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The Little Palace was boring. Ten year-old Prince Nikolai Lantsov tried not to scratch himself, but his clothes were so itchy- Vasily shot him a dirty look and he instantly clamped his hands to his side. Both of them stood next to their father, the King, as he was in deep conversation with none other than the Darkling, the leader of the Second Army. He creeped Nikolai out. He tried his hardest to stand still and stare at a particularly interesting piece of marble on the opposite wall.
After what seemed like ages, his father shooed Vasily and Nikolai from the room, telling them to occupy themselves while he did some “grown-up talk” with the Darkling. Nikolai didn’t mind. He ran outside as dignified as he could be, with a royal guard chasing behind him. Outside of the palace was sunshine and the smell of freshly cut grass. Across a short grass field was a lake. He watched a group of children clustered near the lake curiously. Were they Grisha?
“Your highness, I recommend returning inside,” the guard wheezed. Perhaps Nikolai had been running a little faster than he’d meant to. He frowned and crossed his arms.
“I want to stay out here. I don’t want you here, though. You’re dismissed.”
The guard bit his lip nervously. He was probably a fresh graduate from wherever guards were taught, which meant it would be easy for Nikolai to bully him into doing what he wanted.
“I heard Vasily wants to find a Heartrender and fight them. Perhaps that’s what you should be concerned about.” He blinked innocently.
The guard muttered under his breath and started retreating back into the palace. “Stay out of trouble. Don’t talk to any of these Grisha either, they’re all monsters.”
As soon as Nikolai lost sight of the irritating guard, he shoved his unhelpful advice out of his mind and started walking towards the lake. The babble and laughter of the other children reached his ears and he stopped, suddenly unsure of himself. He didn’t have many friends– just one in fact. And he’d never interacted with a Grisha before. Vasily would tell him stories about them, like how they had to kill children and suck the marrow from their bones to gain their powers. Not that Nikolai believed him.
Without realizing it, he’d gotten a lot closer to the group of children than he’d meant to. They hadn’t noticed him yet, so he hastily turned around to try to find somewhere to hide. But just as he took one step backwards, a haughty voice stopped him.
“Who are you? You don’t seem like you’re Grisha.”
Nikolai spun around to find a girl a little younger than him glaring and crossing her arms. Her wild black hair was pulled into two pigtails, which left the silver embroidery at the neck of her kefta visible for the world to see. A Squaller, then. Nikolai swallowed hard.
“I’m visiting with my father.” He didn’t dare say more than that.
She circled him, looking him up and down while brushing her bangs out of her eyes impatiently. “Otkazat’sya?”
Nikolai blinked. “What?”
She smirked at him. “Definitely. Why don’t you go find a nice pile of mud to play in? This is a class for Grisha.”
He puffed up in indignation. “I can handle myself. I can use a sword.”
She laughed, blue eyes shining in the sunlight. She was missing a front tooth. Nikolai shifted his gaze to the side, suddenly feeling very strange and tingly inside. Was making friends supposed to feel like this? He couldn’t remember how he became friends with Dominik, but he was pretty sure the other boy’s laughter didn’t make him feel like jumping into the lake and drowning himself in embarrassment.
“What’s a sword to the wind? The water? Have you even seen what we can do?”
He scowled. “Can’t be too amazing. I wonder how you can even see in a fight with all that dumb hair covering your eyes.”
Her hands balled into little fists by her side. “Take that back.”
Nikolai crossed his arms and smirked at her. “Make me.”
She held her hands out in front of her and a small breeze rustled around them. Her bangs shifted and Nikolai once again found himself staring at her deep blue eyes. They were like nothing he’d even seen before, the color a cross somewhere between the sapphires in his mother’s crown and the sea just after the sun had set.
He cleared his throat and tried to shake all thoughts of her eyes from his mind. “Is that the best you can do? I suppose even if the Second Army won’t take you in, you’d be useful in a stuffy room on a hot day–”
A significantly stronger wind slammed into him, forcing him to dig his feet into the ground to stay standing. She was full-on scowling now, and with the wind whipping her hair around, Nikolai was starting to believe Vasily’s tales about monsters.
He didn’t want to lose, especially not to a girl. He knew from the stories that to stop a Grisha from using their powers, all you had to do was pin their hands. He watched as her small fingers flexed, then closed into a fist. The wind stopped. Nikolai tackled her to the ground, trying to grab her wrists. She wrestled against him, getting in a few good hits before her fist came up and socked him in the nose. There was a bright burst of pain which had Nikolai yelling, then the warm gush of blood down his face. A few drops splattered on the girl’s kefta and she moved away in disgust.
“What was that for?” he demanded, trying to keep his lower lip from trembling. He wasn’t going to cry in front of this...little heathen. She was busy examining the specks of blood on her now mud-stained kefta.
“You attacked-”
“Hey you! What are you two doing?” the man leading the group of children at the lake yelled. He started walking quickly towards them. Nikolai took in his messy royal uniform, then the girl’s now wide and fearful eyes. She pushed herself up and bolted away. Nikolai didn’t follow.
They had gotten him cleaned up after, then placed him in a carriage and sent him back to the Grand Palace. But all the while, Nikolai couldn’t stop thinking about the little Grisha girl with eyes as blue as the sea.
His father had made sure nobody talked about the “Grisha attack” and effectively banned Nikolai from visiting the Little Palace again. Vasily had gloated, taunted him for being bested by a girl. His mother coddled him to the point of suffocation. Nikolai just wanted to see her again.
“You’re doing it again,” Dominik’s voice interrupted Nikolai’s thoughts. He blinked and saw the other boy peering up at him with curiosity. Nikolai leaned back in his chair.
“Doing what?”
“Thinking about what happened at the Little Palace. Do you want to go back?” His friend was always more astute than most gave him credit for.
“I want to stop studying Fjerdan grammar. That’s about it.”
Dominik leaned back, mimicking him. He smirked at Nikolai. “Doth the prince have an infatuation? Will we be having a new princess in the palace soon? Please promise you won’t forget about me.”
Nikolai threw his book at Dominik and he dodged it, grinning the entire time. “It’s true! You like her,” he sang.
“I don’t even know her name!” Nikolai hissed, his cheeks burning. He chucked his pencil at Dominik, but that was dodged as well. Dominik ran around the table and started poking him incessantly in the ribs. Nikolai didn’t have the energy to fend him off.
“Is she pretty? What kind of Grisha is she? Like those scary ones that can kill people with one look or those that can cause earthquakes? Did she punch first-”
Nikolai clamped a hand over his friend’s mouth and shoved him away. “First off, your knowledge about Grisha is so wrong. Haven’t you read a book before?”
“Doesn’t matter! I’ll help you sneak out. I know you got a gift for her. Oh, to be young and in love.” He waggled his eyebrows. Nikolai restrained the urge to tackle his best friend to the floor.
“How do you know about that?”
Dominik clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Commoners’ secret. Can I see it?”
Nikolai tried to evade his question. He eyed the door and started backing away towards it. “See what?”
“See-” Dominik tackled him to the floor and they rolled around, dust from the heavy carpet rising in small puffs around them. Nikolai felt a hand reach into his pocket, then Dominik leapt to his feet. He raised a velvet jewelry box above his head triumphantly.
“Give that back,” Nikolai demanded. Unfortunately, Dominik had grown immune to his position as royalty and ignored him. He opened the box and let out a long whistle.
“Wow. Where did you get these?” Inside, nestled in a scrap of blue silk, were two silver barrettes. The ends had been fashioned to resemble two miniature dragons with tiny sapphires for eyes. Nikolai had to spend an entire month’s worth of allowance to get a Fabrikator apprentice named David to make them and to keep it a secret between them. He didn’t Vasily poking his nose in things again.
“None of your business,” Nikolai snapped. He snatched the box from Dominik and put it back inside his pocket. Dominik’s grin never left his face.
“So tomorrow? Your dad’s gone on a hunt and Vasily’s hanging out with his sucky friends. You totally have an opportunity, Nik.”
“Shut up, Nik.”
He found the girl in the same spot as last time, a distance away from the lake group. She was sitting cross-legged on the ground facing the lake. There was a certain air of loneliness about her, one that Nikolai could relate to. People were scared of power, whether you intended to use it or not.
“Hey.”
She whirled around, hands at the ready. Her hair was in a neat braid today, but those overgrown bangs still covered her forehead and most of her eyes. She frowned.
“Back to get your butt kicked again?”
Nikolai winced. The words were bitter in his mouth. “No. I’m here to...apologize.”
She looked suspicious, but got up and dusted off her kefta. She’d gotten a new one, he noticed idly. The silver buttons gleamed under the sun.
She stuck out a hand for him. He eyed it suspiciously, but took it. Her hands were small, much smaller than his, but warm. She led him to a grove of trees just out of the sight of those by the lake. There, a pleasant breeze rustled leaves and brought the scent of flowers and fruit. The girl leaned back onto a tree trunk and looked at him expectantly. Nikolai cleared his throat.
“Sorry for hitting you.”
She didn’t say anything, just crossed her arms and glared some more.
“This is the part where you apologize for breaking my nose.”
“It was self defense.”
He sighed, then reached into his pocket. “I got an apology present for you. Close your eyes. “
“No way. What if you hit me again?”
“That was one time, I swear to the Saints-”
“You can give a gift with my eyes open as well as you can with them closed. Go ahead.”
Saints, she was infuriating. Nikolai opened the box away from her so she couldn’t see what was inside, then stepped closer. Her eyes followed his every movement, but she didn’t try to stop him as he moved to the spot right in front of her. This close, he could see exactly how much taller he was and the way her thick eyelashes curled towards the sky. He took one of the barrettes and lifted a hand to her face. He paused.
“Can I touch your hair?”
She scowled. “Not sure why you’d want to, but do whatever you want, otkazat’sya.”
He gently swept half of her messy bangs away from her face and pinned them in place. This was repeated with the other side, then he stepped away to admire his handiwork. She seemed more confident without all that hair covering her face. He could now see how when the sun hit her eyes, they became a shade lighter, more calm sea than stormy ocean.
“There. Now you can see clearly and not accidentally break people’s noses.”
She blinked, two spots of color high on her cheeks. Then she narrowed her eyes and planted her hands on her hips. “Who said it was an accident, otkazat’sya? Your gifts won’t help me.”
“Oh.” There was a sinking feeling in his chest and his gaze dropped to his polished boots. “Do you not want them then? I can take them back-”
“Hmmph.” She stormed past him, barrettes still gleaming in her hair. “You would take back a gift you’ve already given? They’re mine now, as useless as they may be.”
“So you like them?” A spark of hope flared into life. He hoped he didn’t look like an over-eager puppy as he trailed her out of the grove.
“They’re adequate. I don’t want to be in debt to you, though. I’ll get you something next week. You better be here.”
Nikolai grinned. “I’ll be here. I’m expecting something really nice, like some Grisha-made cake, or marzipan, or medovik-”
She interrupted him with a laugh, a full one that made her throw her head back and hug her stomach. “Oh, it’ll be better than sweets, dear otkazat’sya. Just you wait and see.”
She wasn’t there the next week. Nikolai waited all day in the pouring rain, but the only living creatures there were the few lonely geese that paddled around the lake. He went home with nothing but a cold and a broken heart.
He went back to their little grove for a month, two months, but the Squaller girl was never there. Someone told him there had been a young Squaller on the Darkling’s expedition to Tsibeya, but they were to be gone for nearly a year. People didn’t just come back from Tsibeya, much less young girls who couldn’t see because of hair in their eyes. Nikolai lost hope. With Dominik’s help, he forgot her and moved on. It helped that he’d never learned her name.
Zoya examined herself carefully in the mirror. She had forgone any cosmetics this morning as there were no meetings scheduled other than one with Nikolai that she’d been putting off for nearly too long now. She straightened her kefta, then made sure her silver dragon earrings were securely fastened. Their sapphire eyes winked at her as they caught the sunlight streaming through the window.
She took a deep breath, then slid open the first drawer of her vanity. There was a battered wooden box inside, the varnish scratched and dented after years of being toted around in luggage trunks and kefta pockets. But today, she would put an end to its journey. She slipped it inside a pocket, then tossed her hair over her shoulder and exited her quarters.
As was usual in the mornings, Nikolai was seated at the head of the dining table, going through reports while munching on a pastry. Even after all these years, he’d never quite lost his sweet tooth. Zoya cleared her throat and took the seat next to his. He mumbled a greeting and pushed a plate of pastries towards her without looking up.
“Nikolai.”
“Yes?” He wasn’t looking.
She waved a hand and a sudden gust of wind blew his papers to the other side of the room. Zoya made sure they landed in a neat stack, or Nikolai would have thrown a fit. He gave her an annoyed look.
“Zoya, you know I would love to give you nothing but my undivided attention, but–” His eyes narrowed. “Where did you get those earrings?”
She pulled the box from her pocket and dropped it in front of him. It looked pitifully small against the china plates and water goblets. “On this day ten years ago, we first met and I broke your nose. I never got to give you your apology gift.”
Nikolai’s eyes were as wide as the plates. “That was you– I always suspected, but you never said anything and after the massacre, I assumed–”
He stopped himself, seeming to fight a wave of emotion. When he was ready to speak again, he stared at Zoya intensely. “Why didn’t you say anything until now?”
She shrugged. “The time wasn’t right. Open it. I won’t even make you close your eyes.”
Nikolai still looked taken aback, but he did as she requested. There was only a piece of cloth inside, deep blue silk Zoya had cut from one of her old keftas. The edges were painstakingly embroidered with silver thread. Zoya winced as she saw how clumsy the stitches were, and from remembering how many times she had pricked herself in the process of making the handkerchief. She’d only wanted to make something that would match up to the finery he’d been in when they’d first met.
Nikolai turned the cloth over in his hand and chuckled. “What’s this?”
Zoya’s cheeks heated up. She’d nearly forgotten what she’d embroidered on the back. “I’m sure you can read, Lantsov.”
“Deer otkasat’za. The spelling is atrocious, but I must applaud you for your younger self’s effort.” He kissed the handkerchief, then carefully tucked it into his breast pocket. The dark blue corners stood out nicely against his gold jacket. “Thank you Zoya. Although I really wish you’d said something earlier. You were the first to break my heart, after all. If I’d known for certain that wild heathen was you, I would have been more careful the second time around.”
She scowled. “I’ll break your heart again, dear otkazat’sya. Don’t test me.”
He took one of her hands and lifted it to his lips. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”