Two hours later, Arnica sat on the edge of the bed in the main, second floor bedroom of Volkov’s rowhouse in her corset and underwear. It was cold and she tensed her shoulders and waited for Volkov to unbutton his shirt and wondered if she should have even bothered to ask him to. He made it seem like an ordeal, but he had undone hers and it seemed only fair, and it was hard to kiss him when bits of flannel stuck to her lips, but when he pulled his shirt of and stepped out of his pants, she realized perhaps why it did seem like ordeal. And then she just felt bad.
It was a thought that would only surface briefly in that moment, for in another minute, he would be back on top of her, and he was handsome and muscled and good so she wouldn’t think about what she thought in that moment again until much later that night, but for a fleeting half of a minute, she realized that everything she knew about the man, about his betrayal, about Fassen, or at least about his return to Violl, Maathen’s mercy, wasn’t true. Because if it were true, if he had offered his aid to Fassen, if he had returned to Violl as a prisoner treated well and humanely under the care of his brother, he wouldn’t look like that. He wouldn’t have been covered from the base of his neck to the top of his feet with scar tissue.
Sure, some of it could have been from war, and likely was. But not all of it. She knew lash marks and she knew what burns looked like and she knew how flesh healed in thin fragile patches over little squares where precise little knives had cut it away long before. War didn’t leave men covered in little perfect squares. Squares came from intention. And so did the number 9 branded into the center of his chest, deeper and uglier than the traitor’s mark on his arm, and the odd, sunken skin around his neck and wrists and ankles. They were not battle scars and after she realized what it all meant, she realized he was still standing there, and she was still cold.
Maathen's letter had been an apology.
"You want me to put it back on? Too much?"
He sounded bitter, but not at her, and a bit amused. She felt bad.
"I'm not fuckin pretty anymore, am I? Unified Imperial fuckin General and all that glorious shit."
"It's a lot. But that might still be a bit of an overstatement."
She spoke flatly and was becoming annoyed. It was childish. She knew who he was when she kissed him. It wasn't much of a surprise in of itself. It was only the signified that came as a surprise. Though, she supposed it only ever was. If she had been crueller, she would have asked to see his cock first just to spite his self-important martyrdom that he couched as self-loathing.
"I still want you to fuck me. And I'm extremely cold sitting here."
"Alright, good."
He nodded and stood over her and it couldn’t have been that bad for him because it wasn’t as if he looked any less hard than he had a minute ago and so she put it out of her mind because in the dimness of the room, none of it was really that visible anyway and because he was still better looking and in better shape than most of the guardsmen in Violl.
Perhaps he really should have been king, self-importance, martyrdom, and all.
Not that it mattered. None of it really mattered. Only Dianthus Osten ever mattered.
"Hey, Arnica?"
He asked her some point later that night, some point very late, when it wasn't really night at all, but morning.
"You ever heard of Farrah Cordair?"
She remembered nodding.
She spent the next month in Misk. Monterro hired her as an administrative aide. He didn't try to fuck her. She could imagine why.