Rani was so tired of the snoring. Usually, with kidnapping, there were tears and snot and all manner of pleading, but Saints the snoring was worse than all of it.
The King's head is tipped onto his shoulder, swaying with each jolt of the train. Even with his hands bound behind him, arms pulled back at awkward angles, he manages to look at peace as he snores on. His lips parted slightly. And was that... Saints, is he drooling?
Who knew royals were capable of something so mundane?
Slipping the stolen Kefta from her shoulders Rani kicks it into a corner of the train car where it crumples amongst the shipping crates, dust gathering on its hem. By the time anyone finds it she will be long gone, the King with her, skipping over the border and back into the Shu Han. And no one will be any the wiser.
Well, no one but the Tavgharad. When she dropped this lout off and got her payment, she would be rolling in so much prize money that she would never need to do another job again. Not that she wanted to stop, not until Ravka is nothing but a memory.
Maybe, just maybe, Rani could take a break. Hell, she deserved it. She had pulled this off, after all. Kidnapped the Ravkan King. She could leave the country for a while, go to Ketterdam and see how much of her reward she could lose to ill-conceived bets and kvas before she came home.
That sounded alright.
The truth was, the job had been ridiculously easy. It had taken her half the time she thought it would. Clearly, the Ravkan's weren't prepared for a threat like her, just one girl, otkazat'sya, innocuous enough to slip through their defenses. It left them open to other threats. Spys. Bounty hunters.
Assassins.
Rani had expected more from the Shu's biggest foe, she really had.
How the Ravkan uprising had failed, she'll never know. Perhaps they are all as incompetent as the palace guards.
Across from her, the boy King stirs. Moonlight cuts a swath through the darkened car, revealing the glimmering crescents of his eyes as he blinks awake.
"Good, you're up." Rani steps forwards from her spot against the wall, kicking at Nikolai's leg to pull him fully into consciousness, "You snore more than my gran."
The King squints in the dim light, reaching for the memory of his last waking moments that are just out of grasp. His arms strain as he tries to move. It hits him then, that he's bound, and his gaze snaps up to her.
The moment drags on, punctuated only by the rhythmic clack of the rails as they fly closer and closer to the Shu border.
"Did you," Nikolai's voice cracks from disuse, "drug me?"
Rani taps her nose, smirking as the realization sets in on the King's face.
"I take it you're not in the second army then."
"Saints, how ever did you run your country into the ground with a brain like that?"
A wicked grin crosses his face as he sits back, "The people don't care about my brain, darling. Not when it comes in a package as handsome as this."
A disgusted laugh falls from Rani's lips, "To think people are afraid that Ravka might actually win the war."
"Is that what this is about? I told you that Ravka will go on just fine without me. All you'll be doing is making a martyr out of the people's most favored ruler."
"Favored." Rani glares at him, "I hardly think that Ravkans can favor a monarch who engages in such debauchery. Remember meer hours ago, how eager you were to tumble a soldier you just met in the woods."
The grin is back, only widening as he tips his chin up at her, "Sad you missed out, love?"
The King looks far too calm. As if the reality of his situation hasn't set in. As if he isn't afraid. Though perhaps that's because he doesn't realize the magnitude of what has happened, perhaps he thinks that she's simply some girl with an ill concived plan to take on a king.
He stretches his legs before him, reclining regally like he's still on his throne and not crammed between two dusty boxes of textiles on a train bound for the kingdom of his enemies.
"Listen, Tara, dear-"
The knife appears in a flash, slicing through the air. It lands in the wall sunk to the hilt, mere millimeters from his ear and the King wrenches back. The widening of his eyes catches the light, reflecting like a cornered animal in the night.
Stepping up to the King, Rani leans down, grasping the handle of the blade, "Do not use her name or the next one goes two inches to the right."
Why did she give him that name? It was a mistake, giving him the one thing that could make her lose all traces of sense, like handing him a loaded gun. Mistakes like that take people from this line of business.
Mistakes like that kill people like her.
Gritting her teeth, Rani pulls the knife from the wall, "I need you alive and recognizable." She steadies her breath as she taps the flat lightly against Nikolai's temple, "They said nothing about you being unharmed, so I would tread very lightly if I were you."
Nikolai takes a shallow breath, his eyes flicking over her face, "Noted."
"See, wasn't that easy."
Rani sits back on her heels, slipping the blade back into her belt. As the train propels them closer and closer to the Shu Han, to her prize, the King shifts slightly.
"I have one request."
She lifts an eyebrow silently, daring him to speak. For a moment something flashes in the King's face, a darkness like nothing she's seen before, just a moment before it's gone as if it never existed.
"Don't let me fall asleep again."
Demon Nikolai?
That's it. That's the whole question.
YOU ARE READING
heartless | nikolai lantsov
Fanfiction"You enjoy knowing someone in your palace would as soon have a knife to your throat as help you?" "Oh, I count on it, keeps my wits sharp." \\ Kidnapping the King of Ravka was easy. Until it wasn't. When her plan goes awry, Rani is given two choi...
