The Starry Sky - A Darkling/General Kirigan Prequel

14

Three days later, a gloomy Sunday morning, Anna found herself bundled up in a Kefta and a cloak on the front steps of the Little Palace, seeing off the twelve Grisha who were travelling to Kerch. Spring was being dragged in screaming, and consequently the weather was fluctuating back and forth between summer highs and winter lows. The wind was whipping Anna's clothes, almost pushing her over sometimes, and throwing her hair into disarray. If it weren't for the eclipse pins she'd stolen from Aleksander, her cloak would be sailing in the sky, probably already halfway to Fjerda. The only shelter from the miserable cold was the mug of tea in her hands, bleeding warmth into her frozen fingers and scalding her insides as she drank.

Aleksander was going over maps with the coachmen, disclosing the fastest and most preferable routes to Os Kervo, where they would board a ship to Kerch, when he looked up to see Anna stood by the front doors. He'd left her bundled in their bed, secure in the layers of silk and fur, but there she was, sentinel in clothes that were being thrown about her. She had quite a placid look on her face, with her gentle eyes squinted against the cold, and redness creeping across her nose and cheeks from the bitter temperature. Swathes of black danced around her, the wind picking them up and twirling them, catching her blonde hair in the crossfire. She looked like a statue, very commandeering and noble, enough to make Aleks forget about what he was doing. Eventually, she noticed him staring, and wandered further into the chill to speak to him, still cradling the mug as if it would protect her from the Ravkan climate. He met her halfway, leaving the coachmen with a few muttered words, their inky forms becoming one as she hid close to his body to shield herself from the ever strengthening gusts.

"Were you not going to say goodbye?"

"You looked like you needed the sleep." He leaned towards her, making sure nobody could overhear. One of Anna's eyebrows quirked up at this, she knew he was lying.

"I sleep more than you. You should have woken me."

"But I didn't, and it doesn't seem to matter anyway." Anna gave an exasperated sigh, she was stiff from waking up and not in the mood to argue about something so trivial. Especially as she wouldn't see him for two weeks. "We may not be leaving for another half hour anyway, so you can go and wait inside if you want to."

"And let you slip away without a goodbye again? I don't think so." He placed a protective arm around her shoulders. To most of the Grisha it would probably look less affectionate than a show of two leaders supporting each other, as Anna wasn't sure how many of them knew about her and Aleks. She presumed that most people had heard rumours, but hoped that the Oprichniki and the girls were trustworthy enough to not have gossiped.

"Now that you're awake I wouldn't do that."

"Sure."

"Darling." He said almost pleadingly.

"You're always everywhere. Maybe it would be nice to get rid of you for a while." Anna replied in a teasing tone, placing a solemn hand on his chest, feeling the smooth leather of his travelling fatigues beneath her fingers.

"You want me gone?"

"No." She admitted, the sudden realisation crashing over her that he actually would be out of reach for a couple of weeks, and that she'd have to run the Little Palace by herself, just as everything was beginning to happen. She did suppose though that it would help calm the sudden influx of feelings she'd begun to feel towards him. Or, worse, they'd only swelter. Not that any of it particularly mattered as they'd already admitted it all to each other. "Who ran the Little Palace the last time you left?"

"I left them to their own devices mainly, the Oprichniki watched over them, but they didn't have much to do."

"You still had paperwork though?"