Rani is almost at the door of the library when Nikolai catches her arms, swinging her around to face him.
Rani shoves at him, doing nothing to dislodge the King. She can barely hear his voice over the angry buzzing pounding through her skull.
"I don't want to talk to you."
"That's too bad," Nikolai grasps her elbows, keeping her close, "You can't just go around threatening people in my palace. I took a chance giving you a job but if you keep going around like this..."
A small voice in the back of her head says he's right, she's crossed a line. But the rest of her mind is reeling, screaming as it always does when Tara's name is mentioned.
It's bad enough that all her life Rani knew she fell short in so many things the world valued in her sister. She wasn't kind. She wasn't principled. She was all the things the world didn't want - brash, angry, cruel - so she honed those things in herself. Made herself a twisted mirror of her sisters, the heartless demon to her virtuous saint. Made herself into something that could protect Tara, protect both of them.
It hadn't worked.
Now she was here and everyone expected her to be a beacon like Tara. Instead, they got a wisp of shadow, trailing through their halls, haunting them.
She could never be what her sister was. She didn't want to try.
And Nikolai is there, looking at her expectantly. How can she talk to him about this when for so long she had blamed him for the loss of Tara? It just hurts to think her name in his presence.
"You had a brother right," Rani meets his eyes, almost desperate, "You have to understand-"
Nikolai purses his lips, "My brother was not a good person. So mourning him was not my highest priority, especially in the midst of a war."
Of course. His brother was the shadow to the new Kings light. Darkness isn't missed.
The hot anger in her chest is hardening back to steel, into the shield that stops all memories of Tara from slipping into her mind. She's returning to the knife's edge that is her world.
Nikolais hands drop from her arms as if he sees the shift and is certain now that she won't run again.
"I know that you don't like anyone here. Thats fine. Hate us all, think we're monsters - I don't care - but I can't have you go around threatening people." The smile from earlier is gone, his face unreadable, "The job I never got to offer you since your Tavgharad friend told you first, that offer stands. You can leave, you can go to the border and decide if the Grisha there hate Ravka - hate me - or not. You would relish that I think, and you never have to see this place again. You never have to see my face again."
"All this just stops. You stop living side by side with your demons."
Rani almost laughs.
What an apt choice of words that was. Here she is, thinking herself the monster haunting their story, forgetting they could just as easily be considered the monsters in hers.
"I said I would help you find your spy." Rani sets her jaw, "I'm not leaving."
Nikolais brow furrows, "Think about it at least."
"Fine. I thought about it. I'm not leaving." No now, when she was finally, finally starting to carve out a sliver of the world for herself. "If you want me gone, you'll have to have me removed."
She tries not to think about the grin that flashes for a moment over Nikolais face before he's back to the unshakable leader.
"And the threats?"
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...
