no version of reality, in which he met someone he loved as wholeheartedly as Vasily Sokolov. There was no one who would be as perfect for him. The sex last night had felt like the beginning of a goodbye, and that was the worst part of all, the idea that there was going to be this tortured, drawn-out parting between them that would feel even worse than having to say farewell in one moment of perfect heartache.

But the version of Dimitri who hid from the truth and didn’t act because acting was hard was the version who had lost them the war and then trapped them in exile for a year while Alexey almost ended all of humanity. It had almost cost Vasily his safety, and that wouldn’t do.

It was time for Dimitri to be bold and brave, and for him to stop mourning Vasily. It was time to do something to spare them both the inevitable heartache that was coming, at least to the extent that he could. Dimitri would, in the end, marry for the good of his country. He had been born and raised to do one thing and one thing only, and that was to protect Novo-Svitsevo and its people. Even if it tore him to shreds, Dimitri was going to do what he knew was right. The safety of the country was worth far more than the love between two men.

He’d agreed once before to something that very well could have been a loveless marriage. And despite the fact that he’d ended up falling for Alexey from the very first night they’d spent dining together, it could have been different. And he’d been all right with that. He’d known his duty. He hadn’t cared.

But that was before he’d been loved, badly by Alexey and wholly by Vasily. Now he knew what it was to be possessed, to be desired, to be adored, and he didn’t think he could live without at least one of those. He didn’t know whether now—having felt what it was like to be seen as a whole person, loved for his quirks and his flaws more so than for his crown—he’d be able to go back.

Before, he’d been ignorant. Now, he knew exactly what it was that he’d lose.

He’d lose comfort and safety and security. He’d lose laughter and connection, and the feeling of coming home at the end of a long and trying day to someone who relaxed him just with their presence. He’d lose the joy of being known as a man and not a Tzar, he’d lose love and desire and passion, and it would ache like a broken bone, its absence like a missing tooth.

Dimitri would do it, although he still wasn’t sure if he’d survive it.

But he told himself over and over that if he’d fallen in love twice, it could happen a third time. And while that hurt, hoping that his heart would be able to replace Vasily, the wish was born from a need for self-preservation. And he didn’t know which was worse—the grief that Vasily would one day be a memory while he loved another person, or the agony of imagining that a memory might be all that he had left.

Dimitri swallowed hard, hugging his pillow to his chest. Even if the first nights or weeks or months were hard, he’d spent most of his life now doing hard things. Surviving hard things.

The faster he got it over with, the better it would be. Perhaps, as with many things he’d feared in his life, the anticipatory dread was the worst part.

So he peeled himself out of bed and prayed to God that he would feel sturdier than this eventually. And besides, there was another problem.

Dimitri raised his hand up, the light from the morning sun playing across his skin, and reached for the hold he had on the void within him. Shadow thrummed beneath his fingertips, giving off the same feeling he’d experienced at the moment Alexey had stabbed a blade through his heart. The control seemed so much like Alexey’s mastery of the shadow, how he’d always described the methods he’d used to murder small creatures, and Dimitri wondered if his own ability to embrace the darkness was something he’d inherited from Alexey as well.

The power that was coming to him easier and easier by the hour, now, was death itself. Dimitri was sure of it. It was a cold so intense that it seared him, an emptiness that he could feel creeping up on his fears and his hopes and his dreams. He realized how easy it would be to give in to the void, to let it consume the part of him that was very much human, and it finally made sense to him why Alexey had come back wrong and gotten worse by the day. It was hard to resist the lure of the grave, the promise of unfeelingness that it offered him.

The thing the void wanted most was his love for Vasily. It was what the void reached for with greed, and Dimitri knew that if he let this go on for long enough, the temptation to give in would be hideously strong.

Luckily for him, his love for Vasily was the one thing he would never, ever, give up, even if he was being forced to end the relationship itself. His love for Vasily would endure to the end of time.

Clenching his fist, he reeled the power back in, wishing he could do more than tamp it down. Wishing he could wield it, control it. But every time his mind touched the place the magic resided in his chest, it made the power sharper and clearer and stronger within him, and Dimitri knew that was the price to pay for struggling to master it.

Alexey’s journal had become more and more esoteric the longer he experimented with the Holy Science, and despite managing to decode the words, Dimitri hadn’t been able to figure out precisely what Alexey had done to master his use of the Holy Science. It wasn’t as if he could ask Ladushka, who would have had the best chance at penetrating the academic language, because she would assuredly have a fit at the thought of him attempting to do anything other than banish the magic back to where it had come from. And Alexey’s supporters were dead at his own behest, at least the ones who had been interested enough in the Holy Science to have studied it themselves.

Dimitri glanced out the window, where there was, for once, no snow falling. There was a plan gnawing at the edges of his mind, and he suspected that if he told anyone they’d determine a million ways in which it was a stupid idea.

But it was beginning to feel far more idiotic to ignore the source of power within him, when Alexey had been able to use it to do so much for Novo-Svitsevo, even if what he’d chosen to do had been wrong. Before Dimitri could think better of it, he was dressing and making his way out into the corridor and down the back staircase into the courtyard, ducking through one of the gates with his scarf wound high around his face and his hat pulled down over his ears, so that hopefully no one could tell who he was.

He and Ladushka had spent weeks trying to decide what to do with the small but meaningful segment of the population that had become devoted to the Holy Science during Alexey’s rule. As much as it sickened him, Dimitri had decided to let those synagogues continue, so long as they weren’t venerating Alexey himself. It had been too much to deal with all at once, and he hadn’t wanted to add a religious schism to the political crisis he’d been facing with a still-divided court.

But all of this meant that there were still two synagogues operating in Rav-Mikhailburg which taught the Holy Science. And it was possible that one of the rebbes knew something—anything—about how to wield this power. Dimitri had thoughts of going to Wilnetzk to discuss things with Aleksandr the magician, but there was no way for him to conceal that visit and not make a diplomatic incident out of the whole thing. And he hardly thought that Aleksandr would respond well at all to a summons.

So this was the option he had left. He turned down one of the smaller side streets in Rav-Mikhailburg towards a shul wedged between a café and a postal office. He was about to walk up the steps when a hand caught his elbow, causing him to whirl around, his hand already on the pistol tucked into his belt.

“Ayla?”

He slammed into the chest of his very disapproving little sister, who took a step back and crossed her arms, frowning so deeply that Dimitri was surprised her mouth didn’t drop onto the ground with the force of it.

“And what,” she said with admirable evenness, “were you just about to do?”

Dimitri shrank back, then remembered he was the Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo and straightened up. “I was going to shul.”

“This shul?” Her frown was joined by an incredulous raise of her eyebrows. “Did you change denominations sometime in the last twelve hours while I wasn’t looking? And besides, did you really think you could give me the slip and sneak out unnoticed?”

He blew out a breath, his face heating despite the cold. “I’m just…” He bit his lip and lowered his voice to a whisper. “I’m just looking for someone to help me with the magic.”

“Dima.” Ayla put a hand on his shoulder and drew him towards her, pulling him gently off the first step to the shul. “I was around for all of Alexey’s rule. You don’t want to become like him. I swear you don’t. Watching what he did with the Holy Science was…it was awful.”

Dimitri let himself be led away, the frustration at Ayla having caught him muddled with the relief that he didn’t have to learn anything about how to be more like Alexey. At least not that morning.

“Come on,” Ayla said when he didn’t answer her. “Let’s go home.”

“Where were you this morning? There was nothing on your schedule.”

Dimitri closed his eyes. Of course Ladushka would have been waiting for him at the back entrance she knew he always used. Ayla slipped away before he could ask her to help deflect Ladushka’s inquiry.

“I went for a walk.” There was no way he was going to admit to Ladushka what he’d actually done, not when she’d likely lambaste him over the possible political implications. He needed knowledge and they weren’t going to find it any other way. “What’s on my agenda now?”

When he opened his eyes, he could tell from her expression that she knew he was lying. But Ladushka just blinked a few times, looked away and then sighed. She motioned him to walk with her and they made their way back to his rooms, where he discarded his snow-covered coat on a chair. “We need to ensure that you have suitable clothes ordered for the summit. I have drawn up a list of public events, and all of the coordination is in place. With your permission, formal invitations will be sent out today to the heads of state. We have already made contact with lower-level administrators in each country to let them know to expect them.”

Dimitri swallowed, looking into the fire. Servants were keeping it well stoked, but these days he always felt cold, no matter how high the flames were coaxed. “What do you need me to do?”

“Choose,” Ladushka said softly. “Nothing more than that, Dima.”

He nodded, his throat tight, and she left a sheaf of papers on the table in his sitting room and slipped out. He sank into the armchair and closed his eyes. The void reached for him, and for once, Dimitri was weak. He fed it a tiny shard of his pain, and the ache in his chest eased, just for a moment.

It would be far, far too easy to let it take the rest of his heartache and swallow it whole. To become unfeeling the way that Alexey had been. He could, after all this time, see the appeal.

“I was thinking that royal blue would be flattering against your eyes,” Ladushka continued. “Although we’ll want to prepare at least one outfit with a subtle nod to each country of your potential suitors.”

He hummed in response and let her commentary wash over him, even as he felt like he was drowning, and wished that there was someone who would come to save him. But of course, he reminded himself, being saved from being Tzar had never been his fate.

Speaking with Ladushka about the summit had been exhausting. Now, back in his rooms, he had the servants run a bath and then banished them as he climbed in, sinking under the bubbles that coated the surface and letting the heat of the water chase away his ever-present chill.

The door creaked as Vasily padded in, carrying an enormous shopping bag so heavy Dimitri saw the way his biceps were tensed through the lines of his suit jacket.

“I heard you were working with Lada today.” Vasily put the bag down next to the tub and dragged over one of the stools to sit on. “So I figured I would get you a few things to help you relax.”

He pulled out a sack of salt, which he dumped unceremoniously into the tub, making Dimitri recoil. “What, are you trying to brine me?”

“No,” Vasily scoffed, rooting around in the bag. “The boy at the store said it was good for aching joints and muscles. You have to soak in it.”

He surfaced again with an enormous, precarious stack of books tucked to his chest. “And this is every romance novel that I know you haven’t read that’s been released in the last few months.”

Vasily’s expression was so openly wounded despite the false cheer in his words. The sudden pressure behind Dimitri’s eyes was almost too much to bear. “Thank you,” he managed to say, even if his voice was strangled.

“You’re going to need something to help you get through the next few weeks.” Vasily looked kind of helpless. “I know…I know you might want to start drawing away from our…physical relationship. So I thought this would be a comfort.”

“Oh.” This sounded definite, final, like it was what Vasily wanted and he was just couching it in an observation about what he supposed were Dimitri’s desires. “Thank you.”

The grace of being saved from having to do this himself was unexpected, and Dimitri was grateful for that, at least, even if he no longer had access to one of the few things which reliably took his mind off unpleasantries and all of his anxiety. Books and cookies and salt were what he’d have to content himself with, now.

Dimitri drew a hand through his wet hair, staring at Vasily, who simply stared back. There had never been this tense, uncomfortable silence between them, not for a single moment since they’d met. There had always been warmth, even before there had been love, and now there was only the beginning of what Dimitri feared would be an unfathomably painful separation.

“Dimitri,” Vasily began, clearing his throat, and his heart sank at the way Vasily addressed him so formally, his tone as stiff as the set of his shoulders. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so very sorry. This is all my fault. I should never have overstepped.”

“Over…stepped?” Dimitri sank down in the bath, stunned, the breath rushing out of him. Of all the things that he’d expected Vasily to say, that wasn’t one of them.

“This thing between us never should have happened. And it wouldn’t have, if I’d remembered my place.” Vasily unwrapped his arms from around his chest for long enough to slide down the doorframe, propping himself against the wall and hugging his knees to his chest. He wasn’t wearing shoes, Dimitri noticed stupidly, like his mind was trying to distract him from the love of his life telling him that everything between them had been a mistake. “And for that, I’ll always be sorry. I’ve made this harder for you than it ever needed to be, and I can tell how much it’s hurting you.”

Vasily put a hand to his chest and rubbed his breastbone, like there was a physical ache there he was trying to soothe. Dimitri, meanwhile, was rooted to the spot, nausea seizing his gut as he remembered a hundred different nights, a thousand different days, a string of moments that he’d treasured beyond anything else he’d ever been given. And here Vasily was, regretting all of it. He dug his fingernails into his thighs, hoping that the pain would pull him out of whatever nightmare this was, but he remained stubbornly rooted in reality, Vasily still refusing to meet his eye.

“You’re letting me go so easily—it’s almost like I wasn’t worth keeping in the first place,” Dimitri spat. The words were out of his mouth before he could truly think about them, but he couldn’t take them back.

Vasily looked like he’d been punched in the gut. “I’m not—I’m not doing this because I want to, Dima. How could you say that?”

Dimitri didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. He just stared into the bathwater sullenly. It was easier to be angry at Vasily than afraid of a future without him.

“I’m not going to keep doing the wrong thing, Dimitri. I’ll always do my job, and I’ll always care for you, more than you’ll ever know. But I won’t stand in your way when we both know that you must make the right choice for Novo-Svitsevo, no matter how much—” Vasily’s voice cracked and he stopped talking, closing his eyes and chewing on his bottom lip.

“How much what?” Dimitri snapped. “How much what, Vasily?”

“No matter how much I wish it could be different.”

For a moment, Vasily met his eye, and Dimitri thought that he would get up, that he would cross the room, that they would embrace, and he’d press his head to Vasily’s broad chest and be wrapped in his arms and that everything would feel all right again. That he’d be able to sink into the feeling of safety that always surrounded him with Vasily around, the man for whom he’d defied God and death.

How different a few months had made their lives. Because instead of coming towards him, Vasily stood up and left.

Dimitri’s chest split through with pain, and he curled over himself, gasping for breath. At least, he thought, as tears burned his eyes, he wasn’t suffering alone. Because alongside his heartbreak, he was feeling Vasily’s too, through their connection, an echo of his own.

It had been a long time since Alexey had felt true physical pain, and so when his chest began to throb, it caught him by surprise.

He was sitting by the lake behind the estate, staring out into its blackened waters while floating on the tides of memory. It all felt so distant now, his human life, and the memories—of a barge loaded with silk cushions, his young lover sprawled on them with his eyes closed enjoying the sunshine, of his dogs barking and howling as they stood on the edge of the lake chasing geese, of a night spent here on the shores atop a blanket, teaching the man next to him each of the constellations in the sky—they all felt as though they were mere watercolor paintings, soft around the edges and distant enough that he could not quite reach out and touch them. After his first rebirth, the vagaries of mortal existence had still affected him. Now, it was more like he had brought the stillness of death back with him to the waking world, and everything around him was warped to shape it.

Which was why it surprised him when he felt a distinct sense of loss, so acute that it ripped through his breastbone like a knife wound.

Alexey touched his chest and looked down, half expecting to see the hilt of a dagger protruding from his chest. But there was nothing there, and it took him a moment to place what he was feeling.

Not physical pain, no. Heartbreak, deep and yawning, so huge it was enough to consume him whole. Like the end of the world, the edge of death, a drumbeat of mourning that spread through every fiber of his being. The lure of the grave, pulling on his soul.

There had only been one time in any of his lives when Alexey had felt pain like this. It had been the moment Dimitri Alexeyev had turned his back the final time, had shuddered away from Alexey’s touch with enough revulsion that Alexey could taste it. The moment that he knew his husband no longer loved him, and that whatever had been between them was gone forever.

Alexey closed his eyes against the pain and reminded himself that his husband was dead. So it was up to him alone, now, to save the world from itself.

Alexey knew he had to merge the realm of mortals with the middle world, and that he must do it soon.

With each passing day, the memory of his power as Tzar would weaken. With each passing month, his supporters would lose their conviction. It had already been long enough. He had to strike now. It had already been nearly a year since Morozov had taken him from the palace, and Alexey feared it might already be too late to seize back what was his.

“Moy Tzar, I am prepared to do whatever you instruct. If you wish it, I will personally gather your supporters from Rav-Mikhailburg or from their estates, should they have left the capital.”

“How will we call for them?” Alexey looked at Morozov, the inhuman way his body had stretched and twisted. He was nearly entirely covered with black fur and scales now, the shine of their iridescence captivating in the light from the windows. He had truly created a miracle with this zemonyii, but he could imagine the panic it would induce if Morozov flew into Rav-Mikhailburg to personally escort Alexey’s supporters back to Chernitzy. His creation would return to him shot full of arrows, if it returned at all.

“However you wish, Moy Tzar.” Morozov gave a small bow. “I am at your disposal.”

Alexey let out a frustrated breath. Of course Morozov would leave this to him. His chancellor was a brilliant man but not a creative one, and this would require creativity.

His mind spun through the possibilities. He wondered if there was a way that he could reach each of his supporters through dreams. It would require more research, but it was a possibility. He also considered sending letters or hiring messengers to convey a missive. Alexey could certainly not walk into Chernitzy proper and find a messenger, not unless he wanted to announce his presence to the world, but he could certainly attempt to contact his network of informants, who might serve the same purpose.

He considered, for a moment, that he might write to one of the intermediaries he had had the most fruitful working relationship with, a brilliant yet frustrating practitioner of the Holy Science who kept a repository of information in Wilnetzk, but the man was too unreliable to effectively carry out directives and produce results of a specified nature at a desired time. Alexey would need more precision for this.

“Write to the informants,” Alexey ordered Morozov, who had slunk into the corner and curled his wings and tail around his body like a dog preparing for sleep. “You will meet each of them in the forest seven miles to the north of here. If they have been compromised, you will kill them. If they have not, if they remain loyal, you will give them a message directly from me.”

He doubted that any of the spies would be able to harm, let alone kill, his zemonyii. Morozov had the strength of ten men and blades glanced off his scales. He was truly a formidable creature, and now that his human mind was adjusting to the new form and the powers that it could wield, his intellect and cunning were slowly returning, fighting with his animal nature.

“Moy Tzar.” Morozov nodded in confirmation and unfurled his wings to stand. “What will you do with the army when you summon it?”

Alexey narrowed his eyes. “It isn’t for you to question, Morozov.”

The creature that had been his chancellor stiffened but bowed. Alexey warmed at the obedience. “But if you must know, we will continue with my original design. I will summon forth the army and subdue the surrounding countries which pose a threat. Ivan will be waiting for me in Rav-Mikhailburg; when my work is done, I will return to the throne.”

Morozov grinned, showing each one of his pointed teeth. “It will be, as always, the pleasure of my life to assist Moy Tzar with such a worthy ambition.”

Alexey flicked his fingers at Morozov in dismissal and sank back into the armchair next to the fire, rubbing absently at the place in his chest where so much pain had bloomed just hours before.

It was nothing, he told himself. Just a memory of heartbreak, and nothing more.

The palace at Rav-Mikhailburg was bustling with a level of activity that Dimitri couldn’t remember seeing since his coronation and wedding to Alexey. Annika had pitched in to help with the army of decorators that had descended on the palace, commanding them with the same military precision she’d used directing troops across the battlefield. The courtiers who lived in the palace were fighting over the best tailors in the city, who kept rushing in and out of the palace carrying ever more elaborate bolts of fabric. Everything was cleaner than it had ever been, every corner of the palace swept and polished.

Dimitri wished it was as easy to prepare for the summit itself.

“This is when you will be meeting with the entire delegation from Atreus.” Ladushka was poring over an elaborate schedule that she had laid out on his desk as Dimitri drank his fourth cup of tea. He had woken up in an empty bed and spent the next several hours staring at the ceiling. As soon as dawn had broken across the sky, he’d slipped down to the stables, where he’d saddled up Malishka on his own and ridden her through the streets with a hat pulled low over his face, evading everyone’s notice until he reached the outskirts of the city, where the forest butted up against the ever-sparser buildings. He’d let her roam free as he’d dismounted and picked his way through the trees, hoping the bitter cold would numb him enough that he wouldn’t have to feel anything anymore. He wanted the cold to put out the fire that was burning inside him every time he thought about Vasily regretting what they’d shared, and the way he wanted to rage at the man he loved.

It hadn’t worked, but at least the wickedly low temperatures had soothed his aching hip.

“Dima, are you paying any attention at all?” Ladushka snapped her fingers in front of his face, scowling. “Did you hear what I just asked?”

“No,” he admitted. “I didn’t. I’m sorry, Lada.”

He put his now-empty teacup down in the saucer and poured himself yet another cup, hoping it would make a difference in his focus and knowing it wouldn’t.

Ladushka straightened, and for a minute Dimitri braced himself for the inevitable dressing-down. She was as tightly wound as he’d ever seen her, and it occurred to him that at the same time as he was making her life immeasurably harder, she was organizing the biggest diplomatic summit of her tenure as chancellor thus far, while also attempting to orchestrate a marriage between him and someone he might very well hate.

His disappointment with himself grew. Not only was he a fucking terrible Tzar, he was also being an intolerably bad friend.

He opened his mouth to apologize, but she raised a hand and cut him off, gathering her skirts up and settling into the chair across from his desk. “Dima,” she said after staring into the fire for a bit, “are you certain about this? Truly certain? Because I can tell it is weighing on you far more than you care to admit.”

Vasily as good as admitted that he regretted everything that had ever happened between us, Dimitri wanted to say. Vasily went back on his word and nearly called me unlovable. He thinks I was a mistake. That I was too much. I’ll never be able to forget the words or the look on his face when he said them. How can he have loved me into death itself and yet let me go so easily once I came back to life?

Dimitri looked at his oldest friend and wondered how honest he could be with her. Whether she would take his side or Vasily’s. But if there was one thing he’d learned from the time he’d spent finding his way mostly back to himself after Alexey, it was that he couldn’t do any of this alone. He brushed a hand through his hair, which, with how much he was fiddling with it, was perpetually standing on end these days.

“Yeah,” he said eventually. “Something did happen. Last night.”

Ladushka didn’t ask him what—she merely waited for him to continue. It was one of the things he valued most about her, her ability to be silent and wait for him to gather the courage to speak.

“Vasya—he wanted to speak about our relationship going forward.” Dimitri twirled the teacup around on the saucer, desperate for something to distract him. “He as good as admitted he thought it had all been a mistake and that he regretted everything between us. That we should stop what we’re doing with each other, because it would make everything harder. And I’m mad at him. So, so mad.”

Ladushka hummed, fiddling with the end of her braid, and it gave Dimitri time to clear his throat and try his best not to cry.

“I see,” she said eventually. “I see why you would be feeling so out of sorts over that. Anyone would.”

He looked up at her, concern written on her face, and was surprised for a moment that she wasn’t offering anything more. No advice, no proclamations of the best path forward. She merely sat there, looking at him, waiting for him to talk.

“I—” He deflated. “I knew this would be hard. I think it’s even harder knowing that he’s trying to back off, to break away. I mean, fuck, Lada—we were together every night and every morning. Our souls are tied together. Everything he feels, I feel too. And it’s horrific to think that he wishes that none of it had ever happened. It’s so much worse than it merely…ending.”

“Your souls are tied together.” Ladushka pointed at his chest. “Do you feel regret over your relationship from him? Distaste?”

Dimitri paused his twirling of the teacup, shocked. His hand went instinctively to his stomach, the place where he’d always felt every one of their shared emotions. Because no, he hadn’t felt any regret. He’d felt pain and heartbreak and a vast wave of sadness.

“No,” he admitted. “I don’t.”

Ladushka studied him, flipping the end of her braid between her fingers. “So why do you think it was malicious, as opposed to the lie he had to tell himself in order to do what he did? The lie he told you to be able to begin unwinding the ties that bind you together?”

“It was cruel,” Dimitri countered.

“Our lives are cruel,” Ladushka replied, gazing at him steadily. “None of us were born to freedom, Dima. You have known that from the moment you knew your own name. You merely did not know the shape of your cage.”

Dimitri looked out the window at the snow falling down on Rav-Mikhailburg, the tops of the buildings coated in a layer of it like a blanket. He tried to remember why he was doing this. Why he did any of this. Saving his people, upholding his duty, ensuring peace and prosperity and security for all of them. Honoring the memory of his family and his devotion to God. Doing the right thing.

“It all feels very far away,” he whispered. “When we were fighting Alexey, when we were all worried about where our next meal would come from or who would die or what would happen when we lost, the sacrifices were easier.”

He looked down at his green silk jacket, the cuffs stitched with gold thread and the buttons embedded with emeralds. He’d gone riding earlier in the day, but his valet had reshined his boots the moment he’d come back inside, leaving not a hint of dirt or mud anywhere on them. He gestured at himself.

“Right now, it all feels so…safe. And whether I gave myself permission or not, whether I know deep down it’s unrealistic or not, my heart wanted, Lada. It didn’t feel like there was danger around the next corner. It still doesn’t. We’re sitting here in gilded rooms eating caviar and drinking wine from across the continent. There are summer roses on my banisters in the middle of winter. And I know—” He paused to swallow hard.

“Lada, I know we’re doing this for a reason. We’re doing this because there’s danger on the horizon that everyone can see. But it’s really, really fucking hard to remember that when around me, everything is perfect except for Vasya not being by my side. And I’m furious that this is happening. I’m angry that this one good thing in my life is ending. I want to rip the world apart, knowing that this is what keeping Novo-Svitsevo safe has come to. I won’t. But I want to.”

Ladushka pinched her lips between her teeth. “I wish I could give you advice that would salve the wound. I wish I knew the right thing to say. I do not. But what I do know is that Vasya would harm himself first rather than deliberately do anything to hurt you. Every word from that man’s mouth, Dimitri Abramovich, is carefully weighed and measured to protect as much of you as possible. I swear that upon my own life.”

He could feel the truth of what she said in his bones, in the ache in his chest and the burning in his eyes. It was easier to be mad at Vasily than to be mad at the situation. But maybe, as Ladushka said, that had been unfair.

Dimitri supposed it would be better to be miserable together than it would be to be angry apart.

“I just want us all to be all right.” He sighed, shifting in his chair to try to find a more comfortable position given how saddle-sore he was. “I want all of this to be over and to know that we’re going to come out the other side, whole and well.”

Ladushka stood and rolled up the schedule in front of him, clearly realizing that there was nothing more useful that she’d get out of him, at least for now. She rounded the desk, cupped his cheek with one small, soft hand and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

“I know that,” she said as she straightened. “That is precisely what I pray for every night. But none of us can promise that, Dima. Only God will decide.”

Vasily knew as soon as he woke up that he shouldn’t have said what he had the night before, but the guilt he’d felt at being the source of Dimitri’s pain had been far too overwhelming for him to stay silent. He re-dressed in silence in his office, his shoulders sore from having slept awkwardly on the too-small sofa opposite his desk, then settled in at the small table in the empty dining room for a late breakfast. Vasily kept his head down and looked at the notes he was reviewing. With the summit starting soon, at least he had plenty of distraction from the fact that Dimitri was likely furious with him. Or sad, which would be worse.

He was halfway through his dish of eggs sprinkled with caviar when Dimitri arrived, taking a seat opposite him. It was a long time before he spoke.

“I know,” he said slowly, “about the letters.”

“The what?” Vasily’s lips parted and his head jerked up. “What letters?”

“The ones you rewrote for me, when my handwriting was too god-awful to read.” Dimitri picked at the skin in the hollow of his throat, which Vasily knew was a sign that he’d rather be talking about anything else. “I know that you can forge my script. I also know that you’ve recently stopped doing it, so I suppose my penmanship must finally be legible.”

Vasily was caught between amusement and disbelief. At least Dimitri was actually talking to him, despite his monumental cock-up the night before. “How did you find out?”

“You’re not the only one who knows things,” Dimitri countered, his mouth quirking up in a smile that melted half the anxiety right out of Vasily’s body. It was a relief that he was still worthy of Dimitri’s smiles. “And besides, that viscount of Atreus I was writing to about wine responded to all my questions on my own letter, using a different color of ink. So imagine my surprise when I found that the mail had magically transformed my horrific cursive.”

“Oh.” Vasily flushed from his face down to his chest, embarrassed at the revelation. “I, uh, I didn’t know you knew. I’m sorry?” He made a half-aborted shrug. He didn’t know whether Dimitri was looking for an apology or not.

“All I’m saying, Vasya,” Dimitri continued, “is that I know you do things to protect me, and you think that it’s better if I not know. But I’d rather there be honesty between us. I’d rather that you tell me the reasoning behind your actions, because only then can I truly make my own decisions.” He tilted his head back against the wall, rubbing his hand up and down his dead arm. “Don’t take that ability away from me, Vasya.”

“Dima, darling.” Vasily paused and moistened his lips, his voice rough. “Dima, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take anything away from you.” His voice cracked, but he made it through what he needed to say without breaking down. The tether between him and Dimitri thrummed with everything he was feeling—loss, desperation, love, trust, desire—and he could tell by the way Dimitri’s hand flitted to his stomach that he felt it too.

“But you did.” Dimitri’s breath came faster and shorter, and leaking through their connection was his familiar fear at the fact that yes, he was arguing with Vasily and that no, Vasily wasn’t going to torment him for disagreeing or retaliate against him for arguing. Vasily’s hand twitched with the urge to reach out and comfort Dimitri, but he didn’t know if that would help or hurt. “You sat down next to our tub and looked me in the eye and as much as said you regretted all of it. So do you? Because if what you said was true, you’ve taken the greatest thing in my life away from me.”

Dimitri’s face crumpled, and he pressed the back of his hand to his mouth. Vasily could see Dimitri’s pulse thrumming through the skin of his neck.

Vasily’s regret, then, flooded through the connection between them.

“I didn’t mean to,” Vasily whispered after a moment. He closed his eyes, and a tear tracked down his cheek. He didn’t bother to wipe it away. “I’m trying to think about how to make this easier. Any way that I can possibly help you with what you have to do next. And…I misstepped. I made a mistake. I thought starting to step aside would be the right thing to do. Clearly, I was wrong.”

“I think I can survive losing the ability to love you openly in order to save Novo-Svitsevo.” Dimitri drew in a shuddering breath. “But Vasya, I cannot survive if you sever that love for me entirely.”

Vasily looked at him through blurry vision, his eyes shining with tears. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, Vasya, that I need to know that even if my body belongs to someone else, even if publicly my heart is resting in another’s hands, even if you and I can never spend the night together again, that you are still the one holding the core of me, the truth of everything that I am. That even if I give myself up for my country, if I give up on the future of us for this country, I don’t have to give up the entirety of my heart. That some small piece of it can always stay with you, so I can think back fondly on what we were able to share, and not have it tainted because I think you regret it.”

Dimitri bunched his legs up against his chest, resting his heels on the cushion of the chair. “I’m saying, Vasya, that I will always love you and you cannot stop me from doing it. God Himself couldn’t stop me from defying Him to get back to you. I came back from the dead for you, and if that isn’t proof of how I feel and how I will always feel, I don’t know what is. Me marrying someone else won’t change that. It can’t. It isn’t how I’m made. The fabric of who I am is stitched together with your love, Vasya. If you take that away, I unravel.”

Vasily gave the smallest shake of his head, wondering if he should argue, but then his shoulders sagged and he tilted his head up to the ceiling and blinked hard the way he did when he was trying not to cry in earnest. When he composed himself, he got up, rounded the table and knelt in front of Dimitri, taking his hands, cradling the dead one in his palm just as tenderly as he caressed its living twin.

“Dimitri Abramovich,” he said, looking deep into Dimitri’s eyes. “Nothing will ever stop me from loving you unless you order me to cut out my own heart. That, maybe, would work. I can’t honestly say that I regret a moment of what we’ve shared, even if it has to end. What I regret is being the source of your pain.”

Dimitri smoothed his thumb across Vasily’s. “You aren’t the source of my pain. You never could be. It’s the demands of this country that are responsible, not you.”

Vasily leaned forward and tipped their foreheads together. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.”

They breathed together for a moment, connected, the bond between their souls thrumming with love and forgiveness and desire and hurt and regret.

“I’m not going to get this right,” Vasily whispered. “I’m going to fuck this up. There’s no guidebook for how you let the love of your life go to save your country. I’m in enemy territory here, and I’m sorry if I make it worse through my fumbling, Dima.”

“You couldn’t truly make it worse,” Dimitri replied, his breath caressing Vasily’s cheek, “as long as you still love me.”

There was no answer to that that Vasily could manage to get out without breaking down entirely, so he defaulted to humor, which had gotten him through every horrible moment in his life thus far. He let go of Dimitri’s good hand and brushed Dimitri’s hair away from his eyes. “How about we end our fight the good old-fashioned way?”

“We had a fight?” Dimitri asked as Vasily stood and led him back through the winding corridors to their bedroom. Once inside and behind closed doors, he stooped to pick Dimitri up, noting that the other man weighed nothing. Given that his diet over the last week had devolved into mostly cigarettes and tea, it wasn’t surprising.

“Our second, and hopefully last,” Vasily responded, dropping Dimitri down onto their mattress and reaching down to untie his boots. “Every time the world tries to separate us, it becomes an inevitable source of argument.”

“Hey,” Dimitri countered, lifting his hips so that Vasily could slide off his pants. “The first time, you were the one insisting on leaving. I didn’t want you to go.”

Vasily undid the buttons on Dimitri’s jacket and let Dimitri shrug out of it on his own, not commenting when it took him a moment to wiggle his left arm free from the sleeve, remembering what Ladushka had told him. Dimitri removed his own shirt, and then Vasily staved off an inevitable shivering fit by climbing onto the bed and covering Dimitri’s body with his own, the contact burning. He smoothed a palm up Dimitri’s ribs, his fingers dipping into the ridges before sliding up his throat and caressing his cheek. When Vasily leaned down and their lips met, the kiss was desperate and hard, nothing like their usual languid explorations of each other’s mouths. Vasily pinned him to the bed and shoved a thick thigh in between Dimitri’s legs, which Dimitri parted willingly, thrusting his hips up to meet Vasily’s.

“Someone’s eager.” Vasily dipped his head and nipped at Dimitri’s ear, making Dimitri shudder beneath him. “Allow me to make my absence up to you.”

And he slowly proceeded to take Dimitri apart, leaving him a trembling mess aching for more. Vasily nipped at the sensitive parts of his chest and sucked bruises into the column of his throat, biting the meat of his shoulder muscle and tormenting the sensitive skin of Dimitri’s cock while making sure Dimitri never tipped over the edge. He worked his way down every inch of Dimitri’s skin, claiming him, all the while sending a constant stream of MineMineMineAlwaysMine flooding through their connection.

It felt like being home, and Vasily couldn’t believe that he’d tried to deprive himself of this, thinking it would be easier.

Dimitri hissed when Vasily entered him, stretching him open, but Vasily stilled his hips and kissed Dimitri’s closed eyelids and worked his way in slowly until Dimitri took a deep breath and nodded. He committed everything to memory, every spark of pleasure as he dragged in and out, how the way their bodies coming together felt nothing but right.

A tear leaked down Dimitri’s cheek and Vasily licked it away, chasing away the grief with a kiss and a hand hooked into Dimitri’s hair. He tilted his hips in a way that nudged him against Dimitri’s core, which had Dimitri arching his back and crying out.

“Come for me, Dima, darling,” Vasily rasped into his ear, bending Dimitri’s leg back with a hand in the crease of his knee, making sure the thrusting of his hips grew more relentless, more precise, until Dimitri reached a hand in between them to stroke himself, bringing himself over the edge.

Vasily followed, his hips stuttering as he moaned, sweat gathering on his forehead and the candlelight burnishing Dimitri’s skin into a perfect alabaster. Dimitri bit his lip as Vasily withdrew, collapsing to his side and drawing Dimitri into his chest with a strong arm.

“I missed that,” Dimitri admitted. “I missed you.”

“I know,” Vasily replied, breathing in the smell of Dimitri’s skin, wondering how much it would hurt to never have this again. Finding that in his greed, he didn’t care about the future version of himself that would have to deal with the consequences.

“Vasya? Hello?” Mischa was waving a hand in front of his face, leaning forward across the table they’d been sitting at to plan the final details of the summit. “Are you dying? Do I need to cut you open? I don’t have any anesthetic in the room with us, but I can do my best if you promise to stay still.”

“What? No, I’m fine.” Vasily rubbed his forehead and closed his eyes. “I’m just—it’s been a long ten days.” The sex earlier, and his apology to Dimitri, had given him some relief. But in a way it also felt like a step back, a capitulation of the boundaries he’d been trying to draw between the two of them. The beginnings of a separation, a renegotiation of their status, given what was starting tomorrow.

There was a loaded pause. “In any sense you want to talk about?”

Mischa had gotten good at helping them all process life’s more difficult emotions. And maybe one day Vasily would have the strength to talk about how fucked up this was out loud, just how deep he’d gotten into something that was far beyond his station and also so far out of his control. Maybe one day he’d be able to talk about how this was tearing him apart, how hard it had been to start to pull away from Dimitri.

“No,” he said, clipped and sure, when Mischa tapped his knee in a sign that they were impatiently awaiting his response.

“All right.” Though Vasily kept his eyes shut, he heard Mischa’s sigh. “But you know that I’m here if you want to. If you need to. And that there’s plenty of things we can try if the emotions become too much for you to manage. You’ve been through a lot—and fuck, we all see that you’re going through a lot—and no one would think less of you if you needed help.”

It was easier to talk when his eyes were still shut, so he draped an arm across his head and slumped into the depths of the plush chair he was in, the padding swallowing him. “You know I know that. But this isn’t something that anyone can fix, and I doubt any medication could either. I just—Mischka, I think I just need time. Don’t I just need time?”

He wanted them to say yes. He wanted to hear that time would heal all wounds. But then again, Mischa had never been a liar, even when it hurt to hear the truth.

“No.” A hand came to rest on his thigh and a warm body wedged next to him. Mischa’s head landed on Vasily’s shoulder. “I don’t think you need time, because I think you two love each other more than anyone has ever had a right to. I look at you together and I see what everyone hopes to have at least once in their life, something perfect and right and good. It’s beshert, right? Destiny. The thing you were meant for in life from the moment you were born.”

“Mischka,” Vasily said around the lump in his throat. “You’re not making it better.”

“Could anyone say anything to make it better?” Mischa took Vasily’s hand, giving it a squeeze. “Really, is there a magic word that can undo heartbreak of the highest order? If there is, I’d like to know it. I’d be even richer than I am now.”

Vasily opened his eyes at that and tried for a laugh but ended up with a sob. Mischa made soothing noises and flung their arms around his neck, hugging him hard.

“I don’t know how I’m going to get through the next month,” Vasily eventually sputtered out as he rubbed his sleeve across his eyes. “Let alone the next…rest of my life. But I’m going to, for him. For Novo-Svitsevo. For all of us.”

“You were here for him when he needed it.” Mischa rubbed soothing circles into his shoulder. “And we’ll be here for you. Anna, Lada, me. We’ll get you through it. We’ll be with you through the long days and the hard nights. Because that’s what family does.”

Vasily hadn’t had a family in so long. He hadn’t had siblings that would be there for him, parents who would comfort him. He’d been by himself since he was young, and maybe that was why it was so daunting to think about living through this. He assumed that he’d be alone.

But maybe he wasn’t. Maybe Dimitri hadn’t only gifted him with a love he’d never forget. Maybe Dimitri had also gifted him with a family that would still be there when that love was taken away.

He estimated that it would take thirty-six souls to begin his experimentation with the rift.

Everyone had assembled far quicker than he had thought possible, and it pleased Alexey to see their unerring devotion. Morozov had also managed to gather the ingredients for the ritual, and so Alexey had spent the last ten days and nights in his study, ensuring that he had everything he needed to engage in this first experiment.

He would need to determine the correct ratio of fuel to power, to ensure that he could stabilize the rift, and to practice with the creatures which they could pull out of it.

A test, then, was in order.

The estate at Chernitzy was fuller than it had been in years, the shuffle of bodies through the rooms reminiscent of the days when he and Dimitri were living there together and were always accompanied by part of their provincial court. There were no servants now, though, so Morozov was making himself useful and Alexey had allowed his guests to bring personal servants. He paid them no mind, as they would soon no longer be alive to divulge any information about what happened at Chernitzy. They would provide ample sustenance for any creatures from the middle world who chose to cross the rift.

“Morozov.” He snapped his fingers in the direction of his chancellor, who was attempting to carry on a conversation with a lady who would not stop staring at his taloned feet. “With me.”

The zemonyii turned immediately and stalked behind him, past the mortals clustered around the card tables in the parlor, sipping tea as if they were partaking in a social call. Alexey led them to the servants’ staircase by the kitchens which provided access to the cellar of the estate.

It was ill-lit and damp, full of spiders and mice, and Alexey ignored the fact that Morozov had eaten his fair share of rodents over the days they had been toiling together down here in the dark. He would have preferred to do the preparations outside, in the fields behind the estate, but he could not risk the possibility that rain or snow would fall and destroy his hard work. So the dirt floor of the cellar had had to suffice.

Morozov struck a match and began to light the crude torches that had been placed at regular intervals in sconces around the perimeter of the cavernous space. The firelight flickered to life and illuminated their work—an enormous circle of symbols, all meticulously shaped and inscribed in Alexey’s own blood. It would be a challenge to ensure that he had enough time and solitude to craft this array when out on the battlefield, but this time he would use secrecy to his advantage. As long as he and the rift stayed hidden until the last moment, Alexey was confident that he could replicate the design.

He swallowed, his throat working, and he massaged the hard lump of scar tissue that Mikhail’s dagger had left in the soft space between his collarbones. He found he did not mind. It was a reminder of his idiocy, that he was so blind in trusting a man he did not know completely.

Alexey would never make that mistake again.

He walked the circle, counting symbols, assessing everything with a critical eye. There was one blank spot in the circle, the final letters. The part of the ritual that would tie him to the middle world, to this rip in the fabric of the realms that he was poised to create. He would be the one to control it, the one to will it open or closed, the sole master of anything that emerged from its depths.

Alexey only wished that looking at the place where he would inscribe the letters of his own name did not leave him feeling hollow. He had dreamed, early on, that one day he would write two names in that space, sharing the power with his husband.

It had been a fool’s wish, and he was paying for it even now.

“Everything else is in order, Moy Tzar.” Morozov was examining some of the ritual objects in the corner, and when he was done, he covered them with Alexey’s prayer shawl, wincing as he touched it. Holy objects, they had learned, tended to sear Morozov’s skin, even as he remained impervious to bullets or blades. “We merely need to collect the supplicants in the ritual space to allow you to begin.”

Alexey moved out of the circle and over to the corner, where the estate’s stock of root vegetables was stored. He checked that a pistol was still tucked neatly between the nearest two sacks, in the event that any of his supporters became restless enough that he had to put them down. He hoped, though, that by the time realization sunk in, the ritual would have taken enough life from the participants that they would be unable to fight back. It would become quite onerous if he had to both complete the end stages of the ritual—the most demanding part—and also contain a crowd of frightened mortals.

None of the sages said that for the ritual to work the sacrifices had to be aware that they were giving their lives to the Holy Science.

“I think that tomorrow night will be the appropriate time.” With an upraised hand, Alexey extinguished the torches, then began his ascent up the ancient wooden stairs. “It is the sabbath. I think that to celebrate, we will invite our guests down to the cellar for a very special ceremony to welcome the day of rest.”

Morozov gave what may have passed for a chuckle as he followed up the stairs, his wings scraping against the stone walls. When they emerged into the light, Alexey dismissed Morozov and headed for his chambers. He knew with a certainty that burned through every fiber of his being that whether or not God would acknowledge His favored son, he was carrying out God’s will.

He only had to prove to the Lord his God that he was no longer weak, no longer fragile, and that he was finally truly worthy of the Almighty’s love and power.

Alexey greeted the sunrise on the day of the ritual on the roof of his estate.

The snow coating the grounds shimmered in the dawn light, the forest beyond their manicured grounds still and silent. There was no sign of life in the bitter air, the quiet absolute. He had always loved it up here, the way that it allowed him to look over the place he was sworn to protect, stretching out to the mountains in the distance with their mines and their jewels, the source of his power.

If he were still living his mortal life, he would have been cradling a cup of tea, the steam rising into his face and the bitterness rousing him awake. He had never been one for the early mornings, and it had taken effort every day to clear the fatigue from his mind and the exhaustion from his eyes. But there had been too much to do for him to be indolent, too many problems every day to tackle. And he had never been able to deny that there was something peaceful about it, being on the roof alone.

He leaned back against the frame of the open window, the heels of his boots resting on the plaster. The ledge was narrow but not uncomfortably so, a window high up in the attic that he had discovered as a boy leading to a portion of the roof that jutted out before descending into a gentle slope of slate tiles. He had come here in his youth to escape his father when the man grew angry, because while now Alexey would not shy away from his blows, as a child it had frightened him to be hurt. And after his father died, he had come here to think, to plan, to dream of what more he and Chernitzy could become.

He came here the night he met Dimitri, and it was where he determined he would make the Tzarevitch his.

So many decisions had been made on this ledge, looking out at the expanse of his region. Alexey ran a fingertip over the cracked plaster, feeling each one of the pits and the divots that time had worn. This, in a way, was the last decision he would ever need to make. He sensed it—that this was the conclusion of the story of the mortal Alexey Balakin. That after this final task, he would shed the trappings of humanity entirely and finally be free of its constraints.

He had never shown Dimitri the ledge. It was the only thing he had kept from the man who had become his husband.

It was strange that here he was, mourning the loss of his humanity on the very day that he was set to finally transcend it completely. Everything was sharper than it had been the last time he had climbed up here as a man, his senses more acute and his vision keener. But something about it was colder too.

Alexey shook his head and cleared the doubts from his mind. The way to move forward was not to dwell on the past. He had no time to mourn, no time for the fury of all those wasted years. He had a task to complete.

He climbed back through the window and latched it shut for the very last time.

“Thank you for coming.”

Alexey stood on the dais in the ballroom, the small crowd of his loyal supporters arrayed before him. Twilight was approaching, and with it the holy sabbath. The thirty-six lords and ladies were shuffling in front of him, their eagerness palpable now that they had been told that they themselves were to participate in a great working of the Holy Science.

None of them suspected. Alexey could tell.

He drew in a breath and continued. “Tonight we shall perform a great feat, the connection of our realm with the middle realm of demons. You have all seen the power I can wield.” He gestured to Morozov, lurking in a corner. “Tonight, with your help, I access more of the same. With it, I will be able to take back the throne which has been wrongfully seized from me.”

Revenge started with the ritual.

“In a moment,” he said, “Morozov will lead you down into the cellar. While it may not be the most extravagant place to join our realms”—he paused to allow for a chuckle among the crowd—“it will prevent any damage to the studious work of my interior decorators.”

It was so easy to slip back into the role of host, giving his guests a reason to laugh, the humor on their faces aided by the free-flowing wine he had provided. He gestured to Morozov, who brought forth candles, a kiddush cup and a loaf of braided bread that someone’s servant had produced that morning. Alexey led them through the traditional prayers to welcome the sabbath, abstaining himself from eating the bread or drinking the wine but providing them to each of his followers.

When it was done, Morozov herded them all to the door to the cellar, and they descended one by one. Alexey himself had lit candles around the space, the dirt of the floor and the symbols inscribed in blood flickering in the light. There were whispers from the crowd, excitement buzzing among them like flies over a corpse. The eagerness of his followers was strong enough that he could feel it, and Alexey hoped that the Lord his God would accept these sacrifices as His own.

This was the greatest science that he had ever worked, the largest experiment he had dared to undertake, far bigger and more consequential than even his own resurrection. The theory had long been worked out—he had been puzzling over it for years. Alexey knew his logic was sound, his formulas were correct, but that did not stop the twisting of nerves deep in his gut.

It had been a long time since Alexey had been anxious. He was now. Ever since Mikhail had bested him, a permanent stain of suspicion had marred his heart.

Morozov was ushering the last of his supporters into the circle. There were, he hoped, enough of them to open the rift, to hold it open for long enough that he could be sure it would work. That he could prove himself able to summon forth the demons of the middle world to walk among men. To help him finally seize and protect what was his.

Alexey raised a hand for quiet. The whispering ceased.

And with a breath, he began.

The first day of the summit finally dawned, and Vasily very much wished he could go right back to sleep and stay that way until it was all over.

The suitors had arrived the night prior, along with the rest of the delegations. He’d observed them from the corners and the shadows like a hawk watching prey. From the very first moment they’d entered his city, he and his spies—maids and tailors and stable hands and cooks and footmen—had been keeping watch. The way that Aziza had breezed in on a cloud of jasmine perfume. The genuine smiles which Lukas bestowed on each and every servant who’d helped him. The sly grin that had crossed Yullyan’s face when they’d seen Vasily standing by the stables with a cigarette he’d not been smoking and winked as if they’d known things.

Vasily knew things now, too.

Lukas Marks’s favorite fruit was strawberries. Aziza Timurova had had nightmares since she was a child, which apparently centered around falling from her horse despite the fact that she was a very talented horsewoman. Yullyan took an ice-water bath every morning at dawn, then spent an hour going through a series of seemingly ritualistic stretches.

In one sense, he was in his element, collecting information and building a picture with it to help his country and his Tzar survive. On the other hand, this time, it was all too personal. It made his palms sweat and his stomach ache, and he’d been tempted to take one of Dimitri’s calming pills far too many times in the last three weeks for him to claim he was doing all right.

At least he was in bed with Dimitri right now. They had months more. It could be the entirety of the length of their relationship thus far before they had to part. Ladushka was adamant that a wedding couldn’t be put off indefinitely, that they couldn’t wait years before making a marriage alliance formal, but there was a limit to how quickly they could rush things without looking desperate. A wedding in mere weeks would look odd to observers who were used to such an elaborate undertaking coming together over the course of a year or more.

Dimitri’s breath whooshed in and out softly, his face unlined in sleep. It was the only time now when he looked truly relaxed, truly at ease, and it was difficult for Vasily to look at him. It was easier to turn away.

It was hard for Vasily to contemplate that one day, he wouldn’t be here to watch Dimitri sleep, to run his thumb over Dimitri’s lower lip while he wondered what his love was dreaming about without him there to share it. He had always woken up earlier than Dimitri, and being still and silent and getting to drink him in was Vasily’s favorite time of the day. It was hard for Vasily to imagine another person lying here, in his place, on the side of the mattress that was gradually molding itself to his weight, in the nest of pillows that Vasily had hoarded, covered by the dozen fur blankets he’d had imported from the far north, since Dimitri was always cold.

It was going to be near impossible to let go, and while half of him was glad that Dimitri had given him permission to relent, to keep this going for as long as they could manage it, it was also hard to sit here knowing that the clock was ticking closer to the day when everything would change.

A hand on his shoulder broke him out of his thoughts, and he rolled over to find Dimitri blinking awake, his sky-blue eyes dazzling in the early morning light slipping in past the curtains.

“Good morning.” Dimitri’s voice was rough with sleep.

“Good morning,” Vasily answered in a voice that was equally rough, but with grief instead of exhaustion. Still, he smiled and pulled all his emotions into the core of him, away from his bond with Dimitri. He didn’t want the other man to feel his sadness when he would have to perform today not just for his own court, but for a dozen others. “You’re awake early.”

Dimitri bit his lip. “Important day.”

“Yeah.” Vasily’s eyes flicked to Dimitri’s lips when he drew the lower one in with his teeth, bone indenting the soft pink flesh. “It is.”

Dimitri shifted closer, slipping his hand around Vasily’s neck and letting Vasily wrap him in an embrace. “But you’ll be there.”

“I’ll be there,” Vasily breathed into Dimitri’s hair. “Right there beside you, for as long as you need me.”

Dimitri tipped his chin up and Vasily knew what he wanted—reassurance to carry him through the day. So when their lips met, Vasily cupped Dimitri’s jaw with one hand and rolled him over with the other, so that he was hovering over Dimitri, his hips nestled in between Dimitri’s legs.

He broke the kiss to tip their foreheads together. “What do you want?”

“Everything,” Dimitri replied. “All of you. All of it.”

He reached up to knot his fingers through Vasily’s hair, canting his hips up and drawing a groan from Vasily, one that he didn’t bother to try to muffle because he wanted Dimitri to know just how much pleasure this gave him, along with all the pain.

“You already have everything I am, darling.” He inched lower, pressing kisses down Dimitri’s neck until he reached the collar of his nightshirt, drawing the flat of his tongue across Dimitri’s collarbone, the one that had been broken by Alexey’s fist. He went lower still, teasing the most sensitive areas of Dimitri’s chest with his fingers and his mouth until Dimitri was shaking, the hard length of him nudging insistently into Vasily’s stomach.

Vasily hiked up Dimitri’s nightshirt with a hand, running his palm over the lean abdomen and twitching muscle, sweeping over the points of Dimitri’s hips and down the curve of his ass.

“Vasya,” Dimitri panted. “Stop teasing.”

“Oh?” Vasily chuckled. “What makes you think this is me teasing you?”

Dimitri gave a strangled moan as Vasily sucked the tip of his cock into his mouth, holding Dimitri’s hip and pinning him to the bed before taking him in deep. Vasily wondered how long he could distract Dimitri for, how relaxed he could get the other man before what was sure to be a stress-inducing day. What kind of peace he could allow Dimitri to settle into before having to perform before the continent’s courts.

“More,” Dimitri gasped out, his fingers tightening in Vasily’s hair almost to the point of pain. When Vasily chuckled, Dimitri jerked his hips up and Vasily pulled off.

“You’re impatient this morning, aren’t you?” The jest came naturally, and Vasily was glad to see that it made Dimitri smile. He hadn’t expected any smiles from him, not today. “But you know that I’m a master at resisting torture. Don’t try that pout on me—it won’t work, darling.”

Dimitri was trying it anyway, biting his lip adorably and gazing at Vasily from beneath his arm, which he’d flung over his forehead. His chest was heaving and he was flushed, and Vasily wished there was an artist in the room with them so that he could have this moment painted, saving it forever.

He looked and drank it in, and tried to commit it to memory.

“Vasya,” Dimitri rasped. “I command you not to stop.”

Vasily smiled, because he could never disobey a command, and bent down again to kiss Dimitri’s cock and work his way lower, bending Dimitri’s thighs back to his chest until he could reach what he was searching for, and when he laved Dimitri with his tongue the sound the other man made was glorious.

His fingers were next, searching, exploring, one then two then three, opening Dimitri up wide. He pressed kisses to the back of Dimitri’s thigh, memorizing the smell of his skin and the feeling of his ankle hooked across Vasily’s back, holding him in place.

If he could stay here, right here, for the rest of his life, Vasily Sokolov would die a happy man.

When Dimitri started to shake with pent-up desire, the flush building on his chest and creeping down his shoulders, Vasily took pity on him. When he pushed into Dimitri—slowly, so slowly and carefully that it took everything he had not to give up and fuck his Tzar like an animal—he released the hold he’d kept on the tether between them.

Without the distance, without any physical or emotional space between them, it was like they were one person. Vasily tilted his forehead down to Dimitri’s, let their noses brush, then claimed his mouth in a kiss. Their bodies met over and over and over, until Vasily was trembling with the effort of not coming undone, Dimitri leaking against his stomach, both of them covered in sweat. When his arms started to tremble, Vasily reached down and flipped them over, Dimitri planting his good hand on Vasily’s chest and riding him like he was born to do it, his head thrown back and his mouth open in pleasure.

Vasily finally couldn’t take it anymore, and when he came, Dimitri did too. When Vasily opened his eyes, Dimitri was staring down at him, utterly broken apart.

“Vasya,” Dimitri choked out. “Vasya.”

His mouth opened and closed, like he didn’t know what else to say, and Vasily opened all of himself to Dimitri, and Dimitri did the same, until there was a knock at the door.

It took an inhuman amount of effort to get out of bed, to wrap himself in a dressing gown and leave Dimitri in the hands of the servants who poured into the room, ready to bathe and shave and dress the Tzar for the day. Vasily slunk down the hallway to his own rooms, the ones he was in so rarely now unless something had gone terribly wrong.

Annika met him at his door. He found his own servants waiting for him, and even though he had devised half the summit’s schedule himself and knew what his role was—he was leading some of the negotiations as the newly established special adviser to the Tzar, since it still wasn’t useful for anyone foreign to know exactly who he was and what he did—he wished he could crawl into bed and stay there.

He submitted to being disrobed and shoved into the tub, already full of steaming water. Annika perched on the lip as a servant went to work on his hair, washing out his curls.

“You’re going to get through this,” she said, shifting over to make room for the servant who came to trim his nails. “You’re going to be fine. I swear it.”

Vasily closed his eyes because at that moment, he wasn’t sure if he actually wanted comfort from anyone. Maybe he wanted someone to knock him out so he could forget all of this. Maybe he wanted someone to commiserate with him, telling him that yes, this was a fucking shit thing he had to do, this was going to be one of the worst days of his life and it was all right to feel like he was being ripped to shreds.

He didn’t know what he wanted, except for this all to be over so that he could be back in Dimitri’s bed. Because they still had time. They were still, blessedly, giving each other time.

Annika took the hint when he didn’t respond, getting up and leaving with a mumbled explanation that she needed to get dressed herself, even though she was already in an immaculate court suit of cloth-of-gold, a jeweled necklace with an empire’s worth of rubies strung around her neck and her hair twisted into an elaborate braided crown. But he appreciated the lie, the space that she gave him, and the fact that she could tell when he wanted to be coddled and when he just wanted to be left the fuck alone.

Eventually, he was rinsed and permitted out of the bath, and he submitted to having his beard trimmed and being shoved into a suit. Court clothes were always so restrictive, and Vasily felt like he was choking when the cravat was tied around his neck.

When the servants left, he went to the sideboard in his parlor and poured himself a shot of vodka, then another because he was feeling especially sorry for himself.

Buoyed slightly by the alcohol, he exited his rooms to find Mischa, Ladushka and Annika loitering in the hall. No one said a word and he could tell everyone was trying to be strong for Dimitri, despite their discomfort. Trying to be strong for him too. He appreciated their efforts at stoicism more than he could say, the gratitude tightening his throat.

They waited for several long minutes until the doors to Dimitri’s rooms creaked open and he stepped out, completely and utterly resplendent in a way that made Vasily’s breath catch in his throat.

A circlet studded with sapphires rested on newly trimmed hair, highlighting the color of Dimitri’s eyes. The deep-blue velvet of the high-necked, silver-thread embroidered jacket he had been buttoned into set off the creamy paleness of his skin, and someone had brushed a light dusting of shimmering pearl powder across his eyelids and lips. The effect was stunning, down to the weave of the fine silver netting of the sling for his left arm, the rings that had been pushed onto the dead fingers of his hand, the right one free of adornment because Dimitri hated the way that rings would be crushed into his fingers when people shook his hand.

There were diamonds in his ears and around his neck. The entirety of him shone in the light filtering into the hall, and Vasily had never, ever felt so unworthy of sharing a bed with the man in front of him as he did now.

“Stop staring,” Dimitri said, licking his lips and utterly ruining some servant’s careful application of makeup. “You’re making me feel like a specimen in the Rav-Mikhailburg zoo.”

Annika giggled at that, even if it sounded a little bit forced, and it broke some of the tension. Even Ladushka smiled, just a little, but it was there nonetheless. Dimitri’s smile, though, didn’t reach his eyes, and Vasily was unsure how much comfort he wanted from them or whether he wanted to hold himself apart. Whether he’d slipped back into the armor of being Tzar, separate from them all.

The answer came a moment later when Dimitri held out his hand.

“Vasya,” he said quietly. “Walk me in?”

Because of course Dimitri had no consort, no one to officially stand by his side as he was welcomed to the summit. The honor would have gone to a parent or a sibling or a spouse, but Dimitri had none of those left.

“Sure,” Vasily managed, despite the fact that he knew it wasn’t right, that it was an imposition and it should be Ladushka, the highest-ranking noble among the court, the one who by any social rights should be given this honor. That it would draw too much attention to himself to be smart.

Then again, he had always been stupid for Dimitri.

No one else said anything, and so he took Dimitri’s arm. They didn’t speak as they walked through the corridors and out of the private wing of the palace, the public halls lined with servants from dozens of nations, the unfamiliar uniforms and languages putting Vasily on high alert. He kept one eye on Dimitri and another on everything else, wondering if there would be threats to counter even among the delegates and their staffs, or if Ayla had done what she’d promised and ensured that there wouldn’t be a single weapon or ill intent among those she permitted into the building.

They made it to the top of the staircase, which gradually widened as it descended into the palace’s entryway below. The herald there nodded to them.

Beneath them was a teeming mass of people, far more than Vasily had ever seen packed into the palace atrium. The windows set into the ceiling, like those in the throne room, admitted only muted light, given that they were covered in a blanket of snow, but the effect was to make the thousands of candles set into the scattered arrangements of crystal-studded roses all the more striking.

Vasily knew everyone important in this room by their file, by their tastes and their secrets and their histories. But it was one thing to know a person on paper and completely another to see them in person. Standing at the top of the stairs, he listened as the herald announced Annika, Mischa and Ladushka, who walked down together. But what he was really doing was searching for the only three people in this room who truly mattered to Dimitri, and thus to him.

Lukas Marks was easy to spot. He was half a head taller than most of the others in the room, his curly hair glinting in the candlelight. He had an easy smile on his face and warm brown eyes that hadn’t been captured in the drawing Vasily had seen, and he exuded a warmth which undeniably would draw others in. Something about Lukas Marks screamed friendly and trustworthy and genuine. He was shadowed by an even taller man with a scowl and a shaved head whose tailored suit did nothing to hide the fact that he was rippling with muscle, and Vasily made a mental note to find out everything about the person who he bet was Lukas’s primary bodyguard, there to ensure Lukas—with his overly trusting nature—didn’t smile at a potential assassin and try to shake their hand.

Standing nearby was a tawny-skinned woman with dark eyes and long, even darker hair falling in beautiful curls nearly down to her waist. Unlike Lukas, she wasn’t smiling; instead, she was surveying the room with a sharp-eyed intelligence that belied the image Vasily could tell she was trying to project, of an impassive and beautiful woman who was paying more mind to the gaggle of ladies-in-waiting surrounding her than she was to studying the people around her. He was sure this was Aziza Timurova, the strategically minded princess of Urushka.

It was her searching look that guided him to Yullyan Sakvin, but once his eyes landed on the royal, Vasily didn’t understand how they weren’t the first person in the room to catch his attention. They were standing at the foot of the stairs with an utterly bored expression on their face, a half-empty glass of wine dangling from their fingers despite the fact that it was barely nine in the morning. Their white-blond hair hung in a silky sheet to just past their shoulders, and they were completely, utterly encrusted in diamonds, the gems hanging off every conceivable part of their body that could host a jewel, evident by the fact they were also wearing a jacket that had been left open with absolutely nothing on underneath.

He winced, wondering how much, exactly, those particular piercings had hurt.

“Well,” Dimitri murmured out of the corner of his mouth while maintaining his court-approved smile, “the Atreans are certainly going to put us all to sartorial shame.”

“It looks like a weird sex thing.” Vasily tried his best to mimic the way that Dimitri was able to deliver insults while looking like he was completely and utterly delighted to be here. “Like they decided that it would be half a minute faster to undress if they just…didn’t wear all their clothes in the first place.”

“That is what Yullyan is known for,” Dimitri reminded him. “They’ve always had a reputation for being a total rake.”

Vasily was about to laugh but he caught it at the last minute because Dimitri was supposed to marry one of these three people. If Yullyan Sakvin was here to try to attract someone to their bed by showing up nearly naked with their lithe chest and abdomen on display, it was because they were trying to attract Dimitri.

The thought made his stomach sour, as did the way that all three of the suitors snapped to attention, their gazes drawn like magnets to the top of the staircase, when the herald announced Dimitri’s name.

Dimitri started to walk down the stairs, and Vasily followed out of sheer instinct. The eyes of everyone in the foyer were on him, people clapping politely, and he felt his cheeks flush. It was clear that people were wondering who, exactly, was escorting the Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo, and the searching gazes of nearly a thousand people trying to dissect who he was made him feel like a bug under a scientist’s microscope. He was so used to the shadows, so used to evading people’s eyes, that this was like being flayed alive.

Dimitri’s fingers dug into Vasily’s bicep, his body rigid, and he realized with a flash of understanding that no, Dimitri didn’t like this either.

They made it to the bottom of the staircase and Ladushka immediately came to their side, pulling Vasily away and allowing Dimitri the space to greet Yullyan. The royal’s bored expression never faltered, but Vasily realized that their eyes were darting all over Dimitri’s body, the way Vasily’s father used to assess horses at the market.

Ladushka handed him off to Annika, who towed him away from Dimitri. Ladushka moved to Dimitri’s right shoulder and began whispering minutely in his ear.

“Come on,” Annika said over the din of the crowd. “Let’s go find Mischka.”

Mischa hated crowds, and they were excellent at finding quiet places to hide during events like this. Vasily owed many of his favorite nooks for surreptitiously listening to conversations to the doctor. It took a minute of searching, but eventually he and Annika found Mischa sitting in one of the alcoves underneath the grand staircase, nursing a cup of tea.

“It’s too fucking early in the morning for this,” Mischa griped when Vasily wedged in next to them on the marble bench. Annika perched on Vasily’s knee. “I hate these things.”

They sat for a few more minutes, talking about nothing even though it felt forced, and gradually Vasily felt himself relaxing. He was grateful to Annika for noticing that he needed a minute to collect himself, a minute away from Dimitri and all the people showering their attention on him.

But eventually, it was time for Vasily to work.

He excused himself from Mischa and took Annika by the arm so that he’d have cover as he made his rounds. “Just talk at me,” he muttered to her. “I’m not going to be listening to what you’re saying, so excuse the fact that my responses will be nonsensical.”

Annika hummed in reply, smiling widely and starting to rattle off her plans for the second orphanage that Dimitri had apparently gifted her. He listened with one ear to her plans for a place for much older children, those who were edging into adulthood but had nowhere to go, no chance of adoption. It was, he conceded, a good idea, but he was far more interested in steering them towards the ladies-in-waiting who had once clustered around Aziza, banished now that she was talking to Dimitri.

Vasily had found that, even now that he was somewhat known to the court and to the broader world, people still hardly cared about him. They had never really defined his role, and Vasily had ignored the most prevalent whispers that he was a handsome stranger only there to warm the Tzar’s bed, since that was actually the truth.

Because the currency of Rav-Mikhailburg was favors, and when a person couldn’t do favors anymore, they were no longer worth the court’s time. Annika had been constantly mobbed by courtiers before the war, everyone wanting a commission for their child or a contract with the army. Now that she was in charge of a program for destitute, orphaned children, not a single person approached her unbidden, because she had nothing left to give them.

Mischa had a cult following now because they were known to dispense their famous cures for any number of sexually transmitted diseases to those they liked, and Ladushka was constantly beset by hangers-on, but that made sense—she was the Tzar’s chancellor, and that meant in many ways she was the one who held all the real power, all the ability to get in front of Dimitri and snare his attention.

Vasily was someone, now, with a name that certain people knew, but he had nothing to give, no title and no clear purpose. He was just a minor lord of no consequence, without significant holdings or much wealth. He’d refused every one of Dimitri’s attempts to award him a new title, which would come with land with substantial holdings and enough value that he’d be one of the country’s richest people. But that wouldn’t do—it would sever the anonymity he needed to do his job. So even though he had escorted the Tzar down the staircase into the most consequential gathering of politicians in the last decade, he was still a nobody, still nothing, to these people who craved power.

The court’s disregard was helpful, though, in allowing him and Annika to edge their way through the crowd, cups of tea in their hands, carrying on their fake conversation and wearing their fake smiles. The court of Abramovich all wore false faces, and Vasily hated it. But it was useful too, because when they got to Aziza’s ladies-in-waiting, they were chattering away about their mistress.

“She’s going to want to wear the red tonight,” one of them tittered. “She whispered it to me when he came down the stairs. I knew she was going to be interested, even though she protested otherwise. He’s just so handsome!”

Vasily listened to their giggles with one ear and pretended to nod in response to Annika’s recitation of her grocery list. So Dimitri had already caught Aziza’s eye—it was good to know, even if it felt like an arrow spearing through his chest.

He navigated them closer to Lukas Marks and where his entourage was standing. The bodyguard he’d observed earlier was the only person who noticed them, staring in their direction and raking eyes down both of their bodies, lingering on Annika’s hips.

She snorted. “At least one person here is paying attention.”

“Knives?” He reached out a hand and put it on Annika’s waist, feeling the hilt of a concealed dagger against his palm.

“And a gun.” She winked and pulled his hand discreetly around to the small of her back, where he could feel the distinct outline of a pistol tucked into her waistband. “It wasn’t as if I was going to waltz into a crowd like this unprepared, no matter how much I trust Ayla and her team.”

Vasily looked over his shoulder to find the bodyguard whispering in Lukas’s ear. Lukas’s smile never faltered, and Vasily wondered how much of his supposedly affable nature was real and how much of it was an act. The two men switched places so that the bodyguard was now in between his charge and them, and Annika bit back a grin—then winked at the man.

The enormous bodyguard, to Vasily’s amazement, blushed.

“It’s been a while,” Annika said, licking her lips, “since I had someone fun to play with. It’s always been a good distraction when things get particularly horrific.”

“Everyone is pairing off.” Vasily rolled his eyes. “And here we are, supposed to be working.”

Annika laughed, but the edges of her smile were strained and it never quite reached her eyes. “Vasya, I forget that you’ve never been to one of these before. The secondary objective is politics. The primary objective is to figure out which gorgeous foreigner you can have a fling with before you never have to see them again.”

Vasily wondered how much grief the others were bottling up, and how much they were deigning to show him. He would guess that it was very little, in an effort to spare his feelings. But he was beginning to wonder how long all of them had before they cracked into pieces with their false cheer and affected bravado in the face of so much danger, so much loss.

How long would they be able to keep the ruse up? None of them had practice pretending quite as much as he did, and he was already uncertain how much longer he would be able to do this.

He wondered where Yullyan had gotten that wine. Maybe they had the right idea.

“Come on,” he said to Annika, “I may as well take you around the room if you’re determined to find the best candidate to spend the night with.”

She smiled and they moved, each turn around the room getting them farther away from Dimitri at its center, and Vasily drowned in the crowd and information and the feeling of being totally, utterly alone.

The room was suffocatingly hot.

Ladushka hovered behind Dimitri’s right shoulder, whispering bits of information in his ear without ever moving her lips, and a servant had their eye on him, constantly filling his glass with ice-cold water. People pressed in from every side, the lords and ladies of his own court and the nobility of a dozen other nations, all wanting the time and attention of the Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo.

He’d forgotten just how much work these things were and just how much he utterly despised them.

There were three people in this crowd that he needed to meet, and yet it would be a dance to get to all of them without offending the rest of the delegations, those from the more minor nations who didn’t know that they were here under false pretenses and that there was no chance of them snagging the ultimate prize—Dimitri’s hand in marriage. Not that they even knew that it was on offer.

The first suitor that he chose was Yullyan, just for their proximity to the bottom of the stairs. He didn’t miss the way they looked him up and down, their bored expression never once changing.

“Nice pants,” they drawled before he had a chance to open his mouth. “Could be tighter, though.”

Dimitri was so taken aback by the greeting that he couldn’t help it—he laughed.

And Yullyan winked.

“Pleasure to meet you.” They extended their hand and Dimitri took it. It was strange to meet someone in the flesh that he’d only ever read about on paper and yet might share a bed with in too short a time. “You must introduce me to your party planner.”

Dimitri jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “She’s right here. Chancellor Ladushka Zakharova, she of the ability to write treaties and arrange roses all on the same day.”

Yullyan sketched an exaggerated bow that made even more diamond jewelry hang from hidden places beneath their jacket. Dimitri fought the urge to stare—although perhaps that was the point of all this decoration.

“I’ve heard so much about you.” Yullyan cocked their head at Dimitri, and he realized that the bored expression was masking interest keener than he’d realized. And that although Yullyan was holding a glass of wine, they hadn’t taken a single sip.

Dimitri cast a glance at the nearest potted fern. The soil around the base of the plant was suspiciously wet. He was no Vasily, but Dimitri would bet that Yullyan had watered the plant with wine so that they could pretend to be drunk while remaining quite sober.

“And I you.” He turned his shoulder to head off a gaggle of courtiers who were trying to edge into the conversation. “How are you finding Rav-Mikhailburg?”

Yullyan’s eyebrow—pierced through with a diamond-encrusted hoop—edged upwards. “Gorgeous, but it’s not the first time I’ve been here. Perhaps you weren’t in residence when we paid our last state visit? It’s the only one I attended, given that my parents finally gave up on locking me in the palace”—they mimed quotation marks in the air—“for my own personal well-being and safety.”

“Ah.” Dimitri winced, having already made a misstep half a minute into the conversation. He should have remembered Ladushka’s note about Yullyan’s presence at the state visit six years ago. “No, I wasn’t here. I was in Chernitzy.”

Yullyan’s mouth twisted into something uncomfortably like a smirk. “With your husband. He’s what, quite dead now?”

Dimitri stared, wondering how to respond to that, but Yullyan just laughed after a moment and waved a hand. “Of course I know what happened. Everyone thinks I’m an idiot, but I do read the papers. Something tells me you’re better off without someone so egotistical.”

His tongue could have been sewn to the roof of his mouth for all Dimitri was able to respond. Yullyan blinked wide blue eyes. “Of course, if you’re looking for a replacement, I’m the next victim of my parents’ attention. Tyoma got married and created a gaggle of adorable children, and now that that’s a feather in their cap, they’ve moved on to their other child. Something tells me I could make worse choices than you, Dimitri Abramovich.”

“Oh.” Dimitri flushed and cringed at the same time. He was failing at this, totally and utterly. And here one of his three options had announced, bald-faced, that they were eligible for marriage and interested in him. He should have said something suave, something seductive, something or anything to take advantage of Yullyan’s statement and turn it into an opening for more.

But Dimitri was dumbstruck that Yullyan had addressed the topic of marriage so openly. He’d been expecting far more of a dance from the three suitors, a game of politics and politeness before any true desires were spoken aloud.

Yullyan was studying him with their head cocked. “So, if during all of this”—they waved their hands around, indicating the summit—“you want to sleep together, I would be absolutely delighted. Because the rest of the piercings are even better,” Yullyan said with another wink. “But we’ll have to strip down for you to get a good look. You can even ask others to join in. You could be in the middle, as is the royal prerogative. I do, you know, excel at handling multiple partners at once.”

Dimitri shook his head, biting his lip. A quarter of an hour into the summit and already one of the people he was supposed to be targeting for marriage had completely unbalanced him.

Ladushka saved him from his inability to speak by elbowing him in the ribs, making him wince. Dimitri did what he could and defaulted to talking about the schedule. “I believe we have dinner set for the two of us, so we can get to know each other, and I’m very much looking forward to it—and I promise, there will be excellent food and not many people. We can speak more then.”

Yullyan inclined their head, and Dimitri thanked God that they didn’t continue to press the discussion of sex and marriage. “I look forward to it as well. It will be a blissful reprieve from talking about mining treaties. Who knew so many metals were in such demand?”

“Bombs,” Dimitri deadpanned. “It turns out that everyone wants them.”

Yullyan snickered. “Go on, then. I’ll see you around.”

Ladushka spirited him away from Yullyan, who turned to accost the finance minister. She’d been staring at them with unabashed interest and Dimitri wondered if Yullyan would return the favor, or if they were going to try to extract information out of the minister while blinding her with diamonds.

“Lukas next,” Ladushka whispered in his ear, taking his arm to steer him imperceptibly to the right.

Dimitri swallowed the nerves that were creeping up his throat as Lukas came into view. He was shadowed by a tall man in a guard’s uniform who was twice as broad as anyone else in the room, whom Dimitri could not recall being mentioned in Ladushka’s and Vasily’s briefings. But he could hardly blame Lukas for wanting security close at hand when Novo-Svitsevo had so recently been in turmoil. Aziza’s and Yullyan’s guards had been relegated to the perimeter of the room, but perhaps Lukas was more nervous about being in a crowd.

“Dimitri!” Lukas’s face broke into a wide grin when their eyes met, and Dimitri’s smile became a little more genuine in return. “What a pleasure to finally meet you.”

Lukas reached out and clasped Dimitri’s hand in both of his, his palms warm and dry and enveloping. There was sincerity and eagerness in every line in his face, and something about that instantly put Dimitri at ease.

It reminded him so much of Vasily.

“A pleasure to meet you as well.” Lukas hadn’t let go of his hand, but Dimitri didn’t try to pull away. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Good things, I hope.” Lukas finally dropped his hand, and Dimitri hated that he wanted to take Lukas’s hands back in his, just for something to anchor him. “I know I’m the newcomer here. All of this is quite spectacular.”

He smiled again, completely earnest. Dimitri wasn’t able to tell whether this was an act, or whether Lukas really was both friendly and excited to be here. He found himself wishing it was the latter.

“Very good things.” Dimitri cast around for a safe topic of conversation, something that wouldn’t lead him into a misstep like he’d made with Yullyan. Somehow, asking Lukas about the health of his family’s shipping company for volatile goods seemed like a fantastic way to put a damper on the conversation. “The roses were actually grown in Nizhniy Karevskiy, the region I was born to.”

“Not born in?” Lukas’s eyes crinkled in amusement. “Is this one of those royalty things? I can’t say I’m well versed in the customs of the nobility. We have something of a lack of it in the Free States.”

It was charming, the innocence that Lukas admitted to. He was somehow so much softer than Yullyan’s sharp edges, free of the layers and games of a life spent at court, learning how to fit into the role one was destined for.

“Yes, and I understand why it’s confusing.” Dimitri offered him a small smile, hoping to assuage his embarrassment. “I was born in Rav-Mikhailburg, since my parents were already on the throne. I grew up here all my life. I have a summer home in Nizhniy Karevskiy—it’s temperate, by the sea—and I go there when I’m able to get away. Which isn’t much now,” he added ruefully.

Lukas nodded. “When was the last time you were there?”

“Oh.” Dimitri rubbed the side of his face, trying to think back. “It must have been a decade.”

He was fairly sure the last time he’d been to his home region was the summer before he’d gone on the tour of the south with his parents, the one that had ended with him staying in Chernitzy. Alexey had never wanted to leave the province—it wasn’t as if he’d trusted anyone to preside over the provincial court in his absence—and Dimitri wasn’t going to go alone. And then when he’d become Tzar there had been no time for taking breaks, and then the war.

And now all this.

“It must be hard, not being able to take a proper break,” Lukas said, like someone who had never had to decide between a full night’s sleep or finding a way to provide for the safety and security of one hundred million people. “If you’re not there, is a lot of your extended family there? Who’s in charge of the region now?”

“My half brother was made the Lord of Nizhniy Karevskiy. He hadn’t ever been there,” Dimitri replied. “There’s no one there now from the house of Abramovich, not that I’m aware of.” When he said it, he realized the estate was probably something he needed to address—except that the region clearly hadn’t fallen into the sea, and so he assumed that his father’s stewards, long since appointed to care for the place, had been doing a decent job all through the war and what came after.

“Has he—” Lukas’s mouth kept moving, but no other words came out. He blushed, and Dimitri got the distinct sense that, unlike his mother, he wasn’t made for politics. “Your half brother, is he—”

“Yes.” He took pity on Lukas. “Ivan’s dead.”

The smile slid off Lukas’s face. “May his memory be a blessing. I’m sorry. I know we don’t know each other at all, but you’ve been through a lot, so know I very much admire your strength and perseverance. It would have killed a lesser man.”

Dimitri almost choked on his own saliva and lost his composure entirely, but through some miracle he managed to remain straight-faced. He could feel Ladushka leaning into his shoulder, a solid presence, like she was worried that he would crack into pieces at the comment.

“I appreciate that.” Because he did—Lukas was only trying to be kind. Dimitri could practically feel the sincerity rolling off him. But Dimitri was unsure that he’d be able to continue the conversation much further, not with the look of pity on Lukas’s face. “It was wonderful to meet you. I’m very much looking forward to our private dinner.”

He said his goodbyes and let Ladushka guide him away yet again. “That was wonderful, Dima,” she whispered in his ear, and he wondered what was wonderful about it—that he’d managed to keep his composure, or that he’d now had two conversations that resulted in clear interest, where he hadn’t fucked anything up terribly or fainted dead away in front of the other person.

Ladushka steered him to where Aziza Timurova was holding court in the center of the room. There were rings of people clustering around her, as if she was the center of the event and everyone was attempting to get as near to her as possible. They all parted for Dimitri, though, and left him standing in front of the princess of Urushka, who was dressed in a dazzling gown that looked like the night sky studded with stars.

She tilted her head at him, her gaze assessing. “The rumors of your country’s ruin appear to have been exaggerated. I’m glad to find that is the case. What a pleasure, to be hosted here in Rav-Mikhailburg, to see for ourselves.”

Her tone said that no, she was not glad that his country was not in ruins. He wondered what she’d expected to find in Novo-Svitsevo, whether she thought they were all living in a bomb crater and eating rats. Her disappointment—and the fact that their repartee had begun immediately upon laying eyes on one another—put Dimitri on edge, as did the sense that she was here for more than a summit, just like he was. She was here to gather information, to assess, to play the role of princess and spy and scout.

This was an ancient game, and it was one that Dimitri knew well. He settled into the dance. “The pleasure is ours, Princess. We have not had the chance to host a gathering of this magnitude in some time. I’m glad to have the opportunity to show that Novo-Svitsevo is thriving, more so now than ever.”

“One might question how that is.” Aziza blinked at him, and he wondered if she was going to try to play the innocent. “With so much death and destruction, and the rumors on top of it.”

“What rumors?” Dimitri countered, even though he knew exactly what she was referring to.

“Oh,” she said airily. “About your husband, of course. Such strange whispers about what he did, the new religion he founded around himself, the perversion of mysticism that he engaged in. Some even said that you fell prey to it yourself before your little war.”

It was patronizing in a way that set his teeth on edge, and he knew that that was the point. That Aziza was going to try to make him angry, to goad him into revealing information because he was arrogant and would be too daft to realize she was searching for it. Vasily had been right—he would bet anything that Aziza was as smart as Ladushka, and that she absolutely was the political brains behind the Urushkin throne.

“Well,” he answered with his most charming smile, “you can see that I have a distinct absence of demonic features, so I’m sure you’ll believe me when I say that I did not condone my former”—he took care to emphasize the word—“husband’s heresy. The war was fought over exactly that. Hundreds of thousands of Novo-Svitsevans gave their lives to stop the Holy Science and honor the Lord our God.”

Aziza nodded at the retort, her fingers going to the six-pointed star on a chain around her neck. “A relief, Tzar Abramovich. One would hate to think that an old and noble house such as yours condoned such blasphemy, the way it verged on idol worship. But how do you feel about more respectful uses of mysticism? Because of course, you yourself have seen the other side of death.”

He shuddered. The way she was staring at him was causing the magic under his skin to twist around, reaching for her. He breathed in and out several times to steady himself, taking a long drink of the icy water in his hand as a distraction. It was clear Aziza was a practitioner of the Holy Science herself, although she seemed not to call it that, and she drew some distinction between what she did and what Alexey had done. Maybe she had magic of her own that was similar to the shadows plaguing him, and his magic was reaching to touch hers.

“I think,” he said tersely when he was fairly sure that he could control himself, “that that’s best discussed in private. Although I can assure you that the house of Abramovich stands in opposition to everything that the Holy Science as practiced by my former husband did.”

The void within him didn’t like that pronouncement, twisting around his heart and rattling the edges of the cage he’d placed it into, begging for release. He wasn’t sure if the magic inside him wanted to hurt its host, for denying it, or the woman across from him for provoking him.

“What a wonderful conversation you and I will have about that.” Aziza’s eyes gleamed. “I look forward, then, to learning more about what the house of Abramovich does stand for. Perhaps at this private dinner your chancellor has so kindly arranged?”

Aziza tipped her head in Ladushka’s direction. Ladushka honored her with the barest incline of her head. Dimitri was glad, then, that after the horror of crawling to Alexey in the throne room and having to watch his friends bow, he had instructed them to never show that kind of deference to another person as long as they lived.

“I look forward to it.” Dimitri took the hand that Aziza offered and kissed the back. Her skin was cool against his lips, and her hand, while delicate, bore the kinds of calluses that came from long hours doing something repetitive—riding, shooting, handling knives. Aziza, like most people in court, must be far more dangerous than she appeared.

“It is time,” Ladushka whispered in his ear over the din in the room, taking his elbow. “Let us go.”

They fought through the crowd again and Ladushka deposited Dimitri at the base of the stairs. He climbed up five of them and pivoted to the crowd. He nodded to the herald, waiting for his cue, who shouted for the room’s attention. Quiet settled over the gathering, and Dimitri took in a breath, hoping that he was able to stop shifting from left to right to relieve the ache in his hip. It wouldn’t do to look like he was fidgeting.

“Thank you all for coming.” He projected his voice as loudly as he could, remembering the way that Alexey had taught him to speak to a crowd with authority and poise. “I know the journey to Rav-Mikhailburg was long for many of you, and so we are committed to making this an experience worth the effort. While we have weeks of important discussions ahead of us, which I hope will bear fruit for everyone involved, know that we’ve also provided entertainment—and a lot of caviar.” He gave a chuckle, and the rest of the crowd laughed with him.

It was strange to fall back into the role of Tzar as host, the one providing for the entertainment and comfort of others instead of worrying about the details of taxes and provincial roads and all the minutiae of running an empire. He felt, traitorously, that same spark of enjoyment he’d always felt in Chernitzy, of a party well put together and a crowd amused and happy.

He found Vasily in the crowd, off to the side with Annika on his arm. He held Vasily’s eye as he continued.

“Life has not been easy here in Novo-Svitsevo these last few years. I regret that the country had to suffer in order to get to the place we are at now, stable and prosperous and free of any malign influence.”

The void within him seemed to bang on his ribs. Even when he had practiced this small speech in front of the mirror, the power living within him had hated the implication that it was a thing that had to be purged from the country. Dimitri clenched his teeth and fought against it, hoping that none of the battle showed on his face.

“But now we are at peace, and as you can see, the charms of Novo-Svitsevo are still here to welcome you. Please make the best use of them as you can during your stay. For those of you lodged in the palace, I invite you to venture into the city and experience the delights of Rav-Mikhailburg. For those of you staying in the city, make sure to spend some time in the palace gardens. While it’s winter, they remain a sight to behold.”

There were murmurs of appreciation through the crowd. Vasily gave him a small smile, and it anchored him.

“With that, I will take up no more of your time. Please, enjoy the food that we have prepared for you. The grand ballroom is to your right, if you will follow the servants.”

The room gradually started to empty as the crowd flowed towards where a large breakfast spread had been arranged in the ballroom, with a wall of windows that looked out across the snow-coated gardens. Dimitri retreated back up the stairs, even though he knew that Ladushka’s instructions had him following the rest of the summit’s attendees into the breakfast.

He slipped into the nearest corridor at the top of the stairs—an unassuming hall full of rooms used for meetings where he was sure no one would be—and chose the nearest to shelter in for a breath or two.

There was nothing wrong with needing a quiet moment alone.

Dimitri was about to close the door and sink into the nearest chair to close his eyes for a moment when someone grabbed the handle from the other side, pulling the door back open. He startled, and shadow burst out along his fingertips, but his heart immediately calmed when Vasily’s face came into view.

“Hey.” Vasily looked down at Dimitri’s hand and the shadow curling lazily around his fingertips, and Dimitri shoved it back inside, telling the void within him that there was no threat, no opportunity to take life from someone else. It went, but not without a bit of a fight, stealing away some of his happiness at seeing Vasily there. “Are you all right?”

Dimitri swallowed. “Yes, of course I am. I merely needed a moment to…” He paused, unsure of what to say.

“A moment to yourself?” Vasily finished gently. “Is that what you needed? Because I understand if so. I can go.”

“No.” Dimitri shook his head and intertwined his fingers with Vasily’s. “There’s no version of me that prefers to be alone without you there.”

Vasily didn’t reply, just stepped forward and wrapped Dimitri in a firm hug, allowing Dimitri to tuck his head into the crook of Vasily’s neck. He let his body relax into Vasily’s arms as the other man rubbed soothing circles into his shoulder blades.

They stood like that for long enough that Dimitri was sure that Ladushka was frantically searching for him. But at least he felt more centered, restored from the depleted, off-kilter sensation he’d had after speaking to the suitors and then the crowd.

“I should go back,” he said into Vasily’s suit jacket. “Lada will kill me if I’m gone for too long. I might cause some kind of international incident.”

Vasily’s hand stilled on his back. “If you get through the day, I’ll reward you tonight.”

“If we’re both awake long enough to do anything except collapse into bed,” Dimitri replied with a snort. “But thank you, Vasya. For being here.”

“There’s nowhere else that I would be,” Vasily whispered into his ear, before laying a kiss on the edge of his jaw and stepping away.

“Yeah,” Dimitri replied hoarsely. “Me too.”

The feeling of thirty-six souls tethered to his own was at once an unbearable weight and a pillar of strength, holding him up.

Alexey sat cross-legged on the floor in the ruins of the basement of his estate. It could have been seconds, minutes, decades, millennia since the moment he had opened the rift. Now it drifted around him, the ashes of his most faithful stirring in the ethereal breeze like motes of dust.

He had known that the ritual would take far more power than anything else he had ever attempted, even his own rebirth. The energy had drained from his every limb, leaving a far more profound exhaustion than anything he had experienced before except in the very depths of his mortal memory, lying ill on sweat-soaked sheets, stricken with fever, Dimitri’s hand in his hair for comfort.

So he remained motionless, staring, his senses overwhelmed by the strong smell of sulfur and a hollow ringing noise. The rift was jagged around the edges, the melding of two realms like a body blown open by an artillery shell. Where the two realms met, things bled together, hard for even Alexey’s eyes to discern. The span was no longer than the length of three men laid head to foot, but something within him knew that the rift would grow to accommodate any creature of Gehenna he summoned, no matter how massive.

Alexey knew he could pull demons through. But until the moment he had looked into it with awe, he had never once wondered if he himself could pass through the rift. The middle realm was cast in a faintly amber glow, the darkness split by ethereal stars that burned with the intensity of holy fire. The landscape beyond was like nothing he had ever seen before, the vast plains stretching into eternity, broken by small, gnarled trees that formed groves that glowed with their own amber light. The whole scene pulsed like a heart, like a breath, this realm alive and moving and coiled through with raw, unearthly power.

He knew, however, that if he walked into the gleaming, jagged rift, he would never return. He would never be able to resist what he knew would be the first true warmth he’d experienced since his death.

“Master.” Morozov was at his side, one clawed hand outstretched towards the rift. Several creatures, mostly lesser demons, had attempted to cross through the rift into their world, sniffing curiously at it like hounds after a scent. Morozov had repelled them all. “Do you wish me to take any action?”

Alexey almost asked Morozov to help him up, but he was determined not to show any weakness in front of the new territory that he ruled. It would not do to start his reign over both the mortal and middle realms with a literal stumble. With a groan, he staggered to his feet, the faint tang of iron on his tongue coating the back of his throat. His vision swam, the first true sign of physical weakness that he had experienced since his rebirth. While the damage to his body was already healing, and while he was certain that an ordinary mortal magician attempting the ritual would have died before it was ever completed, he was still hovering on the verge of fainting.

“Stay here,” he commanded Morozov, the words tearing at his parched throat. “This is your new post until we determine when and where we will bring the first wave of demons to walk the earth. Stop anything from crossing, even if you must kill it. I must rest.”

Morozov merely nodded, wings unfurled and scaled feet planted in the dirt of the cellar floor. When Alexey looked down, there was a lone finger bone in the dust. He bent to pick it up and tuck it into his pocket, a reminder of what he had accomplished because he had no fear.

The stairs up from the cellar had been partially charred in the opening of the rift, but they remained sturdy enough for Alexey to mount them and make his way up to the main house. For a moment, he leaned against the doorframe, winded. It was miraculous that more had not been taken out of his body by performing the spell, but being able to draw on the lives of his faithful had prevented too much of a drain on his own reserves.

Still, he stumbled as he started to make his way down the corridor.

When he reached his bedroom, darkness was creeping around the edges of his vision. The most he could do was remove his boots before falling into his bed.

It was Dimitri’s side of the bed. His eyes landed on the nightstand. He’d never removed the last book that Dimitri had been reading, a silk ribbon still tucked through the pages halfway into the book.

Alexey couldn’t sleep, but he could drift. It was the closest he could come to rest, the exhaustion weighing so heavily on him that his eyes closed of their own accord. His lips were parched and his throat dry, despite the fact that he hadn’t felt thirsty since his first rebirth. It had been years since any liquid had passed his lips.

He thought he smelled Dimitri’s hair, and when he blinked, Dimitri stood in front of him.

The flickering lights illuminated a small shop, the door painted a brilliant green, a glass cloche on the counter filled with sugared flowers and perfectly cut bricks of fudge. The smell of sugar hung in the air, and Alexey knew where he was—in the sweet shop that Dimitri had favored, where Alexey had come to buy the treats that he’d hide under Dimitri’s pillow to make him laugh after a long day. He’d always had an incorrigible sweet tooth, and Alexey happily indulged it.

And Dimitri was there.

He stood at the counter, his hands laid flat on the worn wooden surface. The lines of his neck were tense, the stiff set of his shoulders visible through the nearly transparent white cotton of his shirt. Alexey fought the ghost of an urge to grip the back of Dimitri’s neck and draw him close to massage the tension out of him.

The brilliant blue of Dimitri’s eyes still hit him like a punch to the gut as the other man turned around.

Dimitri gave a hoarse, defeated laugh. His voice was dry as he said, “Stop it. Stop it. He’s gone. Alexey’s gone. Why am I doing this to myself?”

“You are too,” Alexey replied.

But dream-Dimitri didn’t answer, didn’t acknowledge him. He was pulling at his hair now.

Alexey could feel the way that Dimitri’s bones had broken under his fingers, the way his trachea had collapsed under Alexey’s palm. He remembered, with perfect, painful clarity, the way it looked when the light left Dimitri’s eyes. Yet here his husband was, still taunting him in dreams. His own unconscious mind, pulling the worst parts of memory to the forefront. His husband wanting him gone.

A flash, and the setting changed. They were in their bedroom at the palace. Dimitri was panting, wild-eyed, looking at him with repulsion. Alexey recognized this moment—the one that had hurt most of all.

Dimitri chuckled, although even to Alexey’s ear it sounded forced. “You never wanted me. You never truly wanted me. Why can’t I dream of him instead? Why can’t I let you go?”

“Vasya?” Alexey hadn’t forgotten the name that Dimitri had uttered as he’d died. “Is that who you want?”

But once again, Dimitri didn’t hear. He just sat down on the rug, his arms wrapped around his knees. “I hate you. I hate what you did to me. I hate that you’re gone and yet you’re not out of my head.”

Dimitri’s exhausted anger made the ache in Alexey’s chest even deeper, spearing through him. The cold distance in Dimitri’s eyes, the disdain, stung more than Alexey cared to acknowledge.

It had been so long since he’d been this close to Dimitri. He couldn’t help but take another step forward, reaching for his husband. But in this dream, it was clear, looking at him, that the man he had loved was gone, replaced by someone else. Someone harder, and colder, and wrong.

There was that sense of heartbreak again, that wrenching feeling between his ribs. Alexey swallowed the lie on the tip of his tongue and decided, between one breath and the next, to tell the truth. “It was love, Dimitri. I always loved you. I never stopped.”

“You killed me.” Dimitri was looking down at the carpet. “You broke half the bones in my body and then stabbed me in the heart. You deserve nothing more from me.”

Dimitri’s fists and jaw clenched at the remembrance, warring with his bloodshot eyes and the look of hollow defeat on his face.

Alexey wondered if this was his conscience coming back to haunt him, if Dimitri’s curse right before the light had faded from his eyes had worked and Alexey’s sins had carved themselves into his very bones.

“Dima, I—”

He opened his mouth to try to explain, but the dream shuddered. They were back in the sweet shop again. Dimitri was sitting at the table by the window, crying.

Alexey took three quick steps forward across the tiled floor of the dream-shop, until they were face to face.

“You never deserved my love,” Dimitri snarled. “And you don’t deserve my nightmares either. Now get out of my head.”

His husband reached out and touched him.

Dimitri put his hands against Alexey’s chest and shoved, hard. Alexey flew backwards until he blinked up at the ceiling in their bedroom, filled with horror and hope at the realization, deep in his soul, that this was no ordinary dream. This was something more.

Dimitri Alexeyev was somehow, some way, still very much alive.

Dimitri spent a long, long time that morning looking at himself in the mirror. He was haggard, having been up half the night after another gut-wrenching nightmare featuring Alexey.

His former husband was dead and buried, and yet his mind kept conjuring him. He would be haunted forever by a man who was gone, and he wasn’t able to stop his mind from going back to the worst moments, time after time.

A knock at his door pulled his gaze from his reflection, and he was glad that it was only Annika who opened the door, because the guilt must have been written all over his face. If it had been Ladushka returning, or Mischa coming to check on him, he never would have gotten away with lying. But because it was Annika, and she didn’t want to force him to explore what she assumed was heartbreak, she merely came over, wedged herself next to him on the chair cushion and wrapped him in a brief hug.

“Are you ready to go?” She tapped his nose with a finger. “It’s a visit to the sweet shop, isn’t it?”

Ladushka had wanted him to present meaningful tokens to the suitors, and today he’d had time arranged with all three of them. He’d chosen sweets, and while he could have had a servant go fetch them, he’d told Annika the night before that he’d wanted to go himself. He needed to get out of the palace, even for a moment.

He mustered a smile and nodded. “Let me get my coat. We can walk.”

Together, they made their way out of the royal wing and through the halls to the front gates, passing through the courtyard and out into the city. He’d refused any guards but Ayla, who trailed behind them at a respectable distance.

Dimitri’s coat was slung around his shoulders—it was too hard to maneuver his left arm in and out of a sleeve, and he didn’t think he would get over the awkwardness and embarrassment of people staring at him and then rushing forward to help as he grappled with his own clothes, when all he needed was a bit more time to untangle himself—and it barely broke the frigid air that met them in the streets of Rav-Mikhailburg. The snow had been falling for days, and the streets were thickly coated with a hardened layer of powder that crunched under their boots. He tugged his hat down lower over his head and was gratified that no one was stopping to look at him, aided by the snow flurries obscuring everyone’s vision.

The sweet shop was only a ten-minute walk from the palace. He’d been visiting since he was a young boy, and the now-elderly couple that owned the store—and made all the confections themselves—never made too much of a fuss when he stopped by. Even now that he was Tzar, they treated him the same, and for that reason Dimitri felt the smallest bit free every time he came here.

“Leah,” he greeted the woman behind the counter, her gray hair twisted into a bun and her warm brown eyes surrounded by the kinds of wrinkles that told of a lifetime of laughter. “How’s the shop?”

“Doing as well as ever, Dimitri.” He’d never been able to persuade her to call him Dima, but at least she’d dropped the use of his titles a decade and a half ago. “We have more rugelach for you. It’s fresh out of the oven as well.”

He surveyed the glass case on the counter she stood behind, filled with cookies and candies and all sorts of things that made his mouth water, despite his having eaten just an hour ago. Dimitri had always had a difficult time taming his sweet tooth. Making a decision, he pulled three gold coins out of his pocket. “I’ll take everything you have.”

“Everything?” She raised an eyebrow, looking between him and Annika, who was snickering. “And the two of you are going to eat all of that?”

“Us and half the royals of the continent.” Dimitri pushed the coins across the counter, and when Leah tried to push one of the three back, he caught her hand. “The extra one is for the inconvenience of having to turn the rest of today’s customers away.”

“Shayne punim, you spoil me.” She turned to shout into the back, and two of her grandchildren came scampering out to help with the packing.

“His pretty face has nothing to do with it,” Annika said. “He merely wants a bribe to make people like him. It’s why he buys out your shop every time he visits my orphanage.”

Dimitri flushed, because it was true. Whenever he had a moment to visit Annika and her charges, he came prepared with sweets to buy their love.

Leah huffed. “Children will like Dimitri because children are the best at telling when someone is kind in their heart. He doesn’t need sweets to bribe them with.”

“But it helps,” Dimitri said with a wink.

Leah reached over and patted him on the cheek fondly, and Dimitri’s heart gave a twinge as it reminded him of his own grandmother, the way she would tease him and hug him and love him with her whole being. “One day you’ll have children of your own and then you’ll see how good they are at telling the truth of a person.”

He tried to smile back but it cracked, because standing there, his right hand curled on top of the worn counter, a future he could never have flashed before his eyes. Vasily, cradling a baby in one arm with the other around Dimitri, a brilliant, breathtaking smile on his face. The two of them teaching their children how to walk, how to read, how to ride horses and get into trouble and then weasel their way out of it. Growing old together and running hands through each other’s graying hair while they gained laugh lines like Leah’s, Shabbat dinners around a table with the family they’d chosen and the family they’d made together, their own children having children and the love and trust and life that they would cultivate.

Leah’s thumb brushed against his cheek, and he realized she was wiping away tears. He swallowed thickly and made to step away, but she hooked her still-strong fingers behind his head and held him there.

“Who were you thinking of, bubbeleh?” And it was the term of endearment that he hadn’t heard from anyone since his grandmother had passed that did him in. He raised his hand to wipe his eyes, as he did his best to stifle a sob.

“No one,” he managed to choke out, even though it was a lie.

“I can’t pretend to understand the complexities of your life, little one, but I’ve lived quite a lot of mine.” She let her hand drift down to grip his. “And whoever it was that crossed your mind? Hold them close. Because it’s been a long time since I’ve seen someone look so much and so deeply in love.”

Annika came up behind him to put an arm around his waist, and Dimitri took a deep breath to collect himself, mindful that he was out in public and Leah was a citizen, and the complexities of politics in Novo-Svitsevo were something she never had to take into account. She could love and be loved and not worry about the future of the state, because that was his burden and his alone.

“It’s more difficult than that.” His voice wavered as he squeezed her hand. “For now, I’ll merely have to settle with bribing children that aren’t my own, and delegations at this summit as well.”

She gave him an assessing look but squeezed his hand back and then went to help her grandchildren with the packing, finishing each box off by tying it with red and white string. Annika pulled Ayla into the shop to help her carry all the boxes, and when they turned to go, Leah called his name.

She held out a single ingberlach on the palm of her hand, the tart ginger candy one of his favorites. “Because you look like you need it,” she said, giving him a sad smile. “You’re going to go make people happy, but you need someone to make you smile too.”

He did take it, because he couldn’t help it, and put the candy into his mouth, the flavor bursting his tongue. He walked out the door, into the snow, and wondered if loving Vasily and losing him anyway would ever get any easier, or if his life would merely now be a string of moments like this, realizing over and over the kind of future he had been forced to give up.

Dimitri sought Yullyan out first, a box of rugelach tucked under his arm. Hints from the servants led him to the stables.

He made his way down blissfully empty corridors to the stables and was shocked when there was a figure standing in front of Malishka’s stall. She was uncharacteristically hanging her head over the edge, letting the person scratch her behind the ears. When Dimitri got closer, blinking in the dim light, he saw that it was Yullyan. Except they were as radically different from the night before as they could be, long blond hair pulled back with a leather tie, their face devoid of makeup, not a single diamond or piercing to be seen. They blinked at him, the baggy sweater they wore over breeches and simple riding boots slipping over their hands.

“She’s yours, then?” They gave Malishka another scratch and she shook her head, snorting happily. “Beautiful mare.”

Dimitri leaned against the stall door. “Yes. And she doesn’t usually let anyone touch her.”

Yullyan shrugged. “Neither of us are just anyone, are we?”

Yullyan looked so young like this, even though they were older than Dimitri. Lonely too, although Dimitri didn’t know how he knew. Something about the look in their eyes and the way they caressed his horse.

Dimitri supposed he’d looked like this an awful number of times, talking to an animal because talking to a person was too hard.

“It’s difficult, being different,” Yullyan continued, not waiting for an answer. “My parents want me to marry Lukas Marks. I was going to be sent to the border to meet him and escort him to the capital for negotiations with my father. I know they hoped that we would organically fall in love or some nonsense like that, despite me telling them that that kind of romance isn’t in my cards. And Lukas doesn’t seem like the kind of man who would be open to the arrangement that I’d like to craft with my spouse. That poor boy wants to be swept off his feet with a declaration of true love and all that bullshit.”

Dimitri stayed silent. It didn’t seem like Yullyan wanted him to interrupt.

“They aren’t pushing me. But I sense their disappointment all the same. They’re people I love and care about, and I’m failing the expectations they have of me. The hopes and dreams they have for me. My brother made them happy. I should wish to do the same, to provide for the royal line in the horrific eventuality that my parents and my brother’s family are…deceased.” They grimaced apologetically, not meeting Dimitri’s eye. “Something that the royal families of the continent have taken more seriously as a threat these days.”

Dimitri swallowed back the acid in his throat at the realization—that the destruction of his entire family was a lesson learned from by the rest of the royal houses. “And they don’t understand that a traditional marriage would make you unhappy?”

“Who among us can understand something so different from our own way of being?” Yullyan smoothed their hand down Maliskha’s broad forehead and began to stroke her velvet-soft nose. “My parents have a happy marriage. So does my brother. They want that same happiness for me, despite me not finding my joy in the same way.”

They turned towards Dimitri and gave a small smile. “Maybe you know someone who would enjoy a marriage where they stayed in their court and ruled while I pursued my life’s greatest desire?”

“Which is?” Dimitri managed weakly.

“To fuck my way across the continent before getting weary of people entirely and retiring to my seaside home with an infinite supply of good books and better food, and no ever-present spouse staring over my shoulder at all times demanding grand romantic gestures.” Yullyan rested a cheek against Malishka’s forehead. “In other words, I will make a paradise here on earth to rival Eden, and they’ll pursue their own paradise. We could meet for appearances together at big events and otherwise have a perfectly modern marriage. It would be…it would be the best way for me to be happy, I think. Maybe the only way.”

“I’m sorry.” Dimitri didn’t know what else he could say. He knew all too well the way that the expectations of one’s station could murder the desires of one’s heart.

Yullyan was silent for a minute, the only sound between them Malishka’s snuffling of their sweater, hoping to find hidden carrots. Dimitri put down the box of sweets and reached into his sling, taking out a carrot he’d stowed there and pressing it into their hands. They nodded at him in thanks and smiled as Malishka took her treat.

“Our lives are fucked up,” Yullyan said, pressing their forehead to Malishka’s. “If only we could have been born common, so that we could be free. Or been born horses, so beautiful people could feed us delicacies every day and scratch us behind the ears whenever we wanted.”

“Yes,” Dimitri sighed. “If only.”

“I think that we could be friends,” Yullyan said, their voice a near whisper as they spoke into Malishka’s hide. “If you would have me.”

Dimitri’s throat closed up at the plaintiveness in Yullyan’s voice, so at odds with the self-assurance of the person they were in public.

Yullyan gave him a sidelong glance and then went back to stroking Malishka. “All I want in my life is to be my own person. I have to marry, I know that, but I would let my spouse have who they wished. I’m not one to care or be offended, because I know that my way of living is antithetical to so many who think romantic interest is the highest compliment one person can pay another. I merely want friends who aren’t planning on bombing my country to bits or some fuckery like that. Because our lives are lonely, and it’s so rare to find someone who wants nothing from us. No expectations, no weight of societal convention. Someone who, like a lovely, darling horse, will just sit with us and be.”

They paused and looked at Dimitri, blinking in the light filtering through the slatted windows of the barn. They opened their mouth and then bit their lip, and Dimitri wasn’t dense enough to miss the stifled invitation in that look.

Dimitri pressed his palm against Malishka’s neck, feeling the strength of her pulse beating beneath his hand. She freed her head from Yullyan’s hands and swung it around to snuff at Dimitri’s hair.

He could be that person to them. He could offer it now. It was tempting. So tempting. But Dimitri didn’t know if it was the right choice for Novo-Svitsevo, not yet.

“I’ll have you as a friend. No expectations.” Dimitri looked at Yullyan and was rewarded with a small—but very genuine—smile. It was incredible, the ways in which people wore armor around others, and what they were like when it was stripped off.

“Well.” Yullyan stepped away from Malishka, their voice back to the cheery, rather sarcastic version of the night prior. “Thank you for the use of your horse when I needed a bit of comfort this morning. Where did you get her?”

Dimitri swallowed. “She’s from Chernitzy’s finest breeding stock,” he answered, echoing words that had been said to him nearly a decade ago. “One of the southern regions of Novo-Svitsevo. But all of their horses were moved to the coast during the war. You’ll have better luck in the western provinces, if you have time to make the journey.”

“Thanks for the tip.” Yullyan inclined their head and gave Malishka a final pat on the nose, then picked up the ribbon-wrapped box from the ground. “And for the sweets. I’ll leave you to it.”

Their heels clicked on the flagstones of the stable aisle as they sauntered away, their hands clasped behind their back. Dimitri was left alone with his horse, and his thoughts, and his desperate wish that they could all get what they wanted out of life, nothing more and nothing less.

After a quick lunch, Dimitri looked for Aziza, eventually finding her in the library.

“You have a very interesting collection,” she said. She was sitting at a table, poring over a number of books that Alexey had imported from across the continent. Several of them, he saw, were in Urushkin. “Have you read your books on the Holy Science?”

Not those books, Dimitri thought to himself. Anything dangerous was, he was sure, in Alexey’s study.

“No,” he said. “I’m not a practitioner, nor a scholar.”

He set the box down in front of her. Ingberlach, because he imagined that she’d like something as spicy as it was sweet. And because he’d seen her continually plucking pieces of candied ginger out of the bowls on the table at last night’s dinner. “For you.”

Aziza closed the book, opened the box, and looked up at him with surprise in her eyes. “Thank you. You noticed. I don’t have a sweet tooth, not for things which are sweeter than they are tart.”

She angled her head at him in a way that made him think there was more to the statement than a simple observation about candy. There was steel in this woman’s spine. Dimitri thought that of the three of them, she alone might be able to hold him up, to brace him as he sat upon the throne.

“I ate lemons as a child,” she continued, picking up an ingberlach with red-painted fingers. “My parents did not know what to do with me, so strange was the habit. I have always wondered if my own children will, one day, do the same.”

“You want children, then?” Dimitri knew he should try to make conversation with her, to learn more about her hopes and her preferences. He hated how it made his stomach twist to think of a partnership with Aziza. She put his guard up, the way she looked at him, the way the sharpness in her eyes reminded him so much of Alexey’s keen gaze.

Or maybe that was just last night’s terrors haunting him, combined with the mention of the Holy Science. He reached out and took an ingberlach of his own, hoping the ginger would settle his stomach.

“One or two.” Aziza pulled out a handkerchief to wipe her fingers, then passed it to him. The silk was warm from her skin. “To continue the dynasty, of course. And how could one not give in to the temptation to recreate the best parts of oneself with another?”

The smile she gave then was genuine, another crack in her mask, just like her surprise at his observation of her tastes. The way it softened her put him at ease.

Alexey hadn’t smiled like that at thoughts of the future, not in the end.

“Tell me more about growing up in Urushka,” he said, sitting down in a chair, pushing the box towards her. “I want to listen.”

She smiled a true smile and grabbed another one. “And I want to tell. It was idyllic in some ways and horrifying in others.” She pushed the box back towards him, and despite the lack of appetite he’d been suffering from, he took another piece. “The court is vicious, and it became more so when the plague hit. I lost my protector.”

Dimitri swallowed the ingberlach in his mouth, the candy tacky against his teeth. “Your mother?”

He remembered the dossier that Vasily had presented him. Aziza had lost her mother and each of her older siblings. She, too, knew what it meant to be a survivor through no effort of one’s own.

“Yes.” Aziza ran her finger down the page of the open book in front of her, stroking the text, then began flipping through the corners of the pages over and over. “I was the only one to survive. My father’s first wife died in childbirth with their first child, and my mother was his second wife. My four older siblings died in the plague first, then my mother. There was callousness in God’s arrangement, the way she had to watch each of her children succumb before she did. But as the sages say, gam zu l’tovah.”

“This, too, is for the good?” Dimitri couldn’t help but snort incredulously. “I have never managed to see what good there is in the death of innocents.”

Aziza gave a small, elegant shrug. “It is a way of staying sane in the face of the world’s cruelties. You know how it is.”

He wasn’t sure that he’d managed the tragedies of his life half as gracefully. He remembered Alexey at his family’s funerals, dry-eyed and literally holding Dimitri up, stoic in the face of so much pain. He knew that about himself, that he needed someone to be there for him to shore him up in all the ways he was weak.

“I do.” He swallowed against the dryness in his throat, then desperately tried to change the subject. “Did you find time for leisure, in the capital of Urushka?”

“Of course.” She quirked up an eyebrow at him. “Another way of staying sane—finding joy amidst the horror. I grew up riding on the plains and being tutored in history. I love to read, and my parents indulged my love for tawdry novels. I have quite the collection.”

She grinned sheepishly, and it brought humanity to her perfect features.

“Ah,” Dimitri admitted, relieved to find common ground that had nothing to do with loss. “Me as well. You’ll have to go further back in the library for what I’ve left out in public, though.”

He stood and offered her his hand, and she took it, her skin soft but her grip firm. “Well,” she said, her eyes sparkling, “I’d never say no to recommendations.”

Dimitri tugged her forward, and she went with a smile.

Lukas was last. Dimitri’s stomach growled, and he was glad that Ladushka had arranged for him to meet Lukas over dinner. Lukas had, apparently, requested that they meet in the kitchens.

Dimitri was almost never down here, not unless it was the middle of the night, and he was both terribly hungry and unwilling to inconvenience a servant by calling for food to be brought to him. He thought the last time might have been when his court had utterly devastated the place by baking him something they claimed was a birthday cake, when they’d gotten flour and butter all over the walls. But there was something cheery about the enormous room lined with worktables and cabinets, interspersed with ovens and stoves and fireplaces that kept the cavernous space warm in the dead of winter, so he always enjoyed his time here.

Lukas was waiting for him with a smile, and thanked him profusely for the cookies, which Dimitri immediately handed over. The few servants that were there bowed low when they saw him, but he wished them well and instructed them to ignore him and Lukas, and thankfully they did.

“There’s been so much fish at every meal,” Lukas said with a laugh. “Is that some kind of new trend? I have to admit, I’ve kind of been starving.”

Dimitri shrugged. “I’m actually not sure. It certainly wasn’t a choice of mine.”

“Well, how about something a little heartier?” Lukas ambled over to the branching room that served as the pantry and Dimitri trailed him, uncertain what was expected of him but glad that they were alone, and Lukas was taking the lead. There was a yawn trying to break free that he kept stifling, the muscle in his jaw ticking with the effort. The nightmare had taken too much out of him for him to remain alert all day.

Lukas emerged from the pantry a moment later with a sack of flour in one arm and three eggs cradled in his other hand. “Any chance you could put a pot of water on to boil for me?”

Dimitri stared at him for a minute, stunned that he had just been asked to do something without the person first looking him over to assess whether they thought him capable. And he found himself opening his mouth to protest that it would be difficult with just one arm, but then thought better of it and grabbed a pot off the rack one-handed. After filling it in the sink and making some awkward calculations, he was able to drag it back out of the basin without too much loss of water, tuck it against his chest, and maneuver it to the stove.

Lukas had stripped off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves and was whistling cheerily as he dumped what looked like half the sack of flour directly onto the worktop, shaping it into a mound with his hands. One of the kitchen maids approached like she wanted to help, but he merely thanked her and motioned her off with a white-coated hand.

Dimitri sidled up to the worktop. “What are you doing?”

“Making noodles.” Lukas cracked one of the eggs into the center of the pile, then followed it with the other two. He stirred the mess with a finger and then started flicking the edges of the flour into the egg. “I went on a tour of the south when I finished university, and ended up meeting a number of grandmothers on the coast who were appalled that I wasn’t able to make a decent bowl of pasta. So I canceled most of my other obligations and spent time with them to learn. See?”

To Dimitri’s shock, Lukas had managed to transform the flour and egg into a rich yellow dough while only getting a small amount of it on himself. The muscles of his well-toned forearms flexed, and Dimitri tried desperately to be interested in this man who was making him dinner in his shirtsleeves, and was handsome, and yet was also very much not Vasily.

It wasn’t working. Dimitri felt the anxiety rising up in his chest, and when the void reached for it greedily, he gave in and fed it the edges of his despair, just enough to take the edge off. He breathed a little easier after that.

“So,” Lukas said casually. “You want to try?”

He motioned to the half-kneaded dough, and Dimitri saw the offer for what it was, a chance to not stand off to the side anymore. “Sure. I used to love to bake with my grandmother, before she died. It’s been a while, but I’m sure I still remember the basics.”

Lukas smiled and Dimitri was close enough to see that he had dimples in his cheeks. He was clean-shaven, like Dimitri himself, with nothing of the scruffy almost-beard of Vasily’s that he adored.

The void took another helping of his pain, and that made it better when Lukas stepped behind Dimitri and trapped him between his chest and the table, caging him in with his arms.

“It’s not so hard.” Lukas, with only a moment’s hesitation, placed his hand over Dimitri’s and moved it onto the dough, showing him how to roll it back and forth under his palm. Dimitri could feel every inhale that Lukas took and see just how interested Lukas was in the proximity. He prayed that he could manage the same.

“Wonderful,” Lukas said after several long moments, his mouth by Dimitri’s ear. The feeling of his breath on the back of Dimitri’s neck made him shudder. “I’d say you’re quite the natural.”

Lukas didn’t move but instead took over, pinching off bits of the dough and rolling it out with the help of a fork to make indents into the shapes he created. It was something that had to be done with two hands, but Lukas hadn’t said anything about Dimitri being unable to. He just kept going in a way that, thankfully, didn’t make Dimitri feel incompetent.

Dimitri tried. He really, truly tried. He took his desires and his wants and made them as small as possible, tried to pretend that he was twenty again and knew no better than what he had read in romance novels, didn’t know the shape of his own desires or how he liked things in bed. He tried to fall hard, to fall fast, the way he had felt his love for Alexey twine around his heart between courses of a single dinner. He tried to inhabit the shell of the Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo, who was currently nestled against the very firm chest of a very kind, handsome man that anyone would be happy to go to bed with. That anyone would be happy to fall in love with. If this had been his first encounter with romance, maybe it would have been easy.

But the only thing his heart said now was not Vasily, and the only thing his mind could do was compare the way Lukas felt against him with the way that Vasily held him close.

He swallowed down the unease of the comparison and fed more of his pain to the void. Then he watched Lukas step away and put the pasta in a pot, and when it was cooked, drizzle it with cheese and oil before feeding it to him as they stood next to the stove, the dough burning his tongue.

“You know,” Lukas said easily, wiping a bit of oil from the corner of Dimitri’s mouth, “I always imagined doing this with my family. A spouse, a gaggle of children. Teaching little people how to cook would be fun, don’t you think?” He paused, meeting Dimitri’s eye, a faint blush touching the top of his cheeks. “Do you want children? Through adoption, perhaps, or employing a surrogate mother?”

Lukas was smiling, his eyes warm in the light from the fire, and Dimitri’s heart lurched. Because maybe he wasn’t instantly falling in love with Lukas Marks, but suddenly he could see a life with him. The kind of life that would give him the family that he was only now starting to dream of. Alexey hadn’t ever expressed much desire to be a father and seemed content to let Dimitri decide the shape of the future royal family, if there was one—but of course that had been ruined by everything that came between them.

“Yeah,” Dimitri managed to whisper. “Yeah, I do.”

Yullyan would offer him the freedom he needed, but in an empty marriage where they were more business partners than lovers, where the only romance in his life would have to be buried deep down where no one could see. Aziza would be a powerful ally in ruling the country and marrying her would bind Urushka to Novo-Svitsevo, preventing another war, but there was so much of Alexey in her. And with Lukas, he could have the family he wanted, and he would be loved and cherished as a man, but Lukas seemed far too trusting and naive to help him when it came to ruling. Dimitri was unsure that Lukas would survive the often ruthless politics of the court of Rav-Mikhailburg.

Dimitri sighed and wondered how this was a harder choice than whether to wage a civil war.

Lukas grinned and fed Dimitri more noodles, and Dimitri’s traitorous mind and heart began to imagine a future in which they did this every night, in which their children joined them, in which a comfortable and easy attraction grew between them and everything was safe and proper and fine.

He bid Lukas good night, feeling nothing like himself, and managed not to vomit all over his own feet when Lukas took his hand and kissed it tenderly, hope in his eyes.

He could do so much worse than this. Maybe it would even be good. Maybe a life with Lukas or Yullyan or Aziza could make him happy. That scared him more than it would have if he’d realized he couldn’t stand any of his three options.

But as he opened the door to his room and found Vasily in bed waiting for him, as he crawled into his lap and sank into his arms, he was certain that he was condemned to know, for the rest of his life, that no matter how good things were with the next person he married, he could have done so much better. He could have had this.

Dimitri had come to bed last night smelling of another man’s cologne, and Vasily had done his best not to let it throw him into a rage.

He wasn’t an angry person, usually. Anger was self-defeating and not productive. But as he tried to punch Annika in the gut, he knew that no amount of exercise was going to help him work out his aggression. Not this time.

“Vasya,” she wheezed when he finally connected, evading her block. “A little sympathy? I’m a human, not a punching bag. That’s in the corner.”

“Sorry.” He rested his hands on his knees, panting, his clothes drenched with sweat. None of it was making him feel better, not even the exhaustion stealing his breath. He straightened up, peeling off his shirt and dropping it on the floor before making his way to the bench at the corner of the room and slumping down onto it. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Yes, you did.” The corner of her mouth turned up in a wry smile. “I’m happy to help you work out your anger. But you’ve gotten stronger in the last few months, and my rib cage is having trouble keeping up with those muscles.”

She pointed to his torso and he looked down. He’d lost weight and gained muscle in the time since he’d realized whatever he had with Dimitri was drawing to an inevitable close. The combination of a distinct lack of appetite and a distinct desire to punch through a wall was apparently working wonders for his physique.

“I’m not trying to use you as a punching bag.” He tipped his head against the wall and tried to slow his breathing down. His heart was jackrabbiting in his chest. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” She sat down beside him, the bench creaking under her weight. “I’m not going to do you the disservice of asking if you are, though.”

Vasily sighed. “Something happened with one of the suitors. He wouldn’t say what when he came to bed. And he left early this morning without saying anything either. I think he thought I was asleep.”

He hadn’t wanted to pry, but Dimitri had crawled on top of him and laid his head on Vasily’s shoulder, shaking faintly. He’d had an oddly blank look in his eyes, and his expression had been vacant and his answers clipped. Like it was Dimitri’s body without his mind. The worst part was that Vasily couldn’t tell if it was the result of whatever had happened over the course of the day or due to the magic festering inside him. Even their connection was blunted, Vasily’s efforts to probe Dimitri’s state of mind stymied by a feeling of trying to look through muddy water to the bottom of a pond.

Annika cracked her knuckles. “Do you think Lukas did something inappropriate? He was the only one to have Dima in a private place. Because if so, I’m very prepared to divest him of his balls.”

“He didn’t seem like the type,” Vasily muttered. He’d spent a lot of time the previous day listening in on the entourages and the suitors themselves. Nothing of note had come up in their conversations. It was all the polite chatter of court, most of the delegations keeping to themselves instead of intermingling. And Lukas had seemed like the most genuine of them.

“He definitely didn’t. And talking to Pavel made me think that Lukas was far more likely to gift Dimitri a puppy without asking because he thought it would make him happy than to do anything that would truly hurt him. But you never know.”

When he turned to look at her, she was staring straight ahead, a blush spreading over her cheeks. Vasily had stalked off the previous evening as soon as dinner was over, taking a very long bath and curling up in bed with one of Dimitri’s romance novels, praying it would provide the distraction he needed from the fact that his lover was off somewhere secret with another person.

Evidently not everyone had gone back to their rooms.

“Annaaa.” He drew out her name and grinned, pivoting on the bench and gripping her by the shoulders. “What happened? Were you engaging in international relations with Lukas Marks’s enormous, handsome bodyguard?”

“No!” Annika swatted him away, her flush spreading down her neck. “He asked me where the training facilities were and I showed him.”

“You could have sent a servant to show him the way.” Vasily was glad for the distraction. It warmed him to the core, despite the chill the whole situation had settled around his heart. “But you showed him yourself. Is it because he could crush you just as well as you could crush him? I don’t blame him for his interest. I know sometimes I love a woman who could crush me.”

“I was being hospitable.” She rolled her eyes. “And besides, it’s not like anything happened. We just talked about Lukas, and Lietuva, and the challenges of providing security to high-ranking nobles, and the newest model of folding throwing knife coming out of Urushka.”

Vasily was sure his smirk took up the entirety of his face. “So in other words, you already proposed to one another and you’re going to have a house full of babies wielding pistols by the end of next year.”

Annika swatted him away this time with a snort. “I already have about thirty children. I’m not looking for more at the moment. But he was nice. Calm. Protective.”

“Good.” Vasily leaned back against the chair. “Good.” Dimitri would need people around him that were a good influence, that were calm and steady and able to look out for him. Vasily would be seeing him far less once he was married. He’d have to spend most of his free time with his spouse.

It hurt to think that Lukas Marks’s bodyguard might have far more access to Dimitri than Vasily himself.

“How are you holding up?” The way that Annika massaged her ribs told him she knew the answer, but he appreciated her asking.

He dragged a hand through his hair. “It’s more difficult than I thought it would be. I’m not sure if it’s easier or harder that he seems to have gravitated to them so easily.”

Annika bit her lip. “I think he likes Lukas best, and I’m not surprised.”

“Why?”

“Because, Vasya,” she sighed, “he’s by far the most like you.”

“Oh.” The breath left him in a rush, his lungs compressed by an invisible vise. He stood. “I think I should go.”

Annika glanced out the window, then looked down at her sweat-soaked shirt. “I suppose I should too. I think I should bathe before today’s meetings. I’ll see you at breakfast.”

She waved him off and started to put away all the weapons they’d been using while sparring earlier, deliberately slow. He appreciated her more than he could say in that moment for her innate sense for when he wanted to be left alone.

Vasily knew he should be heading to his rooms and letting the servants wash him, but he found himself making his way to his study instead. He passed Ayla in the hall, who nodded at him, and he promised himself that he would get a meal with her soon. It had been far too long since they’d had a real conversation, and she was another person who would be able to remain close to Dimitri when he remarried. She, he knew, would watch over him with her very life.

When the door clicked shut behind him, he leaned against it with a groan. His entire body ached from the early morning exercise with Annika, and there was more exhaustion beneath that, a weariness that went down to his very bones. He wished that he could take the day and sleep, but he had plans to circulate among the delegations’ staff today so that he could hear any whispers they were willing to divulge to a decently good-looking foreigner who plied them with wine.

Plus, that plan would take him far from where Dimitri was going to be entertaining his potential spouses.

Still, before he went to ready himself for the day, there was something tugging at his mind. The way that Dimitri had looked the night prior, dead-eyed and hollow, had been concerning enough that it had still haunted his mind when he’d woken up the hour before dawn. Dimitri hadn’t seemed to notice, or mind, and appeared to be more interested in going to sleep against Vasily’s shoulder than talking or explaining what was bothering him. Vasily had undressed Dimitri as he lay in bed, mostly asleep, having neglected to change into a nightshirt under his own power. Doing so, at least, had allowed Vasily to check him over for bruises. He’d felt better when he found not a single mark on Dimitri’s skin, the surreptitious examination allowing him to breathe a sigh of relief, but it hadn’t explained what was going on inside Dimitri’s head.

Vasily could have wormed his way into Dimitri’s dreams, but frankly he’d been afraid of what he’d find there. He’d tried the connection between them to assess Dimitri’s feelings, but when he reached for it, it felt deadened too. Fear gripped Vasily once again as he considered that, given Annika’s report on Lukas’s essential goodness, the culprit was far more likely to be Alexey’s magic than Lukas’s misbehavior.

He crossed to the shelf where he kept Alexey’s diaries, lined up neatly and tied with the same ribbons that Alexey himself had knotted around them. It looked like one of the diaries might be missing, based on the spacing between the books, but Vasily couldn’t be bothered to investigate where he’d misplaced it, not when there was something more important to deal with.

Vasily hadn’t replaced any of the books, just like he hadn’t changed any of the decor. And now he was glad, because when he pulled one of the diaries down and settled into an armchair, he at least had a hope of finding the answers he needed.

It didn’t take long to come across an entry where Alexey described the magic within him begging for tastes of his emotions. Vasily read on with horror as he traced Alexey’s words with a finger, the entries becoming more and more sterile as time went on. Alexey had, at one point, been a colorful and evocative writer. A few months prior, Vasily had hatefully read Alexey’s diaries from the period of Dimitri’s arrival at Chernitzy to the death of the royal family. Alexey’s rapturous descriptions of his young lover and their explorations of each other had made Vasily sick.

Alexey, in those early entries, had seemed human. Far, far more human than the man Vasily had observed in the palace years later. Vasily had chalked it up to being a decade younger and newly in love, perhaps fueled by a nascent and soon discarded interest in writing erotic poetry, but now he wondered. He’d assumed that Alexey had merely matured, but maybe it was something else that had changed him. He’d stopped reading the diaries once they started railing against Dimitri’s absence.

Maybe it was the same magic that was currently deadening Dimitri.

When he rose from the armchair and put the diary back on the shelf, Vasily’s bones were as heavy as lead and his soul was even heavier.

Ayla trailed him silently as he made his way to Dimitri’s rooms. When he cracked the door to the bedroom open, Dimitri was back again, in bed wearing clothes meant for riding. He must have gone out with his horse, then come back for a nap while Vasily was occupied with Annika.

Dimitri was still fast asleep. His bad arm was bent at a strange angle underneath his head, and Vasily sat on the edge of the bed to gently roll Dimitri over and untangle the limb so it wouldn’t lose circulation. Since Dimitri couldn’t feel it happening, Mischa was always concerned by the risk.

“Vasya?” Dimitri blinked at him sleepily, his blue eyes bloodshot. “What time is it?”

“A few hours past dawn.” Vasily looked at the clock ticking on the mantelpiece. “We have time yet before we have to start the day.”

“So come back to bed,” Dimitri mumbled into Vasily’s thigh, his good hand curling into the fabric of his pants. He yawned, his body trembling with the motion. “That’s what I did.”

“Of course, darling.” Vasily toed off his shoes and discarded his clothes on the floor for the maids to take care of later. Crawling into bed, he positioned Dimitri so his spine was pressed against Vasily’s chest and splayed a hand across Dimitri’s ribs.

He would rip the magic right out of the other man if he could. Now there was the fear that he could barely even admit to himself, that Dimitri would choose the Holy Science the way Alexey had, would through no fault of his own fall prey to the same kinds of horrors. That Vasily would be forced, the way Dimitri had, to watch the same cycle play out.

Feeling Dimitri’s heart beating steadily against his palm, Vasily ran his thumb across the ridge of a rib. He could tell that Dimitri had settled back to sleep, which was a relief because he needed the rest. But Vasily couldn’t stop himself from wishing that he could talk to Dimitri and see if he’d been restored to something more like his usual self.

He held Dimitri in his arms and realized that the fear of having to let him go had been replaced by something so much worse—the fear that they were all about to lose Dimitri entirely. That after this, there would be nothing left.

Vasily ran a finger around the edge of his shirt collar, trying to pull it away from his irritated skin. Whoever was laundering his clothes had taken to using far too much starch. Or maybe it was just that he constantly felt like he was being strangled these days, no matter what he was wearing.

He eyed Dimitri, who was speaking with Aziza. They were taking a break from negotiations over the transfer of large quantities of gunpowder, and Dimitri had seemed at ease as he forced everyone to agree to the price he’d been told by Ladushka he must get.

Dimitri turned and looked at him, frowning minutely. He sent an inquiry over the bond between them, an AreYouAllRightMissYouLoveYou that Vasily returned with a gentle reassurance that everything was fine. Dimitri, at least, was back to normal since waking—something that Vasily had confirmed quite vigorously as they bathed together—and the magic between them felt normal again too. But that didn’t stop discomfort from creeping up Vasily’s spine. He worried there was a direct connection between Dimitri trying to make it through the summit without breaking and his giving in to the magic’s demands.

“Are you all right?”

Vasily nearly jumped at the voice coming from next to his ear. He’d been distracted enough that he hadn’t in the least been paying attention to his surroundings. He looked over to find Yullyan standing next to him, a full glass of wine in hand.

“You don’t look it,” Yullyan continued. “In fact, you look a little lovelorn.”

Vasily cleared his throat. “I’m fine. Thank you for asking, Your Highness.”

Yullyan snorted. “Don’t call me that. Merely Yullyan is fine.” Their tongue flicked out to catch the ring embedded in their lip. Today’s theme appeared to be rubies, and at least they were wearing a shirt this time, even though it was mostly transparent. Vasily didn’t want to be more distracted than he actually was.

“You know,” Yullyan continued, “it’s curious that your role isn’t very well defined, and yet the Tzar’s attention never wavers from you. One has to wonder if you’re an adviser because then it’s easier to mask that you’re the one sharing his bed, or whether you’re a so-called adviser because your true role cannot be revealed.”

Vasily’s blood turned to ice as Yullyan cocked their head at him, the dramatic cascade of the ruby earrings they wore spilling across their throat like blood. “Or, actually, whether it’s both at the same time.”

“I’m nothing and no one,” Vasily said. “Truly, Yullyan, I have no role here.”

“From the way he looks at you, I cannot believe that’s true.” Yullyan sighed. “You know, I saw him in the stables early yesterday morning. He and I had an interesting conversation about the kind of marriage that might work for me. I think, if he’s already found the person he wants, and this whole farce is tearing him apart…perhaps he should consider other arrangements. The kind of arrangement which I’d be amenable to, given my personal proclivities.”

There was a lump lodged in Vasily’s throat that he couldn’t clear, and it meant he couldn’t speak. That he couldn’t refute what Yullyan was saying and promise it wasn’t the case, that Dimitri wasn’t in love with him and was ready to marry whomever he chose.

Yullyan’s whole expression creased with pity when Vasily opened his mouth to speak and nothing came out.

They ambled away, their hair shining in the light from the windows. Another instant later, Annika and Mischa were flanking him, both of them grabbing him by an arm and towing him away.

“What did they say to you?” Annika asked, her voice low. “Are you all right?”

“Do you want me to break their fingers?” Mischa whispered. “Because I’ll do it if you ask nicely.”

Vasily gave a choked laugh and was glad that at least he wasn’t alone here, that even if he couldn’t go to Dimitri, his friends were still there to support him. “Not yet. I think Yullyan may be the most perceptive person here, though. Ladushka could probably do a deal with them that would benefit everyone.”

“Right now we’re focusing on you, though,” Annika said as they reached the hall and then turned towards the doors that would take them into the gardens. “Because you actually look as though you’re going to put your hand through a wall, and that’s going to cause an unaccountably bad diplomatic incident.”

Mischa quirked an eyebrow. “I mean, I could just say he was totally drunk and didn’t know what he was doing. I’m a physician. Everyone has to believe me, no questions asked.”

“That’s not how that works,” Annika argued, and the two of them fell into a comfortable spate of bickering as they made their way into the biting air of the garden.

The icy air at least did something to snap him out of the fog he’d fallen into, clearing his senses and leaving him flushed not just with the chill, but also with embarrassment that he’d let Yullyan rattle him so badly. He was about to insist on them turning around and going back inside because he was fine, really.

Vasily closed his eyes and wished that he could float above all of this. So he startled especially hard when a hand slid between his shoulder blades. He whirled around and grabbed the wrist of the hand that had touched him, only to come face to face with a concerned Dimitri.

“Vasya, what’s going on?” There was a little crumple between Dimitri’s eyebrows that Vasily wanted to smooth away with a kiss, but they were in public and that absolutely couldn’t happen. “You left so suddenly.”

Breathing out through his nose did little to calm him. “Yullyan said some things. It’s all right. We can talk about it tonight.”

“Or we could talk about it now.” Dimitri turned his head, his breath ghosting out of his mouth in a frosted cloud. Disconcertingly, he appeared to be completely unconcerned by the cold, so unlike his usual self who could barely stand a fall breeze without a thick coat. “There’s no one here.”

He gave a meaningful look to Annika and Mischa, who quickly melted away behind the hedge.

“What did they say to you?” Dimitri asked. “Because I know what they said to me.”

Vasily pinched the bridge of his nose. “That I was in love with you. Is it that obvious, truly? Should I leave the court for the remainder of the summit?”

“No. Absolutely not.” The vehemence in Dimitri’s voice shocked Vasily. “I couldn’t do this if you weren’t here.”

“Dima.” Vasily risked reaching out and brushing a finger across Dimitri’s cheek. “You’re going to have to do things without me eventually. That’s the whole point of this.”

Dimitri closed his eyes, his lashes fanning across the pale skin of his cheeks. “I can’t. But maybe…They were looking for something unusual that might let us—”

Vasily swallowed the frustrated sigh that was threatening to escape from his lips, because he didn’t want to be taunted with the possibility that he could stay with Dimitri and have his spouse not mind, even if that meant he was a secret for the rest of his life. Instead, what came out was, “What happened with Lukas last night, Dima?”

“Nothing.” Dimitri’s eyes remained closed, but his lips pursed and his brow furrowed like he was in pain. “Nothing happened. We went to the kitchens and he cooked me noodles, and he hugged me and we talked about children, and I did it, Vasya, because I had to. Because maybe he’s the one I’m going to spend the rest of my life with. I have to start imagining these futures, no matter how much it tears me apart.”

“And you used Alexey’s magic to make it easier.” It was awful, the feeling of standing there, helpless, unable to soothe Dimitri because Dimitri was right. “You let it take some of the anxiety away from you. That’s why you came to bed last night…empty.”

A small nod was the only acknowledgment that Vasily got.

“Dima.” He grasped the other man by the shoulders. “You cannot do that. You cannot, because I know it’s hard, darling, I do. But if that’s what you’re using to make it easier, it’s going to overtake you. It’s going to turn you into the thing that Alexey was. You’re going to lose yourself.”

“I’m already losing myself.” The words were so quiet that Vasily could hardly hear them over the sound of the hedge rustling in the wind. His hands were going numb, but he couldn’t tell if it was from the cold or the creeping dread he felt looking at the resignation on Dimitri’s face. “I’m already giving myself away. Why not do what makes it easier?”

“You have to fight it, Dima.” Vasily didn’t care that it sounded like he was pleading. No, begging. “No matter what happens to us, I can’t keep going if I know you’re not…you. I would rather you drink yourself to death than do this. Because you’re not going to end up dead, Dima. You’re going to end up hollow, like him. Cold, like him.”

“I could never be like him,” Dimitri rasped, but the end of the sentence tilted up, like he was unconvinced how much that was true.

“Please.” Vasily would have gotten down on his knees before Dimitri if there wasn’t a risk of someone else walking out into the garden and seeing them. “You need to resist the urge. And I know it’s hard, when this hurts so much, but you have to.”

He tried to force the urgency of it through their bond, and it must have worked because Dimitri flinched hard, looking like he had been slapped.

“All right.” He held up his hands plaintively. “I’ll…try. That’s the best I can do, Vasya. Try to resist. Because it’s really, really fucking hard.”

The way Dimitri’s lips twisted meant he was about to cry, and Vasily folded him into his chest, wishing that he’d brought a coat just so he could wrap Dimitri in it. He risked brushing his fingertips along the back of Dimitri’s neck, a motion that always soothed him. Dimitri’s skin was as cold as ice.

Dimitri shuddered, and Vasily wondered if it was better to ignore the fact that he was crying. That Vasily had made him cry. Perhaps he had been too harsh, but the threat of the magic inside Dimitri, stealing everything vibrant and beautiful and good about him, made Vasily’s blood run cold.

He might survive losing Dimitri to another marriage. But he knew, with every fiber of his being, that he would certainly not survive losing Dimitri himself.

He was dreaming, once more, with his husband.

They were in the maze in the garden behind the palace at Rav-Mikhailburg. Dimitri was ahead of him, barefoot even though it was snowing, a thick layer of ice on the ground. Alexey stalked his husband as Dimitri made his way through the maze while calling out, over and over, for this other man. For Vasya.

“I did it,” Alexey said, because here, he could. Dimitri gave him no indication that he could see Alexey, just kept stumbling forward. “I did what I said I would, Dima. I brought forth an army from the middle world. You were unable to stop me.”

It was a hollow statement of victory, because Dimitri didn’t respond. He merely blinked, turning, looking right through Alexey like he couldn’t see him. Then he shook his head and whimpered, shivering in the cold.

Dimitri had always hated the cold.

“I won,” Alexey said again, and now it merely felt childish.

“Vasya,” Dimitri replied, turning in a circle, reaching out with the arm that wasn’t bound in a sling against his chest to grasp at the barren, thorny branches of the hedge. When no response came to his cries, Dimitri whined.

He’d always made noises like that when he was having a nightmare. Alexey opened and closed his fist, hardening his heart. Because it wasn’t his name that Dimitri was calling anymore, not like when he would shake Alexey awake in the middle of the night, shivering and needing to be held, his cheeks tacky with tears.

Alexey had comforted him all those long years, and in the end all he had gotten was betrayal.

“You turned my general,” he accused next, because anger was easier than empty triumph. “Mikhail Haleyvin. I don’t know how, but I am going to punish him, and then I am going to punish you. I do not suffer disloyalty.”

Dimitri had frozen at Mikhail’s name, and Alexey knew his suspicions were confirmed. The two had been involved in the plot to bring him down.

All of a sudden, it was as though Dimitri could see him. He turned and his lips parted, his eyes wide and startled.

And then he bolted.

Alexey ran after him, watching Dimitri slip and stumble over the cold, slushy ground. Dimitri eventually tripped and fell hard, rolling over and bringing a bloodied palm to his chest, leaving a streak of red on the white nightshirt he was clad in.

Alexey stalked over to his husband, putting a boot on Dimitri’s ribs. “I am going to come for you. I am going to rip apart your country and make you watch. I am going to devour your people and burn your cities and scorch your land and force you to see it all, Dima. I have power like you have never seen, all the denizens of the middle world at my beck and call. And I will use it to conquer you. And I will have no mercy. I will shred you to pieces with my own hands. I loved you, once. I gave you chance after chance. And now that you’ve defied me, you have a lesson you must learn. I merely regret I have to be the one to teach you. That you couldn’t have been a good boy who learned on his own.”

He pressed his boot down harder, feeling Dimitri’s ribs creak under the pressure, watching his husband’s thin, frail, scarred body curl up around the hurt.

“Don’t, you can’t, Lyosha,” Dimitri whispered. “I won’t let you take him. Vasya, where are you…?”

“I’m coming for you, Dima,” Alexey said as the dream faded around the edges. “I’m coming for you and for every person you’ve ever loved.” But it was a hollow statement. His heart had been carved out over the course of a single dream.

And Alexey woke up to the feeling of being truly and utterly dead.

He woke up from a nightmare that Alexey had invaded, shivering in Vasily’s arms as if he were actually standing in the snowy maze behind the palace.

“What’s wrong, darling?” Vasily mumbled into his hair. He rarely fully woke up when Dimitri had a nightmare, common as they were, and it was a relief that Dimitri didn’t have to explain himself.

He didn’t want to bring up that Alexey still haunted him. What had happened with Alexey was over—he shouldn’t be dwelling on the past, not when it was dead and buried. It was just a dream, Alexey taunting him that he was coming for him, that he was going to take Vasily away from him.

“Nothing,” Dimitri replied, turning in bed to bury his face in Vasily’s chest. The silk nightshirt Vasily wore slipped across the skin of Dimitri’s cheek. “Go back to sleep.”

Vasily did, his breaths evening out again and his arms relaxing around Dimitri’s frame.

Today was a hunt for the heads of the delegations attending the summit. Conveniently, of the smaller countries attending, one delegation head was ninety years old and long past her hunting days, and the other three were people who expressed that they were completely disinclined to get on horseback. So Dimitri, Aziza, Lukas and Yullyan were the only ones attending. It was, as Ladushka put it, a chance to see them all interacting with one another, which would prove a useful test not just of each person’s temperament but also of their ability to manage tense situations as a future spouse.

Dimitri had tried to convince Vasily not to come with him, to spare the other man the pain of having to watch him try and court three people at once. But Vasily had stubbornly insisted on coming along, since even Mischa was riding with them, and Dimitri could tell from the set of his jaw that there was no arguing with Vasily. If he was determined to hurt himself by watching, just so he could be near him, Dimitri would take the comfort.

Reluctant to get out of bed and eat and dress, Dimitri allowed himself to doze in Vasily’s arms, inhaling the scent of his favorite lemon soap and the warm musk of his skin. Lying there, he could almost pretend the world wouldn’t touch them, that they would be able to stay like this forever.

But all too soon, servants were knocking on the door and coming to wake them, laying out a formal riding outfit for Dimitri and helping him into it, Vasily rousing himself and dressing in the corner in breeches and a hunting coat. Ladushka and Annika came in with the servants carrying breakfast, and the four of them sat down to eat at the table in Dimitri’s sitting room. Mischa stumbled in, complaining about the earliness of the hour and how they were never going to be able to get the smell of horses out of their clothes, then grabbed the entire plate of toast meant for the five of them and hoarded it like a dragon, claiming they needed their strength.

“Mischa,” Vasily chided, flicking them on the cheek with his thumb and forefinger. “If you don’t want to come, stay here.”

Mischa’s mouth pressed into a thin line, and they looked down at their lap, picking at their chest binding through their hunting jacket. “Someone’s got to be there to put Dimitri together if he falls off his horse and breaks his skull open.”

Dimitri’s heart twinged and he reached across the table to intertwine his hand with Mischa’s. “Thank you.” He didn’t bother to insist that he would be fine. Of all of them, the doctor knew all the ways in which he could break. He felt guilty that he hadn’t done more to check in on his friends, that once again he’d been relying on them instead of being there for them too, ignoring the ways in which all of this was heavy on their shoulders just as it was on his.

A wave of reassurance passed through him, emanating from the part of his soul tied to Vasily’s and washing through his core. He knew that Vasily was trying to let him know that it was all right, that no one expected more of him, but the guilt suffused through him nonetheless.

The rest of breakfast was quiet, which suited Dimitri just fine—he wasn’t in the mood to discuss the next round of conversations they’d be having with the summit delegations, nor was he going to be a good partner in idle conversation. But that was the beautiful thing about his friends—they sensed this, and everyone sipped their tea and ate their breakfast in silence until Dimitri’s steward came to fetch them for the hunt.

As they left his rooms, Vasily reached over and captured his good hand for just a moment, giving it a squeeze. Dimitri looked into Vasily’s dark, gold-flecked eyes, saw the creases that were pressed into the edges from exhaustion and concern, and wished his throat wasn’t closing up so he could express how grateful he was to have Vasily by his side, even if it would have been far easier for Vasily to leave.

The air was frigid when they exited the palace and made their way to the stables. Frost coated the ground, crunching under the heels of their boots, but at least it wasn’t snowing. Grooms were waiting outside with their horses saddled, and when he got to Malishka’s side, her breath steaming in the winter air, he rested his forehead against her hide and felt some of the tension instantly bleed out of his shoulders.

“You like horses, then?”

Dimitri looked up to see Lukas, dressed in an absurdly thick woolen jacket and enormous scarf, his cheeks already pink with cold. He was grinning, and when he tossed his head, moving his hair out of his eyes, Dimitri’s heart gave an uncomfortable lurch.

“I do.” Dimitri felt, more than saw, his court taking the reins of their usual horses and melting into the background, Anna joining Pavel off to the side while very obviously checking her knives, and the rest of them heading over to the cluster of advisers and ladies-in-waiting and grooms who were preparing to trail the guests of honor from a respectable distance.

“Good morning to you all,” Dimitri said. “Thank you for attending today’s hunt.”

Aziza smiled, her grin as sharp as the icicles hanging from the edge of the stable roof. “We all came here to Novo-Svitsevo to hunt, did we not?” She made a show of looking him up and down slowly. Dimitri felt his cheeks heat under what was clearly very approving scrutiny. “I won’t be killing anything today, just so you all know. I find it barbaric, but I’m quite content to participate in the show of it all.”

The jet-black mare whose reins she grasped in her hand snorted and stamped its feet. She reached up and hooked an arm around the horse’s neck, calming it. It snuffled into the red velvet of her jacket, mouthing at the ruby necklace hanging from her collar.

“I quite agree,” Lukas said, rubbing his hands together. “But it’s fun to track a quarry and lay claim to it all the same, don’t you think?” He was all wide-eyed innocence, but Dimitri heard the implications behind the words.

“It’s a tame stag from our herd with a garland around its neck. It’s about to get a taste of freedom with a run through the forest, escaping our hounds. No killing required—the first to toss a ring onto the stag’s antlers lays claim to the metaphorical kill. Your grooms have tied rings to the back of your saddles.” Dimitri’s breath crystallized in the air, and he wished briefly that he hadn’t had to dress so formally and could instead dress warmly, for a long winter’s ride.

Aziza narrowed her eyes, but before she could retort, Yullyan butted in. “It’s too early in the morning for veiled repartee, don’t you think?” They were holding the reins of a massive dapple-gray stallion that had a reputation for ill temperament, but the horse was currently hanging his head over Yullyan’s shoulder and allowing them to braid its forelock into an elaborate swirl. Yullyan’s riding jacket was crusted with silver thread, making them look like a snowflake standing in the courtyard. “Maybe we could all agree that we’re here to lure Tzar Abramovich to our sides and get on with doing the physical activity which will warm us and keep us from getting frostbite in this regrettable weather?”

Ducking his head at the implication, Lukas flushed, but Aziza appeared entirely unruffled.

“Well then, with such a…pointed declaration, we might as well begin, no?” Aziza wasted no further time and swung into the saddle gracefully. “I’m happy to take point. Shall you join me, Tzar Abramovich?”

Malishka headbutted him, shaking him out of his frozen stupor. “Of course.” He nodded at Aziza and allowed the groom beside him to boost him up into the saddle, trying to quell the embarrassment he felt at needing the assistance. Lukas and Yullyan also got into their saddles, as easily as breathing.

“Let’s go, then.” Yullyan wheeled their stallion around, thighs flexing visibly through breeches so tight they might as well have been painted on. They set off at a trot out of the courtyard, following the guards who would sweep the path in front of them to ensure there was no danger as they made their way out of the city and into the forest.

“Not a morning person, I see,” Lukas said from next to Dimitri. “They seem grouchy.”

“They’re cold, and they have excellent hearing,” Yullyan called over a shoulder. “And limited patience for cock-measuring contests before the sun has even risen, thank you very much.”

Lukas grinned and barked a laugh, and Dimitri wondered if anything ever upset the man, or if he took even insults and snark in good humor. Lukas kneed his horse and trotted after Yullyan, leaving Dimitri with Aziza.

“Someone is testy this morning.” She glanced sideways at Dimitri, her kohl-rimmed hazel eyes pinning him in place. “It isn’t everyone who has the temperament to sit on the throne, to weather discomfort when discomfort is necessary. To put themselves last, after duty and country. Is that how you see the burden of ruling?”

Dimitri looked away, navigating Malishka across the cobblestone streets as they made their way to the forest’s edge. He mulled over her question in his mind, and then decided to turn it back on her. “What do you think it means to rule?”

“Making something better.” She tilted her chin up. “Thinking of the many instead of the few. Being better than our parents. Caring for those who cannot care for themselves. And doing all of it in such a way that dissent is quelled and those who would contest the throne in an attempt to seize power for their own ends are denied the chance to do so.”

He tightened his right hand on the reins. “I think you and I have a similar sense of what ruling requires.”

“Except I can help you do it better.” They had reached the edge of the forest, and true to her word Aziza spurred her horse into a canter, passing Yullyan and Lukas, who had relaxed into a walk at the tree line. Dimitri urged Malishka forward, letting her follow Aziza into the woods.

“Who says I need help to do it better?” Dimitri’s pride rankled at the idea that Aziza had come to criticize him, but she shook her head.

“I studied what you did in the early days of your rule. I was watching from our capital, curious as to how the young, new Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo would pursue control. And your policies were radical. I admired them greatly. But you failed to employ the kind of strategy that would have allowed you to bring them to completion while maintaining your political safety. You need a partner for that. Someone harder. Sharper.”

They reached a stream and Malishka vaulted over it, Aziza’s horse following behind with a snort. The forest wasn’t terribly dense, and so Dimitri pushed Malishka into a gallop, as if he could outrun this conversation.

Because he could see it.

All of this, he’d done for Novo-Svitsevo. Everything he was suffering for his country. And Aziza was right—the reason Alexey had gained such a foothold in court was that Dimitri had been foolish with his policies, naive enough to think that all of Novo-Svitsevo’s nobility would be content to do whatever it took to provide for their citizenry. He’d been wrong, and now he was scared.

Dimitri was scared to antagonize the nobility who he knew admired the hard-hearted efficiency of Alexey’s rule. They’d dealt with those who had sworn allegiance to Alexey, but he couldn’t murder everyone in court. Ladushka had spent a great deal of time negotiating with the different factions of the court of Abramovich, and since his return to the throne, Dimitri had stuck to staid, boring policies that hadn’t made anything better but also hadn’t made anything worse.

But that wasn’t what he wanted for his people.

Ladushka was a talented chancellor, but what she wanted more than anything was to keep the ship of state steady. She had a caring heart, but she would never jeopardize security and stability to try innovative policies which might improve the lives of peasants. She saw the duty of the Tzar as maintaining peace.

Aziza appeared to think differently.

“I know how to do it, you know,” she said, her horse drawing even with his. She really was an excellent horsewoman, confident in the saddle, and an image of the two of them spending mornings like this, riding while plotting how to improve the country, flashed across his mind’s eye and made heat flare low in his belly, a spark of longing and desire. “I know how to navigate difficult political waters while making change and doing it covertly. I can be your partner in this.”

She slowed down to a canter, then a trot and a walk, and Dimitri did too, like they were tied together with string. “I’ve been a woman running my father’s court from the shadows for years, and few know. I’ve made change. I believe that we can use the science and the secrets of mystics to make life even better, if we experiment with the power they can bring. Imagine if we didn’t have to spend so much of our country’s money on war and could instead ensure security with our magic? What could that funding be used for instead? What kind of life could we give people?”

Dimitri looked at her, at the passion in her eyes and the determined set of her mouth. He could see it then, the ways in which they could work together. The ways in which she’d be by his side the way he’d hoped Alexey would be, the strength behind the throne as opposed to the power on it. The ways in which the same things might be important to the both of them. This could be a partnership that would truly benefit the people he’d been put on the throne to serve.

“A good life,” he whispered, his voice almost lost in the sound of their horses shifting on the frost-coated grass and the bare tree branches rustling in the wind. “The kind I’d want to give them.”

Aziza nodded. “Very few people understand me. I think that is because very few people have the vision and the compassion to see what we could all become, if we weren’t so bent on decorating ourselves in jewels and playacting at governance.”

She glanced behind her, where Yullyan and Lukas were emerging into the clearing. He saw Anna with Pavel, their heads bent together and their eyes flicking from side to side as they scanned the forest for threats. If Dimitri looked closely through the trees, he could see both the perimeter that Ayla and her guards had created, and the far-off crowd keeping its distance from the hunting nobility.

“I don’t think they’d agree that’s what they’re doing,” Dimitri countered. He felt suddenly protective of both Lukas and Yullyan, neither of whom he knew well but both of whom had seemed kind at their core. “But I understand your point about a shared vision of governance.”

“You went so fast!” Lukas shouted, breaking Dimitri’s concentration. The intense look on Aziza’s face melted back into her neutral mask, and she looked placidly at the two of them as they trotted up. “You’re such a talented horseman, Dimitri. I confess it’s been a while since I rode. Motorcars are all the rage in Wilnetzk, you see, and I don’t get out into the country much anymore. It’s been an age since I went on a hunt.”

Yullyan spared Dimitri a sidelong glance and then turned in the saddle, scanning the rest of the forest. “Is there actually a decorated stag in here, or have you sent us on a wild goose chase? Don’t you bring dogs on a hunt to do the work for you?” They hunched up their shoulders and suppressed what was clearly a full-body shiver. “Next summit you can all come to Atreus. I’m going to freeze my balls off this far north.”

Their grousing was so much like Mischa’s snark that Dimitri couldn’t stop himself from laughing out loud in response. Yullyan’s eyes flicked up to Dimitri’s from under their lashes, and Dimitri caught the edge of a smirk from under the curtain of their hair. So they were trying to entertain him.

Yullyan winked. Dimitri winked back.

There was a pang between his ribs, and Dimitri looked up to see the rest of the party on the edge of the clearing as well, Vasily looking at him and Yullyan laughing together with a blank expression on his face. Nausea rose up in Dimitri’s stomach and he let the smile slip from his face as quickly as it had appeared.

He was grateful that he was truly growing to like—or at least admire—each of these three people. He was grateful that he could see slivers of a life with each one, desire and attraction for all three slowly surfacing. But he felt horrible that Vasily was having to watch him do it.

Turning at the sound of barking, Aziza said, her tone clipped, “There are the dogs now.” Her eyes then darted between him and Vasily, and he got the sense that she, too, was noticing the connection between him and the man whose position hadn’t been defined in court but who was trailing Dimitri everywhere. “You see, Yullyan, they’ve got to be brought to catch the scent, and then rereleased. This is a performance, after all, and not a true hunt.”

Yullyan rolled their eyes, but Lukas’s went wide. “Oh, how fascinating. You seem like you know what you’re doing. Do you hunt much in Urushka?”

“From the time we can ride.” Aziza reached behind her, untying the hoop from her saddle. “But at home, it’s a blood sport. I’m grateful for this kinder version.”

Her eyes met Dimitri’s, and he had the distinct sense she wasn’t only talking about hunting.

“Come on, then.” He edged Malishka over to where the master of the hunt was corralling the dogs. He reached down and scratched the head of his favorite hound when she put her feet up on his boot, her tail wagging. “Shall we?”

He raised his hand, and the hounds were given the signal to track. They shot forward, barking noisily, and Dimitri kicked Malishka into a gallop to follow. In an instant, Aziza was by his side, her hair breaking free of its bun with the force of the wind, the two of them racing to follow the dogs. Icy wind tore tears from Dimitri’s eyes, but Malishka leapt over logs and darted around trees, her head held high as she tried to gain on Aziza’s mare.

Dimitri found himself smiling, unable to stop it. It had been so long since he’d felt so easy and carefree, and as horrible as it was, as awful and depressed as he was feeling given the situation with Vasily, he was enjoying himself. No one was asking him whether he could ride, or whether he’d be safe on a horse with a bad hip and only one working arm. He caught flashes of Annika’s jacket through the trees and knew she was next to him, surveying for threats, but Aziza was grinning too, not treating him like some broken thing. He wasn’t as steady of a rider as before, his hip was already twinging, and he knew his limp would be worse as soon as he dismounted, but fuck, he felt free.

Eventually they slowed down, their horses lathered in sweat and their own chests heaving. The dogs had, by the looks of it through the trees, cornered the stag in a clearing up ahead.

“Go on,” Aziza said. “I have terrible aim when it comes to lawn sports. It’s unlikely that I’ll be able to toss a ring around a stag’s antler.”

“Don’t worry.” They both jumped in the saddle as Yullyan and their horse appeared almost out of nowhere from the direction of the clearing. “Prize claimed. You can go check. How slow, the both of you. Although not as slow as Lukas there. He’s having a wonderful time—does anything wipe the smile off that boy’s face?—but the poor thing can’t ride worth a damn.”

They examined their nails, smirking, while Dimitri and Aziza traded a stunned look. Dimitri nudged Malishka into the clearing, and sure enough, the terrified stag had a bright red wooden ring swinging from the point of one of its antlers.

“Well done.” Dimitri turned and offered his hand to Yullyan to shake. “You’re an exceptional rider, clearly.”

“In so many more ways than one,” Yullyan purred. “Are you sure you don’t want to send everyone else home so I can show you?”

Aziza made a choking noise that she muffled with a glove, and Yullyan looked supremely self-satisfied. Dimitri’s heart kicked in his chest, his mouth going dry.

“What did I miss?” Lukas was panting slightly as he emerged into the clearing, Pavel on his heels, the mountain of a man looking distinctly uncomfortable on his nearly-too-small horse. “Oh, someone got it. Wonderful. Are we heading back to the palace now?”

The rest of the party must have declined the gallop, because in the silence of the forest there were no more sounds of hoofbeats, just the whines of the dogs and the panting of the stag. Dimitri whistled to the dogs, which immediately backed down. The stag tossed its head, flinging the ring across the clearing, then galloped away, the loosely braided garland on its neck already unweaving and strewing flowers everywhere.

“I suppose we are.” Dimitri gave a half bow. “Thank you for joining me. I hope you all enjoyed the exercise, and the chance to get out of the palace and see some of my country’s natural beauty.”

“It’s very beautiful indeed,” Lukas said, biting his lip, and from the way the other two glared at him, they all understood that he wasn’t talking about the forest.

Dimitri was about to turn Malishka around when she suddenly jerked to the side. The dogs had started braying again, and Malishka uncharacteristically reared up, screaming.

He didn’t have time to see the other horses do the same, or react, because without his other arm to balance him, and with his hip weak, he immediately lost his seat and hit the ground hard enough that the breath flew out of his lungs.

“Dimitri!” He heard Annika yell his name from across the clearing, but he was stunned enough that all he could do was blink up at the sky. “Get up now!”

He struggled to sit up, looking through Malishka’s legs—she had planted herself in front of him—and saw exactly why the clearing had erupted into chaos.

An enormous boar was charging right for them, sending the hounds scattering. There was a click from nearby that had Dimitri ducking instinctively, and then the sound of rapid-fire pistol shots. Pavel was shouting at Lukas and the others to turn around and ride backwards, firing on the boar as he did so, but the creature took bullets and just kept charging, foam flecking out from between its tusks.

Dimitri didn’t even think. The magic inside him leaped to greet the terror rising there, and then he was extending a hand and sending a wave of shadow surging for the boar. When it struck its target, Dimitri gasped and got to his feet.

Because he felt alive. He felt stronger and healthier and more vigorous than he had since he’d died and come back to the world of the living. He swayed on his feet, intoxicated, dimly aware of others shouting around him and yet uncaring.

The boar was shriveling, its hide turning from black to gray and its bristles flaking off, its skin cracking and its bones snapping. Dimitri could feel the boar’s vitality draining into him, and he never wanted to stop, even as his heart started to pound from exertion and his vision started to swim from what must have been an incredible strain on his body.

The boar’s body cracked open, ashes spilling out of its abdominal cavity. There was a gagging noise from behind him that finally broke his focus, and he turned, watching Lukas vomit while leaning against a tree and cradling his shoulder, which was hanging at a strange angle, his breeches covered in dirt. Yullyan dismounted and went to him, rubbing his back, while Aziza got down from the saddle and quickly and efficiently gathered the reins of all four horses, tossing them to an ashen-faced Annika before barking orders to them all to stay clear.

Blackness was crowding the edges of Dimitri’s vision. The boar had been reduced to a pile of dust, and the shadow within him hungered. He watched, helpless and in its thrall, as the blackness began stretching out across the frozen ground as if searching for the next living thing to devour.

“Dimitri.” Aziza grabbed his shoulders firmly. “Follow what I am about to tell you. Close your fist and imagine a door shutting. Seal the cracks with wax, visualize yourself barring the door, whatever you need to do to shut this power away. Contain it somewhere within yourself and envision a guard to watch it.”

She had taken off her gloves and her nails were digging into his jacket. Her hands weren’t shaking, and something about her willingness to get close to him and touch him while he was draining life from the forest itself steadied him.

He imagined the greenhouse that his mother had loved, pictured the darkness being trapped there, where it would be pinned in by the warmth. It thrashed, fighting, and so he envisioned it growing smaller and smaller, containing it, and visualized a horse stall sturdy and thick enough to corral the wildest animal. He fed the darkness in and barred the door, watching it writhe.

“Good,” Aziza said into his ear. “Now lock it away. Set a guard.”

He thought about who hadn’t bolted, who had stood between him and the boar. He envisioned Malishka, strong and steady, in the stall with the darkness, ready to gnash at it with her teeth and kick out with her hooves if it tried to escape.

“Excellent.” Aziza’s hands relaxed on his shoulders. “Open your eyes.”

He did, breathing raggedly. The shadow had stopped emanating from his hand, and nothing was left except the black circle on the forest floor.

That, and Lukas and Yullyan staring at him, the former confused and the latter calculating, with Annika and Pavel standing behind them looking horrified.

Ladushka, Mischa and Vasily broke through the tree line, clearly having been summoned by the commotion. Mischa made to dismount, but Vasily beat them to Dimitri, riding up and reaching down.

“Come on, Dima,” Vasily said, taking Dimitri’s hand, then helping him settle in front of him in the saddle. Dimitri was shaking so hard that he was worried he’d fall, but one of Vasily’s arms wrapped around his middle like an iron band, anchoring him. “We’re going home.”

The first demons to come through the rift had been small and nearly docile, even without Morozov commanding them. Now, larger creatures emerged with Alexey’s coaxing, made purely of claws and teeth and shadow and bones. Monstrous forms which defied the eye, hulking shapes whose edges seemed to devour any light that touched them.

It exerted him, keeping the rift open while also summoning forth demons. He had lost count of how many there were now, in his army—hundreds, perhaps even thousands. He was beginning to reconsider his plans; he was no longer sure he would be able to open the rift elsewhere, as he would likely be far too physically vulnerable on the front lines of battle if the rift were to be maintained. He could not direct his power outwards and inwards at once, not in this reduced state.

It would pain him to be removed from the site of his victory, but perhaps the right way to consider it was to think of his army, led by Morozov, as an advance guard, razing his enemies and clearing a path for him back to Rav-Mikhailburg and the throne that Dimitri had somehow regained.

He could feel the bloodthirstiness of each of them. The hunger they had for violence. But when Morozov greeted them, when he commanded them, they listened. They bowed to Alexey as a king and acknowledged Morozov as kin.

The satisfaction of a plan brought to fruition warmed Alexey’s ever-chilled heart. And as the cellar filled with the denizens of the lower world, he looked around, wondering how to test this new strength. Wondering how to train this new army to terrify while not allowing it to destroy the world, not unless he commanded it.

“Moy Tzar,” Morozov said from behind him, returning from leading another horde of demons outside, shaking snow off his wings. “Many of the creatures already here have become restless. They are consuming the forests outside the estate, reducing them to ash. Shall I remove them to some other location?”

“Go,” Alexey ordered his general. “Go with them and remind Novo-Svitsevo who I am. Remind the people that nothing can kill me, not even a traitorous husband. Make them remember that I am the true Tzar, the only one with the power to protect us from the wolves at the gates. Return to me in no more than two sundowns. I expect the nearby village of Chirkutsk will be nothing more than ashes and dust in that time.”

“Yes, Moy Tzar,” Morozov rasped. His claws were grasping at nothing, like he was ready to tear out a throat, and with a shrill cry he launched himself into the air and flew up the steps of the cellar, the rest of the newly summoned demons joining him in a wave of malevolent blackness.

When the last one was gone, Alexey slumped to the floor, panting, his sweat-damp palms pressed to the dirt.

He had done it. After all these years, he had succeeded. And now all that was left was to savor the vengeance that victory would allow him to wreak.

Vasily sat in front of the fire with his palms pressed to his eyes, wondering how the day had gone from bad to totally fucked before it was even lunchtime.

“He could have killed people,” Annika was saying from across the room, where she was standing rigidly by the fireplace. “What should I have done if he had? Should I have shot him? Tried to wound him nonfatally, so that he’d stop?”

Mischa made an inarticulate, strangled noise from the chair to Vasily’s right. “It’s only a supposition that he’d stop if he were in pain. We know it stopped the last time when he fell unconscious, but that was a tiny tendril of power. This was a fucking flood. Who’s to say it wouldn’t keep going?”

“To look at the merits of the situation,” Ladushka said into the ensuing silence, “at least this display did not take place in front of a large audience. We know that both Yullyan and Aziza are not intimidated by use of such power, and Lukas seemed more distressed by his dislocated shoulder. None of them have indicated any intention to withdraw from the summit.”

“Can we stop talking about the fucking summit, Lada?” Vasily was on his feet and nearly shouting before he realized it. “Dima is being taken over by Alexey Balakin’s fucked-ass dirtbag magic. My—” Vasily managed to stop himself before he continued, because Dimitri wasn’t Vasily’s anything, not now and not ever. “Dima could be dying.”

Dimitri’s eyes had been completely black, totally glazed over, as Vasily had hauled him onto his horse. He had been shaking like a leaf and hadn’t uttered a word. They’d gotten him back into the palace and by the time he’d been cleaned up and examined by Mischa and undressed and tucked into bed, he’d been completely insensate. He’d been asleep before his head hit the pillow. Now they were clustered in his sitting room, too afraid to leave Dimitri completely alone but unwilling to disturb his rest.

“I’m serious when I ask what we do if this happens again and actually endangers other people.” Annika leveled a look at him. “We’re all worried about him, Vasya. That’s never stopped. But now we have to be worried about ourselves and everyone else in this palace too. Once is a fluke. Twice is a pattern.”

Vasily sank back down into the chair, his breath catching in his throat. He tried to breathe in, but his ribs wouldn’t expand. He bent over his thighs, trying not to panic, but all that did was make him dizzy. Since watching Dimitri use magic, he’d felt empty himself, like the display of Dimitri using his former husband’s legacy had drained Vasily’s soul.

“You’re panicking and you’re exhausted.” Mischa’s peppermint and iodine scent filled Vasily’s nose as the physician checked his pulse. “Your heart is racing. You need to rest too. We all need to rest. This was too much excitement and exertion for one morning. I’m ordering naps for everyone, and Vasily, you’re going to sleep in your own bed. I don’t want you worrying over Dima. Worry over yourself, for once.”

Vasily glanced at the closed door to the bedroom where he’d slept nearly every night for the last ten months, but he nodded. He didn’t think he could be near Dimitri right now without panicking, and Dimitri needed him steadier than ever.

“I will check in with the staff and adjust the schedule for the day to clear everything before dinner, which was to be with the Atrean delegation.” Ladushka was turned away from Vasily, her shoulders rigid, and he cringed from the reminder that he’d yelled at his friend. “Mischka, do you believe he will be sufficiently recovered by then? If you do not, I can cancel that event as well.”

“Let’s give it a few hours and see.” Mischa’s arms were tucked tight around their body as they headed for the door. “Come on, everyone. We need to let him rest, and we need to rest ourselves.”

With one last backwards glance at the bedroom door, Vasily followed the rest of the court out of the room. But when he got to his own door and opened it, revealing his nearly barren rooms, he couldn’t bring himself to lie in the bed he’d left abandoned for months, even though his very bones were aching with fatigue. Instead, he shut the door again and wandered aimlessly through the halls, moving in the general direction of his study with the vague idea that maybe he could stoke the fire high and nap on his couch instead of a too-big, too-empty bed.

He stopped when he heard familiar voices in one of the public parlors.

“It’s uncontrolled, but clearly there’s quite a bit of potential.”

Yullyan’s voice. Vasily flattened himself to the wall next to the cracked-open door.

“He could be taught.” Aziza’s voice, low and urgent. “I was able to introduce him to a basic containment technique that he mastered with apparent ease, even while in the middle of what was clearly some kind of fear-based episode. That is not the control of a novice. That was a demonstration of inborn expertise. The problem, however, is that he will not receive proper training here in Novo-Svitsevo. Not if we’d like him to use magic the way we would, instead of in the manner of Alexey Balakin.”

“Dimitri is just too kind to be like that monster.” Vasily cringed, because Lukas was there too, and apparently, they were all standing around debating how Dimitri’s magic could be manipulated by foreign nations. “I refuse to believe it. The poor man also looked terrified.”

“How would you know?” Yullyan asked airily. “You were too busy puking on your own boots to take notice.”

Lukas scoffed. “I was able to look at his face, Yullyan. I wasn’t vomiting the whole time. And I stand by the fact that I don’t think Dimitri would use whatever power this is for anything malign. I know we don’t use magic or mysticism or whatever it is you call it the same way in the Free States as in your countries, but I also know that even if power corrupts, it amplifies a person’s worst qualities. And Dimitri doesn’t have any. He’s vulnerable, and lonely, and I think rather sad.”

And fuck if that declaration, in that warm voice, didn’t make Vasily’s heart split in two, like a scalpel taken to muscle and severing it clean. Lukas was right—Dimitri could never be bad, no matter what. He’d kill himself before that happened, before he could kill or hurt or even inconvenience a single person. He’d fought a war to save his country and, in doing so, had ripped out his own soul. Even with magic, he was still the same person.

Lukas was fighting for Dimitri the same way Vasily would. The same way Vasily just had with the rest of their friends. Thinking of Dimitri as a person instead of a pawn.

It hurt more than he’d thought it ever would to realize that there might be a truly good match for Dimitri among these three people. That there might be someone who would care for him and treasure him and keep him safe and make him feel happy and loved. He wanted so badly to be the only one in the world who could do that. But was that still the case?

“We’re all sad,” Yullyan replied, in a tone far gentler than Vasily expected. “We’re all sad and fucked-up people, Lukas, love. I, for one, would rather be coming up with very clever names for the wine I make out of my seaside vineyard, and not parading around in exceedingly uncomfortable clothes because there’s a prize to be won and it’s in my interest to compete. We’re all pieces on a game board that none of us control.”

Aziza gave a short, humorless laugh. “And that’s where you’re wrong, Sakvin. It’s perfectly possible to be a game piece who knows the rules and uses them for something good, instead of to escape and be a dilettante. We’re in a position of power, and if we don’t use it to repair the world, we’re violating one of the most sacred tenets of the faith.”

“Oh, a theology discussion after we were all almost murdered.” Yullyan sighed.

“Well,” Lukas said contemplatively, “she’s quite right.”

The three of them devolved into discussing religion, and Vasily took the chance to slip away.

He couldn’t decide, as he reached his study and locked himself inside, whether it was better to free Dimitri from this magic so that he’d have a better chance of living a normal life, or if it was as Aziza said—a necessity to embrace, because it was a way to save their country. To protect it from threats.

Vasily poured himself a glass of brandy from the decanter on his desk and slumped down onto the couch, sick. He drained the glass, hoping it would help him forget, because the thought process he’d just been through had been the exact same as he’d heard Alexey express, over and over. The same twisted logic that Alexey had beaten into Dimitri’s skin.

There was something so hard about balancing an image of Alexey Balakin as the piece of shit he was while also acknowledging that there might have been something he’d been right about. It was causing a headache to begin throbbing between his eyebrows, so he gave up and kicked his shoes off and gave in to the stress, pulling a blanket off the arm of the sofa and burying himself under it. He watched the bare branches of the trees scratch at his window and tried to focus on the crackling of the fire instead of thoughts about what was right or wrong for their country.

Because he knew what was right for Dimitri—being free to choose. Not letting anyone take that away from him. So he’d tell Dimitri what he’d heard, and Dimitri would decide what to do with the magic he’d acquired. He wouldn’t do what Alexey had done and push and pull Dimitri into the supposedly right shape. Even if what Vasily wanted to do was rid him of anything that could hurt him, and then run away so that neither of them would have to worry about anything other than each other ever again.

Dimitri slept through the entire day and night and woke, groggy and disoriented, in the morning. He was alone, and for the first time in a while that made him relieved instead of upset—because if Vasily hadn’t slept next to him, there was less of a chance that he’d lost control and killed him.

Staggering to his feet, Dimitri felt like he hadn’t eaten in years; his limbs were light and his head swam. He leaned against the nightstand and the palm of his hand slipped on the playing cards that were lying there, reminders of Vasily’s love and devotion.

He stared down at them, the king of hearts and the joker. The joker was lying on top, and he slid it over to cover the king’s face. He didn’t want to look at himself, not when shame was burning hot in his stomach.

He could have killed everyone. Maybe he would have, if Aziza hadn’t been there to stop him.

Grappling with whether or not to learn how to use the magic inside him made his ribs ache, like the magic knew it was at risk and was beating at his bones to be set free from its cage. And so much of him wanted to. So much of him wanted to feel the way he’d felt draining life from another living thing—powerful, in control, like death would never touch him unless it was to hand him what he asked for.

This must have been how Alexey felt. But Dimitri couldn’t give in, because hundreds of thousands of people had died in a war he’d fought to protect Novo-Svitsevo from a monster. He couldn’t repay their sacrifices by becoming that monster himself.

Dimitri was weak. He felt the siren song of the magic curling around his spine, pulsing with the desire to take everything that haunted him and consume it. He felt how close he was to giving in, how much easier this would all be if he felt nothing at all. And that alone told him that he couldn’t be trusted.

He couldn’t be trusted around Vasily.

So Dimitri got dressed and started to form a plot that would keep his love safe, even if it meant giving up everything he had with Vasily forever.

He took an hour to bathe and dress because he was weighing the chances that doing what he was thinking would actually result in a cure. He wasn’t sure it would—the last time, it had done little more than give them a starting point, but that was more than he had now, and so he judged it worth the risk.

Besides, it would accomplish two tasks. It would get Vasily far, far away from him in case he lost control again. And it would give Vasily something to do that wasn’t staring at Dimitri with hollow-eyed terror.

He waited until the five of them were seated around the dining table in the pink parlor, being served breakfast, to spit out what had been on his mind. Everyone was studiously neutral, ignoring the events of the day prior and doing their best to make their chatter sound normal, even if it came out forced. Dimitri waited until there was a break in the conversation to speak.

“Mischka, Vasya.” He looked at the two of them. “I need you to do me a favor.”

“What?” Mischa said through a mouthful of eggs, spewing crumbs onto the tablecloth that Annika carefully scooped up with a grimace. “Medical stuff? Torture stuff?”

Vasily was eyeing him with a curious look, and Dimitri wondered if he was going to be grateful for the distraction or incandescently furious. Either way, Dimitri knew that Vasily needed a mission and a purpose that wasn’t sitting around and worrying about Dimitri and this summit both.

“I need you to fix this.” He gestured to his chest, and the way everyone stiffened and stared at his fingers like they expected magic to erupt out of him at any moment made his heart lurch. “After yesterday, it’s clear to me that we need to get rid of the magic I’ve developed. Even if I wanted it, even if I could use it, I would be putting everyone in far too much danger in the meantime to justify it. We have a summit going on that I don’t want interrupted by me accidentally murdering some foreign dignitary. I can’t wait a month to figure this out—I need answers now, and I think there’s only one place we’re likely to find them. That’s why I want help.”

Dimitri put his hand down and noticed how everyone at the breakfast table, including Vasily, instantly became less tense. “I want this power gone, preferably as soon as possible. And certainly before—” He choked a bit and took a sip of strong black tea to steady himself. “Certainly before a marriage. Especially since strong feelings seem to make me lose control.”

Vasily looked down and wouldn’t meet his eyes, even though Dimitri silently pulled on the tether between them, desperate for Vasily to know that no, he didn’t want this, even if he had to go through with it.

“The only person that I think might have answers is our old friend Aleksandr.” Dimitri couldn’t help but smile a little at the horrified noise Mischa made at the name, and the way Ladushka’s eyes went wide while Annika smacked herself in the forehead with a palm. “I want—I’d appreciate if you two could go to Wilnetzk together and see if we could get some answers as to why this power is accessible to me now, and what we can do to banish it for good. I don’t want to take Anna from the orphanage and whatever is happening with this Pavel”—Annika blushed furiously—“and Lada sadly must stay here to ensure that I don’t accidentally give away all of Novo-Svitsevo’s gold and jewels for free.”

He wanted them to know that this wasn’t an order, that this was something they were free to refuse. While he was sure that yes, the strange librarian who had cultivated a collection of mystic texts and objects would have plenty of ideas for how to sever his connection to the magic, he wasn’t about to force either of them to make the journey. He’d considered sending the four of them, but it hadn’t been practical—and sadly, given their lack of stature in the ranking of nobility, Mischa and Vasily wouldn’t be nearly as missed as Annika or Ladushka.

Mischa’s eyes narrowed and flicked from Dimitri to Vasily, and then they pursed their lips. “I think it’s a great idea. I’m in.”

Vasily bit his lip, nodded and stood up. “Me too. Mischka, we leave tomorrow morning. We’ll be back in a little over a week. Anna and Lada can keep everything under control while we’re gone. It’s not as if we’re needed here, yeah?”

He stalked out of the room without another word, his back as stiff as his words had been. Guilt sank into Dimitri’s stomach, but at least Vasily wasn’t going alone this time. He knew that Mischa would be able to keep his spirits up, and if anything, Dimitri himself had experience with how good the doctor was at helping people untangle their feelings of complicated grief around relationships.

Mischa stood up and circled around the table, laying a comforting hand on Dimitri’s shoulder. “It’s a good idea,” they whispered in his ear. “Thank you for thinking of it for him. And for us. I’m glad you’re going to do something to get rid of this.”

They made their way out of the room, presumably to follow after Vasily, and Dimitri resolved with a heavy sigh not to pursue Vasily too. He knew that the other man would be taking this as a dismissal, as a way of wasting the precious few days remaining to them, but Dimitri would rather make himself miserable than watch Vasily suffer through a long and extended parting. At least sending him to Wilnetzk would be useful.

“So,” he said, turning to Ladushka. “We need to fix the fact that I missed all of yesterday. And I’m sure that there were whispers. Can we reschedule the dinner with Yullyan? How offended are they?”

Annika was looking at him like she wanted to wrap him in a wool blanket and fuss over him, but Dimitri needed the distraction. He had to keep working, had to keep moving forward, or he wouldn’t be able to function at all. He wouldn’t be able to stand it if he was quiet and still enough to be forced to listen to the cracking of his ever-breaking heart.

“Not much offended at all,” Ladushka replied with a glimmer of what could have been pride but also might have been pity in her eyes. “Vasya reported that the three of them were discussing your use of magic with curiosity, not disdain, which provides us with interesting insights. I will happily brief you on Vasya’s report and the rearrangement of the schedule, Moy Tzar.”

She so rarely used his title that it sent shivers across his skin. He knew she meant it as a compliment, praise for making the hard choice that also happened to be the right one. But it also felt heavy, his neck bowing under the weight.

Vasily had vanished after breakfast and Dimitri knew he shouldn’t put much effort into finding out where his spymaster had gone. When Vasily wanted to hide, he did it better than anyone else, and in any event, if he was angry at Dimitri, he deserved to be able to process those feelings in private. They had never been the type to yell at each other, and Dimitri knew Vasily needed time to work through what he was certain was a sense of anger and betrayal at being sent away.

He’d come back. He always came back.

Dimitri worked his way back to his rooms with Ladushka in tow, stopping to greet assorted members of his court and various ministers who all wanted to ambush him with requests of one variety or another. His time had been focused on the delegations and the negotiations and would be for the foreseeable future, which meant that his actual ministers were forced to conduct business in the stolen moments between sessions. But now, he was grateful to listen to his minister of public health discuss a new outbreak of tuberculosis in the south and some suggestions for containing the spread and helping the victims, and Dimitri, impressed with the woman, approved. His minister of finance let him know that tax revenues were holding steady, and Dimitri breathed a sigh of relief. He’d had to increase taxes on the wealthy, especially in industries that hadn’t been harmed by the war, in order to pay for reconstruction and repair. When he’d announced it, there hadn’t been much complaint—at least not that reached his ears—but he was glad that the plans were bearing fruit.

The more he could think about these matters of state, the more he could ignore his own far more disturbing thoughts.

When they made it to his rooms, Ladushka slipped in behind him.

“That was kind of you,” she said, leaning against the door once she shut it behind them. “To do that for Vasily.”

“What, to order him away?” Dimitri tried for a laugh, but it was short and hard.

“To give him an excuse to escape,” Ladushka corrected. “He is…he is very broken up about the summit. He is worried about you, especially after the way you lost control of your magic yesterday. And I am worried about him. Assigning him a task—one which, I agree, is quite vital—and letting him feel as though he is helping you and helping us by finding answers is exactly what he needs.”

“I know,” Dimitri answered simply, running his hand through his hair. “I know. And part of it is selfish. I don’t want to put him at risk. And besides, you know I can’t bear the long goodbye.”

“I know.”

She stared at him, a wounded look on her face, and for a moment he was consumed with guilt. When he’d stayed in Chernitzy all those years ago, instead of returning to Rav-Mikhailburg as he’d intended, he hadn’t known what to do with Ladushka. He’d toyed with the idea of inviting her to visit, but then he’d realized that doing so would mean he’d inevitably have to say goodbye. And letting people go was never easy for him, so he’d let it rest, trading letters with an ever-reducing frequency until his return to the capital after his family’s murder.

He’d thought he was being kind to them both, and it had felt better at the time than reckoning with the fact that their relationship was changing. But maybe it had been the worst kind of selfishness, to leave her alone like that.

Dimitri shook his head. Whether it had been a mistake or not was in the past, and that was nothing like what he and Vasily were facing now.

“I just want to do the right thing.” Dimitri swallowed hard.

Ladushka cocked her head, settling down onto the chaise, laying the bundle of papers in her arms on the table in front of her. “This is the right thing, Dima. Because I can tell from the way you’ve been looking at us that you are afraid of hurting us, but that you are terrified of hurting Vasya most of all. Sending him away prevents that, and I hope it will allow you to focus more fulsomely on the summit. Because unless I am mistaken, there may be a chance for a genuine connection between you and one of the three candidates.”

She said the last part gently, staring off into the corner. Ladushka was uncomfortable meeting anyone’s eye, but she made an effort to aim her gaze at people’s faces. Right now, she couldn’t even do that.

Dimitri swallowed the guilt and picked up the crown resting on the table. He placed it on his head, wincing at the bite of cold metal. “Yes,” he admitted in what felt like a confession. “Yes, there could be.”

Ladushka granted him the blessing of a day filled only with meetings in which he didn’t play more than a ceremonial role, which allowed him to at least distract himself while also managing the fatigue that was still plaguing him after yesterday.

Aziza, Yullyan and Lukas were all in attendance. Aziza kept studying him like she was trying to dissect him, and Yullyan was doing an excellent job of pretending to look bored while also casting Dimitri sidelong glances and randomly interjecting scathing comments that disarmed the negotiators. Lukas, sitting next to him, snuck a hand out under the table to squeeze Dimitri’s knee and kept passing him cookies from the plate in the center of the table, which Dimitri nibbled at unthinkingly.

Vasily hadn’t been in their rooms when he’d come back to undress and Dimitri had been both disappointed and relieved. He’d briefly entertained the notion of going to find Vasily himself, but he knew that the other man would come to him when he was ready.

And he’d been right. He’d been dozing off in gradually cooling bathwater, the candles burning low, when the noise of the door opening and shutting and the sound of footsteps made him blink awake.

“Hey,” Vasily said, standing in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest.

“Hey,” Dimitri replied, swallowing, wondering if he was going to get Vasily’s anger or his sorrow, and reminding himself that he deserved both.

Vasily’s burnished gold skin shone in the flickering light of the candles, his eyes ringed by tired bags and his jaw rough with stubble. He looked like he’d aged five years over the course of the day, and when he raked a hand through his hair and sighed, Dimitri stood up out of the water and reached for a towel to wrap around his waist.

“The travel arrangements have been made,” Vasily said, not looking at Dimitri.

“Thank you for telling me.” Dimitri finished drying off and slipped on the nightshirt he’d left draped on the bench. “Do you have everything you need?”

“We don’t need much.” Vasily hadn’t moved from where he was standing, and though there was merely a few feet separating them, it felt like a gulf too big to ever cross again. Dimitri hated every single moment of this. “It will be a simple trip. It’s not as if we need to hide this time—there’s no trouble in the two of us going openly.”

Vasily’s voice was wooden and his posture stiff, his knuckles standing out through his skin as he clenched his fingers around his biceps. Dimitri realized that this was him getting an update from his spymaster, not being told the details of a journey by his lover. Dimitri had done that, when he’d ordered Vasily away.

“That’s…good.” Dimitri tried to remember that he was the one who was enforcing this distance between them, for the good of Novo-Svitsevo. That Vasily was doing exactly as he had asked. He fought against the urge to reach for the connection between them, to get down on his knees and beg Vasily’s forgiveness, to forget all sense and suggest they run away together where no one could ever find them again. Ladushka practically ran the country on her own already, anyway.

“I’m going to find help for you,” Vasily said, picking at a loose thread on his shirt. “It’s all going to be all right, Dima. I promise. Even if I have to torture the answers out of Aleksandr myself. We’re going to free you from this magic, and you’re not going to have to worry about it anymore.”

It was less a tender promise and more a sworn declaration from a subordinate to a master.

“Thank you,” Dimitri replied stiffly. “I appreciate that you’re willing to make the trip. I would come with you if I could. Who couldn’t use a bit more Aleksandr in their lives?”

The attempt at humor fell flat, and the silence stretched on between them.

“Be safe, all right?”

“You too, Dima,” Vasily replied with a nod. “Don’t let anything happen to you while I’m gone. I’ll be back before you know it.”

Dimitri began to reach out a hand to Vasily, but then let it fall. There was nothing between them anymore, no tenderness, no care. Just duty and devotion.

Dimitri had no right to seek comfort in Vasily. So he merely watched the drops of water falling from his hair onto the marble and tried not to look up when he heard Vasily turn and leave.

It took Morozov until the last moment to return, as if he was testing his leash.

“Moy Tzar,” the zemonyii said, bowing and flaring his wings for balance. “It is possible to control the creatures, even in these numbers. They performed what I asked of them, in the manner of human soldiers. They turn anything that is before them to dust. We destroyed Chirkutsk, eliminating the people and devouring the animals, leaving only bones and corpses. The larger demons were eager to use claws and limbs to destroy the village’s structures, and the smaller demons set everything left standing aflame.”

“What I asked of them,” Alexey corrected icily. “You are the mere conduit.”

Morozov straightened up and bared his teeth. “Without me, you would be unable to control them. I am their general. I issue their orders.”

“And yet I give orders to you.” Alexey ground his teeth together. Morozov had always been a simpering mess, and now was not the time for him to be suffering from an altered disposition. “You would be well placed not to forget that. After all, I know now how to create zemonyii. You may be my sole general now, but you are not a singular creation I can never replicate, Morozov. Do not do us the disservice of forgetting your place.”

For a moment he wondered if Morozov was going to snarl at him, his mouth hanging open to display the sharpness of his teeth. A line of spittle dripped down from his fangs onto the floor, and Alexey’s eyes followed it with disgust. Morozov had truly turned into little more than a hunting dog.

“Your magic comes from mine.” Alexey reached out a hand and placed it on Morozov’s chest. He pulled at the magic contained within his general, bringing some of it back into himself. Morozov convulsed, whining like a dying animal, because in that moment that was all he was. “And as such, I can take it back. You may think you can defy me. But you are little more than you have always been—my loyal servant, rewarded for his dedication beyond all measure, with power known to no other man.”

He let go of the magic and allowed the life to unspool back into Morozov, who gasped and brought a taloned hand to his rib cage. “Yes, Moy Tzar.”

“Go and supervise the demons,” Alexey ordered. “I will think on how best to proceed, and then we will begin our march.”

“Immediately?” Morozov asked.

“No.” They needed to wait a few more days. The conditions of the march needed to be ideal.

A chastened Morozov bowed his head and left the parlor through the open window, snow drifting in on the wake of his wings. Alexey put a hand to his head, wincing at the headache there. He prayed that he would not need to put Morozov down, and that this newfound rebelliousness was easily quashed with the reminder that Alexey was, indeed, both his commander and his creator.

Alexey made his way to the estate’s library, where he had not bothered to light candles or stoke a fire. The dark and the cold suited him, because it wasn’t as if he was ever going to be able to get warm. The chill had seeped into the marrow of his very bones and settled there. He had given up on fighting it. He was stronger than pain and mortal discomfort.

A large map of Novo-Svitsevo was laid out on the long table in the middle of the library, Rav-Mikhailburg marked by an obsidian paperweight studded with diamonds that Dimitri had gifted him for some celebration or another. It was four days’ ride on a horse to the capital, a day more by carriage. But his army would be flying, and a messenger bird could reach the city in a little over a day. It would be slower if they took time to destroy what was in their path.

A languid, inevitable march to the capital. A wave of terror that Dimitri would see coming. Were it Ivan on the throne, he wouldn’t have bothered to devastate his own country. But without knowing where the boy was or what had become of him after Dimitri retook control, there was no point in holding back.

Dimitri was alive and needed to be dealt with. To be reminded that this country was Alexey’s to rule, and that he would never let it go.

Alexey traced the route with his hand, over the mountains ringing Chernitzy and across the flat plains where the war had ravaged fields and villages. He had wondered over the last several days about the manner in which he should proceed. During the war, he had been on the front lines, supervising the battles and ensuring that his solders did not fall victim to cowardice. But now his bones were laced with cold, and he had been killed a second time. He no longer clung to the arrogance of invincibility. There was nothing for him to prove by walking into danger, especially not with the energy and concentration it took to hold open the rift.

No, he decided, laying his hands flat on the carved wood of the table. He would stay here, in Chernitzy, until his army had done its work. They would lay a path for him to the capital, and by the time he walked it, Dimitri and everyone who cared for him would be on their knees.

It was days until the sabbath, when he suspected his powers would be at their strongest, his connection to the middle world at its greatest. He would spend the next few days determining what orders to give to Morozov so that the creature could lead his army.

And then, for the final time, it would begin.

“It was the right thing to do.”

“What was?” Vasily winced against the lights in the tearoom that Mischa had dragged him to when they’d peeled him out of bed and realized, to their amusement, that he was still drunk from the night before.

There was a hangover pounding behind his eyes, and Vasily had a feeling that it wasn’t just his own headache he was feeling. For half a moment he thought about reaching through the tether between him and Dimitri to soothe the other man, then remembered that wasn’t something he was supposed to be doing anymore, and then realized that if he kept thinking about Dimitri, he really was going to vomit.

Mischa snorted. “Getting you to eat breakfast before we got in the carriage. You’re positively green, and I’m not stopping every mile to let you puke on the side of the road. Now eat your waffles.”

The doctor glared at him, making threatening motions with a knife that looked a lot like they were miming a decapitation, until Vasily grudgingly cut a tiny piece of waffle and stuck it in his mouth. The syrup was overly sweet in a way that made him gag, but he swallowed it down and chased it with a long drink of tea.

He’d feel a lot better if Mischa had let him put vodka in it, but the doctor had decided to become a paragon of virtue or something and had declared that this was going to be a substance-free trip to Lietuva.

“I’m definitely not hungry,” Vasily grumbled.

“You’re definitely eating all of that,” Mischa replied. “If you refuse, I’m going to start telling you all of the embarrassing stories about yourself you don’t remember.”

“The—what?” Vasily looked at Mischa askance, through narrowed eyes.

Mischa just cocked their chin at him and huffed. “I’m a physician, I don’t have to explain myself. Now eat.”

Halfway through the pile of waffles, Vasily begrudgingly had to admit that he was feeling better—or at least less likely to empty the contents of his stomach during the first part of the carriage ride.

They made their way to the street, where the snow was still falling, the air colder than Vasily had ever remembered it. “It’s bitter out.” He wrapped his coat tighter around himself, but it had no effect.

“It is?” Mischa studied him as they opened the door to the carriage waiting for them, their luggage already loaded in and the coach driver waiting patiently on the seat. “It’s no colder than it’s been the last few weeks. Are you feeling all right?”

Vasily shivered as he followed Mischa inside, collapsing into the velvet seat and breathing a sigh of relief when the door was pulled shut behind them. There was a foot warmer, at least, and the enclosed carriage kept the wind off them. Vasily pulled a fur blanket across his lap, then proceeded to shove it off when he breathed in and realized it smelled just like Dimitri’s skin, vetiver and tobacco and comforting warmth.

Of course the carriage they’d been given had to have been the one that he’d fucked Dimitri in the last time he’d accompanied him on a trip to visit some of the closer villages. The Lord their God had either a strange sense of humor or an eye for petty vengeance.

There was pressure behind his eyes and a vise around his throat, and he made it half a minute before the first tears started to fall. And that released a flood, until Vasily was sobbing like a child, grieving over the fact that memories like this were the only thing that he’d have left of Dimitri soon. Wondering how long it would take his heart to mend, if that was even possible. Mischa moved to sit next to him on the bench, winding their arms around him and whispering comforting words into his ear, before they just hugged him and let him empty himself out.

Vasily spent the first part of their ride out of Novo-Svitsevo crying into a blanket that smelled like everything he’d lost.

Aleksandr’s library was as weird as Vasily remembered it.

Four days on the road and they’d finally reached Wilnetzk, which somehow had become even dirtier and more depressing than it had been last time they’d been there. Vasily was sure the Lietuvans would chalk it up to industrial progress, but he was fairly sure that everyone here must have coal dust lining the entirety of their lungs.

After eating breakfast at the café that Mischa used to frequent—uncomfortably close to the park that Vasily now knew was infested with demons—they’d taken the carriage to the outskirts of the city, to the nearly abandoned area in which Aleksandr kept his library.

There were still skulls outside, mixed in with the gaunt branches of dead shrubbery. One of them was now wearing a hat.

“I still fucking hate this place,” Mischa muttered as they waited after knocking. “I know it ended up being key to Alexey’s downfall, but it still gives me the creeps.”

“I’m pretty sure that the day you feel comfortable here is the day you need to seriously reconsider your life choices,” Vasily answered, before rearranging his face into a smile as the door cracked open.

“You.” Aleksandr’s left eyeball was all that was visible through the tiny opening in the door. “What are you doing here? You stole one of my books, you know. Are you here to return it?”

Vasily held his hands up. “I didn’t steal anything. And if someone else did, I’m sure it was for a good cause. Can’t we just pay a fine? Isn’t that how libraries work?”

Aleksandr grumbled something unintelligible and opened the door the rest of the way, reaching out a spindly arm to pluck a hair from Vasily’s right eyebrow. “Okay, have it your way.”

He tucked the hair into the breast pocket of the patchwork dressing gown he wore, as Vasily reached up to massage his stinging skin. “What was that for?”

“The fine?” Aleksandr pointed an accusatory finger at him. “You asked for it, and no refunds.”

Mischa found their tongue next to him. “Can we come in? It’s really cold out here.”

Aleksandr arched an eyebrow. “Do you have payment?”

Vasily traded a look with Mischa, and they reached into their pocket. But then Aleksandr sniffed the air like he was a dog and got close enough to Vasily that they were nearly touching noses, despite Vasily being a good few inches taller than the old man. “Never mind.” Aleksandr placed a surprisingly tender hand on Vasily’s cheek. “You’ve lost enough, haven’t you?”

It would be a miracle if Vasily could get through a single day without someone reminding him in the most painful way possible that his time with Dimitri had come to an end. He bit his lip, drawing in a lungful of the dusty, chilly Wilnetzk air, and willed himself not to cry. Impossibly, he hadn’t used up all his tears the six separate times he’d broken down in the carriage on the way here.

“Come in.” Aleksandr stepped aside and ushered the two of them into the hallway, which was even more impossibly full of books and hanging herbs and what looked like an extensive collection of pristine, never-used gardening tools.

The parlor was exactly as it had been the last time they’d been there, save for the fact that he and Mischa were alone and the head set into the table wasn’t hidden by its cloth.

“You figured it out!” the head crowed as it caught sight of them. Vasily suppressed a shudder, remembering that the first time he’d been in here Aleksandr told him what had happened to the last person to offend the talking head. “It’s not every day that someone manages to correctly interpret a prophecy. There’s hope for the kid yet.”

“Shut up,” Aleksandr shouted at the head. “I thought we agreed that if I left the cloth off, you wouldn’t talk just to hear the sound of your own voice.”

The magician and the head started to bicker in a way that Vasily feared could last a while. He turned to Mischa to commiserate but noticed that they were looking over their shoulder, back into the hall, their eyes half-unfocused and their mouth hanging a bit open.

Vasily turned to look too, and immediately sympathized.

Standing in the hall was one of the most stunning women that Vasily had ever seen, glossy dark hair framing a striking, heart-shaped face. Her lips were painted a dangerous red, and her wide brown eyes were almost golden in the parlor’s light. She was lounging casually against the doorway, her arms crossed over her ample curves, twirling a pen between her fingers and wearing a look of arch amusement that he’d seen on Mischa a thousand times before. For the very first time since whatever he had with Dimitri had begun, he felt his body stirring unconsciously in response to her proximity, and even though his heart had no interest, he couldn’t for the life of him blame his cock.

This woman was beautiful trouble.

“Hey!” Aleksandr barked, making the both of them jump. “Stop staring down my daughter’s shirt!”

That snapped them both out of their trance. Vasily and Mischa exchanged horrified glances—Vasily was quite sure there was no way to stare down the woman’s shirt, since she had it buttoned up to the neck and tucked under a wide scarf—but images of what Aleksandr might do to them if he thought differently flashed through his mind.

“Your…daughter?” Vasily was slightly dumbfounded and definitely tongue-tied, looking between the two of them and trying to search for any kind of resemblance between the shriveled magician and the striking woman standing across from them.

“How could it not be my daughter?” Aleksandr’s brow furrowed. “We look exactly alike.”

“Oh my God,” Mischa uttered in a strangled whisper. “We’re in so much fucking trouble.”

Vasily didn’t get a chance to ask what, precisely, the doctor thought they’d be in trouble for, because the woman threw her pen at the head like a projectile and hit it square on the tip of its nose. “I thought I told you to be quiet. Do you know how hard it is to read with two idiots yapping in the background?”

She turned to glare at Aleksandr. “You too, father. You promised when I came back here that you weren’t going to disturb my research. This counts, don’t you think?”

Aleksandr held his hands up, his eyes wide with fear, the expression exactly like when Dimitri had threatened him a year ago. Truth be told, Vasily was convinced this woman was more menacing than Dimitri could ever be, even on his worst days.

“I’ll gut you with my bare hands and throttle you with your own intestines if you don’t let me read in peace!” The woman pointed a sharp fingernail at Aleksandr’s stomach to emphasize her point, and then between one second and the next her glare melted off her face and transformed into a wide smile as she turned to the two of them. “Hello. I’m Nina Aleksandrova. Pleasure to meet you.”

“Oh my God,” Mischa whispered, strangled now. They flushed from their cheeks down when Nina extended her hand and shook theirs. Vasily didn’t miss the way that Nina gave Mischa a very unsubtle once-over and held on to their hand far longer than a traditional handshake would take. “Mischa Danilleyev. I’m a—I’m a doctor. Yeah.”

Vasily allowed himself a single moment to snicker before he took pity on his friend. “They’re court physician to Tzar Dimitri Abramovich, the holder of seventeen patents for new medications at my last count, including a cure for tuberculosis, and the founding surgeon of Rav-Mikhailburg’s first free hospital.”

Nina’s mouth curved up into a smile, as she eyed Mischa like a predator might assess a particularly delicious-looking prey animal. “Oh? So accomplished. And is there anyone in your life sharing those accomplishments with you?”

Mischa swallowed and appeared to recollect themselves. “No, but I’d like there to be.”

“Well then,” Nina practically purred. “How about if I show you my famously voluptuous—”

Aleksandr made an audible choking noise.

“—collection of texts from across the continent on the use of toxic plants in small doses as anti-cancer agents?” Nina gazed at her father innocently.

Mischa shot Vasily a questioning look, and Vasily gave them an approving nod. Just because he was miserable didn’t mean that everyone he knew had to be miserable as well. And Mischa deserved a bit of fun for having spent the entire journey here being a sponge for Vasily’s tears.

“Use protection!” Aleksandr shouted, as his daughter took Mischa by the hand and towed them out of the parlor. “I’m too young for grandchildren!”

“Don’t have a cock!” Mischa called back over their shoulder, which caused Nina to cackle and Aleksandr to sag with relief.

“The two of them are going to get married,” the head pronounced as soon as Mischa and Nina had vanished, and when Vasily looked over to the head in surprise, Aleksandr smacked his forehead.

“I just met my daughter’s spouse?” He pointed an accusatory finger at the head. “And you didn’t even warn me? I would have put on my formal robe instead!”

“Technically you met them a year ago,” Vasily interrupted. But no matter what was going on around him, he did still have to try to do what he’d come here to do. “And I’m here because I have a problem.”

“Oh?” Aleksandr looked down at Vasily’s belt. “A strapping young man like you? It’s only heartbreak. Go to a brothel—I can recommend a great one right down the street—and find someone who looks just like the Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo. They advertise them on the front doors now, the look-alikes. I guarantee you’ll get it up again in no time.”

Vasily pinched the bridge of his nose, then gave in to the weirdness and sat down on the lumpy couch. “It’s not that, although thank you for the horrifying unsolicited advice. No, I want to know how someone could come to acquire the powers of death and wield them like a practitioner of the Holy Science, but without doing anything themselves to obtain them.”

“Ah.” Aleksandr sat down in an armchair next to the fireplace, scratching his chin, all humor gone from his face. “In that case, you better tell me how the boy came to kill the other Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo. Confusing, that there are two of them.”

Vasily wasn’t surprised at the fact that the magician apparently knew exactly who and what he was talking about, and at least this time they weren’t in hiding and on the run from Alexey—the man was dead and buried. So he told Aleksandr the story from the beginning, what Alexey had done to gain immortality, and what they had done to defeat him. He described each and every one of Dimitri’s injuries that still wouldn’t heal, the way they still shared dreams, how he’d called Dimitri back from the dead with sheer force of will and how they’d put Dimitri’s soul back in his body.

“You’ve done a lot, and quite adeptly,” Aleksandr said, giving him an appraising look, “for people who claim not to practice the Holy Science.”

Vasily raked a hand through his hair and shrugged, then loosened his tie. It felt like it was strangling him. “We did what we had to do.”

“And where’s the body?” Aleksandr narrowed his eyes. “Tell me you burned the body.”

“Alexey’s body?” A chill worked its way through Vasily’s chest. “No. His zemonyii flew off with it.”

Aleksandr rolled his eyes. “If you didn’t precisely follow instructions—which, by the way, why sacrifice to an angel if you’re not even going to listen?—you can only be sure a practitioner of the Tzar’s stature is truly gone if the body is burned. The cockamamy way you did things could have left just enough power in his body, just enough life, to trigger his contingency plan.”

Vasily undid the first button of his shirt. Either it was very hot in Aleksandr’s house, or he was so anxious he was starting to sweat. “Contingency plan?”

“Any good magician worth their salt has a contingency plan, especially when dealing with matters of life and death.” Aleksandr reached into his robe’s pocket and pulled out a lavishly decorated imperial egg, the cloisonné shining in the firelight. A diamond the size of his thumbnail glittered in the center. Vasily had it on good authority that the imperial eggs had only been made for the royal children, because Dimitri had a line of them on his mantel. “Here’s mine.”

Vasily opened his mouth to ask what was almost certainly a series of ill-advised questions, but he decided to put aside any inquiries about how Aleksandr had gotten one and what exactly he was planning on doing with it. “I’m not here to speculate about a dead man. I’m here to determine what can be done about Dimitri’s magic, and how we get it out of him without killing him.”

Aleksandr rolled the egg around in his palms and shrugged. “As to how he developed the magic, I would guess that when the lackey removed the bone from the former Tzar’s throat, that there were splinters left behind, or even a whole piece. That, combined with their history, almost certainly would have provided enough of a connection for a window to open between their souls—much like what you share with him now as well. The magic fleeing the former’s Tzar’s dying body would have had a conduit into your lover. Has your Tzar figured out how to wield the power yet, or is it slowly overtaking his soul?”

“It can do that?” Vasily leaned forward in alarm.

“Oh, don’t panic,” Aleksandr retorted. “It’s not that bad to have your soul overtaken. Drink enough raspberry tea and you can fix it right up.”

A rhythmic banging started up above their heads. Vasily looked up. Mischa didn’t usually work that quickly, preferring the long seduction.

“Don’t worry,” Aleksandr said, waving off his concern. “It’s not your friend’s virtue. It’s just the bats. But back to your Tzar. Can he control the power?”

“I—think?” Vasily winced at the memory of two days ago, the way in which Dimitri had listened to Aziza’s instructions and not just killed a dangerous animal, but also reined that magic back in. “He can control the shadows, now. There was a first instance where he got…upset, shall we say, and used the power involuntarily. He passed out for nearly two days. But then he was able to kill a boar with it and reel it back in, even if it also left him exhausted.” Vasily bit his lip, thinking about the missing journal in his study. “I think he’s been reading Alexey’s writings and teaching himself about the magic.”

“So he’s a natural.” Aleksandr pursed his lips. “Or, at least, the power is natural to him.”

Vasily didn’t know which version of that was more upsetting.

“He sent me here to find a way to remove the power,” Vasily said. “It’s upsetting him, he doesn’t want it, and I’d like to see him rid of it. Do you know how to do that?”

Aleksandr cocked his head at Vasily, narrowing his eyes. “Do you usually master things that upset you with such apparent ease?”

Vasily took a deep breath and fought the urge to snap at Aleksandr, who definitely wouldn’t take kindly to it. “It doesn’t matter. He says he wants it gone. I believe him.”

“Well, then.” Aleksandr went back to stroking his beard. “I don’t quite know what to do. I mean, what did you expect? I didn’t know the first time, and somehow you managed. Maybe summon Gavril again. He helped you before. I think you should try that again but do better this time. Obviously, the last attempt was rather half-assed.”

Vasily bit his lip to keep from a nasty retort. He’d seen what had happened that night—when Dimitri had tried to get the Name into Alexey’s mouth—over and over in Dimitri’s dreams, or rather, his nightmares. He’d felt the pain of each one of those broken bones like it was his own, the agony of the stab wounds and the sick burn of the incision all the way down Dimitri’s left arm. Nothing about Dimitri’s efforts had been half-assed in the least. “I don’t think that’s an option, since Alexey is dead now, if you haven’t gotten that through your head. Killing a dead man again seems both pointless and impossible. Do you have any other ideas?”

Aleksandr shrugged. “For a man looking for answers, you seem awfully certain about things.”

Vasily sank back against the couch’s uneven cushions, something sharp stabbing him in the shoulder. He shifted and looked behind him to find the tip of a knife poking out through the fabric. He was about to ask Aleksandr whether he routinely left knives in the couch to stab his guests with, but Mischa and Nina walked back through the door. Mischa’s eyes were lit up with excitement, and they were carrying what looked like a stack of a dozen books.

“That was the best conversation I’ve had about toxicology in years,” Mischa gushed, so enthusiastic that Vasily almost didn’t recognize his friend. “I’m really thinking that you’re right about the potential uses of chelidonium—”

“—for skin cancers, I know.” Nina was also flushed and practically bouncing on the balls of her feet. “You’d need to combine it with an anti-emetic if you were going to feed it to a patient, but the topical nature of the cure circumvents that. If only we could test it on—”

“—prisoners.” Mischa beamed. “I have so many of those.”

“Oh my God.” Vasily had a horrible feeling about the havoc that Mischa and Nina could wreak together. It was never a good sign when Mischa got excited enough to forget to be sarcastic.

“What?” Mischa’s eyes narrowed at Vasily. “It’s not like we wouldn’t test it on animals first. What do you think we are, butchers? For advanced skin cancer patients, without a cure, it’s a death sentence, so ethically the doctor must weigh the risks of a new treatment versus the potential benefits when no other course of action exists…”

“Right, right.” Vasily held up his hands in supplication. “Sure. But we came here to do a thing, you know?”

“Ah, right, that.” Mischa had the good graces to look chagrined. “Nina also said she had some ideas about that.” They jerked their chin at her, and she proceeded to wink at Vasily in a way that was definitely not entirely nonsexual. “She thinks if she comes back to Rav-Mikhailburg with us that she can run a few experiments and see if there’s anything she can do to sever the connection.”

“Good.” Vasily raked a hand through his hair. “Because Aleksandr here had no ideas whatsoever.”

“Ah.” Nina bit her lip and grinned. “Just because my father has no idea doesn’t mean that a more talented magician wouldn’t be able to fix the problem. Complicated problems are the most fun. Let’s see if we can crack it like an egg, yeah?”

She punched Mischa in the shoulder, and they wobbled precariously, given that they were weighed down by books. Vasily was convinced she had done it on purpose when she then wrapped an arm around the doctor to steady them and neglected to let go once they’d regained their footing.

“Why do you want to leave me?” Aleksandr was glaring at his daughter. “You only just got here.”

“Because you never shut up.” Nina rolled her eyes. “Plus, when have you ever known me to say no to an adventure? The chance to purge magic from the soul of an unwilling practitioner—think about how many articles we could get out of that, if the method was replicable.”

Aleksandr looked to the heavens and muttered something in a language Vasily couldn’t understand. Nina merely grinned. “Thank you, father. I’ll be taking money for the journey. And half the store of scholars’ blood, if that’s all right with you.”

Aleksandr scrunched up his nose. “One-third.”

They haggled for a minute while Mischa looked starstruck, and Vasily wondered about how to get out of the situation as quickly as possible. If Nina Aleksandrova was offering to come with them and look into the situation, he supposed that was the best course of action out of all of them. What better solution was there than to bring back a practitioner of the Holy Science themselves?

Vasily stood up as Aleksandr and Nina appeared to conclude their negotiations, both spitting into their palms and shaking hands.

“Give me ten minutes to pack a bag,” Nina declared, then raced out of the parlor.

“You can wait outside.” Aleksandr brushed invisible lint off the sleeves of his robe. “You’re already stealing my daughter, I don’t need you stealing anything else while you’re here.”

“We didn’t—” Mischa opened their mouth to argue, but Vasily made a frantic cutting motion behind Aleksandr’s back as he whirled on Mischa.

“—need to stand here any longer,” Mischa concluded smoothly, giving a little bow over the top of the stack of books. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Yes.” Vasily went to extend a hand to Aleksandr, thought better of it, and tipped his head instead. “Thank you for the advice.”

Vasily clapped Mischa on the shoulder and took half the books from them, tucking them under an arm and ignoring the way they felt like they were trying to wiggle out of his grip. It must have just been his imagination.

As they were walking out of the room, someone cleared their throat behind them. Vasily turned, expecting a last admonishment from Aleksandr, but the magician had vanished. Instead, the head was staring right at Vasily, its eyes completely black.

“It will end,” the head said. “The thing that you fear.”

Vasily’s breath caught in his throat, all the terror he’d managed to keep contained at the thought of losing Dimitri rising up to consume him.

“Come on,” Mischa said gently. “Come on, Vasya. Let’s go.”

“We’re coming back with Aleksandr’s daughter Nina. He didn’t have any answers, but she said she’d do research with us.” Vasily was sitting on the other side of dream-Malishka’s stall, looking at Dimitri through the oddly transparent horse, his suit covered in hay. “I thought it would be easiest to tell you this way.”

It had been five days since Vasily had left, and nothing Dimitri had done could manage to soothe the ache away. Maybe it was idiotic that he thought such a thing was possible. After all, even though Alexey had put him through hell, Dimitri had loved the man. Maybe he still did, even to this day. He’d woken up from every one of his recent dreams that had featured Alexey angry, but with a distinct sense of loss—and it was too hard for him to tell whether he was mourning the man or still missing some small piece of their relationship. The part that had been good, once.

His love for Vasily was so much stronger and richer and more vibrant than the fear-tinged adoration he’d held for Alexey. And it felt that way now, sitting across from a dream version of the man he missed with every fiber of his being.

Dimitri wished that the world had allowed them a bit more time.

“Thank you for letting me know.” He was stiff and stilted, unsure what Vasily was expecting from this encounter. He’d fallen asleep every night the last week praying that he would see Vasily in his dreams, but when he’d reached out through the connection between them—desperate to see Vasily, to know that he was all right, to check and see how long it would be until he returned—there had been nothing but a blank space where Vasily’s awareness usually met his own. Vasily, he realized, had been taking the sleeping pills that Mischa had concocted for them long ago, to prevent them from meeting in dreams every night.

It had been almost a year since he’d been cut off from Vasily like this, and it hurt more than he’d realized, being without him. Being left alone in his own soul, without the presence he’d come to think of as the other half of himself.

“You’re welcome.” Vasily was as awkward as Dimitri felt, not even meeting his eye. “I think she’ll be useful. She has some thoughts on how to remove the magic you’ve got stuck in you.”

Please don’t say you want her to sever the connection between us too, Dimitri prayed. Mercifully, Vasily stayed silent.

“I think Mischka’s half in love with her already,” Vasily continued on awkwardly. “I mean, it makes sense. You’ll realize when you see her.”

“Ah.” Dimitri tamped down the flare of jealousy that came with the thought of Vasily looking at other people the way he used to look at Dimitri. “I see. Maybe I will.”

“Or—or maybe you won’t, and that’s all right,” Vasily said hastily, his cheeks flushing. “I didn’t mean to imply that there was something wrong with you if you didn’t find her attractive.”

Dimitri’s stomach soured and he gave up trying to figure out what was going on with Vasily, instead focusing on caressing dream-Malishka’s velvet-soft nose. She was as warm and comforting as ever in the dream, despite being see-through. Despite what he was having her stand guard over, even if he was hiding that particular feature in this dream. “All right.”

There was a long silence, like Vasily was expecting him to say something. Dimitri couldn’t find the words.

“Are you…are you doing all right?” Vasily cleared his throat and reached for Dimitri but aborted the movement halfway through. “Are you eating? Sleeping, the last few days?”

I’d be sleeping better if we hadn’t parted the way we had, Dimitri thought bitterly, and when Vasily winced, he realized that at least some of that bitterness must have leached through the dream and reached him.

“Yeah, I—” Vasily sighed. “I’ll go.”

Dimitri should have told him about the nightmares, that Alexey was haunting him. That it was impossible to sleep without Vasily next to him, that he was so tired every morning that he moved about automatically, barely able to pay attention to what Ladushka needed him to do. That he’d fallen back into bad habits, a bottle under his bed for the evenings and a snuffbox in his coat pocket for when he needed to smile and be the Tzar and not a miserable piece of shit who was too heartbroken to properly rule his country.

That Dimitri hated himself because he was the one responsible for this all. That he’d hated himself every night since Vasily left for hurting the other man so badly. That he hated his life and sometimes wanted to take off his crown and walk into the streets of Rav-Mikhailburg and disappear into blissful anonymity.

The fact that he didn’t know if he could make it through any of this without Vasily by his side.

“Yes,” Dimitri said instead, his voice clipped and curt as he clenched his fists into Malishka’s mane. “You should.”

Vasily bit his lip and vanished, stepping out of the dream. Dimitri was left alone.

He breathed in deep, fighting the clenching of his ribs. And then he rested his forehead against his dream-horse and tried to get used to being alone.

“You seem distressed.”

Yullyan was walking through the garden next to him with their hands in their pockets, bundled up in a fur coat. Their long blond hair was tossed around in the breeze, some of the strands flying into Dimitri’s face, since Yullyan was almost a full head taller than him.

“I—” Dimitri at first debated the wisdom of exposing his feelings to Yullyan, but then again, they’d accurately pegged him from the first moment they’d met him. “Yeah. I had a falling-out with the man who you noticed the first morning of the summit.”

“Over marriage.” Yullyan glanced at him sidelong, their breath fogging in the frigid air, the frost glinting on the hedges mirroring the icy blue of their eyes. “And the fact that you’re not getting married to him.”

“Yes.” Dimitri bit his lip, which was so dry it cracked and started to bleed. “It’s been difficult. For both of us.”

Yullyan looked at him, pity in their eyes. “I saw the way you looked at him that first day at the summit. Lord Vasily Sokolov. Like he was the sun, and you were the moon, chasing him through the sky. And I also saw the way you looked at one of the most handsome men on the continent—who was clearly hoping to take you to bed—like he was about to kick a puppy in front of you. Poor Lukas is oblivious, the sweetheart.”

“Oh God.” Dimitri flushed with shame. “It was that obvious?”

Yullyan nodded, then was quiet for a minute, the only sound the crunch of gravel as they walked further down the path, approaching the old greenhouse that his mother had grown roses in. “Have you given any thought to what I could offer you?”

“Yes.” Dimitri’s guilty whisper was nearly swallowed by the wind. “I have, and—I want it. But I don’t know if he will. And I don’t know if it would be better, to have half a life with him, and only in the shadows.”

“I wish you could have the life you wanted.” Yullyan twirled a loose strand of their hair around a gloved finger, their lips pursed. “I wish I wasn’t here to plead my case. I wish I wasn’t trying to convince you for my own selfish heart, because I know that with you, I would be able to do as I pleased, as long as we both committed to the farce. But alas…”

They stopped at the door to the greenhouse, the glass panes slick with frost. They reached out and started drawing on the glass with a fingertip until a cartoonish rose took shape.

“I could give you what you want.” Yullyan leaned against their own drawing, smudging it, and reached out to take Dimitri’s hand in theirs. “A marriage to me in name, a marriage to him in truth, the three of us the only ones who would know. A half life, I think, is better than no life at all.”

Dimitri shook his head helplessly, unable to speak, and when Yullyan reached out and drew him into their chest, stroking his hair in an unexpected display of comfort, Dimitri hid his watering eyes in their shoulder and let himself be held.

“I can teach you, you know.”

Dimitri was drunk enough by the afternoon that this private meeting with Aziza was less fraught than his earlier walk with Yullyan. They were sitting in his favorite parlor next to a roaring fire, sipping tea imported from Novo-Svitsevo’s east and eating sesame-covered pastries that were apparently quite popular in Urushka.

“It’s nothing to be afraid of,” Aziza continued. “You appear to be a natural.”

Dimitri choked on a piece of pastry and was glad for the coughing fit that allowed him to regain his composure.

Aziza’s offer was something he’d thought about often in the time since the forest incident, as he’d taken to calling it in his head. But he was growing more and more certain that he wanted to get rid of the magic, because he couldn’t be trusted with it. He didn’t want to have to spend his life fighting to retain his humanity at the same time as he was fighting to keep his heart from giving out with grief. It was too likely that he’d give in to one or the other and become precisely what Alexey had been.

He couldn’t do that to his friends or his country. Or to whichever person he ended up marrying next.

“I know it’s frightening.” Aziza sipped her tea calmly, and Dimitri was at least glad that someone in the palace was able to talk about the Holy Science without having a fit. “I can only imagine. I spent years studying the mystics and their texts before I was able to call on power to enact change in the world. And here you are, doing it in a way that must be shocking to you.”

“An unfortunate parting gift from my former husband,” Dimitri managed to get out once his coughing had subsided. “Do you really think that you need magic to make the world a better place?”

“No.” She was looking at him as though she could dissect his soul with her gaze alone, the way that the archangels of God had flayed him open and laid him bare. “I do not, not strictly. But I do think power makes the difficult things easier to accomplish. Those who wish to keep the system in place, the ones that work for the rich and the powerful, have everything that they need to keep things steady. And those who wish to change that system are at a distinct disadvantage, no matter what their position.”

“But it’s still possible the normal way,” Dimitri pressed.

Aziza shrugged. “Anything is possible the normal way. But then again, I have never been a normal person.”

“What do you want out of life?” Dimitri might be drunker than he’d thought, because the room was swimming slightly. At least if he lost control, Aziza would be able to stop him. “Just to change politics and help people? Or do you want a family, friends, lovers?”

“I have not given it much thought.” Aziza steepled her fingers and rested her chin on top. “Because the course of my life is far from clear. If my spouse wants children, and we can create them, then yes, I think I would eventually build a family.” She sharpened her gaze, meeting his eye. “I have no interest in lovers other than the person I marry, and one would hope that my spouse would feel the same way.”

The room was too hot and his collar was too tight. So Aziza would help him better life for his people but would demand the entirety of his life in return. The whole of his heart, in exchange for being his guiding light through the halls of power.

“I think it’s time for me to retire for the night,” he said, standing up. “But thank you for giving me much to think about.”

“You have the chance to change the world, Dimitri Abramovich,” Aziza said softly, standing and curtsying to him. “And that is not something you should lightly give up.”

“You really seem like you could use a break.”

Dimitri was worn thin. He hadn’t managed to eat much since Vasily had left, and what he had eaten had come back up. So he chain-smoked through the summit meetings, even though Ladushka glared at him because it was a breach of decorum, and he drank far too much wine as he mingled with the guests in the ballroom before dinner. No one noticed that he wasn’t eating during the meal, because he used the excuse of circulating among tables, the light from the thousands of candles reflecting against all the gilt making him blink, pulling names and faces and important facts out of his brain with a little chemical assistance and all the alacrity of a dancing bear.

He was leaning against the wood-paneled servants’ hallway after dinner, having managed to evade Ladushka’s supervision. Annika, at least, was preoccupied with talking to Pavel, both of them laughing over the fifteen-layer chocolate cake that had been served for dessert.

It was there that Lukas found him, tucked in what he hoped was an unobtrusive corner, waiting for the world to stop shifting beneath his feet.

“The Tzar doesn’t get a break,” Dimitri slurred. He’d probably combined too many substances which shouldn’t be put together, but it wasn’t like Mischa was around to chide him. Mischa wasn’t there because they were with Vasily, whom Dimitri had sent away.

“I noticed he was gone,” Lukas said gently, which granted Dimitri the horrifying realization that he’d been saying all that out loud. “And you don’t look well. Can I take you to your rooms? I won’t do anything untoward, I swear. I mean, unless you want to? You just…Dimitri, you seem like you need to rest.”

Dimitri sighed but had no desire to fight, and so he let Lukas wrap strong arms around him and ask a servant to direct him to Dimitri’s rooms. Dimitri was about to complain that it would look like Lukas was hauling him off to ravish him, but then Lukas was summoning a trail of servants to follow him with porridge and buttered rolls and a very large pot of peppermint tea, the whole lot of them making their way up to Dimitri’s rooms, where Lukas stood very politely outside the bathroom while servants bathed Dimitri and dressed him in comfortable clothing, and then sat him like a doll at the table where Lukas was waiting for him, having clearly ordered servants to change the sheets on the bed and remove the detritus from the sitting room and light the fires so that the whole place was no longer dark and cold and dank.

“Thank you,” Dimitri mumbled when he sat down, his hair wet but the chill not bothering him because Lukas had thrown a warm blanket around his shoulders.

“Of course.” Lukas smiled at him, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and he poured Dimitri tea as the servants filed out, then fussed over him until he’d eaten some porridge and swallowed most of a roll. Dimitri drank two cups of peppermint tea, and wondered how Lukas knew that his stomach would hurt after eating more than he had in almost a week.

“What do you do to relax?”

Dimitri looked up from where he was staring into his cup and blinked at Lukas. It felt like the kind of intimate yet superfluous question that someone would ask another person if they were truly trying to court them. “I read romance novels.”

“Do you have any in Lietuvan?” Lukas brightened. “I speak Novo-Svitsevan fluently, but reading it is another matter. I stumble over the difference in the way the letters look.”

Dimitri nodded. “On the bookshelf in the bedroom.”

Lukas smiled and got up, returning with a book clasped in his hands. “Shall I read to you?”

“All right.” Dimitri didn’t know why, but it felt dangerous to do this—although the kind of danger that preceded a thrill, instead of a catastrophe. He followed Lukas over to the large sofa by the fire and let himself be pulled down nearly onto Lukas’s lap, snuggled up next to him. Lukas opened the book and began to read, and he didn’t even care when Dimitri’s head slid down to rest on his broad chest, the vibration of his voice through ribs and skin soothing the ache in Dimitri’s head.

With the food and the warmth, the comfort of finally being out of court clothes, the waning influence of the wine and whatever else he’d taken that day, Dimitri felt each of his muscles relax. Lukas kept reading for several chapters, then Dimitri found himself being shaken awake.

“You fell asleep,” Lukas whispered. The fire had burned low. “I don’t want you to hurt your neck sleeping like this. Let’s get you to bed.”

“Stay with me,” Dimitri pleaded, suddenly not wanting to be on his own, the comfort and the companionship so close to what he had lost that he could pretend that everything was all right, that his life and his world weren’t slowly and steadily falling apart. “Just…just to sleep. There are clothes in the wardrobe you can borrow to sleep in.” He didn’t want to be alone, not even for the half an hour that it would take Lukas to cross the palace, dress and then return.

“I don’t think I’d fit into your clothes,” Lukas countered, brushing Dimitri’s hair off his forehead. “But I’m happy to stay if you want me to. Just let me go to my rooms to change first.”

He picked Dimitri up and carried him into the bedroom, settling him beneath the covers and tucking him in.

“They’re not mine,” Dimitri said into the pillow. “They’ll fit you. He’s your size.”

Lukas’s hand stilled in his hair, then started up again. “I see. I’m—er. Unless you have a problem with me being unclothed, I think merely my underthings will do.”

Dimitri nodded, too wrung out to speak, and it occurred to him that perhaps up until this moment Lukas hadn’t realized—the way Yullyan had—that he and Vasily lived together.

Had lived together.

But Lukas’s weight left the side of the bed and there was a rustling of clothing, and then a warm body was sliding behind him, an arm around his ribs pulling him ever so slightly backwards into a muscular body that radiated heat. Lukas’s skin was smooth, his chest bare of the dusting of hair that Vasily’s featured, but his hand was firm where it splayed on Dimitri’s stomach and the weight was the same.

Dimitri matched his breathing to Lukas’s, feeling steadier than he had in days. If he felt a kiss pressed to the back of his neck, and evidence that Lukas, if asked, would be interested in doing more than just sleeping—well, he wasn’t going to think too hard on it.

It wouldn’t be so bad, for this to be his life. If this was it, he would be able to pretend. As Lukas fell asleep, his muscles going lax, Dimitri reached out and pulled open the drawer in his nightstand, using his forefinger to flick the two playing cards inside.

If Vasily was determined to move on, perhaps he should do the same. He relaxed into Lukas’s embrace and let himself fade into sleep.

He had chosen the neighboring region for his test of the true power of the demons he now commanded.

Three hours at a gallop had taken Alexey across the border through a narrow mountain pass, Morozov flying above, the army of demons trailing them like a cloud of smoke.

The further he drew away from the rift, the more his body was tormented. Alexey gritted his teeth and shuttered his mind against the pain, the clawing at his bones, as if he was being slowly turned to dust. Sweat broke out on his brow despite the snow falling against his skin, and Alexey realized that there was only so far the Holy Science would allow him to travel away from Chernitzy and the rift before the connection between them became too tenuous to hold.

For this, though, a demonstration of power that he himself deserved to see, he suffered willingly. He whispered to the void within him that he would return to the rift as soon as he knew the kind of devastation he could wreak.

When they reached the outskirts of the town he had selected, he slowed his mount, its sides heaving, and its neck lathered in sweat.

Morozov landed next to Alexey with a susurrus of wings, the acrid burnt-ash smell of him stifling Alexey’s nose. Together, they gazed out at the town, nestled in the middle of a valley with snow coating the roofs of wooden houses painted in pastel colors. A shul made of stone, inns advertising rooms to travelers—all would be a worthy test of whether his demons would be able to besiege the capital.

It was dusk and yet there were people moving through the streets, lighting candles in the windows, riding horses towards home. Alexey imagined he could hear each of their heartbeats, a cacophony in his pounding head.

“I once wondered how many human lives it would take to sustain an army from the middle world,” Alexey murmured, half to himself and half to Morozov. “We never did have the chance to test your calculations or my own.”

“You estimated that it would take far more fuel than I did, Moy Tzar,” Morozov replied. He was hardly able to whisper, his voice like twigs scraping against glass. “I have no doubt that you were right. My own hunger, now, is ravenous.”

Alexey nodded. “You are a good servant, Morozov. I think that tonight, you deserve to feast. Go on.”

He jerked his chin towards the town, and Morozov spread his wings and launched into the air, charging towards the nearest buildings. There was a beat of silence and then a rush of sound, of thousands of wings spearing through the air, as the rest of Alexey’s army followed in Morozov’s wake. When Morozov roared, the piercing noise made even Alexey shudder.

That was when the screams started.

Alexey’s stallion shifted underneath him, and he put a hand to the creature’s neck to steady him as the noise from the town grew louder. With another shrieking cry, the demons began to descend from the sky, falling upon the buildings in the center of town. Wood caught fire, and Alexey peered into the growing flames to see the demonic creatures he’d summoned picking up humans and carrying them into the air, severed limbs and blood raining down on the scene.

People were starting to stream out of the town now, running for the hills. Alexey watched as more of his soldiers began to peel off from the writhing mass above the buildings, darting for those trying to escape. They were devoured, their cries silenced as their bodies melded with the now-melting snow, staining it with blood.

Pride grew in Alexey’s chest as the blaze of the town burned brighter, the destruction rippling out from the epicenter where Morozov hovered in the air, perfect in his monstrousness. He could tell they would leave no survivors. There would be no pity or mercy to ruin plans, no human soldiers to balk at orders, to lose their courage. Alexey could taste the fear and the pain and the utter confusion of this town, which was rapidly being reduced to nothing.

This was the kind of complete and total devastation that Alexey had always known he could command.

It was all he needed to see. He whistled and called out with his soul, and Morozov came to him.

“Go north,” he ordered. “Arrive at Rav-Mikhailburg having left death in your wake. You will encircle the city and kill all who resist. Starve them out or pull Dimitri from the palace yourself—however you choose to do it, I want the throne empty before I arrive, but leave his death to me.”

Let Dimitri feel the same terror Alexey himself had felt in the years after they’d first taken the throne, following their marriage and the death of his family. The knowledge that danger was creeping closer and had yet to show its face.

Alexey wheeled his stallion back towards Chernitzy, leaving triumph in his wake.

Traveling with Nina was a rather unique experience.

She and Mischa spent the entire time talking rapid-fire, using words so big that they couldn’t even fit in Vasily’s ears. Most of it was about medicine, and Vasily kept cringing at their rapturous mutual descriptions of the visible signs of some of the rarer skin-based fungal infections.

“Do you think that maybe we could turn this conversation to something useful?” Vasily winced, opening the carriage window a crack to let the icy fresh air in. There was only so much of this he could take without feeling nauseous. “Like how to get this magic out of Dimitri before it consumes him whole?”

Nina cocked her head at him. “It will be hard for me to assess before we arrive in Rav-Mikhailburg.”

Vasily ground his teeth together and reminded himself that if he strangled Nina, who was just as frustratingly obtuse as her father, he wouldn’t be any closer to helping Dimitri.

He must have been making a foul face, though, because Mischa kicked his shin and shot him a look. Then they looked at Nina with moon eyes, and Vasily rolled his. He didn’t know how Mischa wasn’t growing more anxious by the second, with all the cryptic things that Aleksandr had said, the way he’d implied that they’d performed the ritual poorly enough that Alexey might not be gone for good. And his mood was only further fouled by the dream he’d shared with Dimitri two nights prior, where they’d barely had anything to say to one another. When they’d seemed like strangers.

Vasily knew it was his doing, the way that they were pulling apart. He’d seen Dimitri’s nascent fondness for each of the three suitors, and judged that if left alone, something could grow there. Dimitri could graft his love onto any of the three of them, and perhaps his heart had healed enough in the last year for that love to even thrive. But it wouldn’t ever take root if Dimitri was still clinging to Vasily, and so he was doing what needed to be done.

Even if it made him fucking miserable.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, until the carriage stopped dead.

Vasily looked to Nina and Mischa, who both shrugged. Vasily unholstered one of his pistols and opened the door to the carriage. When he stepped out, wary, he could immediately see the problem.

There was supposed to be a town here—Vytiza. They had planned to stop here for a meal and a bit of information gathering, but the land before them was only blackened ash and piles of rubble. The town had been…obliterated. There was no other word for it.

He had had two spies stationed here. Vasily’s stomach clenched with a familiar, haunting pain.

He circled back around and stuck his head into the carriage, fear running through each one of his nerves. “Come on, you two. You’re going to want to see this.”

Nina was the first out of the carriage, and when she saw the corpse of the town with no sign of life, the way that the ground was covered in piles of white-gray ash, she stopped dead. “Something’s wrong.” The horses were stamping their hooves and snorting, clearly discomfited by the scene as well.

The world was quiet.

“I’d say,” Mischa said dryly, with the tone of voice that Vasily knew was a hallmark of true panic. “What did this? Some kind of forest fire?”

“In the winter?” Vasily’s brow wrinkled. “Never heard of such a thing. What fire could burn hot enough to take down stone buildings?” He pointed to the rubble strewn about, which was the only sign that they were in the right place, that this had been a town of nearly a thousand people.

“No.” Nina crouched down, touching a single fingertip to the edge of the ash, then bringing it to her nose to sniff. She retched, then ground her finger back into the dirt. “Demons. An enormous horde of them, sucking the life out of the earth. Something so wrong it should never have come to pass. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”

“Oh,” Mischa and Vasily said at the same time.

“Fuck,” Vasily finished.

“Do you think…” Mischa trailed off, like the idea was too horrifying to even contemplate. Because it was. “Do you think it’s possible he’s…”

Vasily thought back to what Aleksandr had said about Alexey and how he might not be as dead as they’d all thought. “Do I think it’s possible that Alexey is still alive?” Vasily was surprised that his heart didn’t give out as he said it. “I don’t know. Does it seem like anyone else is particularly likely to use widespread devastation as a calling card?”

There was perfect silence, too still and ominous to be natural. It was eerily like the war, but worse. There wasn’t even much evidence of what had been here before. There weren’t corpses, there weren’t slaughtered animals. There was just…nothing. Blackness. Like it had all been unmade.

This, Vasily realized, was worse than anything he’d ever seen. Alexey could wipe them off the face of the earth if he so chose, and this was proof. They were at the mercy of a monster and a madman, and he was slaughtering innocents to make a point about his power.

This was a message written to Dimitri, signed by Alexey in Novo-Svitsevan blood.

“Come on,” Nina said, breaking the spell. “If that’s what it is, we have to move.”

This was a fucking nightmare.

They returned to the carriage and tripled their speed back to the palace, because, as Mischa put it, if Alexey truly was alive and Dimitri was attacked before they could reach him, there wasn’t going to be anything left to perform a ritual on.

Privately, Vasily was wondering if Dimitri very well might need to keep whatever magic he’d been cursed with, if Alexey was still around to fuck everything to shit. It had taken them hours to find a way through the devastation. It was trailing its way north, towards the capital. There wasn’t even any sign of refugees. The land was just blank, dead.

He was heading to Dimitri. Vasily was sure of it.

“Alexey Balakin,” Vasily said through gritted teeth. “That shit-stick dirtbag rat-fucking piece of scum.”

The only reason Dimitri was sleeping well at night was that he thought Alexey was gone and could never hurt him again. Vasily had promised him as much, and now he was a liar and a traitor and a fool too full of hope in thinking that Alexey would die that easily. Picturing the way that Dimitri would react was horrifying, and the mental image of Dimitri shaking apart in a panic almost made Vasily start to cry.

He needed help, from someone who would know how to do this—how to break difficult information to someone, how to look them in the eye and tell them that their worst fears had come to pass. Because he had to be the one to tell Dimitri, to his face, so that he could hold him while he did. Which was why they were galloping towards Rav-Mikhailburg, the driver instructed to stop only when he needed to change out horses, or when they needed to get food or relieve themselves. Vasily took those moments to listen at the fireside of the taverns, doing what he did best and collecting scraps of information, weaving them into a story.

He learned that some of the more minor nobility of the region had gone south. Their staff had been dismissed, and now there was this recent wave of horror, what the commoners were calling a plague. There were also whispers of a horde of demons destroying the towns in their wake.

All of those who had upped and left had been supporters of Tzar Alexey Balakin and adherents of the Holy Science. Too unimportant for him and Dimitri to purge, just on the fringes enough to have been left alone. And now they were gone.

He’d stopped, too, at the hidden places that his spies were told to use for messages. It was more of the same every time he unfolded a bit of paper, damp from the winter air. He replaced them all with coded requests for as much information about Chernitzy as he could get, sent directly to him at Rav-Mikhailburg.

Vasily knitted his fingers over his stomach to try to ease the pain that had taken up residence there and closed his eyes for a moment before breaking the silence that had fallen over the carriage since they’d made their discovery. “How do I tell him such bad news, Mischka?”

Mischa put a hand to their forehead, drawing in a ragged breath. They looked to Nina, but she was still fast asleep against the padded side of the carriage. “So you’re wondering how you should tell him that Alexey might still be alive. Because you’re volunteering to be the one to tell him, right? It’s sure as fuck not going to be me. He likes you best, you should be the one to do it.”

“I’m basically giving him the worst news he could possibly receive, on top of all the stress that he’s experiencing because of the summit. How am I supposed to throw this at him?”

Mischa blinked. “You’re not suggesting that you should keep this from him, are you?”

“No.” Vasily sat up straighter, rolling his shoulders, which had crept all the way up to his ears. “I mean, we can’t. We have to tell him. He has to know. But I just don’t know…How do you tell a person that they have a condition you can’t cure?”

Mischa rubbed at their eyes with the heels of their hands. “I mean, we had a course on this in medical school. More like a single day, really, which amounted to tell them as clearly as you can, as directly as you can, and don’t beat around the bush. Which is good advice in practice, rather than trying to lie to patients or otherwise obscure the truth. But it sucks a lot to have to be the one to say it to the person getting the news.”

“I hate that we have to keep doing this over and over and over again.” Vasily dug his fingers into the blanket covering his lap. “I fucking hate that we have to keep hurting him.”

“He deserves more, but he was never going to get it.” Mischa sighed. “Not with who he was born to be. Not with what he is.”

Vasily felt the defeat in every line of his body, every tense muscle coiled up ready for the blow. The ways in which life had failed Dimitri were horrifying, and he didn’t know how, precisely, Dimitri was going to bear it. He didn’t know how any of them were going to bear it.

“You should do it as soon as we arrive, when you get him alone, because he’ll be able to tell that something’s wrong. You’re not that good an actor around him. And nothing is worse than knowing that other people are keeping something bad from you, and not knowing what it is.”

“Sage wisdom.” Vasily patted Mischa’s knee, and they caught his hand, squeezing it, and then pulled him into a hug across the carriage, his face mashed against their bony shoulder. Vasily wondered if Mischa had always been this thin, or if this was a new development born of stress.

“Only you can hold him together.” Mischa pulled back, looking him in the eye. “Only you can stop him from falling apart.”

The one final stop they made was at a tavern in a town seven miles from Domachëvo. Vasily ordered Mischa and Nina to the far side of the dining room to eat while he slid into the chair across from one of his most trusted spies.

“You have to understand that this is a mission I couldn’t possibly prepare you for.” He picked at the edge of the table, separating a splinter from the cracked wood. “I need someone to go who I can trust to be discreet and to keep themselves safe.”

The girl sitting across from him nodded, her slate-gray eyes flinty in the light cast from the greasy candles in the chandelier. Her slim fingers were wrapped around a tin mug of strong beer, and when she lifted it to drink, the scars on her hand caught the firelight. “This I will do.”

Lida had been a classmate of Ayla’s at university and had come highly recommended by Dimitri’s half sister. Vasily suspected that there had been something between the two, because Ayla had blushed when he’d asked her if she knew anyone he might recruit. Lida, like Ayla, had been studying civil engineering. The difference between them was that unlike Ayla, Lida didn’t have a Tzar paying her tuition. So she had turned to odd jobs, including, according to Ayla, a specialty in finding people who didn’t want to be found.

She had mostly deployed this talent against those who owed debts, bringing in a tidy sum from finding debtors and convincing them to pay up—or bringing them back forcibly if they refused. With a bit of training, Vasily had ensured that Lida could pass almost entirely undetected in nearly every circumstance. He’d taught her about lock picking and explosives and how to use disguises, and she’d become even better at ferreting out information as a result. Vasily was proud of how far she’d come, and with her uncanny talent for following trails that others would say had gone cold, she was the only one he’d considered for what he was about to do.

It was merely a shame that he only had access to his best spy during university holidays, but then again, Dimitri had insisted that he not interrupt the girl’s education.

“Look,” he said, chewing at his lip. “I have a feeling in my gut.”

Lida met his eye. “You should listen to it.”

“I am,” he huffed, “which is why I’m here, asking you to do this instead of tracking Atrean messengers across the continent. That’s a matter of the nation’s security. This is something even more important.”

Lida nodded. The thing he liked the most about her was that she had never once pressed him for information he wasn’t ready to give. She did what she was asked and trusted that he would tell her what she needed to know, no more and no less.

“You tell me where to go,” she said, “and I will go there. I will follow the usual protocols and send you messages by bird with what I learn.”

“Good.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a purse full of silver tolar, small enough denominations that it wouldn’t catch anyone’s attention. “I want you to go to Chernitzy,” he said, the word acrid on his tongue. “The ancestral region of the Balakin family. We’ve heard whispers that supporters of the former Tzar are congregating there. You’ll pretend to be one of them. Find out what they’re doing. Confirm for yourself that Alexey Balakin lives. Search his house for a length of bone, with letters carved into it. He will be keeping it somewhere safe. And whatever you do, don’t get caught. Because I need you to return to Rav-Mikhailburg as quickly as possible with that bone. The world depends on it.”

Lida blinked once, but if she was surprised, she kept it off her face. “I won’t get caught,” she said, standing up and taking the purse, slipping it into her pocket. “And I will find you what you need.”

When she left, Vasily downed the rest of her beer, and then wondered how he would ever tell Dimitri his suspicions.

Finally, after an interminable wait, Vasily came back to the palace.

They hadn’t spoken in dreams since the one visitation that Vasily had made, and Dimitri had dipped into his supply of Mischa’s sleeping pills to ensure that he was able to sleep through the night and be awake during the summit’s meetings. Since Lukas had taken care of him, he’d been trying to do better. Ladushka had been looking at him approvingly as he ate more under Lukas’s watchful eye, and managed to smile when Yullyan joked with him, and actually paid attention to some of Aziza’s more interesting observations on the entertainment that they’d arranged for the evenings and the cultural intermingling it displayed. Lukas came back to stay with him each evening and through the nights.

So when Ayla poked her head into his study where he’d been catching his breath in between meetings to let him know that Vasily was back, the news caught him off guard and caused his stomach to drop.

He drained the cup of tea on his desk, wishing it was something stronger, and then left the business of the empire unattended to go see the man he loved.

Vasily was in Dimitri’s room, stripping off his suit jacket, his hair flecked with snowflakes. In his shirtsleeves, suspenders drawn up over his broad back and shoes lying by the door, he was somehow more vulnerable than when he was fully dressed. Like he was missing his armor.

It was something that only Dimitri saw. At least for now.

The click of the door behind Dimitri made Vasily turn his head, and Dimitri was hit with a wave of HopeLoveSorrow so great that it almost sent him to his knees. Instead, he sagged back against the doorway, rubbing his good hand to his chest.

Vasily unhooked the suspenders from his shoulders and made quick work of the buttons on his shirt, shrugging his way out of everything until he was standing in only his undergarments, the tension in his frame visible in the way the muscles of his chest and legs twitched.

“Most of my clothes are here.” He jerked his thumb at Dimitri’s wardrobe. “I’m sorry. I needed to get dry. And then I need to tell you something.”

The look on his face sent Dimitri’s heart down to the pit of his stomach. “What, Vasya?”

He wanted Vasily to stop and fold him into a hug. He wanted Vasily to tell him that everything was going to be all right. The bravado he’d felt the past week, the belief that he could move on, crumpled in the face of seeing Vasily again.

Especially when Vasily looked like he was about to cry.

Vasily went to the wardrobe and shrugged on a sweater and pants, then took a long look at the bed, which was clearly rumpled on both sides.

“Nothing happened,” Dimitri whispered, his throat dry. “I just didn’t want to sleep alone.”

“Yeah, I—” Vasily raked a hand through his hair. “It’s not that. And you would have been within your rights to do whatever you wanted with whoever you pleased.”

It hurt so much, the pain coming through their bond, that Dimitri curled over himself and collapsed to his knees.

“I’m sorry for sending you away.” Guilt rose up in his chest. “I thought it would be good for you, to have a purpose. You always think better when you’re moving, anyway. And I wanted to get you far away from me, not because I didn’t want you here, but because I’m afraid I’d hurt you.”

“Dima, darling.” Vasily was there, kneeling in front of him, holding him close. He pressed a delicate kiss to the tip of Dimitri’s nose. “You could never hurt me. Your heart wouldn’t allow it. And besides, I needed to have repeated breakdowns somewhere you couldn’t see.”

“There are six empty bottles of vodka under the bed and I’m out of cocaine,” Dimitri confessed into Vasily’s firm chest. “I think I needed to have repeated breakdowns somewhere you couldn’t see either.”

That drew a chuckle out of Vasily, even if it was tinged with sadness. He squeezed Dimitri tighter. “That thing I needed to tell you—it’s that we saw devastation like I’ve never seen before, not even during the war. There were no survivors, only rumors. Nina says it’s demonic in nature, from a horde of them. It’s trailing up towards Rav-Mikhailburg, but we managed to divert and get ahead of it. It’s moving slowly, deliberately. And we’re worried it means that Alexey isn’t dead. I mean—Dima, I’m sure Alexey isn’t dead. That’s the cause of all of this, your magic too. And I think he’s coming for you.”

Dimitri stiffened. “I knew. I knew it. I think I always did.” He choked on the words. It was like Alexey’s fingers were slowly and steadily wrapping around his throat, choking the life out of him, cutting off his air and crushing his trachea. He had been killed—Dimitri had traded his life for the chance to end Alexey for good—and it hadn’t worked.

Dimitri had given everything and it hadn’t been enough.

The dreams had been real, Dimitri realized, and his skin crawled with the memory of Alexey’s hands on him, Alexey’s boot on his chest. He rubbed the place where his husband’s heel had ground into his rib cage, right over his heart. The violation of it, of Alexey inside his mind and soul, touching his body, it being real…

“What?” Vasily pulled back, grasping him by the shoulders, shaking him out of his spiraling thoughts. “What do you mean?”

Dimitri swallowed hard. “I’ve been having dreams. And I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to admit it, but I think I was dreaming with Alexey the way that I dream with you.”

Vasily recoiled, and Dimitri felt their shared panic grow. He could feel what Vasily was thinking—that Dimitri was hiding things from him again, the way that he’d hidden his bruises and his wounds back when Alexey was tormenting him. And that was a betrayal.

“What was in the dreams?” Vasily was still gripping his shoulders tightly, but his hands were trembling. “What did you see?”

“Gehenna, I think,” Dimitri rasped. He licked his lips. “I was beside him as he was fighting through the dark. And there have been others. More vivid dreams. Sometimes he’s here, in the palace.”

Vasily stared at him. “When was the last one?”

“When you left.” Dimitri’s voice had reduced to a frail whisper. “I—I didn’t think it was real. I thought it was just a bad dream. I thought they were nightmares, Vasya, I swear it.”

Vasily let go of his shoulders and cupped his hands around Dimitri’s jaw. His expression was so, so impossibly tired.

“I didn’t want to. I’m sorry. It was out of my control. I should have realized—”

Vasily rocked backwards, settling his palms on Dimitri’s knees. “I don’t know why you think you need to apologize.”

“Because I let him in.” The words left Dimitri in a rush, and Vasily winced. “Dreaming with him the way I do with you. I didn’t want it to be real, and so I buried it. I shoved it down. And it still kept fucking happening. He can still reach me and I’m terrified.”

Vasily sighed. “I don’t blame you. This feels like a nightmare we can never wake up from.”

Dimitri felt dazed, the panic already receding, strangely, in the face of the horror. He was numb and tired and broken down. At the end of the war, none of them had even flinched when shells exploded close enough to shower them with earth. They’d become so dead to the terror that it hadn’t moved them.

This, he supposed, was more like that than he cared to admit. But at least the numbness stole the panic enough that the magic wasn’t reaching for it, clawing at it like it did all of his strong emotions now.

“How do we find out if you’re right?” Dimitri asked the question even though he didn’t want the answer.

“Well.” Vasily clenched his lips and hesitated. “I think you need to meet Nina Aleksandrova. She has some ideas.”

The panic felt very far away indeed as Dimitri followed Vasily to find the rest of the court, like he was floating in a dream. He’d taken two of Mischa’s calming pills before leaving the room and had pretended not to notice when Vasily palmed one away for himself.

“Oh,” Vasily said before they left, “one more thing. Mischka is utterly besotted with Nina, and they don’t know it, but the talking head said they’d get married.”

It was so strangely normal to talk about love and weddings that weren’t tied to the paths of empires. It felt wrong, when the world was ending once more, but he tried for a smile anyway.

They met up with Annika and Mischa at the end of the hall, Annika saying that Ladushka had been detained in a meeting and would join them soon. Vasily drifted behind them and Dimitri let him linger—if he looked away from Vasily for more than half a heartbeat, the fragile calm he’d cultivated inside himself might shatter. Instead, right now, he could float and pretend like this was all a misunderstanding, some kind of freakish blight that hit trees.

Their feet were quiet on the plush Urushkin carpet lining the floor of the library as they entered, and they followed Mischa over to the far corner of the library while the doors clicked shut behind them.

Dimitri noticed that, while the library was usually not full of visitors, today it was completely devoid of other people. “What happened to the librarians?”

“I dismissed them.” Mischa shrugged. “I didn’t think you’d want anyone gossiping about your demonic possession. It’s the kind of thing the palace would absolutely seize on.”

They were right, and Dimitri was grateful for Mischa’s sense of professional discretion. “Thank you.” He cleared his throat, looking around. “So, where is she?”

“Here.”

Dimitri’s head jerked up to see the woman who must be Nina Aleksandrova waving at him from her perch atop a bookcase some ten feet high.

“Uh,” he managed, before she clambered down, using the shelves as a ladder. “Nice to meet you.”

Nina bowed low to him. “I needed to check for mazzikin. Luckily, you have none. I’m assuming you already know my name and why I’m here, so how about we skip the niceties and you tell me your side of the story. After that I can tell you what I think we need to do to determine the source of your magic and whether your former husband is still alive. I suspect, now, that the answers to both are interrelated.”

Dimitri blinked at her a few times, shocked by both her affect and her ability to completely disarm him. She seemed, at least, far more agreeable than her father—whom she resembled not at all—and less likely to murder all of them before they took their next breath.

“I think it’s best that you sit down,” Nina instructed, taking him by the shoulders and steering him to the nearest chair. She shoved him down into it like he was a puppet she was controlling. “Sometimes recounting trauma can be disorienting, and I don’t want you to faint.”

“What—” Dimitri managed to get out before Nina knelt before him, grabbed his dead hand, and placed it to her breastbone, sending her fingers questing up his arm, pushing back the sleeve of his jacket and shirt.

“How did you get this?” She cocked her head at him, narrowing her eyes at the thick scar stretching from his wrist to his elbow. “Describe everything.”

So he did, telling her everything that they had done in Wilnetzk, first to tie him and Vasily together in dreams, then how they’d summoned the small demon that told them what Alexey had done and how they could defeat him, and finally how they had called on the angel Gavril to ask for the name of God. Mischa came to sit in the chair next to Dimitri, filling in the details that Dimitri hadn’t known because he’d been fading in and out of consciousness. The way that Dimitri had been engulfed in flames that didn’t burn him, the way that they had all heard the angel speak. The way that when the flames receded, Dimitri had been flayed open and the Name seared into the bone of his forearm.

Dimitri took over to tell the rest of the story, how he had failed to kill Alexey and had instead been killed himself, how he’d faced the throne of God in heaven and refused to submit because there was something calling him back home. How he’d had Vasily cut open his arm a second time to saw out part of his arm bone, and how they’d used that as a dagger to stab Alexey. How they had all thought they’d killed him.

Annika remained stubbornly at the entrance to the alcove they were in like she was keeping watch. Or like she was preparing to dismember Nina at the slightest sign of any issue. Vasily was next to her, whispering in her ear.

“Hmm,” Nina hummed as she kept stroking a hand up and down Dimitri’s arm. It was as disconcerting as ever to watch her do it and yet not be able to feel the touch, and Dimitri fought back the nausea that always plagued him when there was this dissonance between his brain and his body. “This is a highly interesting story. I’ve never heard anything quite like it.”

She let go of his hand and placed it gently back in his lap, then sat back on her heels, her hands on her knees. “All right. We need to move somewhere private where you’ll be comfortable. And then I’m going to summon an angel who’s going to help me trace the branches of your magic.”

“Sure,” he said, as if that were a normal proposition. “How does that work?”

“I enter a meditative trance and call for the assistance of an angel.” Nina sighed. “Usually I would need a name, a specific angel to call on. But given the threat this poses, I’m sure the archangels are already aware. I don’t have time to do more research, so I’ll be using a generic prayer and hoping that at least one answers.”

“Is this going to be safe?” Annika was shifting on her feet next to him, fingering the Seal of Zalman that she still wore around her neck, despite everything they had stooped to in order to return Dimitri to the throne. “Is there any way this could hurt him?”

“Unlikely,” Nina said, cracking her knuckles and then her neck. “I’m an expert. I mean, at least that’s what my father tells me.”

She threw a wink in Annika’s direction, and Annika wrinkled her nose but didn’t voice any further complaints. She stalked off to lean against the nearest bookshelf, her arms crossed and her eyes sharp, tracking Nina’s every move. When she caught Dimitri’s eye, she gave a small, tight nod. He dipped his chin in return, grateful that Annika wasn’t putting up a fight despite her continuing discomfort with the Holy Science and everyone affiliated with it.

After all, it wasn’t as if his soul could be any more damned than it already was.

Vasily wanted to tear his hair out. Instead, he settled for banging his forehead into the wall of his study. Regrettably, the wood paneling didn’t change what he’d just heard Nina say.

Nina poked him in the shoulder. “Stop trying to concuss yourself. This is the only way.”

Dimitri was curled up in an armchair by the fire, looking ill at ease in the study that Alexey had formerly occupied. His gaze kept sweeping to the repaired and cleaned rug in the middle of the room. Vasily wondered if his mind was imagining the bloodstains left by his half brother’s murder.

He had made sure never to bring Dimitri here, but Nina had led them all directly here from the library. “Can we talk about this elsewhere?” Vasily turned around to glare at the magician, making an unsubtle eye motion over to where Dimitri was staring fixedly at the floor. “Like, literally anywhere else?”

Nina narrowed her eyes. “No. I like the energy in this room. But you need to feed your mazzikin. She’s hungry.”

She pointed to the empty birdcage in the corner of the room that Vasily didn’t quite understand, but which Dimitri had insisted he keep. At the gesture, it rattled slightly on its stand.

“I told you there was something there,” Dimitri mumbled into his knees, his legs drawn up to his chest. “None of you believed me.”

“If you don’t feed her cream, she’s liable to feed on your life force. Not enough to matter, but enough to give you a wicked headache you probably don’t really want to deal with.” Nina marched to the door, pulled it open, screamed for a servant, and when one appeared looking both confused and frightened at the wildly assured stranger barking orders at her, dispatched the woman to get cream from the kitchens and slammed the door shut again.

Vasily pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to use every mental skill he possessed in order to stay calm. “I thought that was from trying to figure out how to keep an entire empire safe, but more importantly, can we please go back to what you’re suggesting we do?”

“It’s especially not dangerous if the soul has an anchor. Which this one, conveniently, does.” Nina flicked the tip of a finger between him and Dimitri. “Unless you plan on letting his soul go, it’s not like he’s going to float away into the ether and leave behind an empty shell. That’s not how this works. None of the archangels who would respond to this prayer would fuck this up.”

“We don’t know how any of this works,” Annika broke in, pushing off the desk that she’d been leaning on with a murderous expression in her eyes. “Why are we supposed to trust you without question when you’re telling us that the only way to diagnose this problem is to yank the thing that makes Dima, Dima out of his body and then fool around with it?”

Ladushka cleared her throat. She’d coolly appraised Nina and decided, with her usual decisive intuition, that she’d taken a liking to her. “She does appear to be quite learned in this matter. And it is not as if any of us have a better idea.”

Nina looked to Mischa, who just raised an eyebrow silently. Apparently, their infatuation didn’t translate to leaping into this particular fight on her behalf. Vasily didn’t blame them—he wouldn’t want to fight Annika on this either.

The magician growled and then flopped down to the floor, curling into herself like an upturned bug. “I’m telling you this is the only way for me to see if the magic inside him is connected to the undying soul of his freakish ex-husband. And the magic could be corrupting Dimitri too. I need to get rid of it, and that means understanding where it’s coming from, which I can only do if I can examine his soul.”

Annika started to argue, but Ladushka jumped in too. Annika looked like she wanted to punch the chancellor, and Mischa got between the two of them, one hand on either of their shoulders. Vasily was going to help them restrain an increasingly furious Annika when Dimitri finally spoke.

“He was never the same,” he said so quietly that Vasily almost missed it. “He was never the same once he came back. He was Alexey, but he also…wasn’t.”

“Yeah.” Nina turned over on her side, still on the floor, to look at him. Vasily could have sworn that her face creased momentarily with sadness or pity, or both. “When you do something like that…when you defy God, it extracts a price. The Holy Science is miraculous. But it is also a balance between what you can do and what you should. People like Alexey Balakin, people like my father—sometimes they have a difficult time telling where the line is that they should draw.”

Dimitri stared out the window. Vasily went to him and cupped a hand to the back of his neck. Dimitri was shaking.

“It sounds frightening, what I’m proposing we do,” she continued. “But if you trust me, I can make it quick. I can get you the answers you need.”

There was silence in the room, broken only by the sound of their collective breathing. Dimitri’s was coming harder and faster, and he hunched his shoulders. Vasily didn’t know where the boundaries between them lay anymore, but he knew that Dimitri was on the verge of panic. He sat down on the edge of the armchair and nudged Dimitri over with his hip, and then when he slid over, pulled the other man into his lap so that Dimitri could rest his head on Vasily’s shoulder. Vasily slipped another pill out of the bottle that he carried around in case Dimitri ever needed it and pressed it to Dimitri’s lips. The tip of his tongue touched the pad of Vasily’s thumb as he opened his mouth and swallowed. Dimitri took a moment to breathe in deeper, Vasily rubbing his back, and then he lifted his head up to look Nina in the eye.

“You’re telling me,” Dimitri said slowly, “that this is the fastest and best way to tell if Alexey is still alive.”

Dimitri’s hand twitched on Vasily’s thigh as Nina looked him in the eye and simply said yes.

He took a deep breath and nodded his assent.

“All right.” Nina looked at the clock on the mantel. “Let’s eat a snack. I’m starving. And then we work.”

It turned out that untethering Dimitri’s soul somehow involved getting both of them stripped to their underclothes and lying down on the rug in their bedroom, with everyone standing around them. Nina had wanted to stay in the study, but Vasily couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Dimitri lying down in the same place his broken corpse had been laid out. He’d suggested the bedroom as a compromise and been relieved that Nina had agreed.

“Are you sure this was necessary?” Vasily was staring up at the ceiling and shivering slightly. It wasn’t that he minded being nearly nude in the least—his friends had all seen him without clothes before, and all of them had walked in on him and Dimitri fucking at least once in Wilnetzk, aided by Dimitri’s proclivity for propositioning Vasily in the kitchen. It was that the bedroom was somehow ten degrees colder than it should have been, the fire doing nothing to warm up the air.

“Yes.” Nina peered down at him. “You’re lying down because I don’t want either of you to fall over when Dimitri’s soul untethers. Vasily, you may feel some of the effects.”

“And the clothes?” Vasily arched an eyebrow up at her.

She shrugged. “It will make the spell stronger if I can come into direct contact with your skin, and it’s easier to touch the soul that way. Plus, I figured you wouldn’t want to ruin them if either of you puked all over the place. It’s fairly common with Dimitri, I hear.”

Dimitri, next to him, turned his head to glare at Mischa, and then shivered violently. “Let’s get on with this, then. It’s freezing.”

Vasily couldn’t help but intertwine his hand with Dimitri’s, even though with the way they were lying it was the one Dimitri couldn’t feel. He rubbed his thumb across the ridges of Dimitri’s knuckles. “What do we do?”

“You?” Nina jabbed a finger in his direction as she came to sit in between them, cross-legged, one of her knees resting on each of their chests. “You do nothing but hold him. Metaphorically, of course.”

“And me?” Dimitri cleared his throat, and Vasily could hear the nerves there. “What do I do?”

“You do nothing but let go.” Nina placed her hand over the center of Dimitri’s heart, and Vasily had to bite his lip to stop jealousy from flowing through their bond.

Mischa came to sit by Vasily’s head and ran a reassuring hand through his hair. “I’m here to watch in case anything goes wrong. It’s not like I haven’t fixed the results of Holy Science gone bad before.” They were trying for a joke, Vasily knew, but their tone fell flat.

“Thank you,” Dimitri replied. “I hope we won’t need your intervention.”

There was a hand on his left ankle, and Vasily raised his head to see Annika shoving a knitted sock onto his foot. “You’ll be less cold if your feet are warm, and it doesn’t matter if you mess up the socks,” she mumbled. He could see how much she hated this in the set of her shoulders. Ladushka was at Dimitri’s feet, doing the same for him.

Vasily let his head thunk back to the rug and tried to relax his muscles one by one. Dimitri twitched next to him.

“All right,” Nina said. “I’m going to start. Just relax.”

He closed his eyes and wondered what, exactly, he was supposed to feel. What exactly he was supposed to be doing. He heard Nina start to pray and felt her hover her hands over their bodies.

“May the angel Mikhail be at my right, and the angel Gavril at my left,” she said. Her voice echoed strangely in the room. “In front of me the angel Uriel, and behind me the angel Raphael.”

The room was growing cold, far colder than it ever should have been.

“And above my head the protection of God,” she said, except her voice was far away now.

For a moment, all Vasily could do was grip Dimitri’s hand. He would always hold on to Dimitri, even past the point of rationality, but he didn’t know how that was going to manifest itself here. So he kept clinging to his hand and breathing, anchored by Mischa’s hand in his hair and Annika’s hands on his feet, and then, all of a sudden, he was somewhere else.

Vasily was standing but he didn’t have a body. He was seeing but he didn’t have eyes. He was looking at Dimitri and Nina was there. There was a presence next to her that his mind could not comprehend. She saw him looking and nodded. “The Archangel Uriel will help.”

“I’ve felt like this before,” Dimitri said. “When I was in heaven.” He gestured down at himself, and Vasily couldn’t quite understand what he was seeing. There was a figure before him that he knew was Dimitri, but he also knew that if he reached out and tried to touch him, there would be nothing for his fingers to find.

“You’re in the realm between realms,” Nina replied. “Just like you were then. You were dead, but you hadn’t been accepted into the Kingdom of God. You were in a liminal space, just as we are now.”

“What happens next?” Dimitri shifted, and Vasily could feel his agitation.

“Well,” Nina said, “we take a look.”

A ball of light appeared between the three of them, laced over with lines in the deepest black. It looked chained, weighed down. The closer Vasily looked, the more the lines looked like veins, branching and penetrating deep into the glow. Nina reached out and caressed it with a spectral hand.

When she made contact, there was a tug somewhere between Vasily’s ribs and his navel. Dimitri groaned, the sound full of pain, and Vasily could practically hear his teeth grinding together as he fought to stifle the noise.

“I’m sorry,” Nina said, pulling experimentally on one of the black lines. The figure next to her touched her shoulder, and she started to ripple with something like power or flames or both.

Dimitri let out a choked scream. She let it snap back into place, then turned her attention to Vasily. “I’m going to need you to hold him, now.”

For the first time, Vasily realized what she meant was I need you to hold him down.

When it hit Dimitri too, he let out a whimper that went straight to Vasily’s heart.

“These lines,” Nina said quietly, “are magic. I think they’re Alexey Balakin’s magic. You can see how tightly they’re wrapped around Dimitri’s soul. I’d like to try to untangle them, to be sure I can follow where they lead. I’m not sure if I can.”

She shook her head. “The two of you—your connection is deep enough inside Dimitri’s soul that the magic hasn’t reached it yet. But if it continues to spread, Vasily, it could infect you too. Your soul is fused to Dimitri’s in ways I’ve never seen before. It’s remarkable.”

“Whatever of Alexey is in me could harm Vasya too?” Dimitri’s voice was strained. “Can you get rid of it?”

“Eventually I’ll try,” Nina said grimly. “But first things first. Vasily?”

Vasily felt the reluctance in everything that he was right now—a floating soul, or a ghost, or a person having a very detailed hallucination—but he wasn’t about to let Dimitri down. Because the veins running through that ball of light would overtake the soul of the man he loved. So even if that man needed to hurt now, it was worth it to set him free.

He drifted over to where Dimitri was and the two of them merged. It was like sinking into Dimitri when they were in bed, except this was the whole of him enveloping the entirety of Dimitri.

Dimitri started to scream and Vasily held on.

It was hard, now, to be back here in the home they had shared, even though his return to the rift had eased the agony in his chest and restored his energy.

Alexey stalked out of the ballroom and into the hall, his feet carrying him of their own accord.

The carpet on the staircase leading to his private wing of the estate was still plush under his boots, muffling all sound. The stairs, made of ancient wood harvested from the forests around the manor, had creaked horribly before he’d had them repaired. Dimitri had been such a fitful sleeper that seemingly any noise was able to wake him from slumber. Alexey had learned, entering his bedchamber late into the night only to find Dimitri blinking awake, that even the stairs all the way down the hall could disturb him.

Hence the carpet, and the doors he had had rehung with wood carved triple thick, heavy to the touch even for him, even now.

The hallway yielded the ghosts of innumerable nights following this same path, finally done with the work of running the province near to midnight, his body aching with exhaustion and his mind depleted, but his heart jumping at the chance to see Dimitri and speak with him for the first time since breakfast. His hand landed on the handle of their bedchamber door, caressing the brass with his thumb.

He remembered the very first night, when he had opened this door to find Dimitri kneeling on his bed, a supplicant, and the way heat had burned through him at the desire to claim, to take, to hold. The way it had taken all his willpower not to do so, to give Dimitri time to settle in, to try to maintain the dignity of a political marriage with the son of the Tzar and not act like the most beautiful creature he had ever seen was setting the whole of him on fire.

Alexey had resisted, for a time.

He crossed over to the door that led to an adjoining room, which had been refitted to serve the purpose of holding Dimitri’s expansive wardrobe, Alexey’s compulsion to clothe him in the most extravagant fashions they could procure quickly outstripping the confines of a normal closet.

It had been a long, long time since he had been in this room. Even after all these years, it was infused with the smell of Dimitri’s skin.

Alexey lit a candle sitting by the door, then went to draw open the curtains on the windows, letting moonlight spill into the room. Rows upon rows of shelves bearing folded breeches and shirts, an entire army of mannequins wearing court clothes too stiff with gold and gems to fold and pack, trunks with lids propped open holding enough jackets that Dimitri had never needed to repeat one if he hadn’t desired to.

Alexey circled the room and stopped at the boots. He swallowed, remembering a night in the stables next to Dimitri’s horse Malishka where his husband had kissed him, desire in his eyes.

They had built cases into the walls to hold Dimitri’s collection of jewelry, everything that Alexey had commissioned for him to show off the wealth of Chernitzy’s mines, and because he could not help but spoil his husband and indulge his love of beautiful things. There were circlets and earrings, necklaces and elaborate cufflinks, jeweled tie pins and buttons with rubies the size of quail eggs. Alexey ran his hand across the entire row of watches, inset with diamonds, their hands still ticking in quiet time with one another. He could recall, with perfect clarity, the times when Dimitri had worn each one of these pieces, the times when Alexey had removed them with less than careful hands and then thrown them aside. It had been more than once that precious items had gone missing, only to be found months later underneath their bed.

Dimitri had inherited the crown jewels and the entire vault of Abramovich treasures. Alexey had insisted that he leave most of his new jewelry behind, because it would send a message of power for Novo-Svitsevo to see Dimitri draped in ancient gems. But he had always ached at the lost sight of Dimitri in everything that Alexey had crafted for him, each design sketched out in his own hand, each jewel inspected by his own eyes.

Those eyes burned, now, with tears he refused to let fall.

In the end, Alexey sat in the center of the room, his stiff joints protesting the movement. He closed his eyes, wondering how, after all this time and all these lives, after his husband had tried to kill him to steal his throne, he still missed Dimitri Alexeyev with all his heart.

Alexey sat among Dimitri’s things, closed his eyes and tried his best to breathe.

It was after long moments of stillness and silence that he felt it. A tugging on his soul, on the threads that bound the magic to his bones. But he didn’t have time to investigate the sensation, because Morozov called for him from the doorway to the bedroom.

He swallowed hard and stood up, unbalanced and shaking from cold, and went downstairs with Morozov to greet the latest group of his supporters.

The crowd was smaller tonight, given that they needed fewer sacrifices to sustain the rift than they had needed to open it. Alexey recognized none of his supporters, but he greeted them all the same, affecting hospitality. It felt hollower, now.

The tugging continued, and when he went to greet a red-haired girl with a flinty expression, he almost crumpled to his knees as his soul was subject to a particularly vicious yank. It must be the rift, he reasoned, demanding more of his power.

The girl looked at him with narrowed eyes. “Moy Tzar?”

He didn’t bother answering her, gritting his teeth. She looked downcast at his inattention. His eyes tracked her as she drifted to the back of the crowd, and he had enough presence of mind to notice that she slipped out the doorway of the parlor.

Either she was going to attend to her bodily needs, or she was going to attempt to leave the estate. If she didn’t come back, he’d have to send Morozov to fetch her. But the thoughts scattered out of his mind like crows when another wave of nauseating pain washed through his core.

The rift would not be ignored.

“Welcome to Chernitzy. If you would all follow me,” he gasped out, turning on his heel and heading for the cellar. “It is time for the ritual to begin.”

He woke drenched in sweat, with his teeth clenched so hard together that it felt like his jaw was fused shut.

Agony was lancing through every inch of Dimitri’s body, second only to the excruciating pain that he’d felt when coming back from the dead to a body that Alexey had literally crushed to dust hours before.

Dimitri wondered what he had done in his life to deserve always being in so much pain.

Vasily was flung half on top of him, the other man twitching, his arm pinning Dimitri to the ground. Dimitri tried to shift out from under him so that he could breathe better without his chest being crushed, and the movement caused Vasily to stir and open his eyes.

“Fuck,” he breathed. “You could have fucking warned us.”

He sat up and pulled Dimitri with him, every muscle and bone in his body protesting. Vasily wrapped his arms around Dimitri and cradled his head with one large hand, gripping him tight like he was trying to convince himself that Dimitri was still alive, still there.

Dimitri allowed the both of them a moment of comfort before he pulled away and stood up on shaking legs. Nina had moved from where she’d been sitting between the two of them to lying on her back several feet away, panting. Mischa was checking her pulse, and Dimitri couldn’t even be annoyed that they’d gone to her first because her normally richly toned skin was white as a sheet, like all the blood in her body had been drained away.

Annika came up behind him and flung a dressing gown over his shoulders, and Dimitri was glad for it because he realized that he felt like he’d been submerged in ice. The memory of pain was slowly shifting into an all-encompassing cold that chilled him to his core. Ladushka was helping Vasily to his feet, another dressing gown flung over her arm. Annika wrapped Dimitri in a hug, then guided him to the armchair by the fire and forced him to sit down. Someone had clearly called for tea, because a steaming cup was thrust into his hands.

Exhaustion was slowly overtaking him, and it was a struggle to keep his eyes open. Dimitri felt like he could crawl into bed and sleep for a week, if such a thing were permissible while also running a country and courting three people at once.

Vasily was deposited into the armchair across from him, and Nina was helped into a third. Mischa sat down at her feet, a finger on her wrist to check her pulse again, and Ladushka and Annika took the remaining chairs.

“So,” Dimitri rasped before stopping to clear his throat. It was raw, like he had been screaming for days. “What happened?”

Nina groaned, massaging her temples. “I have a migraine that will last a fucking century, that’s what happened.”

“Nina,” Vasily growled. He was ashen-faced, and Dimitri could see his hands trembling from an arm’s length away. “Just tell us what the fuck happened.”

“I—” Nina swallowed. “I followed the magic. To its source. I’ve never felt anything like that, the well of power that was concentrated all in a single soul. I didn’t get too close because I didn’t want him to realize someone was looking, but yeah—I think it’s Alexey Balakin. I think he’s alive, and that’s why Dimitri has magic. Because there was a connection, a bridge, formed between them, when Dimitri’s bone was used to stab Alexey. Likely a shard was left behind when it was removed, because someone or something must have removed it. The angel assisting me tried to untangle the magic from Dimitri’s soul, calling it an abomination against the Lord. And for a moment it was working. I could see the bonds loosening. But then they contracted again, and they started to fight the angel back. The angel gave up, out of fear that they’d hurt Dimitri. That magic? It didn’t want to leave him. It was fighting as if it were an animal and the angel had a knife to its throat.”

“Aleksandr mentioned the possibility that this was why Dimitri had magic,” Vasily added. His shoulders were slumped and he had a terrible look on his face, as though he didn’t know whether to rage or cry. “So I suppose I’m not surprised.”

“It figures,” Mischa muttered, running their hand over their face, exhausted, “that even now Alexey won’t let him go.”

“That fucker,” Annika hissed. She reached for the hilt of a dagger at her waist as if she could stab him herself right then, and Ladushka, blank-faced with fear, reached out reflexively to grab her wrist.

Dimitri wondered if he needed to get up and go to the bathing chamber because he was going to be sick. He hadn’t known it was possible to feel like Alexey was still strangling him, still looming over him, even when he wasn’t in the room, even when it was clear to the both of them that whatever had been between them was over for good. His entire body felt unclean, contaminated, like it didn’t belong to him anymore. Like Alexey had possessed him and had sunk into every bit of his flesh, ruining him.

His body had never been his own. Alexey had claimed it, Novo-Svitsevo had claimed it, God Himself had claimed it. But he had never felt the revulsion creeping through his veins before now. If he could claw his way out of his own skin, he would.

“So what does that mean, then?” Ladushka was staring intently at Nina. “What options remain?”

“I don’t know,” Nina said, shaking her head. “I’m going to have to research. But I cannot imagine there’s an answer that’s different than the one the Archangel Gavril gave you in the beginning—to put the holy name of God into Alexey’s mouth to weaken him enough to kill him. We can try to find another way, but to me, that sounds like the best option.”

Annika drew in a sharp breath and Ladushka stood up even straighter. Mischa cleared their throat. “Well, that’s going to be fucking hard, considering what happened the first time.”

Dimitri nodded, the ridges of his spine pressing into Vasily’s palm. “He’s never going to let me get close to him now. And he knows who Vasily is as well. Who among us is going to be able to get close enough to him?”

“If you kill Alexey, you kill the magic infesting Dimitri. That’s your only option. I’m not touching that magic again because if I do, it’s either going to kill me or it’s going to kill Dimitri.” She put a hand to her temple, massaging it. “Alexey Balakin is effectively a demon housed in mortal flesh. If you want to get close enough to kill him, you need a bigger and badder demon to at least pin him down long enough for Dimitri to force the Name into his throat and stab him in the heart.”

“And where would you suggest getting one of those? That will do our bidding and not rip our heads off for amusement’s sake in the process?” Annika was looking decidedly unimpressed.

“It makes intellectual sense.” Ladushka held a hand up. “Like counters like. Although, Anna, your concerns about security do remain. As does the question of what incentives a demon would have to do our bidding, or what payment we could offer it that we would be willing to give.”

Mischa, meanwhile, was staring fixedly at the place where Dimitri and Vasily had just been lying, a strange look on their face, somewhere between concern and excitement. “I need to think about this.”

Nina turned to Vasily, raising an eyebrow. “And you? Who taught you to take on psychic pain like that?”

Dimitri’s eyes flicked to the tension in Vasily’s shoulders, the way he was sitting rigidly in his chair like everything in his body hurt too. “I feel everything Dima does,” Vasily said with a jerk of his chin Dimitri’s way. “Of course I would feel his pain. Of course I would share it if I could.”

Dimitri would have said thank you, but the lump in his throat stopped him from speaking. All he could do was send his gratitude through the bond they shared.

Vasily, as always, met it with love.

“So what should we do now?” Ladushka was the first to collect herself, and as always, she was focused on the plan, on how to move forward. Dimitri was grateful, because if he kept dwelling on this he would scream.

“Rest.” Nina rose with a groan. “We all need to rest, because what comes next will take energy and concentration. Mental acuity. And oftentimes the best answers come to me in my dreams.”

They all looked around, and Dimitri saw the exhaustion etched onto everyone’s faces. Mischa and Vasily hadn’t even washed after getting back from Wilnetzk. Annika had been up at dawn every day to coordinate guard shifts and oversee security. Ladushka had been running an entire summit on her own.

“Yes,” Dimitri agreed. “Annika, alert the city’s sentries to report immediately if they see anything strange. And tell the palace guard to lock down the building and set extra patrols. That’s all we can do for now without causing alarm. After that, we might as well get some sleep.”

Dimitri woke up the next morning in a bed that was groaning under the weight of six adult bodies it was never meant to hold. None of them had wanted to leave the others alone, so they’d all stumbled into his bed.

His head was in Mischa’s lap, which he was sharing with Nina’s head. She was snoring directly into his face, and he could see her eyes twitching under the lids. He could tell from the shape of the body behind him that it was Vasily pressed against him, an arm slung over his ribs in their habitual sleeping position. The hair tickling his feet was clearly Annika’s—he could feel the stiffness of her curls—and he could see Ladushka out of the corner of his eye.

Vasily was warm behind him, and when Dimitri drew a finger over the hand resting on his chest, he could feel the pulse that beat as strong as ever, hot red blood rushing through Vasily’s veins.

Nina’s eyes opened inches from his, and he fought the urge to jump.

She lifted a finger to her lips after casting her eyes upwards at Mischa, and then she proceeded to expertly wriggle around until she was standing up, wobbling her way over to where her clothes were discarded on the floor. He realized, quite belatedly, that she was both completely naked and totally unconcerned with it. It appeared that casual nudity was something of a family trait.

Dimitri crawled over Vasily’s form and got to his feet, still feeling light-headed from the news of Alexey’s evident nondeath and the ritual they’d undergone.

“Come on, then,” she whispered, slipping her trousers on, followed by what appeared to be a shirt of Vasily’s that Mischa had long ago appropriated. “Let’s take a walk. I figure you need to talk to someone who will actually understand what you’re going through, and that isn’t any of them, although they’re trying harder than they should to comprehend what the Holy Science can do.”

Dimitri followed her out of the room and waved off the guards, curious to see where she was taking him and also unwilling to have anyone, even his own sister, witness how this conversation would go. Ayla bit her lip when he dismissed them, and while he knew that she would merely hang back out of sight, he was grateful for the illusion of privacy.

Nina led him down several hallways and into one of the servants’ passages that lined the corridors, meant to make it easier for food and clean linens and everything it took to keep the palace residents comfortable to be brought to them quickly and discreetly. Dimitri had been in several of these as a child, out of boredom and curiosity, but he didn’t know the one that she led him into now. She marched determinedly up several flights of stairs, and he was about to ask where, precisely, they were going when Nina opened a door and they found themselves on the roof of the palace.

The sun was rising over the city, and the sight made his breath catch in his throat. He had never seen anything more beautiful, the glittering of the dawn light reflecting intensely off the snow-coated roofs of the city, like a thousand diamonds scattered over his capital. The view from this height let him see the entirety of it, from the spires of the Great Shul to the neighborhood that housed Leah’s bakery and Annika’s orphanage, to the forest beyond where he rode Malishka when he needed to escape.

All of it was here, in his sight, and he had never once realized that he could spend every morning with this view until a stranger had shown it to him.

“How did you find this?” he asked, once he’d reclaimed his ability to speak. “I’ve lived here for almost thirty years, and I never knew about this until now.”

Nina shrugged, nonchalant, as the wind whipped her hair around her shoulders. Despite the chill, she didn’t seem to feel the cold, just like Dimitri couldn’t truly say he was bothered by the winter air anymore. “It’s always good to know all your escape routes.”

Dimitri decided it was better not to question how, precisely, Nina intended to escape off the roof should the need arise.

They stood around for a minute more in companionable silence, watching the sun crest the skyline, pushing its way weakly through the snow-laden clouds. He appreciated it—the silence, the stillness, the lack of any attempt at conversation—more than he could express, after days and days of having to entertain, every movement scrutinized and every word hung on. Nina sat down against the palace’s exterior wall, stretching her legs out on the snow-coated flat of the roof, her heels digging into a snowdrift. He slid down the wall to sit next to her, watching as the toes of his boots disappeared under the shifting snow.

“So,” Nina said eventually, her voice filled with the false cheer and bravado that Dimitri assumed meant the magician was scared. “Your body contains more power than I’ve ever felt or seen in any other circumstance. If you were an ordinary man, you would have been rent apart by now. I’m not actually quite sure how you’re holding it together, but I’m certain it’s got something to do with the fact that you spurned God in coming back from the dead. Something like that takes balls, and you appear to have them in abundance.”

She smirked, and Dimitri was torn between laughing and crying.

“I’m quite convinced that if you wanted this power gone, you could remove it yourself.” She bit her lip and kept on staring straight ahead. “I think you could sever the connection on your own. I didn’t want to tell the others, because frankly, if it were me, I’m not sure I would want to do that.”

“You think I could end this all on my own?” Dimitri’s guilt curdled in his chest. “I thought you said that we needed to kill Alexey to sever the connection.”

“And I was right.” Nina started to chew on her thumbnail. “I think, if you wanted to, that you could use the connection between you to basically force his magic back onto him, use it to strangle him the way it’s entwining around your own soul. The psychic equivalent of turning someone’s own knife against them in a fight. It would take meditation and concentration and a lot of willpower, but you could probably kill him while lying in your own bed.”

There was, Dimitri thought, no way that that was the entirety of the story. “And what are the risks?”

“That he realizes what’s happening and kills you first. That he floods your soul with his power and obliterates it. Your body would persist, but the thing that makes you, you? That would be gone forever.” She let out a breath. “And, of course, because your soul is tethered to another’s, Alexey would be able to do the same thing to Vasily. Like following a fork in the road.”

“No.” The refusal was instinctive, gut deep. “I’m not risking Vasya’s soul. Absolutely not.”

Nina turned to look at him. “I know. That’s why I suggested you summon a bigger, badder demon to literally hold him down while you stab him or cut his head off or whatever. A kind of inhuman bodyguard. I’m just suggesting that there’s another way, even if you wouldn’t want to use it. Because if you did, there would be no doubt that you were a master of the very thing I’m getting a sense that you hate. The power that Alexey accumulated would likely flow into you and stay there. You would become just like him. And I don’t think you want that, no matter how much the prospect would entice any scholar of mysticism who ever lived.”

“That’s because I’m not…that.” There was a sour tang in Dimitri’s throat, revulsion and panic mixing into one. “I don’t want that. I never have. I didn’t ask for this ability, I didn’t ask for this power, and I want it gone. I want to at least know that, if I’m giving everything I am for Novo-Svitsevo, my soul remains mine. Having that part of him inside me, it feels like a violation.”

Because it did. Knowing that there was a part of his abuser lodged around his soul, crippling him, tempting him into doing things that they all knew would destroy Dimitri eventually—it felt like being back in those last, desperate months with Alexey. Where he was afraid of the man he loved, when he didn’t trust his own mind, when sex was a violation instead of a blessing. When he was always watching over his own shoulder, jumping at noises, not sure what would happen next. Fearing every next moment because it could be his last.

“You could use the power to defend Novo-Svitsevo, you know,” Nina said quietly. Her breath puffed out before her in a cloud. “I know that’s important to you. The ability you have could level towns and cities and battlefields. I could show you how to wield it as a weapon.”

“No.” His refusal was more vehement this time, because the void inside him surged outwards at the idea, at the implication that it could be let loose to kill and maim and devour.

And it was tempting. It was so, so tempting. It was what he’d been grappling with for weeks, what Aziza had suggested he use to shape the country for good.

Dimitri understood, now, why this had been tempting to Alexey. The ability to protect everything that he loved with a single thought.

“Most men would kill for this kind of power,” Nina said into the falling snow. “Many men have.”

“And I’ve seen what it did to one of them. What it turned him into.” Dimitri swallowed, coming to the final realization that no, this was not for him. It never had been. “And I don’t want that for myself. Selfishly, I don’t want to become Alexey. Because what he was in the end, it was horrific. Worse than being dead.”

Nina gave a tight nod and started chewing her nails again. “I just wanted you to know. I thought that it was important that you knew the options. I wouldn’t begrudge you if you’d taken it, but I do have to say that I respect you even more for refusing it.”

Dimitri didn’t have an answer to that, so he sat, staring at the sky as the sun made its slow progression through the clouds, trying to ignore how he should be shivering and frostbitten right now but felt perfectly at home in the chill.

“Do you know what you want to do?” she asked eventually.

He found that he did. “Summon a demon. Go to Chernitzy. If I could, I’d stuff a carriage full of books and see what we can determine on the way, but there’s no time to waste. We don’t have weeks or even days. Alexey always wanted to open a rift between here and the middle world, and from what you all saw, that’s precisely what he’s done. I need to stop him as soon as possible and stop this demon army that’s marching on the capital in its tracks. Otherwise, the entire country might be in peril. Maybe even the entire world. And that means killing Alexey for good.”

“All right,” Nina said. “I’ll help.”

He thanked her, even though he felt like screaming with all the panic shoved in between his ribs. Then they sat in silence and Dimitri tried to steady himself by counting the falling snowflakes.

“We should go back,” Nina said, when the tips of her fingers started to turn blue. “Come on.”

She stood and offered him a hand, and together they made their way back inside. Ayla was standing stiffly with her back against the corridor wall, and when he came inside, she looked him over like she was expecting him to be ill or shivering or in some way crippled by having sat outside in the snow at dawn for an hour without so much as a coat. He couldn’t tell if she was relieved or frightened when the most she saw was the wetness of his clothes as the snow melted in the palace’s relative warmth.

When they made their way back to Dimitri’s room, everyone was still fast asleep, clearly worn out from everything that had happened. Nina cleared her throat loudly, and they all startled awake at once.

“It’s morning,” Annika said, blinking. “Who let us sleep until morning?”

“I did,” Dimitri said as the rest of them roused. “We’re going to summon a demon, and then we’re going to Chernitzy to kill Alexey. And between one and the other, we need to have three very important conversations.”

Because if they were going to fight Alexey, they might as well not do it alone.

“Talk me through this again.”

Vasily was trying not to panic as they all assembled in Alexey’s basement laboratory. He hadn’t been down into the space since the night that Morozov had transformed, and there was still a disturbing amount of dried blood staining the floor. Whose, Vasily had no idea, but it made him nauseous as he watched Dimitri holding a blade to the palm of his dead hand, looking at Nina for support.

“All you have to do is trace the signs I made. Exactly, though, because if you end up writing something different, I can’t guarantee what’s going to happen.” Nina was dusting chalk off her hands, looking down at the large circle made up of symbols that she had drafted onto the floor. “So try to color within the lines.”

Ayla had followed them and stood guard by the door. Annika was slumped in a chair in the corner, her hands pressed to her mouth like she was about to be sick. Ladushka was standing next to her, her back rigid but, ever the scholar, her eyes alight with interest at what she was about to witness. Mischa was watching Dimitri like a hawk, and Vasily was standing over it all, trying not to shake apart.

He couldn’t believe they were doing this.

“Do we…have a choice?” Dimitri’s voice quivered just the smallest bit as he spoke. As if to distract himself, he cut surgically into his unfeeling palm. Mischa hissed, which Vasily took to mean that the cut was too deep, since of course Dimitri couldn’t feel what he was doing to judge. “Of who comes?”

Nina’s eyes followed the slow swelling of blood into Dimitri’s cupped palm, which was resting on his folded thighs. She jerked her chin at him. “Get writing. And it’s not quite the same as summoning an angel. You can ask a specific demon to come, but that comes with quite a few complications, like binding an unwilling entity to your service. Some of them, believe it or not, don’t like being enslaved to humans here in the mortal realm. So I usually suggest dealer’s choice with this sort of thing.”

Dimitri bit his lip and started to trace her chalk lines in his own blood, using his finger like a pen and his palm like a grotesque inkwell. Vasily caught Ayla’s eyes and was glad to see that he wasn’t the only one looking completely and utterly distressed. He gave her a terse nod and a jerk of his chin, and she returned it with a grateful look, then slipped out the door. She, at least, didn’t have to watch this and could do her duty perfectly well by guarding them from any unexpected human visitors.

“How will we tell what entity emerges from the void?” Ladushka asked. Vasily envied her ability to put terror aside in service of learning. “Will it announce itself, or will we be forced to question it to determine its identity? And does its identity even matter?”

“It will, in the sense that its name will allow us to assess how much power it possesses, and whether Dimitri here has managed to snare a demon sufficiently powerful to have a chance against Alexey.” Nina crouched down to use a fingernail to correct an invisible smudge at the edge of one letter. “It’s not like we’re after a prince of hell. Since you killed the demon Samael by stabbing Alexey with the name of God, Alexey is currently demonless. What he’s drawing on now is his own life force, instead of drawing on a specific demon’s power. I saw it while looking at his soul, and it accords with your description of what happened, Dimitri. He’s got a considerable reservoir because of what he did to himself, but it’s not infinite and it doesn’t compare to what a higher-range demon from the middle realm can wield.”

Ladushka arched an eyebrow. “And what will we do if Dima fails to secure a powerful enough demon?”

“He throws it back into the pond and goes fishing again. And then if he fails, I’ll do the summoning, although I guarantee that will be less effective. Dimitri’s personal, ah, feelings about the matter will likely be an incredible lure. The spell circle here transmits intentions across the void.” She looked up from her scrutiny of Dimitri’s work. Dimitri, meanwhile, continued to trace her pattern. The blood in his palm was overflowing onto his trousers. “It’s kind of like the way that incantation bowls work, the ones you can use to trap demons. You write—”

“I don’t think we need a whole explainer, Nin,” Mischa interrupted gently. Vasily was immensely grateful, but Annika’s shoulders also sagged with relief. The last thing Vasily wanted to do was listen to a whole long recitation about how demons worked.

He just wanted to get this over with.

Nina made a face but sat back on her haunches, silently watching and nodding along as Dimitri pivoted to finish the other half. When he was done and had stepped out of the circle, Mischa darted forward with gauze to sop up the oozing blood and then bound up the wound. Vasily felt like he could breathe again when Dimitri’s bleeding was stanched, although the wound would have to be thoroughly disinfected. He couldn’t feel it, and so it would be difficult for Dimitri to catch any sign of infection. And that was not how Vasily wanted him to die.

“Okay,” Nina said once Mischa had backed off and she’d done one more round of the circle. “So now you meditate and pray. And then we see what happens.”

Dimitri’s face was drawn but his eyes were alight with the same kind of curiosity that Alexey’s had displayed when he’d talked about working the Holy Science. It was an expression that Vasily had hoped never to see on Dimitri’s face, and all he could do was comfort himself with the idea that Dimitri was merely glad to be finally accessing a permanent solution to their Alexey problem.

Dimitri closed his eyes as he settled, kneeling outside the circle in which the demon he summoned would supposedly appear. Vasily could see by the way his chest rose and fell in an exaggerated motion that he was trying to calm himself down, and he wondered if they should have leaned on chemical assistance the way they had when they’d summoned the angel who had tethered their souls. Then again, he hadn’t been there when the angel Gavril had given Dimitri the name of God, when apparently they’d just said the usual prayers and then invoked the angel’s name.

Vasily supposed that summoning a demon was probably not all that different from summoning an angel. It was merely a matter of semantics.

He couldn’t bear to stare at Ladushka and Mischa and Annika as they, in turn, stared at Dimitri, and so he closed his eyes, leaning back in the chair he was sitting in. He felt his way across his bond with Dimitri and pushed a sense of calm and ease into the other man, and Dimitri grabbed onto it with the gratefulness of someone who was drowning.

And with that, Vasily felt his own consciousness pulled into Dimitri’s mind.

“Oh, hello.” Dimitri was visualizing himself as he was sitting now, but instead of kneeling on a cold flagstone floor, he was kneeling in the palace garden. The greenhouse, to be precise. “Fancy seeing you here.”

“I came to help.” Vasily knelt beside Dimitri and reached out to touch a rose on the bush in front of them. Instead of a velvet-soft petal, Vasily’s fingers met with the cold bite of ice. “What can I do?”

Dimitri gradually slumped over so that his head was resting against Vasily’s chest. The petal that was still under Vasily’s fingers warmed. “You’re helping already. I feel calmer. I need to reach that meditative state that I used to be able to slip into so easily, but I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll…”

He trailed off, and Vasily waited a beat before prodding him to continue. “What are you afraid of?”

“That if I do what Nina said to do and ask the power inside me to open the void, I’ll like it.” It came out of Dimitri in a rush and sounded like a confession.

“Oh, love.” Vasily pivoted to take Dimitri fully in his arms. Even in his consciousness, Dimitri was quivering. “I’m here. You’ll be safe. I’ll keep you safe.”

Dimitri sagged in Vasily’s arms, content to be held. “Can we do it together?”

“Of course.” Vasily pressed a kiss to the top of Dimitri’s head. “Of course, darling. Just show me how.”

It took another moment, but Dimitri eventually took a deep breath in and pulled away. Vasily let him go and stood, his knees aching. He followed Dimitri further into the greenhouse, where a horse stall was incongruously standing amidst the plants. Malishka’s head peeked out over the stall door, and Dimitri reached out a hand to caress her nose. Vasily wondered if it also felt like ice.

“It’s mean,” Dimitri said, “but I make her guard it, because I trust her.”

The dream-horse or whatever it was snorted and tossed her head, and Vasily did his level best not to let his heart crack with both pity and a fair bit of resentment that apparently a horse was the most trustworthy being that Dimitri knew, and that it wasn’t him.

Dimitri’s hand hovered on the sliding bar lock that kept the stall door shut. “I don’t trust you less than a horse, Vasya,” he whispered, as Vasily cursed his inability to hide his emotions. “I merely don’t want you to get any closer to this fucking awful thing inside me than you already are.”

He wasn’t facing Vasily, but Vasily knew exactly the look of guilt that would be stamped on his face. He reached out and ran his fingers down the back of Dimitri’s head, letting his palm cup Dimitri’s spine and his fingers curl around the nape of the other man’s neck. Vasily fought down the lump that was suddenly lodged at the base of his throat. “There is nothing awful about any part of you that I do not wish to see. Even Alexey Balakin’s magic. Because I love all of you, the broken and the beautiful just the same.”

Dimitri’s grief and gratitude felt too private to bear witness to, but Vasily had no choice, connected as they were. So he ignored the hitching of Dimitri’s breath as he tightened his hand on the lock and slid it out of its casing, the stall door falling open. The vision of Malishka disappeared, and Vasily looked over Dimitri’s shoulder to see what was inside.

He almost pulled Dimitri back into his chest, but Dimitri stepped forward into the roiling blackness that had been revealed. The dark was alive, churning and giving off an aura that was seductive and malevolent both. It gave Vasily the feeling of knowing something he was about to do was decidedly wrong, but that he would enjoy doing it nonetheless.

It made sense, now, why Dimitri was so terrified that he was going to like it. Why he’d kept it so securely locked away. Why he’d conjured a horse to guard it, instead of entrusting it to another person.

One would go mad, living with this inside them. The call of it, the pull of its force, was gliding over Vasily’s skin, seeping into his mind, tangling around his heart. He had no idea how Dimitri was still sane, how he was still resisting this.

“Because I had a year of resisting it,” Dimitri replied to the unasked question. “Every night in bed with Alexey after his rebirth, I resisted it. I won’t lie and say it doesn’t call to me. But this is your first experience with what it feels like. Meanwhile, I know what it is to live with this by one’s side.”

Dimitri reached for it and Vasily didn’t stop him, which was perhaps one of the hardest things he had done in his life, on par with leaving Dimitri in Wilnetzk thinking that it was the last time he would ever see him.

The shadow almost…sighed, when Dimitri’s hand reached it. Like it was relieved, like it was coming home. Vasily wondered if it was furious because Dimitri had so effectively caged and contained it, or if this was merely a manifestation of Dimitri’s unconscious desire to not separate himself quite so fully from the magic. Vasily stood stock-still as the shadows twined around Dimitri’s fingers, up his arm, caressing his legs like a cat greeting a favorite person. Dimitri looked back at him, and his eyes were subsumed in black, none of the whites visible at all.

Dimitri grinned and ripped the world apart.

Vasily was flung out of Dimitri’s mind so violently that when he slammed back into his own body, he fell out of his chair. His body jerked as his hip hit the floor, his right hand smarting when it smacked against the stone. He blinked back the darkness creeping into the edges of his vision and was up and moving before he could truly register it, darting to Dimitri’s side, grabbing his shoulders.

But Dimitri didn’t need his support, because he was rigid as a board. And Vasily registered a moment too late that no one else in the room had moved even the slightest bit.

When Vasily finally looked up, he almost fainted with the shock. He now understood why everyone else was frozen. Because staring right at him, standing within the circle, was Dimitri’s dead brother Ivan.

Ivan, the boy he had killed with a knife through the heart, whose flesh he had burned as a sacrifice to the angel of death, was smiling at him.

And Dimitri couldn’t breathe.

Of all the things he had thought could happen in the process of summoning a demon from the depths of Gehenna, this had never crossed his mind.

He had imagined the summoning going wrong and killing him or corrupting him somehow. He had imagined the summoning going wrong and killing his friends, Nina, Vasily. He had reckoned with the fact that he might unleash something that was hard to control and which he might have to put down using the power of the Holy Science, more magic than he had done before, which could tie Alexey closer to his soul. And he had even worried that doing this would alert Alexey somehow and lead to a confrontation that Dimitri knew was coming but hoped wouldn’t happen in the populated capital of his country, where casualties would undoubtedly be high.

In none of those imaginings had he considered that he would be faced with his twenty-three-year-old brother, ethereal and perfect and unchanged except for the feet that he stood on, the wings spreading from his back, and the fact that he was robed like the angels that Dimitri had encountered before the burning throne of God.

“Ivan?” he croaked. “You…”

“That’s a weird name for a demon,” Nina interjected, moving to stand on the opposite side of the summoning circle. “Did you come up with that yourself just now?”

“Shut up,” Mischa hissed, grabbing Nina and pulling her backwards. “Shut the fucking fuck up.”

Vasily’s hands were shaking on Dimitri’s arms, his heart hammering against Dimitri’s shoulder blades, Dimitri’s back pressed to Vasily’s chest. Annika and Ladushka were plastered against the wall, both ashen-faced. Annika had grabbed the amulet hanging around her neck, and her lips were moving in a silent prayer.

“Dimitri.” Ivan’s voice was exactly as he remembered it. Ivan had been the same height as him, but he was taller now. His avian feet, black and taloned, were like those that Morozov had grown. Ivan was otherwise, blessedly, free of claws or the animalistic mouth full of fangs that the chancellor had acquired.

Still, this was so much. Too much.

“Ivan,” Vasily said from behind Dimitri. “What happened to you?”

Dimitri felt the pain emanating from Vasily, the self-recrimination and blame. He knew that Vasily thought he was the one responsible for Ivan’s death, even though it wasn’t true. Vasily thought that he hadn’t done enough to save the boy from Alexey. They hadn’t ever spoken of it, but sometimes Ivan’s bruised body featured in Vasily’s nightmares, laid out next to Dimitri’s brutalized and broken corpse.

Ivan’s brow wrinkled. “I don’t know. I remember Moy—Alexey, I remember something happening to him, and I was trying to save him. I remember you…dying. Dead. And then I woke up, and I was being held.”

No one was holding Ivan now, so he could not possibly be referring to the present. The words stuck on his tongue, and Dimitri was afraid to ask the question of Who, Ivan, was holding you? So he thanked God when Ladushka got there first.

“You woke up in the middle world,” she said. She was the fastest to blink off the shock besides Nina, who was standing there, baffled, clearly not realizing why everyone had had such a stunned reaction to Ivan’s apparition.

Ivan turned to look over his shoulder and nodded at Ladushka. “Yes. I did. Malakh ha-mavet told me that he examined my soul, and that I could not yet ascend to heaven. He said he would put me somewhere where I could…learn, whatever that means, and that my story was not yet finished.”

Dimitri had assumed, in all of this, that the brother he had sacrificed—in order to come back to life himself—was resting in peace. But, he supposed, after his experience of judgment before God, there was a chance that the middle realm was better than that. His body twitched reflexively at the memory of agony, of his flesh being peeled from his bones.

But that didn’t answer the most pressing question.

“Why are you here?” Dimitri managed to choke out.

Ivan cocked his head. “You called for me? Didn’t you?” He shuffled around on his feet, his eyes gleaming hopefully but with a bit of confused contrition now turning his mouth down at the edges. He looked like a puppy that someone had dangled a treat in front of, then revoked.

“I—what?” Dimitri wet his lips, his tongue sticking to his teeth. His mouth had gone bone dry.

“Just now?” Ivan looked bashful, now. “I’m sorry, did I make a mistake? I thought I heard you calling for someone. Asmodai and I thought it was you, and that I should answer before someone else did. But I can leave if you like.”

“Asmodai, the King of the Sheydim,” Nina said flatly, despite the fact that Mischa was trying to clamp their hand over her mouth. She used the six inches she had on them to evade silencing. “You were with the King of the Sheydim, one of the princes of the middle realm?”

“Um?” Ivan answered after a beat, and Dimitri didn’t know if he should laugh or cry or if perhaps he had died again and this was just an absurd fever dream as the last of his life faded from his body. “I mean, yes? That’s—I mean, he doesn’t like when you use those titles. He says it’s too stuffy.”

“Am I dreaming?” Annika finally said into the dead silence that followed that particular confession. “Is this a dream? Have I died?”

Dimitri was incredibly thankful that he wasn’t the only one who apparently was having quite a bit of difficulty understanding what, precisely, he was being confronted with.

“The angel of death put you somewhere to learn,” Vasily said, “and that place was with…who, the King of the Sheydim? Learn what?”

Ivan nodded, his eyes wide. They were exactly the same as they had been in life. The only difference now was that he had no bruises ringing his wrists or throat, his porcelain skin as clear as Dimitri’s was now. “I’m not sure yet. I’m trying to figure that out.”

That was all it took for Mischa to burst out laughing, their hand pressed to their mouth but unable to stifle the noise. “Oh my God,” they gasped. “What the actual fucking fuck?”

“I could show you, sometime, where I live.” Ivan shuffled his feet, the talons scraping against the stone. “Mortals, in my understanding, don’t do too well in the middle world for long, but a day or two shouldn’t hurt. And you’d be under Asmodai’s protection, so it isn’t as if any of the more…disturbing residents would bother you. The rest of the sheydim are quite nice, actually, once you get to know them. We play cards. I taught them how. And Asmodai even does paper crafts with me, now.”

Dimitri got to his feet, his legs shaking, and was grateful when Vasily rose with him so he could lean back into the other man’s solid, steady presence. “Ivan,” he said quietly. “Are you here? Truly? This isn’t my mind playing tricks on me?”

His brother looked into his eyes, no guile in his expression whatsoever, and said yes.

And with that, some of the guilt and the grief that had haunted Dimitri since Ivan’s murder lifted, just a little. He’d been under no illusions that Ivan had a good life in the palace to begin with—he was nothing more than a glorified servant, and his days had likely been monotonous and his options in life limited—and when Alexey had come, Ivan had been brutalized. Dimitri had never had a chance to apologize for any of that. Maybe now, he’d be able to fix that wrong.

“Well,” Vasily said softly from behind Dimitri, “Ivan, I’m glad you’ve made your way back.”

Nina cleared her throat loudly. “Dimitri, if you’re going to take his offer, why don’t you explain to him what you need, and then let him out of the circle?”

Ivan looked down ruefully. “I hope you didn’t have to draw too much blood for this.”

Dimitri looked down at his palm, where the blood had begun to seep through the bandage. It was all over his fingers and his pants, and his stomach twisted at the remembrance of Ivan’s blood on Vasily’s hands. Alexey’s blood on his hands. He drew in a shuddering breath.

“Can we have a moment alone?” Dimitri asked plaintively. There was so much he wanted—needed—to tell Ivan, and he didn’t want to do it with an audience. There were some things that only those who had been loved by Alexey Balakin could understand. “Please?”

Vasily released his hold on Dimitri, and Annika opened her mouth to argue but Ladushka laid a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go.”

They filed out of the room, leaving Dimitri and his brother alone.

“Ivan,” he said, unsure of how to begin. “You…Alexey abused you. You know that, right? That what he did to you was inexcusable?”

Start with the thing between them that he’d never been able to address. The thing that Dimitri would have bet the angel of death would have wanted Ivan to learn. Self-worth, after all, had been hard for Dimitri to come by. And he hadn’t been in nearly the same position as Ivan, a bastard in his father’s service.

His brother drew his lip in between his teeth. “I loved him. And then we died.”

“He killed you,” Dimitri said. “And he killed me. He murdered the both of us.”

Ivan furrowed his brows at that, and of course he didn’t know. He couldn’t know. So Dimitri explained it all as gently as he could, everything that had happened since the moment that Mikhail—Vasily, he revealed—had stabbed Alexey in the throat. How Ivan had been dying, and how they’d used his soul to bring Dimitri back.

Ivan sighed when Dimitri finished. “The way he looked at you when you came back, when Mikhail brought you back to the palace, it made me realize that I’d loved him, but he’d never loved me. At least not in the way that he’d loved you. And still, even that didn’t make me love him less.”

Dimitri bit back the urge to say that being loved by Alexey wasn’t something to be jealous of, that it had led to his downfall and started a war. “Your worth isn’t defined by the feelings of one man.”

“It felt that way, though.” Ivan’s voice was a mere whisper. “Because nothing in my life had meant anything. He was the one to give me meaning. He was the one to give me a name. Without him, I was just some servant in the palace with no prospects, who happened to have the same father as the boys who would rule the world.”

Dimitri swallowed. “I made you the Lord of Nizhniy Karevskiy and legitimized you. Before you died.” He hesitated, because that was the most passive way of saying things. “Before I stabbed you, so I could sacrifice your soul for my own ends.”

“Dimitri, no.” Ivan looked up, his eyes wide. “You did what you had to do. I’m honored that my death had meaning. That I was finally able to do something good.”

“Ivan,” Dimitri replied, wondering if he could put into words how desperately sad that made him. “You always had worth. And I’m sorry I was a terrible brother. I should have been better. I should have at least…” He stopped, lost for words, flapping his hand. “I should have at least come to talk to you all.”

“It wasn’t your fault.” Ivan shook his head. “You didn’t have time.”

“I should have made time,” Dimitri retorted.

“You talked to Ayla,” Ivan insisted. “You paid for her to go to university.”

“Ayla isn’t you.” Dimitri’s heart was breaking, because here he was protesting and yet he’d never done better. In the time since Ivan’s death he’d grown closer to Ayla, but then again, they’d always been on speaking terms. His father had other bastard children who were God knows where, and he’d done nothing to find and build relationships with them. He’d failed, yet again, to be a good brother. He constantly missed his family, his siblings, and yet ignored the ones he still had that were living. There had never been time, he’d told himself.

Or maybe he hadn’t had the heart and the courage to get close to them after losing yet another brother.

“I should have done better.” He swiped at his cheeks. “And I need you to know that what happened to you wasn’t right. That you were abused, and that you didn’t deserve it.”

Ivan was quiet for a moment, his brow pinched and his mouth downturned at the corners.

“I don’t think of it that way,” he said slowly. “I don’t put that name to it. When I met Asmodai, I was…afraid. That’s the only word I could use without it feeling like a lie. Not because of who he was or where I was or what I had become. Because I was scared he was going to hurt me, because I was scared of his anger. And even though none of that happened, I couldn’t help but flinch each time he came near. Each time he seemed frustrated at the actions or defiance or machinations of someone in his court. I was always waiting for a slap or a bruising grip or being yelled at or being…hurt, in other ways.” He paused, blinking rapidly. “And eventually, Asmodai asked me to tell him about my mortal life. He told me that it wasn’t right to do those things to another person. That you can love someone who has hurt you and still know that they were wrong and bad and that you shouldn’t blame yourself for it?”

The way that Ivan phrased that as a question gutted Dimitri.

“He says he wants to court me, that he would like the chance to prove himself to me if I’d let him. But I—I can’t do that, can I?” Ivan bit his lip. “He’s been nothing but kind and respectful, but even living in his palace, even the friendship we’ve formed instead of something more, it feels like being disloyal. To Alexey.”

“You deserve more,” Dimitri insisted. He used the toe of his boot to smudge a line through the blood runes of the circle, and his brother stepped out. “Alexey was terrible to you. He was terrible to us both.”

Ivan whimpered as he stepped outside the circle.

Dimitri wrapped his arms around Ivan and held him close.

He couldn’t help the tears that started as he hugged his brother, who had paid for the sin of looking like Dimitri with his very life. From the way Ivan’s shoulders were shaking, he was crying too. Eventually Dimitri pulled back, grasping Ivan by the shoulders, blinking to clear his vision.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said, his voice rough. “It wasn’t our fault. It was his. And neither of us should blame ourselves for what that man did to us. Nor should we castigate ourselves for still loving him, even though he hurt us.”

Ivan sniffed and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, but he nodded. “I don’t know if I’ll ever stop loving him. I think I always will.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving him all the way either,” Dimitri confessed. “Even though I’ve moved on. And you can move on too. You can reclaim your life too.”

Ivan sighed in a way that said he didn’t quite believe him, but Dimitri had at least said it. That had to count for something. Ivan shook his head and looked Dimitri in the eye and said, “So why am I here?”

Dimitri chewed on his lip. “Alexey isn’t dead. We tried to kill him, and we thought it worked, but now demons are rampaging through the countryside. He’s back and planning something awful.”

“He always did want to open a rift between here and the middle world,” Ivan said. “So you think that now you know a way to kill him for good?”

“We do.” Dimitri nodded. “Or at least, we knew before. The plan went to shit, and now we’re hoping to do it better. And I need your help.”

Ivan froze. “My help to do what?”

“To kill Alexey,” Dimitri replied. “For the final time.”

Ivan swallowed but didn’t respond.

“We can explain together.” He raised his voice and shouted for the rest of them to come back in, and everyone must have been listening at the door because it opened in an instant, Ladushka and Nina nearly falling through as Vasily turned the handle.

“So,” Mischa asked before Dimitri could say a word. “Are you going to help us kill Tzar Fuckface?”

Ivan blanched at the way Mischa said it, so bald-faced and open. But he didn’t move from Dimitri’s side.

“I will go with my brother and watch over him,” Ivan said slowly, flexing his feet so that his talons scraped against the floor. His eyes grew dark and Dimitri realized that no, his brother was no longer fully human. There was something else there, alongside Ivan’s gentle soul. Dimitri couldn’t bring himself to regret that. At least now, the boy would be able to protect himself. “But I cannot promise anything more.”

The temperature in the room was dropping, and Dimitri didn’t think he was imagining it because Ladushka and Annika were both shivering violently, and Mischa, who always ran hot, was looking distinctly uncomfortable. Only Nina seemed unaffected by whatever was happening. She, instead, was grinning.

“I think he’s powerful enough to protect you.” She clapped her hands together. “You came with more than the powers of an ordinary sheydim, then? You’re more than your average higher-order demon with the powers of rational thought and the ability to wield magic?”

Ivan pivoted to look at her and inclined his head. “I come with the power of the sheydim of the middle realm, granted to me in part by Asmodai for the purposes of helping my brother. We didn’t know what the task would be, but we wanted to be prepared. While I walk in the realm of men, I have his power as well as my own with which to assist.”

“Oh,” Nina breathed. “Amazing.”

Mischa looked to the women, whose teeth were now chattering in concert. “Uh, Ivan, would you mind warming it up in here?”

Ivan blinked and shook his head like a dog clearing water off its fur. Instantly, the temperature returned to normal. And Ivan returned to normal too, the feral look gone from his face along with the distinct aura of menace. “Oh. I’m so sorry.”

Annika put a shaking hand to her chest, right over her amulet. “Don’t worry about it.”

“We should probably get out of here.” Vasily’s eyes were darting around the experimentation chamber, and Dimitri got the distinct sense that he was deeply uncomfortable being there. “Ivan, do you need a…special place to stay?”

Ivan finally really looked at Vasily. “No, a bedroom is fine. But Mik—Vasily, I wanted to thank you—”

“I’m sorry that I couldn’t do more to help you,” Vasily interjected. He gave a rueful half laugh and ran his hand through his hair. “If I had, it would have broken my cover, and then I wouldn’t have been able to help Dimitri.”

“You did quite a bit,” Ivan said. “I remember…I remember you were kind. And that was more than many others did for me. So thank you.”

Vasily bit his lip, and Dimitri didn’t want him to keep wallowing in his self-recrimination, so he said, “Come on, all of you. To my rooms. Ivan, you can stay in Vasily’s room tonight. But first, we should go somewhere more comfortable to discuss what needs to be done.”

“Come, then.” Annika finally shook herself out of her stupor and reverted to her usual state of mother hen. “It’s uncomfortable in here. Let’s go upstairs and call for some food. Everyone will feel better once we eat. We can work on a plan, and then we’ll all get some rest. We can set out for Chernitzy tomorrow. The delay will be minimal, and we’re…better equipped now than we were this afternoon.”

Ladushka started for the stairs, her joints cracking audibly as she began to move. But Mischa flung out a hand. “Wait. Give me a moment. I need to warn Ayla.”

“Oh, fuck,” Vasily hissed out through his teeth as Mischa slipped out through the door. “Good point.”

Whatever Mischa said must have been succinct, because a minute later the door flung open and Ayla barreled into the room and straight into Ivan, who rocked backwards at the impact.

“You’re here,” Ayla was saying through her sobs. “Ivan, oh my God, how are you here?”

Ivan explained the whole story while hugging Ayla back, and Dimitri’s chest speared through with guilt and regret once more as they walked into the hallway and Ivan started asking Ayla about all their other siblings, how they were doing and what they were up to.

“As much as I’d like to allow you this moment,” Vasily said gently, “we need to do it somewhere less public than a corridor full of other guards, given that it might send them into a fit to realize there’s a…different sort of person in our party right now.”

They all, despite their varying mental states, looked down at Ivan’s taloned feet. He blushed furiously.

Ayla whistled, which led to a shuffling down the corridor that Dimitri figured meant her guards were dispersing. Then she slung an arm around Ivan’s narrow shoulders and started them walking down the hallway.

Dimitri was in something approaching a trance by the time they reached his rooms, and they all collapsed onto various seating options in the sitting room. The fire was raging in the hearth, but he still felt chilled to the bone. If he’d had time, he would have insisted on a bath, but time was one thing that was decidedly not on his side. Mischa was the only one who didn’t sit, pulling a bag of medical supplies out of the back of Dimitri’s liquor cabinet that he’d had no idea was there, and coming over to poke and prod at his bleeding palm, eventually declaring that it would need stitches and setting to work, tongue between their teeth.

“We must plan,” Ladushka said when no one else volunteered anything. “Which of us will go to Chernitzy, and which of us will stay and defend Rav-Mikhailburg.”

“Ivan and I are going alone.”

Dimitri knew, the moment he said it, that he had gutted Vasily. He felt it through the bond they shared, and he saw it written all over the other man’s face.

He was gutted in turn when Vasily just looked him in the eye and nodded, instead of fighting. So Dimitri continued with his plan. “Once Vasily’s spy returns to the palace with the bone containing the Name, we’ll set out. In the meantime, we can help coordinate the defense of Rav-Mikhailburg.”

“She’ll be here tomorrow morning,” Vasily said. “I have absolute faith in that. She’ll have what we need. And the fewer who go to Chernitzy, the easier it will be to infiltrate the estate. We know you have to be the one to kill him. If Nina thinks that Ivan alone is protection enough, I trust that.”

“I do,” Nina concurred. “If you were a practitioner of the Holy Science, you’d be able to feel the power coming off this boy in waves. The two of them alone will be enough for Alexey Balakin.”

“I hope you’re right. Never underestimate that man’s desire to fuck around and find out,” Mischa said, tongue between their teeth as they cut the thread and poured more iodine across the neat stitches in Dimitri’s palm.

Nina drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair. “The real battle will be here, dealing with the demons coming our way. They’ll disperse when Alexey dies, I’m almost certain.”

Ivan was fidgeting now, his hands pressed together and tucked in between his thighs. “Are you sure he has to die?”

“I’m really fucking smart and an expert in most things,” Nina said from where she was sitting with her legs over the arm of a chair, cracking her knuckles, “but this one comes direct from the Lord our God.”

Ladushka stood up. “Those of us staying behind need to discuss the defense of the palace and city. Dimitri and Ivan will leave at the first light of dawn. I suggest that everyone make an effort to get a substantial amount of sleep. The next few days will be trying indeed.”

Ivan nodded and stood.

“Come,” Annika said, putting a hand on Ivan’s shoulder. Dimitri was immensely proud of her, in that moment, for being willing to treat Ivan like a man and not like a monster, despite all the fear she still held for the middle world. “I’ll show you to Vasya’s rooms. They’re not too messy. And Lada is right. The rest of us should eat something and go to bed. I’ll ring the kitchens and have food sent up for us all.”

“Ivan, please, if you need anything…” Ayla gave a tight nod.

He reached out and squeezed his older sister’s hand in his own. “Thank you, Ayla. I’ll be fine. You should sleep.”

It could have gone on forever like that, none of them truly wanting to leave the sitting room because when they did, it would mean that they were that much closer to riding into battle, to being in danger once more, to having things ruined again.

“Come, then, all of you,” Ladushka finally ordered. “And Dima, Vasya—please do get some actual sleep tonight.”

Dimitri froze, unsure of whether to refute the notion or lean into Vasily as he always would. His friends didn’t know that he’d ended things, that he’d refused the other man.

It felt, now, like the worst mistake he’d made in a very long time. His entire body ached at the thought of going to bed alone, of bearing this burden alone, of not having someone to comfort him. Of not being able to share this fear and this regret and this pain with the one person in the world who would understand.

Mischa snickered as they led Nina out of the room, Ladushka sweeping after them. Annika took Ivan out, and Ayla wished Dimitri and Vasily good night before she closed the door behind her, likely to take up her post guarding their door. Dimitri truly didn’t know how his little sister stayed awake, given that she appeared never to sleep.

He and Vasily were left alone in the sitting room. Vasily’s eyes were dark.

Dimitri lasted all of three breaths before he broke.

He held Vasily’s gaze, flushing with shame that this was what he was doing, how he was reacting, as he pivoted towards the bedroom and crossed the threshold, shedding his clothes as he went, each layer dropping to the ground in a rustle of fabric. By the time he reached their bed, he was bare, the fire-warmed air licking his skin. He sprawled onto the bed languidly, cradled by the furs piled high on top, and looked at Vasily through half-lidded eyes.

The other man was standing in the doorway, his lips parted, staring at Dimitri like he was waiting for what Dimitri was going to say next. He was flushed too, his fingers fidgeting against his thigh, like he didn’t know what was coming. As if there could be anything else to say except what Dimitri uttered next, which was, “Come to bed, Vasya.”

Vasily licked his lips, then shucked off his suit jacket and let it hit the floor. Dimitri sighed, relieved knowing there wouldn’t be any awkwardness, at least not tonight, not when they might not live to see many more days. The telltale clinking noise of bullets knocking together made Dimitri shiver, and they caught each other’s eyes.

“The war never ends, does it?” Vasily asked. His tone was light, like he was making it into a joke, but Dimitri knew it was anything but.

“No,” Dimitri answered. “I suppose it never did.”

Vasily turned burning eyes his way as he started to unbutton his vest, and when he shrugged it to the floor, he hooked his thumbs underneath his suspenders and dragged them off his shoulders, so slowly that Dimitri’s mouth went dry.

“Do I need to remind you,” Vasily said, his voice husky, “what it means to live?”

The bolt of arousal that shot through him prevented him from speaking his reply. All he could do was nod as he leaned back against the pillows, his legs falling apart to accommodate the way he was hardening so rapidly that he was dizzy.

“It’s been a while since we’ve done this,” Vasily continued conversationally as he popped the buttons on his pants, then slid them down his muscled thighs. “Fucked the night before we went off to battle. Do you remember what we used to do?”

Dimitri nodded mutely, fighting back a moan, because he did remember.

It had been back when he’d craved Vasily’s body, in part as a way to remember Alexey’s, and so it had been rough and unforgiving. But when Vasily had learned that Dimitri was also struggling with the burden of having to command troops the next day, to send them to fight in his name and die for his cause, Vasily introduced him to the pleasures of complete and utter surrender.

“I think that it might be appropriate to continue the tradition tonight,” Vasily said as he removed his cufflinks and dropped them on the floor, his shirt following suit. The rasp of linen against the waistband of his trousers was as loud as a gunshot in the quiet of their bedroom. “What do you think?”

“I think,” Dimitri rasped, “that I would enjoy that.”

Vasily smirked as he dropped his trousers and crossed the room, fully bare now, and opened the drawer in his armoire which held items of a more…personal nature. He gathered several things up in his arms and cradled them to his chest so that Dimitri couldn’t see what they were, depositing them all on the pillows above Dimitri’s head so that his selections remained a mystery. Dimitri shivered with excitement, frissons of energy running up and down his skin.

“Remember,” Vasily purred as he put one knee on the bed, the mattress indenting under his weight, “all you have to say is caviar, and whatever we’re doing will stop. Instantly.”

Dimitri nodded, completely incapable of speech because there was no blood in his brain and his heart was hammering. When Vasily laid a hand on Dimitri’s right wrist, completely encircling it with his fingers, dragging Dimitri’s arm above his head, Dimitri lost all power of rational thought.

This was why they had done this on the eve of every battle where they could die. Because this was the only thing that allowed them to lose themselves in the moment, to fully and totally surrender to their bodies instead of being trapped by their minds.

The moment he felt silk encircle his wrist and tug, Dimitri entirely lost the ability to breathe.

Vasily chuckled as he ran a large hand back down Dimitri’s arm after securing his wrist to the headboard with efficiency born of having done this many times before, and in far less forgiving circumstances. He pressed the little bell they always used into Dimitri’s hand, the one he would drop if he needed Vasily to stop but couldn’t speak. And then his palm landed on Dimitri’s sternum, over the scar that Alexey’s knife had left, like he was covering it from sight.

Dimitri so wished he could be more beautiful for Vasily, that he could go back to skin that wasn’t covered in the harsh red lines of never-fading scars. The thought jolted through him and curdled some of the arousal flowing through his veins.

“No,” Vasily growled, his other hand coming to Dimitri’s neck, his thumb finding the hollow of Dimitri’s jaw and pressing down, forcing Dimitri’s head up as he fought to breathe. “No, you don’t get to feel that way. I refuse to let you feel that way.”

Dimitri’s throat worked against Vasily’s palm as he fought to swallow. There were tears welling in his eyes, and he didn’t know if it was from being half choked or from the look of utter devotion that Vasily had turned his way.

“You are so brave,” Vasily said breathlessly as he pressed a kiss to the scar, then chased it with his tongue. “You are the bravest person I have ever met, Dima, and the scars tell that story. I hope you don’t think so little of me that you believe I find you anything less than stunning. Your entire body could be one huge scar and I would still think you were the most beautiful thing on earth.”

If they weren’t tied together by their souls, Dimitri never would have believed the other man. He would have thought he was lying or overcome in the heat of a passionate moment. But sincerity radiated from Vasily and sank into Dimitri, bone deep. So he closed his eyes and tried his best to trust, feeling Vasily work his way down to nip at each one of his scars, to press a kiss to his bad hip. He couldn’t feel Vasily do the same for the scar on his left arm, but by the way Vasily’s body shifted across Dimitri’s stomach, he kissed that scar too.

The hand left his chest and Vasily let go of his throat, and at the loss of the heat and the pressure he blinked his eyes open, only to find that Vasily was studiously creating an intricate knot that he anchored to the bedpost. The edges of the soft devotion that had been radiating Dimitri’s way were now giving in to a much more animalistic need, and when Vasily grabbed Dimitri’s right ankle and pulled, hard, Dimitri’s head fell back into the pillows, heat rushing through him.

When Vasily was done tethering Dimitri to the bed, he placed a hand on either side of Dimitri’s chest, one of his thighs in between Dimitri’s, his weight pressing Dimitri down into the mattress. His knee nudged up against Dimitri’s ass, and he couldn’t help but cant his hips to chase the friction.

“Eager, are we?” Vasily purred into his ear. Dimitri whined in response, because yes, he was eager, and yet he couldn’t move and was completely at Vasily’s mercy.

“Well,” Vasily continued, “there’s something I need to take care of first.”

Dimitri was about to protest that Vasily couldn’t get up and leave him here, not like this—not like that one time when Vasily had restrained him and then retreated off the cot to spend a quarter of an hour in the corner of the tent suggestively cleaning his pistols while Dimitri steadily lost his mind—but that wasn’t what Vasily did. Instead, he bent down and fastened his teeth on the skin under Dimitri’s jaw, biting down in a way that was sure to bruise. Heat flared through Dimitri along with the pain.

“This is the first time you’ll see him again since he killed you. And hopefully the last time anyone in the mortal world will see him for the rest of time.” Vasily’s voice was gravelly. “And when he sees you, I want there to be no doubt that you belong to someone else. That you are no longer his. That you are mine, and mine alone.”

“Vasya,” Dimitri panted as Vasily sucked another bite onto the side of his neck. The sting of his teeth biting at tender flesh was perfectly paired with a soothing kiss, a swipe of tongue. “Everyone knows I’m yours. How could they not, with the way I look at you? Only the biggest of fools wouldn’t know that you are mine and I am yours, and no matter who either of us is with or married to, that will not change.”

“Well,” Vasily growled, “Alexey Balakin is a fool. So I’m going to spell it out for him.”

Dimitri giggled as Vasily continued attacking his neck in an entirely irresponsible manner. Dimitri should stop this, should have some sense of decorum or self-preservation, because Ladushka would be furious at this breach in etiquette. It was one thing to take Vasily to bed, and another thing entirely to flaunt that fact in front of the suitors he might one day marry.

But in that moment, Dimitri didn’t care. He didn’t care because he was going to Chernitzy tomorrow and Alexey could kill him. Dimitri would leave Vasily behind tomorrow, and demons could overcome Rav-Mikhailburg. If they were going to die, he was going to die well fucked.

And besides, all of this was making his deranged ex-husband and his demonic half brother and the rift in the world currently threatening all of existence feel acceptably far away.

When Vasily was satisfied, he continued his journey lower, teasing Dimitri’s chest with a clever tongue and the scrape of his nails. And he moved lower still, the evidence of his own arousal hot against Dimitri’s leg, and there was a rattle from lower down on the bed as Vasily groped for whatever he was going to use to torment Dimitri with.

Dimitri closed his eyes and surrendered entirely to the sensations of his body, to the sweet, sharp sting of pain chased by growing pleasure. By the time Vasily finally decided that Dimitri was allowed to come and pushed into him, gasping with his own impatience, there was nothing elegant about the way they fucked. But still, Dimitri would have it no other way, the sloppy haste of it all somehow only taking him even further out of his own head.

When they were both spent, Dimitri was half-asleep and sweat-slick, too exhausted to protest as Vasily levered him up and bundled him into the bath, washing them both and then drying Dimitri off like he was a child, slipping a nightshirt over his head and forcing him back to bed.

“Sleep,” Vasily whispered when they were curled up together under the blankets, the fire crackling in the grate and a storm that had picked up sending snow that was more like ice tinkling against the glass of the window. “You need to rest. I’ll be right here. I’m not letting you go.”

“I know you never will,” Dimitri replied, boneless in Vasily’s arms. “Vasya, I know.”

He didn’t hear Vasily’s response, whispered against the crown of his head, because satisfaction and warmth and trust finally pulled him to sleep.

The next morning came far too soon.

Vasily was up and dressed with the dawn, watching Dimitri get dressed, shivering in the early morning chill.

“Vasya,” Dimitri said as he tugged on his boots. “Tell me we’re going to be okay. Tell me it’s all going to be okay.” Another ritual from the war. Vasily hated this kind of pretending, but Dimitri needed confidence.

“We’re going to come out the other side of this and win, and then we’re going to erase his stain from our country and our memory and move on with our lives. He won’t be able to ruin anything again. He won’t be able to hurt you again, Dima. I promise.”

Dimitri snorted. “You would think that trying to kill my ex-husband would be routine enough by now that I would be used to it, but every time I think about facing him, I wonder if I can do it. Even though he killed me, even though he stabbed a blade through my heart and hurt me worse than anyone has ever hurt me before, I don’t know if I can do it.”

The way he was visibly shaking now made Vasily cross the room half-dressed and wrap Dimitri in a hug. “You don’t have to do it. Not alone, at least. We’re going to help you, and it’s all going to be all right. I’m never going to leave you alone with him ever again. And I’ll tear him limb from limb before I let him hurt you, Dima.”

Vasily was lying about the first part. But not about the second.

Sure enough, there was a pounding on the door a few minutes later that tore the two of them apart, Dimitri shaking less but still looking like he was going to topple over. Vasily bit his lip and wondered if he would be able to tap into the power that Dimitri carried for him, because it looked like the other man wasn’t going to survive the encounter.

Then again, Dimitri had been through so much and he had always been all right. Vasily had to believe, for the both of them, that he was going to get through this too. That they all were, and that they could then go back to the normal slate of horrific things to deal with, like being separated from each other by the dictates of propriety and marriage.

Yeah, that wasn’t going to be painful at all.

Three hours after dawn, Lida arrived on a lathered horse, looking like she hadn’t slept in days.

“I have it,” she said without preamble. “And you must move fast.”

She pulled a leather-wrapped object from the bag slung around her shoulders and tossed it to Vasily. He grabbed it, the bond between him and Dimitri thrumming.

“Come on,” he said, gesturing her back into the palace. “They’re waiting.”

They half ran through the palace, and Lida’s grim expression made Vasily more and more anxious. He took them to the parlor, where the rest of the court was sitting around the table, silent and still since they’d gotten word from the steward that Lida had arrived.

Vasily tossed the bone onto the table, unwilling to hold it any longer. Dimitri flinched away as Nina leaned closer, fascinated.

“Report,” Vasily ordered Lida.

“I saw him and this rift he has opened. It is an unholy thing, blacker than the night and so foul it caused my skin to crawl,” Lida said, stone-faced. “The area around Chernitzy is blackened and dead. The estate’s grounds are damaged. I snuck away before the ritual began, took this bone and left.”

“So it’s real,” Dimitri breathed. “He’s alive. He’s really, truly alive. You’ve seen him.”

Lida nodded. “And he is coming for you, Moy Tzar.”

There was a beat of silence, and then Dimitri took in a breath.

“Well then,” Dimitri said. “I think we need to move to the next phase in our plan.”

Vasily’s teeth were grinding together of their own accord and Dimitri was biting his nails when the door opened. A herald announced Lukas, Aziza and Yullyan.

“Dima!” Lukas’s face brightened as the three suitors walked into the parlor. “I was worried about you, with all the cancellations in the summit’s schedule.”

“There’s nothing to be worried about,” Aziza said, examining her nails, then nodding to Ladushka, Annika and Mischa in turn. “Except for all of the information that’s being kept from us about the state of the demons stampeding around the countryside.”

Dimitri let out a choked noise, but otherwise remained impassive. Vasily flinched, wondering how good their spy networks were and how they matched up against his own.

“Oh dear,” Yullyan said, fiddling with their braid. The dress they were wearing was laced so tightly around their waist that Vasily had no idea how they were breathing, but he supposed it was in service of the way that it pushed the musculature of Yullyan’s chest up to create cleavage that had been dusted with pearl powder. It was impressive, considering the earliness of the hour. “Did you think we didn’t all have our own spy networks across the continent, or that we would stop monitoring their reports for the duration of the summit? Because the Novo-Svitsevan spies in our courts are still active, I’m sure.”

They leveled a look of supreme disdain at Vasily, and he realized there was no way that Yullyan, at least, didn’t know that he was Dimitri’s spymaster. He glared right back until Yullyan arched an eyebrow and then smiled. Aziza was staring at Vasily now too, her brow furrowed, and if she hadn’t known before, Yullyan had just given him up.

Lukas just looked earnest, his hands clasped in front of him, either ignoring the exchange that the other two were having with Vasily or not noticing it at all. “Is there anything we can help with? If we’re welcome, that is.”

“Well,” Dimitri said, clearly striving for the kind of levity that made things like this easier to bear. “I hope you understand why this needs to be kept quite secret, but we’ve just learned my ex-husband is very much still alive and has apparently used his Holy Science to open a rift into the middle realm, where demons walk. And he may, at this moment, be planning to allow many more of them through and amass an army of demons with which to take back this throne and then overthrow the rest of the governments of the continent.”

“Oh.” Lukas’s warm brown eyes were wide, and his mouth had formed a perfect circle of surprise. He ran a finger around the collar of his shirt, like it was choking him. “All right.”

“Huh,” Yullyan said. “Sounds messy. I think I can understand why you got divorced. I like crazy in the bedroom, but not like that.”

Vasily shot Yullyan a glare but was fairly shocked when Dimitri actually laughed despite the circumstances, shooting a fond look Yullyan’s way. Dimitri then put a hand on his shoulder surreptitiously, clearly indicating that he didn’t want Vasily to murder Yullyan for mentioning him and sex in the same breath.

His stomach twisted. Vasily needed Dimitri to move on. He hadn’t thought about what it would feel like when he did.

“I wanted to warn you all.” Dimitri looked between all of them. “Because Alexey Balakin is coming for Rav-Mikhailburg. And I don’t think we have time to evacuate everyone. The safest place for you all is here, in the palace, where our defenses will be concentrated. I’m figuring out a way to get to him and end this for good. Hopefully that happens before this demon army arrives, but if it doesn’t, staying here is safest for you.”

“Is that all?” Aziza leveled a look at Dimitri. “You tell us of this threat, and you do not even ask for our help?”

Yullyan was nodding. Lukas looked at Dimitri and narrowed his eyes. “Yeah. What she said.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Dimitri retorted. “I don’t want more people endangered for my sake.”

“This is not for your sake.” Aziza rolled up her sleeves and turned to Annika. “Take me to the defenses. We will begin coordination. All of us. Because no country is an island. This, one day, would be our war too if we turned our backs.”

Vasily should have been pleased that they had agreed to help. But all he could truly think about was how, when the three suitors agreed to face this danger with them, Dimitri’s face brightened in a way that felt like a knife straight to Vasily’s heart.

Things moved quickly after that. Once Vasily had finished ensuring Dimitri had everything packed that he could possibly need, he accompanied Dimitri and the rest of the court to the door to the stable yard, where Lukas, Aziza and Yullyan were waiting for them. The moment Dimitri and Ivan were gone, they would need to get to work forming defenses. From the smear of gunpowder across Aziza’s perfectly manicured hands and the way Yullyan was bare-faced and dressed in excessively practical clothes, it looked like they’d already started to work.

For all his conflicted feelings about them, Vasily was glad these three were here. They would need all the allies they could get.

“You’re going to be fine,” Lukas said firmly, like he was trying to convince himself as well as Dimitri. “You’re going to come back and then we’re going to see each other again.” He came forward to hug Dimitri and pressed a kiss to his cheek, which made jealousy flare in Vasily’s gut, and pressed something wrapped in brown paper into Dimitri’s hands. “Cookies, for the road. I stole the kitchen for the last few hours.”

Dimitri mumbled a thank you, unable to meet Lukas’s eye.

Aziza stepped forward next, the glint of something silver flashing in the light before she hung it over Dimitri’s neck and tucked it into the collar of his jacket. “An amulet belonging to my family. I believe you need the protection more than I. Remember, now, what it means to rule.”

“Thank you.” Dimitri’s expression turned flinty, his back straightening. “I will.”

“I didn’t get you anything good,” Yullyan said. They pulled a book from the satchel they were carrying, inserting it into Dimitri’s sling. “Just some smut for the road.” Then they whispered conspiratorially, “Reading material to match whatever you were doing last night.”

They winked and jerked their chin at Dimitri’s neck, where a few of the bruises Vasily had left were evident above his collar. Dimitri flushed red but laughed, and then Ayla corralled the three suitors back to wherever it was they’d all meet to coordinate the palace’s defenses.

When Dimitri finally opened the door to the stable yard, stone-faced, the winter air shocked Vasily back into wakefulness.

Ivan was standing between the stalls, tucked into an alcove to shield himself from the wind. His wings were gone and he was dressed in normal traveling clothes. Somehow, he’d put boots on his feet. Now he looked like nothing more than a boy.

Saying goodbye was really fucking awful. Vasily’s stomach felt like a bottomless pit.

“Ride hard,” Annika said, enclosing Dimitri in a fierce hug. “Don’t stop for anything. End him and come back to us.”

Ladushka and Mischa had never done well with goodbyes, and so they both merely stepped forward to embrace Dimitri. Mischa tugged his hat a bit further down his ears, with an admonishment to stay warm.

“Protect him,” Mischa said to Ivan. “Or I’ll kill you myself.”

The three of them went back inside the palace, and Vasily and Dimitri were left alone.

“I love you,” Vasily said, because he didn’t say it enough and this might yet again be the last time they saw each other and he wasn’t about to die without reminding Dimitri. “I love you more than life itself. Please, Dima, be careful. I want you back here, safe and sound.”

Dimitri’s cheeks were flushed with the cold, his eyelashes flecked with snow. He was as beautiful and jagged as ice. But still, when Vasily stepped forward, he let himself be held. “I love you too, Vasya. But you knew that already. I hope you always do.”

Vasily didn’t want to let him go, but he did. He didn’t want to watch Dimitri turn away to where a stable hand was holding Malishka, but he did.

Vasily Sokolov’s life had become nothing more than doing everything he never wanted to do. Suffering everything he never wanted to suffer. And the only way to get through it was to harden his heart.

He didn’t want to do it. But once again, he did.

A hand on his arm stopped him as he turned to go back into the palace. It was Ivan.

“I wanted to thank you,” Ivan said softly. “I remember what you did for me, even if it’s hazy now. How you were kind to me, even though I now realize just how dangerous that was for you. And how you cared for me, after…”

Ivan trailed off, his eyes going unfocused, and Vasily prayed to the Lord that Ivan didn’t remember his own death, that somehow whatever had happened to him had wiped that particular slate clean.

“What I mean to say is, I’m glad that I got to meet you, and I’m exceptionally glad that I got to come back and help the people who had done so much for me.”

“Ivan,” Vasily said softly, “all I did was get you killed.”

“No.” Ivan was vehement. “What you did was see me, and be kind and care, and that is a gift more valuable than anything else that’s ever been done for me. Even more valuable than the gift of a title and a name and a place to belong.

“But I wanted to ask…” Ivan said into the silence left by Vasily’s speechlessness. “Is it my brother who’s hurting you?”

Maybe it was just the sense of impending doom, but for once Vasily felt like confessing.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s your brother. Or rather the fact that I can’t be with your brother.”

“Ah.” Ivan was quiet for a while, and the only noise was Dimitri talking to the stable hands and the horses’ feet on the snow-covered gravel and the early morning birdsong.

“I know what it’s like to love someone unattainable,” Ivan said after clearing his throat. “I still do. And it was like having your heart ripped out through your chest, the idea that there was this man who was making love to you but who felt nothing true for you, while you loved him with everything you were, and it was all not enough because there was this barrier there?”

Ivan looked up and blinked, the same way that Dimitri did when he was trying not to cry. “Knowing what you feel for him, or what he feels for you, doesn’t matter at all—that, for me, was the hardest part. I was in love with him, but I think in the back of my mind and the depths of my heart I knew that it was all for nothing, that no matter what I did he would never love me back. That if we ended up together it was because I was a tool for him to use and not a person he truly cared for. That’s what most royal marriages are. I think that’s what his marriage to Dimitri was too, at the end of the day. Even if they loved each other, it started as Dimitri being used.”

“Dimitri will always be used.” Vasily cleared his throat, and even still his voice was thick. “He will always be used because he is a crown, not a man, and I of all people should know that. I’ve been at his side for years, long enough to learn this lesson. That no matter how much anyone cares for him, the empire comes first. The empire has to come first. And I’ve been too much of an idiot to listen to reason, to draw away from him before it was too late, because I finally wanted something in my life that was more than safety and more than just not being hurt, and I got it. And then when we lost…”

Vasily took a deep breath, because he had never admitted this to anyone else, not even to himself, truly. “When we lost the war, there was a part of me that was glad. Because I thought that if Dimitri never retook his throne, we could all live like normal people. He and I, we could truly be together, in a way that we would never be able to as subject and Tzar. I am nothing to no one. And for a time, I was glad that he was nothing to no one too.”

Vasily was shaking, and it wasn’t from the cold. This was one of his most shameful secrets, that even though losing the war had gutted him, he was secretly glad. Glad that hundreds of thousands of people had died, glad that an empire had been torn apart. Because it meant that he was allowed to be with Dimitri, who had turned into just another anonymous citizen.

Hiding that joy had been hard, but he had done it. He had buried it deep within himself and had been a master at hiding that secret, even from his own heart. He’d destroyed that joy in helping Dimitri return to the throne, because he wasn’t a heinous piece of shit who would deny millions a better life and a better future so that he could hole up in a townhouse with the man he loved.

Vasily was selfish. But he wasn’t a monster.

Ivan made a sympathetic noise and reached across the space between them to put a hand to Vasily’s shoulder and squeeze. The gesture was so small and kind that it broke Vasily open, and he had to run his hand across his face to wipe away the tears that fell.

“I’m sorry,” he said wetly. “I feel like all I do these days is cry.”

“That’s all right,” Ivan replied. “It’s very human, to need to let your emotions out. You should be glad that you have the capacity to do so. If you didn’t, you would have already lost a crucial part of yourself.”

Vasily nodded, fighting to expand his lungs against the iron band around them, and was eternally grateful that Ivan wasn’t trying to talk more or make him feel better, but was instead merely standing next to him in silence, his presence letting Vasily know that he wasn’t alone, his words letting him know that it was all right to grieve.

“Thank you,” he said eventually, when he could speak again. “Thank you for everything.”

Ivan turned to him, his eyes crinkled in a smile. “It’s the least I could do. Thank you once more, Vasily Sokolov. I can feel your pain. I pray that God will let there be room in your heart for strength and, one day, for peace.”

There was nothing that Vasily could say to that past the lump in his throat, so instead he just nodded and then stepped back inside the palace, closing the door so that he didn’t run back after Dimitri. So that he could be strong, the way they all needed him to be, for whatever fresh hell came next.

The first part of the ride was quiet, except for the noise of their horses’ hooves on the loam. Dimitri had so many feelings battling inside his rib cage that every time words rose to his lips, he squashed them down.

He was glad they were following a narrow, little-used route through the mountainous regions between Rav-Mikhailburg and Chernitzy, because it gave him something to focus on. He watched out for rocks and roots which might trip Malishka’s hooves at the quick pace they were moving, allowing himself time to think. About Ivan, about what Alexey was doing to the countryside. Like an inescapable tide, the horror of it all came back again and again.

Vasily had done his best, with Annika, to guess where Alexey’s demonic army was heading on their way to the capital. To minimize the chance that Dimitri and Ivan might end up in their path, they avoided passing through towns or villages which might become targets of Alexey’s wrath and instead kept to the woods, taking hunting trails and deer paths. For them to die while en route to kill Alexey would be unforgivable.

It would take them slightly longer to reach Chernitzy this way—three days at a gallop, as opposed to the two they could’ve managed on main roads if time was of the essence—but it was safer. It was strangely reminiscent of being at war, sneaking away from battlefields when all was lost, running through the woods on spooked horses fleeing from artillery shelling. Except now there was a peacefulness which belied the danger, the leaves rustling in the wind and animals darting between trees, the birds that braved the cold calling out.

Dimitri could have been on a morning pleasure ride instead of a journey with his dead half brother to kill his delusional ex-husband. The world tilted each time he considered the incongruity.

“Are you all right?” Ivan said eventually, when they let the horses slow to recover, after hours of silence. “I mean, I know you aren’t. But…is there anything I can do to help?”

Dimitri sighed and looked skyward, the tops of the pine trees crowding over the path obscuring his view of the sky. He blinked against the cold wind, wondering how to put the heaviness of his heart into words.

“It’s all right to be mad at him,” he started out. “In fact, I’m worried that you’re not.”

Ivan stiffened. Dimitri could tell from the set of his brother’s shoulders that instantly his guard was up. “Who?”

“Alexey.” Dimitri swallowed. It hurt, seeing his own denial reflected back at him. The way he’d clung to the vision of Alexey as the man he’d once loved and tried to block out the picture that his husband had painted for him day by day.

He couldn’t believe his friends had been able to stand it, and he was immensely grateful to them for giving him the time and space to heal. But he and Ivan didn’t have time and space, and Dimitri wasn’t about to potentially die a second time without giving his brother at least one bit of the peace he deserved.

“I know you hate him,” Ivan said. “But I loved him. My heart loves him still, I think.”

Dimitri reached across the space between their horses and put a hand on Ivan’s shoulder, squeezing. “If hearts could tell the worth of people, you wouldn’t get boys like me in situations like mine. Is what he did to me wrong?”

Ivan blinked at him. “Yes.”

“Then how can you say what he did to you wasn’t?”

Ivan shrugged, and Dimitri dropped his hand. “Ivan, you deserve the world. You deserve love and laughter and someone who sees you for who you are, not what you could do for them.”

“It was my fault,” Ivan said after a long silence. “It was my fault that Alexey did those things to me. I wasn’t good enough. I never could be, because I wasn’t you.”

Bile burned in Dimitri’s throat, because how many times had he told himself the same? How many times had he wished he could be different, better, a man that Alexey could be proud of? Could truly, fully love?

Asking had never made a difference. The only thing that had was looking into his husband’s eyes and realizing there was no more love there. And then being loved by Vasily and feeling what it meant to be whole.

“You didn’t make him hurt you,” Dimitri said quietly, his eyes fixed on Malishka’s ears. “No one makes another person hurt them. It’s a choice, it always is. And sometimes it’s defensible. Other times, it’s not. And Ivan—it was not. If you say you deserved it, you’re saying that I deserved it too.”

Every line of Vasily’s letter, the one which he’d left in Dimitri’s hand before sneaking into the palace at Rav-Mikhailburg, the one where he’d confessed his love, was burned into Dimitri’s memory. “You can’t believe in my innocence,” he told Ivan, “and simultaneously condemn yourself.”

He chanced a glance at his brother. There were tears streaking down his cheeks. “Even if my mind knows that, even if people tell it to me, how do I believe it? How did you make yourself believe it?”

“I didn’t,” Dimitri confessed, because that was the truth. “Vasily did.”

Ivan let out a shuddering breath. “Asmodai told me I was worth more than I could ever know. That I was kind and good. That he wanted me to see it. That he would show it to me.”

“Vanya,” Dimitri said, because he’d never once called his brother by his nickname—the one that family members would have used. From the way Ivan’s bloodshot eyes widened, he had never expected even such a simple gesture of familial love. “I want you to let him. I want you to do it for me. And I don’t know what happens after we…after we do this, after we get rid of Alexey for good. I want to show you too, if you visiting me is possible. But please, Vanya, promise me that you will let Asmodai try. And that you won’t turn away from it, even when the kindness hurts. That you’ll try to believe in the love of a good man, instead of the rot that Alexey wound around your heart.”

Ivan sniffled but nodded. “I—I’ll try.”

“That’s all I ask.” Dimitri reached out a gloved hand to grasp Ivan’s. His skin was like fire, even through the leather of Dimitri’s glove. “It took me a long time. Years, a war, coming back from death. I don’t want you to have to go through the same to remember your own worth. I want you to have a better love story than mine.”

Ivan’s lips quirked up in a sad smile. “Boys like me don’t get love stories.”

“And that’s where you’re wrong,” Dimitri said, squeezing his brother’s hand hard. “Because, Ivan Abramovich, boys like you should.”

They talked more on the way and Dimitri listened to everything. Every hurt that Alexey had inflicted upon Ivan. Every horrible thing that Alexey had made Ivan do.

The rage grew within him until he was sure he wouldn’t be able to contain it.

But he kept those feelings from Ivan, because Ivan shouldn’t have to bear both his own grief and his brother’s anger. And by the time they’d reached the inn they’d planned to stop at for the night, he’d gotten Ivan to at least look like he wasn’t going to stop Dimitri when he tried to kill Alexey.

They’d eaten, worn thin from the journey and the discussion of the man who still haunted them both, and then taken a room together. Dimitri curled up on one of the two beds, shaking, hating again that he was sleeping alone.

The anxiety of it all made it easier to fall asleep, at least, the exhaustion of riding all day and the turmoil in his mind combining to render him unconscious.

And when he slept, he dreamed.

Dimitri’s bare feet were treading on a plush carpet. It felt like it had cost a fortune and come from the palace at Rav-Mikhailburg, yet it wasn’t nearly so ostentatious in pattern and, in fact, looked slightly worn and faded from the sun. The furniture was the same—comfortable-looking armchairs arranged around a large fireplace, the upholstery clearly of quality yet understated in a way that spoke of no true desire to show off wealth. There were books scattered on low tables and an eclectic mix of art on the walls from different regions of the empire, like it had been gathered through a person’s travels. Sun streamed into the room and added to the cheer. Somewhere from another part of the house, he heard a childlike giggle followed by the excited barking of a dog.

None of the homeyness, though, took his attention away from the man in front of him.

“Hey,” Vasily said. He was leaning against the sill of a large picture window, his fist resting against the plaster of the wall like he had half aborted a move to punch it.

Dimitri found himself looking out onto a lush garden filled with a riot of color. There was nothing manicured about it, nothing tame. It was wild and beautiful and free. Dimitri wondered where they were, given that he had never seen this room or this garden before, neither in life nor in dreams.

“Hey,” Dimitri replied. Vasily wasn’t looking at him and it was hard to gauge his mood, whether he was upset that they were sharing a dream or glad. They had done this with much less frequency over the past few weeks, and Dimitri wondered if it was Vasily’s subconscious way of separating the two of them.

It occurred to Dimitri that even when he was married, they could still do this. That he and Vasily could live out a fantasy life while they both slept, that they could have everything they wanted with each other for as long as they were asleep.

Vasily snorted. “That’s a fucking shit idea. I’d never want to wake up, if we were living our lives in dreams.”

Dimitri crossed the room to lean against the other side of the window. “Maybe it would be better than having nothing.”

“I’m not going to stop you from properly moving on.” Vasily raked a hand through his hair, his jaw flexing in agitation. “If that’s what you want to do, it’s only going to make living your life during the day harder. It’s going to make it harder to separate ourselves, and it’s going to risk us acting in a way that’s inappropriate. You’re going to look at me or I’m going to look at you and everyone is going to see that there’s something between us that there shouldn’t be. And unless whoever you marry is all right with you having a lover on the side who you parade about openly instead of just fucking quietly and discreetly, it’s going to cause trouble. It’s going to humiliate your spouse, which would be a shit idea because you’re marrying the person for an alliance that, if broken, would devastate the country.”

Vasily was laying out the facts clinically, like he was giving Dimitri a report on the state of his intelligence network. Not like he was discussing their future, or lack thereof.

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri said quietly, coming to join Vasily at the window. There was a seat there and Dimitri scooted onto it, relishing for a moment the freedom with which his body moved, even if it was merely a fiction in dreams.

Vasily’s jaw flexed again, and he laid his hand flat on the window frame, his nails digging into the paint. He sighed and raked his other hand through his hair again. It was causing the waves to stick up wildly. Dimitri wanted so badly to reach out and smooth them down, but Vasily didn’t look like he would welcome the touch. “I know. It’s…I’m sorry. This is horrific for the both of us. I’m just trying to find my way through as best I can.”

He came to join Dimitri on the window seat. His feet were bare and he slotted his legs around Dimitri, the two of them crushed together by the window seat’s confines. Vasily didn’t speak, and so Dimitri distracted himself by looking out the window at the flowers, the buds waving softly in the breeze, the sun sharpening their colors.

“Where are we?” Dimitri finally asked. “Is this where you grew up? Before…”

“No.” Vasily let out a short, humorless laugh. “You know me, the hopeless romantic. This is the house I dreamed of for us. If we were allowed to be together, I thought we’d live someplace like this.”

“Oh.” Dimitri couldn’t speak, couldn’t say anything more than that one syllable, because his throat was sore with the effort of not crying at the quiet hopelessness in Vasily’s voice.

“Yeah.” Vasily looked at him, and it was like they were strangers staring at each other over a ravine, the distance between them farther and more uncrossable than ever before. “It’s—” He stopped to clear his throat. “It’s why I haven’t been joining you in dreams as much lately. Because I’ve been spending time here.”

He jerked his chin up towards the ceiling, and Dimitri heard the small sounds of conversation that he hadn’t noticed before. The creaking of feet on floorboards, easy laughter. The sounds of a quiet domestic life that wasn’t something either of them could ever have together. Not in this life. Not like this.

“It’s beautiful,” Dimitri managed, his voice gravelly with the effort it was taking not to cry.

“I know,” Vasily said. He reached over and took Dimitri’s hand, and they sat like that, listening to a dream of a life they could never live out, until one of the two of them woke up.

The ride over the next two days reminded Dimitri of the first time he had ever come to Chernitzy, though that had been in summer and not in the dead of winter.

He hadn’t known what to expect back then, and he had been rather exhausted from the month and a half of touring already completed. The preceding weeks had been a whirlwind of parties and meetings. Fedyenka was being introduced to the people he would one day rule, and many of the stops along their tour route had involved renegotiations of taxation agreements between Rav-Mikhailburg and the territories to the capital’s south. Dimitri had been considered too young and uneducated to sit in on any of those meetings, and perhaps his father had noticed the way he had a tendency to let his attention drift when he was stuck in hours of endless negotiation over the minutiae of taxation. So he was bundled off, stuck in blisteringly hot conservatories where his mother and sisters discussed the latest fashions and focused on their embroidery in a passive-aggressive attempt to show who was of the best breeding.

Dimitri’s needlepoint would have put all of theirs to shame—in truth, he had far more talent for it than for hunting, and if his father wouldn’t have had a conniption about him neglecting his studies, he would have tried his hand at designing his own clothing—but he didn’t partake. Instead, he spent the time daydreaming and staring out of various windows and wondering why, precisely, he had been brought along.

Fedyenka joining made sense. He was there for a purpose, to better learn about the ruling of the empire. And his sisters who joined were the married ones who had dispersed to nearby regions and were making the comparatively shorter journey to see their mother in this way. She doted on them, and so Dimitri understood why they would want to spend time with her.

Dimitri, though—he hadn’t understood why he was there. At least, not until they arrived at Chernitzy.

The roads into the regions wove through mountains that were larger than anything that Dimitri had ever seen in his life, reaching up to touch the sky with peaks that were shrouded in mist. The air was chilly here, even though it was summer, dampness clinging to the windows of the carriage in the early morning and the fog refusing to dissipate until noon. Unfamiliar birds haunted the lush pine forests, and they came upon elk more than once, ambling along the road as if they had never been hunted in their life and had nothing to fear from people.

It was wild and free, and Dimitri had immediately fallen deeply and madly in love.

He’d traded the carriage for a horse and rode for most of the two days that it took them to make their way from Chernitzy’s borders to the region’s seat. His father griped about them not moving faster, their progress slowed by the carriage carrying his wife—she was alone now that Dimitri had escaped its confines and his sisters had dispersed once more—needing extra time on the steep, winding roads; a man on a horse could have done the trip in half the time. But Dimitri was content with keeping his horse at a leisurely trot, watching the landscape and marveling at how different it was from the plains of most of the south, which had been full of the same flat and unchanging forests as the outskirts of the city where he had grown up. It had been his first time leaving the capital as an adult on a trip to somewhere other than the Abramovich dacha in Nizhniy Karevskiy, and knowing that he was part of the family ruling this empire in all its wonder had set his heart on fire.

And then, on the afternoon of the second day of travel, he had gotten his first look at the Balakin family seat.

It was nestled in a broad valley cradled between the mountains, overlooking a placid blue lake. The home was more of a small palace really, ornately decorated and clearly well maintained. His father had turned to him for the first time on the road with a raised eyebrow. “Well, Dima, what do you think?”

“Of the region?” Dimitri was startled and had jumped a little in his saddle, because his father routinely treated him like he didn’t exist. It was rare for him to pay more attention to Dimitri than the standard, offhanded parental concern, mostly displayed in front of courtiers who had taken to looking at the newly adult Dimitri like he was a piece of meat. “It’s gorgeous. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

His father hadn’t answered, merely hummed and turned to talk to Fedyenka about the fact that Rav-Mikhailburg had gotten the short end of a mining treaty negotiated years back with the former head of the Balakin house, who had died young of a failure of the heart. They were here to test the mettle of the young Lord Alexey Balakin. It had been a name that Dimitri hadn’t heard before, having little reason to pay attention to the vagaries of regional politics. He had turned his attention back to the trees and the birds and the small animals that were darting along the road.

He hadn’t paid it any mind until they arrived, and he met Alexey and was lost, completely and utterly. Then he’d started to pay attention, and at their first dinner Alexey had caught his eye and twisted up a corner of his mouth, winking.

Dimitri had winked back, and it had set him and Novo-Svitsevo on the path to war and ruin.

Dimitri had often wondered when his father had decided to betroth him to Alexey. Whether it was at that dinner, seeing the looks exchanged between the two of them—which would have been charitable of the Tzar, picking a person that Dimitri had finally expressed interest in. But the more he’d thought about it, the more it made sense that part of the tour to the southern region had been in order to find someone to sell Dimitri to. To find out whether Alexey would take him off the empire’s hands.

The question his father had asked him—What do you think?—had perhaps been an attempt to soothe his conscience, his guilt at giving Dimitri no say in the matter of his marriage. His sisters had had the chance to pick their suitors, and all of them had ended up with a husband they adored. After all, who wouldn’t want the chance to marry a daughter of the Tzar, who would bear royal children? His brothers Fedyenka and Fyodor had also had the chance to pick their wives, who would give birth to the future heirs to the throne, from among the most eligible of Novo-Svitsevo’s nobility.

Dimitri had never wondered when he might be given his chance. He’d never thought about it, because that was not where his mind went, most of the time.

He was…assigned a spouse, in a charitable way of putting it. He was sold for wealth, because running an empire was expensive and three and a half million tolar—the price of his hand in marriage—had gone a long way to reinforcing the royal treasury.

It hadn’t mattered to him then, because he’d gotten Alexey in the bargain. Now, arriving back for the first time since he’d taken the throne, the bitterness lay like a metallic tang on his tongue.

The devastation wrought by Morozov and Alexey’s demons got worse and worse as they approached the region’s center, like they were riding into the middle of a bomb crater. Vasily, Mischa and Nina had described what they’d seen, but it didn’t compare to viewing the lifeless landscape for himself.

Dimitri couldn’t believe that Alexey had done this to their own people, their own land.

The war had never come to Chernitzy, and Dimitri suspected it was from an unconscious desire to spare his own region any damage. To see this now was a sign of just how far Alexey had fallen. A sign of just how badly Alexey needed to be stopped.

Maybe it was suicide to try—there were far too many variables contorting in far too many ways for them to hope for success. But Dimitri kept reminding himself that doing nothing was suicide too.

So he rode through the ruins of a place he’d once loved and wondered how much it would hurt to die again. And how much it would hurt to triumph over Alexey and survive.

Preparing for battle, at this point, was so familiar that it was more akin to breathing.

His cards tucked safely in his pocket, Vasily was methodically counting out bullets into groups of six, stashing them into the hidden pockets he’d had sewn into his suit jacket lining in Wilnetzk, wanting to ensure that he was always ready to protect Dimitri, even if one day he wouldn’t constantly be at Dimitri’s side. Next to him, Mischa was quickly stuffing medical supplies into a bag while whispering quietly to Nina, their heads bent together. Ayla was gathering the soldiers they could trust the most to lead the defense, while Lukas, Yullyan and Aziza were conferring in a corner.

No one knew if, for the last thirty-six hours, they had been preparing a defense of the city or just forestalling an inevitable slaughter.

“Stop thinking,” Mischa said suddenly. They must have finished packing their bags, because the rucksack was now slung over their shoulder. They stooped with the weight, and Vasily wondered whether they all needed to take better care of the doctor, lest they shrivel up. “I can hear you all the way over here.”

Vasily didn’t respond, just continued clinking bullets together in groups of six, tucking them away. He wondered if they were going to be of any use against whatever it was that Alexey had conjured, but if there was one thing that Vasily hated, it was feeling helpless. He’d rather fool himself into believing he would be able to shoot his way through a flock of demons than admit that the only thing standing between them and almost certain death was Dimitri’s ability to get to Alexey first and kill him.

“I’m thinking about what to do,” Vasily said. “Because weirdly enough, I’ve never fought an enormous flock of demons before.”

Annika snorted. “I don’t think anyone has. I went to a war college, and I’m extremely certain that was never part of the curriculum.”

“It does beg the question, however.” Ladushka’s left eye twitched frantically as she looked at each of them. “What are the best tactics to defend against such an enemy?”

Nina banged her heels against the bottom of the table she was sitting on. “An enormous amount of salt. Or incantation bowls that would be powerful enough to protect an entire city. How much salt do you think is in the palace right now?”

“Uh…” Vasily said.

“Sixty pounds,” Ladushka replied. “But because of all the banquets, roughly one-third of the supply is likely to have been depleted already.”

Nina clicked her fingers. “All right. The first thing we need to do is get everyone who needs to be protected—which I assume is most people—into the dungeons.”

Ayla, who had just walked in with several of her captains, looked confused. “Dungeons? What? Are we taking prisoners?”

“No.” Aziza looked up from her conversation with Lukas and Yullyan. “She wants to put people in the dungeons because they are a large space with only one way in or out, yes? And the entrance can be warded with salt most effectively, without having to stretch it thin.”

Yullyan leaned back against the wall, one boot pressed up against the stone. “You cannot assume that it will be foolproof, though. And if any part of this flock of overgrown nightmares gets in, you’ve just created a slaughter.”

“We do what we can to protect,” Lukas’s bodyguard interjected with a shrug. “Nothing in life or death is certain. Everything is a risk.”

“Cheery.” Yullyan raised their eyebrows and widened their eyes.

“I didn’t see anything when I was scouting,” Annika said. “And I’ve called up the reserves. They’re stationed at Domachëvo, so they’ll be here in mere hours. I think we have at least another day or two before we need to put up a fight. Plenty of time to prepare.”

She looked as calm as she sounded, but then again, he remembered what she’d said to him years ago under a bridge in Gorki. If you’re afraid, so are your soldiers. And scared soldiers don’t fight well.

It was strange, though, to be doing all this without Dimitri. He was the linchpin of every planning session during the war, and he was the one who would give the ultimate orders, the final sign-off. With him missing, everything was unbalanced.

“So who, uh, does what here?” Vasily turned to see Lukas twisting his hands together. “I haven’t been in a battle before?”

“This won’t be a battle,” Nina said, a shade too cheerfully.

“Oh?” Lukas brightened. “You think we can get out of this without fighting?” Aziza rolled her eyes while Yullyan pinched the bridge of their nose.

“No, you softhearted fool,” Yullyan replied with a sigh. “She means we won’t be evenly matched, so there won’t be anything to battle over. Battle implies we’d be able to fight back. It will be a slaughter.”

“Hence,” Nina said, spreading her arms wide, “the dungeon and the salt.”

“What about the city?” Annika had moved close to Vasily and pitched her voice low. “Do we warn them? Is it possible?”

Vasily thought through the implications of spreading the word. What was likely to happen, besides mass panic and a stampede into the countryside which would likely claim lives itself? And besides, he wasn’t sure that being outside the city would be any safer. Alexey and his demons were just as likely to devastate the forests and fields surrounding the city as they were to eat everything in it.

People could die. People would die. But was it better to die unsuspecting in your home or terrified in a field?

Vasily, having thought far too many times that he was about to die terrified in a field, knew which option he’d prefer. “Announce a citywide lockdown. Everyone stays indoors until further notice.”

Annika’s mouth was set in a grim line, but she didn’t disagree. “I’ll send a messenger.”

“This could be a siege.” Vasily jumped and turned—he hadn’t heard Pavel come up behind him at all. “Do you have adequate food and water stores in the city?”

Ladushka came back from speaking with Nina and Mischa and crossed her arms, pensive. “I believe that the city would be sufficiently supplied for several days. But we do not need extensive supplies—we will not be facing a long siege.”

“Right,” Mischa added in. “Because the human body can survive for three days without water, and I don’t think we’re going to be alive in three days. Dimitri will be in Chernitzy by then, and either he’s going to kill Alexey or he’s not. If he does, problem solved. If he doesn’t…”

“We’ll be dead anyway,” Vasily finished for them. “So it’s a moot point.”

“You know what’s not a moot point?” Ayla nudged Vasily in the side with the edge of an enormous crate. “Weapons. Those we have a lot of, even here in the palace. And I think we’re going to need to distribute them among people who can fight. A lot of guard contingents came with the delegations.”

“You do that with Anna,” Vasily said. “Mischka, Nina—you two start outfitting the dungeons with whatever you need to ward off demons and take care of the people trapped inside. Aziza, Lukas, Yullyan—you three speak to your staff and explain what’s going on. Ladushka, you take the rest of the delegations. Ayla, arm the city guard and send out riders to get people from the outlying areas into the city. Make sure the lockdown is enforced. Spread the word to the guard, to the rebbes, to whoever you can think of. No matter what people see, they stay inside. We can’t deal with chaos in the streets in addition to trying to defend Rav-Mikhailburg.”

“And where are you going?” Annika asked after she nodded.

“Me?” Vasily arched a brow. “Where else? These fuckers can fly. I’m going to the roof.”

The wind was fucking freezing on top of the palace.

Vasily climbed out a window and shuffled his way down the ledge until he could get onto one of the flat sections of the roof. He took the spyglass from his pocket with already-numb fingers and tugged it open, putting it to his eye and training it on the horizon.

He knew that there was a force coming for them, but he didn’t know how long they had. Reportedly, the demon horde and Morozov had taken their sweet time in demolishing the parts of Novo-Svitsevo in their path.

Somehow, he didn’t think that Alexey would do them the mercy of making this quick.

His hand was trembling, and he allowed himself the grace of pretending that it was from the cold instead of fear. But as he looked towards the horizon, his stomach dropped.

There was a smudge where the land met the sky. He could imagine it, the way that creatures were swarming the land, a plague from the Torah come to life. How scared the people would be, if they had time to escape. How much it would hurt to die this way, if they didn’t.

They probably had a day or two until the demons were at the city gates. Knowing Alexey, he suspected they’d perch there to instill terror, at least for a short while. Morozov would be there too, that ass-licking fucker.

He settled against the roof and looked to the sky, wondering how much time they had left. Wondering where Dimitri was now. Wondering if he was safe, if he was cold, if Ivan was good company. Wishing he could reach Dimitri, but the bond between them was silent and still and as cold as ice. He didn’t want to die with things like this between them. He didn’t want to die when he’d finally found something to live for.

Vasily would do his best to buy Dimitri time to kill Alexey.

Because if there was one thing Vasily knew in his bones, it was that that was the only chance left for them all to survive.

By the time Vasily was too cold to continue watching the army’s advance, night was falling anyway.

He got back in through the window and realized it was no warmer inside than out, and when he exited the attic and found himself on the top floor of the palace, he realized why.

“You stayed up there a long time.” Annika was carefully stacking ammunition on an ornamental table, her grim expression reflected in the gilded mirror hanging on the wall. This was, beyond a doubt, the strangest battlefield Vasily had ever had the misfortune of fighting on. “How close are they?”

“Hard to tell.” Vasily looked at the long hallway, every window jammed open, with two soldiers, rifles and stacks of ammunition stationed at each. “It’s dark, and they’re basically a big black cloud. But I’d wager that by morning, they’re here.”

“Ah.” Annika nodded tightly. “We have soldiers now, as you can see. But it would be too difficult to get artillery up here, and so rifles it is. I’m also concerned about the possibility that we’d shoot larger rounds, and they’d merely crash through the roofs of the nearest houses. This isn’t an empty field—we have to worry about where we’re situated.”

“Anna,” Vasily said softly, “do you really think that rifles are going to do anything against demons?”

“No,” she replied with a sideways glance. “But they need to. Because otherwise, there’s nothing much we can do.”

She jerked her chin at her soldiers. Vasily shuddered, wondering how long it would take them to realize they were shooting at enemies which couldn’t be killed that way.

“Come on.” Annika sighed. “Let’s go downstairs. I’m literally sitting here rearranging bullets because there’s nothing more I can do until we’re under attack. Everyone was going to meet in the throne room. Lada commandeered it as a kind of war room.”

“Holy shit,” one of the soldiers cursed loudly, right as they were turning to leave. “What’s that?”

Vasily grabbed his pistol out of the holster under his arm and cocked it, crossing the hall with Annika at his side.

“Oh no,” he said, dread seeping through his veins.

There was a ratfucker who had landed in the courtyard, illuminated by the torches burning on the palace’s exterior, looking like the most deranged, overgrown bat anyone’s nightmares could concoct.

Morozov gave a screech that made Vasily want to cover his ears and made the soldiers around him go pale with terror. Annika didn’t move a single muscle.

“Mikhail Haleyvin,” Morozov ground out. “Surrender him to me by dawn, and fewer of you will die.”

“Oh,” Annika said, turning to Vasily.

“Fuck,” he finished, as Morozov launched back into the sky with a scream that went straight into the marrow of Vasily’s bones.

The final approach through the dead forest was almost more than he could bear. There was no sound, no sign of life, just the two of them now that they’d tied their horses to the trunk of a dead tree and started to walk on foot.

Dimitri at first thought it was snowing, but when he swiped at the flakes falling on the sling holding his arm to his chest, gray smears were left behind. It wasn’t snow, but ash.

He shuddered, fighting back the shivers that fear and the frigid weather were racking him with. The precariousness of what they were about to do struck Dimitri, leaving him with a hollow ache in his chest. It was the same feeling he’d had every time someone had turned to him across a table with a map showing the scarred remains of his country, asking him during the war where troops should move, which people he should imperil in the quest to take Alexey down. The idea that he was one wrong decision away from ruining everything, that he was the only thing standing between them all and utter destruction.

He wondered if, at any point in his life, he’d be able to escape this feeling or if it would plague him forever.

Ivan looked so young that Dimitri’s shoulders curled in at the fact that, already, almost everything had been taken from Ivan. He might, after this journey, be willing to open himself up to someone who could heal him the way Vasily had healed Dimitri, but he didn’t have his mortal life anymore. And here Dimitri was, asking him to put himself in harm’s way yet again to save them all. He had already died for Novo-Svitsevo.

And that didn’t even touch the panic he felt when he remembered that everyone else was back at the palace, staring an oncoming army in the face. The army which had done this to Chernitzy.

The army that consumed everything he’d once loved about this place.

“Stop.” Ivan reached out a hand and put it on Dimitri’s shoulder. The heat of his skin burned, even through Dimitri’s many layers. “I can tell what you’re thinking, and you should stop. Stop worrying about me, about the rest of them. You take everything upon yourself.”

“I have to.” Dimitri met Ivan’s eyes, even though it was hard to see the concern reflected there. “It’s my duty. I’m the Tzar of this country. I’m responsible.”

“You are,” Ivan said soothingly, like he thought Dimitri would bolt. “But you don’t have to be responsible alone. We’re with you of our own volition. All of us have chosen to help. To support you, to figure this out by your side. You aren’t the one making the sole decision here, Dimitri. You cannot take it all upon yourself, I beg you.”

Dimitri sagged back against a poplar, the bark cutting into his exposed neck. “None of you would be in this position if not for me. If something happens to you, to anyone else, it’s on my head.” Dimitri’s voice was little more than a whisper. “What if one of them dies in the next day? What if Vasily dies?”

“You love him.” Ivan’s smile was crooked and sad. “You really love him. I’m happy for you, Dimitri.”

“Well, I’m not,” Dimitri snapped back, pulling away from Ivan and stalking off further into the trees. “I’m fucking not, because it’s been torture, loving him and having to leave him. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life, Ivan, and I wouldn’t wish this kind of love on anyone.”

Dimitri whirled around when he realized his brother wasn’t following him. Ivan was tugging on his hair, the same way Dimitri did when he was frustrated.

“I think,” Ivan said quietly, “that loving and being loved is the greatest gift a person can have during their lifetime, and if it leads to heartbreak, then so be it. It is the reason our lives are worth living. No one should die without knowing true love, Dimitri.”

And that made him freeze, because Ivan was looking at him with condemnation in his eyes. Ivan, who had died because his abuser had harmed him badly enough that there was no coming back from the injury. Ivan, who had been lost and alone in a palace at Alexey’s mercy, who had had to love a man who was no longer a man. Alexey, who had learned to abuse with Dimitri and had then perfected the art on Ivan.

Ivan, who was here now because of all Dimitri’s failings.

“I’m sorry.” He tried to swallow his guilt, but it bubbled up in his throat, nausea thickening his tongue. “I’m sorry that you had to be with him. I’m just…I’m scared. That’s what I do when I’m scared, and I know it’s wrong, but I do it anyway, lashing out like that.”

A crooked half smile that he recognized from his own face appeared on Ivan’s. “It’s all right. I have a lot of practice, I’m beginning to realize, telling true malice from when people are upset.”

Dimitri couldn’t help but let out a harsh, dry laugh. “Thank you for forgiving me. I wish I didn’t need it.” He hugged his dead arm to his chest. “I wish I was a better man.”

“Dimitri.” Ivan stepped forward and wrapped him in an embrace that was far more comforting than Dimitri deserved. “You are one of the best men I know.”

Dimitri did his best to steady himself.

“During the war, we would all toast—we’d say that if we died, we’d come back to tell each other the secrets of heaven. A promise that even death couldn’t part us. And I’d do it now, but I can’t even promise that anymore.” Dimitri managed a weak laugh. “I don’t think I’ll be let back in, after the last time.”

“You aren’t going to promise me that,” Ivan said, pulling back and looking Dimitri in the eye. “Because you won’t be dying. Not today. Not for a long time.”

Dimitri nodded, his throat tight, and then did the hard thing, the necessary thing, and stepped out of Ivan’s embrace. Stood by himself. “We should go.”

He was a man and he wanted comfort. But he was also the Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo, and so he was forever cursed to stand alone.

As Lida had predicted, there was no sign of anyone around the estate. There were lights burning in the parlor, but no sign of movement. Ivan and Dimitri crept along the outer wall until they reached the window of Alexey’s study.

There was a trellis with roses arching around the window. Alexey had liked to keep the window open and smell them as he worked. They were dead now, nothing more than shriveled vines and husks.

This was exactly where they had stood, alone but for a rebbe, the night that they’d married before they’d left for Rav-Mikhailburg.

Dimitri shoved down the nausea that memory brought about and instead focused on the window latch. Alexey had never worried about security—he was too feared and respected in Chernitzy for someone to be so foolish as to break in—and Dimitri himself had done a fair bit of redecorating, but never to the window latches.

“It should open with a good shove,” he told Ivan. “The latch will break. It’s probably rusty.”

Ivan eyed the window, then brought up his hands—now tipped with claws—and dug them into the wood of the window frame. With a tug, he hefted the window up. There was a sharp snap, and then the window was open with the latch dangling from it, pulled clean out of the frame.

“All right,” Dimitri said, the anxiety twisting in his chest. What if Alexey caught them? What if they were killed before they could kill him?

If that happened, it would all be over before they had a chance to fix what he’d done.

Ivan nodded once. “Let’s go. And Dimitri, know that I will protect you. Even if—even if I can’t yet—”

He looked down and away, and Dimitri couldn’t bear it. He reached out to tip Ivan’s chin up with his fingers. “It’s all right. It’s enough that you’re here with me, even if it’s difficult. I know it must be. It would have been for me, had this been years ago.”

Ivan swallowed hard, and he let Ivan give him a leg up onto the windowsill. He hauled himself over the windowsill and landed in Alexey’s study, Ivan close behind.

The room smelled the same as Alexey’s skin, musk and leather and sandalwood and something sharper, the tang of cloves and cardamom and wine. Everything was the same as he’d last seen it, from the couch where they’d spent so many evenings together to the shelves lined with books, several reserved for the romance novels that Alexey wrinkled his nose at but bought for Dimitri anyway.

He hadn’t thought that it would be so hard to be back here, with all the happy memories bearing down on him.

But maybe it was a sign of some kind of growth, that he wasn’t rooted to the spot. Maybe he was just scared of the idea of getting caught, of getting Ivan caught, of fucking this up yet again. But he needed to know that, when the time came, minutes or hours from now, he’d be able to do it.

He forced himself to move, nudging the leather chair in front of the desk aside to pull open the drawer where Alexey kept his most treasured possessions.

Old love letters between the two of them. Alexey’s father’s wedding ring. His mother’s photo in a locket tarnished with age. Clay medallions imprinted with the paw prints of long-dead yet beloved pets. Sketches of the ring that Alexey had presented him with upon their engagement. The soft insides of a man who’d grown so hard that he’d become impenetrable, even to his own husband.

Gifts from Dimitri.

He removed one carefully from the drawer, the cloth smooth between his fingers. It was a challah cover that Dimitri himself had embroidered with the most intricate flowers he could manage in rich jewel tones, interspersed with grinning skulls made up of nearly invisible stitches. A memento mori, a gift from a new betrothed to his beloved.

There was a dagger there too. Long and sharp, with a thin and unadorned blade. Alexey had never told him why this particular weapon was valuable enough to merit a place in this drawer, even when he’d asked. He’d suspected it had once been used to hurt Alexey, given the way his husband’s eyes shuttered when he brought it up and the way he’d reflexively rubbed his thumbs over his fingernails every time the dagger was mentioned.

Inspired, he tucked it into his jacket next to the pistol he’d brought with him, then shut the door. Turned on his heel. Cast one last look at the room, and then swallowed the lump in his throat and left.

“No,” Ladushka practically barked at him as he paced the length of the throne room. “We have no reason to believe he would keep his promise, whatever it means. I do not authorize you to turn yourself over to Morozov so that he can dismember you and drop your corpse at Alexey’s feet like a rabid dog. And with Dimitri gone, I am in charge.”

“What she said.” Mischa was lying on the carpet, staring at the ceiling, surrounded by stacks and stacks of bandages. “I’d rather take whatever is coming than see you needlessly sacrifice yourself to him. He probably thinks he’s going to win points with Alexey with this, but we all know that Alexey isn’t even here. What’s Morozov going to do, abandon his demon army to fly his prize back to Chernitzy? This is fucking dumb.”

“If there’s any chance to minimize the harm to Rav-Mikhailburg’s innocent civilian population,” Vasily ground out, “we need to take it.”

“Well,” Nina said from where she was sitting on Dimitri’s throne, “you don’t need to take it, you just need to use it.”

Every head in the room swiveled in her direction. “What do you mean?” Vasily asked.

Nina blinked owlishly. “What’s the easiest way to distract any army? Kill the general. And this demon army only has one of those. We use you as bait and lure him in.”

Vasily leaned forward, intrigued. “What do you—”

“No,” Annika said, cutting him off and holding up a hand. “No, no, no. No one is bait. We’re not going down that road.”

“Except it does make sense,” Ayla countered. “What Nina is saying. What if we use Vasily to lure Morozov somewhere and then ambush him?”

Vasily bit his lip. “Lada, is there a part of the palace that structurally doesn’t sit over the dungeons?”

She let out a breath. “If I recall the schematics correctly, the parlors of the east wing are over the root cellar.”

“Okay,” he said, a plan taking shape in his head as he paced, “here’s what we’re going to do.”

Vasily was very, very glad that apparently Annika kept enough explosives on the premises to blow up one very overgrown demon in one moderately sized room.

“It’s too dangerous.” Mischa was wringing their hands while Nina physically restrained them from interfering.

“It’s going to be fine,” Vasily insisted. “I’m going to pop my head out the window, call him over, he’ll fly in, I’ll be by the door, I’ll trigger the explosives, I’ll run out, he’ll be crushed, and that will be the story.”

It was simple when he said it like that, all in one breath, but privately he had his doubts. It didn’t matter, though, because Nina was right—if this worked, it was the most effective way to deal with the threat to the city and his friends. It was worth the risk.

Otherwise, they’d all just be stuck shooting demons with completely ineffective bullets in a shameful waste of perfectly good ammunition.

He twisted a wire around another stick of dynamite, anchoring it to the side of a very ornate and very ugly picture frame. He continued the chain he was building by getting up on the table and stretching as far as he could to toss dynamite into the chandelier.

Dawn was going to break soon. They had wasted too much time arguing about whether this was the right thing to do, and now Vasily was practically holding his breath while making sure they finished in time. Hiding dynamite in decorations wasn’t his specialty, but it was key that Morozov not notice that anything was amiss. Otherwise he’d just retreat right back out the window the moment the trap was sprung, and then Vasily would have caused enormous property damage for absolutely nothing.

“You don’t have to do this,” Annika said to him as he got off the table, looking for more places to stash explosives. He was still weighing the odds in his mind. Would Morozov even be crushed if an entire palace fell on his head, or would he just get up out of the rubble and kill them all?

“I do,” he retorted. “And you and everyone else need to get far away, and make sure every other person still in the palace gets down to the dungeons.”

“Ayla’s already doing it.” Annika looked down. “Vasya, if you get hurt, he—”

“Stop,” Vasily bit out. “He doesn’t get to decide what I do and don’t do with my own life.”

Because Dimitri would give anything to save Novo-Svitsevo. He already had. And so Vasily knew, deep down, that even if Dimitri would fight it, he’d let Vasily go.

He already had. Twice, now.

“Come on,” Nina said, reaching out a hand for Annika. “He’s right. Dawn is coming, and we all need to move.”

Annika turned haunted eyes to Nina, and then stepped up and wrapped Vasily in a fierce hug. “Stay safe.”

Mischa and Ladushka stepped up next and he let them fold him into their arms. “Come back to us,” Ladushka pled.

“If I die first,” Vasily said, instead of promising he’d be all right, “I’ll tell you the secrets of heaven.”

The first rays of sunlight broke over the city before long. Vasily lounged against the windowsill smoking a cigarette.

He found he didn’t mind that he was alone, looking up at the sky turning pink and then orange as the night turned to dawn. The wind was bracing on his face, the smell of the wintery air clean. He had always been alone when the worst things in his life had happened to him, in bedrooms, on battlefields, in ornate gilded parlors. It was easier to be brave when it was just him, when he didn’t have to put on an act for the ones he loved. When he could let his hands shake without worrying it was scaring his friends.

What he was planning next would take ten seconds. They might be the most important ten seconds of his life.

He looked out the open window as the thing that had been Morozov flew into the courtyard. Vasily’s heart was pounding in his chest, and he didn’t trust himself to stay steady much longer, not in the face of a man who’d become a literal monster. He tapped ash off the cigarette’s tip and held it behind his back.

“Hey,” he called out the window, waving an arm. “Shit-stain, over here. Come and get me if you want me so badly.”

He tripped backwards as Morozov shot up from the ground with another bone-rattling screech, and praised himself for not pissing in his trousers right then and there. Morozov landed on the windowsill, hunched over and drooling, his talons cracking the plaster as he wobbled.

“You killed my master,” Morozov growled. “I will present you to him in pieces, as atonement for my failings.”

Vasily shrugged, backing up, affecting nonchalance. “Sorry to be a cockblock, but it needed to be done.”

Three more steps as Morozov advanced. Vasily eyed the point on the wall he needed to get to, where a line of gunpowder extended out across the carpet.

With a breath, he aimed the cigarette and flicked it.

Ten.

He needed to make sure the flame caught, that it would ignite and cause the first explosion, the one which would trigger the others. Because if he didn’t, then Morozov would catch him as he sprinted back out through the room. As soon as he saw the flash of flames and heard Morozov’s surprised grunt, he turned and sprinted for the open door.

Nine.

It was four paces away. He’d measured.

Eight.

He got three paces away before something caught his ankle and he tripped, sprawling onto the carpet.

Seven.

Vasily twisted, his heart in his throat and adrenaline flooding his body. He looked down, ripping a knife out of his belt to try and saw through whatever had trapped him, but it was a writhing rope of dark flesh.

Six.

Morozov was lying with one clawed, scaled arm outstretched, talons grasping Vasily’s ankle, and his eyes on the growing flames.

Five.

Morozov couldn’t release Vasily without setting him free, but he couldn’t smother the flames without letting go of Vasily either.

The whine that Morozov let out as he realized this too made it all worth it for one split second.

Four.

He realized he wasn’t going to make it. Not with Morozov grabbing him like this. He struggled to free himself, stabbing Morozov’s wrist, but the demon appeared impervious to the pain. He dropped the knife, gave up, and dug his nails into the carpet to try to tug himself forward, his arms straining, but Morozov held fast.

Three.

The fuse in front of him was moments away from reaching the first string of explosives. The rest would follow, blowing the support beams on the ceiling. The weight of the upper floors would cause the roof to cave in, and it was all going to fall down on them within the span of heartbeats.

Two.

Vasily knew, with a kind of calm acceptance he never would have predicted, that he was about to die.

It was all right, because he was going to save his friends.

It was all right, because he was going to save his people.

It was all right, because maybe after gaining Dimitri and losing him, he was dead inside already.

He stopped fighting. With everything he had left, he pushed every scrap of love he felt for Dimitri into the bond between them. Every last look and touch and promise. Every hope he had for their future, every dream they’d ever shared.

One.

Vasily Sokolov took his last breath and imagined Dimitri’s eyes.

And then, with an explosive burst of pain, it all went black.

Vasily had died.

Vasily had just died.

Dimitri was kneeling on the carpet of Alexey’s study, choking on sobs, clutching his chest like he could repair the gaping wound there. The pain lasted only for a moment, but the knowledge scored him soul deep.

He had left and Vasily had died.

“Dima?” Ivan was in front of him, holding him up by the shoulders, his wings flared around them like a tent. “What’s wrong?”

“Vasya,” Dimitri managed to choke out. “We need to go back. I think he’s dead, Ivan. He’s dead. He’s dead.”

Ivan’s hands tightened on Dimitri’s shoulders, and his brother took in a deep, rattling breath. Dimitri could feel the tips of claws press against his skin.

“I don’t know what happened,” Ivan said with incongruous calm. “But if Vasily is dead, he would want you to keep going. He would want you to finish this. He wouldn’t want to die in vain. Don’t let him.”

Dimitri leaned his forehead into the crook of Ivan’s neck, and Ivan let go of his shoulders to hold him close.

“Let his memory be a blessing,” Ivan whispered. “If he’s dead, let his memory feed a revolution.”

“I don’t want him to go,” Dimitri sobbed out. Everything in him was breaking. The very fiber of his being was shattering apart.

“No one wants to lose the ones they love,” Ivan said, his voice thick. “But right now, you don’t have the luxury of time to mourn. So bury your grief. Let’s go.”

He pulled Dimitri to his feet and tugged him along as though he weighed nothing. And Dimitri drowned in grief until he started to burn with anger. By the time they left the study, his entire being was made of rage.

Alexey felt the tether that bound him to Morozov snap in a wash of agonizing pain.

He was sitting in his bedroom with a dressing gown pulled on over his clothes, to fight the agonizing pain from the cold cracking its way through his bones. The longer the rift was held open, the deeper it sank into him. Alexey suspected that, in a way, he was absorbing some of the middle world into himself. That he was taking some of its power and keeping it for his own, alongside the workings of the power of death that he could already wield. It was filling him up, hollowing him out, and he found himself afraid for the first time since all of this had begun.

He was afraid that the power of the middle world was pushing so far against him that it would erase his very being.

Over and over, he breathed. Over and over, he reminded himself that this body had surpassed all limits, had carved its way through life and death and pain and was still here and still whole. Reminded himself that he was the master of his mind, that he was the one who controlled the void and not the other way around.

Still, he had been unable to stay in the cellar, too agitated by the nearness of the middle realm to sit and watch the darkness writhe within the rip in reality. It felt, disgustingly, like the uncertainty that had crippled him as God had ordered him to murder Dimitri. So he had gone up to his bedroom to center himself, waiting for what came next.

He hadn’t expected it to be this.

Something was wrong, terribly and horribly wrong. He needed to go to the rift, to check its stability. He would have made it through the door in three steps, except that there was a body blocking his way.

Alexey Balakin looked down, straight into the eyes of his husband.

The world tilted and shifted on its axis, and Alexey struggled to maintain balance, control. For a moment, he doubted his own mind, because surely Dimitri wouldn’t be here, in front of him, his cheeks pink from the cold and his body swathed in a thick winter coat.

“Alexey,” Dimitri said, as if he were paying a social call.

It was impossible to do anything but gape, to ponder how to react. The last time he had seen Dimitri in a doorway, it had been because his husband was there to kill him.

Somehow, Alexey felt as though this was inevitably the same.

And then his husband punched him directly in the jaw, sending stars bursting behind his eyes.

He staggered back, clutching his cheek.

“Why are you here?” The question scratched its way out of his dry throat, the power of speech having nearly deserted him in his surprise. “What are you doing, Dima?”

“What I should have done the last time.” Dimitri had lines in the corners of his eyes now, bruises underneath that spoke of exhaustion and ill health. “Putting down a fucking monster.”

“What—” Alexey began, but Dimitri cut him off with a snarl. He took a step forward, but the movement was jerky, a limp that he’d never had before plaguing him. Alexey almost reached out to steady him.

“You just killed the only good thing I’ve ever had for my own,” Dimitri hissed. “The only person who ever made this fucking awful life worth living. The only reason I defied God Himself and came back from the fucking dead. I could have known peace. I could have known rest. I came back for him, and you killed him, you utter fucking cock. I will destroy you.”

This was a Dimitri he had never seen before, rigid with rage and fury, his voice as jagged as broken glass. And it made Alexey hurt, the way that Dimitri spoke of this other man, as if anyone could surpass everything he, Alexey Balakin, had ever given Dimitri Alexeyev.

“You won’t be able to.” Alexey should have stepped forward, but instead he stepped back. “That is not how this will ever end. It will be me killing you, for the impertinence of daring to defy me and God both.”

Dimitri didn’t shrink from the claim. Instead, he bared his teeth in a sick imitation of a grin, the expression feral. He held up a hand, the fingers wreathed in shadow. “That might have been true, before. But I died too, Lyosha. I died and left a part of myself behind in you, just as you did to me. And so every power that you have, I have too. You will never escape me, just as I will never escape you. And in the balance, if we alone can never defeat the other, I’d bet on the man who has a country behind him. Who has friends and family and love behind him.”

“Love?” Alexey spat. “What do you know about love? You spurned everything I had to offer you without a second thought. I loved you enough to die for you, and the thanks I got? Nothing but insubordination.”

Dimitri scoffed, holding his hand up and sending a tendril of shadow Alexey’s way. It coiled lazily through the air, in no rush to find its target. “You never loved me. And I realized that I never loved you either, not in any way that counted. Not in any way that mattered.”

And that hurt, more than soul deep, seeing Dimitri standing there and claiming that what they shared had been nothing. Claiming Alexey had never loved his own husband. “Fuck you,” was all he managed to spit out past the lump that rose in his throat.

“You wish,” Dimitri said with an ugly grin. He reached up and pulled down the collar of the jacket he wore, tilting his chin up and baring his throat, marked with bruises from another man’s mouth. “You wish you could have ever made me feel the way he could. I have friends in my life now who love me for the man I am. I have been gifted a kind of love you were incapable of ever giving. I have known pleasures that would be impossible for you to imagine. You thought holding me face down and fucking me raw constituted pleasure? I feel sorry for you, Lyosha, that that is all you’ll ever know. That you’ll never know what it’s like to be taken apart, bit by bit, piece by piece, reduced to nothing but sensation, held by someone you trust and love and cherish with all your heart. Vasya showed me what it meant to love, what it meant to feel, and you will never know the utter fucking agony of having it taken away.”

Alexey’s foolish, fragile heart would never learn. It was the one part of him that had never hardened, despite everything he had put his body and soul through. He had become unbreakable, invincible, but the part of him that Dimitri had touched was forever tainted. It was the last part of him that would have to be excised. And now, he was being given the means to do it for good.

God had never abandoned Alexey. God had been showing him that now, he had to stand alone.

Dimitri laughed, bitter and dry, a sound like Alexey had never heard from his husband’s mouth before. “There was so much more I thought I would want to say to you. There was so much that I was planning to say, but now that I’m here, now that I’m looking at you, Lyosha? I find that none of it is worth it, because you’ve taken so much from me already. You’ve taken the only person who ever truly loved me, and who I ever truly loved in turn. I wish it had been him I’d married. I wish I’d never met you. I wish I’d never touched you. And I can’t undo a lifetime of wasting my breath on you, but you don’t get to take any more of it. I am done with you and I am done with this.”

It was like standing in front of a different man, and Alexey had to admire the harsh coldness that Dimitri embodied. “So you finally learned something from me after all.”

“I learned nothing at all from you except how not to be loved.” Dimitri reached a hand out, and every muscle in Alexey’s body tensed, ready to fight. Ready to counter whatever poor use of the Holy Science and its power of death that Dimitri had been able to seize and learn.

But all Dimitri did was reach out and grab the decanter on the sideboard by the neck, hefting it in his hand. “All I learned from you is that I am worth something, and that you didn’t realize that. I bet you don’t even remember that night.”

“What night?” The question slipped out of Alexey’s mouth before he could stop it.

“Precisely,” Dimitri said, and then raised his arm and threw.

The decanter shattered against the wall behind him, and Alexey shook off the shock of seeing Dimitri again, here, instead of summoning his power. He reached for the void inside him a heartbeat later, but he was interrupted by the feeling of Dimitri’s hand planted squarely against his chest, shoving him backwards against the wall.

Cold flooded through him, so frigid that it was more like heat. It took him a moment to shake himself and fight back, sending a burst of power Dimitri’s way. He countered it with a raised hand, and the magic responded to him like it was his own. Alexey gaped, astounded, as the power twined around Dimitri’s hand and arm like a contented cat.

“I told you. I left something in you.” Dimitri flicked his fingers, and Alexey’s own magic shot back at him, sinking into his shoulder. He couldn’t stop the scream that came from him, the pain of the power eating away at his flesh and bones and causing him to bow forward before he straightened, panting, and crossed the room in two steps to seize Dimitri by the throat, throwing him down to the floor.

Alexey knelt on top of Dimitri’s chest, his ribs groaning under Alexey’s knee, making sure to pin his hand and choke his breath so that he couldn’t summon magic, couldn’t speak. Blood was seeping down Alexey’s shoulder and dripping down onto Dimitri’s face, painting his cheeks like tears. “It doesn’t matter. We are the only ones left, and now I will deal with you for good. No matter how you came back to life the last time, you will never be able to haunt me again.”

Dimitri smiled with all his teeth, his face purpling, and Alexey had a gut-churning sensation that he’d only ever experienced once before, when he’d been walking across a decimated battlefield to survey Dimitri’s losses and had come across what he thought was a dead soldier lying in an abandoned trench. Except that as he approached, she’d looked at him, grinned and opened her hand. In her palm had been a grenade pin.

The explosive she’d activated had detonated a heartbeat later, completely shredding both of his legs. It had been the first time his body had sustained major damage, and he didn’t know for sure he’d survive until he’d woken up healed.

There was a grenade somewhere in the room with them, and Dimitri had the pin in his palm.

He felt it a moment later, a hand closing over his own throat, but something more than that. Talons, the points digging into his flesh, pulling him off Dimitri as if he weighed no more than a child.

Alexey turned as best he could while being lifted, scrabbling at his assailant, but the hands around his throat didn’t ease.

“I don’t think,” a quiet voice said, “that you have the right to hurt Dimitri anymore, Alexey.”

He was flipped and pinned against the floor so hard that his bones groaned in protest. He struggled to breathe and to process what it was that he was seeing.

“Ivan?”

Alexey blinked, wondering if his eyes were playing tricks on him. But no—the subtle differences he could name by memory, given that he’d spent a year’s worth of nights cataloging how Ivan was not Dimitri, were all there.

Dimitri, next to them, staggered to his feet.

“You don’t have a good history of killing your lovers permanently, Lyosha.” Alexey had never seen such a look of utter bloodlust on Dimitri’s face. “Not me, not Ivan. And I don’t think it will work out in your favor, in the end.”

Ivan’s hand flexed around Alexey’s throat, and Alexey gurgled, blackness seeping around the edges of his vision. He couldn’t believe this was the boy that he’d taught how to shoot, that he’d taught how to command respect, that he’d offered to legitimize. Ivan’s eyes were black now, his pale face carved from marble. Stretching behind him were two massive, black wings.

“What are you?” Alexey managed to gasp out. “What did you become?”

“Only what you made me,” Ivan whispered. He opened his mouth as if to say something more, but then stopped. He merely turned Alexey’s body around so that he was facing Dimitri again.

Dimitri unsheathed a knife.

For the first time, true fear began to seep through Alexey’s veins. Dimitri placed the sharp tip against the single scar on Alexey’s throat.

When he started to dig, Alexey couldn’t help it. He screamed until the world went black.

As Alexey’s body hit the floor, trapped under Ivan’s winged form, Dimitri stood and watched. He listened to his husband scream, a sound of pure agony, and remembered boating on the lake behind the house in the summer sun. He remembered the two of them riding into the woods on their horses, cantering through the fields, his sides aching from laughter, the feeling of Alexey’s lips against his.

Dimitri remembered the plush thickness of the rug beneath him as he read beside the fire, two dogs curled at his feet. He remembered corded arms around him on cool winter nights, the warmth of quickened breath in his ear as his husband entered him, the moments of silence in which they could merely be. No palace, no servants, no duties.

Dimitri remembered all of it.

And he would never forget these moments, despite what had happened. He would remember them just as vividly, as painfully, as he would remember Alexey’s strong fingers curled around his throat. The icy frigidness of those eyes, the pain of broken ribs beneath his flesh, the muffled sound of his own cries. The pain of dying. The pain of seeing what Alexey had wrought in the world.

And so, as Dimitri knelt and dug into Alexey’s neck, blood rushing from the gaping wound that was created as the blade parted flesh and his fingers searched for the lingering shard of his bone, Dimitri felt the warmth of tears in his eyes from the grief and the satisfaction both.

Eventually his fingers closed on something that felt like home amidst the gore. And he sat back, a sliver of his own bone between his bloodied fingers.

Alexey finally lost consciousness, the only sign that he was still alive the slow rise and fall of his chest. Dimitri shuddered as he felt the magic that had haunted him for so long whisper away, leaving his body like water dripping through cupped hands. When he twitched his fingers, when he tried to call on the shadow, nothing happened.

The relief warred with grief. He wasn’t being haunted any longer, but nor could he wield the kind of weapon that would haunt others. That would help protect his country. So there was only one thing left to do—to remove the truest threat that would need to be countered with magic Dimitri no longer possessed.

When Dimitri met Ivan’s eyes, he finally breathed out the desire which had been gnawing at him for days. Months, years.

“Let’s end this for good.”

He knelt down next to Alexey and pulled out the shard of his bone with the Name while Ivan opened Alexey’s mouth. And with all his might, he stabbed it down through Alexey’s tongue.

The transformation was subtle, but there. A flush of warmth back into Alexey’s cheeks. A reddening of the blood seeping from his neck, a heavier flow as his heart began to beat once more at a normal pace.

This was their chance.

He extended a hand to Ivan, and his brother grasped it, Alexey’s blood slick between their palms.

“We can end it.” Ivan licked his lips. “Killing him will release a burst of energy, and I can use that, in part, to seal the rift.”

Ivan bent down to scoop up Alexey’s limp form, and together they made their way to the cellar, where Dimitri could feel the call of the middle world, as insistent as the hope and the horror warring in his chest at the thought that Alexey was almost, very nearly, gone for good. At the thought of what that would mean and how that would feel.

Dimitri was finally, finally ready to live in a world where Alexey was truly gone.

He woke up unable to breathe, choking on blood. Were Alexey a normal human being, he undoubtedly would have been long dead. His hand fluttered up to his throat, which had been rent open, ribbons of flesh hanging from either side of the wound. His fingers touched a hard ridge of cartilage—his own trachea.

Dimitri and Ivan were standing in front of him. He was in the cellar, lying on the cold mud floor, the ashes of his faithful cushioning his head.

He tried to speak but couldn’t. There was something in his mouth, a burning pain through his pinned tongue. He tried to summon power to his fingertips, but as soon as he reached for the void inside him, a boot landed on his chest, crushing his ribs.

“No,” Dimitri said, his voice unwavering. “Not anymore.”

“He’s yours, Dimitri,” Ivan said. He was standing in front of the rift in the world, a hand extended towards the pitch darkness. Alexey blinked, his vision hazy, his eyes betraying him once more because there seemed to be another man standing on the other side of the rift, his massive bulk and wings large enough to swallow the sky, a crown of broken shards across his brow. The figure was reaching towards Ivan. They were holding hands across the void. “He’s yours, and we will take care of the abomination that is this rift between worlds.”

“I—”

Alexey struggled to draw in a breath through the blood in his mouth that was filling his throat. Agony was pulsing through him. He reached for the connection that he knew lay between him and Dimitri after what his husband had done, but it wasn’t there. It was a bridge of ice, impassable, closed off.

“No,” Dimitri said, quieter this time. “Don’t even bother to try. You can’t hurt me anymore.”

He held something up. It was a sliver of bone, and looking at it sent a blaze of purest pain through Alexey’s shattered body.

“Nothing of me is left in you. You have no claim to me. Not my body, not my heart, not my bones or my soul or anything else.”

Dimitri knelt down, brushing a hand across Alexey’s brow and into his hair. Alexey reached up reflexively, grabbing Dimitri’s wrist, the same way he’d held on to Dimitri when Dimitri had run him through with a knife to begin his rebirth. The way that Dimitri had clung to him when Alexey had punched a blade straight into his heart.

He had tried for so long, and despite everything, Alexey did not want to let Dimitri go. Not ever. Not like this.

Dimitri leaned forward, pressing a kiss to Alexey’s brow. When he drew back, his mouth was painted with Alexey’s blood.

“You know what, Lyosha? I owe you nothing. Not my love or my hatred or even your death. I get to decide what I give to your memory. And I won’t kill myself wondering whether it’s a terrible thing to forgive an abuser. Whether I did the right thing, fighting the war. Whether you deserved what you got, in the end.”

Dimitri pulled back, his hand leaving Alexey’s hair. A tear snaked its way out of Alexey’s eye. He tried to speak, but nothing happened. Not even air was left to him, now.

When Dimitri stood and pulled his wrist out of Alexey’s grasp, Alexey grieved.

Alexey remembered the feeling of Dimitri beneath him the first time, the satisfaction of watching him blossom into the best version of himself under Alexey’s guidance, the sound of Dimitri’s infatuated Lyosha in his ear. The times when Dimitri defied his authority, when he made mistake after mistake that nearly shredded the court at Rav-Mikhailburg, the frustration and the grief of Dimitri refusing to accept the Holy Science.

Blood bubbled up through his lips in place of what he wanted to say. I’m sorry, Dima. I love you, Dima. I was right, Dima. You deserved all of this, Dima. You made me do it, Dima. I didn’t want to, Dima. I’m not whole without you, Dima. Don’t leave me, Dima.

Please, Dima.

“Ivan,” Dimitri said, his words filling the quiet where Alexey’s should have been. He held out a hand and a figure approached him. Ivan, his black wings covering Alexey and Dimitri like a wedding canopy.

Ivan handed Dimitri a knife, glinting in the dark.

“Goodbye, Lyosha,” Dimitri whispered. “Die knowing what we could have had. The happiness that we could have made in this home. Everything we could have done for Novo-Svitsevo. Die knowing that you ruined us, ruined this, all for nothing.”

The tip of the knife pressed into his breastbone, then broke flesh, driving towards his struggling heart. Dimitri’s eyes never left his.

There was agony, and the darkness rushed towards him. He called out for God, for his Creator who had imbued him with divine power and right, for whom he had defied death and done so much.

There was no response.

Alexey Balakin shuddered and whispered Dima one last time.

Vasily was dreaming, he was sure of it, because everything was blurred around the edges. Yet it had the same immediacy as all the dreams he shared with Dimitri, the same sense that he could reach out and touch everything, because it was real.

He was standing in front of what must be the estate at Chernitzy.

The doors were hanging on their hinges, and the hallway he entered was in a similar state of disarray. The furniture had been knocked over, the paintings were hanging askew on the walls, and there was a smell in the air like the aftermath of an artillery attack, acrid and smoky and with the faintest tinge of blood.

Vasily’s heart raced faster and faster as he made his way through the halls, not knowing where he was going but trusting the connection he had with Dimitri to lead him to a door in the servants’ quarters. It was hanging half-ajar, and there was nothing but blackness beyond the threshold. When Vasily yanked the door the rest of the way open, light from the hall fell on a crude wooden staircase.

He thundered down it two steps at a time, and when he got to the bottom and his feet hit packed earth, his bones aching with a sudden cold, he blinked until his eyes adjusted to the gloom.

“Dima.”

Dimitri was kneeling in the center of an elaborate circle, drawn in blood. There were motes of dust floating in the thick, sour air. Sparks skittered across Vasily’s skin, like wool when it was charged with static. There was a smudge hanging in the air, darker than the rest of the cellar, and next to it was Ivan. He was caressing it with the tip of one wing, like he was soothing a scared animal.

“Did you…?” Vasily was frozen in place. “Are you…?”

Dimitri didn’t answer, still kneeling on the dirt floor in front of a pile of ashes.

Something was glinting amidst the darkness. As Vasily stepped forward, he realized it was gold. A wedding ring.

His stomach revolted, that Alexey had thought he’d had a claim to Dimitri even now, even after all of this.

Vasily knelt down beside Dimitri and reached out a tentative hand, unsure if Dimitri realized he was there, not knowing if this was a shared dream or something else.

“Dima?”

“He’s dead,” Dimitri said. “He’s gone. He’s not going to hurt us anymore.”

“No one’s going to hurt you, Dima,” Vasily promised, even though it wasn’t his promise to make. “No one is going to hurt you ever again. You’re safe. You’re safe.”

He looped his arms around Dimitri’s shoulders and pushed that sense of safety through their bond—their bond, which Vasily thanked God was still there and as strong as ever. Dimitri was shaking, and Vasily sat back from his kneeling position so he could tug Dimitri into his lap, holding him even closer.

Dimitri was whispering something, over and over. Vasily leaned in to hear.

He’s gone.

There was too much sadness, too much mourning there for Vasily to feel anything but sick at the words. But then Dimitri sighed and melted into Vasily’s hold, and it was like he was coming back to himself. “Vasya? I’m dreaming.”

“Yes,” Vasily said, almost ready to sob with relief. Because if they were both dreaming, they were both alive. “Yes, you’re dreaming. You did it, Dima.”

Because he had, and he’d lived.

Dimitri turned his face into Vasily’s neck and clung to him, and Vasily didn’t let him go until the dream faded around them. “I’m coming for you,” he said, pressing a kiss to Dimitri’s forehead as he felt himself reach for wakefulness. “I’ll see you soon.”

Vasily woke to fire and agony and a wonderful, beautiful, all-encompassing sense of joy.

“Vasya?” Mischa was kneeling on the bed next to him, their face still smudged with dirt and blood. Ladushka and Annika were there too, still wearing expressions of concern. Nina was standing at the foot of the bed, examining him like he was a science experiment. Although he supposed, to her, he was. “Can you hear us?”

“Was I…dead?” Vasily’s tongue was thick in his mouth. “What happened?”

He tried to get up, but Mischa pushed him down. “Morozov was killed in the explosion, but yeah, so were you. You fractured all of your ribs when debris hit you, and the impact stopped your heart. Thank God we didn’t actually go down to the dungeons to join everyone else. We dug you out, since the room was only partially collapsed, and I got it started again with chest compressions—which, sorry about this, but I think I just fractured all your ribs further—and you’ve been unconscious for a day.”

A day.

“The city?” His vision was blurry. He blinked a few times, but it didn’t clear. Mischa must have given him something for the pain.

“The demons dispersed after Morozov died. They started attacking each other, aimless, and then about an hour later they crumbled to ash. We thought it was the sunlight or something, but—”

“It wasn’t,” he rasped out. Every word hurt. “Dima did it. He killed Alexey. And he’s alive. We met in a dream.”

“Thank the Lord our God,” Ladushka whispered, her voice thick. Annika just started to cry, her hand with its bloodied and split knuckles grasping her amulet.

Vasily took in a breath, realized that the entirety of his rib cage was one mass of agony and that he could almost feel the ribs poking through his skin, and then decided that he didn’t need to breathe, actually.

But he really did need to get the fuck to Chernitzy. To Dimitri. Because seeing him in dreams wasn’t enough. Holding him in dreams wasn’t enough either.

He swung his legs over the bed. “Get horses ready. I’m going to go get him, and don’t try to argue with me.”

Talking hurt and he tasted blood, and when he landed on his feet he was overcome with a wash of dizziness and nausea so acute he almost fell. But he’d dealt with worse recently. Like being temporarily dead.

To their immense credit, none of them attempted to stop him. Likely because they were all as eager as he was to ensure that Dimitri was still alive.

Mischa caught him around the shoulders, somehow bracing him with their skinny frame. They had a syringe in hand, and Vasily shied away, but they just clicked their tongue at him. “I’m going to drug you to the fucking gills with painkillers, otherwise you’ll never make it.”

They jabbed the needle into his arm, and within a minute he felt So. Much. Better.

“Thank you,” he slurred. “Get horses.”

“Get a carriage,” Annika corrected. “You’re not going to stay upright.”

Vasily took a step forward and stumbled, and this time Nina swooped in to catch him. “I’m going to say that the general is right on this one,” she said, grunting. “Come on, you.”

Time blurred, with the drugs and the lingering pain. Vasily remembered being shoved into a carriage with blankets piled on his lap, the rest of his friends around him. Lukas had made noise about coming—or was it Yullyan?—but Ladushka had demurred, saying they needed to do this alone, and that the visitors should stay with their delegations to keep everyone calm.

There was an inn, because in a carriage the trip would take five days. And then another inn, and another, and then Vasily started to refuse the painkillers because he knew they were close, tears leaking involuntarily from his eyes every time they hit a pothole, his hand holding Annika’s in an iron grip as she talked him through the pain.

And then they were there.

There was a single light burning in the estate’s windows, and Vasily’s heart flipped. He stumbled out of the carriage, had a moment where he was sure he was going to black out, took a break to vomit from the agony instead, and then took the steps to the front door two at a time, every bone in his body aching, his ribs flaring with pain. Despite how tightly they’d been wrapped, it was like the shards of his bones were poking through the skin. He didn’t know how Dimitri had managed all his injuries when he’d come back. It wasn’t as if he’d been drugged out of his mind every day as he sat on the throne.

He made his way into the estate and up the stairs towards where that light was burning. He heard his friends behind him, but he didn’t stop to look.

An open bedroom door. He almost died again with relief when he walked in to see Dimitri nestled in the blankets, fast asleep.

“I’ve been urging him to rest.” Ivan was sitting in a chair by the bedside, his wings draped over the arms in a way that couldn’t possibly have been comfortable. “He wanted to see you, to go back straight away. But I made him sleep first, and then he had the dream about you, and we decided to stay here.”

“Thank you,” Vasily said, “for keeping him safe.”

Ivan nodded tightly. “Of course.”

Dimitri blinked and stirred, coming to slowly. “Vasya?”

“I’m here.” Vasily staggered the rest of the way to the bed, collapsing onto it, his forehead dropping to Dimitri’s. “I’m here.”

Dimitri sagged into the hand that Vasily threaded through his hair, and then came fully awake. “I didn’t really trust that you were alive. That it hadn’t just been a dream. I felt it. I felt you die.”

“Payback, Dima, darling,” Vasily managed through his tears, because they were coming freely now and there was nothing he could do to stop them, no matter how much sobbing hurt. He kissed Dimitri once, then again, the bond between them thrumming. “I’ve felt you die too, and I never want to repeat the experience.”

Dimitri laughed, and maybe it was the first real, true laugh he’d heard from the other man ever in their lives. It was free and light and beautiful.

It was a sound worth having died for.

Dimitri sat up and got out of bed as the rest of the court arrived in the room, the three of them falling on Dimitri and Vasily. Everyone was finally together again, with nothing to tear them apart.

Eventually Ladushka reminded them that they needed to be on their way back, and Dimitri stood from the bed. He turned to his brother. “Are you going to be all right?”

Ivan looked as one would expect after watching his brother kill his lover. “I’m all right,” he said, even though he was a little more blank-eyed and ashen-faced than Vasily would have liked. He let go of Dimitri’s hand, allowing him to go to Ivan.

“Remember what you promised me?” Dimitri asked, his eyes crinkled with concern.

“I do.” Ivan looked up to the ceiling, blinking hard. “And after seeing him again? After seeing the way he—he—” He broke off, shook his head, and took in a deep, shuddering breath. “I think I see what you mean. I think I’m ready to let Asmodai try.”

“Good.” Dimitri nodded. “Please, Vanya. Believe you’re worth it. I love you.”

Ivan leaned forward and wrapped Dimitri in a hug, which Dimitri returned. “I will. And I love you, too.”

Ivan didn’t say anything more, just stepped backwards and vanished between one blink and the next, returning to the middle world, the reason for his summoning complete. But at least some of the pain in his eyes had eased.

Vasily hoped he had left to find the peace he deserved.

“Come on,” Vasily said softly. “Let’s go home.”

Back in one of the inns, Vasily tried to distract himself from the pain of life going on by wondering about the status of his spy network. He tried to think through all the spies he’d cultivated in all the other countries, envisioning the web he’d draped over the continent, which usually filled him with so much pride but now only made him feel hollow.

Because even though Alexey was now dead, the worst was still to come.

Dimitri had gone into his own room and hadn’t asked Vasily to follow. Hadn’t even looked backwards at Vasily, no hesitation in the dismissal. It stung far more than the pain of broken ribs on a hard bed.

He wondered what he was going to do with himself, after this. He wondered if he was ever going to feel anything except this strange, aching discomfort ever again. He wondered how he was going to return to the summit and watch Dimitri propose and then remarry and then have a family and a life which Vasily was no longer a part of.

He wondered how much shame there would be in running away, in returning to the no-name region he’d grown up in. His uncle was dead, thanks to Dimitri, and he technically owned the land. Maybe he could hide there until he figured out how to piece his shredded heart back together, if he ever could. Or maybe he should take that lordship that Dimitri had offered and fuck off somewhere far away and be rich and miserable and alone.

Vasily would have stayed like that all night, staring at the ceiling vacantly, if there hadn’t been a knock at the door. For a moment, his heart fluttered into his chest, thinking it was Dimitri, but when the door opened and Annika put her head in, all the hope fled out of him again.

“Oh, Vasya,” she sighed.

She was wearing a thick sweater over clean breeches, and her hair was wet and shining like she’d washed off the day too. Her fingers were tapping against her thigh, though, in the way they always did after battle. Her adrenaline, she’d always said, taking too long to settle after nearly facing death.

He was about to tell her that he didn’t need her to take care of him, but she merely crossed the room, her brown eyes creased with worry.

For a moment she didn’t say anything, standing in front of him and biting her lip, her arms coming to cross over her chest. Then she seemed to make a decision, and she let out a quiet breath of air.

“My grandmother would tell us a story about creation. One that the mystics of old would tell.” Annika came to sit next to him on the bed, the mattress creaking under their combined weight.

“The story went like this. When God created the world, He breathed light into the nothingness. And He put it in ten vessels, which He sent out to the universe. And if all ten had made it to their destinations, the world would have been perfect. But they couldn’t contain the light of creation, and so they broke apart. The light splintered, and with it the promise of perfection. But God tried again, this time putting light into humans instead of vessels. And it worked, because we as people could do something that the vessels could not—we could reflect the light back, instead of trying to merely contain it.

“The mystics say our job while we are alive is to participate in the work of drawing together all of that original lost light of creation and putting it back into the whole. Of finding the shards of light and the broken part of those vessels. And sometimes, that light is found in the darkest of places. If we do our work well, if we live up to the challenge that God laid out for us, we must venture into the dark. We must sit in the brokenness because it is holy. It is where we find God. It is where we find our true meaning.”

Vasily’s eyes burned. He tilted against Annika, leaning his head on her shoulder. His body, his grief, were too heavy to hold up alone. He thanked God that Annika was there to lean on.

Annika pulled his head against her chest and ran her fingers through his hair in soothing strokes. “None of us are immune from shattering, not even God. All that we can do is pick up the scattered bits of light and pray that we gather them all in our hands.”

He looked down at his hands, blinking through the tears, breathing through the grief. “And what happens if we fail?”

Annika sighed and hugged him tighter, and he didn’t even care about the pain in his ribs. “Not even God could manage it, Vasya. Maybe we’re destined to fail. And maybe that’s the point, that we know that and we keep trying anyway. That we keep searching our way through the darkness, trying to seize the light.”

She held him and he held her, and he wondered, truly and deeply for the first time, whether after this he was ever going to be all right.

Vasily spent the entire ride back numb, trying to do as Annika had said. Trying to venture into the dark places of himself, his soul, his grief, and gather up the shards of light that remained. He clung to those little flickers of light. The happy memories, the remembered touches, every gesture of Dimitri’s that he could hold on to. The flutter in his stomach whenever Dimitri smiled. The bone-deep pleasure in knowing that his beloved felt so safe, so content in his arms, that he could truly relax. The sound of Dimitri’s laugh, pure and raw and beautiful. Each tender touch, each accidental moment of intimacy, each time those lean, perfect arms had twined around Vasily’s neck.

Every time he’d fallen deeper and deeper in love.

These were the moments he would cling to. The ones he would never allow to slide through his grasp.

He gathered them all together in his hands, but the light slipped away like water. And Vasily wondered if his quest was as futile as God’s. If he’d ever be able to hold the light together, or if it would shatter, spilling across the darkness of the universe, leaving him no choice but to either give up or chase it.

There was a moment, when they got out of the carriage in the stable yard of the palace at Rav-Mikhailburg, when the grooms were rushing around them to grab reins and luggage, and the guards were collecting their weapons and the palace stewards were coming out to greet the party with warm drinks, that Dimitri and Vasily found themselves standing alone in the middle of the chaos.

Vasily’s knees almost gave out. He didn’t want to do this. He wanted to remain suspended in this moment. He wanted to let it stretch on forever, his windburned cheeks stinging in the cold, snowflakes and pain clouding his vision, the smallest shred of possibility still hanging between him and Dimitri because they had not yet done this final thing.

But the moment came, and Vasily was merely a man, powerless to stop it.

Dimitri turned to him, his eyes wet, and pressed his gloved hand to Vasily’s cheek. It may have been his imagination, but even through the leather, the contact burned.

“Thank you,” Dimitri whispered, “for seeing me through this. For getting me here. Where I could be truly”—his voice cracked and he swallowed—“free.”

“You don’t sound free,” Vasily countered. He would have moved to embrace Dimitri, but his body was pinned in place. “You sound like a man walking to the scaffold.”

“Well,” Dimitri said, biting his lip and not meeting Vasily’s eye, “freedom was always going to mean something different for a man like me.”

“Dima—”

“No.” The finality of it settled into Vasily’s chest. He could have sworn that his heart ceased to beat. “No, Vasya. This is it. I’ve saved my country, my people, and this is what I get.”

When Dimitri stepped away from him, Vasily knew in his bones that it would be the very last time. He was the Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo now, and he was no longer Vasily’s to keep.

“Ask Aziza to meet me in the parlor tomorrow morning,” Dimitri said, turning to Ladushka. “Tell her I have an offer to make.”

Dimitri made it back to his room without any thought, his feet moving mechanically as his mind went numb.

It was like the weeks and months after arriving in Wilnetzk. His body was not his own, his mind was spinning uselessly, and he felt half a breath from shattering.

He didn’t protest as the servants undressed him, swapping his snow-damp clothes for a comfortable sweater and breeches. He stared blankly as they stoked the fire higher, and someone threw a blanket around his shoulders and guided him into an armchair. Another servant handed him a tumbler of vodka. He threw it back and wordlessly held it out for a replacement.

The alcohol didn’t do enough to numb the feeling of Vasily’s cheek under his gloved hand. His fingers twitched around the cold glass of the tumbler. With the spasm, it fell to the floor.

A servant swept it up, blotting at the drops of alcohol that had fallen onto the carpet. His steward appeared with a plate of blinis and caviar. Dimitri shook his head mutely. He didn’t think he could bear to eat anything, not now.

Eventually, the bustle in the room died down. The servants left, and the blinis were taken away with a gentle reminder that the Tzar could ring for a fresh plate whenever his appetite was whetted. His steward asked if he would like to see his chancellor.

That Dimitri found the words to refuse.

As the fire died down in the grate, the room stiflingly hot, Dimitri staggered to bed and made it under the covers. Vasily’s dressing gown was draped over the other pillow, and he stared at it numbly.

Two weeks from now, Aziza would be lying there instead of the vestiges of Vasily.

Dimitri rolled over, his stomach churning, his right hand groping for the nightstand knob. He managed to get it open and reached for what he had wedged in the joint between the drawer and the nightstand top. The joker and the king of hearts.

The cards were smooth under his fingers as he pulled them out and pressed them to his chest, right above his heart. This, at least, was the one thing he couldn’t give up. The remembered touches. The stolen kisses. Fighting against the tides of fate and duty and inevitable separation.

This was wisdom, Dimitri thought to himself, to press that all into bits of paper that he kept in a drawer, to let the rest of it flow out on the tide of memory. To bring it out when he felt strong enough, in the dark of night, to remember.

He didn’t know how often that would be. But he did know that it was all that was left for him now.

Dimitri closed his eyes, thumbed the cards, and breathed his way through the first night of the rest of his sad, lonely life, given up for country and Crown and safety.

But it didn’t feel like safety, or like triumph, or even like peace. It felt like being dead, like being nothing, like being a shell of a person who had given up everything, only to find out that it was impossible to go on when you had nothing left to live for.

Six nights after he’d killed his husband, sitting in an inn, he’d spoken to Ladushka at length about his choices. She alone was going to tell him what was best for Novo-Svitsevo.

He wanted to say Lukas, badly. It was the closest he was going to get to being with Vasily, fully and truly. Lukas wanted what he did—children, a family—and he could make Dimitri laugh. He would care for Dimitri and hold him close when he needed it. Lukas treated him like a person, before treating him like a Tzar.

But Lukas wasn’t going to help him rule. Lukas was going to be there at night to entertain Dimitri in their rooms. Lukas was going to love being a father to their children, and Dimitri was sure that he’d spend all day on the floor of the nursery with them, playing. His heart broke, just a little bit, for that future that would never come to pass.

Lukas Marks was what Dimitri wanted. He wasn’t what Dimitri needed.

Ladushka had asked him about Yullyan next, and that was tempting too. Because Yullyan was offering him a way to live his life in the shadows. But it felt like it would be agony, tearing himself between two worlds. A man he loved whom he couldn’t ever have openly. A person he knew he could come to adore and share a deep friendship with, but who would never desire the whole of him, not in the way that Dimitri himself wished to be desired.

And so they were left with Aziza.

She was the right choice.

He respected her deeply, her knowledge and her cunning. She would help him shape the path of the country and their people, and her intelligence and her courage would bolster him when he faltered. Uniting their countries would end generations of animosity, and their children would forever tie together Urushka and Novo-Svitsevo. Together, they would forge something new, something better. He would try his best to love her, even as he wondered if he could ever hold more for her than respect and the stirrings of desire.

She was the right choice for Novo-Svitsevo, and so she was the right choice for him.

When Ladushka had left him that night at the inn, curled up in bed around the empty cavity where his magic had been, he’d surprised himself by blinking dry-eyed at the wall. Like he’d finally given up after all the pain and all the sorrow and merely accepted his fate.

He felt like that even now, walking to the parlor. He was clutching a ring in his hand that Ladushka had given to him. He was moving mechanically, like a puppet on strings held by the empire.

Aziza grinned at him when he bowed to her, a moment of pure and unguarded joy that should have taken his breath away, but which merely came over him and then receded like the tide. He tried to arrange his face into anything but blank politeness as he got down on one knee, asking Aziza Timurova of Urushka to become his wife.

She said yes. He rose and pressed a chaste kiss to her lips.

“We will set the wedding for two weeks’ time,” he said to his new betrothed, because he’d talked to Ladushka about this too and didn’t think he could withstand the agony of having to wait months to finally seal his fate. “I will see you at the altar.”

“Yes,” she said softly, her brow creasing as she pressed a cool hand to his cheek. “Yes, Dimitri, you’ll meet me there.”

He was sure that she meant it as a statement, but as he turned and left, the questioning lilt of her tone echoed in his mind.

Saying goodbye to Lukas and Yullyan was easier, but he still felt like he was looking down at his own body while doing it, someone else operating his mouth and his limbs.

“Don’t worry,” Lukas said, even though he was blinking rapidly, his eyes glassy. “I completely understand. Thank you for giving me the chance to get to know you, Dimitri.”

“Oh, don’t look like he kicked your puppy.” Yullyan nudged Lukas in the ribs with an elbow, but then wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “Dimitri, keep in touch. I’m sure this won’t be the last we see of each other. But I think my new task is helping Lukas to get over his first great heartbreak. Love, don’t worry. I have a whole vineyard for you to sample, and we can read naughty books and get drunk and then you can cry it all out until you feel better.” They lowered their voice and turned to Dimitri with a dramatic whisper. “I also make my own spirits. They’re incredibly strong. I’ll send you a case every month, along with some choice reading material.”

“I’m all right,” Lukas insisted, but he was sniffling now too and wiping his eyes. Dimitri wanted to reach out and comfort him, his heart cracking at the sight, but Lukas wasn’t going to want to be soothed by the man who had just spurned him.

“It’s normal to not be all right.” Yullyan’s tone was surprisingly gentle, and Dimitri was reminded of when they’d comforted him near the greenhouse. He was glad that Lukas had someone who’d taken an interest in befriending him and seeing him through his grief. “But you’ll get there. And don’t worry—I hear the number one export of the Free States these days is boys making a living on their striking physical similarity to the Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo. We’ll get you someone to take your mind off things.”

Dimitri tried for an approximation of a smile, but as Lukas gave a wet laugh and Yullyan turned to hug him, Dimitri slipped out of the room.

He went back to bed, where he continued to feel nothing and like no one at all.

Breakfast the next morning was the worst mistake of his life. And Vasily had made many, many of those in his time.

Dimitri was there, sitting like a puppet at the head of the table in the parlor. He wasn’t meeting anyone’s eye, and he wasn’t eating either. The only motion he made was a rhythmic ticking of his jaw.

It totally decimated any appetite that Vasily might have had. He looked at Mischa, concerned, but Mischa was just staring at Dimitri.

Ladushka and Annika were both sitting quietly too. Lukas Marks and Yullyan Sakvin were nowhere to be seen, and Vasily had to assume that was because they were both preparing to leave to nurse their broken hearts.

Ayla was standing by the door, as always, her face creased. Nina was nowhere to be seen, having announced that she was going to scour the countryside to make sure that there was no lingering trace of demonic activity in the areas Alexey’s army had ravaged.

Fuck, he wished he could do the same. He’d volunteer for anything that got him out of the palace.

His body still hurt, every bone bruised and weary.

But his heart was so much worse.

After an utterly painful breakfast where perhaps two slices of toast were consumed in total among the six of them and zero words were exchanged, everyone got up to leave. The rest of the court rushed out in front of Vasily, and despite his best attempt, he found himself last in the room with Dimitri.

Dimitri was struggling out of his chair, and even though his heart cracked to do it, Vasily sighed and circled around the table to pull out Dimitri’s chair and offer an arm, despite the horrific pain in his torso. “You should have asked for help.”

His voice came out scratchy and raw. He wondered if Dimitri could tell that he’d taken up a chain-smoking habit the night prior.

“I can do it on my own.” Dimitri’s voice was small, and he didn’t meet Vasily’s eye.

“So that’s how it’s going to be from now on, yeah?” Vasily stepped back, reeling like he’d been slapped. Dimitri had left him, he understood that, but he didn’t understand Dimitri refusing his basic help now too. “I’m not allowed to look at you, or touch you, or speak to you, or help you when you’re clearly struggling?”

Dimitri was standing, then, and he swayed on his feet. His skin was as pale as the bone china laid out on the table, untouched. He gripped the edge of the table so hard that his joints stood out through his skin, skeletal. “I think it’s best we be apart for a while, Vasily.”

And that hurt worse than someone punching his bound ribs. Dimitri hadn’t called him by his given name since long before the war.

“Fuck you,” he whispered, because he was hurt and because Dimitri deserved it. “Fuck you, Dimitri Abramovich, for cutting me out of your life like this. For not letting us be whatever it is that we can be now. What was it that you said to me? That you couldn’t bear if I took my love away from you, even if we couldn’t be together? How is that not what you’re doing now?”

He realized he was yelling by the end of it by the way Dimitri started to cower, his shoulders curled in and his eyes fixed on the floor. Vasily raked a hand through his hair and took a breath to calm down. “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”

“Yes I did,” Dimitri mumbled. “Because I’m a coward and a liar and I’m drowning trying to find my way through this. And because right now, being next to you is more than I can take.”

“So that’s it, then?” Vasily chewed his lip and took a step back. “Do you want me to leave the palace? Rav-Mikhailburg? The country?”

That got Dimitri to look up. Vasily wished he could reach out and brush the tears off his eyelashes. “No, no, Vasya. I don’t want you to leave. I just…I need time. I need to figure out my way through this. I don’t want—I can’t—linger in some half-alive state. It’s better for me to burn it all down to the ground at once. I’ll love you to the end of time, until the last beat of my heart, but I cannot do this long goodbye. It’s going to tear off shreds of me until there’s nothing left. I want to remember our love the way it was, not give it a slow and painful death merely to eke out a few more stolen moments. I just…I can’t. I thought I could. I was wrong.”

He sounded like a Tzar, Vasily thought, like a leader in a way that perhaps he never had until now. Maybe this was the crucible of his reign, the ability to subjugate his heart once and for all and offer it to his people.

What, after that, was Vasily supposed to say?

He opened his mouth, but the words stuck in his throat. He could rage at Dimitri, he could cry at the unfairness of it all, he could plead and beg and hope that that changed Dimitri’s mind, that he would buy them weeks or months.

But what would any of that do?

Dimitri was right, in a way. This was like cauterizing a wound so that it didn’t get infected. It was horrifically painful and disgusting and raw and no one ever wanted to do it, even though it would save their life. Vasily himself had held patients down as Mischa cauterized bullet wounds, had felt the way that even the bravest people’s bodies reflexively curled up around the pain like they were trying to protect the core of them.

What was left for Dimitri now except to protect himself? What was left for Vasily now except to do the same?

He knew it was the coward’s way out. He knew it was the wrong thing to do, that Dimitri would be hurting just as much as he was, that Dimitri would need comfort and strength. That Dimitri, once he healed a bit more, would be looking to preserve their love and their friendship even as he gave his body to another person, and that if Vasily was gracious, he would take what was being offered. He would give Dimitri time.

He did none of that. Instead, he turned his back on Dimitri and walked out of the parlor without another word.

Vasily spent the next two weeks high on painkillers, drunk, crying, or all three at once. He didn’t eat, he didn’t leave his room, and he certainly didn’t have the willpower to stop being an ass and get on with his life, because every time he put a hand on the knob of his door, his stomach churned with the thought of seeing Dimitri or the preparations for the wedding. God forbid he see decorations and have a breakdown in public.

He refused to see any of his friends, even though they never stopped knocking, day after day. Eventually, when he thought he might go out of his mind from pacing within his room, he took to haunting the servants’ back corridors, his office, the training room at midnight, everywhere he was reasonably sure he could wear a track in the floor without the risk of seeing Dimitri and falling to pieces.

It got worse the more the days went on, ticking in a horrific, inevitable countdown towards the day that he was going to lose Dimitri forever.

It was Ladushka who found him late the night before the wedding, slumped in the corner of the training room drunk out of his mind, with the salt of hours’ worth of tears making his cheeks itch.

“He is disconsolate,” she said without preamble. “Mischa drugged him because they were worried he was going to hurt himself, with the way he was hyperventilating.”

“He’s not mine anymore.” The world tipped and spun, and Vasily’s mouth filled with saliva. He didn’t know if he was about to vomit because he was that drunk, or if it was because he was sick with the thought of Dimitri. “So I don’t know why you’re coming to me about this.”

“Because I am drowning in guilt, Vasya.” Ladushka had a wobble in her voice that he’d never heard before. When he looked up, she was crying, tears tracking silently down her pale cheeks. “Because I am the one who arranged this. I am the one who is tearing you both apart.”

He had never, not once, heard her express this much regret.

“Do you think he wants to do this?” she continued. “I know as well as you that if Dima could spend the rest of his life with you in a house with a rose garden, he would do it in a single beat of his heart. The only reason he will not be able to is because of an accident of birth that trapped him.”

Vasily’s stomach lurched again at her words, and he gave up and emptied the contents of his stomach into a crate sitting next to him.

“Please,” Ladushka said quietly. “Please, Vasya. I am begging you. Help Dimitri through what will be the hardest night of his life.”

Vasily swallowed bile. “I can’t.”

“You can,” Ladushka countered, running a hand through his sweat-damp hair. “I have known Dima longer than you have. He could never say goodbye. That was his burden. And I think, now, I understand. He was never able to practice letting go. And that meant he never learned that you can lose someone and still keep them close to your heart. Dimitri was never given the grace of learning how to be gentle with himself through grief. He was left in Chernitzy and turned into a husband. He was orphaned and turned into a Tzar. Dimitri has never, not once, gotten to say goodbye to all the people who loved him on his own terms.”

She took in a shuddering inhale. “Saying goodbye is to welcome the pain of knowing that someone you love is now too far away from you to touch, whether from death or distance, and that the only thing you have left is what they meant to you. Do you know why, when a person dies, we wish that their memory be a blessing?”

“No,” Vasily choked out. His eyes were burning, and his throat was so tight he almost couldn’t breathe.

“When a person dies, it is up to us to keep their memory alive. And even though it hurts to remember, no one is ever truly gone from our lives if their memory remains—that is the blessing, if we choose to welcome it. We are going to grieve this together, Vasya, the way we would grieve the dead, so that the sadness can abate and space for that blessed memory can be carved into your heart.”

“He’s not dead,” Vasily said, curling into himself.

“But something has died.” Ladushka placed a hand on his cheek. “We will all keep the memory of your love close. We have all seen it. We all know, Vasya. We have all borne witness. And none of us will forget. Your love is a blessing because it brought Dimitri back to life. Your love is a blessing because it was the only thing that truly made Dimitri want to live. And I will never forget that. None of us will ever forget that. Let the memory of your love be a blessing, Vasya. But to do that, you have to say goodbye. You have to let what is dead go, so that the grief doesn’t poison you. So that you can hold on to the blessing of its memory instead.”

Vasily didn’t know if he wanted to cry, or if he wanted to punch something or someone, or if he just wanted to scream until his throat was raw and the blood vessels broke in his eyes. He wanted to go to the stables and take a horse and ride until he didn’t know where he was and just be alone, because he didn’t want to put on the suit of clothes that had been delivered to his rooms that morning, tailored and pressed and ready for him to wear to Dimitri’s wedding the next day.

He didn’t want to watch Dimitri give himself away. He wanted to claim Dimitri for his own.

He had been hurt so many times before. He had been hurt so much he’d been numb to it. And maybe that was the difference, that with Dimitri, he’d finally woken up. He’d been a man alive, a man breathing and hoping and dreaming and loving. Of course you couldn’t hurt a dead thing. One needed to be alive, after all, to feel pain.

In order for the memory of what they’d shared to be a blessing, he would have to keep on living. A dead thing, after all, could not love. Alexey Balakin had proven that to the world.

And that meant that in order to honor Dimitri, he would have to let him go and live. Allow himself to hurt. Suffer but survive. Grieve him and grapple with that loss. But do it while moving forward.

Mischa was right. He had to let the grief out.

Annika was right. He would have to cup what he could in his hand and hold it close, even if it was just scraps of memory.

And Ladushka was right. The only way he could do all of this was if he first said goodbye. If he ended this on his own terms. If he had the courage, in the end, to look Dimitri in the eye and let him go.

“No one wants to let go. No one wants to welcome that hurt. Which of us do? But the only way to move past that pain is to journey through it. And you will not be alone as you walk that path.” Ladushka paused, then leaned in and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Please, Vasya. For me, if not for you.”

Vasily couldn’t refuse the plea. He’d never been able to. And she was right. She always was. So when she offered her hand, he took it and went.

When he got to Dimitri’s rooms, he paused at the door. Mischa was sulking there, checking their watch.

“Good,” they said when Vasily arrived. “I didn’t want to have to dose him again. He’s got to be upright by five in the morning.”

They were about to turn and walk down the corridor when they stopped and paused, stretching out a hand to grab Vasily’s. They squeezed. “Tomorrow night, you and me, we’re going to sit in my room and talk. We don’t have to stay for the reception—one of the benefits of being fairly anonymous at court.” They swallowed hard, and Vasily noticed that their eyes were red-rimmed.

“Thank you,” they continued. “I know this is harder for you than for anyone. But this is a mitzvah if I’ve ever seen one done.”

Then they turned and left, the heels of their shoes clicking on the floor until they turned into their own room, the door shutting firmly behind them.

There was nothing left for Vasily to do but turn the knob and enter.

Over the last few days, Dimitri’s rooms had been purged of anything that had ever belonged to Vasily. It wouldn’t do for Aziza to spend her wedding night with her new husband and find another person’s clothes under the dresser or folded into the armoire, another person’s books on the shelves, and drinks that Dimitri never would have consumed stashed at the bar. Dimitri’s steward had packed everything up and taken it two floors down to the new room that Vasily had picked out for himself, far, far away from where Dimitri was going to stay with his wife. Ladushka herself had combed the rooms for any stray items that would have given Dimitri away.

Vasily hadn’t told her that there were still two playing cards missing from his deck.

This was the last time that Vasily would be here. He tried to make peace with it as best he could. The door to the bedroom was ajar. With a shuddering breath, Vasily squared his shoulders and fought back his tears and went to Dimitri. The other man was curled up in bed, wearing a dressing gown of Vasily’s in the saddest, most painful echo Vasily could imagine of the way Dimitri had clung to Alexey’s dressing gown in Wilnetzk.

At least this time, Aziza wouldn’t know to suspect. He could leave Dimitri with that single, solitary piece of comfort.

Dimitri sat up, bleary-eyed. “You came,” he whispered hoarsely. “You came back.”

“Yeah,” Vasily rasped. “I did. One more time.”

Dimitri held open his arms for Vasily, and Vasily grew weak and went.

Ladushka had been right. This was what it felt like to shred oneself apart, to pry another person’s soul from one’s own, to sever the ties around one’s heart which love had made. And all the same, it was a salve too.

This night was the best and hardest thing that Vasily had ever done. It was a long, aching meditation, a torment and a blessing and a prayer.

This was what letting go looked like, when you had the chance to say goodbye.

Vasily moved as slowly as he could manage, praying that he could make this last, that he could commit the feeling of Dimitri under him to memory, that he could remember for the rest of his life the way Dimitri’s eyes fluttered shut as Vasily parted his thighs. He trailed a hand from the crook of Dimitri’s knee to the curve of his ass, and this was worship purer than he’d ever known. It was the closest Vasily had ever felt to truly knowing God.

Dimitri’s hand was fisted in the pillow above him, and his knuckles stood out white against his skin, the bone straining through flesh. His jaw was set and he wasn’t meeting Vasily’s eye, his breath coming in harsh little pants that Vasily pretended were from overwhelming desire and not a bald-faced attempt not to cry. Vasily gave Dimitri the grace of lowering his gaze to Dimitri’s hip, studying the way the warm bronze of his own skin stood out so starkly against Dimitri’s creamy flesh. His hand spanned half the circumference of Dimitri’s thigh and Vasily committed this, too, to memory, the weight of Dimitri’s leg against his palm, the way the muscles flexed and jumped as Vasily guided the limb over his shoulder, even as the weight made his broken ribs burn. Dimitri’s skin broke out in goose flesh as Vasily lowered himself down to press a kiss to Dimitri’s inner thigh, inhaling the scent of him. Vasily rested his forehead against the hollow curve of Dimitri’s lean stomach, swallowing worries about why he was so thin again, so painfully lean in so little time, in favor of turning his head and tonguing Dimitri’s swollen length.

Dimitri was shaking hard, the kind of shivering that had overtaken him the first few times they had done this. Vasily pinned his hips with his hands as he took Dimitri fully into his mouth, blaming the stinging of his eyes on the intrusion as he felt Dimitri hit the back of his throat. Dimitri moaned and it was the first sound that had come from the other man that night that didn’t sound like something a wounded animal would let out, so Vasily did it again and again. He let his right hand creep downwards off the ridge of Dimitri’s hip to dip into the open jar of salve he’d left on the bed, before stroking the puckered flesh of Dimitri’s entrance with a single finger, pressing against the part of him that would let Vasily in one last time.

“Dima,” he said, surfacing for air. “Dima.”

He didn’t know what he was saying, what he was pleading for, only that it felt like speaking the Shema, the prayer so holy one said it with one’s eyes closed. The moment in the liturgy where everything else dropped away and all attention was turned inwards, to one single commitment, one single offering.

This was like that.

Vasily’s finger finally dipped inside Dimitri, coaxing the tight muscle to relax. His heart was hammering in his chest as he was subsumed into Dimitri’s heat, and when Dimitri’s calf twitched and hooked tighter around Vasily’s shoulders, his hips bucking up against Vasily’s hand, he edged a second finger in, savoring Dimitri’s gasp.

He could spend forever like this, working Dimitri open, suspended in the time between getting him into bed and getting into him, the delicious and tense moments of Dimitri slowly unwinding, Vasily unwinding him. Picking apart the strictures that held Dimitri Abramovich together as the devoted Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo, turning him back into a man who could pant and plead and feel pleasure.

But they didn’t have forever. Not anymore.

So when Dimitri was pliant and ready and clearly, from the whines escaping him, needing more, Vasily withdrew his hand and crept back up Dimitri’s body. He hovered over Dimitri, meeting his glassy eyes, his throat aching. Vasily’s muscles trembled with the strain of holding himself up and holding himself back.

“I will ravage you,” Vasily promised hoarsely, biting down on the taut tendons of Dimitri’s neck, “the way you have ravaged my heart.”

Dimitri didn’t respond, but as Vasily lined up the head of his cock and edged into Dimitri, the other man curled forward, panting, like he didn’t know how to do this and had been caught off guard by the burn. Vasily stopped dead, his whole body aching to move, but he threaded one hand through Dimitri’s and pressed it back against the pillow and stroked the other hand through Dimitri’s hair.

“Breathe, darling,” he whispered into Dimitri’s ear. But Dimitri shook his head, their jaws knocking together, and when Vasily drew back he realized why.

Dimitri wasn’t panting. Dimitri was sobbing.

“Oh, love.” He tilted their foreheads together, kissing Dimitri’s tears, letting the other man fall to pieces in his arms as he edged his way inside. “I have you. Let it out.”

Dimitri choked on a sob but canted his hips up, meeting Vasily’s next thrust, and his length was like silk-coated steel against Vasily’s stomach, so he didn’t stop.

Their unity was simple, infinite. They were one soul in two bodies, and this was the bridge between them.

He caught Dimitri’s lower lip in between his teeth, coaxed his mouth open, used the kiss to say everything that he could. How he loved Dimitri. How he would never forget this. How he would spend the rest of his life grieving its loss.

Vasily rebelled against the climax building at the base of his spine, fought against the way his core flooded with pleasure, because when he came that was it. This, after all, was the very last time.

But it had always been too good with Dimitri, and it was inevitable.

Dimitri was the one who tipped over the edge first, his thighs clenching around Vasily’s waist, his release spurting hot and sticky between them. The contractions of his inner muscles were more than Vasily could bear. And so he let himself go in a blinding flash of pleasure, and when he blinked his eyes open, he ran a thumb across the ridge of Dimitri’s tear-stained cheekbone.

Then there was nothing left to do but pull apart. Vasily counted all the things in life he would rather suffer than this, and the list was infinite. He bundled Dimitri into his arms and crushed him to his battered chest, as if by sheer force of will he could merge them into a single person that would never have to be split in two. Perhaps each of Vasily’s ribs had been broken so he could weave Dimitri’s bones in through the fractures, their rib cages knitting like interlinked fingers, never letting go.

He held it together until Dimitri started talking.

“If you were the one I was marrying tomorrow, what would it be like?” Dimitri swallowed audibly, his voice thick. “What would our wedding be like?”

And that was all it took. Vasily was the one crying now, and he couldn’t stop, the tears hot on his cheeks and the pressure behind his eyes and in his throat so intense that he thought it might choke him. But Dimitri was shaking in his arms, and this was the last time, the last night, and Vasily never could deny him anything, no matter how much it tore out his own heart.

Because he wanted it to be him. He wanted to be the one whom Dimitri would walk towards tomorrow, the one whom Dimitri would swear to love for the rest of his life. Vasily wanted to be the one whom Dimitri would circle seven times, the one whom Dimitri would drink from a kiddush cup with, their arms linked. Vasily wanted to be the one who would crush a glass beneath the heel of his shoe to ward evil spirits away.

Vasily wanted it to be him.

It would never be him.

He wiped his eyes with the back of the hand not slung across Dimitri’s chest, and painted a picture with words because they would never be able to do this. They would never have these memories, so this was the only moment that they would share. These were the only wedding vows Vasily would ever be able to make.

This was what their love would look like.

The wedding that they would never get, the moment with each other they would never have. The way Dimitri’s hand would be warm in his, the way Vasily would be laughing and crying because he wouldn’t be able to comprehend how he was so lucky, that he was going to be the one who was going to call this man his own. The way that Vasily would kiss him in front of the whole world. The way that they would walk back down the sanctuary’s aisle, the way that they would be surrounded by their friends because their friends were their family.

The way that Vasily would lay Dimitri down that night, after dancing and eating and navigating crowds through a party that they held for the court, and then the small celebration that they’d hold just for their friends. The way that it would feel like their first time, because it would be their first time, joined together not just by the bonds of their hearts but also by the law and by God.

Speaking it into existence hurt like a knife wound, but it was one that Vasily was inflicting on himself, deep and precise yet clean. When he ran out of words, he merely held Dimitri close.

Vasily knew that he should be urging Dimitri to sleep, because tomorrow was a long day that would tax him, needing to meet and talk with nobles not just from Novo-Svitsevo but from all the surrounding countries. He knew that this might be the last good night of sleep that Dimitri would get for a long, long time.

Would Aziza know how to comfort Dimitri when he woke up thrashing from nightmares that wouldn’t leave, even though Alexey was finally dead and buried? Would she care to? Or would she disdain her husband for being weak, and would that make Dimitri curl back into himself the way that he’d done under Alexey’s thumb?

Vasily didn’t know if he could survive watching that again.

“Dima,” he croaked out. “I need you to promise me something.”

Dimitri shuffled against his chest, and when he raised himself up on his good arm to look down at Vasily and nod, the whites of his eyes were so bloodshot from crying that for a second Vasily could have sworn that he was looking back into Alexey’s bloodstained gaze.

He reached up and ran a thumb along Dimitri’s cheekbone. “If it’s ever like it was with Alexey, I need you to tell me. Because I swear that I will get you out. I don’t care what happens to Novo-Svitsevo if you’re not here. I thought I would do anything for Novo-Svitsevo, for my country, before tonight. But I was wrong. My country isn’t a place. My country is you.”

“Vasya,” Dimitri whispered. “I can’t—I can’t promise that.”

“I don’t care if it starts a war.” Vasily’s voice was rough. “I don’t care if it burns our empire to the ground. If she mistreats you, I’ll kill her myself. I want you to promise me that you won’t stay with her if it’s going to do to you what your last marriage did. We didn’t free you for you to chain yourself to yet another monster.”

“I’m doing this for all of us. I’m doing this because it’s what I was born to.” Dimitri collapsed back onto Vasily like his arm could no longer hold him up. “If I don’t do this, we go to war again. If I don’t do this, our citizens die. There’s more famine, there’s more pain and suffering. And we’d lose. You know we would.”

“Our country or you?” Vasily whispered. “You make it sound like a choice, but you know that it isn’t. Not for me. Never for me, because I love you.”

He so rarely said it out loud, and it hung between them in the quiet of their bedroom. Vasily knew that it was only making things harder, that he should have left months and months ago when Dimitri took back the throne. But he would never be able to live with himself if he didn’t say it, because this was his last chance.

“I love you, Dima.” He bit his lip, wondering how to put it all into words, the enormity of what he felt for Dimitri, who held his whole heart. Who cradled his soul in a careful hand, who was his safe harbor when the world was dark. Who anchored him to life, to meaning, to purpose. He couldn’t manage it, his throat closing up. “I love you more than words.”

“I love you too, Vasya,” Dimitri said. “Too much. Far too much.”

They said nothing else the rest of the night, and maybe they slept or maybe they didn’t, and when dawn broke over the horizon that was it. That was the end of them, and there was nothing left but to live through the grief of finally saying goodbye.

Dimitri’s first wedding ceremony in the Great Shul of Rav-Mikhailburg had been wrapped in a veil of grief. Even though his heart had been pounding at the thought of everyone knowing that he was Alexey’s and Alexey was his, it had been subdued by the sadness that hung around him like a shroud. He had only been crowned because his entire family was dead, and then presided over innumerable royal funerals—for his parents, his siblings, his nieces and nephews—and then, only then, had been swept through a hastily arranged royal marriage.

They had debated waiting—or rather, Dimitri had debated waiting—but Alexey had argued that they needed a sense of stability for the people and the surrounding countries, that Novo-Svitsevo needed a ruler and a successor tied to that ruler as his heir by law.

So he’d been on the verge of tears all through the ceremony. He’d never thought that it would happen like that, the front rows that should have been filled with his family instead packed full of an odd assortment of distant cousins who had been able to reach the capital in time. Annika and Ladushka were with their families and he couldn’t find their faces, and Mischa was relegated to the back because of their lack of noble status. He had walked down the aisle towards Alexey alone, because he couldn’t bear the thought of someone else taking his arm. Someone he hadn’t planned, because his parents and brothers and sisters were gone.

At least everyone there had been sympathetic to the fact that their young new Tzar might not have been a fountain of joy on his wedding day, for understandable and highly public reasons.

It was far worse this time, because the agony was private, and showing it would undo all the work that had been done to get here. If he offended the Urushkins, then the reason for the marriage was moot. He needed Aziza to stay by his side so that their alliance held; only then would Novo-Svitsevo be safe.

So Dimitri began the morning by taking two of Mischa’s calming pills and chasing them with a shot of vodka, and settled into a pleasant haze that allowed him to stand still and be puppeted around by seamstresses and servants, all of whom were dressing him up like a doll to be presented to Aziza like a gift.

Well, he supposed that was what his body was, in the end.

It was easier to think of it, he realized, as not him going through this. It was easier to send his mind elsewhere, to that imagined house with a window seat and roses and Vasily, and allow his body to be tugged into the right shape without his consent or assistance. This was happening to him but also not to him, and he thanked the Lord when the fiction and Mischa’s pills and the alcohol finally slowed the frantic jackrabbiting of his heart to a normal pace.

Dimitri had locked his court out of the room, mostly because he wanted to be alone but also because he didn’t want to see Vasily, who had slipped out of bed early that morning when he thought Dimitri was asleep. He had told Ayla to keep everyone out, that he was going to do this by himself, and she had looked devastated but agreed. When he wanted to be solitary with his hurt, she didn’t protest.

This would be the rest of his existence, living in the half-imagined dream that he’d never get to share again. He would have to take sleeping pills for the rest of his life, because it would be far too painful to meet Vasily in dreams. The connection between them was as strong as ever, and yet Dimitri was doing his best to ignore it. He swore to himself and to God that he would never use it again, that he would never torment either of them like that.

He held out a hand. A servant put a glass of wine into it and Dimitri drank it down.

Eventually there was nothing left to do. He was dressed in so many layers that he was sweating despite the perpetual chill that deep winter brought to the palace, his head and ears and neck and hand weighed down with the jewels of state. Ladushka was summoned by a servant, and she gave him a once-over before nodding her approval, giving him her arm to take.

Still in a daze, he allowed himself to be escorted through the palace. It was properly morning now, and the court of Rav-Mikhailburg was awake and dressed in finery to see their Tzar leave for a union they had never imagined would come to pass. He knew that Ladushka was keeping an eye on who looked excited at the prospect of this marriage, and who looked as though they would rather Dimitri marry a sheyd than the princess of Novo-Svitsevo’s oldest enemy.

Funny, Dimitri’s traitorous brain supplied, how you are sacrificing everything you have ever loved, and yet you aren’t even making the entirety of your court happy.

They made it down the central staircase and to the entrance, whose doors were flung open by guards. Dimitri remembered to wave to the crowd that was gathered outside the palace gates, which cheered even louder at his arrival. His hearing was muffled like after a bomb blast. Once Ladushka had maneuvered him into the carriage, he took another one of Mischa’s pills and put it under his tongue. She gently pried the rest of the bottle away from him.

“Dima,” she said, “Novo-Svitsevo needs you to be able to stand in front of your bride. We may deal with the implications later tonight, once…”

She trailed off. Dimitri knew, though, what she was going to say. Mischa had left an unmarked bottle of pills in the drawer of the table next to Dimitri’s side of the bed, with a short note explaining their use, should Dimitri require or desire assistance, that Dimitri had immediately thrown into the fire, his cheeks flaming with embarrassment.

But they had been right. He’d need something stronger than his own willpower to do what needed to be done tonight. Perhaps he could get wildly drunk and pass out before Aziza even came to bed.

He ran his thumb across the pocket he’d had sewn into the cloth-of-gold sling binding his left arm to his chest under his cloak, feeling the hard ridges there.

The one other thing he hadn’t been able to get rid of had been Vasily’s note. Not yet. The entirety of him wished he could go back to that moment, nearly a year ago, where he’d been terrified of dying and yet there had been more hope inside him than he’d ever had in his life.

Admitting his love for Vasily had been like taking the first deep breath of his life. Now all his air was gone.

The carriage bounced slowly through the streets of the city, citizens on either side of the avenue throwing flowers and cheering their passage. He wanted to scream at them that they were cheering for an execution. But they didn’t know. All they knew was that their Tzar was triumphant. That there had been war and that now there would be peace, the country rebuilt, new alliances formed, talk of more bloodshed shut down because the princess of Urushka would soon be the Tzarina of Novo-Svitsevo too. A new dynasty would be born, and generations of peace would follow.

How he envied them all their delusion, their certainty. The ease of a life where someone else was the one to make the hard choice, in order to protect them all.

Too soon, they arrived at the shul. Dimitri’s soul was being squeezed right out of his body.

“Smile, Dima,” Ladushka whispered, her eyes avoiding his. “You must smile.”

He pasted on something that he was sure approximated the rictus grin of a corpse instead of a smile, but Ladushka gave a tight nod and opened the door to the carriage.

Every step that he took felt like it lasted ten lifetimes. His mind flashed back to the way Alexey had made him crawl to the throne a year ago, how he’d been feverish and shaking with pain and rage and terror. He’d thought that had been the hardest journey of his life.

He’d been wrong. This was.

The horror was creeping back in, the numbness of the morning sliding away. When the angel Gavril had flayed his arm, there had been long moments at first where he’d felt no pain, just a fuzzy nothingness. And then the agony had hit him, like being kicked in the chest by a horse, and he’d slammed back into awareness of his body all at once, the sensation threatening to overwhelm him.

Dimitri realized, with a dawning awareness, that the same thing was happening to him now.

It started with the shaking in his right hand, similar to the tremor that he’d had after the war, except a hundredfold worse. He was passing the middle of the aisle, and all the heads in the shul were turned to him, so many eyes on him that there was no way to count. Sweat started to drip down his back, the silk of his undershirt sticking to his skin, and nausea twisted his stomach, saliva gathering in his mouth.

His feet were made of lead now. It was the only explanation for how difficult they were to move. It had been easier to walk into Alexey’s bedroom to try and murder him. It had been easier to crawl across the throne room floor. It had been easier to walk up to his husband and put a blade through his heart.

This was like stabbing his own heart.

Somehow, through a lifetime of training, he kept his body moving forward, kept the smile on his face. He fixed his gaze on the inlaid tile of the aisle, unable to look up.

He was afraid of what he’d do if he saw Vasily.

It was a miracle that he didn’t collapse as he made it to the altar. The rebbe of Rav-Mikhailburg stood in front of the open ark under the gilded marriage canopy, his prayer shawl draped around his shoulders and edged with gold. There were flowers everywhere and innumerable candles, all of them shining off the gold and the jewels gilding the assembled crowd, packed shoulder to shoulder in the benches. Aziza was standing there, dressed in the richest white silk, her black curls tumbling down her back, pinned through with diamonds. She was smiling and serene, and when she took Dimitri’s hand, hers was dry, even as his skin was slick with sweat.

The pinch between her brow would have been imperceptible to the crowd, but he saw it. The first hint of concern.

He locked his knees and tried to stand up straight, even as his breathing grew more and more rapid and shallow. He would not fail in this, not when everything was at stake.

Aziza gripped his hand harder, her mouth moving along with the rebbe’s prayers. And then they were being wrapped in Dimitri’s prayer shawl, the rebbe blessing them both. She moved at an instruction Dimitri didn’t hear, beginning to circle him the way he’d circled Alexey so long ago.

When Aziza stepped to his side, he saw who she had been blocking.

Vasily sat in the first row, wearing an emerald coat and the most stricken look Dimitri had ever seen on another person’s face. Vasily was gripping Annika’s hand, and Ladushka had her arm around his shoulders. Vasily should never have been sitting in the first row, not with his rank, but this must have been a concession of Ladushka’s, since Mischa and Nina and Ayla were there too. All of them, standing in for his family.

The lump in Dimitri’s throat solidified until it was impossible to breathe. He started to choke, his hand flying to his neck. Vasily’s hand mirrored the motion.

Dimitri was gasping for air. Vasily was gasping too. Except Vasily was surrounded by people who loved him, and they were comforting him, and Dimitri was up here all alone with a stranger whom he was supposed to devote his heart to, while his heart was with another. It always would be.

There were so many vows he’d broken in his life, to be good and honest and holy. And he hadn’t cared, not when they’d kept his country safe.

But this? This was finally too far. This was finally too much.

It wasn’t that he cared about a dishonest vow to love and cherish Aziza until one of them died. It was that he cared so viciously about the vows he had made to Vasily in the dark, over and over, night after night, just the two of them. The promises they had whispered, the future they had woven out of words and dreams and a love strong enough to bridge life and death.

They’d never broken the link between their souls. It was the one thing that he’d never even mentioned, too scared that Vasily would insist on having it severed if such a thing was even possible. He didn’t want to be left completely and entirely alone. He wouldn’t have been able to bear it.

He let go of the stranglehold he had on the bond between them, and the full force of their collective agony and desperation and grief almost brought him to his knees. Vasily slumped forward, his head in his hands.

The rebbe was still speaking. Aziza finished circling him, and the rebbe handed her a ring. She reached out to slide it onto the fourth finger of his right hand, the one which still worked, but as she touched her hand to his, Vasily stood up.

Dimitri couldn’t help but turn his head, following Vasily’s path back down the aisle.

“Dimitri?” Aziza was whispering his name more and more urgently, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that all of Rav-Mikhailburg’s nobility were looking at him. It didn’t matter that Ladushka was looking panicked. It didn’t matter that there were countless eyes on him and the weight of a country on his shoulders.

The man who would always hold his heart, who would always be stitched into his very soul, was leaving—and it was all his fault.

He knew now what it felt like to face the end of the world.

The end of his world. The end of what was good and truthful and real in his life. The end of love. The end of everything.

Weddings were supposed to be beginnings.

And so Dimitri Abramovich did the only thing that could possibly be right. He walked down the steps of the altar, then ran after the man he loved.

It didn’t take him long to find Vasily.

He had gone for the side door of the shul that Dimitri had sometimes snuck out of as a child. It led to an alley, quiet and private. It was no wonder that Vasily had wanted to flee that way, because when Dimitri opened the door and stepped out into the snow, he found Vasily with his head resting against the brick wall, a lit cigarette hanging between his fingers.

“When did you start smoking again?” Dimitri said dumbly, because it was the first thing to come to his mind when what he should have said was, I’m sorry.

Vasily whirled around, and Dimitri’s heart lurched when he saw that Vasily’s cheeks were wet with tears.

“Dima, what’s going on?” His voice was trembling. He took a long drag of the cigarette, his whole body shaking so much that Dimitri could see.

“I can’t.” It was the only thing that Dimitri felt capable of saying, now that he was looking into Vasily’s eyes. “I can’t.”

“You need to be in there.” Vasily’s eyes were growing wide. “You didn’t come after me, did you? Fuck, no—”

Dimitri didn’t know what to do except walk three steps forward and kiss Vasily.

Their lips met and it all fell away, all the panic and fear and the sense of wrongness that had been flowing through his veins like blood. Every nerve in his body sung, because this was right.

He pulled back to look at Vasily, to meet his gaze.

“I need—” Dimitri couldn’t catch his breath. All he could do was lean helplessly into Vasily’s shoulder, shivering in his arms. The ceremonial cloak he was wearing felt as though it weighed a thousand pounds. Vasily wasn’t wearing a coat at all, and he was shivering too. “I need to talk to you. I need us to go inside.”

“Where?” Vasily pulled back, looking around. He was blinking like he was in shock, and maybe he was, because he wasn’t shoving Dimitri back through the door.

“The candy shop,” Dimitri panted, because he was shaking apart and he didn’t know what he was doing and if he had just ruined it all, ruined everything. “Yeah. Let’s go there.”

It wasn’t far at all, close enough that they were able to take back streets and avoid the crowd that had gathered in front of the Great Shul, waiting to catch a glimpse of the happy couple.

The bell on the door tinkled incongruously when they entered, the most normal of sounds in a situation that was so far from ordinary that Dimitri could have laughed. The shop was warm and light and smelled of caramel, and Leah was standing at the counter as always, polishing the glass and humming to herself. She looked up when they entered, and her eyes went round with shock.

He realized a second too late that he and Vasily were somehow holding hands, that they had unconsciously grabbed for each other as they walked through the door. Like their bodies knew that they would always belong to one another, even as their minds protested.

Dimitri didn’t have it in him to let Vasily go, though. Not when he had almost done so for good. Not when it was so clearly the worst possible choice.

“Oh,” Leah said, a smile stretching across her cheeks. “I see you’ve finally made the right choice. This is him, isn’t it? The one you were thinking about when I gave you the ingberlach?”

Dimitri nodded. Leah nodded back, then made a point of shooing her grandchildren into the back of the shop and following them herself, winking at Dimitri and closing the door with a click behind her. It left him and Vasily standing stock-still, staring at each other.

“What did she mean?” Vasily said after a long, still minute.

“She meant,” Dimitri said, stepping close enough to feel the heat coming off Vasily’s body, “that I finally realized that I was making the wrong choice, and in perfect time to prevent the mistake from being carried through to completion.”

“Dima—” Vasily croaked, but Dimitri merely squeezed his hand and cut him off. He was so light that he felt as though he were floating, and he didn’t know if it was from the drugs and the alcohol or the elation of finally seizing the reins of his own life.

“I’ve loved you,” Dimitri quoted from memory, the words as familiar to him as the prayers he’d been saying for the entirety of his life, “since the day I met you and I’ll love you until the day that I die, and for all the days after.”

With a shaking hand, he drew out the note, handing it over to a dumbfounded Vasily.

“I forgot,” Dimitri said, pushing the words out through the tears threatening to spill, “what I promised you. I forgot what I said. Because I was so fixated on saving the country, because I had fucked it up so badly. Everyone told me what I had to do was let you go and that would make things right—but I thought that when I married Alexey, I thought I was doing the best thing for Novo-Svitsevo then too, and instead it led to ruin.”

He struggled to meet Vasily’s eyes, the lights of the shop casting his face in bronze. He was so still that he could have been a statue.

“Dima,” he said eventually, just when Dimitri thought he’d scream if Vasily stayed quiet. “There’s still time for us to go back. We can say you were ill. We can smooth this over.”

Dimitri’s heart plummeted to his feet. “Are you—Vasya, are you refusing me?”

“I don’t want you to do this for me,” Vasily retorted. “I don’t want you to destroy what you’ve worked for, for me, of all people, of all things.”

And that—that was what sent anger flaring up through the numbness that Dimitri had so carefully cultivated since that morning. “What I’ve worked for,” he said as evenly as he could manage, clenching and unclenching his hand, “what I’ve fought for and died for and been broken over and over and over for isn’t Novo-Svitsevo. It isn’t my country.”

It settled over him, understanding of the same kind he’d been gifted with the moment he’d realized that it was Vasily calling his soul back home. “It’s you, Vasya. It’s the chance to love you. I’ve been fighting all this time for you. To protect this country so you could be safe, to fight my way back to health so that I could be whole for you. I didn’t refuse God Himself for my country. It’s like you said last night, Vasya. My country isn’t a place. My country is you. You’re all I have, the only thing that I’ve truly chosen for myself. Even Novo-Svitsevo, as much as I love her, was thrust upon me by accidents of birth and death. You are my vow and my promise and the thing I will never, ever let go, as long as I live.”

“Are you—” Vasily stopped, his mouth working open and closed, his eyes rimmed with tears. “Dima, are you—”

His expression was what made Dimitri’s heart expand so much it almost cracked his ribs. Hope, bitter and unyielding hope, the kind that he’d seen on the faces of soldiers who were rescued just as they were about to finish bleeding out. The kind that came only from having been plunged into the darkest of nights.

“Vasily Sokolov,” Dimitri said, letting the tears fall in earnest, because what was the point of stopping them? “Will you let me claim you for my own? Will you let me claim the honor of standing by your side for the rest of our lives?”

“But—” Vasily pressed a hand to his chest, like he was in pain. “But what about the Urushkins? Dima, you cannot throw away a peace that could save our people. Your people.”

“Except I can.” Dimitri managed a half smile through the tears. “That’s the miracle of it all. I can do anything I want, because I am the Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo and I rule this empire. I’ve lived my entire life doing precisely what was expected of me. I was the docile third son until I assented to my father marrying me off. I let Alexey mold me into exactly the man he wanted me to be. I let him goad me into heresy, I let him force me into a war I didn’t want to fight. I let others convince me that the only way to secure peace was with marriage, when God knows there are so many other ways to make a deal. I’m an idiot, that I didn’t see it sooner. I was led astray by fear. I never should have let it get this far. I’ll figure it out. I’ll go to war if I have to, I’ll deal with the consequences no matter what they are. I’ll let the world burn, I’ll ruin our trade routes, I’ll be the worst ruler this empire has ever had. I’ll be selfish for once in my life because this is the one time it matters. I have nothing if you’re not by my side. I am nothing if you’re not by my side. And Novo-Svitsevo deserves more than a ghost on the throne. It deserves a ruler who has something to live for. And the only purpose of my life, Vasya, is you. It’s you. It’s always been you.”

For a moment, Vasily said nothing, and Dimitri was afraid that he had torn whatever was between them to shreds. He swallowed down the guilt of having done this, having tormented the love of his life, the best man he knew, who didn’t deserve to have been cast aside, even if it wasn’t the choice Dimitri made in the end.

Vasily never, ever deserved to feel as though he were lesser. As though he were unwanted. Dimitri would burn the world down for him. Perhaps he just had. But it didn’t matter, because that was what their love demanded. And it was a worthy sacrifice if ever Dimitri had known one.

For the second time in his life, Dimitri was looking at a man he loved and making the selfish choice. For the first time in his life, it truly felt right.

“It will end,” Vasily whispered finally. “That thing you fear.”

Dimitri’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “What?”

Vasily shook his head, sniffling. “Aleksandr’s head. When Mischka and I went, it gave me that prophecy. And I thought, this whole time, that it meant that we would end. That I was afraid of us ending, and so it had been foretold.”

Vasily gave a broken little laugh. “But I got it wrong, didn’t I? The thing I feared ended. Our separation ended. Our goodbye ended. Fucking heads. I should have known better than to not parse out the possible meanings of that sentence.”

And that was all it took, one look into Vasily’s eyes, and then they were both slumped against the counter, laughing and crying and clinging to each other. Because it was ludicrous, in the end, that all it had taken for Dimitri to find happiness, for Vasily to have what he wanted, was for them to fight a war and die and burn everything to the ground and potentially imperil their country.

He would do it all again for the sound of Vasily’s laughter.

So he got down on one knee, resting his head against Vasily’s thigh, his good hand gripping Vasily’s hip. “Vasily Sokolov, will you marry me?”

Vasily didn’t answer. He got down on the floor and pulled Dimitri into his lap.

“You kneel,” Vasily said, “to no one. Not an empire, not a husband. If we do this, we do this together, as equals.”

Dimitri’s heart stuttered in his chest. “Is that a yes?”

Vasily’s lips parted at the same moment the door to the candy shop banged open, Mischa and Ladushka and Annika and Ayla flying in, red-faced and panting. “Oh my God,” Annika burst out, falling to her knees in front of them. “Are you all right?”

Mischa was checking them over for injuries, as if Dimitri had bolted out of the shul because something was wrong with his health. Ladushka was merely staring at the two of them.

“I think,” she said eventually, in that calm and steady way of hers, “that I was about to advise you to make yet another mistake. Except that this time, you appear to have corrected my error of your own accord. I must beg your forgiveness, Dima. Vasya.”

Dimitri shook his head and staggered up, pushing off Mischa’s probing hands and brushing off Annika’s concern. Vasily stood with him and wrapped him in his arms like he was never going to let Dimitri go. Dimitri hoped that was the truth.

“Are you—” Annika started, her eyes glazing.

“Oh,” Ayla said, pressing a hand to her mouth. “They are.”

“Thank fuck,” Mischa crowed. “After all this time. Thank the Lord our fucking God that you two got your heads out of your asses, and just in the nick of time.”

The door to the back of the shop swung open, and Leah was standing there, looking at all of them like a proud grandmother. Like his own grandmother would have. Dimitri’s chest ached. He missed her so much. She would have been proud of him for this.

“You know,” Leah said, her eyes sparkling, “my son is a rebbe. He happens to live with me, above the shop. He’s there now.”

“Well,” Vasily said, his eyes sparkling with joy this time instead of grief. “I was promised a royal wedding today. Dima, darling, what do you think?”

“Yes,” Dimitri gasped, soaking it all in. The love surrounding him. The family he had built. The family he had chosen. The family he had finally, finally earned. “Yes.”

When Dimitri Abramovich had become Dimitri Alexeyev, he’d had two weddings. The first was just for them, under the stars behind their home. The second was for their country.

So it was only fitting that when Dimitri Abramovich married Vasily Sokolov, he gave him the same gift.

He and Vasily married first in the simplest of ceremonies, Leah bringing her baffled son down into the shop and the ceremony performed with a borrowed prayer shawl held up by Annika and Mischa as a wedding canopy. It took less than five minutes to say the prayers, to exchange rings made of little bits of the red and white string that Leah used to tie boxes, because of course Aziza was still holding Dimitri’s new wedding band and Vasily didn’t have one of his own.

And then they were husbands, and Ladushka told them that they had to run.

Even though the course of his life and his country had changed so thoroughly that his head was spinning, it hadn’t been more than a quarter of an hour since he’d left Aziza at the altar. And Ladushka gave them a rare smile and told them that they were absolutely not allowed to waste the wedding she’d put together, and that they were going to do things right.

“I don’t care if I have to personally come back as your general to fight a million wars,” Annika said, panting and crying as they dashed through the streets. “This is all fucking worth it.”

“I am the best political mind of our generation,” Ladushka huffed out. “I will make it work.”

Mischa, somehow the fastest of all of them, had sprinted ahead, deputized to handle Aziza. And so when they burst back in through the side door of the shul and made their way to the sanctuary, Aziza was gone and so was her retinue, but all the Novo-Svitsevan guests remained, some standing but others sitting, shocked. Maybe they’d thought he’d suddenly taken ill. But they certainly, given the number of mouths that dropped open, didn’t expect him to come back with a completely different choice of spouse.

This time, he wished the walk down the aisle would last a thousand years, so that he could imprint each moment in his memories.

Dimitri and Vasily made their way hand in hand to the shocked rebbe, bathed in the silence of the stunned crowd, and Dimitri reveled in the fact that he didn’t have to explain himself, because he ruled this country and all its people, so all he had to do was arch an eyebrow at the man and he started stammering his way through the liturgy from the beginning, all while staring at the strings tied around their fingers.

They left the shul as husbands, causing such a stir among the crowd gathered at the entrance of the shul that Ayla had to call for more guards, the city in an uproar that the Tzar had married a man that no one knew instead of the princess of Urushka. The reception was similarly full of baffled nobility, but Ladushka ordered more wine brought out and soon everyone was drunk, and eventually concerned murmurs turned to joyful, if slightly strained, laughter as the Tzar and his new consort took to the center of the room to dance, and the rest of the court followed.

Maybe he’d just ruined his country. Maybe the nobility would revolt. Or maybe they wouldn’t, and it would all be fine. Doing the right thing had never seemed to save them. Maybe this time, doing the wrong thing might.

Dimitri didn’t care, not the night he married for the second and final time. For once, he wasn’t thinking about the consequences. Because that night, when Vasily had laid him down in their bed and taken him to pieces, he whispered husband in Vasily’s ear, and Vasily answered with a kiss.

The ring kept catching his eye, even a week later. He wasn’t used to wearing one again, but he couldn’t bring himself to mind the distraction of the simple gold band glittering in the firelight from the folds of his sling. Every bit of distraction was a reminder that everything in his life was finally right. That he was bound to the right person and that he never needed to let that go.

In the end, Ladushka had concluded that it was best to tell the truth. The long-held love that had saved the Tzar’s life, a bond stronger than death, a vow that he could never break, no matter the cost. And the city had eaten it up, a love story for the ages. There were already two operas and a ballet about their romance in the works.

Vasily reported, when Dimitri allowed him to leave his sight, that there was an undercurrent of worry in the city’s taverns, that a broken marriage deal with Urushka would mean war. But the continued presence of Aziza and her delegation in Rav-Mikhailburg quelled some of that fear. Ladushka had roped her into another round of negotiations, which Aziza assured she was perfectly placed to conclude, despite being merely the heir to the throne. And so Novo-Svitsevo had found itself with a mutual non-aggression pact, drawn up by Ladushka and Annika and good for the next year. Not much, but something. A shred of hope that Dimitri’s actions hadn’t fucked them all to shit.

He hadn’t seen Aziza since the altar. Ladushka told him that she was composed in public, even as Vasily reported that she was seething with embarrassment and injured pride in private. But there hadn’t appeared to be any great rupture in their public relations. Dimitri hated that he’d wounded her, this woman who’d wanted to make things better, who hadn’t deserved to be hurt. But he also thanked God for her stoicism and levelheadedness. He hoped that time would, with luck, lessen the sting.

He was flushed with shame as he walked down the grand staircase to see her off. Vasily had declined to come with him, and Dimitri had to agree that shoving his new husband in Aziza’s face would likely test even the most unruffled of spurned spouses.

“Hello.” His cheeks were burning as he took her in, standing wrapped in a rich red wool traveling coat, her hair piled into a bun. “I’m—I guess I’m here to say I’m sorry.”

There was a moment of silence that hung in the air, and Dimitri wondered if he was about to be dressed down in front of a hall full of courtiers and servants. It would be the least he deserved.

Aziza, though, merely examined her nails with red-rimmed eyes, leaving Dimitri to fidget for a good long while before she spoke. “You know, I had very little desire to marry a man who was in love with someone else. And despite appearances, I am more than something to be married off for gain. I’m sure you feel similarly.”

Her voice had a distinct bite to it, like she was trying to be brave and also not cry.

Dimitri swallowed the guilt that rose up in him at that, the way he had been about to use this woman in front of him the same way that his father had used him. “I’m so sorry. Truly, I am.”

Aziza shrugged, then breathed in and let out a ragged sigh. “I think that you will find, should you get to know me, that I have different plans than my parents do. Collaboration, after all, can create gains just as war can, and without the added expense of bullets enough to bring an entire country to its knees. We’ve worked something out, me and your chancellor and your former general, and I’ll be pleased to see how it holds. Things could still degrade to war, in which case I will meet you on the battlefield. But you never know. Instead, it could be the start of something new.”

“I’ve been told by others my whole life how to rule,” Dimitri said, staring at the frost covering the windowpane. He leaned against the windowsill, his hand in his pocket. “Perhaps you’re right, and it’s time we started deciding how to rule for ourselves.”

“It seems that you and Mr. Marks get along decently,” Aziza said, in that offhanded and airy way of hers that Dimitri was starting to realize belied great intentionality. “And Yullyan, despite all their prickles and sarcasm, gets along with everyone. I think, once the time of our parents is over, that something new will dawn over the continent.”

Dimitri cleared his throat, overcome with gratitude for the utter grace with which she was handling this, even if she was clearly hurting. “I will pray to God that He hears and listens. That we can make something new, as you said. Something better.”

Aziza snorted. “God has nothing to do with it. This, at least, is entirely up to us.”

She swept into a curtsy and Dimitri bowed back, grateful that she’d decided the audience was at its close. She turned and went to the door but paused with her hand on the doorknob.

“I cannot promise that there will be a lifetime of peace between our countries,” Aziza said over her shoulder. “But I think you will find it worth it that whatever comes next, you, at least, will be blessed with a lifetime of love. All of us should aspire to what you have. Thank you, Tzar Dimitri Abramovich Vasiliev, for reminding me of that.”

She left the parlor in a swish of silk, the door closing behind her and leaving only the faintest trace of her jasmine perfume, and the smile that Dimitri couldn’t keep off his face.

Six Months Later

“Dima, darling,” Vasily called. He was loath to get off the window seat, the sun warming his skin and the smell of flowers drifting in from where he’d cracked open the glass. “Where are you?”

He checked his wristwatch and found that, as was typical, Mischa and Nina were late. They were both caught up in planning some kind of ridiculous wedding ceremony involving a hot-air balloon, for reasons that Vasily himself couldn’t fathom but that Mischa glared at him for when he dared to question it. Mischa had been utterly shocked when Nina proposed, and Vasily had managed to keep from them that, as always, the talking head had been right.

“Coming!” Dimitri yelled from somewhere on the upper level. Vasily wondered whether he’d have to get up to retrieve his husband, until he heard the steps creaking. The dacha was old but close enough to Rav-Mikhailburg that they could escape to the house on the sabbath, spending time away from the demands of the court and ruling, ensconced in their own little paradise. Vasily had promised that he’d get around to fixing up the place as soon as he’d physically recovered enough to do so, but every time he tried rolling up his shirtsleeves to get to work, Dimitri looked at his forearms and got a gleam in his eye, and they inevitably ended up twined together instead.

There were worse things in life, Vasily supposed, than a few uneven floorboards.

“Sorry,” Dimitri said sheepishly as he entered the parlor, still wearing a dressing gown. He must have been answering correspondence all morning, from the bundle of letters tucked into his sling. “Are they here yet?”

“Of course not,” Vasily replied, opening his arms wide. Dimitri deposited the letters on a faded armchair and took up the offer, crawling into Vasily’s lap. “But is it a crime, to want to see my husband?”

It still tasted so new, even after six months. Every time he said it, every time he claimed Dimitri—every time he said his own name, now, Tzar Consort Vasily Sokolov Dimitriovich, ridiculous as it sounded—his heart grew so large he couldn’t believe his newly healed rib cage hadn’t exploded from happiness.

“No.” Dimitri pressed a kiss to his lips, settling his hips on top of Vasily’s. There was a promise there, something that Vasily would undoubtedly take Dimitri up on later, when there was no risk of Nina barging in and laughing her ass off at an unintended display of exhibitionism. Mischa’s fiancée was, after all, very prone to coming in without knocking, having displayed an astonishing facility with lock picks, and God knew it made having sex difficult when one couldn’t count on a barred door to keep unwanted guests out.

“Did you finish all your correspondence?” Vasily reached up and brushed a strand of dark hair out of Dimitri’s eyes. “Or is Lada going to take me to task for distracting you when we get back to Rav-Mikhailburg tomorrow?”

Dimitri chuckled. “I finished. I wrote to Anna—she and Pavel are going to be back in Rav-Mikhailburg at the end of the month, since they got all they needed to from the Lietuvan Department of Child Welfare. Apparently, Lukas was helpful in making some connections for them. He wrote to me separately, betting me fifty tolar that there’d be a wedding there within two years.”

Vasily raised an eyebrow. “Did you take him up on it?”

“Of course.” Dimitri smiled innocently. “Although I took the bet that there’d be a wedding within one. It’s not as if Pavel asked me on their last visit for my permission to ask Anna’s hand in marriage.”

Vasily rolled his eyes. “Perhaps try not to antagonize our ally by making bets with insider information, yeah?”

Dimitri waved a hand. “He’s fine. Yullyan keeps him stocked with a lot of wine these days. Apparently, they’ve taken to Lukas because, when he’s drunk, he gives rapturous descriptions of wine that Yullyan uses to market their latest vintages. It’s been quite a successful business partnership, I’m told.”

“And Aziza?” It still hurt, just a bit, to say her name.

Dimitri nodded and gave an exasperated sigh. “Yes, of course I answered her. She drives a hard bargain, but we agreed on an export deal for armaments. A joint venture, or something like that, that Lada hammered out. I merely signed it. The two of them get on like a pair of thieves, and I’m never sure who’s outsmarting the other.”

It still astonished Vasily that, while tentative, there was still peace on the continent. That they all had somehow come through the entire thing with little more than some cases of bruised pride. Perhaps Aziza had been right, that this generation of rulers could do things differently. That peace could be sealed with words and trust and assurances that had nothing to do with making unhappy marriages.

“So,” Dimitri said, leaning forward to kiss him again, causing Vasily to groan at the friction it caused between them, “once Nin and Mischka leave after lunch, I’m all yours until the carriage arrives after dinner to take us back to the palace.”

“All mine, you say?” Vasily pressed a kiss to the curve of Dimitri’s jaw.

Vasily had once thought that it would be enough to have Dimitri for a moment instead of a lifetime. He knew now that he’d been wrong. He would never have enough of Dimitri. He was his beloved’s, and his beloved was his, from now until the end of everything. Just as he’d promised.

He kissed the ring that sat on the fourth finger of Dimitri’s left hand, the one he couldn’t feel. The vulnerable part of him that Vasily would always, always protect. “I love you.”

“And I you,” Dimitri answered, his sapphire eyes sparkling, more beautiful than anything Vasily had ever seen. “For the rest of my life, and all the days after.”

He held Dimitri tight against his chest, and reveled in the fact that the Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo was his to keep. That he’d made a solemn promise in front of God and his family and his country to never, ever let him go. To never again look Dimitri in the eye and say goodbye.

The bond between them sang, their souls entwined, Dimitri’s heart beating against his own. And Vasily knew then that this—this was it.

This was the shard of light he’d been put on earth to gather up. This was the part of creation he was destined to cup in his hands.

He was never, for the rest of his life, going to let it go.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In the year since The Sins on Their Bones came out, I’ve been overwhelmed by the response. Publishing a book has been the fulfillment of my wildest dreams, and meeting readers from all over the world has been both an honor and a joy. I’ve received fanfic and fan art, I’ve gotten to meet readers at conventions and festivals and hear their stories, I’ve been blessed with a loving and lovely fan community (shout-out to the Court of Rav-Mikhailburg over on Discord), and I’ve gotten to see the ways in which readers have been touched by this book and made it their own. It has been more impactful than I ever could have imagined seeing readers seize on these characters and make them mean something. I am so lucky to get to do this, but I wouldn’t be able to without my own court of supporters at my back. So once again, many thanks are in order:

To my editor, Amanda Ferreira—this would truly never have happened without you. Dimitri, Vasily and Alexey would never have the story they were meant to have without your guidance and dedication. I cherish every comment from you and am so grateful for your talent. I am honored to be on your list. Thank you for every single thing.

To the entire team at Random House Canada, for pulling this book together into the most beautiful package. Special thanks to Talia Abramson for the exquisite cover and map; to producer Jaclyn Gruenberger, director Rooks Field-Green and narrators Aaron Willis, Danya Chichagov and Robin Wilcock for the stunning audiobook that still gives me chills; to Evan Klein and the sales team for bringing this duology to the world; to Polly Beel, Danielle LeSage, Megan Costa and the rest of the marketing and publicity team for making sure that the world knows about my books; to Adrienne Tang and Catherine Ryoo for bringing The Cursed Crown duology to readers around the globe; and to Sue Kuruvilla, Deirdre Molina, Catherine Abes, Lavanya Narasimhan, Julia Hartland, Dilara Kurtaran, Rachelle Drobena, Tilman Lewis, John Sweet and Matthew Broberg-Moffitt.

To Hannah Ausbury, for being my original anchor in the publishing world. Thank you for making so, so many of my dreams come true over the last three years. And to Sophia Ramos and New Leaf, thank you for becoming my new champions in the publishing world.

To the artists who continue to illustrate my world, thank you for showing me what it looks like. And to Ashe Arends, thank you not only for the beautiful interior art for this duology, but also for your friendship.

To the special edition bookmakers, thank you for the gorgeous editions of this duology that are more beautiful than anything else I’ve held in my hands.

To the booksellers who have championed The Cursed Crown duology, who have put it on tables and in displays and made it a staff pick, who have given it shelf talkers and put it in reels. Thank you so much. I appreciate, more than I can express, the support you have shown me and my book. Readers can’t find books without you—you’re the real heroes in my story. A special shout-out to the Union Square Barnes & Noble and all the amazing booksellers who work there. Thank you for putting up with my antics and inability to find my own book in the store, for having me for events and for babysitting my broccoli so lovingly that one time.

I can write a book about a found family full of love and affection and unflinching support only because I have something so beautiful in my own life:

To Ben Alderson, my soul-brother, my twin in every way that matters—I’m so grateful to have met you and I love you to the ends of the earth. I’m so lucky we’re on this wild and amazing publishing journey together.

To Saint Gibson, my darling friend, who has shown me so much love and care and trust—I am so grateful to be afflicted with visions together, and I can’t wait for the world to know them all.

To my IRL friends Therese Horn, Karissa Placheki, and Elana Stern, for always being here for me, through thick and thin.

To my beloved fellow writers: Kamilah Cole, for the friendship and unflagging support; CG Drews, for all the cute little horrors and our collaborative mug line and for never, ever telling me that I need to sit down and write; Koren Enright, for letting me be both a friend and head of the Issac de la Cruz fan club; Sarah MacLean, for knowing what it’s like to be a professor and an author, and also for the antlers; Maddie Martinez, for the writing dates; Halli Starling, for the cat videos and encouragement; Frances White, for buying every seed and making me cry and laugh, somehow at the same time; and Amanda Woody, for still, all these years later, being my petty bitch-in-arms.

To my Mom and Dad, my brother Mitchell and my sister Allison, my Grandma Joan, my Aunt Stacey and Uncle Howie, and the rest of my beloved extended family—thank you for reading and coming to events and making bone-shaped cookies and offering to serve as crowd control, but more than that for loving me always. To Sheri, my second mom, may your memory be a blessing to us all. I miss you fiercely, and always will.

To Sacha, who has been here for me every step of the way with unfailing support—for me, it’s always been you. I still love you more than words, and that will never change.

And finally, to you, reader. Thank you for coming on this journey with me. Letting go of this series is the best and hardest thing that I’ve ever done. It makes it easier, knowing that it rests in your hands.

Attending a wedding involving a hot-air balloon and a goat—with a baby and a very enthusiastic four-year-old in tow—was far, far harder than Dimitri could have imagined.

“Ivan,” he begged, trying not to lose his balance as he crouched down next to a long table laden with alarmingly purple drinks. They were in the garden of Mischa’s country house, and all he could imagine was a nightmare involving a lot of broken glass. “Please, for the love of all that is holy, get out from under there.”

He said it in a whisper because Sara was finally asleep in the crook of his right arm, and getting a six-month-old to sleep in the middle of all this chaos was a gift from God Himself, one that he didn’t want to waste.

All that he got in answer was a goat bleating and his son snickering. Dimitri was quite sure Ivan didn’t think he could hear—he hadn’t yet picked up his father’s talent for subterfuge. God help Dimitri when that happened.

He stood up, looking around for help. Yullyan was standing on the other side of the table, staring up at the sky and blinking with a studied innocence.

“Yull,” Dimitri stage-whispered, “what did you let him get into now?”

In hindsight, letting Their Royal Highness Yullyan Sakvin babysit his son today hadn’t been his best idea. The two of them had grown thick as thieves over the years and Yullyan somehow always managed to let Ivan coerce them into making a terrific mess. But Dimitri had been exhausted because Sara had been colicky and he’d been up most of the night with her, trying to calm her down and nearly bursting out into tears himself, so he hadn’t argued when Yullyan had swooped in as soon as they’d arrived at the dacha this morning and immediately let Ivan drag them into the garden to dig up bugs.

“Goats like kids,” is all Yullyan said from across the table, a glass of whatever the purple drink was in their hand. They blinked again, then smiled broadly.

A groan came from Dimitri’s right. “That’s a horrible joke.”

Lukas materialized next to Dimitri and, somehow knowing exactly what was needed, scooped Sara out of Dimitri’s grasp. She didn’t wake up as Lukas cradled her to his chest with one hand and grabbed the cloth Dimitri had slung over his shoulder with the other in a desperate attempt to protect his suit. He smiled down at her as she made a sleepy, tiny baby sound of contentment.

Dimitri took the chance to finally scratch the itch on the side of his nose that had been plaguing him for the last quarter of an hour, then nodded to Lukas. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Lukas said into Sara’s shock of dark hair. Things had been decidedly strained between them after Dimitri had rejected him all those years ago, but time had mercifully thawed the tension. When Lukas had come to Novo-Svitsevo with Yullyan to celebrate Ivan’s adoption, it was clear that his love of children—even those belonging to others—would overcome any lingering awkwardness. It blessedly gave them something to talk about that wasn’t the way in which Dimitri had broken Lukas’s heart, and the relationship had mended from there, Lukas returning to his affable self in Dimitri’s presence.

“It’s so good to see my little princess,” Lukas crooned to Sara. “The smartest and most talented girl to ever grace the continent.”

“Don’t let Aziza hear you say that.” Dimitri gave himself the luxury of a second to smile before ducking down and crawling awkwardly underneath the table, where he found the heir to the throne of Novo-Svitsevo with his arms around Piotyr the goat. Piotyr bleated at him again, his slitted eyes no less mean than they’d been years ago in Wilnetzk, the night they’d used him to find themselves a demon.

He scrubbed his hand over his face, muttering under his breath. “Why the hell did Mischka have to bring a goat back with them?”

“Daddy,” Ivan gasped, delighted. “That’s a bad word.”

Dimitri kicked himself—he’d never hear the end of this from Vasily, because Ivan repeated every single thing he heard adults say these days—and took a deep breath. “Vanya, you need to get out from under the table. Come out so we can all see you. Do you want to miss the wedding?”

“Yes,” Ivan replied with a pout, clinging to Piotyr’s neck. Dimitri tried to inch closer, but Piotyr made a sound suspiciously like a hiss. “Adult things are boring.”

“All right,” Dimitri said, changing tack. He shrugged. “I guess that’s more cake for us, then, if you’re not going to come out.”

He ducked back out from under the table and straightened up. It took all of six seconds for his son to bolt from his hiding spot, goat thankfully not in tow, wild-eyed at the prospect of missing out on sweets. Dimitri grinned, triumphant.

“He’s not going to like that you tricked him when he realizes dessert isn’t served for another few hours.” Warm hands wrapped around his waist, and he turned his head to kiss Vasily, who must have finished calming Mischa down. They’d insisted that they weren’t nervous about getting married, but did admit to being terrified that the wedding they’d spent a good three years planning would be beset by one misfortune or another. Something about buoyancy and barometric pressure, neither of which Dimitri wanted to think terribly hard about.

“Daddy,” Ivan said, tugging on the hem of Dimitri’s jacket with tiny, muddy hands. “Where is the cake?”

“Ask your father,” Dimitri said, stepping aside and letting Vasily bend down and scoop Ivan up, lest he make more trouble. Ivan immediately slapped a muddy hand onto Vasily’s cheek, squashing what looked like several ants into his neatly trimmed beard.

“Oof.” Vasily winced and grabbed the offending hand before Ivan could do further damage, kissing his chubby baby knuckles. “Let’s get you cleaned up, shall we?” He looked over to Dimitri, an eyebrow raised. “The ceremony is about to start, and everyone is excited to see who’s going to be bringing the rings down the aisle.”

Dimitri’s heart lurched into his throat as his son attempted to perform something that looked like a backflip. Luckily, Vasily had far stronger arms than he did and held the flailing boy with ease.

“Let me down!” Ivan continued to squirm, and Vasily smiled indulgently but held tight. “Auntie Nina showed me where she hid the rings. But she made me promise not to tell anyone.”

Dimitri turned to see Annika, dressed in a stunning red gown, approaching with a drink in hand and Pavel at her side. She handed the glass over to Dimitri, and he was relieved it was only water.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered, putting a hand to the swell of her stomach. “Those are the fakes. Mischka has the real rings in their suit pocket. I told them there was no way I was going to be hunting on my hands and knees for rings when a four-year-old with no control over his hands drops them in the grass.”

“As if we would allow you to work,” Pavel huffed. He wrapped an arm around his wife, kissing her forehead. “You are already doing so much.”

Annika snorted. “I’m pregnant, not an invalid. Dima, how are you doing? You look exhausted.”

“Yeah.” Dimitri pushed a hand through his hair, sipping at the water and wishing it wasn’t too hot for some strong black tea. “I couldn’t get the speech right, and Sara was crying all night and Vasya didn’t wake up.”

Vasily rolled his eyes, wiping at his face with a dampened napkin that Ladushka had handed him with a frown of consternation, having handed Ivan back off to Yullyan. “You should have kicked me until I woke up. And besides, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t been doing quite a bit of physical exercise right before we went to sleep.”

His eyes flicked down to Dimitri’s waist suggestively, and Dimitri’s face heated.

Yullyan swaggered around the table, towing the goat by a decorative leash woven with flowers, a now-clean Ivan clasping their other hand. “Good to know that parenthood hasn’t put a damper on the Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo’s desire to let the Tzar Consort fuck his brains out,” Yullyan said in a whisper they clearly thought would be too quiet for Ivan’s ears.

“Fuck,” Ivan said, loudly enough that every head in the vicinity turned.

“Oh my God,” Dimitri muttered, leaning into his husband for strength. Yullyan flushed bright red and muttered an apology, which Dimitri wearily waved off.

“Once again, Yullyan proves that dignity and being high-born do not go hand in hand,” Ladushka sniffed. She brushed past the Atrean monarch, gave Piotyr a cool stare and a brief, respectful nod, and went to stand by Annika’s side. “I do believe we should all assemble in our places momentarily.”

Lukas drifted over to hand Sara to Vasily, who took hold of their daughter with such tenderness that Dimitri’s heart flipped in his chest. Then they were all left to the business of helping Mischa get married without any explosions going off.

The gardens were lush and enormous, and the seven of them set about making their way with the children to the main stretch of cleared space, where chairs had been set up facing the chuppah, the canopy of which appeared to be made out of the pages of old books. Their seats were in the front, near the rest of Mischa’s family. Aziza was already sitting in the second row and greeted them with a dip of her chin. Aleksandr was there too, along with several of Nina’s cousins, all of whom looked to be in various states of dishevelment. The magician gave a jaunty wave when Dimitri raised a hand in greeting.

When they got to their section, Dimitri groaned. “Are you serious?”

“Deadly serious, young one.” The head set into the mahogany table was wearing a bow tie and a party hat. “I predicted this wedding. I certainly wasn’t about to miss it. I even knew I’d be sitting next to you. At least you’re keeping an eye on the children. They always like to climb up the legs of my table. Your fifth will bite a good chunk out of one before her third birthday.”

Vasily turned to Dimitri, ashen-faced. Five? he mouthed in silent horror. From next to them, Annika was laughing hard enough that tears were springing to the corner of her eyes. Even Ladushka and Pavel cracked smiles.

“That’s got to be a while from now, because I can barely handle two,” Dimitri grumbled. “Maybe when I’ve retired from running the empire.”

“You know that’s never going to happen, darling.” Vasily tugged him down into his seat and put a comforting—if too warm—arm around his shoulders. “We’ll just have to adapt. We always do.”

Dimitri let his head rest against his husband’s shoulder and allowed himself to close his eyes for a blissful five minutes. He was startled back into wakefulness by a chime ringing and turned to see Piotyr shooting down the aisle towards the rebbe of Rav-Mikhailburg, trailing confetti in his wake, a collar covered in bells around his neck. Mischa was walking behind, looking dignified—if nearly about to vomit—in a deep-blue suit embroidered with silver thread. They smiled sheepishly at the crowd, and Dimitri returned a smile fondly, remembering just how nervous he’d been at his last wedding.

Vasily’s hand tightened in his, his wedding ring pressing into Dimitri’s skin.

Then the goat made it to the beginning of the aisle. But instead of walking towards the rebbe, holding a carrot discreetly underneath his prayer shawl as an apparent incentive for making the journey correctly, Piotyr detoured and made straight for Dimitri.

“No,” Dimitri whispered, cringing. “Go on.”

Piotyr bleated, then laid his bearded chin on Dimitri’s knee.

“Go on,” Dimitri hissed, ignoring the way that Vasily was trying to hide his laughter. “Go over there.”

Mischa caught up to Piotyr and started tugging on the collar. Piotyr refused to budge, bleating pathetically.

“He wants you to carry him,” the head said very unhelpfully from Dimitri’s left.

“Fuck me,” Dimitri whispered, acutely aware that roughly a hundred of Mischa and Nina’s friends and family were staring at him.

The goat started to chew on the hem of Dimitri’s jacket.

“No,” Dimitri snapped. “Bad Piotyr.” He shot up out of his seat and scooped up the goat under his one working arm, grunting. Piotyr was noticeably heavier than the last time he’d been forced to do this, and he was down a limb. It was a good thing he now had a lot of practice carrying around a struggling toddler.

“What are you feeding him?” Dimitri wheezed to Mischa as they made their way to the rebbe, who extended the carrot with a look of solemn concentration. “He feels like he’s made of lead.”

“Nin discovered he likes caviar,” Mischa said, “and he’s gotten less exercise since she caved and started letting him sleep in bed with us.” They looked distinctly green around the mouth, and when Dimitri put the goat down, he clasped his friend on the shoulder.

“You’re going to be fine,” he said, hoping he sounded reassuring. He pulled Mischa into a hug. “She’s the love of your life.”

He was interrupted in his effort at reassurance by laughter from the guests. He turned in time for his son to barrel into his legs, apparently not having the same problem as Piotyr with following directions. “Daddy! I have the rings!”

He was brandishing a stick that someone had tied two rings to as if it were a magic wand. Dimitri caught Aleksandr’s eye and cringed at the sparkle there—perhaps it actually was. He let out a breath of relief when Mischa crouched down and wrapped Ivan in a hug, taking the stick from him and thanking him. Ivan proceeded to turn on his heel, give Piotyr a sloppy and open-mouthed kiss on the nose, and then take a running leap into Vasily’s lap with enough force that Dimitri winced in sympathy. Vasily gave a weak wave to indicate that he hadn’t died by enthusiastic toddler, Sara still mercifully asleep on his shoulder.

“It’s not marrying Nin I’m worried about.” Mischa straightened their prayer shawl, reaching up to make sure their kippah was still in position. “I just want her to land safely. Then I won’t be nervous anymore.”

“What”—Dimitri looked at Mischa—“could you possibly mean by that?”

The answer was provided by a dark shape passing in front of the sun, throwing the wedding party suddenly into shadow. Mischa made a shooing motion and Dimitri gladly retreated to his seat, looking up at the massive hot-air balloon that had sailed high overhead.

“That’s Nin for you,” Vasily said as the bride appeared from the side of the basket, then proceeded to jump out, causing several of the wedding guests to scream. The head just hummed, and even though Dimitri’s heart was in his throat, he watched the plummeting bride as she pulled the cord on a parachute that erupted from her billowing wedding gown. When she touched down to the ground safely, she pulled the cord again and the parachute yanked itself back into shape as the voluminous skirt of her dress.

“Thank the Lord our God,” Mischa breathed, visibly more relaxed now.

“The Lord our God had nothing to do with it,” Nina said, rolling her eyes. “Merely physics.”

The relieved rebbe started the ceremony, Piotyr the goat munching contentedly on a stack of carrots next to the happy couple, and Dimitri wiped away tears when his friends were officially wed in the eyes of God and the law. They all cheered as Mischa and Nina walked back down the aisle hand in hand, leading them all to another section of the garden where large tables had been lined up, laden with food, an orchestra already playing. Ivan immediately began rolling around on the parquet floor which had been set up in the middle of the tables for dancing. Nina dashed over to join her nephew enthusiastically, seemingly unconcerned about the effect on her wedding gown.

“That’s my wife,” Mischa said, smiling like a fool, an expression of complete disbelief and utter joy on their face. It was one that Dimitri recognized well, having worn it himself enough times in the last few years—looking at his husband, holding his children—that he’d almost, very nearly, gotten used to it.

It was still, after all this time, strange to be so happy. He wished he could tell the battered and bruised version of himself kneeling on a cold stone floor, staring bereft at the lifeless body of his husband, that one day he’d be here in a garden with the sun setting and candles flickering to life, the continent devoid of power politics and everyone safe and happy and well. His body strong, if not whole, his heart stitched together with so much love he was almost overflowing with it.

He wished he could go back and tell himself that even with what he’d have to go through, even with what would come next, he’d come to know what true joy felt like. He’d know what it meant to be fully, honestly loved, for each and every bit of himself.

Vasily grabbed Dimitri’s hand and raised it to his lips, pressing a kiss to his knuckles. Dimitri looked at him, eyes watery, and Vasily merely gave him a crooked half smile. “I know, Dima, darling. I feel it too.”

He tapped at the center of his chest, where their tether still thrummed, the bond between them as vibrant as ever. Dimitri raised himself up on his tiptoes to kiss Vasily tenderly, drawing his hand around the back of Vasily’s neck, letting himself get lost in the moment until Yullyan showed up and poked Dimitri in the side, letting him know that it was time for his speech.

Vasily captured Ivan and sat down as the other guests found their places. Dimitri made his way to the head table and kissed Nina on the cheek, then hugged Mischa, before pulling out of his pocket the scrap of paper on which he’d jotted his thoughts.

Dimitri looked out over the crowd of guests that had assembled to celebrate the person who had saved his body and his mind on more than one occasion. Annika was leaning against Pavel, Ladushka was flushed with excitement, Vasily was holding Sara in one arm and had Ivan on his lap, and Yullyan, Lukas and Aziza were sitting next to each other and smiling with four bottles of wine between the three of them. There were so many people he loved here. There was so much peace and joy and happiness.

Thank you, the Lord our God, Dimitri sent up in silent prayer, for keeping us alive and sustaining us. For bringing us to this moment.

As Dimitri Abramovich Vasiliev, Tzar of Novo-Svitsevo, began his speech, he added one more bit of gratitude. Thank you for letting the love between all of us finally, finally, be enough.

Laura R. Samotin and her spouse live with two enormously large felines. When she’s not pursuing her academic research on military tactics, power politics, and leadership, she relishes her role as a full-time cat servant.