Ivan Press

Hilary

As it turns out, Dmitri is better at finding accomodations to suit Ivan and Hilary than, perhaps, either of the Silver Fangs are. While they stroll through narrow streets with Anton, Miron, and Darya, he procures for them a villa near one of the coves that dot the hilly, verdant shoreline of the western side of the island. It is private.

There are rooms enough for servants and family, for the master suite is in the main house and the other rooms are in two smaller cabins to one side. There is a view to the sea, but this time of year the beaches are crowded and so it is set back, set apart. Outside, jutting out over the hills themselves, is a sparkling lap pool.

He has the pool cleaned. He has the linens throughout the villa changed. He sends a maid to fill the kitchen. He has a painting of a naked woman removed from above the master bed, not sure if Hilary will like it, and has it replaced with one from another room. He does everything he is supposed to do. And before the little family comes there, he pours himself a small shot of vodka.

But his reward is that later, when they arrive, Hilary does not begin crying. She does not throw a fit and blame Ivan for ruining everything, again. By the time the Fangs come to see the villa their manservant has arranged, the sun is beginning to set. It looks beautiful through the vast windows that take up almost an entire wall. Anton is asleep on Miron's shoulder, worn out from travel and the full day. The servants vanish away, melting into the background.

Hilary walks, with Ivan, out to the terrace by the pool. They descend the steps and walk past the water to the very edge, looking down at the coastline. They can see the yacht from here. Without a word, she lowers herself to sit down on the stone, watching the sun set into the horizon.

[for reference! not necessarily really in calvi, but for reference: https://www.hotel-lavilla.com/hotel-luxe-corse/villa-calvi-prestige

So much of what makes their luxurious, decadent existences possible happens in their background. Ivan never knows how much effort goes into the satisfaction of his ever-shifting whims and caprices. He never sees how much time Dmitri spends on the internet, how many calls he has to make, how many physical, in-person trips to this site or that. How many other bodies must be mobilized; how many resources must be called into action -- and all of it always just in the nick of time.

He doesn't even begin to suspect how his staff has, over the years, learned little tricks of the trade here and there: little ways to influence him subtly, little ways to delay him by a half-hour or an hour, if need be, by throwing some irresistible diversion into his path. That used to be easier. It used to take nothing more than a beautiful car, a beautiful motorcycle, a beautiful face. These days there's the added variable of Hilary, her moods and desires, her implacability.

Still. Dmitri pulls it off. The glorious villa, the unbelievable view. All of it so perfect that Ivan doesn't even have the think about how perfect it is. Doesn't even notice, the same way he never notices the effort, the same way he never notices how his servants just

melt away.

His son, too. It's like these things are ghosts, little figments of his imagination that appear only when he feels like toying with them. Hilary, though: the white-hot core of his existence, the lightless center of his gravity. She is always there.

And they descend those steps, so graceful. And she drifts away from him, but only because he lets her go. She goes to the edge. He doesn't fear for her safety. He knows she is far too certain in her own skin to slip and fall. He knows she is far too... what? Far too imperious to ever take her own life. If the world became utterly unmanageable, he suspects she would try to tear the world apart first. Try to burn it to ashes.

She burns nothing right now. Her rage is far removed. She seems so cool, so poised as she sits on the stone, which is still warm from the day. The sun is slowly dissolving into the sea, leaving a molten trail upon that shattered surface.

Ivan watches her for a while. A long while. And then, quite at his leisure, he begins removing his shoes. And his socks. And that shirt he threw on this morning as they left the yacht, and the light trousers that kept him cool all day.

She couldn't be blamed for thinking he means to take her right there, right at the edge of the concrete, her hair fluttering in thin air while he fucks her. Remarkably, for once, that doesn't seem to be his goal. When he's in his underwear -- trunk-cut today, fitted and low on the hips, and a solid red so flagrant it may as well be swimwear -- he leaps suddenly and effortlessly, twisting backward, slicing into the pool behind her.

A few times, Hilary has not been there.

She has left him, or sent him away, and he has...

well. Whatever might happen to the light around a dying star if that dying star simply ceased to be, suddenly.

--

The very tips of Hilary's toes graze some flowering weeds growing up from the side of the hill. She brushes her feet over them, bare now, her shoes taken off at the steps going from pool to villa. She is looking at the ground, and then at the sea, and then at her yacht, and then at the sunset. She is not looking at Ivan at all. He is not sitting beside her, and perhaps she forgets he's there.

She doesn't, though. She never does. He never melts away. There are times when he has left her, when he has gone away, when she has sent him away. There are times when she has been alone, and the loneliness became choking. The lack of him was like trying to live in a sandstorm. It left her raw, breathless, bleeding from a thousand jagged, scouring cuts. Hilary does not, and perhaps cannot, truly show Ivan what he means to her, or how much she needs him, or how when he feels very far away indeed, she doesn't know how to live. When he's with her, when he drops in to the villa in Nice, it seems like she gets on quite well without him.

And she does.

Because she knows he's always going to come back soon. He hasn't left her alone. Not really.

So it's all right.

--

In any case: she is aware of him, though she doesn't know he's watching her. She hears him behind her, but the sound is muffled somewhat by the pool lapping at its boundaries, by the water down below, by the breeze. She doesn't see him undressing. She is watching the sunset.

But then there's a splash, and she starts, and turns, seeing a pile of light-colored clothing and the chaos on the surface of the water left by his immersion. She does something very strange indeed, then.

She laughs.

--

Well: it's what passes for laughter. It's a sharp exhalation, a chuckle that's more breath than sound. A tremor in her shoulders, a smile that looks blindingly bright, flickering like the spots that appear behind your eyelids after a flash goes off. There it is, the afterimage of laughter on her, when he rises from the water again.

Into the water he goes, missing the first rush of her laughter. From the first moment she saw him Ivan has been a creature of the water, sleek and gleaming, agile and lean. Comfortable in weightlessness. Several long seconds underwater, the surface rippling only slightly from his disruption. And then he reemerges, nearly at the far end of the pool now, stroking back toward her, and the edge, in long lazy pulls.

The last of the sun shines on his wet arms, his face, his eyes. He pulls himself up at the edge of the pool, folding his arms to anchor himself. The water is cool, but he too feels that residual warmth in the concrete, soaks it in like a snake.

There's an afterimage of what might have been laughter still lingering about her. He cannot be certain; he didn't see. He looks at her, though, studying her face. In the end he smiles a little, almost to himself. His eyes fall from her face. He lays his chin on his wrists and floats a little lower in the water, watching the sunset with her.

She likes watching him swim. He knew this earlier, somewhere beneath consciousness. Then they said it aloud, and there it was: true. Hilary rarely gets in the water. She doesn't seem to like swimming, or soaking in hot tubs, or diving into the ocean. He knows she's terrified of it: lakes, the sea, being underwater, being weightless, being submerged, swallowed, consumed. He knows she's darkly fascinated by it, too.

So she watches him as he swims towards her, cutting through the water until he is there, just a few feet away.

Hilary turns as he settles, a sinuous rolling motion. Her palms are on the stone. She's on her knees now. She crawls slowly towards him, slightly silhouetted with the sun behind her now. She stays low, too cunning and sly to be moving like a wolf. Something smaller, something more furtive, more wary, no less hungry.

Her hair hangs down to either side of her as she stops just before him, her fingertips scant centimeters from his folded forearms, her brow scant inches from his.

So there is no calm viewing of the sunset, after all. There is no coolly romantic moment. There is only Hilary, eclipsing the light, the stray strands of her hair aglow. The last light of day gives her a warmth she never has otherwise; hints of red in her wintry complexion.

He watches her instead, his eyes quite fixed upon her, his pupils dilating as she throws him into shadow. Or perhaps simply dilating at the very sight of her, like a predator's, like a lover's.

She is quite close now. It is no effort at all to unfold his arms, to rise half out of the water, to touch his mouth to hers at the edge of the pool. After a time, he lifts one hand. His wet fingers grasp her slender jaw; his palm presses against her throat. It is a possessive, terrifying grip, and yet his kiss, deepening, is still so tender.

She's so low that when he rises, kisses her like that, it pushes her head back a bit. She permits this. She welcomes it.

Submits to it.

Her mouth opens slowly against his, something luxurious in it. Droplets of water, not very cool at all but nearly the same temperature as her skin, run down her neck from his hand. She struggles to go on kissing him back, her focus being drawn to the way his hand feels wrapped around her like that. Her eyes have closed. Her breath comes more quickly now, panted out between kisses.

He kisses her the way lions lick their prey: with a warmth and tenderness that is sure to bare teeth at any moment. Yet after a time he pauses, his lips open against hers, and then he draws back.

Not very far. But enough that he escapes her shadow for a moment. He nods over her shoulder, "Look."

And if she turns, she sees it -- the very last of the sunset, the blazing edge of the star disappearing over the curve of the wide ocean. When it's gone all that remains is dusky shadow, the color of bruises.

He kisses her again then, his lips against the flash of muscle in her neck, just beneath where his thumb encircles her. He bites her where he feels a pulse. Seizes. Grips. Releases. Jaws, fingers. He takes a breath as he slips away from her, descending into the water, coiling like a snake.

"Do you like it here?" he wants to know. It's not a test.

Ther'es no prey on earth like her. Nothing so beautiful when it's caught like she is now, nothing quite so captivating, nothing which feigns helplessness with such fidelity.

Her can feel her pulse against his touch, quickening. He can feel her lean forward, just barely, when he stops kissing her. Her eyes open to find him. He's drawing back. He keeps his hand on her throat. She looks drunken, she looks drugged. She looks warm. In the dying light her reddened lips look far darker.

Ivan instructs her to look, and so she turns her head to look over her shoulder. She knows what he wants her to see. Sometimes he wants her to see things like this, experience things that make other living creatures feel things. Connect. This isn't a test, either. Perhaps he doesn't even notice that he does this sometimes. Even Hilary hardly recognizes it, but on some level -- the level where she knows she is not right, that something is terribly and terrifyingly wrong with her -- she knows he odesn't expect her to suddenly snap out of herself anymore. He doesn't dig deep, trying to find who she is underneath the coolness, the cruelty, the beauty, the submission.

Too often, there was simply nothing there. No one.

And recently, he knows there is. Small and fragile and frightened and strange, but real: she's in there. She can't always connect to sunsets, to music, to feeling, to him. But she is there.

--

The sun dies in the sea. Hilary watches it.

She understands.

--

His mouth like a lion's again at her neck, this time when the creature has decided to kill, to feast, to feed. She shudders, her eyes closing again. He bites her and her elbow gives; she lowers herself, falling those few inches with impossible grace, with surprisingly strong slowness, her belly to the stone now, her fingers curling along the edge of the pool. The water laps at her manicure.

Ivan is gone. Her eyes open. She follows him, a hungry but hunted look in her dark eyes, made darker by the twilight.

She isn't able to think very clearly. Her lips are parted. But she tries. He asked her something. She looks at the clear surface of the water, trying to find her way back to the part of herself that can answer.

"Not as much as home," she finally says, quiet. "It's similar."

The way she says it, even as soft and hazy as it is, makes this sound like a good thing. She doesn't crave novelty quite the same way he does. Or as often. She likes her home in Nice very much.

Hilary thinks a bit longer, watching his body cut in half, bent, shortened, beneath the water. She thinks of words like akimbo and askew and asymmetrical. She lifts her eyes and looks at him. "We haven't been here very long yet." A day only. But this is a back door, a way out, an escape for her. In case she hates it. In case she gets bored.

Then, a question for him, too: "Do you want me to come in the water?"

Even Ivan couldn't tell you why he points these things out to Hilary sometimes. A sunset over the Mediterranean. The aurora borealis on a night flight across the Arctic.

Perhaps it all goes back to that night on the lake. The fireworks. The small, poignant realization that she liked this, liked the colors and the light, liked it with a heartbreaking simplicity and -- dare we say it? -- purity. He remembers that moment like it's seared in his mind, crystalline and timeless; remembers the colors, remembers the brilliance reflecting in her black eyes. Remembers because it is seared into him, burnt there by what happened afterwards: the beginning of an end, the first time she told him she would be leaving him.

How he tried to avert that. Took her belowdecks and fucked her every which way. Flew her all the way to Lausanne. Fell quite in love with her, or more deeply in love with her, or, or...

The next time she saw him, she left him anyway.

--

So of course it's seared into his mind. Of course it's tattooed into his brain. Of course he keeps trying to give that to her again, those little moments of light and beauty, those little flickers of -- he hopes -- uncomplicated appreciation and joy. Or remembrance: something for her to perhaps flicker back to in some quiet moment, in the depths of some night.

Or at the very least, recognition, perception, an experience that is simply held and had and not measured, not remarked upon, not dissected, not weighed, not judged.

Of course he tries.

--

The sun disappears. He tears her throat out. She falls to the ground, dead.

No; that is not what happens. It happened to her parents, but not to them, see? He lets her go and she is breathing, she is trying to breathe. She is finding her way back to the part of her that has words.

They come back from some strange void. They find shifting ground, not quite solid. She gives him an answer that makes him ache a little. Makes him feel the way he did when she looked at the fireworks and was happy. Makes him feel the way he did when she looked at the aurora and put her hand on the glass.

--

Then she has a question for him. And Ivan smirks. And he's found his way back to something shallower and more solid; not so frightening as the utter bottomlessness of his love for her.

Something she says has struck him as funny. Filthy, actually, though he doubts she knows it. No, that's not true. He doubts she intended it, but Hilary is hardly the innocent she sometimes wants to pretend to be.

He pretends with her, right now. He folds that smirk away. Wipes it away, actually, pawing fingers thoughtlessly over his mouth. Or maybe he's just thinking about kissing her. Biting her. Holding her pulse in his hand.

Shake of his head, though it's not his answer: "I don't believe I've ever seen you swim."

Hilary

That night on the lake. The fireworks.

Telling him she was leaving him.

Hilary doesn't remember these things the way Ivan does. She remembers other moments with clarity, but they are dark ones. Even Ivan, who knows her so well, might be startled to learn just how many of Hilary's memories are centered around terror. That this is what she remembers, beyond light, color, beauty, love: fear.

It is only just now changing. Slowly, warily, haltingly: they talk about things she likes. No digging, no explanation, nothing more than liking something or not liking it. Very gradually, Hilary is learning to like small things, apart from the terror that they will be taken from her, or broken, or ruined.

Except: there is nothing truly small about a sunset. Or about a book. Or digging in the sand with her son, watching the water pour in.

These things she likes are seismic events.

--

Hilary doesn't note that what she said could be taken in a dirty way until Ivan smirks. Until he has to literally wipe it off his face. Her brows furrow, her head tipping: naughty thing, her eyes say, chiding him. He doesn't tease her though. He answers her in the place of her intention, and not the place of his silliness.

Some part of her even appreciates it.

She just shakes her head a little in response. "I can't."

He knows she couldn't. When her first mate would leave her in the lake, in the little boat, all by herself. This may be the first time he learns that she still can't. And there is that: the way she says it. Not that she doesn't know how, or that she doesn't like it. She says it like a fact. Or perhaps an escape. A hiding place.

Or an explanation.

Funny, all this time their servants have been watching Anton on the dock and the shore or at the edge of pools and fountains, making sure he doesn't tumble in. All of his own servants are versed in various life-saving techniques, because god help them if their charge chokes or drowns while in their care. Miron has even begun teaching Anton how to swim. In the sea, at home. He is looking forward to teaching Anton in the pool that Ivan is currently occupying, where the tide can't take the boy out of his grasp. At this point it boils down to teaching Anton how to be calm in the water, how to float, how to move.

No one has been watching Hilary. No one has thought to be careful with her on the flybridge of a yacht or the edge of a dock. No one has considered the possibility that she might not know how to kee herself from drowning, if she happened into the water.

But she says it simply now, to Ivan, because he remarks on it. Of course he's never seen her swim. She doesn't.

She can't.

The look on Ivan's face is unmitigated surprise. So much for the naughty turn of his mind. So much for the poignancy of memories. So much for the hungry, predatory way he put his hands on her, even. He's just -- shocked, really.

And then, absurdly and retroactively, a bit panicked. He thinks of all the times he took her out on the water. He thinks of all the houses and homes and apartments and hotels they've been to, and how many of them were near a lake, an ocean, some body of water one could rather easily drown in if one were not careful. And she is not careful. She is never careful, not with creatures that could literally eat her, not with water.

"I never knew," he says, as though that were not clear enough from his expression. "You certainly shouldn't get in, then. It's twelve feet deep here."

A small pause.

"Would you like to learn?"

It's not just a brief, passing thought, then: he's never seen her swim. He thinks he hasn't, but no: he really hasn't. He's never seen her slip into a pool or dive off of her yacht. She doesn't swim. She never swims. She never gets into the water.

And he has built her houses literally right out on top of the water. He's taken her on yachts and boats and never once was she wearing a life preserver. They always seem to vacation near the water. All those months in Novgorod with that pond out back, and only the ignorant servants to watch over her.

Granted: Hilary doesn't jump into ponds, much less lakes, so there's been scant chance of her drowning all this time. But that doesn't matter. The likelihood doesn't matter to the piece of Ivan's heart that is hammering, panicked, at the thought of losing her.

She looks down into the water when he says it's twelve feet deep. She looks faintly curious. It's shallower, nearer to the house. It's deeper, when you swim out of the cove just a few yards. Much, much deeper, with a current borne of the might of the entire sea, the primordial shifting of the earth itself. She looks down at the water, because it doesn't look any deeper than the shallow four-foot water near the stairs. But Ivan says it's twelve feet. She thinks of how tall she is. She is five feet and eight inches tall. She could stand on her own shoulders and both versions of her would still drown.

She looks at Ivan again. Her brow furrows. She can't think of what to say for a while. She struggles, but doesn't stammer. She would never. But she hesitates. A great deal.

"...I don't like... to think of being... in the water. Covered by it."

Her hesitation means something to him. It means more than anyone else stammering, stuttering, would mean to him. He thinks, now, of that goddamned first mate of hers, the beautiful cruel young Frenchman who took her out on the lake and left her there,

alone,

terrified,

unable to swim.

Ivan's rage is not an all-encompassing thing. It is, insofar as such things go, relatively easy for him to control. To channel. He channels it now: grasping the edge of the pool, levering himself suddenly and smoothly out. Water everywhere. He twists, sleek as a fish, and sits at the edge of the pool beside her. His bare feet hang into the water. Droplets glimmer and slide down his broad shoulders, his lean sides.

"You needn't learn to dive," he says. "Or even to swim underwater. But you would be ... safer, if you could swim. If you could at least tread water and keep yourself afloat."

The frown on her face is still there. She moves away as he pulls himself out of the water, dripping, drenched, paler in the darkness. Most of the light now comes from the moon, the stars, the lights beneath the water of their villa's pool.

Hilary cocks her head, watching him. She does not seem to sense rage in him. She never has. Her last mate was a Galliard. The one before that, an Ahroun. She never seemed to notice their rage, either; Ivan's is comparably negligible.

She weighs her thoughts, but not her words: "Do you want me to?"

For some reason this makes him sigh. And sighing, he answers: "Yes." A pause. "But it doesn't matter what I want. It's your choice."

Hearing that sigh, Hilary thinks he's upset with her. That she's done something wrong, somehow. But also:

she knows she hasn't done anything wrong. She doesn't know at all why he's sighing. So her frown deepens, this time from confusion.

She moves off of her hands and knees. She turns, and sits beside him, the water from where he sits spreading, seeping over to the edge of her dress, cool against her thigh. She puts her lets in the water, thoughtlessly, unafraid,

the way she is unafraid of the things that could really hurt her, while she is terrified of the things that are just shadows from the past.

She's quiet for a while. Looks at the pool, the coast at their backs, quickly vanishing into shadows. There is less unnatural light here, at the edge of a nature preserve and a secluded cove. There are so many stars. But she looks at the pool. At its orbs of light under the water. At the water itself, rippling and chopping left and right.

"I don't want to drown," she eventually says. "But I'm too old to learn to swim."

She's in her mid-thirties.

She always, somehow, seems a bit older.

And much, much younger.

This surprises a little laugh out of him -- a rush of breath, really, more than sound. And as she sits beside him, her own feet slipping into the water, he moves a little closer to her. He wraps his arm around her, securely, so she can't possibly fall into the water. She can't possibly slip out of his grasp, leave him.

He kisses her temple. His lips press there for a moment, warm. He loves her quite utterly, but of course he says nothing of it. There are times when she amuses him so much. Not the cutting blade of his amusement when he watches someone makes a fool of themselves, and makes a fool of someone; not even the inappropriate, irrepressible bursts of amusement he sometimes feels when she's angry or, at the least, serious.

Not those. Not cruel humor, not careless mirth. Just -- amusement, which is somehow wrapped in and shot through with adoration.

"I don't think it's possible to be too old to learn," he says. "Especially when you've trained and honed your body your entire life."

But he's all wet, and Hilary squirms a bit when he holds her, though really

it doesn't matter,

and she relents. She eases, because he's warm despite the droplets, he's solid. He never looks solid to her when she's just watching him. He's just... a fish. A wave. A cloud. A bit of color.

Fireworks. Northern lights. Sunsets.

--

But there he is, wrapping her up, and she recalls that he is the only solid thing. That he is real, and if she can feel him, she must be also. She exhales, slowly. He insists there is no such thing as old to learn, which misses the point entirely. She almost sneers when he speaks of training and honing her body, almost pulls away,

but sometimes she gets tired of pulling away. She never knew that before.

"I don't want to be mocked," she says quietly, almost hissing it.

Ivan's brow furrows; it's his turn to be a little at a loss, a little confused.

"I'm not mocking you," he says gently. "I'm ... just loving you."

"Not you," she says immediately, frowning, but

he must know she means him, too. Chief among all people, is he. His mockery enrages her. She can't tolerate even the imagining of it.

But everyone else is there in her head, too: the servants. The teacher. Anton.

She shakes her head. "I don't want anyone to teach me. I don't want anyone to see me --"

afraid. Flailing. Ungraceful.

Her cheeks are hot. Her cheeks are pink with it.

At once he understands, and his brow clears. He is quiet a moment more.

"Not even me?"

Some of the wars inside Hilary are violent, crashing things. You cannot be near her without seeing them, overhearing the clash. He has heard her screaming before, caught between the longing to forget she ever had a child and the desperation to have that child back. He has held her when she's been so wracked with shame and guilt it twisted her limbs and tightened her muscles, listened to her at the same time blaming it all on him, all on him not loving her enough, on wanting to leave her,

long before he ever knew how profoundly she was left behind, by those who had the greatest responsibility to stay with her. That it was never him at all, that he could never love her enough to undo that harm or completely allieviate that fear.

But sometimes the wars inside of her are quiet things. The conflict plays out silently across her face, in the way she winces, at the lack of focus in her eyes, the intensity of focus in her eyes, the tightness of her shoulders, the sharpness of her shoulderblades. Now is one of those hushed wars, because

of course him. The only one she trusts. The only one who might understand her terror and be able to soothe it. The only one who might understand why she can't hold her breath underwater without wanting to scream, without thrashing, without panic.

On the other hand:

anyone but him. She can't bear the thought of him seeing her like that, awkward and uncertain, flapping about like an idiot child or a half-dead fish, stupid and childish and useless. She can't stomach the idea of Ivan, of all people, witnessing not just her imperfections but her... lack. Her foolishness. Her inexperience.

"You'll think I'm so stupid," she whispers, from deep in the mud,

deep in her trenches.

"Never."

That's what he says, immediately, quietly, vehemently. And then, just to underline it:

"Not ever. Hilary -- "

He doesn't dare reach out to her, touch her face, any of it. Sometimes, when she's at war with herself like this, he thinks of her as something at once fragile and dangerous, like nitroglycerin in a glass vial. He doesn't dare perturb her in the least.

So he stays where he is. His arm still around her, his body still beside hers. No closer; no farther.

"Hilary," a second time, "if you want to learn, I'll teach you. And I will not mock you, or think poorly of you, or criticize you aloud or to myself. I promise you."

"I don't care if I learn," she snaps back. "I've gone this long. I haven't drowned yet."

It's inevitable. Impatient, fickle thing like him: inevitable that something she says will finally hit him the wrong way, land across his back like a switch.

Ivan grimaces. He tries not to recoil, but he can't help tensing. And once that's done, there doesn't seem to be any point pretending otherwise. And so he draws away, bringing his arm back to himself. He has nothing to say for a time.

Then: "As you like."

His arm, wet but warm, leaves her. Hilary turns to look at him.

He says three words after a long time.

She says nothing at all for a long time.

Then:

"Say what you are thinking," she tells him, and though it's barely more than a whisper, it sounds more like a command, or like permission, than like a plea. "Speak to me as you would... any person."

The first sentence: he glances at her.

The second: he looks at her, longer, turning his head. His forehead is wrinkled again. His hands are braced on the edge of the pool; another moment and he might have slid back in, swam in mute fury until it burned itself out. Or until she threw a shoe at his head. One never knows.

He didn't get back in, though. And she's asking something of him that she never has before. May never have even thought to ask him before. May never have even thought he'd speak to her differently.

And he is understandably hesitant. Give him this much credit, though -- he doesn't ask to confirm.

"I thought we were getting somewhere," he says at last, quietly. "I thought ... I felt you wanted to learn. Or at least, that you were torn. But then you slammed shut like a book. And I was frustrated."

However distant she is from the way normal people think, however detached she is, Ivan knows that Hilary isn't stupid. She isn't blind. She knows he's angry. She doesn't understand why.

She also knows he is trying not to show it, not to take it out on her. And she doesn't understand why.

--

When he answers, her forehead wrinkles. She understands. She looks away again, at the water that her legs are sitting in.

When she speaks, she speaks slowly, piecing things together. Perhaps he tunes her out. Perhaps he follows along. Sees where she puts pieces in the wrong way: forces a fit where there is none. Pretends the colors match when they are a shade too dark, a touch too light.

"I thought you wanted me to go in the water with you. Because you swam away after you kissed me. But you wouldn't answer. I told you why I don't like it. You said you wanted me to be safer. I asked if you wanted me to learn. You..."

he didn't refuse to answer that time. He did tell her he wants her to learn. She finishes:

"...demurred."

Hilary doesn't say anything for a few moments.

"It frightens me to think of being in the water like that. It frightens me to think of drowning. I don't want anyone to see me foolish and stupid. I have been fine so far without knowing. I don't like not knowing. It doesn't matter if I don't know."

Her face is hot again. Her throat is tight. She doesn't like it.

"I don't know, Ivan," she says. "I know you want me to... know what I like and what I want and what I should do always, but I don't."

Her hands curl at the edge of the pool, tight enough to whiten her knuckles.

"Do you think I would be as I am if I knew what I wanted and what I should do?"

By now her shoulders have tightened and her arms are rigid. She's hunched slightly, but with a breath and an exhale she forcibly straightens her spine, holds herself less like a crouched animal and more like the creature she truly is:

something regal, though no less savage.

Hilary takes another breath, then exhales. It's more shallow than it should be, but she's trying. "I wasn't trying to frustrate you. Or... 'slam shut'."

Ivan

Her knuckles are white. But she straightens her spine; dignity in her carriage, grace in her poise. And in some attempt to comfort, or perhaps simply to connect, Ivan covers her hand with his.

His palm has dried by now. It is warm, his hand larger than hers. For a moment it simply lays over hers. Then his fingers curl into her palm; he holds her hand.

"I want you to know how to swim," he admits. "I want you to be as safe as you can possibly be. I know the probability of you drowning is slight, but it's terrible to contemplate. Just terrible. Especially when I know you fear such an end. Especially when I am part of the reason you live so close to water. And sail. I want to teach you, or I want someone to teach you.

"I want you to know how," again. And another confession, this: "It upset me when you refused."

Perhaps she doesn't really notice his hand on hers. Or perhaps, for once, she doesn't mind him showing her comfort when she's trying not to need it.

Or perhaps she doesn't want him to be frustrated. Perhaps this is one of those rare, almost miraculous occasions when Hilary knows that something she might do could wound him, reject him, and that she doesn't want him to feel these things even if it isn't always easy for her to be touched.

In any case: his hand covers hers. She doesn't pull away. He holds her hand. She closes her eyes, not in endurance but certainly in an attempt to understand this, to accept it, to let him be kind to her.

Her eye open slowly as he's talking. She is looking at the pool. And then she is looking at him.

"I didn't refuse," she says quietly. Which is... true. Somewhat. It's true in that she didn't mean to outright refuse to learn, even if that is how it came out.

Hilary is quiet for a while, again, after that. She looks back at the water. She looks a little bit miserable, but that isn't quite the word: she's afraid, and she doesn't want to, and she knows it's going to be awful and unpleasant, that she is probably going to be awful and unpleasant during it. And she also does not want to drown. And she doesn't like being ignorant and useless in this regard. So her lower lip is somewhat jutted, and her brow furrowed, and her head downcast a bit.

But eventually, she nods.

Eventually, she asks: "Can you teach me someplace like this? Where I can see through the water? At least at first."

Her voice is small. Her throat moves with a tight, anxious swallow.

Her hand under his is shaking.

"Hilary, of course."

It breaks his heart a little that she would ask. That she feels she must ask, instead of simply telling him: this is how she wants it to be done. This is what she requires for the experience to be at all survivable for her.

"We could even start here, tomorrow. We can put in a pool at home. I think Anton would like that, anyway. And we could stay here until the pool was ready. Or travel. Whatever you like."

He thinks a moment. His hand holds hers. He adds, carefully: "I don't expect you to always know what you want. But when you do know, you could simply tell me. You needn't ask my leave."

The ones who taught her to dance, and to cook -- the only two things she knows she is good at -- did not coddle her. They did not ask her how she felt. They did not care how she felt. They were immune to her fears or even cuts on her fingers, raw skin on her toes. They were not kin, and to her she was just another skinny rich girl, not royalty, born of ancient and noble bloodlines. So when they told her what was required, that is what she did. When they told her to do it again, this time better, that is what she did. When they told her to do something that hurt, or made her fretful, or felt like a risk she wasn't sure she could survive,

then she did it.

Of course she asks him if it is all right if they don't make it as hard as possible. If he doesn't test her by throwing her into the ocean. It isn't that she thinks he would harm her, or be cruel to her, or anything like that. It's that this is her experience of learning new things. It is even a bit shameful to ask her would-be teacher to start off easy.

But they are not the same. They think of this differently.

--

When he mentions putting in a pool at home, even though he says Anton might like it, Hilary gives a sharp little shake of her head and interjects: "No. I don't want a pool at home. It's gauche."

Apparently in this respect, Anton's desires don't matter as much as her home suiting a certain mold.

She waves her legs gently in the pool, listening to him. When he finishes, she just nods. "I know. Sometimes I just want you to give it."

Then, a beat later, honesty coming from a place where she is half-hypnotized by the water rippling, by surrender to her fear: "I can't always trust that what I want -- or don't want -- is... for the best."

"Well, I'm sure we can find a relatively clean pool nearby to rent for as long as we need."

It's almost offhand. Yet another impossible task for poor Dmitri.

"I would tell you," he continues. "If you demanded something unsafe, or dangerous, or inadvisable, I would tell you."

"I know," she says. That's all. She knows. That's why she asks his permission. And that's not quite what he means, or what he wants, but she will be ready when she is ready. She's never promised him anything more than that. Frankly: she never promised him even that much.

Hilary turns to look at him, though, her chin against her shoulder. "And I like you to tell me what to do. Even... when we're not in bed. Do you understand?"

Even when we're not in bed.

It's something that hovered in the background of this entire conversation: the unspoken understanding that none of this applied when they were playing, that there he is vladelets and she is nameless, treasured, no more or less than his krasivaya devushka.

That it is okay if she is willing and will-less. If she is docile, wanton, craving. If she asks permission. If she begs. If she submits, so prettily, and breaks under his control like a butterfly on the wheel.

--

She doesn't just mean that, though. She means in everything else, too. Sometimes she wants him to decide. Often, she likes him to decide. It is a pressure; a weight; dear god, a responsibility. Even now, even after all this, there is a flicker in Ivan's eyes, like something feral.

He takes a breath. His thumb rubs her hand.

"I do," he murmurs. It is a small miracle, every time.

She smiles. A small thing, faint: he sees the ghost of it turn the corners of her mouth upward, and then it fades, slowly, unable to survive long out in the cold, cruel world.

And then she leans over to him, their shoulders touching, and kisses him. Perhaps surprisingly, there's nothing coy or hesitant or even docile about it. There's nothing aggressive or fierce, either, nothing angry.

She just kisses him, softly, like they are equals. Like they are lovers. No less. Often more.

Any other couple and this would be an everyday thing. It would happen literally thousands of times over a relationship. It would not be as it is, rare and precious and beautiful as that red diamond she wears on her fingers.

Sometimes, anyway. Perhaps not now. Certainly not always.

And they share that soft kiss, their legs in the water, their mouths touching. No hand at her throat this time; no grip on her jaw. Just his hand on hers, which is sweeter and far more innocent than they have ever been. Just that kiss, which is warmer and more tender than one would think them capable of.

Before, anyway. Before Nice. Before Hawaii, and Montreal, and what nearly happened in Chicago.

The glow in the west has waned from its reds and oranges. The sky is a deep blue, somehow at once dark and vibrant, majestic. And even in this warm climate, this warm island on a warm sea, the evening is growing cooler. Ivan's brow rests against Hilary's for a moment; then he draws back a little, nods her toward the house.

"Let's go inside."

Hilary so rarely kisses him first. Sometimes she won't even kiss him back. Sometimes he has to break her first.

Hilary so rarely kisses him with any sort of gentleness. Sometimes she's pliant, submissive, pleading, always demanding, but rarely just... tender. Plainspoken, simply expressed like this.

Hilary so rarely opens her eyes as they part, looking at him like she knows who she is, and who he is, and what they really mean to one another.

She tips her head. "Are you tired?"

"No. I just don't want you to get cold."

It's a moment of surprising sincerity -- from her, from him, from the both of them. He says it like he isn't stung by her barbs, and has never been. He says it like she's never mocked him or rolled her eyes or ughed before at his romanticism, his stupidity, his intolerable and pathetic affections.

This time he's right next to her, right up close, when she laughs. It's actually more overt than before, when he dove into the water suddenly. That flashbulb of a smile, that quivering in her shoulders, that breathy chuckle.

"You're the one not wearing his clothes," she tells him.

The laugh catches him by surprise; he watches her a moment, smiling, hardly even realizes he's smiling.

Then a glance down at his bare arms, bare chest, bare legs. Bare feet, too, still in the water. Just then pool lights flicker on; must be a timer somewhere. The pool glows cerulean and turquoise. Refractions arc and shimmer across his body, her clothes.

"Well," wry, "you aren't wrong there."

Of course it doesn't occur to her that she never laughs, that she is breaking and rebuilding his heart in that moment, that tonight is magical because of her honesty, her presence in the moment, her laughter, her kiss. Maybe on some level she does feel that tonight is... easier, somehow. But it's distant, and she would be too wary of breaking it to speak it aloud.

"Swim a bit longer," she says softly. "Let me watch you. Then take me inside."

Maybe it's her honesty. Her presence in the moment. Her laughter. Her kiss. Maybe it's the small, quiet magic in the evening. It's a flicker in his mind, and then -- before he can think better of it -- he speaks it aloud.

"Why don't you come with me?" he says quietly. "You can hold onto me, and I'll carry you across the pool and back. We can swim like that for a while, together."

Pause.

"Only if you want to," he adds.

She doesn't erupt. She doesn't reel away, tears in her eyes, betrayed and miserable again. So there is that.

Hilary pauses, holding her breath a moment. He can sense her shrinking, sense her crumpling in on herself like a flower exposed too long to summer sun. But that's just her fear.

She shakes her head. She starts to pull her legs out of the water, remembering that at this end, it's twelve feet deep. Her breathing has become slightly elevated. She shakes her head again.

Then stops herself. Forcefully. She sets her jaw, lips hard together.

Then:

"I'll get in with you. But... over there," and she looks at the shallow end, the four-foot-deep end, where she can stand in the water, where she can stay by the edge. "Yes?"

Sometimes, one must simply wait. Wait for Hilary's panic to subside. Wait for her rage to die. Wait for her to return to herself, fractured but alive.

It is a short thing this time, and not nearly so traumatic as some storms have been. She shrinks. She breathes quickly. She --

stops herself. And that, too, is something strange and new and magical. He sees it, the same way he saw her laugh.

And he nods, drawing his feet out of the pool, standing with her. He takes her hand again. They leave wet footprints on the concrete, perfect imprints. Physical flaws rarely do trouble the children of Falcon.

So they rise. She holds his hand very tightly as he helps her up. Water runs down their legs. She holds his hand as they walk around the edge of the pool. She hasn't indicated that she needs to go inside to change into a proper swimsuit. But when they do get to the other end, she doesn't make excuses. She doesn't say she has to get a suit, maybe they should just do this tomorrow.

Hilary takes her hand from Ivan and reaches to her side, and unzips her dress. She shrugs out of the straps and tugs it downward til it falls of its own accord, and then she steps out of it, wearing a small lace bralette and panties that match. Of course.

She takes a breath and holds Ivan's hand again.

Briefly, Ivan wonders if anyone else has ever been so privy to Hilary's fears and phobias. If she has ever let anyone else see how much she fears the dark. Deep water. Drowning. Being swallowed.

It wouldn't be unfair to say she clings to his hand as they stand. As they walk around the edge. Even after she undresses, leaving her dress on the sunwarmed concrete, standing in her lingerie. They both have swimwear somewhere -- their servants must have packed a selection. For Ivan, because he swims. For Hilary, because she sometimes wears swimwear when she's on a yacht, or watching Ivan swim. Neither of them go to find it. They stand there in their intimates, Ivan's already damp from his initial dive. Hilary's still dry, and the sort that might be ruined by chlorinated water.

He doesn't suggest that she remove it. It's not modesty. It's just that he wouldn't ask that of her -- that added vulnerability, when she is already so very vulnerable.

He holds her hand, though. And he takes a step into the water, descending the narrow stairs cut into one corner of the pool. He pulls on her hand a little, but not to force her into the water.

To wrap her arm around his shoulders from behind. To draw her against his back.

She walks a step behind him, her hand rigid in his, and if he pulls her that's all right. She needs that, right now. That bit of force. That direction and guidance. She isn't afraid of water to the point that putting her toes in it terrifies her. She walks in slowly with him, carefully, making sure the ground doesn't slope away suddenly. The steps lead down into water that is about four feet deep. It is enough to drown Anton if he were to topple in, but the truth is:

he has taken to water the way most young children do, joyfully and with some unconscious familiarity. He's gotten over the first few times of dunking his head and choking and sputtering and crying on Miron's shoulder. He likes the water. They make him wear inflatable armbands when he's out at the dock or having his lessons with Miron, but he knows how to hold his breath now. He opens his eyes underwater. He doesn't panic. He likes swimming.

He has taken to water the way one would expect of Ivan's son.

Hilary is different, though. She clenches her jaw as they walk out in the water, as it creeps up her thighs and belly and over her breasts. There she stops, though. No deeper, no yet. Her shoulders are rising and falling as she breathes. One imagines she might shriek if the water were to ripple and splash against her neck.

They are holding hands under the water. She shakes when he takes his hand away, shakes her head no and pulls away when he moves to draw her against his back. "No," she says, too quickly, very anxiously. "No. No, not yet. Please."

So he stops.

Stops, but doesn't let go. Simply halts, right where he is, as cleanly and crisply as if she'd said a safeword. They have no safewords, though. All they have is this: her hesitation, her resistance, the silent and physical cues she gives him.

"I'm not going anywhere until you tell me it's okay," he says, softly, slowly, the way one must speak to a wild and frightened thing. "Just come closer. Hold onto me. Feel me. I won't let anything bad happen."

"Just don't... don't swim with me hanging on. I don't want that tonight."

She speaks quickly, her voice low, as quiet as the water itself lapping against the sides of the pool. She takes a deep breath after she says it. Her eyes are not on him. Well: they are, but not his eyes. His chest, his sternum, a fixed point that is easier for her than more intimate contact.

But she does move closer. Not to his back, not to hold onto him. Into his chest. Her arms wrap around him like that, low on his waist, and she rests her head on his chest. She feels the water touching her upper arms, but it is also touching Ivan's arms. Somehow, this is calming.

"I won't," he promises.

And she comes closer. And he turns, intuiting her intent. They are standing flat-footed in the water, a step or two above the bottom. She wraps her arms around him and he reacts in kind, his embrace firmer, enveloping.

She rests her head on his chest. He thinks, suddenly and unexpectedly, of Anton. The way the boy rests his head sometimes on Miron's shoulder, or perhaps Hilary's. That sort of unconditional trust; that sort of unspoken certainty that he would not be betrayed, nor harmed.

The association perplexes him; disturbs him. Yet it is there, and for no reason he can easily name or explain it makes him hold his lover a little tighter. A little closer. It makes him murmur to her, "It's okay. I'm here."

This calms her, too. His arms around her. His body, his solidity. His warmth. She knows he won't let her drown. She knows he won't let her be consumed,

even by herself.

Nowhere in her mind is the suspicion that Ivan would be thinking about Anton. That she would, in her trust, remind him of his son. That this is, confusingly and naturally, why he holds her more tightly. In Hilary's mind, Ivan never thinks of his son. And yet it was Ivan, not Hilary, who brought him up tonight: a pool. Something Anton might like.

He does think of his son sometimes. It is getting harder and harder not to. He keeps growing.

"I know," she whispers back to him. "I know. I just... wanted to hold you."

He has no answer for that. He feels no need to answer. It seems to stand alone, perfect, rounded, like the moon in the sky.

So Ivan just holds her. His strange, fractured lover. And after a while he closes his eyes, because this feels right too. And it's just him, and her, and the cool water, and the impression of arcs of light falling across his eyelids.

And her heartbeat. Her breathing. These subtle signals of life as she leans against him, and holds on to him. Because she wants to. Not because she thinks he'll leave her.

That, too, is a small magic of its own.

Ivan

Let's go somewhere, Ivan said one day over lunch -- as he does sometimes -- and by afternoon they were boarding the yacht, Anton a few steps behind on Miron's shoulders. Not Krasota but the new one, the Christmas present to his lover that he simply didn't have the patience to wait to give.

It's a catamaran, all sweeping long lines and lean double-hull; soaring white sails, a deck of blonde wood. A catamaran, because he told her he missed the old one and he told her he'd get her a new one, and really she wouldn't be wrong for thinking he bought it as much for himself as for her. Still; she's the one to have named it. She's the one to have broken the customary bottle of champagne, unless of course she didn't want to; in that case perhaps poor Daria was assigned the job because Ivan couldn't be fucked to do the honors, either.

He certainly couldn't be fucked to help load supplies for the journey, either. So between let's go somewhere and actually going somewhere are several frenetic hours of buying, delivering, sorting, loading, preparing. They need fuel, foodstuffs, linens, fresh water; they need changes of clothes, and a ridiculous amount of toys for Anton. One might think they meant to depart for a month-long journey -- and perhaps the staff is not wrong to prepare for the potential.

It is winter, and so the sun is dipping into the sea when at last they push off from the private dock. Dinner in the open air of the cockpit, their wake foaming white behind them, a trail back to their estate by the sea; candles somewhat unsafely lit on the table amongst the glitter of wineglasses, the succulent gleam of seafood and greens. The evening glow turns into the faintest glow of zodiacal lights, visible only because they sail across open water -- though the coastline of the continent is still visible.

Later, when that coastline is gone, they go belowdecks. Their servants clean up. Their servants put their child to bed. They bathe, and indulge in after-dinner drinks, and fuck, and sleep. Sometime late in the night, the staff drops anchor and retires to their quarters to sleep, themselves.

Morning, and there's an island on the horizon. Turns out they've sailed to Corsica. The sails are raised and the anchor drawn up. They skirt southward along the coastline, past naked red cliffs and sunbeaten scrubland. Eventually they come in to port, if it can be called that: a tiny dock near a tiny commune, a humble clustering of low structures. The newer ones are stucco and the older ones are stone, but new is relative here, and old is ancient. On the cliffs above, a crumbling castle from the late middle ages, so weatherworn it looks as ancient as the earth around it. Everything, even now in midwinter, is utterly bathed in warm light.

Ivan, yawning and golden and barechested, emerges onto the flybridge as they approach shore. He hardly glances at the servant who hands him a glass of iced juice, but he's so sure it would be there for him. Sipping, he slides an arm around his lover's waist.

"Which mad, ancient cousin of ours lived here, do you suppose?"

The yacht is a gift. It is the same sort of boat that Hilary's second mate bought her, but it is different: it is newer, and there is more color to it, and more youth. It is different because she sold the one Dion gave her. She cast away almost everything he gave to her, in the end. She slipped his shackles, she shed her skin.

The yacht is not really for her, though perhaps Ivan thought to put it in her name, to make sure she owns it outright, to give her another asset that will protect her in the event of his -- inevitable -- death. It is more for Ivan, because he loved the other one, and he likes to sail, and loving her and giving her presents is a convenient excuse to do things like buy a yacht.

Maybe he comes to visit her and leads her outside and there it is, off the shore where she lives, and then suddenly she has a yacht again. Or perhaps he shops with her; perhaps. Perhaps he discovers another new layer to the strange person Hilary has been becoming: one who seems worried when she realizes she does care about the color of the deck's wood, the shade of blue on the cushions here, the wallpaper in the cabin. One who, once she finds her own opinions, has many of them indeed.

There are accents of brushed nickle rather than shining brass; upholsteries in shades of blue and silver and hints of black. A slightly larger cabin than she had on Cielo. And when it was time for a name to be painted across the hull, she gave it, because she had some time to think of it: Impératrice de la Lune.

Hilary does break champagne across the hull. It is her yacht, after all, even though she never cared if she had one. She marks it. Even the name is there to remind Ivan who it belongs to. Who, perhaps, he belongs to.

In their way.

--

So it's there, and they have never taken Anton on a sea voyage, but they do now. He is old enough, though Miron never lets him out of his sight, keeps a life preserver on him constantly, follows within arm's reach of him all over the yacht.

Anton's mother was amenable to a trip. Ivan has not had such whims for a while. He has stayed close enough, never too close, not too far for too long. And when he wants to go somewhere, he seems to mean all of them: at least, the ones who matter most. Hilary of course, and Anton and Miron. Elodie and Evgeny. Darya and Dmitri. A maid or two, and so on. There is another cabin for Anton where Miron stays as well, and the rest hole up in the servants' bunks.

As it turns out, Anton is very excited about the boat. He runs all over, sending Miron's heart racing, examining everything, climbing on cushions, looking over the bow, pointing at the sails, asking questions in a bizarre blend of the three languages he is growing up with. When they leave port it takes him time to get his 'sea legs' and he does throw up a bit of his dinner, but that doesn't matter to Hilary and Ivan, because Anton is eating below deck. They are out in the open air, sipping wine, eating together and watching the stars. Hilary is wrapped in a soft silver pashmina, her hair loose, shorter than he likes it, but beautiful as always. She is softened with wine, pliant, and when he takes her downstairs to fuck her she is obedient and whimpering, molten in his arms when he pins her wrists above her head, sinks his teeth into her shoulder, drives his cock into her cunt.

--

Though she sleeps easily and trustingly in his arms that night, when he wakes he's alone. The shower in their cabin still bears steam from her washing. Going to the flybridge he finds her, dressed already, holding Anton, who is wearing a pair of sunglasses. So is Hilary. They almost match. Anton is eating a dense little muffin, and Hilary is sipping a mimosa from a flute. He is in a life preserver, and he is a growing toddler now, but no one would dare tell Hilary he is too big to be held now. So she holds him at her side, on her hip, and they observe the oncoming shoreline together.

She has no idea where they are. She has not asked anyone; she has not seemed to care, though she seems curious enough to look. She sips. Anton turns his head at Ivan's presence a half-heartbeat before she does; it is almost simultaneous, his mate and his progeny turning towards him as they sense him.

Juice appears in his hand. Anton watches him as he always does: unblinking, staring, at once deeply curious to the point of fascinated and yet also wary, careful, vigilant.

Hilary permits him to touch her, embrace her, and even turns her cheek to him so he will know he should kiss her good morning.

Empress of the Moon.

She blinks, but it's invisible behind her shades. "Where are we?"

Thus bidden, he does indeed kiss her: his lips pressing against her smooth, cool cheek. He shaved this morning. He showered; he's wearing a splash of some fresh, spicy scent. His teeth graze her ear a moment after that kiss, as though he cannot hide his true nature for long.

"A little town called Osani," he answers. And, having ignored his son long enough, deigns now to graze the boy's cheek with the back of a curled finger. "On the west coast of Corsica. I thought we could be islanders for a little while."

Beneath the yacht, the rich blue of the Mediterranean is transitioning to a jeweled, clear turquoise. A single pier, long and thin, extends out from the shore. This is where they moor themselves, the sails overhead folding, the maneuvering motor humming deep belowdecks. A gangway is extended. Their people start unloading their luggage.

"We could go to Italy if you get bored," Ivan adds. "Or perhaps Carthage. I must say, it never ceases to amaze me, how old your part of the world is."

Her cheek is cool from the air, flushed from the champagne. Anton frowns when Ivan kisses his mother. He chews on his muffin and wiggles, trying to get her attention. Unfortunately, she does not give it to him as he wishes: she sets him down on the deck, because he is a big boy now. He is heavy. He stands there by her feet in their delicate little shoes, leaning a bit on her leg. He has adapted quickly to being on the water, but still holds to her a bit, and for once she seems unbothered, not annoyed.

She lives with him now, and seems... better. In some ways. She rests her hand on his head, and he is calmed by this. She may let Ivan kiss her, but she has not forgotten him. He eats his breakfast, leaning on her knee.

For her part, Hilary breathed in when he scraped his teeth over her ear. She set Anton down because of this, too. Ivan is whispering cryptic things to her: Osani. Corsica. Islanders. She huffs a small sound, almost but not quite a laugh. They've been islanders before, but briefly. She sometimes seems to enjoy it. She likes warm places. She likes flowing fabrics. He likes it when her hair is undone, wavy, textured with salt air.

He touches Anton's cheek, and Anton looks up at him, curious and perhaps a little startled. But there's something in his eyes that may very well unease Ivan to see: longing. Still mixed with a healthy dose of wariness, but sure enough, there it is: a desire for his attention. His interest. His affection.

Hilary does not notice it. She is stroking the top of her son's head, covered in that fair hair that so clearly marks him as his father's child.

The yacht is being unloaded. She takes a breath, thoughtful: "Where are we staying while we're here?"

A beat. The words catch up to her: "My part of the world?" She gives the smallest laugh. She seems to have forgotten she was ever... not American.

That poor boy, Anton. If Ivan had more insight, more awareness of the needs and desires of those outside of himself and Hilary -- that dark gravitational center of his universe -- he would see how his son craves his attention, his approval, his love. He would see the damage he was inflicting with his indifference. He would see the age-old conflict between that desire and the strange jealousy and competition over the love of the mother that lies at the heart of so many father-son relationships. He would see, too, the damage Hilary inflicts with her swings between frustration, withdrawal, and sudden overwhelming adoration. He would see the sins of his own parents -- and hers -- sketched out in their own actions; a spiral of madness that pulls on every Silver Fang.

Though, then again: her parents killed each other. And his exist so far on the outskirts of his orbit that he barely thinks of them at all. So perhaps, compared to that, they're not doing so poorly after all. Perhaps.

--

Ivan's fingers brush Hillary's as he, too, ruffles the boy's hair. Then he straightens, his arm uncoiling from around her waist. Stepping forward to the railing, he looks down at the activity below. The dock is small, but there are a handful of other pleasure crafts there -- mostly power yachts, a few sailboats. Nothing so gloriously sleek as the Imperatrice. Nothing so exotic, so fine, so breathtakingly expensive.

"Europe. France," he replies, smiling. "And before you remind me of your actual upbringing, do allow me to remind you of the insufferability of vegetable puns. As for our lodgings, I thought we'd take a car and drive until we find suitable accommodations. What do you say?"

Below their sphere of attention, Anton has both of his parents gently stroking his hair, ruffling it, touching him. It isn't that he goes without touch, without affection: the servants give him quite enough. Miron and Elodie, mostly, as affectionate and tender as any parent could be. Even the big scary ones like Dmitri are kind to him. Even Polina's arms sometimes wrap around him, nevermind if they are accompanied by an exasperated sigh. But they are not his parents. These idle, thoughtless touches seem to soothe him differently. He does not stray from them.

Above him, Hilary is tilting her head at Ivan. He steps away, watches their people scurrying about. Hilary remains where she is, one hand on Anton, one holding the slender stem of her flute glass. She sips. She does not get the joke, or reference: vegetable puns? She does not ask, either, because she cares very little.

"Why don't you do that inexpressibly boring task, and we'll visit the town until you fetch us?" she retorts lightly, the 'we' apparently indicating her person, her child, and whatever members of her entourage are necessary to her.

Not for the first time -- and certainly not for the last -- Ivan finds himself unexpectedly stung by his lover's casual cruelty. That's not even accurate; it's not cruelty. It's simply carelessness, callousness, a near-total lack of empathy. Yet this time, for no reason he can easily name, he doesn't react with casual, cutting cruelty of his own.

He pauses. Then he turns, comes back to her.

"I thought you might have an opinion on where you might like to stay," he says. "That's all. If not, I'll have Dmitri book something and spend the day with you."

It wasn't meant to be cruel. Or even... careless. It doesn't occur to her that he would just want her company, that sending him off on a 'boring' task while she plays with their son might sting him somehow. In this, it isn't even her callousness that spurs the words or invites them, but ignorance. Obliviousness. A fundamental inability to reliably connect with others. In this way, she's always been something of a flickering light, one whose brightness or warmth simply can't be trusted. She probably always will be.

She does notice his pause. She does not consider its meaning, or implication.

She does seem pleased when he comes back to her. Not with a smile, or even a smirk, but some softening of her features, a keenness in her eyes on him that is, all the same, hard to see behind her shades. She likes it when he comes back. She lifts her hand from Anton's hair and uses it to touch Ivan's cheek, like she has a right to him somehow, like he is a piece of art she purchased partly so that no one could ever stop her from touching it at will, absorbing its beauty through her fingertips.

His beauty.

He is not a thing.

Sometimes she has to remind herself that none of them are just things. It is sometimes easier, these days.

"You know what I like," she tells him, which is only partially true and a point where she often strays as though contrariness is as much a part of her nature as madness. "Have Dmitri do it. Come with us. Lunch by the water. You can buy me presents."

Her touch brings a long, languid blink of his eyes. His eyelashes catch the morning light; then his eyes, too, the golden flecks in his irises glittering.

He turns into that touch. Kisses the heel of her hand, then covers it with his own. Takes her hand in his own, those long elegant fingers of theirs interlocking.

"I know what you like," he confirms, even though it is only partially true. He does not think of that right now: with a Son of Falcon's inborn and unquestioned confidence, he is certain of his certainty. "I'll have Dmitri see to it. Far be it from me to leave you present-less.

"Come on; let's go ashore."

This, too, Hilary permits: his hand on her hand, his mouth on her skin. There is an air of noblesse oblige about her acceptance of his affections, his stares. So: some part of her must know how fascinated he is with her, how taken.

What pretty, calm ways to describe what is between them. All the darkness. All the bright, searing flashes of connection, which is the only form true connection can take for creatures such as they. They don't use words to describe what is between them often, and when they do, it is in dark whispers, or aching declarations torn out of them like bones ripped from ribcages, or -- most often -- fancy turns of phrase, pale in comparison to the truth.

Ivan is 'taken with' Hilary. Hilary finds him 'charming'.

Hilary is the collapsed star at the center of Ivan's life, his world, his unraveling sense of time, his inevitable yet eternal destruction.

And Ivan

is Hilary's god. Hilary's soul. Cornerstone, lifeline, heartbeat. Savior.

Some part of her must know that he loves her. Perhaps sometimes he knows how desperately she adores him.

--

He says they shall go ashore now, and she steps from him, and from Anton, who makes a noise, questioning. She just looks at him, not understanding immediately and not putting much effort into understanding. He starts to follow her, and she permits this, but scarcely a few steps have been taken by any of the Fangs before Miron slips onto the deck, scooping up his charge so he doesn't follow his parents to the gangway, peer over the edge, and go toppling into the water.

Hilary glances briefly at Miron, but does not comment. She finishes her mimosa and leaves it somewhere for a maid to take care of.

She is holding Ivan's hand, their long fingers loosely linked. He is still shirtless; no matter.

Miron has, over time, grown quite good at anticipating where and when he is needed. He hears footsteps on the flybridge; he knows Hilary and Ivan will soon be disembarking. He is in the middle of a hurried breakfast, and toast-in-mouth he bounds up the stairs to --

-- see that Ivan has, shock of shocks, scooped his son up himself when Hilary stepped away. It happens so rarely, and yet there it is: the boy held in the crook of Ivan's free arm, his little brow furrowing as he tries to decide whether this is good or frightening; something to tolerate or something to wail over.

"Ah, Miron," Ivan says, spotting the young man, "go fetch me a shirt, would you? Something short-sleeved."

Miron blinks. He casts Anton a wary glance, as though trying to estimate the chances of Ivan dropping the boy or simply losing him somewhere in the next two minutes. In the end, docility and obedience win out; he bobs a quick nod and disappears down the stairs again.

Ivan follows, scarcely more careful with a toddler on his arm than he would be alone. At the bottom of the stairs, he does turn and extend his hand to Hilary, courtly. He is always so careful with her.

He loves her, after all. Quite profoundly, though they do like to mask it in frivolous, fancy terms.

Anton doesn't quite know what to do with himself when Ivan picks him up. His brow wrinkles, and he draws back a bit -- partly to see his father better, blinking at him behind his little toddler-sized sunglasses. There is a crumb of muffin on his lip, but he eats with better manners than he once did. His hands are a bit messy, but he doesn't go pawing at his father's face, as he might have when he was much smaller.

Hilary is watching them. She looks thoughtful, more than anything else, but... pleased. It hurts her somewhat, to see Ivan giving Anton any affection at all, any attention. It hurts her in the middle of her chest, piercing and tight, and she does not pay Miron any mind at all.

They disembark. When she takes his hand, she holds it tightly. Anton appears to have decided this is nice, that his father is warm and not biting him, and he is being carried, which Miron and Polina and even Elodie don't do very much anymore because he is A Big Boy Now.

Hilary's hand grips Ivan's with all the ferocity of feeling that she has, but cannot name or express.

Anton is talking to him. "Where going?" he says, pointing at the port town.

Perhaps it's best that Anton doesn't paw at Ivan's face. Nothing would have made him put the boy down or hand him off faster than a grubby little hand jammed in his mouth, up his nose. As is, the boy just stares at him while he ... well. Pays very little attention, to be truthful.

But then Anton speaks. And of course he knows his son is talking now; he's not completely insensate. He knows there have been words, sometimes in English and sometimes in Russian and sometimes in French; he knows Anton is actually becoming a regular little chatterbox with Miron and especially with Elodie. He almost never talks to Ivan, though, and one can hardly blame him: Ivan never talks to him either.

Until now. Now, suddenly, there is the expectation of a conversation. Ivan flicks a frown at Anton; then at the little town. He almost never utters placeholder syllables, but he does now: "Uh. To the village." Every sentence gets simpler. "Ashore. On island.

"Fun place," is where he lands, eventually.

Hilary talks to him sometimes. Hilary even listens to him sometimes. They both have about the same grasp on Russian, though Anton is learning it faster than she can keep up, and she prefers to speak French with him, or even bits of English. They don't speak often. When she is with him, there is usually someone else. She likes to watch him; she is not good at playing. Luckily, he is of an age where he is generally content to explore and play on his own, only occasionally bringing her something to look at that he found, saying a few words about it. And Hilary looks it over, maybe says a few words, too. And then he takes it back, and walks away again, and right now, this is perhaps the healthiest their relationship has ever been.

Ivan never speaks to him. Ivan rarely acknowledges him but for a stroke of his hair or the like. Anton asks him a question, though, and Ivan seems a touch disgruntled, and then...

behind him, Miron presses his lips hard together.

Beside him, Hilary just laughs at him. There's of course an edge of mockery, but it is light -- especially for Hilary, who does not avoid cruelty. She almost sounds delighted.

Anton has no idea why his mother is laughing, but it makes him grin. He thinks he has done something very good, and that is why she laughs, and he wiggles a little, bouncing in Ivan's arms, but not very much. He has been well trained by Polina that if he wiggles too much when he is held, well then he can damn well walk, can't he?

"Vijij?" is what he says back to Ivan, because the 'L' sound is still just beyond him. "Fun pace," he adds, repeating it, like he's sealing that away in his small, developing brain.

"We are going for a walk, mon plus petit faucon," Hilary says, stepping closer to both her lover and her... cub. "Your father will buy us presents, and we'll have lunch, and you can have ice cream." She smiles. One imagines it is how the white witch smiled at the boy in the story, to get him to betray his entire family for a tin of candies.

Behind them, Miron presses his lips together for an entirely different reason now.

Her finger extends, and she strokes Anton's cheek, which is fascinatingly soft even now, when he is no longer quite a baby. "It will be lovely," she says, like she's casting a spell.

"Wubee," Anton repeats, and: "Icekeem." He cannot help it: he bounces again, wiggling happily.

Meanwhile, while Hilary is thoroughly enchanted by the little tableau unfolding before her, Ivan is frowning again. "Why can't he pronounce things right?" he demands: first of the air, and then of Miron, as though the poor fellow should have all the answers. "He's nearly three, isn't he? Is it a speech impediment?"

"Er -- " Miron looks taken aback. "Well -- "

This upsets Hilary. She frowns at Ivan, but she doesn't look angry. She looks... almost afraid. But that also looks like anger.

Anton senses the sudden shift in both of them and tenses up in Ivan's arms.

"He's not three until spring," she says, and because Ivan is frowning and Anton looks like he's about to start crying and because Ivan is a wolf and she is sometimes driven by something deeper than her insanity --

call it instinct --

Hilary puts her hands on Anton's sides and pulls him right out of Ivan's arms, turning him to herself, holding him. "He speaks three languages, all of them better than you," she says,

which is... not quite accurate by any measure, but she's ruffled that he's making her happy baby look wary and unnerved when he was just babbling about ice cream.

And with that, since she does not know if Anton has a speech impediment or not and Ivan has sent her into a spiral of worry as well, she continues down the gangway and onto the dock, muttering to Anton in French.

Poor Miron is still trying to explain -- stammering some comment on child development and the time it takes to fully acquire language -- when Hilary simply confiscates her child and sweeps off the yacht. Even Ivan looks taken aback. Miron just gives up explaining and hurries after her.

It's Polina, dry and blunt as ever, that finishes the explanation. She's just emerging from belowdecks, eating a bowl of utterly generic cereal out of one of the lovely bowls stocked in the galley. "She is right," she opines. "He is not even three. How many languages you speak at age three, hm? Babies do not speak proper until age four."

Ivan mutters under his breath. He presses his half-finished orange juice into Miron's hands and -- shirt forgotten -- jogs off the yacht after Hilary. And his apparently non-impeded son.

Miron is a protective, nurturing, genial young man who -- rather wisely -- fears both Ivan and Hilary, though primarily for what they might do to inadvertently or carelessly harm Anton, and secondarily for the fact that Ivan may one day snap in a rage or Hilary might pick up a knife in a fit of pique. He is respectful and careful with them, for the sake of his charge, and for the sake of the rest of the staff.

Polina, on the other hand, is zero percent intimidated by the Silver Fangs she ostensibly works for. She respects Dmitri, shows deference out of necessity and self-interest to Max and Miranda, considers Miron her peer, Elodie her junior but their ally, and nearly everyone else as someone who probably is not doing their job very well. In her mind there is a strict hierarchy among the servants who, technically, serve three separate masters. While she knows that Anton will one day be her boss, and while she is very aware that Ivan and Hilary are creatures to be wary of, one thing has been and remains painfully true, at least in her thinking:

they need her more than she needs any of them. By a mile.

So, lacking deference, lacking wariness, she explains to Ivan that his son is not three years old, that he is multilingual, and that he is still a baby.

Miron of course is having a mild anxiety attack in the midst of all this, but no one notices. After all: this is at least a weekly occurrence.

--

Hilary is not going terribly fast. She is carrying a heavy toddler who is talking to her, but not very much. He wants to get back to this conversation about presents and ice cream, and Hilary is all too happy to oblige him, because his daddy is stupid and mean.

His daddy is coming up to them, and Hilary looks at him as though she is waiting for something.

Obviously an apology.

Long-limbed and graceful, Ivan lopes up to them easily enough, dropping back to a stroll as Hilary turns expectantly to him.

It is not quite an apology she gets, but perhaps it is close enough: "Polina tells me children aren't expected to speak clearly until they're four years old or so. So I think we've nothing to worry about. Hm, Anton?"

Deft and gentle, he boops the boy's nose with the very tip of his finger. Miron, meanwhile, is trying to look invisible.

She is expecting an apology. A reassurance that Anton is perfect, from the tips of his white-gold hair, to the depths of his nearly black eyes, to the wiggling toes inside his toddler-sized Puma sneakers. Ivan is to say that he was wrong, and he needs to tell Anton he's sorry, and then beg Hillary's forgiveness.

Naturally, she never gets what she really wants, and Ivan doesn't do any of it, because he's terrible.

However: he tells her that Anton is not broken. He doesn't have a speech impediment. He's fine. And he looks at Anton, addresses him, touches him fondly.

Something wound tight in Hilary uncoils to hear that nothing is wrong with Anton. He isn't delayed, or stupid, which is what she thought Ivan was saying. He's perfect.

Ivan does not apologize, or beg forgiveness, or even admit fault. He breezily says they shouldn't worry. He pretends that this was a joint concern, and not the horrible accusation on his part that it was. In her mind. This time, Hilary chooses to let go of her fantasy about the conversation because it feels more comforting to shift to Ivan's projection, instead.

But he is nice to Anton again. He pretends, again, perhaps all for her sake, to love the little boy. This is one of the only things Hilary has ever really asked him for. It is hard for her to pretend it is automatic, or thoughtless, or not done partly -- if not primarily -- for her benefit. Her happiness. Her comfort. It is hard, even for Hilary, to pretend that she doesn't know that this is a way Ivan makes peace with her.

Loves her.

Anton is still a bit confused at all the paternal attention he's receiving, but he laughs a bit when his nose is booped. He reaches towards Ivan's face.

Meanwhile, Hilary is watching Ivan closely, deciding not to ask Miron is that true this time. Deciding to believe that Ivan isn't lying to her about Anton, because he never has, because it is too important to her, and he knows it. Ivan has never lied to her that she can recall, and she knows that, too.

Whatever else is true about them, they are both patently, consistently, reliably honest with one another.

"Of course not," she says, kissing Anton's cheek while he is trying to boop his father's nose back. "He's perfect."

It's not that Ivan hates his son. He feels a certain benign affection toward the boy; he is, after all, beautiful and golden and fair and wrought in the image of his beautiful, golden, fair parents. Sometimes, rarely, when the night is dark and the moon is full and all the world seems still, it runs deeper than that; all the crystalline and filigreed layers of Ivan's sleek persona seem to align just right, and the light can shine in, and what is deep and dark and primordial in him can awaken. Sometimes, rarely, he feels attachment deep and raw to that which was born from his blood; he feels the urge to protect, ferociously, this tiny strange family he has somehow stumbled into.

Those moments pass so quickly, though. And most days it is like this, or less: a few glancing interactions, a moment of two of indulgence when his son reaches for him and he doesn't lean away or, worse, fail even to notice. Anton's little hand baps his nose, and he laughs, catching it. Some of the infantile pudginess has already begun to leave the boy, and that hand is becoming sleek, longfingered, graceful. Still so small, though; the fingers curling around Ivan's thumb.

"Of course," he says. "Just perfect."

He lets go of Anton's hand, then, and takes Hilary's instead. His grasp is loose and easy. He is whimsical again; swings their joined hands gently as they walk down the long wooden pier.

She has to catch her breath, in that moment. It hitches; Anton touches his father and Ivan doesn't shove him away, drop-kick him off the dock, any of that. He laughs. He catches Anton's hand and Anton laughs too and Hilary cannot breathe, she is so happy. Anton grips his father's hand, fascinated and delighted, momentarily loved and so: adoration pours out of him, almost visible despite the brightness of the day.

Perfect, he hears from one parent, and then the other. Perfect, he will hear over and over. God knows what that will do to him, what sort of creature he'll become.

Behind them, Miron and Polina see all this, and both know it cannot last. Ivan swinging his lover's hand as though they could ever truly be carefree. Hilary trembling with pleasure as she walks towards shore. Anton held in his father's arm, laying his head on his father's shoulder, thinking about ice cream.

It cannot last.

It never lasts.

But no one moves to intervene. It's unlikely that it's truly just pity for them: how rare Ivan's capacity for this is, how desperate Hilary's happiness can be, how fragile Anton is in the face of his parents and their madness. But perhaps that's part of it: to hang back, and let them have this moment. They are all three of them happy, gentle, familial right now.

So they are left alone to it. However long it lasts.