"Sit," his voice left no room for argument.
Anastasia eyed him cautiously as he couldn't seem to look her in the eye when she took her seat. He was rifling through a stack of papers that she had inscribed spell after spell on.
Occasionally, he'd lift one to his face and smell it, analyzing either the ink or the paper; she couldn’t tell. It was an agonizing five minutes before Anastasia broke the silence.
"Well? Are you going to say something? Or are you just going to keep me here all day for no reason?"
"You aren't really in a position to be making demands, Your Grace." His voice was heavy, and Anastasia raised an eyebrow, growing frustrated.
"What is your game here, Mikhail?" She said his name in the same tone that he used as if she was trying to get under his skin. She was. Mikhail stopped and put the papers down, looking down from where he towered above her, even as he sat.
"We don't have to like each other for this to work," his voice took on a deadly quiet tone. "We need to at least respect each other. Can you agree to that?"
Anastasia didn’t know what to think as she stared at the man sitting across from her. They had shared some moments that she had cherished greatly, and she’d trusted him enough to bring him to the slums the day before. Their argument at breakfast had shattered any illusion she might have had that he might be different from most of the acolytes her mother had brought before.
He was, of course, very different looking... None of the tutors that she had been forced to study under had made her wonder what it would be like to be, well,under them.
They stood on shakier ground with even shakier hearts, both of them recoiling from the sudden impact of their pasts colliding with their present. He did, at least, seem eager to teach her about the use of her magic, whatever the situation. If anyone could teach her anything, it was surely Asya’s son.
Anastasia’s eyes fluttered, and she looked up at Mikhail, making his heart stop in his chest.
A man could die happy being on the other end of a look like that.
“I can agree to that,” she folded her hands in her lap, “For Asya.”
Mikhail’s gaze snapped up, staring at Anastasia and finding his breath becoming erratic again at the mention of his mother’s name. This woman was going to be the death of him if she continued to remind him of their past.
“Don’t —”
“Stop it,” Anastasia held up her hand. “We can’t pretend like she didn’t matter to the both of us. We can’t. We do not have to like each other, I agree. We can respect each other. It doesn’t feel respectful to your mother’s memory to ignore what she meant to us.”
Anastasia cursed the tears in her eyes, wondering why being around this man had unlocked a gate that she had kept around her emotions for years. She subconsciously began tugging her sleeves down over her knuckles.
Mikhail made note of the tick but said nothing. He had noticed how she had deferred to referring to Asya as his mother instead of using her name. He noted the respect on her features and the ache in her voice, plain as day, scattered across her words.
The duality of his emotions was enough to make him consider going back to the monastery. Mikhail felt like kicking himself again every time he came face-to-face with how much pain she had shouldered alone for years.
Fifteen years. Fifteen years where he had been doing the same. Both of them sequestered from the events of one night that left them with scars they were too afraid to show anyone.
“Alright,” he sighed, finding his resolve cracking every time that he was around Anastasia. “We can respect each other. For Asya.”
Anastasia nodded in response, and the silence dragged on for a few more moments. Nothing could fill such an intimate silence dragging with remnants of their wounds. Mikhail cleared his throat, pausing to take his hair down and refasten the knot.
“So, from what I’ve gathered,” he leaned closer to her and showed her some of her old spell sheets, “Your tutors had no idea what they were dealing with.”
Anastasia couldn’t help it and burst out laughing at the remark. Mikhail recoiled, a little surprised by the sound.
Dear God, I love that sound. I wonder how much this woman has laughed in the last fifteen years. Not enough. Fuck. Stop it.
He cleared his throat, and Anastasia’s hand went to cover her mouth, stifling back a few giggles as she thought of all of the priests that had promised they held an understanding of the gift she hardly knew herself.
“So,” Mikhail started again, “from what I gather, they really did think you were cursed.”
“I’m not?”
“No. Well, ‘cursed’ is a relative term. I don’t think you are cursed —“
“What makes you say that?”
