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"There's a sight for sore eyes," Nikolai murmured, next to Alina, as they stepped down from the carriage which had brought them from their landing site outside the city.
Ahead, Os Kervo‘s cobbled streets and famous lighthouse were draped in gold by the morning light, as the sun chased the lingering chill of the night away. A wolf's-head flag flapped gently atop the mast of a sleek ship sitting in the harbor’s calm waters, safe within the sea wall's embrace.
"It is," she agreed, taking in the figure waiting at the top of the boarding ramp, teal frock coat open to show the brace of pistols at his hips. Anticipation and apprehension intermingled within her, as they had since Nikolai had first suggested the voyage for their (extremely belated) honeymoon. She and Mal had exchanged just a handful of stilted letters, since he'd gone to sea with the simultaneous goals of keeping Ravka well-supplied with intel and himself far away from her. Since she’d accepted Nikolai’s proposal almost out of pique, in the bruised aftermath of their last conversation. But despite everything, she had missed him.
He pulled her into an embrace even as she reached him, and she breathed in the familiar scent of him, overlaid with unfamiliar hints of salt and sea air. His hair had grown back in, and her fingertips itched to touch it.
"You look good," he observed, as he pulled back.
"I always do, but it’s kind of you to notice," Nikolai replied, coming up the gangway beside her. She sighed, but Mal merely snorted. And Nikolai's self-flattery wasn't inaccurate; even though he was dressed more plainly than usual, the navy greatcoat he wore was tailored to emphasize the breadth of his shoulders, and its military collar turned up in a way that only highlighted the sharpness of his cheekbones.
"Good to see you too, moi Tsar," Mal said, before stepping forward to embrace Nikolai next, in a brief one-armed back-slapping sort of affair which made her roll her eyes at men in general and Mal in particular. "You're in the captain's cabin for the voyage, if your people want to drop your luggage off there."
"Of course we are. It's still my cabin, even if I am graciously lending it to you."
Alina elbowed Nikolai lightly in the side. "Stop baiting him."
"He makes it so much fun, though. But I can pace myself. We have the whole journey."
"Don't think being king means I won't tip you overboard," Mal warned.
“Unfortunately for you, I'm an excellent swimmer." With that, Nikolai clapped Mal briefly on the shoulder, and then wandered off to see to their accommodations.
"He hasn't changed a bit," Mal said, half fond and half exasperated.
"Did you expect him to?"
"Not really, I suppose. Being King is a lot of power, though; a lot of responsibility. It wouldn't have been surprising if it had gone to his head. Even more than being a prince had already gone to his head, I mean."
"Maybe that's the secret. Being so egotistical that there's nowhere to go from there."
He slung an arm around her shoulders as they walked. “Nah, I think it’s having you around. You always kept my feet on the ground too.”
A shout of ‘cap’n!’ came from across the deck, and he disentangled himself with an apologetic glance. “Got to go, sorry. I’ll catch up with you later, alright?”
She waved him off. “Go then, be dashing and important without me.”
“Alina!” He called after her as she made her way to the cabin. “It really is good to see you. I missed you.”
Relief, bright and sparkling, buoyed her. “I missed you too.”
They chased the last of the summer south to the warm seas off the coast of Shu Han, where the water was more green than blue. The same word served for both in the Shu language, a fact she'd only learned during her lessons at the Little Palace, since she’d grown up divorced from her mother's culture. It hadn't made sense until she laid eyes on the azure waters here. Craggy islands sprang from them, towering edifices of rock home to immense flocks of seabirds, hundreds upon thousands of them teeming the cliffs and skies.
"That one's a frigate bird." Nikolai's warm tones came from right by her ear as he leaned in over her, one hand on her shoulder and the other pointing to a sleek black bird with a deeply forked tail, that was stalking the edge of the cloud of white-winged forms. "A more ruthless pirate than any you'll find sailing the seas."
The bird dive-bombed a gull, which released its catch with an outraged squawk. The frigatebird dived to scoop it out of the air and flew away, victorious. "Maybe you should have named yourself after them, then."
“Sturmhond rolls off the tongue much better, though, you have to admit.”
She glanced up at him. “Is it strange, the name belonging to someone else now?”
He moved to lean on his elbows next to her, to make it easier to converse. “Not really. Sturmhond was always more of an idea, than a person.”
He watched the birds wheel and dive for a moment, with his face turned to the wind. With his shirtsleeves rolled up, temporarily reprieved of the weight of the world on his shoulders, he looked so much younger. She couldn’t help but wonder whether he’d have been happier, overall, with this life; whether Prince Nikolai had been more of an idea than a person too.
It was strange, being at sea without a purpose driving her forwards, or any catastrophe snapping at her heels. The days were filled with nothing but the gentle creak and sway of the ship; with sketching and sightseeing; with easy conversation and the buzz of the crew going about their tasks.
Nikolai slotted back into their midst as if he’d never left, spending every minute he wasn’t with her being distractingly shirtless as he climbed up to the crow's nest, or dove off the edge of the boat, or sparred hand-to-hand with whoever asked. He encouraged her without success to partake in each of these activities, but she found she enjoyed watching more. Every now and then he'd catch her eye, preening under the attention, and she would hastily avert her gaze, a flush across her cheeks and a lurch of guilt in her chest. The months spent at his side had done nothing to untangle her conflicted feelings.
At night they dined with the inner circle in the officers' dining room, and Nikolai and Mal took turns to one-up each other with tales of their respective tenures as Sturmhond. Or else Tamar and Tolya span some yarn from their pre-Volkvolny days, glasses of rum in everyone's hand—or a handful of cards, for another round of the pirates' game which they'd tried unsuccessfully to teach her and which she suspected they were making up the rules for as they went. She'd yet to win even a single round, though it didn't matter that much when the money she was losing all came from Nikolai's deep pockets to begin with.
Each night, she used the excuse of her depleted funds or her tipsiness to slink from the table first, and curl into the spacious bunk in the captain's quarters. And each night when Nikolai slid in next to her, she tried to ignore the way her skin prickled in anticipation of his touch, as well as the faint wash of disappointment when he kept scrupulously to his side. Each night he was a perfect gentleman, just as he'd been on their wedding night, the one time she'd shared his bed in the palace. It was exactly what she'd said she wanted their marriage to be, and it was driving her very slowly mad.
It took her three days to find both the courage and the opportunity to have a proper conversation with Mal. But finally, while some kind of fencing contest took place on the deck—Nikolai squaring off against Tolya with most of the crew gathered around to heckle and place bets—she headed up to the helm where Mal was steering with one eye on the match below and one on the horizon.
“They’ve really taken to you,” Alina observed, nodding down at the gathered crew, who were cheering as the two combatants clashed blades. “I worried that they wouldn’t, since you were replacing their old captain. But you always have made friends quickly. I was always the one tagging along in your shadow.”
"They're a good lot. Well, I mean, most of ‘em are a bunch of thieves and liars, but they've been decent to me. I guess it helps that I'm not worth anything in ransom."
“I’d ransom you,” she reassured him.
“Maybe keep that to yourself, while you’re here,” he smiled. Then he brought one hand up to rub at the back of his neck. “I’m sorry I never realized how you felt back then. I didn't mean to take you for granted. Or make you feel like I didn’t want you around.”
“I know." She fiddled with the cuff of her jacket. "I’m sorry for doing the same to you, when we were fighting against the Darkling.”
He ducked his head away. “I deserved it.”
“Maybe a little,” she said, smiling to soften it. And then took a steadying breath, as she gathered the conviction to continue. “Before you left… you said that you didn’t feel it any more."
Mal winced. "Look, I said a lot of stuff. Everything was just so much, you know. Finding out we only met because fate pushed us together. Coming to terms with needing to die for you. Coming back. I got in my head about it, a bit."
"Well, now that you've had time to think... do you still feel that way?"
"It doesn't really matter how I feel, does it? The two of us being anything more ended when you said yes to him."
"Nikolai said he would have been willing to look the other way."
Mal shook his head, disbelief at that written all over his face. "Yeah, maybe. But even if he did, that isn't fair to any of us. I don't want half of you, as a consolation prize. I don't want to be your dirty little secret. We'd all end up resenting each other."
"You don't know that." She knew she sounded petulant, but her throat hurt with the emotion building up in it.
"I do. Or it would all come out, and undermine everything you're trying to do. You've been given a chance to do something great, Alina. You shouldn't risk all that trying to hold onto something you know you can't keep." He lifted one hand to wrap around hers. "Set us both free."
"That was almost eloquent," she tried to joke, because it was that or give in to the flood of tears.
He huffed the barest ghost of a laugh. "Sorry, if you want fancy speeches you need to talk to the other man who's hopelessly in love with you."
She was sure Mal must be able to hear the skip her heart made in her chest at the words. He could definitely hear the tremble in her voice when she replied. "I don't want to lose you completely."
"You won't." His voice was rough with emotion of his own. "You're still my true north. My best friend. My path will always lead back to you."
"Do you promise?" Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, welling up, and Mal's face fell. His arms opened wide to let her fling herself into them, burying her face in his chest.
"Of course I do." The low rumble of his voice wrapped around her, soothing. "You and me? That's forever. If the Darkling couldn't break it, a bit of ocean isn't going to."
For a moment she just soaked in the warmth of him, letting the frock coat absorb her tears. "You're staying, then?"
"Yeah. If fate’s done with me, then that means I have the freedom to choose. What I want to do. Who I want to be."
"And you want to be a pirate?"
"Privateer," he groaned, sounding so exactly like Nikolai that it made her smile despite herself. "And why not? I'm useless as a tracker, now. You don't need me to protect you any more. But out here I can still be useful. I can chart my own course."
"That someone else picked out for you."
"How many orphans really get to choose what they're going to do with their life? I'd be an idiot to turn down a chance like this, to make a difference, see the world, just because it was handed to me. And maybe Nikolai set it up, but what I make of it, that's on me."
"I know the feeling." She watched the match below for a while, tucked under Mal's arm; let herself be entranced by the rhythmic back-and-forth of blows and the zing of steel sliding against steel; by the bright flash of Nikolai's grin when he dodged a lunging strike from Tolya. Let her heart slow, until she felt like she could trust her voice to keep steady again. "You're happy, though?"
Mal looked down at her. "I will be."
"Promise me?" she repeated, curling back into him.
"I swear." His arms tightened around her. "But you have to do the same. Don't let the fact you feel guilty about how things went between us stop you from seeing what this thing with him could become. You deserve to be happy too."
Her gaze flicked inexorably down to the deck, where the bout had apparently come to an end. Nikolai saluted Tolya with his sword, and then looked up towards her, still wrapped in Mal's arms. The bright grin on his face flickered, before Tamar pulled his attention away. Cold spread through her despite the heat of the day, as Mal released her and stepped back.
The idea of facing anyone after that conversation was unbearable. She took her sketchbook instead, and found a quiet spot where she wouldn't be disturbed, letting the motions of her hands over the page occupy her mind as she tried to organize her thoughts. Her heart ached, like a deep bruise which flared into exquisite agony when poked, but it wasn't the devastation she'd feared. As the reflexive sting of rejection faded, it left behind only... relief. That she hadn't irrevocably sundered her connection to Mal after all, by bringing him back. That their experiences had instead tempered it, to something steady and unbreakable. A deep and abiding affection for him still thrummed beneath her skin, but it no longer burned, for good or ill. And if there was a certain bittersweetness to wondering what could have been between them in some better, kinder world, she didn't regret for one second that she'd traded that for a world which still had him in it.
When her fingers began to cramp, she put the pencil aside and leafed idly back through the pages to kill some more time. She'd been busy, during the trip. There were numerous seascapes full of craggy islands and sleek porpoise. Studies of the ship's smooth curves; the billowing shapes of the sails; the complexity of the masts and rigging, the rich detail of the captain's cabin. Quick caricatures of the crew; a detailed sketch of Mal posing with a pistol held out sideways, with Tamar at his back holding her axes. And throughout, there was Nikolai. Captured in mid-riposte with bold strokes to convey the movement; leaning back on his chair in low lamplight, hands gesturing to tell a tale with a grin on his face; with his eyes fixed to the horizon as he clung one-handed to the rigging, unaware of her gaze.
She flipped to the start and paged through forwards instead, noting how the frequency and care with which she'd drawn him both increased. The pages were full of scattered moments of their time in Os Alta. The poised and polished prince was there, straight-backed and charming with his hair neatly styled. But there were glimpses, too, of the Nikolai the general public never got to see. More intimate moments, preserved in graphite: with his shirt sleeves rolled up and hair coming free from its hold after a long day, eyes tired but expression so warm, as he quirked a smile at her from the sofa. When had he begun to look at her like that? How had she not noticed?
But she had noticed, enough to capture it here. She'd just pretended not to see, because she'd been so sure that things with Mal would somehow go back to how they'd been. That her conflict over her developing attachment to Nikolai would resolve itself in time. She pressed her lips together and her fingers to the paper, for a few heartbeats. Then, with resolve seeping into all the spaces that the longing had left empty inside her, she headed to her cabin to put the sketchbook away before the dinner bell.
Dinner was less raucous that night, and when Tamar brought a deck of cards out, Nikolai waved her off, heading out early for once instead. Alina hesitated briefly, and then followed.
The handful of crew members up on watch were unobtrusive enough—in comparison to the clamor of court, at least—to give the illusion that she was alone with the vast stretch of the sea and sky all around. The light was leeching from the latter, shifting to a deep purple as the sun sank towards to the horizon. Nikolai was standing by the railing, with his hands in his pockets. He looked around as she approached, the pensive expression swiftly replaced with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.
"Didn't want the company?" she asked, coming to join him at the railing. "That's not like you."
"It's been known to happen, from time to time." He glanced sideways at her. "You patched things up with Oretsev, then?"
Her smile was slightly pained. "I did."
"Good. I hoped you'd work things out, once you were in front of him again."
The carefully neutral tone, as much as the phrasing, made her frown. "Is that why you suggested this trip?"
"It's not the only reason; I wasn't lying when I said that we could both benefit from a break. It's been a hell of a year, for us all."
"But it is a reason?" she pressed. "We could have taken a honeymoon anywhere."
He sighed softly. "I don't mean this as a criticism, so please don't take it that way, but... it's been a year, Alina, and your body might have been in Os Alta but your heart has been an ocean away, and your head has been commuting between them. It was clear that you needed to have a real conversation with him, and that wasn't going to happen in a letter."
The presumption of arranging an entire sea voyage to force her to deal with the situation with Mal ought to have grated, but he was right, and that stung more. "Have I really been so distracted? I thought I was managing quite well."
"You're doing brilliantly," he was quick to assure her. He braced his hands on the railing. "But it's been agonizing to watch, and you're not the only one who's been in limbo for a year. Perhaps it was selfish to force the issue, but I thought it would be less painful to know, one way or the other, than keep hoping that things might change." His mouth twisted into a wry smile. "In retrospect, I'm not sure I agree with myself."
Oh. Understanding bloomed, along with a little twinge of guilt at being so wrapped up in her own thoughts that she'd failed to notice how the uncertainty had affected him. She laid a hand lightly on his shoulder. "Nikolai, I ended things with Mal." His eyes flicked to hers, searching, and she explained, awkward. "Or, well, things ended. It doesn't matter who did it."
"Are you alright? I can still fire him, you know. Or exile him."
She dropped her hand to the railing, gazing out at the waves. "I will be. We're still friends. Just friends, though." Their foray into being more than friends had been so brief, in the grand scheme of things. Maybe some day they'd look back and laugh about this interlude where they'd tried out being lovers. She hoped that it wouldn't always be so awkward.
"I'm glad to hear it," Nikolai said, breaking into her thoughts. And then a very brief pause. "That you're still on good terms, I mean."
"Is that why?" She pitched the question with a teasing edge, to take the accusation out of it, and the smile it coaxed out of him was caught charmingly between roguish and sheepish.
"I can't deny a certain amount of self-interested relief at the second part of the statement as well."
She rolled her eyes at him, and shifted closer to rest her head against his shoulder, looking up at the unfamiliar southern constellations shining above them. "I'm glad we came here. It's lovely."
"I did consider going north instead, to take in the aurora, but I thought it might be safer overall to go somewhere new. With no bad memories attached."
"Better swimming conditions, too."
"Not that you'd know, having refused all opportunities."
A small smile curled onto her face. "Are you trying to get me undressed?"
"Always. If the issue is that you can't swim, I'd be happy to teach you. I'm an excellent teacher."
This she already knew, because he'd been guiding her through her the politics of court since her very in-the-deep-end introduction, but he didn't need her to feed his ego by pointing it out. Instead she teased. "Is there anything you aren't good at?"
"Poetry," he replied promptly. "And I was summarily banned from partaking in any cooking after my first attempt at it in the army."
"You wrote poetry? You have to show me, when we get back. Actually no, you should read some to me."
"Alas, it's all lost to posterity. It was bleak stuff, anyway. I'm much fonder of the romantics."
"I can't imagine you writing anything depressing."
"I was working through some things," he shrugged. "But Tolya's your man if you'd like meandering philosophical poetry reciting at you. I might be able to manage a limerick."
She highly doubted that he didn't have at least a handful of famous and potentially situationally-relevant poems memorized, but she didn't press him on it. They watched the last of the sunset in companionable silence for a while, until Alina let out an involuntary shiver. She hadn't realized how much the temperature had dropped, now the sun had gone. Then sudden startling warmth enveloped her as Nikolai draped his coat around her shoulders.
Her hands came up automatically to hold it in place. "Thank you."
"No thanks necessary. There isn't much I wouldn't give you, if you asked."
He was so close, when she looked up. The faint moonlight gilded his features, and the strength of the desire that ran through her at the sight took her by surprise. Her chest was tight; her gaze caught hard on his lower lip, before she forced it up to meet his eyes. He was holding position, neither closing in nor pulling away.
No kissing, he'd said before the wedding. Not until you're thinking of me.
"I'm not thinking about Mal any more," she breathed.
"Technically speaking, that can't be—"
He fell blessedly silent as she rose up on her toes and pressed her lips to his. One hand lifted to the curve of her hip, steadying her; the other to brush against her cheek. And when she pulled back, the smile on his face was broad and genuine, before he claimed her mouth again, soft and unhurried.