[He wills himself still, as if to minimize the pain while she extracts these words like shrapnel from his flesh. His son, but not hers. I wanted to give you that, he thinks but he holds it in the back of his mouth. What good would it do to let it fly?
When he was courting Alina — back when he thought she couldn't deny him forever — he'd thought that, someday, they might love each other. They might be happy. Saints, sometimes he hates being right.
Because now here's another sacrifice he's agreed to without knowing the toll. While the matter of heirs has long figured into his scheming, and long cast a shadow over his thoughts, it never solidified into anything more than an eventuality. Never carried any weight more than mere practicality. Until now. Maybe it was the negligence his own parents bequeathed on him, or maybe it was the ambitious pace at which his whole life has churned forward, but Nikolai never realized how much he might actually want to be a father.
And what about Alina? Does she want to be a mother? In his present, she has the orphanage to tend to, children enough to fill up any maternal yearning, he supposes. And in her present...it strikes him suddenly that Mal is not an inevitability for her yet. Does she know she might share such a future with him? The marriage bed won't be as luxuriant, but the refuge they create for themselves will be just as sweet. (He hasn't thought about her and Mal together in a long time. Today, he finds, there's no reason to change that.)
All of this, and all Nikolai manages is an affirmative hum in answer.]
He was the reason I wanted to fix Ravka. Not just because he died...but because through him I saw how unequally our country's people live. All the sowing is left to the common people, while the rich get to do all the reaping.
[When he was small, he'd assumed Ravka was a prosperous country. How could he not believe so, surrounded as he was by the opulence of the Grand Palace?]
The only reason his parents could afford to keep all of their children's stomachs full was Dominik's position at the palace. When I realized that, I couldn't get it out of my head.
[He sighs, realizing that his ruminations are wandering.]
no subject
When he was courting Alina — back when he thought she couldn't deny him forever — he'd thought that, someday, they might love each other. They might be happy. Saints, sometimes he hates being right.
Because now here's another sacrifice he's agreed to without knowing the toll. While the matter of heirs has long figured into his scheming, and long cast a shadow over his thoughts, it never solidified into anything more than an eventuality. Never carried any weight more than mere practicality. Until now. Maybe it was the negligence his own parents bequeathed on him, or maybe it was the ambitious pace at which his whole life has churned forward, but Nikolai never realized how much he might actually want to be a father.
And what about Alina? Does she want to be a mother? In his present, she has the orphanage to tend to, children enough to fill up any maternal yearning, he supposes. And in her present...it strikes him suddenly that Mal is not an inevitability for her yet. Does she know she might share such a future with him? The marriage bed won't be as luxuriant, but the refuge they create for themselves will be just as sweet. (He hasn't thought about her and Mal together in a long time. Today, he finds, there's no reason to change that.)
All of this, and all Nikolai manages is an affirmative hum in answer.]
He was the reason I wanted to fix Ravka. Not just because he died...but because through him I saw how unequally our country's people live. All the sowing is left to the common people, while the rich get to do all the reaping.
[When he was small, he'd assumed Ravka was a prosperous country. How could he not believe so, surrounded as he was by the opulence of the Grand Palace?]
The only reason his parents could afford to keep all of their children's stomachs full was Dominik's position at the palace. When I realized that, I couldn't get it out of my head.
[He sighs, realizing that his ruminations are wandering.]
Yes... It's a good name to bring into the future.