Blackness and Ink

At the Russian imperial court, poets are admired the same way people admire storms; from a safe distance.

A Polish Poet, Maria Wysocka has spent years chasing greatness with the desperation of someone terrified of being forgotten. Loud, passionate, and impossible to ignore, she lives for applause, legacy, and the feeling of leaving scars on the world through words.

Elizaveta Volchkova wants none of it.

Dressed eternally in mourning black, she is cold, quiet, and devastatingly brilliant - a poet whose verses sound like grief given the ability to write. The court fears her almost as much as it worships her.

Their rivalry was supposed to remain literary. Instead, it becomes something far more dangerous.

Between sleepless nights spent arguing over poetry, private verses never meant to be read aloud, and a court eager to turn intimacy into scandal, Maria finds herself drawn toward a woman who seems to belong more to ghosts than to the living.

But the Russian court is not kind to honesty, especially not the kind that feels like love.

**(English is not my native language, so please kindly point out the mistakes in the comments!!!)**