Nikolai glanced down at the file. “She’s barely sixteen!”
“She’s from one of the most powerful families in Kerch. Besides, Alina was only a few years older when you threw away the Lantsov emerald on her.”
“And so was I at the time.” Thinking of Alina always smarted. He knew he’d been a fool to propose to her. But at the time he’d been more in need of a friend than a political ally. Or at least it had felt that way.
Zoya leaned back and cast him a long look. “Don’t tell me you’re still mourning the loss of our little Sun Saint?”
Of course he was. He’d liked Alina, maybe he’d even started to love her. And maybe some arrogant part of him had simply expected her to say yes. He was a king, after all, and a passable dancer. But she’d known the Darkling better than anyone. Maybe she’d sensed what was festering inside him. Years had passed, and yet her rejection still stung.
“Never had a gift for pining,” Nikolai said. “Though I do like to show off my profile by staring mournfully out of windows.”
“Elke Marie Smit’s parents will still marry her off, probably to some merchant. I’m sure she’d be better pleased with a king.”
“No. Next?”
“Natasha Beritrova,” said Zoya.
“The Baroness Beritrova?”
Zoya looked studiously at the paper. “That’s the one.”
“She’s fifty.”
“She’s a very well-off widow with lands near Caryeva that could prove essential in any southern campaign.”
“No, Zoya.”
Zoya rolled her eyes but picked up another paper. “Linnea Opjer.”
“No.”
“Oh, for all the Saints and their suffering, Nikolai. Now you’re just being difficult. She’s twenty-three and, by all accounts, beautiful, even-tempered, has a talent for mathematics—”
Nikolai flicked a piece of lint from his cuff. “I’d expect nothing less of my half sister.”
Zoya stilled. She glowed like a painted icon in her kefta, the firelight clinging to her like a halo. He swore no woman had ever looked better in blue. “So it’s true, then?”
“As true as any story,” Nikolai said. The rumors of his bastardy had circulated since well before his birth, and he’d done his best to make peace with them. But he’d only ever spoken the truth of his parentage to one person—Alina Starkov. Why was he telling Zoya now? When he’d told Alina, she’d reassured him, said he would still make a great king. Zoya would offer no such kindness. But still he unlocked the top of his desk and removed the miniature his mother had passed along to him. She’d given it to him before she’d been forced into exile, when she’d told him who his father really was—a Fjerdan shipping magnate who had once served as emissary to the Grand Palace.
“Saints,” Zoya said as she stared down at the portrait. “The likeness—”
“Striking, I know.” Only the eyes were different—tiny daubs of blue instead of hazel—and the beard, of course. But looking at the miniature was like gazing into the future, at a Nikolai grown a bit older, a bit graver, with lines at the corners of his eyes.
Zoya hurled it into the fire.
“Zoya!” Nikolai shouted, lunging toward the grate.
“What kind of fool are you?” she spat.
He reached his hand out, but the flames were too high, and he recoiled, his rage igniting at the sight of the tiny canvas melting in its frame.
He whirled on her. “You forget yourself.”
“That portrait was as good as a loaded gun pointed at your heart.” She jabbed her finger into his chest. “Ravka’s heart. And you would risk it all for what? Stupid sentiment?”
He seized her hand before she could jab him again. “I am not one of your boys to be trifled with and lectured to. I am your king.”
Zoya’s blue eyes flashed. Her chin lifted as if to say, What is a mortal king to a queen who can summon storms? “You are my king. And I wish you to remain my king. Even if you’re too daft to protect your claim to the throne.”
Maybe so, but he didn’t want to hear it. “You had no right.”
“I am sworn to protect you. To protect this realm. I had every right.” She yanked her hand from his. “What if Magnus Opjer came to this palace? Or was invited to some banquet with you in Kerch? All it would take is a single glance for people to know—”
“They already know,” Nikolai said, feeling suddenly weary. “Or they’ve guessed. There have been whispers since before I was born.”
“We should consider eliminating him.”
He clenched his fists. “Zoya, you will do no such thing. I forbid it. And if I find you’ve acted without my consent, you will lose your rank and can spend the rest of your days teaching Grisha children how to make cloud animals.”
For a moment, it looked like she might lift her hands and raise a storm to blow the whole palace down. But then she bobbed a perfect curtsy that still somehow conveyed her contempt. “Of course, moi tsar.”
“Are you really so ruthless, Zoya? He is an innocent man. His only crime was loving my mother.”
“No, his crime was bedding your mother.”
Nikolai shook his head. Leave it to Zoya to cut right to the truth. Of course, he had no way of knowing if there had ever been love between his mother and his true father, but he hoped there had been something more than lust and regret.
He plucked his wineglass from his abandoned dinner tray and drank it to the dregs. “One day you will overstep and I will not be so forgiving.”
“On that day you may clap me in irons and throw me in your dungeons.” She crossed the room, took the glass from his hands, and set it on the table. “But tonight it is you who wears chains.”
Her voice was almost kind.
Nikolai released a sigh. “After the business of this evening, it will be a relief.”
He unlocked his bedchamber. Servants were allowed access to clean only under Tolya and Tamar’s supervision and only once a week. He had no personal valet and attended to his own bath.
Though it had become his nightly prison, the room itself was a sanctuary, maybe the only place in the palace that truly felt like it belonged to him. The walls were painted the deep blue of the sea, and the map above the mantel had been taken from the cabin he’d once occupied as Sturmhond, when he’d disguised himself as a privateer and sailed the world’s oceans aboard the Volkvolny. A long glass stood propped on a tripod by the bank of windows. He couldn’t see much through it—the stars, the houses of the upper town—but even having it there gave him some sense of peace, as if he might one day put his eye to it and see the heaving shoulders of a great gray sea.