fₒᵣ ᵢ ₐₘ bₑcₒₘₑ dₑₐₜₕ, dₑₛₜᵣₒyₑᵣ ₒf wₒᵣₗdₛ
Anastasia Morozova is a kinslayer. Anya Varamyr is a murderer. Anastasia is a decorated soldier. Anya is a backstreet cutthroat. Anastasia would die for her country. Anya would die for her friends.
Anastasi...
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When she woke up, Anastasia discovered she'd been been covered with a familiar blue coat. The ghastly teal hurt her eyes, but a warm, tender kind of feeling crept up her stomach and danced around her heart.
Around her she could hear all sorts of foreign tongues - Kerch, Suli, Shu, even some Fjerdan. All languages she'd learnt in her centuries of captivity. Whoever Sturmhond really was, he was very well travelled.
"You gave us quite the scare there, sweetheart." The privateer stood over her, blocking the setting sun with his head, bronze curls shining like a halo of sorts.
He looks like a saint, she thought.
"Sankt Sturmhond does have quite the ring to it," he laughed, and Anastasia cursed herself for speaking her thoughts aloud. "Though, I think you have to be dead to become a saint."
"That can be arranged," she muttered, taking his offered hand to sit up against the mast behind her. "Sooner rather than later - now that you've had the genius idea to betray the most dangerous man in the world and kidnaped both his sister and his precious Sun Summoner - oh saints! Alina and Malyen? Did they make it? Are they ok? And the Shu twins-"
Hey, hey!" Sturmhond crouched down infront of her, tugging the blue coat over her shoulders to keep her warm. "The darling couple are with Tamar and Tolya - don't you worry your pretty little head," he said, giving her an easy smile. "Though I must say I'm rather disappointed you don't think I'm the most dangerous man in the world. I did just steal three high security prisoners right out from under the oh so great Darkling's nose."
"Not that I'm complaining," she started carefully, not breaking eye contact. There was still something so familiar yet so odd about the colour of his eyes - and hair, and the shape of his nose. "But why exactly have you stolen us away?"
The privateer's bright grin didn't drop, and Anastasia was finding it to be rather infectious. "A wealthy client is paying me a hefty sum to deliver Alina Starkov back to Ravka - and where the girl goes, her tracker follows. As for you, well I couldn't exactly leave such a pretty girl all alone in the Darkling's dungeons now, could I?"
