How to rule a king

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AN: hope you're ready for some heartbreak

Ronja:

I was mad. Madder than a certain hatter. I blinked at the man I had once seen as my husband, as the man I had irrevocably fallen in love with, while my mouth hung slightly open as my heart splintered into thousands of pieces.

How dare he? How dare he betray me like this?

I had trusted him and this is how he repaid my trust? By betraying me? This must have all been a very bad dream. Desperately I pinched my right forearm to wake up from my nightmare. A nightmare Alexei should have protected me from. A nightmare that suddenly had become very real.

Please, please let me wake up. Please let this just be another one of my nightly terrors. Please just let me wake snuggled up against my husband in our bed as he holds me through the cold, dark night.

Yet, no matter how hard I continually pinched myself I couldn't escape the gruesome reality. Alexei had gone behind my back to make a deal with the devil.

Our stay in Moscow had started off more than amazingly beautiful. In a way, it had even felt as if we had been on our honeymoon. A honeymoon spent together with a young, attention demanding boy and various guards always surrounding us 24/7, but a honeymoon nonetheless. We had arrived at the Russian capital city two days before one of Alexei's more important armament trades he had wished to oversee personally had been said to be taking place. After taking a private plane as usual, we had checked in at the Moscow's Ritz-Carlton Hotel's Carlton suite, before Alexei had taken his son and myself out for a city tour with him as our personal guide to show us around the city he had grown up in. Well, not exactly the Moscow he had come to hate as a child, but much rather the beautiful golden, glamorous side of it as he had strictly kept us away from anything that would have uncovered the more gruesome side to this magical place. When I had asked him if we would visit the small one bedroom apartment in the city's outskirts he had spent the first few years of his life in, he had harshly stated to no longer be the boy, who had once lived there, therefore we had had no reason to visit that place. Shocked at his sudden outburst of anger, I hadn't dared to ask a second time. 

During our whole sightseeing trip five guards had trailed behind us in some distance, never too far away for them not to immediately reach us when being needed. In the evening we even had had dinner at a traditional Russian restaurant, enjoying a night out just like every other normal family would. When we had retired for the night I had held my husband closer than ever before, wishing to never let go of him again. I had thought my love for him couldn't grow any further, just to have him prove me wrong the following evening.

Alexei had spent the next day either training in the hotels restricted gym area or in another suite he had rented, meeting with Piotr and another one of his advisors, who I had seen only once or twice before. After a short cuddle session I might have forced upon him he had left his son in bed with me to enjoy breakfast while watching cartoons, telling us to rest for the day, since he had a surprise planned for the night. Keeping his promise Alexei had picked us up at six in the evening advising us to dress as warm as possible. Since it had still been the beginning of a rather cold April the Russian nights would cool the air down immensely. Once we had all been dressed in fluffy dark colored winter jackets he had then surprisingly guided us to one of the hotels private cars.

My husband had stopped the vehicle only minutes later, stepping out of it to open my door and to help me out of it as he always did. Looking around I had realized we had been at a small private part of one of Moscow's havens. Alexei had then taken my glove covered hand in his, while his son had rested in his arms, as he had guided us towards a dark colored, dangerous looking speedboat. He first had sat Vasyli down in the boat before reaching out to help me onto it. Minutes later we had been floating over the dark water while the cold northern winds had howled around us.