Ivan Press

Ivan

It takes time, of course, to prepare that house. It takes time to draw up the paperwork, to wire the funds, the finalize the purchase, to transfer the deed. All these things are done through proxies; Dmitri, most likely, representing Ivan in this the way he represents his master in nearly everything else too boring for Ivan to deal with. And then there is the hiring of builders, and the drawing up and approving of plans -- which on Ivan's part mostly comprises of him speaking in sweeping vagaries and random, miniscule detail with very little to connect the two, followed by boredom, followed by impatience, followed by his wandering off to do something more entertaining.

At least these days it's not someone more entertaining. Unless, of course, that someone is Hilary. Who is, indeed, a very entertaining fuck.

But also: more than that. Anyone and everyone who is even remotely close to Ivan knows that by now. His entire staff knows of her, this bizarre lover of his; his family knows, though they pretend not to; his friends do not know, because he is not actually close to them.

The people who reside in the small seaside village nearby -- a waystation on the road to Nice too small to attract tourists and the sort of businesses that cater to tourists -- they know too. They know a little: they know someone has bought that beautiful estate by the sea, full of arches and terra cotta floors. They know a young couple has moved in; or at least, that it is polite to call them both young, though one is younger than the other by a decade or more and it's not the one a stranger would guess. They know the woman is beautiful, though, and very regal; they know she speaks French like she was born to it. Her lover is different. He is beautiful too. He is very charming. He does not speak French at all, but he is so charming they forgive him for it; he is so charming that sometimes when he asks for things, there is simply no denying him.

So: faster than anyone would predict, there is a construction crew out on the estate. And there is much sawing and hammering and thunking and banging, and then there is a dock at one end of the estate, out on the water, with a gazebo nearby where one might sit in the shade or recline in a hammock and watch the water.

On the other end of the estate, a larger undertaking. A lot of sawing and hammering and thunking and banging; so much so that the beautiful people who bought the house disappear for a few days or weeks, go to Barcelona, go to Paris. When they come back the undertaking is complete and there is a small house there now, standalone and self-contained, connected back to the main estate by a path that winds through the stone pines and cypresses.

The second house -- the small one -- is built beside the water's edge. It is not glaring and glassy the way the last one was. It reflects the architecture of the main house, with stone and clay, old wood. Enclosed, private; hidden where an occupant can see the water, but where someone sailing by cannot see the cabin.

Beside it, linked by an arch-lined walkway open to wind but sheltered from rain, is a second and somewhat larger building. It has more windows, each one blocked by a retracting shade. It has, inside, a sprung floor; a barre; mirrors; an audio system to rival any, anywhere. There are brilliant lights across the ceiling, so many that not a single shadow can exist inside if they were all turned on at once.

--

The construction crews are gone when Ivan and Hilary return from the north. For once, he does not drive. For once, they are driven in a fine, stately vehicle befitting her bloodlines. He is lounging beside her, playing on his phone -- or perhaps texting. It is the latter, because as they pull up, he mentions to her:

"Miron will be landing with Anton later this afternoon. But we should look at your little cabin first."

It shocks Ivan first. Perhaps Dmitri as well, but he is so unflappable perhaps nothing shocks him. Not even this:

Hilary, stepping into one of these meetings with designers, builders. Listening, and then occasionally speaking up. She is very specific. She contradicts Ivan sometimes. She tells them that he is wrong, that the little cabin needs only a simple kitchen. She has opinions about the cabin, and sooner or later Ivan doesn't even engage much: the little lake house he made for her once in Chicago is the basis for this, but it is clear that this new version will be hers. It is more private than the one in Chicago. It still has many windows. It is still open and simple, rather than somewhat labyrinthine like the house up the hill. The bed is still out in the middle, and she still wants a little dock, even though the water draws her and terrifies her at once, because she does like to watch Ivan swim.

There is a cabin and nearby there is a studio. There is a larger dock near the main house and a gazebo with it. There is additional landscaping, new trees and so forth, hiding things away, keeping various elements of the estate private. But after the plans are done the noise is too much for Hilary to bear without screaming, and

they go away. They visit Marseilles. They visit Paris. They go to Spain for a while. Dmitri sends them pictures of the progress; perhaps he even sends questions when they arrive, and not only to Ivan. Hilary, everyone has discovered these months, has an idea of what her life and her child's life are to look like here. Hilary smiles -- actually smiles -- at pictures of the studio when it is near completion. She is pleased with all of this. She asks for the contact information for the decorators that were hired, and begins sending them her thoughts on the new cabin, as well as the main house.

Sometimes she seems almost normal. Sometimes this

exhausts her, and she pitches a fit, throws tantrums until Ivan grabs her, holds her down, makes her relent, gasp, and become soft again. And then he will kiss her, and taste her throat, and reach down between their bodies to pull up her skirts and push aside his slacks, fucking her once she becomes pliant again, obedient, calm.

--

Later they return. Hilary sits in the back seat, her hair straightened and also recently cut to sway just a few inches past her shoulders. Large sunglasses. Her dress is rather casual: printed, knee-length, off-the-shoulder with flowing sleeves. She wears boots with them, flat-soled to walk around the property. She has become slightly more golden in Barcelona. One hardly dared dream it was possible, but Hilary is not always porcelain. Maybe, for once, she didn't want to be so untouchable.

Ivan tells her that Miron is coming with Anton, who has never been on a plane before except for right after his birth. Hilary actually smiles, though it is a bit more of a smirk. "I miss him," she declares, then looks over at Ivan. "When are the others coming? Polina, and the redhead?"

Hilary knows her name. She just refuses to say it yet.

It does shock Ivan. It shocks him so much that it's almost comical: Hilary's ever-smooth, ever-urbane lover agape at the sight of her. Agape while she sweeps in, agape while she seats herself, agape until she opens up the glossy mockups and the blueprints and begins voicing her opinions.

He gets used to it, though. And little by little, he learns to voice his opinions less; let her implement hers. It is quite clear, after a while, that she has opinions on the cabin. She knows what she wants.

This is itself a miracle.

--

Miron's name was spoken first. Then Polina's, though for a long time she was simply the sour one. Ivan can't remember if the nursemaid's name was ever spoken. Funny: he's forgotten it himself. He tries to remember for a moment, fails, lets it go. It doesn't matter. Now there is the redhead, who is French, who has not yet earned the right to have her name spoken by her insane, vengeful mistress. Insane, vengeful: Hilary thinks of Ivan as a god sometimes, and yet look at the terms in which he thinks of her, godlike herself.

"Elodie is coming tomorrow," he says. "Polina is taking a vacation; she wants to see Eastern Europe, god only knows why. She'll backpack her way here in a couple of weeks, provided she isn't eaten by a Baba Yaga-spirit."

Through the tinted privacy glass, the Mediterranean is a deep jeweled blue. Ivan looks at it, the shallow warm waters, the white waves. It is a very different ocean than the one north of Paris. It is similar to the one near Barcelona; similar, a little, to the one that surrounded Hawaii -- but only superficially. This is an ocean swallowed by the land. The Pacific is quite another creature.

The car stops. Ivan doesn't wait to be let out; he opens his door and steps out, fresh and light in a gray suit, no tie. The driver -- perhaps it is Carlisle -- opens Hilary's door. As she rises, Ivan comes around to her side and offers his arm.

"If you hate it," he says of the cabin, "we'll have them do it again while we visit Cologne."

This does not please Hilary, this 'vacation' of Polina's. "Everyone will just be spoiled babies until she gets here," Hilary snaps, irritated that the only person in Anton's household who is mean enough to keep things running smoothly is taking a vacation. She exhales though, roughly, tapping her fingernails on her knee. It has not occurred to her to ask, or care, about how Miron and Elodie feel about the move. She has not cared to ask her own staff about it, either, even as she has instructed Miranda to set these changes in motion. But soon they will have Ivan's people and Hilary's people and Anton's people, a swarm of lesser kinfolk constantly buzzing around the three golden creatures they have been bred to serve.

Carlisle walks around to the car after he has stopped it, opening Hilary's door. He holds it open as Ivan offers the mistress his arm, and closes it behind her. He also takes the car away, out of sight, after Hilary and Ivan have walked away. She shakes her head to him. "It will be fine," she says. "I saw pictures. It will be fine."

She repeats. She is trying.

She is trying.

Abruptly, almost without provocation, Ivan's ribs ache with the strain of love. He has to turn away, lest he say something embarrassingly frank; disgust her with his sentiment.

"Of course," he says lightly. "You're right."

They were dropped off at the house; they don't go inside at all, but instead walk around the side. The paved path becomes a flagstone path. The trees here are fragrant; thick enough to shade the earth, thin enough that the ocean can still be seen through the trunks. Halfway down to her cabin, something occurs to him, and he slows.

"Would you like to see it by yourself? At least for a moment?"

She is going to be very composed. She will take care of her son, and make sure that he has everything good. She will have her own cabin, her own little house, and this won't scare her. She made good choices. It will make her happy. There is no one else to blame if it doesn't please her. And this will be fine.

Her hand brushes his as they walk down the path, listening to the water lapping at the shore, slapping the posts of the smaller dock that extends from her cabin. Her knuckles touch his knuckles until he takes the hint and holds her hand. The trees and boughs brush at her skirt. They pause on the path, though, because Ivan's hand tugs her back as she takes another step.

Hilary looks back at him, and slightly up. She doesn't know how to answer this at first. She blinks, but it's hidden behind her shades; her face is impassive, unreadable, a mask of her all-too-familiar confusion. He asks her what she wants and it takes so much effort for her to understand the question, much less answer it.

Then:

she nods. Does not say yes. Cannot say anything. Just nods to him. Does not let go of his hand.

So they stand there just so for a moment: the Silver Fangs on their land, amidst their trees, with their ocean glimmering just beyond. In the end, he takes a step toward her. He raises her hand to his mouth, and when he kisses her hand there is nothing courtly about it. It is silent, and fervent. His adoration furrows his brow.

Then Ivan lets her go. Her hand slips from his; he slides his into his pocket, produces a key. This, he hands to her; nods her onward. "Go on, then."

It is not far to the cabin. Just a few steps, easily visible through the trees.

Gallant and princely, Ivan lifts her delicate hand to his lips and kisses her knuckles.

Passionate, ardent, Ivan kisses her hand and the gesture is so intimate that lust spikes up through her fingers, so intense it almost hurts her arm.

He is the one to let go of her. The one to hand her the key, the one to turn her hand over and lay it in her palm, close her fingers around it because her hand isn't doing much on its own. He is the one to give her permission, verbally, to go on. But these are only trappings; they aren't even a game. She knows, and he knows, that this place belongs to her. That this is, regardless of names and deeds and money exchanged, Hilary's land. Hilary's territory, in a way. Up the path is a protectorate they share. There, at least, his dominion is far less questioned. But down here, in this little cabin and its adjacent studio, he is the one who has to humbly request leave to enter.

Hilary walks away from him. She walks along the remainder of the path to the front door, which is wooden, which is fixed with black iron, and it is quiet enough out here that he can hear the key slide into the lock, the tumblers thunking. Hears the door open, and even hears the soft soles of her boots against the terra-cotta floors of the entry. If he tried, he could listen harder, intuit every movement she makes, but perhaps he doesn't. Perhaps he leaves it alone. Perhaps he waits, interminably, til another door opens and he sees her, faintly through the trees, walking from the cabin towards the studio. Her sunglasses are off now. She is looking around as though she really is alone. She is listening. She passes a cedar and is out of his sight again.

Some time passes. Enough to make him want to sit down, or roll up his shirt-sleeves, or look out over the water. Then the door opens, the first one that leads to the path. She doesn't come back to him.

Calls to him, though.

"Ivan!"

Summons him, like she is calling him home for supper.

Oh, he is curious. He wants to listen. To open his senses, stretch them as far as he can. He is a Ragabash, after all. He is wired to be curious, to be inquisitive, to want to pry, to want to know.

And yet he does not. She disappears into the little cabin and he turns to the ocean. Time passes; he leans against the windblown trunk of a pine. He yawns. He turns when he hears the other door open. He watches her cross that short walkway, which he can imagine in the rain: water pattering down on the terra cotta, perhaps falling soft into the flowerpots they could set along the path. The sloping, tiled roof would keep her dry, though. She could pass from the cabin to the studio untouched.

She passes from cabin to studio untouched, alone, almost as though she's forgotten his presence. Forgotten the presence of the world. He hears the door unlock and unlatch, and then she disappears again.

--

He is looking up along the height of the tree when she calls to him. He is looking at the forkings of the branches; the wood that, by nature, wants to grow straight -- twisted by wind, by weather. She calls and he looks over, lean and golden, smiling as he sees she hasn't come back out. She's still inside. It is her den.

Ivan straightens. Summoned, he comes down the rest of the path. Invited, he approaches her door. The frame is sturdy thick wood, set into cool stone. The cabin, like the house, will resist heat; resist salt; resist moisture. It feels old. It is built to last.

At the door, Ivan pauses. He is polite: he waits for her leave to enter.

Hilary doesn't leave the cabin to come get him. She calls to him, and then goes back inside, the door left open behind her. He can hear her moving around, and then see her, frowning at him, wondering why he hasn't come inside, even though surely that was the whole point: not just of this cabin, or this move, but of everything they went through back in Chicago, when he thought it was over, when she left him because she felt kept like a flower in a walled garden, just as Grey had described her, when her beloved seemed so similar to a man she wanted to see flayed open on her dining table, eviscerated and humbled.

Ivan, learning to ask.

Hilary, learning how to say no.

She scowls at him anyway, beckons him irritably inside.

It's bright inside. She pulled shades open. The floors warm quickly to the light. There are cool, dim shadows in here too, which also comfort her as much as the light. She likes that she can see motes of dust in the beams of sunlight. The bed is made, the linens soft. It is smaller than Ivan initially suggested. It is set against a wall, too, a strange little nook from where someone in repose can see the ocean. There is a throw blanket atop it, woven and colorful. Traces of Mexico, here, oddly enough. Small kitchen, simple, though everything of excellent quality even if it doesn't quite approach the grandeur of her chef's kitchen at the main house. A rug on the floor. A small fireplace. She's opened all the doors: the one to the dock, the one toward the studio. A breeze goes through, fragrant and cool.

Hilary takes his hand when he comes inside and she shows him things.

Silently.

Awkwardly.

She walks him from place to place, giving him a chance to look at it: the rug, here. The fireplace. Now the kitchen. Look at her bed. This is the path to the studio. This is the little bathroom with its cobalt tile and claw-foot bathtub. It is surprisingly colorful. It is smaller than the cabin he built for her over the lake in Chicago. There is less light. There are more nooks and crannies and places to hide things. Most of the cookware is cast iron. It is not quite rustic -- Hilary is too refined for that -- but it is perhaps the sort of place that a young girl, growing up in the finest of homes with the finest of everything, might imagine creating for herself if she were ever to run away and live in the woods, in some magical house all by herself.

Hilary says nothing to him. Holds his hand and walks him around the small home, the private retreat, pausing at everything she wants him to see, and then moving on.

She does not know how to properly give a tour.

It is -- by far -- the most bizarre tour Ivan has ever been given. There is no narration. There is no explanation. He is nodded inside irritably, as though he were being very foolish: and this amuses him terribly, but he knows better than to laugh. He is taken by the hand. He is simply -- shown things. Here, look, the rug. Here, look, the fireplace. Here, look, the bed. She is so stiff, and awkward, and strange. She has no idea how to give a tour; but then, why would she? He can't remember her ever having a proper guest. Not once.

It is also the most endearing tour he has ever been given. His heart melts again. He doesn't say anything, because then he will be foolish and gushing. He follows her, hand in hers, beholding whatever it is she wants to show him.

And the cabin is, in truth, not at all what he had imagined for her. He knew she didn't want the sleekness, the glass, the polish, the blonde woods and brushed steels. He knew that: that is him, not her, and this is to be hers. But he imagined something ... larger. And more refined. And ornate. He had half-formed ideas of a miniature Versailles, perhaps: that sort of grandeur, that sort of brilliance and opulence. Or perhaps something different, something somber and stately. Mahogany, velvet, wood-panelled walls.

What she has built for herself is quite different. It is small. It is simple, though sturdy and well-crafted. It is small and simple and well-crafted, and it is full of light and warmth; and also of dim corners, hiding places. The air breathes. It is not stuffy, not shut, not walled, not airtight. There is color here. There is life here -- motes of it in the air, a pot of it blooming on the kitchen windowsill. The throw blanket is colorful, patterned; a throwback to the cultures and colors of central Mexico. That does not surprise him, somehow.

None of it surprises him. He realizes this, and is surprised instead by this: that as little as he imagined this, as little as he expected it, it does not surprise him. He looks at what she has made, with its light and its shadows and its color and its secrecy, and he thinks:

why, of course.

that is exactly how it should be.

--

"I like it," he says, as the strange little tour ends. And her hand is still in his, and his gives hers a gentle squeeze. "It's lovely. Suits you."

Hilary

No description of where she found the rug or the argument she had with the interior designer about the cobalt tile being 'overwhelming'. She doesn't tell him that she wavered on what type of stove she wanted. She doesn't talk at all. Just holds his hand, walking him around the cabin, which really he could observe almost in entirety by standing in one place and taking a slow turn.

No one ever came to Dion's house, and if they did, his head-of-household Estrella toured the guests, or one of the children did. They tried, her first mate's house staff did, to teach her how to be a good hostess, a proper wife, but she was skittish and wide-eyed and temperamental, alternately crying or lashing out or going dead in the eyes when pushed to do anything she didn't want to do or didn't understand.

This is not the sort of place Ivan would build for himself. It is not the sort of place he would have built for her, even being told recently that she didn't want it in his modern style. He, in fact, may have never imagined it for Hilary, but the truth is, they have only known one another a few years. Less than. He has plumbed the depths of her soul in some ways, but she keeps changing... and those depths are, in truth, fathomless. How could he have known what she would want, out here in the cedars and beside the sea? No one would have guessed at any of this, for someone like her. Physically she doesn't even seem to fit, here, despite her colorful printed dress with its off-the-shoulder neckline and billowy sleeves, swinging skirt. The very aura she carries with her is too elegant, too refined, too restrained for a casual, warm little spot like this.

They stop at the windowsill in the kitchen where there is a trio of pots: rosemary, oregano, thyme. This is the last thing that Hilary ends up showing him: look, Ivan. There are plants. She has never had plants before. Someone will probably have to slip down here occasionally when Hilary isn't using her cabin and tend to them. Or maybe someone can teach her. Standing here in this place that does not seem like it should be hers but is ineffably and utterly hers, it seems like she could learn: when to water the little herbs with, perhaps, a little water can with a long spout and slender handle.

Standing there, Ivan declares that he likes it. It is lovely. He squeezes her hand and confirms that it suits her, and Hilary

exhales. As though she was holding her breath. Not for his approval, not for his appreciation, but perhaps simply for someone to confirm that she did the right thing. That her decisions about what would make her happy seem correct. Hilary is not used to knowing what she wants. She is not yet convinced that what she thinks she wants is real, or that it's okay.

As she's told him: she knows she's not good. She knows she's not... right.

"I will make lunch," she tells him, as though now that she's gotten his opinion on the cabin she can't bear to talk about it anymore. She works her hand free of his and turns around, standing between the row of cabinets and icebox and stove and sink and the island with pots hanging over it and chopping block at the ready. She touches that chopping block, her fingers anxious. "So it will be ready when Anton gets here. We can eat outside. I know what I will make."

She looks over at Ivan. "You won't like it," she adds, with a touch of disdain.

As she slips free, Ivan leans back against the counter. They are both slender, graceful people; even in the small space, they fit easily and elegantly. He smiles:

"Oh? You don't know that. What are you making?"

"Ratatouille," she answers, looking at him with daring, fearless eyes. She's always been fearless when it comes to him, to his rage, to the rage even of her fuller-mooned mates. It's as if she doesn't know any better; it's as if she has no sense of self-preservation. Look at how she spat words at Oliver Grey one day by the pier; look at what he might have done to her. She still doesn't seem to understand, or care, how foolish it was to talk back to an already angry Galliard.

By comparison, looking Ivan in the eyes is nothing at all.

"But I will cook you some sausages if your hearty lupine constitution cannot survive such a dish," she adds, witheringly.

Ivan starts laughing.

And then he tries to hold it back -- unsuccessfully, lips pressed together, shoulders shaking. He looks down. He's still laughing. He looks away. He's openly laughing now, and so he gives up trying to hide it; turns back to her, grinning, eyes twinkling.

"I don't know," he says. "Maybe you'd best cook me a whole haunch of elk. My poor lupine constitution might simply crumble to dust with anything less."

"Ugh," Hilary says, deep in her throat. Maybe it's his laughter, so gauche, so childish. Maybe it's the 'haunch of elk' comment. She turns aside, waving her hand at him. "Go tell Darya what I'm making and send her to the market."

Like he's an errand boy. Like he's no better than Darya herself, or Carlisle, or one of the maids. Like he's actually a few steps below someone like Dmitri or Miron or Polina when in point of fact he is the most important, the most dangerous, the most powerful member of this bizarre, sprawling household.

He is the only wolf. The only one with a Name.

Hilary waves at him to go send her girl for vegetables, oil, and so on.

Her scoffed ugh nearly sets him off again. It's a near thing. He holds it back, but he's still grinning -- even as he straightens, going uncomplainingly to do her bidding.

Pauses, just before departing her kitchen and her cabin. Over his shoulder: "Cook me some fish. S'il vous plaît."

His pronunciation is actually ... not terrible.

Hilary almost throws something at him, but there's really nothing easy to hand to throw at him. She just waves him off, content to be alone here for a while. He starts to leave, and makes a demand, and she turns to look at him, narrowing her eyes.

"If you want fish, then tell Darya what you want so she'll get what I need. Glupyy mal'chik," she adds, stumbling a little.

Of course she would learn 'stupid' and 'boy' in Russian. Of course.

Of course.

She hears him laughing as he strolls away; it is a warm sound, though perhaps Hilary cannot interpret that. Perhaps she hears it only as foolishness, or worse, mockery.

--

In less than an hour poor skittish Darya arrives laden with groceries. Soon enough this household will have its groceries and supplies delivered regularly and straight from the whatever exclusive, expensive sources the likes of Hilary and Ivan demand. For now, though, the little market in the village will have to do. Neither Ivan nor Hilary have gone themselves, though if they did they might be charmed. Well; Ivan might be charmed. Hilary might find it adequate.

She might even find the foodstuffs she has been brought adequate. There are tomatoes and bell peppers, several kinds of squash. Several bunches of herbs: fresh rosemary, fresh oregano, fresh bay leaf. There is some kind of fish, which turns out to be a sea bass as long as her arm, so fresh its eyes are still clear, and its flesh still pearlescent.

Hilary is, unless she demands company or the assistance of a sous-chef, left alone. There is a telephone in the cabin, tucked away where it isn't an eyesore: an old-fashioned thing with a receiver and a cradle, a rotary dial that doesn't actually work. It connects directly to the servants' quarters at the house, and it serves the sole purpose of letting Hilary issue demands to her people. And her people, well-trained and well-bred servants that they are, know not to come unless specifically requested. She has the cabin to herself.

--

For a while, anyway. Some period of time later -- when the ratatouille is nearly done, and the fish is ready to sear or bake or broil or steam -- there is a knock on the door. It has been a very, very long time since Ivan has knocked on her door, but perhaps she still remembers the sound: light, authoritative.

The door stays open behind him as he leaves her there. All the doors stay open, and the windows, and she begins taking things out. She gets her chef's knife. A pan. She gets the filet knife out as well, sets that aside. She goes to her cellphone and calls Darya directly, who has already gotten Ivan's instruction to 'get things for ratatouille and fish for me', and tells her to get cedar planks for the fish, and coals and lighter fluid and a small outdoor grill.

All of which Darya will do. Darya is skittish but capable. Occasionally she entertains thoughts of poisoning her mistress or drowning a small child she sees at a park, but she's sane enough to be horrified by herself and go to Russian Orthodox churches to venerate Gaia-as-Mary and beg forgiveness for the dark influence of the Wyrm-as-Lucifer. She never hurts anyone. She is terribly gentle, in fact, as a result of her own fear of her intrusive thoughts. She would never so much as brush Hilary's hair too hard, and she keeps away from Anton entirely. She is a good girl, just a touched, twisted one, and far less than most of the other Fangs around her. She does try to do a good job, and she takes the punishment her mistress dishes out like penance.

Hilary sharpens her knives. She eventually takes off her boots and her stockings and walks around in her bare feet on the terra cotta. She didn't want the phone until Ivan explained that it wouldn't ring unless there was an emergency -- something about Anton, or a fire, something life-or-death, and she's ignoring her cell. But she could always call her staff from that phone, and she wouldn't have to leave if she didn't want to. They can't even come inside if she doesn't want them to. So she stopped fighting him on this idea, and the phone lives in a little alcove cut into the wall, easy to ignore.

--

Time goes by. Darya brings her bags from the market. She looks over everything and then sends the herbs -- some of them -- back with Darya to the house. She has the herbs in the window for the rest. She takes the planks from their wrapping and soaks them in cold water. And after sending the girl away, Hilary begins to do things like clean, gut, and butterfly the sea bass. She can do these things; she is unafraid, and not disgusted. It calms her, actually. But this is the woman who, as a child, hid dead things she found on estate grounds in her toybox. Preparing a fish for cooking does not bother her; she even takes a few extra minutes to find its small, dark heart. She removes that carefully and hunches over her chopping block, dissecting it meditatively.

She brings it up to her mouth when it is cut open, curious, and extends the very tip of her tongue to touch it, tasting it. It does not disgust her, though perhaps it should. She looks at the heart for a while and wishes she could dry it like a flower, hang it over a window like a rose. She sighs and casts it aside with the rest of the offal.

Hilary cuts open the eyes, too. She just thinks that's sort of gross and interesting.

--

Time goes by easily. She slices vegetables freehand, no mandoline. Quickly. She seasons the fish and she arranges the vegetables in the pan. Of course he wanted fish; he wouldn't eat just vegetables. She puts the ratatouille in the oven. She wonders, but it's already been hours, if Anton is almost here. She misses Anton. She is sad, laying the sea bass out to season it, when Ivan knocks on the door, even though it stands open. She looks over, barefoot and her kitchen smelling of herbs and heat. She has gone slowly; the ratatouille is not yet nearly done, and the fish still needs a hot grill.

Which is sitting in a box next to a bag of coals and a bottle of lighter fluid.

Hilary waves at that with a finger. "Set up the grill," she tells him, and turns away again. "When is Anton getting here?"

Ivan isn't even surprised anymore when he is immediately ordered to be useful. This is how Hilary is when she is cooking: imperious and demanding and certain as she never is, otherwise. In the kitchen, Hilary always knew what she want and how and when and where and why.

And in the kitchen, he is always her obedient helper. It used to merely amuse him. Now he thinks he actually enjoys it. Enjoys, perhaps, the break it affords him: a few moments where he can be with her and make none of the decisions, take none of the lead.

He picks up the lighter fluid, the coals. He can count on one hand the number of times he has actually grilled in his entire life, but he is an intelligent creature, and besides, this grill is simple, easy to set up. He finds the vent and opens it. He pours coals in the bottom, douses them with fuel, and then sets the grill in place.

"He'll be here in about twenty minutes," Ivan answers while he works. "I came to tell you."

A match tossed in whoomps into flame. He rolls the bag of coals closed and sets it aside.

He sets the grill up outside, facing the dock, overlooking the water. He sets it on fire. But before he goes outside, carrying the grill to unbox it, set it up, make it possible for her to make him the fish he wants, he tells her:

twenty minutes,

and her heart implodes slightly. It's been a very long time since she's seen her son in person. She misses him terribly. For a while, she lived with him, and she hated it, but it's been so long now that it destroys her a little to be separated from him. She pulls the cedar plants from the ice-cold water and lays out the fish, checks on the ratatouille, and then begins washing up. Just herself, but most other things, too. She checks on the ratatouille again. She frets, going outside to the heating grill, the warming coals.

"It's all right if Miron eats with us," she says, too quickly, anxiously. "In case he doesn't know me, or he doesn't like the food."

He can tell she's anxious, fretting. It's there in the little motions, the repetitions. That's the second time she's checked the ratatouille in as many minutes. Now she's washing her hands. Now she's touching her hair. Now she's coming outside, hovering. He puts the lid on the grill, banking the coals, and faces her.

"Miron will stay," he assures her. And also this, firmly: "He will know you, Hilary. He's your son."

"But he's a baby," she says, with a vaguely frustrated, exasperated tip of her head towards Ivan. "Babies are very stupid."

She doesn't mean it cruelly. She thinks Anton is smart. She thinks he is a good baby. Or rather: toddler. But that is still a baby to her, and babies are stupid. They can't even speak properly. She exhales, and goes inside again, and comes back outside carrying a plank of sea bass, adorned with herbs.

Sets it down on a small table near the grill. "The girl you got for him cooked this often, in Novgorod," she says quietly. "It's so... it's nothing. It's vegetables cut up, some oil, some salt." It's a bit more than that, but not by much. It really is simple fare. "He likes it."

She sits down on the dock near Ivan's feet. She wraps her arms around her knees, chin on her folded arms. "But he changes his mind, sometimes."

Ivan has changed his clothes since she last saw him. They're in the south again; it's warm. He wears white shorts, a fabric belt. His shirt is waffle-knit and a burnt orange, the sleeves pushed up to mid-forearm. When she sits by him, she sees he is barefoot, the light hairs on his legs golden in the sunlight.

His hand drops briefly to her head, touches her hair. He does this the way she sometimes does things -- lightly, with the deliberate pretense of paying no attention. As though it mattered little. As though he weren't responsible for what his hand does at all.

"I did wonder why ratatouille," he admits. "I thought perhaps because it's a Niçoise dish."

But that's not it at all. She didn't do it for ease, or because she lives in Nice now. She did it for her son. Because he likes it. Liked it, anyway, when the French girl made it for him. Ivan thinks of Hilary not saying her name; notes it again, but does not draw conclusions.

He strokes her hair. And then he goes to inspect the bass, all dressed for the grill.

"He'll love it, I'm sure," he says. "Shall I put the fish on the grill, or are we waiting for Anton?"

Hilary closes her eyes as he touches her hair. She breathes in, and exhales. He calms her. They trade; he gets time serving her, obeying her, and then this. She gets this comfort, this way he has of wrapping himself around her to keep her contained.

"That too," she murmurs, regarding the dish. "Also, it is easy. And I like the colors."

Look at her, liking things.

Look at the little house she wanted: full of deep, rich blues and burnt reds and soft yellows. Of course she likes ratatouille, the rainbow of it, the prettiness.

She did do it for ease, and because she lives in Nice now, and because she likes pretty colors in pretty shapes. And because Anton likes it, and is used to it, and maybe even Hilary doesn't understand why she does it but she wants to make it easier on him: this new place, this new climate, this new house. She worries that he'll be scared now, he won't know where things are or how to get around, he'll hate her -- her, specifically -- for bringing him here, as though infant logic wouldn't have him rebelling against Miron before Hilary. We only rebel against the adults we trust will love us anyway.

Hilary nods. "He'll be here soon," she murmurs. "And he doesn't like much meat yet." She corrects: "He likes pâté."

"Pâté is awful," Ivan opines, perhaps instantly reducing himself back to a barbarian in Hilary's eyes. "We'll teach him to enjoy caviar like proper Russian royalty."

No matter; he busies himself with the fish and the grill. It's not difficult. Actually, it's foolproof: the fish goes on the grill, plank and all, and then he puts the lid back on.

"Am I meant to have the lid vent open a little, do you think?"

"He likes it," she snaps at him, sharply enough to be a warning: pate is not awful. It's meat and fat and it's soft and Anton likes it and Ivan will shut the fuck up. She soothes again, settles like a cat who bristles one moment and purrs the next.

He is fussing with the grill, and she explains: "Just cover it. You don't need to let it vent."

Waits for him to come back and leans on him, closing her eyes. "I like my house," she whispers.

So he covers it. Closes the vent. Cedar smoke and heat builds; infuses the fish. They can leave it for a few minutes, and in those few minutes he comes back to her.

She leans against him. He remains standing; intuits -- or perhaps remembers from those days on the lake, in his yacht -- that sometimes she likes to sit at his feet. Lean against him like an animal, a beloved pet. His long fingers comb aimlessly through her hair as he looks at that little house, then out at the ocean.

"I like it too. You chose well. This place. The villa. Your cabin. All of it."

A brief quiet. He adds:

"I bought a loft in the city. It's nice. Very modern, though. Very different from here. You should come visit."

He's right about her; she does like this. She rarely submits to this level, and usually only when he has broken her open prior. It's one of those things she does on the rare and beautiful occasions when her submission is long-lasting, when it stretches out sometimes for hours after he's finished with her, when each precious moment is succeeded by another, and another, and another. Sometimes she sits at his feet and he touches her hair like a beloved pet. More often, she doesn't.

Now she does, and it's only because she's anxious about seeing her son again. Dying inside for want of him, shaking in terror of him. Parental love is complete, and utter, and it is in so many ways broken. It looks even stranger, more viscerally dangerous, on a woman who is broken in almost every other way, too. She rests her head against Ivan's leg, and feels his fingertips in her hair, and gauges the done-ness of the fish from scent alone, as though she were just as animal as he is.

Does not thank him for his approval, or dismiss it. She absorbs it like the earth absorbs rain, never grateful or even aware, but lost without it. His assurances calm her, just as his hand in her hair does, just as the careful arrangement of sliced vegetables and the evisceration of a fish does.

"I will," she tells him, of his loft. "Your cars are always gauche; your homes never are."

There is a quiet pause.

"I wouldn't mind it... if you summoned me sometimes," she says, barely above a whisper.

"Mm." It's a thoughtful sound, a murmur. Briefly, and ever so subtly, there's a thread in the stroke of his fingers; a hint of grasp, an intimation of pull.

It passes. "I think I will," Ivan replies. And then he draws back, slips his hand into his pocket, pulls his phone out. It is buzzing. He puts it to his ear; his tone is altogether different.

"Ah, Miron. Just in time. Follow the path through the trees. You'll see us. Bring the boy; leave everything else."

Hilary closes her eyes, feeling the tension near her scalp, the almost-tug of his hand that betrays him. She exhales, and opens her eyes again, and then the phone buzzes just above her head. She tips her head back to look up at him, wondering, and sits up straighter when he says Miron. She rises to her feet and begins walking away from him, fish be damned, and starts walking quickly to the path up from the dock and around the little house, up towards the place where her pup is. The quickness of her steps nearly becomes a run, but it's like watching a sylph in the woods, the way she dances over the ground.

"Anton!" she cries out, and that's how he hears her, far now, and knows how quickly she went to the car, how Miron barely got the boy out of the carseat, barely shut the car door, barely started heading in their direction before Hilary burst from the path, the trees, the lush greenery, her feet dirty and her hair taking on its natural waves again from the humidity. "Anton, Anton," she is saying, almost a moan, reaching for him.

For once, she doesn't seem to frighten or startle Anton overmuch. Miron senses the boy turning towards her and helps lift him into Hilary's arms. He's getting to be quite big now, but she gathers him up close to her, kissing the side of his head, pressing her lips to his temple, holding him a little too tightly, shaking from... whatever it is she's feeling. She would be the last person capable of naming it, because it feels like panic and yet she is happy, so happy, so overcome. Anton is babbling, pushing at her face a little, or just touching her, telling her about his day in the gibberish that passes for his Russian-French-English plus being-a-baby. She touches him, too, her hands all over his face, just as his arm, but her own are,

surprisingly,

much gentler.

Just like that she flits away. Ivan watches her go, bemused; thinks fleetingly of the legends of his forefathers, those pale ghostly women who wandered the cold, wild places.

And like those stories, he follows her. His pace is slower, more measured: up the path and around the bend, through the trees and to the roundabout where Miron is still busily pulling the baby-paraphernalia from the car; putting in stray (clean!) diapers that have slipped loose, picking a binkie off the ground and surreptitiously sticking it in back in the bag.

Hilary likely notices none of this. She is enraptured by her child, overcome with a happiness that feels to her like panic. She is touching him, feeling that fine soft skin and those chubby little limbs, and meanwhile Anton is grasping gleefully at her and sticking his slobbery little fingers in her face and

Ivan thinks to himself that babies can be so gross, but of course he doesn't say it. He comes to stand next to Hilary, slipping his arm around her waist, reaching out to run a delicate knuckle over Anton's cheek.

"Privet, malysh," he says. One might almost think there's affection there. He looks over to Miron: "How was the trip?"

And poor Miron, valiantly shouldering the diaper bag with a carseat hanging off the same arm while he tries to pull a stroller out of the trunk: "It was good! Shorter than I thought it would be. I brought too many toys."

Miron wiped his hands. He's seen Hilary pull away from Anton in disgust, he's seen how Anton is getting older and more capable of feeling the pain of that rejection. He knows how refined Hilary is, how perfect. He wiped Anton's hands before getting him out of the carseat, he checked to make sure the boy's diaper wasn't full. He didn't want Hilary to be disgusted with the boy, hurt him, warp his fragile heart.

So Hilary catches Anton's hand and kisses that too, even puts his fingers in her mouth and hides her teeth behind her lips and 'bites' him, which makes him laugh brightly. Neither of them really notice Ivan at first, until Ivan is right there, and it's Anton who really sees him. Spots the predator and eyes him, laughter fading and something else replacing it. It is similar to the watchful way he once handed his father his toy dragon before demanding it back and then stuffing its throat in his mouth.

He says hello to his baby. Hilary knows those words, too. She is delighted, secretly, aching in her heart because Ivan sounds like he might actually like the child, feel fondness for him, and this pleases her even if it is a lie; it pleases her if Ivan will lie to make her happy. But his attention is shortlived, and so she goes back to cuddling with their son, kissing him, as Ivan talks to Miron.

Overhears what Miron says and looks up, sharply. "Why not all his toys?" she says, tight all of a sudden. "He's going to live here. He needs all of them."

He needs precisely zero of them, in point of fact, but no matter: she is wary suddenly that she is being tricked. That they're going to take him away again, or make this place inhospitable so that Anton won't be happy.

This is insane. None of them would do that. Miron, ready to abandon his life in the middle of the night to protect the boy being stolen by his insane mother, would never do that. But none of Hilary's fears are strictly realistic.

Miron stammers: he is not terribly eloquent, see, and Hilary's vicious, insane fury is something to fear. But Ivan is there. Ivan with his arm around Hilary's slim waist; Ivan, who tightens his hold subtly but firmly to ground her.

"He'll have them. They're being shipped, along with the rest of his things. We'll buy him more." He kisses her, his lips against her temple. "Come on. Let's have lunch. Miron, you're welcome to join us."

Miron looks startled. And then he looks at a loss, his hands full, his shoulders laden.

"Just leave it there," Ivan adds, already guiding Hilary back down the path. "Someone else will handle it."

Her eyes are black. Somehow in the midst of a snap of anger they're still cold. Her son has her eyes. He has looked like her in this small way since he was born; in all other respects he takes more after his father, golden and fair. In some moments of blank curiosity he often resembles Hilary in spirit, but more often than not, it is only his dark eyes that pair him with his elegant, ghostlike mother.

They stand together, the three of them. Anton, really too big to go on being held all the time like he is, tries to get Hilary's attention again by talking to her, and Miron looks at Ivan for help. Hilary flickers; she is torn between reprimanding a servant and being with her child, and in the end, there's no doubt who might win. She looks at him and coos again, while Ivan calms her, tells her what Miron meant. And without a word, she turns away, slipping from Ivan's hand. She leans over, setting Anton down on his feet, and then holds his hand, walking with him down the path to the house.

As with Ivan, she doesn't point anything out. She doesn't tell him that this is the way to his mama's special cottage where he can only come if he is invited and if he behaves. She is silent, walking into the woods with the little boy. No one, especially Miron, would be remiss if they felt a small grip of fear on their heart, watching a woman like that guiding a small child into the woods.

--

Miron and Ivan will catch up; see her with Anton in the house. He is walking around, toddling, investigating his surroundings, while she opens the oven and removes the ratatouille, the edges of the vegetables crisp and caramelized. Outside, the fish is almost done. As soon as she sees one of the others she looks a little disconcerted about Miron, frowning. "Go outside," she says, uneasily, as he is hesitating at the threshold.

He is not allowed inside. At least not right now. But he can go to the dock, go around the house to the grill. He brought the diaper bag. He brought some toys. And when he is spied through the back door on the dock, Anton cries out his name in happy recognition and goes toddling outside, quickly grabbed by his manservant before he tries to use the hot grill as a spot to balance himself.

Hilary looks at Ivan instead, setting the ratatouille on the kitchen island. "You open wine," she orders him. "I will get the fish."

"Of course," Ivan says, obliging and smooth.

But then:

but then he doesn't immediately go to open the wine. He comes closer to her as she sets the ratatouille out. His hand touches her back; rubs a small circle at her waist, then follows the line of her spine up. He touches her with -- well; with care and caring.

"Are you all right?" he asks, quiet.

Hilary arches her back away from his hand, giving him a strange look. Her brows furrow together. Through all the open doors they can hear the water, and the wind, and their son babbling excitedly to Miron, who knows how to properly love him, care for him, protect him, who is talking back to him in Russian.

"Why wouldn't I be all right?" she asks him back, quiet as well, because he was. Because she echoes him. Because that comes naturally to her. "Everything is..."

She looks unsettled. She looks perhaps a little like she needs to eat the food she's made and sit down on the deck chairs outside and be still for a while.

"I'm happy," she snaps at him, firm and almost angry, without making eye contact, like she's daring him to -- not contradict her, but perhaps mock her for it. "I like it here. Anton didn't cry. Everything is... nice."

Ivan's brow clears, though it was never truly furrowed. He smiles. It is, against all odds, genuine.

"I suppose sometimes I worry too much," he says: he who was once and is perhaps still, so often, the prince of carelessness. "I will see you outside."

He picks up the wine as he goes. And the corkscrew, which is sturdy but simple, manual.

--

Anton is holding on to Miron's pants-leg when Ivan gets outside. Anton is talking, or making noises that pass for speech. He is old enough that there are true words in there, and a good number of them, and not at all in the same language. He does not call Ivan daddy or papa or anything of the sort, but he does go quiet to see his sire. He does stare, wide-eyed and watchful, while that lean golden creature drives the corkscrew into the cork and pulls it out, the tendons in his forearms flexing against his sunkissed skin.

"You'll have a little wine with us, won't you, Miron?" Ivan asks -- and Miron does not know what to say, so Ivan pours, and then Miron thanks him. "We're having fish and ratatouille. I'm told Anton likes ratatouille."

"He does." Miron finds it easiest to converse with Ivan when Ivan's son is the subject. "Elodie makes it with the tomatoes we planted behind the house. Perhaps we'll start another garden here."

"It's a fine idea," Ivan says. But: "Ask Hilary, though."

Hilary scoffs. He says he worries too much and she just scoffs at him -- the same tenor as her expressions of disgust, but more dismissive, harsher somehow in that it is so completely aimed at him. Ivan. Worrying too much. Hilary doesn't think so at all. He is annoying sometimes and other times she needs him so badly she thinks she would die if he ever left her, but that is as far as her analysis of him goes.

He is a careless child, she thinks of saying, but doesn't.

--

The truth is, he does worry for her. Worries too much for her, and rightly so: she is so unstable. She is so fickle, and so changeable, and these transformations she's been making since she left Edmund Gray at the proverbial altar do not leave him much ground to stand on when it comes to whether or not she will kill herself tonight, or kill their son, or detach from reality entirely and vanish into herself. And yet:

every step she takes into this new frontier seems to ground her. Look: she makes ratatouille because it pleases her, but because it also might please someone else. Look: she does not mind Miron being with them, eating with them, drinking wine with them, as if they were all a little family, together. Which they would be, if a single goddamn one of them were sane. Look:

she glances at Ivan as he opens the wine, and she thinks something to herself and does not speak it aloud, but it is fond and happy and frightening to her.

--

Outside, the fish is a bit overdone. Hilary makes Ivan remove it from the grill, and it smells rich and herbal and mouth-watering, almost buttery in one's appetite before the flesh has even touched one's lips. Anton is eager for the meat as soon as he smells it and sees it, but he has to be held back, he has to be kept from the very hot things, and not understanding this, he is angry at Miron.

But he also trusts Miron, and Hilary's entrance onto the dock with the platter of ratatouille is distraction enough. Glasses are poured. Anton keeps opening his mouth greedily for food, hungry after travel. Miron is the one who checks to see if the ratatouille is cooled enough for Anton to pick up the slices and put them in his mouth. Miron is the one who gives Anton a small portion of fish and a little fork from the diaper bag that is fat and dull enough for the toddler to hold.

Hilary is quiet through most of this. She watches Anton, hawklike, obsessive, til she hears her name, glancing up. Blinks, her mind referencing barely-absorbed auditory stimuli rapidly, trying to place the words in context.

She frowns at all of them like they're fucking idiots. Which they are.

"Of course he can have a garden," she says, almost snapping at Ivan. "It is his house. Just like the one in Novgorod."

Meaning: it is Ivan's house, and in a way it is her house, but ultimately it is -- in her mind -- Anton's house, for Anton and his servants, for him to grow up in and inherit when he is of age. If he had a garden in Novgorod then he should have a garden up the hill at his new house, too. He should have fresh vegetables. He can have a fruit tree or several of his very own. He can have whatever he wants, because of what he is. What he will become.

She wants to slip from her chair and sit near Anton on the planks of the dock, eat with him there, but she won't sit on the floor in the presence of a servant. So she sits beside Ivan, sipping her wine, eating sea bass that she refuses to admit to herself is slightly overdone or else she might throw it into the fucking ocean, screaming, eating seasoned vegetables while her son does the same, while Ivan and Miron do the same. She looks over at Miron though, after a while.

"I think the two of you should stay in the house tonight," she says, directly. "I will be here. I want him to be able to get used to it."

No mention of Ivan. He comes and goes as he pleases; he has not yet been openly invited to spend the night with her in her cottage, but he needs no invitation, strictly speaking, to spend the night in the main house. It is, after all, like the one in Novgorod. His son is not of age; it is his territory, too.

No one mentions that the fish is slightly overdone. Miron wouldn't dare, not in a million years. Anton doesn't have the words yet -- though god, that's a terrifying thought: what might happen in another year, two, three, if his insane mother cooked him something and it was flawed and he pointed it out in all his childish guilelessness.

He is not two, three, or four years old yet, though. And he is not five, six, seven -- old enough to have learned, bright and cunning child that he's sure to be, what to say and what not to say and what never, ever to say. So it is a moot point: because the last of their number, Ivan, doesn't care that it's overdone. Perhaps it's ridiculous, perhaps it's foolish, perhaps it marks him nothing more than a callow boy rather hopelessly in love, but he genuinely enjoys Hilary's cooking. Even when it doesn't quite hit the mark.

So they dine. And it is lovely: the sun in the sky, the clouds slipping by silently, the ocean washing at the shore so near to them that they can smell salt on the air, which pairs well with the fish, the ratatouille. Ivan drinks white wine. He eats fish. He lounges in his chair, chatting with Miron about nothing of consequence, until Hilary breaks in to give orders. Who is to sleep where. Where she will be.

No mention of Ivan. Perhaps Ivan will stay with her. Perhaps at the house. Perhaps he won't be here at all but in the city; perhaps he won't even sleep. Perhaps he'll go buy some other club drinks. No; he'll stay here, he decides. With her.

"Dmitri and some of the maids are here already," Ivan adds; Miron's relief is writ in his face. "They'll help you get whatever you need."

He stands, then. He does not clear the small folding table they've laid out for lunch. He goes to peer at the grill; makes no move to clean it.

"I'm having my yacht delivered here," he says -- surely to Hilary, because he wouldn't talk to Miron about this. "When it arrives, we should sail somewhere. Perhaps Corsica; what do you think?"

Anton isn't terribly interested in the fish yet. He sniffs it when Miron offers him a bite but then just looks at Miron patiently, until Miron -- obedient to the child's silent whims -- hands him a bowl of ratatouille and his little chubby-handled fork to eat it with. So Anton doesn't yet have to be tested in this deeply unfair way.

Ivan likely can't even tell that the fish is overdone, Hilary is thinking. He eats catfish and thinks it's the height of seafood. His palate is moronic, even less refined than her son's because he isn't equipped with her genetics.

That said: the fish is simple, and balanced, and but for being a trifle dry, fantastic. No one but Hilary likely even notices that it isn't completely perfect, or would mind. Plenty of guests would assume that this is the way fish is meant to be eaten, because she is very good. She is excellent.

Ivan mentions his yacht, and her eyebrow lifts. "I want to stay here for a while. Perhaps later." She glances over at Anton, then back to Ivan, sipping her wine. "After his birthday."

"That's right; his birthday is coming, isn't it?" And now both of them are looking at their son: two pairs of falcon's eyes; two Silver Fangs. Perhaps Anton doesn't know how to react. Perhaps he stares back. Perhaps he flings food. Perhaps he has no idea at all, couldn't care less, is eating his colorful sliced and stewed vegetables.

"Maybe we should throw him a party. Invite the villagers." Ivan is half-kidding; then he thinks of something. "He's never even had a friend his age, has he? Maybe we should introduce him to other children."

The look Hilary gives him when he seems to forget his son's birthday is not just amusingly withering; it is scorching. She looks like she might crush her wineglass in her hand, rub the broken edges into his face. She looks at him; he looks at Anton. Anton uses both his fork and his fingers to push ratatouille into his mouth. Like any toddler of that age, he is sufficiently focused on feeding himself that he barely notices that dining is considered social by older creatures like his parents. Miron leaves him be, and also does his best to pretend that he is deaf and cannot even hear the parents.

"Ugh," she says, again, of the party, villagers. It isn't that she's stupid, or can't tell that he's joking. It's that his joke is stupid, as all of his jokes always are, she thinks. She looks out over the water, sipping her wine. He mentions friends and she frowns, then looks over at him with that frown of confusion. Looks at Miron, who is glancing at her but quickly averts his eyes. She looks at Anton. She looks back at Ivan.

"Babies don't have friends. They don't know how."

Ivan ignores that hateful gaze. He has learned to do such things: to ignore it when she looks at him like she wishes him dead; to not take it to heart. It's a necessary blindness when one is, for all intents and purposes, mated to Hilary.

"Hm. I don't know," he says, mildly, though he has some idea. "By all accounts I was very friendly with all the other Upper East Side rugrats. Obviously they weren't exactly deep and enduring friendships, and the conversation left something to be desired. But perhaps a little socialization will do Anton good."

Hilary looks troubled. Miron looks away but his glances are daringly hopeful; they never dared in Novgorod to invite children or strangers into the house. That first wetnurse, her name be damned forever, never brought her own children to visit, even though one was scarcely three months older than Anton. But he is a bright boy, who reads a great deal and takes online courses on child development to supplement what he already knew. He was vetted carefully. He does know a thing or two about how to bring up a healthy and happy child.

He also knows that he must not speak up right now and tell the boy's parents that they took Anton into town, took him to parks and little baby music classes and so on so that he could crawl around and inspect other infants. He knows not to mention that yes, Anton has had illness before, picked up at these places but hardly life-threatening.

But the truth is, ever since Hilary went to Novgorod, Anton hasn't been around other children. And Miron knows this is not dire -- will not become so until later in his second year -- but it is not for the boy's best.

Hilary idly swirls her wine in its glass, looking away from Ivan and back to her son, who is chewing a roasted slice of tomato and occasionally smacking his lips in satisfaction. She frowns, a flicker of ache daring its way to the surface of her eyes before carefully being folded away again, hidden from The Help. "What does Polina think?" she asks, despite Miron sitting right there. She would trust Miron on this; he's so sentimental. She thinks if anyone will agree with her that Anton is fine and needs no stupid mortal babies to be his friends, Polina will, and then they'll be left alone.

Thank god -- or the gods, or the incarna, or gaia herself -- for Miron. Thank them all that Miron knows more than a little about childrearing, and has actively sought to learn more. Thank everything there is that Miron and his cohort has been around to provide stability and love and discipline and care for the boy, because look at his parents: it took them nearly two years to even blink, doubletake, and wonder if perhaps their son should socialize with others his own age. Even dog owners know better than to try to raise puppies in isolation.

Ivan comes back to the table, and he sits: one leg folded, the other extended. The sun loves him, dances in his hair, makes his skin gleam. He looks at his small son, one eye gently closed against the light; opening it again as he returns his eyes to Hilary.

"I don't know. We'll ask her, provided she still has a working phone out in ... whatever Polish backwater she's in right now. Do we have her number, Miron?"

Miron, who was so assiduously pretending to be a tree stump, blind deaf and mute, looks over as his name is spoken. "I have it, yes," he says.

"Well, call her tonight, ask her what she thinks about Anton playing with other brats."

"I think ... I think she would like the idea," Miron ventures.

"We'll ask her when she gets here."

Hilary's tone is sharp. It makes Anton look up, seeking her, his eyes wide but unafraid, more startled. Hilary is adamant, frustrated with them, but more than that:

she's defensive. She finishes her glass of wine's last mouthful and then stands up from her chair. She crouches down, putting her hands under Anton's armpits and lifting him up, his fork still in his hand, and then picks up his bowl as soon as she has him squarely on her hip.

"Allons à l'intérieur, Anton," she says briskly, dismissive of both the men on the dock. Anton does not seem to mind, since he can reach his bowl of food just as easily as his mother walks inside the door to her cottage

and kicks the door shut behind her.

Outside, Ivan and Miron exchange a glance. Miron is dismayed. Ivan is ... well, it's hard to tell. But when Miron moves to get up and follow, he stands first.

"I'll go," he says. "Just clean lunch up."

--

There is a soft tap on the door. Then Ivan lets himself into the cabin -- provided Hilary hasn't locked the door behind her.

He raps on the door. And Hilary, strangely, does not call out GO AWAY. It is not locked. He gently opens the door, and lets himself in, and finds that she's closed the other two doors as well and is sitting on the rug near the fireplace with Anton in her lap. Anton is eating his ratatouille, and Hilary is resting her head close to his, and he doesn't care as long as he has his food, and she revels in the nearness he permits her. Kisses his temple.

Looks up as the door opens, her eyes dark and dangerous.

"I didn't invite you in," she says, like a warning.

"You didn't order me out either," he counters, but his tone is light and deft. He closes the door behind himself; comes in no further. Not yet.

Hilary watches him. Anton looks up, chewing, and lifts his non-fork-holding hand, palm-out, fingers splayed, then baps his fingers down and up a couple of times. He is waving. Hello, as though he didn't just see Ivan out on the dock mere seconds ago.

"Be careful," she says quietly to Ivan. "You took liberties before. I won't stand for it."

Still: she has noted that he comes no further in. She looks away, and Anton forgets about Ivan, and she curls around him, rocking slightly as he goes on eating his food, bite by bite, the familiar meal settling him in this very strange, warm place. He yawns; it is late afternoon, and he didn't sleep on the trip out here, and the food is warming his belly, making his grogginess fight with his hunger.

"I just got him back," she whispers. "And you want to send him away. He's happy to be here with me. Why must you ruin everything?" Her arms tighten, carefully, around her son's middle.

Ivan's brow furrows. It is unfamiliar, this pang. It was unfamiliar, at least. Now it's growing more and more known: it's how he feels when he's in her presence, and she is hurting. Even when that pain is mad. Even when it stems from her own, imperfect self. Especially then.

"May I enter?" he asks, quietly.

Hilary sulks at his question. She ignores him for a few moments, cuddling Anton, who is quite content at the moment in that stupid, easy way of children who have food, comfort, the nearness of kin.

But after a few moments she nods.

As he comes in closer, she tells him without moving from how she has curled around her toddler:

"I don't want to sail to Corsica, either. He just got here. I want to be here with him for a while."

This is unfair: how she hates him right now, how she fears him. This woman called him in Dubai sobbing, saying she smelled of spoiled milk, accused him of fucking random sluts while leaving her alone in a house with a child. Yet this is precisely what she demands: to be left alone in this estate with that same child she was desperate to escape.

He knows she is unfair. That soon enough she will want to send Anton away, and want to go out on his yacht to Corsica or wherever else. He knows she's a mad, fickle thing. He loves her anyway. Who even knows why.

Who even knows why.

Ivan certainly doesn't. Ivan never thought he'd love anyone. Not like this. Not so consumingly; and more so: not so constantly, so unwaveringly. How long has it been? He's lost track. Years. He never questions why, though -- if only because he doesn't know, can't possibly figure it out.

He just loves her. Deeply and honestly and faithfully; he who is so shallow, such a liar, so faithless.

--

He goes to her. And he kneels behind her, then sits. Moves slowly and carefully closer until he surrounds her the way she surrounds their child. He wraps his arms around her shoulders. He kisses her temple.

"I never meant we'd sail for Corsica now, or even soon. And I certainly don't mean to send Anton away. You can be here with him as long as you like. As long as it makes you happy. I don't mean to always ruin your happiness, Hilary."

He holds her, and she holds Anton.

He loves her, and she loves them both. In her way. In her strange, broken, twisted fashion.

Anton holds his bowl and his fork, and loves them equally, but not so much as he loves his food.

--

Hilary closes her eyes for a moment, then opens them. She loosens her hold on Anton, and slides him off of her lap, setting his bum on the rug.

He hardly notices; glances up and back at them, chewing on a piece of eggplant. He is very curious about his father, more than anything else. Hilary is an enigma that at once delights and upsets him, but rarely comforts him. Ivan, though, fascinates Anton's wary attention. He always watches him, like he's studying.

Hilary leans back into Ivan's arms, unfolding her legs in front of her and to one side of the toddler, using Ivan's chest as a rest for her back.

She says nothing to Ivan, though. No forgiveness is offered, no explanation that she understands now what he meant. She doesn't apologize for having a minor meltdown over the very suggestion that Anton go away to play with other children and -- horror of horrors -- possibly develop attachments outside of his family and the people his family controls. She doesn't admit that somewhere deep down, she is not stupid; she knows he'll be better off if he isn't raised in the relative isolation that she always knew growing up.

"Stay with me in the house tonight," she says quietly. And lest he think she means this room, her private retreat, her cottage in the woods: "I have my suite of rooms there. We shall be all together, as a family, and I will be happy."

He does think she meant this room. That's what she'd spoken of not an hour ago: Anton can stay at the main house tonight, attended by the servants. She will remain here, secluded, retreated, attended by none save perhaps Ivan.

That's not what she means, though. She says it clearly: suite of rooms, together as a family. And she will be happy.

It is not the first time she's used the word today. And even once is rare; to hear her say it once, twice, perhaps three times: rarer than rare. Ivan does not want to spoil it, whatever 'it' might be. Her mood. Her happiness. This fragile peace they sometimes exist in, so vulnerable to her fits of pique, his flights of fancy.

"I like it when you're happy," he says at last, which is the truth. "It's a rare thing, and precious to me."

Perhaps he'd like that better: if she stayed here this first night. If he had her all to himself again, though he's had her all to himself for weeks now. Months, really. Shared her here and there with the nightlife of a city, with the patrons of one dining establishment or another. But not with anything or anyone she cared about. Not with anything that could ever threaten her utter devotion to him.

Though in truth, Anton is no threat to her devotion to Ivan. She felt relief, so much as she feels anything, when he met her at the house in Novgorod to stop her from leaving. She knew he wasn't there to stop her from taking Anton; she still thinks he meant it, that the boy means nothing to him without her. But she did feel relief. She can't have Anton by herself. She can't let herself come to hate him one day for coming between her and his father. Anton is no threat; Anton is a bond. Anton is a bridge.

She would not be able to tell Ivan how to make her happy, perhaps, if Anton had never existed. But who knows?

--

Hilary takes her eyes from the boy for a moment to look at Ivan. She considers what he's said, and then looks away again. "I'm almost never happy," she says, yet not with the tone of agreement that would make sense in an answer to that.

She's silent again, but leaning against him, and he is warm in the shaded, breezy interior of her cottage.

"I want to see your new loft, too," she adds quietly.

Before them, Anton is finishing his food, eating the tiniest bits of vegetables with his bare fingers. It really must be one of his favorite dishes, for he eats it eagerly. He sucks his fingers, looking around a bit. Glances over his shoulder at beautiful Hilary and lithe Ivan, fingers stuck between his tiny soft lips, thoughtfully observing them like he's looking for something. But then he abruptly drops the bowl and fork and rolls to one thigh, hands on the ground. With a bit of wobbling and effort he pushes himself to palms and feet, then all but flips his upper body upward to stand, and stamps his feet a bit as he walks out, calling for 'Miwon', like he's momentarily forgotten that his parents exist. He says his caregiver's name questioningly, calling it out again:

"Miwon!"

Anton toddles towards the door to the dock, finding the young man rising from his seat, coming to collect him so he doesn't walk off into the water. Hilary is watching, silent, and as Miron takes the boy's not-sucked-on hand and walks him back to his toys (and the diaper bag, and the wipes for his messy face and hands), Hilary exhales.

"He'll need proper swimming lessons," she says, and then she unfolds, rising, taking his hand. "Call a maid to clean up down here. Anton will be going to sleep soon, and I want to watch him play in his new room before that. Then you and I..."

she doesn't know. Shakes her head, one slender, bare shoulder shrugging. She is not so decisive, there.

Who knows what might have happened if Anton had never existed. Ivan said once -- long before the boy was born -- that he thought Anton might serve as a sort of proof. Evidence that once, there was this. There was Hilary and Ivan; there was what they had, which neither of them had words for then.

Perhaps to some degree that's come true. Anton is evidence. Anton is proof. Anton is a link between them, a bond, and bridge.

But Anton is also just Anton. Just a boy, a baby, someone Hilary loves more than life; someone Ivan feels decided less fervently about, but nonetheless recognizes and tolerates with something akin to instinct. And perhaps, had Anton never existed, he would still be obsessed and riveted, inextricably tied to this strange and bizarre and mad creature that he loves

more than life.

--

They watch Anton eat. He really does love ratatouille, which surprises and amuses Ivan; he hadn't really thought of Anton having preferences, having likes and dislikes, having a goddamn brain. He's just a baby; what do they know? And yet he does know: he knows he likes ratatouille and he knows Miron. He goes out, looking for Miron, and Ivan is momentarily tense. It's not that he fears for his son falling into the sea. He fears Hilary will be upset by this show of affection, of attachment to someone other than herself.

He underestimates her. She watches, silent, and then she issues one of her childrearing edicts. Ivan privately thinks it is absurd to teach a not-yet-two-year-old to swim, but some battles are not worth fighting. His lover rises. He gives her his hand, but he does not rise with her. Not yet.

He pulls her toward him, until she stands over him and beside him, her shins against his side. His hand wrapping behind her calf, then her knee, then her thigh; gripping as he leans into her, heavy and animal, inhaling. He bites her through her skirt, the edges of his teeth sharp, the points of his canines vicious even in this form.

"Then, you and I," he murmurs. It is an affirmation; decisive.

He gets up. And his hand finds hers again. On the way out, he stops by that phone hidden in its alcove and calls for a maid. They close the door behind them but do not lock it.

Ivan tenses, but Hilary just watches Anton go. Ivan wasn't there when she went to Novgorod to take Anton away. He didn't hear the way the boy screamed for Miron, the way he begged with the only word he could remember not to be separated. He didn't see Hilary's eyes when she looked at Miron, not with hatred but something far more complex, and told him that he could come with her. He didn't see Miron leave everything he'd ever known to be with that child.

Hilary loves Anton more than her own life. She thinks, in a different way, maybe so does Miron. And Anton loves Miron as much as a baby can love anything other than a favored toy or a particular food. And so she hates Miron, and she also needs Miron, and that need comes very close to its own sort of love sometimes.

She is not upset when Anton goes toddling out to see his caregiver, his brother, his father-figure, his servant, his best friend. She is not upset to hear Anton bark a single shout of annoyed protest as, unseen, his hands and face are wiped clean. She is not upset to hear Anton laugh and babble a bit out on her dock as he is picked up and held close and played with. She is not good at playing with Anton. She spent many, many weeks watching him play with Miron, though. So no: she does not melt down. She just thinks:

he should learn to swim, so he doesn't drown.

Ivan is the absurd one, not knowing that babies can learn to swim before they can learn to walk. That growing up on the coast and being given lessons he will be a strong, agile swimmer as he gets older. Ivan is stupid, but he doesn't voice his doubts so Hilary cannot tell him how stupid he is.

--

She starts to step away from him as she rises, but he tugs her back and she looks at him, her dark eyes blank but focused in that way which, for her, passes for curiosity. Comes to stand where he wants her, easily, obediently. His hand touches her bare legs, then moves up her knee-length skirt to grip her thigh. Her eyes focus more tightly, her mostly unseen pupils dilating. His hand is on her skin; his teeth grip her through the thin fabric of her skirt. He bites her rather hard, and she breathes in, and her body pulses in warm response to his cruelty.

This is how she is, softened by his control into something more malleable than before, when he gets to his feet. Holds her hand and leads her to the phone to call the maid. Leads his mute, submissive lady out of her cottage.

--

On the dock, the grill is cooling and the food sits out, half-covered but left for the maid. Miron is holding Anton's hand with one of his own, gathering up toys and putting them back in the diaper bag. Anton is holding onto one toy with his free hand, idly talking to it, appearing to have an involved conversation in Russian. He glances over at them as they walk out of the cottage and towards the path, though they were not moving loudly. He pulls on Miron as though to go with them, and Hilary pulls on Ivan to stop and slow him.

So: Miron hefts the bag onto his shoulder and follows the boy from one path to another, over to Hilary and Ivan. Hilary takes her hand from Ivan's and Anton takes his hand out of Miron's and Hilary picks him up, and he looks happy that everyone is together. Hilary does not look happy. Hilary almost never looks happy but that it is a farce for the sake of someone who does not really understand what she is. She is happy, though. This is what she wanted.

She wasn't wrong about Anton, either: he lays his head on her bare shoulder when she hefts him into her arms, sticking his thumb in his mouth. He watches Ivan with his pearl-black eyes thoughtfully as he sucks, but he blinks slowly and deeply, already hinting at his tiredness but fighting it. Hilary begins walking again, barefoot still, her feet dirty but graceful. She doesn't have the strength to carry Anton against her chest without using both arms, so she has no hand to give back to Ivan, but she stays close to him, heading up towards the house.

It was a short walk from the house to Hilary's cottage. With a babe in arms, though, it seems somewhat longer. Anton is not -- as Hilary had once feared -- a fat baby, but he is large for his age, as most kin and wolves are. Hilary's arms, though strong enough to slice and dice any amount of vegetables and meat, though strong enough to arch into the most pristine positions and curves, are not built for this sort of work. She uses both arms. Ivan keeps close to her, and she to him, and they make their way up.

It is possible, halfway, that she must give the child over to Ivan. Or perhaps to Miron. Or perhaps she manages: treks all the way back to their house with its arches and its terra cotta floors, its atrium with the pond and the fountain and the garden. The boy's bedroom is upstairs, but not in the same wing as his parents'. When he is older, he will be able to come out of his room and stand on the long balcony flanking that central atrium; look across that open space to see the master suite. That distance between might well come to define his childhood, and his very life: never quite folded into his parents' lives the way some children are. Most, perhaps. But not him.

--

Ivan doesn't take part in putting Anton to bed. He watches, somewhat interested, as the boy is bathed and changed and dressed in pajamas. He already has a bed here, and a chest of toys, but it's with his favorite stuffed dragon that Miron tucks him in. The toy is looking rather battered these days; lumpy where a seam has split open and been repaired.

Perhaps Hilary wants to stay to watch Anton fall asleep. And if she does, then Ivan indulges her: takes a seat in a rocking chair, looking out at the sunset. He lets his mind wander; thinks of all the lands the sunlight touches, the way it steals away from one side of the globe to light the other. Ivan's wanderlust is as prodigious as his lust for flesh, finery, pleasure; already he thinks of going somewhere else. Corsica, he'd said. But perhaps: back to the States, too. He misses it a little. The frenetic pace, the towering skyscrapers; even the brash, loud people.

He sits up. Hilary is at last ready to leave. He stands, poised as a dancer, a cat, an animal. His hand slips into hers again -- or rather, hers into his. They leave their son to sleep.

Scarcely is Anton's door closed before Ivan halts in his tracks. He pulls Hilary back toward him; turns her around to face him. His hand on her face, and then his mouth on her mouth. Her back against the wall: he pushes her there, not altogether roughly, but certainly firmly and without question. His hunger is so sudden even he is surprised by it. He pulls at her skirt, up or down; whichever way is easier, faster.

Anton can fucking well walk. But he doesn't. Polina was the one to put her foot down in Novgorod, and eventually Miron conceded to having the child walk with him more often than he is carried. Elodie just does as she is told.

It's Hilary who can't put him down. Doesn't want to, though he makes her ache. She holds him and he is warm and familiar and her body recognizes him, her hormones release in response to him, her brain fires in certain ways that even her madness can't seem to touch. Her cheek touches his fine, soft blond hairs as they walk into the beautiful villa that is now their home. His home. But inside, and at the stairs, she does not hand him over. She shifts him around to her hip, like this is somehow natural, and he stirs a bit to look around but holds onto her. Part of his physiology is primate; he follows those patterns, those instincts, as easily as his dam does.

Hilary walks him to his room. Ivan falls back; Miron goes with him and they find all their luggage set in the room by some other servant earlier, before their dinner of fish and ratatouille. Ivan observes as Hilary finally relinquishes the baby -- who is rapidly becoming less and less of a baby -- over to Miron, who holds him for a moment but then sets him down on his feet. Hilary goes back to stand with Ivan, watching also.

As Miron shows Anton around his room. It's a small, quiet tour. He says this is your room in two languages. (He is no master of French, though he is working with tapes and with Elodie to learn it as quickly as he can.) He says this is your bed. He says these are your toys. He shows Miron where his clothes are. Shows him the en suite, which has a small latch installed where only an adult can reach it, unlock it, so that Anton does not inadvertently drown or otherwise injure himself in exploration. He tells him where he is and what they are looking at and he patiently, slowly waits for Anton to touch things, to push on them, to test them in his small, studious way.

He looks at his father the way he looks at these new things: his gaze is suddenly dark, intense, focused.

It is boring. Ivan is probably looking at his phone. Ivan is probably touching Hilary somehow, wishing she would leave this boring shit behind and come with him. But she watches with that same searing attention that lives in Anton's eyes. She is anxious, slightly: does he like it. Does he miss his old bedroom. Does he hate her now. She is always worried that she will change something and he will hate her, except when she is stealing him from everything he's ever known in the dead of night, and then she doesn't seem to care at all, doesn't seem to think it's possible he would hate her.

She is a mad thing. And her anxiety is, at least at times like this, one of the only ways her sanity can ever surface. She cares for her child. That is no strange thing. That is sane. Isn't it? Isn't it, though?

Soon enough Anton is fighting yawns, so he is changed and trained on the toilet a bit. He is given a short bath, just to relax him more than clean him. His teeth are brushed with a tiny blue brush pulled from the bag. The lights are dimmed and he sits with Miron in a rocking chair, not quite able to see the door where his parents stare, and he is read a story from a book brought from Russia, read to him in Russian. It's one of the books Hilary herself is trying to learn to read with comprehension in her own studies of one of her son's languages.

Anton is given his stuffed dragon and told that now it's bedtime. He is instructed to say goodnight to his mother and father. He is slid from Miron's lap and turned gently so he can see them still there, and he hesitates briefly, thumb in mouth, free hand clutching the long throat of his toy, and then he walks over, eyes down, and presses his body firmly against Ivan's leg for a moment, head on Ivan's thigh. He mumbles something around his thumb. But then he turns to Hilary and leans against her in much the same way, but for a little longer. He does not mumble anything. He closes his eyes slowly and opens them again. He steps back and turns his face up to her, thumb out of his mouth, tiny lips pursed.

Hilary does not look startled. She leans down and turns her cheek to him, and Anton kisses her, and she doesn't know well enough to stop herself from wiping her cheek as soon as she stands up. Anton mumbles: "Spokoynoy nochi, mama."

"Spokoynoy nochi, Anton," she replies, rather formally, though there is something akin to the passionate love she has for the boy in that stiffness, in that formality, in the way she says it as carefully as she can.

Anton is already walking away, taking himself to his bed and crawling onto it, flopping onto his tiny pillow. Miron covers him with a light blanket and tells him goodnight very softly, but Hilary is already walking out of the room. Miron is going back to the rocking chair for a while, where Anton can see him in case he gets nervous about this new place with its new noises, its different shadows, its strange smells.

--

The door closes. Ivan has her hand. They are on the balcony over the atrium, across a wide empty space from her -- their -- master set of rooms. But they don't step away before he pulls her back. She is expecting this. It has been hours and hours since -- anything. There's only been that bite on her thigh, that promise. So she is not surprised. There is no sharp inhale of either surprise or lust. Not even when her back hits the wall beside the door to Anton's room.

Ivan kisses her, and she doesn't slap him. Does not push him away or snap at him or snarl at him or fight him. He wants to kiss her, and she hasn't done anything for him in so long and she knows he must be impatient with all this: her interest in the cottage where he is barely allowed, her obsession with the boy, her participation in the dullest of all rituals and routines. He must be bored almost to tears.

She is wearing a dress. He pulls her skirt upward, and Hilary does not protest this, either. He kisses her, and she kisses him back. He pushes her to the wall and she doesn't push him away. He works on getting her clothes away from her flesh so he can fuck her, and it seems like if that is what he wants to do, that is what will happen.

She is soft. And warm. And pliant.

It unnerves Ivan, in truth, to see Anton starting to do the things children do. In his mind, Anton is still an infant; a helpless thing that mostly mewls and eats and shits and sleeps. But that is not how it is anymore, is it? Anton is walking about now. Has been for a while, and has gotten quite good at it. Anton knows how to take food in his hands and put it in his mouth. Anton knows how to get into bed himself. Anton knows how to -- hug? -- his father, and Ivan is thoroughly taken aback at this; doesn't know what to do. Belatedly his hand falls to the boy's fair head; an awkward ruffle of the hair.

"Goodnight, Anton," he says,

and then Anton goes to visit with his mother. Calls her mama. Kisses her, good god: he's learned that already; hugs and kisses, the little indications of love and attachment. They are meant to be attached, to love. Ivan is meant to feel these things for the boy; he is his son, after all.

--

Perhaps that's what drives this madness out in the hall. They haven't gone three feet from the door. He nearly attacks Hilary. There's a certain fury to it; a hunger that verges on desperation. He kisses her and bruises her lips; grasps at her body. She doesn't push him away, slap him, protest. She is pliant, compliant, uncomplaining, and he

senses this. Senses something, anyway; something that causes him to slow and to stop.

He is panting lightly, breathing fast. He lays his hands on the wall, bracketing her in; studies her from this vantage point, so close to her their bodies can't help but brush. He does something she has never seen him do before: leans into her and sniffs at her, heavily and thoroughly, taking in the smell of her hair and her neck, the soft vulnerable part under her jaw.

Then he pulls back. Quiet: "You don't want this?"

How the surprise of Anton's growth and his (apparent) ability to feel and express affection for his mother connects with Ivan's mad lust for her, Hilary could not guess and may not understand. She lived with Anton and his servants for some time, usually without Ivan there. She frets that he doesn't love her, often, but the truth is that he does know her, he recognizes her, he asks about her in his broken speech when she is gone. He is not old enough to understand differing levels of trust, does not know even in his own heart that he trusts Miron more than he trusts Hilary, but he does trust her. Lets her hold him when he's tired. Goes with her even when she takes him out of sight of Miron. He calls her mama. He kisses her cheek goodnight, because she is his mother.

Somehow this makes Ivan attack her in the hallway. Maybe to stake his claim, maybe to feel like she belongs to him again, and still. Maybe because he feels so little for his son, and so much for Hilary that it is unbearable to him. Maybe -- a thousand things. Hilary does not know. She is never really surprised when Ivan kisses her like this, pins her like this, wants her so much that he seems like he needs to hurt her, control her, dominate her to express it.

This is, after all, such a core element of their love.

But she has a certain softness to her that he recognizes as disinterest, detachment, which may very well carve his heart out of his very chest to think of. He could be wrong. He senses something and draws back, but keeps her where she is with the weight of his body and the placement of his arms, her eternal and beloved jailer that he is. He sniffs at her. This is new, but not unfamiliar to her, this mate of more than one wolf. She tips her head to the side obediently for him, while he takes in her scent. She does it automatically. Lifts her head again, straightening, when he pulls back again, looks at her.

Hilary looks momentarily confused. Her elegant brows tug together, her forehead wrinkles. He might think he's made her unhappy, made her sad, made her insecure and vulnerable suddenly in ways she always is and always is trying to escape. Isn't it his job, his mission, to help build up her pretense that she has left such feelings behind, that she is safe from them?

But she isn't unhappy with him. She just looks confused. Not at his question, but at the answer to it, and her inability to discern what that answer is.

So it takes her some time to answer.

"I always want you," she whispers, finally. This is not true, but it is close enough. "I don't want... it like that. Just yet."

That arouses him too. Her easy submission not just to his dominance and his brutality, but to that part of him that is bestial and savage. It is not a part of himself that he reveals often. He holds it in check; sheathes it like a weapon. Yet she recognizes it for what it is, without hesitation or question.

Not so, when she is asked to recognize herself. To look within; to give some answer about herself, her own preferences, her own likes and wants. It takes her some time, and all the while her lover is staring at her, looking at her, trying to read her.

Always, she says. And it is a lie, but only a small one. Not yet, she says. And it is a truth, and also a small one. She is only capable of mining up small truths. It is asking a lot for her to do even so much.

Which may be why he listens when she does. Listens so intently, eyes focused, face close to hers. It's just a handful of words. A dozen in all. He mulls every single one over, gnaws on them, cracks them open to see the marrow.

Then he takes her face between his hands. He kisses her, and this one is -- softer. It is almost chaste. It is certainly gentle, more tender than you would think possible. When it is finished he breathes in, breathes out. Steps back and offers his hand.

"It's sometimes strange for me to see you with him," he admits. "Being his mother. It ... frightens me. But it excites me too. Is that twisted? I can't help it."

Her eyes close. His hands are warm on her face where they were warm on her thighs. Warm on the small of her back, through her dress. Warm when he held her hand. Always warm. She never recognizes it, appreciates it, mentions it. She seldom even responds to it, but she does now, letting her face sink into that touch, move towards it like so many living things seek such heat. He kisses her and it's softer, slower, gentler, and she reacts far more than she did a moment ago, when he wanted to ravage her. She kisses him slowly in return, opening her lips to him. It goes on for a while.

She touches his chest near the end of it. Her hands stay there even when he draws back. Fall away only when he steps backward, extends his hand. She lets her palm fall into his palm, and steps away from the wall he pushed her to. Her feet are dirty from walking around outside with no shoes on, cooking with no shoes on. She steps with him, begins to walk with him.

Ivan dredges up a confession of his own; his words come easier. His emotions make more sense to him. She doesn't even think to envy it; more often, she just thinks it is a peculiar quirk of his, something sentimental and silly and occasionally touching (and just as occasionally, embarrassing). How would she know that he conceals these things from all but her, that it is one more sign of how precious she is to him?

Her brow, smoothed for a while, wrinkles again in thought. She watches the floor as they walk; this mezzanine is floored with ancient, smooth, oiled wood, darkened and hardened over the years. Here and there are rugs over it, but right now she can feel it on her soles.

"Why should it frighten you?" she asks him, ignoring his plea that he not be judged, even if it is twisted. She cannot answer that question; he knows better. She cannot absolve him, either.

She also does not question why it might excite him. Somehow, that makes sense to her.

Ivan thinks a moment. When he finally does answer, it seems incomplete, a half-thought. Still, the best he has to offer is this:

"It seems ... easy for you to be devoted to him. No; not easy. But -- natural."

Hilary doesn't understand. She walks with him in silence, slow steps around the mezzanine towards their rooms. She holds his hand though. Even this is strange, new, different for the two of them.

"You think it is not easy -- natural -- for me to love you," she says finally, as they are approaching those other doors. She doesn't say it like a question. She doesn't lift her eyes to look at him inquisitively. She just says it, like she is writing down an answer on a test, unsure if it is correct but not expecting to know if she got it right or wrong for some time.

Ivan himself isn't certain. He frowns. He thinks about it. "It's not quite that," he says at last. "It's that it's not easy or natural for you to love anyone. It wasn't. But that's changing.

"You're changing. Surely you've felt it? It's not that I don't like it, but ... it is new. And sometimes a little frightening."

They stand before the doors to their suite. Across the open space of the atrium are the dark doors of Anton's rooms. Neither of them are looking that way. Neither of them reach for the door yet. Ivan struggles to find the words for what he feels, and Hilary stares at him, unsettling and unrelenting.

"You want me to stop?" she asks, after a long moment.

As if she could.

Though perhaps it's possible. Perhaps the changing is harder than simply reverting. Perhaps she could stop. Maybe that would be easier for her.

"Of course not."

At least in this there's no hesitation. It comes so quickly, his answer, that it seems to tug something on its way out; pulls his eyebrows together, almost a wince. He reaches out, touches her face. Elegant. Her face, his hand, that touch: all of it.

"Of course not," he repeats, softer.

His hand strokes softly on her fine features, the bones underneath seeming so delicate. He's seen how a certain grip of her shoulder can leave a bruise. He's come close to breaking her skin when he bites her at the apex of his orgasm. The fact that she is so breakable is part of his lust for her; even Hilary knows that, though she would never be able to put it into words.

"Then you have to get over your fear," she says simply, untouched by his caress, unbothered by his answer.

In spite of himself, her, everything, Ivan laughs. It is a chastised laugh, quiet and under his breath. His hand, falling from her face, takes her hands. Correction: he takes her hand in both of his. Raises it to his mouth, courtly; almost no hint of mockery this time when he kisses her knuckles.

Turns her hand over. Kisses her palm too; a darker, burning thing that closes his eyes.

But they open again. And he threads her hand through his arm; opens the door to their bedroom with its broad windows that open to the southern sea. "You are," he says, lightly, "my love -- and as ever -- correct."

She permits it. The courtly gesture, too passionate for court, too sincere to be just a gesture. The adoration he feels for her is so palpable it almost hurts.

Hilary watches him as he turns her palm over. Watches him kiss her palm. She is impassive. She is impossible.

Or perhaps it's Ivan who is impossible. She is unlovable, and he loves her.

--

Obediently, Hilary helps him slide her arm through his arm. She walks with him into their not-quite-dark bedroom, the sun still just on the verge of setting outside their windows, which stand open to let the warmish breeze move to and fro. The curtains are ruffling slightly. The balcony doors are closed, but their curtains are opened, allowing them their south-westerly view, the hints of the ending sun.

She says nothing, as there is nothing she needs to add to that. And steps away from him as they walk into the room, inspecting yet another room she has not looked at since they first came to this house. The colors are more muted here, and there is less whimsy, and hints of greater modernity than would be found in her cottage. It is serene, more than anything. It is a place you could spend whole days sleeping, letting your life pass you by. And perhaps that's what she wants. That is how she's spent plenty of time, walking into the fog away from the pain and boredom and existential horror of just existing.

Hilary walks away from him, and perhaps he closes the doors behind them. She goes to the balcony and looks out at the water. She decides quietly in that moment that one day, Ivan will give Anton a sailboat for his birthday. She'll watch from here as the sails snap and unfurl, far out at sea. It makes her frown,

only because she wonders why thinking of this doesn't upset her.

She is changing, Ivan said. And on some level she wishes he'd told her to stop.

It frightens her, too.

--

Turning her head, Hilary looks over at him, still frowning. Any man would interpret the look in her dark eyes as anger, even though it comes out of nowhere. Annoyance, at least. Maybe Ivan knows better, because he's seen her when she really is angry at him. How vicious her eyes are, how violent her scowling. Hilary's anger is not subtle, not calm. Not controlled. And usually there's at least some kind of incitement. Not that he always knows what that is. She doesn't look angry to him. She looks thoughtful in a disgruntled, anxious way, which can boil over and erupt if left untended, but does not do so just yet.

"I don't want to fuck right now," she says, defensively, almost angrily, as though daring him to be disappointed with her, daring him to say her bare shoulders and her obedient kiss and that bite on her thigh gave him permission she can't retract. Daring him to let his crest fall. Daring him to just try and see this as a ploy to push him to that hard edge she seems to like so much.