They swung open the cage door, cattle prods at full power, humming with electricity. The man lazily lifted his hands in surrender. "Now, now." He said softly. His voice was like velvet. "No need. I'll do as you please." The man in the cage said, his...
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Kiril had no mirror in his quarters. He had almost nothing in his quarters. Decadence had always been Vsevolod's preference. That single association had been enough for him to discard physical ownership of almost everything. So he washed his face downstairs, in the empty, dusty room that once would've been a servants bathroom.
The water sent the small splatters of blood on his cheek running down the drain with the stubble he'd cut away until his face was bare again. The fading yellow of a bruise still crested his brow. He tried to focus on it. To elicit that raging maelstrom of emotions that he'd felt that evening in the woodlot. To regain the indifference to life or death at his brother's hands.
He couldn't. The apathy had come when he'd been left alive in the snow. The days after hurt. He winced at the state of his body. He flinched in fear from being hit again. He wasn't strong enough to be indifferent to the pain.
Kiril wanted to die that night- was ready for it- and it had been freeing.
Now, he wanted to live and it had leashed the same chains he had always worn back around his neck, and he'd been the one who turned the key to lock them.
The apathy that had always served his self preservation had made it easy, then, to do as Vsevolod ordered when it came time to dirty his hands again.
The human had been some no one. An older man with a grizzled beard. Vsevolod had made it a point to say his name when he ordered Kiril to kill him.
Kiril had made it a point to forget what it had been.
He didn't even have the energy to truly puzzle over why it had been necessary. Vsevolod wanted the man dead for one reason or another, and it didn't truly matter what it was. The consequences would kill him, or they wouldn't.
Kiril blinked, and realized he'd been standing at the sink for several minutes. He turned off the running faucet, and had pressed his face into a clean white towel when Vsevolod pried open the walls Kiril hadn't bothered to reconstruct. He didn't bother to speak to him. The impression of the office was enough.
His slow pace across the house was the only act of rebellion he could muster, and it meant that by the time he entered the room, Mitroshka was already seated, a rabbit in his hands. Kiril tried to be sad at the display. He'd seen those fleeting moments of lucidity, and yet there Mitroshka sat, his sanity reduced to the same point it had been on the same evening they'd all met to discuss procuring Theophania. He should be sad, but he wasn't. There was nothing there.
He took his seat, and waited for Vsevolod to speak. To order him to move and do something other than sit very still and very quiet as he had been every moment he wasn't fulfilling his brother's wicked whims.
"Tonight is the night."
Mitroshka giggled, his anticipation palpable. Kiril didn't respond.
"The boats are set. The men are gathered. You've all been trained on how best to cut the engines and wrap the oars for a silent approach. We've procured the guns."
