preened | OPEN POST.

The day would be dull if it weren't for his appointment with Genya.

It's all he looks forward to. He behaves as best he can throughout his morning meetings, although his mind wanders to the high seas and how her hair would look with the bright sun looming behind her. He remembers how it glowed many years ago when she'd been nothing but a slip of a girl, and he'd been a boy who needed to behave but never quite grasped the concept of it. She stood in the sun and laughed at something funny—it probably wasn't him; he remembers being too far away from her to even be a blip on her radar, even though he was doing something funny. He couldn't quite remember if he was testing his invention of lifting his pet rock at the time high into the sky with a piece of fabric tied to a small cane basket or if he'd made a fool of himself as he was wont to do.

It's something he's chased since then. That laugh. Since his return to Ravka, he's been more determined than ever to hear it again. The Grand Palace lights up when there's laughter echoing through the halls. Especially hers.

The halls are quiet now, however. He much prefers it at this time of night.

Before she can even knock, Nikolai opens the door with a flourish and a charming smile. His white shirt's rumpled, and his hair is a mess. He looks nothing like the king he should. "Ah, the great Genya Safin. I was beginning to think you'd forgotten about me," he teases brightly with a theatrical bow. With a wave, he gestures for her to enter his rooms.

It's late at night, hours after supper and when most of the Grand Palace has gone to bed. His room burns brightly, with lamps perched on almost every surface. It looks like the sun's laid itself to rest on the ocean with its golden walls, curtains and accents of calm sky blue. It's half a neat mess and an unmanageable one; his desk is littered with papers and maps, books lie haphazardly in piles on any surface, while his love seat and bed (tucked away in his room) are tidy like it hasn't been disturbed at all.

Nikolai hasn't gone out of his way to try and neaten up his rooms to impress Genya. He knows there's nothing he can do to achieve such a feat.

"Did you want a drink? I found the good brandy."

( continuation. )

[ Two days pass since Nikolai springs his brilliant idea on Anahid. A part of him expects her to find an excuse and pull out. She has better things to do. Something came up. She stumbled upon a greater idea—one not as brilliant, but still better than his—and she needs to see to it instead.

But she doesn't. Nikolai's trying to outgrow the expectation that people are simply entertaining him because of the glint of the crown he tries to remove from his head.

The day's bright, the sky's clear, and the grounds of the Grand Palace are a deep, vivid green. It almost looks like one of the ridiculous paintings his mother had commissioned years ago. He's dressed in a bright blue coat with golden accents, looking very much like Sturmhond and not the King of Ravka (although, to the untrained eye, he looks like the tsar and not the renowned privateer).

The lake is up ahead, and with it, his hot air balloon. In the great distance, it looks like it doesn't belong. The large wooden box sits tall and proud, painted in a bright yellow that makes him squint. The fabric he'd had especially made remains lying on the grass. It looks like a pathetic heap of junk from up the hill.

The sight of it excites him. ]

Are you afraid of heights? I feel we should've discussed that.

[ He furrows his brows, glancing at her with some concern, but he doesn't stop walking. ]

With the fall of the Darkling, Carol foolishly thought that there would be time to breathe, relax, maybe take stock of the way her life had changed so much. And there had been time, but only about a week or so before new problems starting popping up. Ravka did not want to be united easily. Shu and Fjerda were metaphorically breathing down Ravka's neck. Jurda Parem was circulating wildly around the Grisha abroad. Despite her powers, at her core Carol was a soldier—and she could easily see the battle coming.

So she threw herself into her own training and overseeing the training of the Grisha in the Little Palace. There had been very little ceremony about her taking over the Second Army and she preferred it that way. New faces were arriving frequently, which was a relief from all the allies they had lost in the battle against the Darkling, but they had to get up to speed quickly.

Though as much time as she spends training, she is happy to do it compared to the battles that Nikolai faces every day in the palace. Arguing through meetings and charming diplomats has never been her forte and she's grateful that their king is well-suited to the task. The only drawback to both them being so absorbed in their work is that they don't have much time to talk anymore. After the hell they went through with the Darkling that forged such strong bonds between them, she considers Nikolai her closest friend. Once they got through the obligatory five minutes of flirting, he was an excellent listener and advisor, and always seemed to have an idea for whatever problem she was currently grappling with.

In the middle of her training session, a group of young Grisha start giggling at something behind her. When she turns her head to look, ready to tell off some servant for gawking at their practice, Carol stops and smiles instead. It's rare that the King comes down to their training sessions, but she's happy to see him.

Carol dismisses the other Grisha to a break before walking over to meet Nikolai. "What brings you out to the Little Palace, my King?"

Once upon a time, there was a prince who became a demon who then became a demon king. Although, everyone in the kingdom of Ravka didn't know that.

What they knew was this: the golden prince was tortured by a demon, but he managed to overwhelm the beast with the help of the Sun Saint and saved Ravka from impending permanent darkness. He was celebrated as a war hero, and spoken of as a beacon of hope. The prince had lost his family—his elder brother, the unfortunate heir to the throne, to monsters that tore him limb from limb, and he had exiled the former king and queen in order to secure Ravka's freedom.

And now, Ravka was…

Without its freedom.

But it was getting there. (Nikolai was in the middle of writing that story before he had to take a brief pause.)

Said brief pause was now lasting a fortnight. While Nikolai wasn't one to have a good sense of time—he liked being on the True Sea, losing himself to the waves and reading the sun like a compass while his skin pinkening and turning a little raw (always fun, really)—he couldn't entirely navigate these waters as smoothly as he could the open ocean. His demon had been breaking out of its cage almost every night for a week before his self-imposed isolation. He'd told his closest friends and advisors to tell anyone who came looking for him that he was on holiday or abducted by pirates or that he was lost in the palace's maze garden (he was having that reinstated; Grandfather Lantsov had a good idea there, even if his father who wasn't really his father felt otherwise). The messy mix of stories they gave meant that those who were nosy had a riddle on their hands and no trail to speak of to follow.

They could afford to lose the king for a few weeks. To secure Ravka's freedom through marriage, he needed to ensure that he wouldn't gobble up the bride like the mythological vampire. (Or was it a werewolf? He could never remember which one liked to eat its dinner and which one preferred to only play with it.)

The castle he'd resigned to was to the Grand Palace's east, an hour's trek away by one of his best and quickest flyers. It was hidden away on a large piece of land with overgrown trees and bushes, weeds that looked like vines and pretty flowers, and an uneven ground that was hilly, then flat, then hilly again. (It really was a nightmare to traverse.) The further away he was from the heart of the Os Alta, perhaps the safer Ravka's towns and villages would be. (It hardly mattered. For the last fortnight, there was always a story about a demon sighting. A beast had almost eaten Arseny Balakin's most prized stallion. A monster had nearly torn apart Nikita Yesikova's son. Nikolai always thought about the story Novel Yelchin, a young teenager who had been at the wrong place at the wrong time. His untimely death prompted Nikolai to seal himself away in this abandoned castle that, thankfully, was Lantsov-owned. At least he didn't need to explain to some lord why he needed to commandeer his castle that was out of use.)

Although he had forbidden his friends to see him during this time, someone had to bring him Genya's tonics to see if she was any closer to a cure (she wasn't). And while he would prefer to write a grand letter to detail how well he was doing (he wasn't doing well at all) that he would leave outside for one of Tamar's spies to gather and return to Genya and David; his friends always insisted on coming themselves to receive a verbal report from him. Apparently, they were paranoid he was lying to them through his writing. (He was a fantastic writer. He smudged what he needed to and made it look like an accident.)

When Gwenaëlle Baudin arrives in the castle, it isn't when Nikolai is himself. It's night; this night is almost starless, with the moon high in the sky and as round as a plum. The thin trees loom outside the castle's clean windows, casting human-like shadows against the stone. The wind howls like a wolf, and nudges the branches to tap against the windows like fingertips. The tapping is constant; it drives the demon mad.

As for the demon, it sits perched on one of the many staircase railings. His knees are bent and his fingertips brush against the wooden ledge. He's eerily still; his shadow blends with those of the thick trees that the back of the castle tends to favour. No one's tended to this garden in years, and while Nikolai's given it his best try in the last fortnight, he's known for his black thumb than his green. (His green thumb happens to work better with inventions.) The demon is half man, half beast; its wings are still and almost folded against his back. He wears pants torn at the ankles; his feet are bare. His nails are black with hairline shadows crawling up muscled arms. The only feature that remains human is the shape of his face. One could almost think him handsome if he stepped out of the shadows and let the moonlight illuminate his silhouette.

When the front doors of the castle creak open, the demon moves soundlessly. The dusty scent is already intermingling with something human. Flapping wings echoes through the large space, and the loud tapping of nails against wood as it slides against walls rings out. It's clear that the castle is haunted… or it's simply groaning a lot.

Thankfully, this evening, the demon is not overly hungry. He's bored.

no subject

no subject

For our own clarity: Grishaverse AU

BE OUR GUEST, BE OUR GUEST AKA BEAUTY & THE BEAST AU.