Royal Banquet Hall – Side Corridor
Evening of April 6th, 1896
The hall had not quieted.
It had simply changed pitch.
The chandeliers still sparkled. The musicians still played. Crystal glasses still clinked, and diplomatic laughter still danced between polished walls.
But beneath the surface elegance—beneath the lilting music, the clatter of silver, the subtle exchange of smiles—something had shifted.
A pressure.
A new center of gravity.
The room still hummed with conversation, but the axis of curiosity had rotated away from its earlier target.
No longer Arthas.
Now—Xania.
Not whispered to, but whispered about.
Not stared at directly, but caught in half-glances from behind wine goblets and feathered fans.
She could feel it.
The looks. The measured smiles. The nobles weighing lineage against legend, courtship against scandal. Generals trying to fit her into a chain of command. Dowagers recalculating betrothals. Princes wondering if they were too late to make a claim—or already irrelevant.
And above it all, a quiet, stifling question:
How much control did she really have over the god beside her?
Xania held her flute of champagne delicately between her fingers. She did not drink. She only held it—like a veil, a barrier, a shield of cut-glass and etiquette.
The stem was chilled. Her fingertips were not.
Her face was composed, lips gently parted, eyes half-lidded in the practiced posture of a duchess used to being watched—but inside, her chest pulsed with a rising tide.
The day's momentum had not stopped.
It had simply changed form—from movement to weight.
From spectacle to consequence.
And that was when she heard it.
"Walk with me."
A voice like a knife wrapped in velvet.
Low. Controlled. Female.
No raised tone. No fury.
Just command.
Aunt Yelena.
The steel voice of the Romanov family. The matriarch without a crown. The enforcer of image, of protocol, of bloodline.
Xania turned.
Her lips parted to object, to delay, to prepare her smile—
But then she saw her aunt's face.
And she stopped.
There was no anger in Yelena's expression.
No cold fury. No explosive disappointment.
Only something far more dangerous.
Calculation.
Her brows were relaxed. Her chin slightly tilted. Her mouth set in a line so thin it might have been etched.
Her eyes—those sharp, glacier-gray Romanov eyes—were measuring.
Like a jeweler inspecting a crack in a flawless diamond.
Like a queen looking at a battlefield and weighing which pawn to burn.
And suddenly, Xania understood:
This was not punishment.
This was diplomacy.Inside the family.
And that was so much worse.
The Corridor
Royal Palace – East Balcony, Athens – April 6th, 1896
They passed through the velvet curtain like slipping beneath the surface of still water—from opulence to silence.
Behind them, the banquet still glittered: silver forks, crystal laughter, orchestral charm. But out here—beneath the tall marble columns and the open Athenian sky—it was just them.
The city stretched below in shadows and starlight, rooftops rolling gently like a dark sea, lit here and there by lanterns and hearthlight.
The evening air was crisp and cool, brushing against Xania's skin with the soft indifference of the natural world—a world uninterested in noble titles.
Above them, the stars blinked in quiet judgment.
And all along the balcony's stone balustrade, the torches flickered, sending long golden shadows across the polished floor, across the silk folds of their gowns, across the tension neither of them spoke yet.
For a long moment, they didn't speak.
The silence wasn't awkward.It was ritual.
Yelena stood with her hands behind her back, shoulders square beneath a stiff burgundy bodice embroidered with the Romanov crest. Her chin tilted slightly downward, lips pressed into a line too controlled to be anything but rage restrained by bloodline.
Xania stood beside her, a step behind, hands clasped tightly in front of her. Her back was straight. Her eyes forward.
But her breath came slow.Measured.Like a woman bracing for impact.
Then, Yelena spoke.
"You've caused a sensation."
Her voice was smooth and even, elegant in its severity. Each word chosen like a scalpel—precise, cold, and meant to cut cleanly.
She turned her head only slightly toward her niece, not enough to invite challenge. Just enough to deliver sentence.
"A Romanov duchess," she said, each syllable sharpened, "carried—half-naked—into the Olympic stadium.By a man we cannot place."
"With a chest that made half the court blush…"
"And a smile that makes generals tremble."
A pause. She let that sink in.
"And now you sit at the king's table with him beside you. As if it were always meant to be."
She turned fully now, hands still behind her back, gaze like polished frost.
"Do you understand what you've done?"
Xania didn't answer.
Not at first.
Her fingers—interlaced and hidden within her skirt folds—tightened. Her thumb rubbed against a pearl ring at her knuckle.
Her posture remained perfect. Her dress didn't shift. She didn't lower her chin or avert her gaze.
But inside—her heart trembled.
Because she did know.
She had known when she gave him her cloak in the alley, when she stepped between him and the guards.
When she kissed him, wide-eyed and burning, in a city street.
When she told the world he was Russia's champion.
And especially now—
When she could still feel the warmth of his arm brushing hers at the table.
When his presence beside her was no longer a story whispered in the shadows, but a declaration carved into the bones of history.
She drew a breath.
And then—with perfect poise, with the voice of a duchess and the will of a woman who had finally chosen—
"Yes," she said softly. "I do."
Yelena exhaled.
It was a small sound, but sharp—like the hiss of steam from beneath a steel lid. Her nostrils flared ever so slightly, the only visible crack in her armor of self-control. Her hands stayed behind her back, posture unyielding, but her eyes narrowed like shutters darkening a window.
"Do you think the Tsar will see this as charming?"
Her voice was lower now. Less performative. Less courtly.
This was not a public reprimand. This was a verdict wrapped in concern.
Xania didn't flinch.
Her breath was steady. Her spine tall. But her voice, when it came, wasn't sharp.
It was clear.
"He'll see it as historic."
Yelena stepped closer, the hem of her gown whispering over the marble tiles.
"He'll see it as dangerous."
The space between them tightened.
Xania's jaw set.
"Then let him."
For a moment—just a moment—Yelena's face darkened.
The noble mask, trained through decades of courtly precision, twisted with something sharper. Not rage.
But certainty.
A certainty shaped like a knife.
"You will not marry him."
The sentence fell like iron dropped on silk.
Xania's lashes fluttered.
She did not look away.
"You think this is about marriage?"
Yelena's eyes narrowed further.
"You will not carry his name.You will not carry his child.You will not risk the bloodline of our house for a man who has no house of his own."
The words landed like blades.
Precise. Surgical. Cold.
And unforgivable.
Xania's breath caught in her throat—not from surprise, but from the sharp sting of recognition.
Because for all their civility, this was the true wound.
This was the truth behind the smiles, the veils, the silk gloves.
She was a vessel.
And her worth was her lineage.
Not her love.
Not her will.
Not her heart.
But she didn't blink.
She didn't cry.
She stepped forward, her voice a thread pulled taut with iron.
"He doesn't need a house," she said."He's building one."
Yelena froze.
And for the first time that night—
The mask cracked.
Not fully.
Not violently.
But enough for something to show beneath it.
Not fury.
Not superiority.
But fear.
She stepped closer.
Just enough that their silhouettes overlapped, caught in the flicker of a nearby torch.
"You don't understand, child."
Her voice was no longer cold.
It was quiet. Almost tender.
"You've awakened something that doesn't belong to nations.That doesn't belong to crowns.That doesn't belong to bloodlines."
Her eyes searched Xania's, looking for something—weakness, regret, perhaps still the girl she had raised into a lady.
"It belongs to stories.And stories are the most dangerous force in the world—because they don't listen.They consume."
A pause.
Xania held her gaze.
And when she answered, her voice was low, steady, and unmovable.
"Neither do I."
Silence fell like a curtain.
Nothing but the soft crackle of torchlight and the breath of wind from the city below.
Then—
Yelena moved.
She reached into the deep inner fold of her sleeve and produced a folded letter, cream-colored and thick with wax.
The seal gleamed red in the firelight.
The Romanov crest stared back at Xania like a brand.
Yelena held it out without ceremony.
"From Saint Petersburg. Your father."
"You're to return within the week."
Xania stared at the seal.
Her breath stilled.
Her stomach twisted—that quiet, tightening dread that came not from fear, but from knowing something is about to be taken.
She didn't reach for it.
She didn't move.
She simply looked up—past her aunt, past the curtain, past the soft lights of the banquet hall.
And then—
Beyond the edge of the balcony.
Toward the city.
Toward the night.
Toward him.
Still somewhere down there.
Waiting. Watching. Unaware that she was being summoned back into a life she no longer belonged to.