#grishaverse nikolai | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

heliads · 3 months

Note

because I'm in the mood for Pain could i request a nikolai fanfic with a grisha reader. they were childhood friends, but then one day reader was captured by fjerda and after they find the cure for parem they come back to ravka and don't think they're good enough for nikolai because they were too weak to resist the drug. i hope you're having a lovely day!

'only in my dreams ' - nikolai lantsov

masterlist

There’s an old saying, one that’s been tossed around by generations of practitioners of the Small Science and otkazat’sya alike, one that you’ve heard since you were small and keep hearing as you get older. There’s no good place to be a Grisha. It’s been used as a weapon and an assurance at times, a claim that you don’t belong and a reminder that life doesn’t really get better, so you might as well enjoy who you are wherever you are.

Right now, though, it just feels all too real. When you were a child growing up in the middle of nowhere in the Ravkan countryside, no one trusted a Grisha. When you were brought to Os Alta to train in the Little Palace, the glimmering city didn’t feel like a home either, just a place where you would be brought up to fight in someone else’s wars. You could go anywhere you want, but it would never quite be enough. You find your home in people you trust, but no place will ever want a witch.

And, rotting in a Fjerdan cell, you think it’s especially true now. You pity the Grisha who were born in Fjerda, and wonder how they would have managed to grow up in a country whose own army was dedicated to the cause of hunting them down. It wasn’t all that great to grow up empowered in Ravka, either, but at least there was somewhere for you to go once you were discovered, and that was the Little Palace. In Fjerda, the only place that newly discovered Grisha go is the grave.

That, or the cells, and right now you’re wishing that you were six feet under instead of here right now. Other than wanting them dead, the Fjerdan government seems fascinated by just how Grisha work. They’ve managed to get their hands on jurda parem, and you’re a part of their latest batch of test subjects.

You last received the drug a few days ago, and already the debilitating ache of withdrawal is starting to press against your bones, tearing against your sinews and skin until all you can think of is when you last had it and where you could get some more. The Fjerdan scientists are single-minded in their approach to treating Grisha with parem; exact doses are carefully measured out and only delivered in the precise windows of time that they desire. Once medicated, the captive Grisha will have their hands unchained for slim opportunities to practice their gift, most likely to build or destroy or torture other captives as directed by the Fjerdan guards.

Eventually, the parem will wear off, and then you’ll be back to where you are right now: curled into a corner of your freezing cell, desperate for warmth or parem or anything more than this heavy, never-ending horror.

You used to be more than this, you know. You used to be a proper Grisha, one who could never imagine themselves as you are now, exhausted and starving and addicted to a drug no one even knew existed until just a short time ago. You had been brought to Os Alta when you were quite young, so for the most part, the Little Palace was the only life you had ever really known.

And what a life it had been; your mind drained by the constant tests of parem, you slip into a dreamy half-sleep, letting the memories cloud your consciousness so you don’t have to think about whatever horrors await you.

Os Alta had been beautiful. Ravka has been a struggling country for quite some time, and will likely go on eking out its days one by one for quite some time, but the royal family spared no expense on its capital city. Even the Little Palace, the smaller and humbler variant of the Grand Palace, was intricate and masterful, a testament to the artistic prowess of the Ravkan people when its creators went long enough without hunger pangs to focus on their craft.

You can almost imagine you’re there if you close your eyes. The sensations come back to you as if in a dream: the rustle of your kefta as you walk, the smooth edges of the cobblestones where they’d been worn down by hundreds of feet, the sharp voices of your tutors, the thrill in your veins as you used your powers. You can still remember when it had been a joyous thing to use your powers uncorrupted by parem. Now, every tug to the making at the heart of the world feels like a betrayal of your own people, a sick and terrible thing that should not be practiced by any living thing.

You turn your mind away from that harsh reality, opting instead to remember the good days, the golden memories when the worst thing you could imagine was doing badly in one of Botkin’s training sessions. Since you’d been at the Little Palace since you were small, you had plenty of friends across the branches of the Small Science, plus one extra boy whose eyes used to shine like sunlight off of the True Sea. He wasn’t a Grisha though. He was–

He was a prince.

Nikolai Lantsov wasn’t supposed to visit the Little Palace. Truth be told, he wasn’t supposed to leave the Grand Palace at all except when instructed by the king and queen or one of his tutors. However, the young prince didn’t seem to care for rules, and rare was the day when he wasn’t sneaking off to pass days by his own volition. More often than not, his errant path brought Nikolai to you.

The two of you had been friends for years. Never mind the fact that a friendship between a Grisha and a prince would be strictly forbidden, no one ever caught on and the two of you were quite obliged to keep it that way. Nikolai was brilliant in mind and spirit. When you think about the happiest you’d ever been, the days you wished could stretch on forever, it’s the time you spent with Nikolai that was the best of all. Sometimes, you snuck him an extra kefta and the two of you would explore the Little Palace, or you’d run around the countryside surrounding Os Alta. You’d swap stories and little trinkets or gifts, and you’d smile like everything was alright, because when you were with Nikolai, it was.

Then he got older, and you did too. Nikolai stopped being able to visit you as often. You grew through the ranks of the Grisha, and were sent on missions with increasing frequency. Sometimes, you’d be away from Os Alta for months at a time, and only come back to find out that Nikolai had just left on a similar errand. Your paths started diverging, and even though every time you saw him, it was like the days hadn’t passed at all, both of you had growing up to do, and unfortunately, that didn’t involve each other.

You still held out hope that maybe he would become king and find a way to loop you back into his busy days. Just recently, he had returned from his years at school (and, as the rumor has it, at sea), and you had hoped that maybe you’d be able to spend more time together. All you had was one more mission, then you’d be back in Ravka for many months. Surely you could use that time.

The Fates didn’t seem keen on that happy of an ending for you, however. Your mission went awry. Fjerdans intercepted your group. You distracted the enemy soldiers long enough for the rest of your party to get away, but you were captured and brought back to Fjerda. You had assumed you’d be killed, but instead, you were sent to their experimental division and given your first dose of parem.

So the angels fall. Now, the idea that you could be remotely close to a prince’s best friend is laughable. If you could see him now, you have no doubt that he would still be the same golden, glorious boy he had always been, now imbued with the confidence of years wearing the crown. By contrast, you are huddled in a cell, your powers harshly amplified by the corrupting influence of jurda parem.

No, Nikolai Lantsov certainly wouldn’t want you now. The only way you can have him still is in your dreams, those beautiful fragments of imagination in which both of you are still young and blameless. He hasn’t fled Os Alta for a false name and a life at sea. You haven’t been captured and forced to undergo cruel tests. Both of you are happy and whole, and nothing bad has ever happened to either of you. What a dream indeed.

A dream, but dreams are all you have. The dream of being back with Nikolai is a good one. So, too, is the dream that someone will come to take you out of this place. You’ve had this one many times before, and it slips over you like sleep. It would happen quickly, the break-out. The Fjerdan guards would shout in surprise, then be quickly silenced. You’d hear the rattle of fast footsteps, and the door to your cell would fly open. All doors would be open, and all Grisha would live. You’d run far away, to a place that would finally want you again. All would be well.

You’re comfortable with it, not bothering to open your eyes lest you lose track of the dream. Only– maybe the parem is still lingering in your system, because you swear the faux sounds of fighters are louder than they usually are in the dreams. It’s not real, but the shouts do seem real, don’t they?

It’s not real. After all, parem has a way of messing with your mind. Many times during your captivity, you’ve thought you’d seen someone from home only to realize differently during the cloudiness of withdrawal. This is the same as that.

However, when the door to your cell clangs open, you feel the reverberations through your skin and bones, something that never happens when the Fjerdans come to get you. Your eyelids fly open and you scramble back against the wall, watching with terrified eyes as soldiers hurry to you. One’s in Ravkan fatigues, but the other is a Healer in a red kefta.

“You’re not real,” you grit out, teeth pressed together.

She shakes her head sympathetically. “I am, my friend. We’ve broken you out at last. Here, I have the cure.”

She holds out a syringe pre-loaded with some sort of substance. You snap back when you see it, too familiar with Fjerdan tricks of trying to inject you with different medicines. “Don’t you dare get that near me. I know what you do.”

The Healer jerks her chin towards you. “Hold her,” she says to the soldier.

You scream, a high, drawn-out sound, and do your best to fight, but your captivity has left you frail, and he’s able to subdue you after minor effort. The Healer pushes the needle into your veins, and you wait for something terrible to happen, another grievous experiment to begin in your body, but the strangest thing happens: you feel better.

You stare up at the Healer. Your mind feels clearer than it has in days, and, impossibly, you can feel your strength returning. “What is that?”

“A cure to jurda parem,” the Healer tells you. “Sincerest apologies that it’s taken this long to get to you.”

You’re guided out into the corridor, where you join the former occupants of the surrounding cells. All of you regard your rescuers and each other with the same incredulity and faint excitement. Is this really it? Are you finally out?

The ride back to Ravka should be long, but it feels as if it’s over in the blink of an eye. Several times, the rescue party stops at safe houses along the way, giving all of you opportunities to wash up, get new, warm clothes, and eat and drink to fix the gnaw of hunger that clings to all of you. By the time the gates of Os Alta swing wide to admit you, you’re almost feeling normal again.

Almost.

The torment of your time in the Fjerdan cells will stick with you forever, and the awful memories of what it had been like to be under the influence of jurda parem. However, the Healer’s cure worked well. When you try to use your abilities, they work the same as they had before the awful drug was first administered to you. By all accounts, you’re back to normal, even if your mind doesn’t entirely feel that way.

The driver calls to your group that you’ll be arriving outside the Little Palace shortly. “King Nikolai will be there to greet you,” he announces over his shoulder.

Excited whispers surround this, and you can’t help but listen in intently. “Nikolai Lantsov will be there?” One girl giggles by your side.

Another smiles in encouragement. “They say he’s been observing each coach that brings back rescued Grisha from Fjerda. It’s like he’s looking for someone. Maybe an old friend?”

You feel your stomach chill, the warm delight of rescue starting to cool off again. You have no doubt that you’re the one Nikolai is looking for; he had told you many times that you were his favorite Grisha by far, even when he was briefly engaged to the Sun Summoner for purely political reasons, but you find yourself hoping he doesn’t find you when you get out of your coach.

It’s not that you don’t want to see him, you do– the idea of being with Nikolai again had sustained you through your time in the Fjerdan cells better even than food or drink, but the fact remains that you are no longer as you were in your memories. You are no longer someone that a king would care to see. More so than just your weakened frame, your disorganized mind– you were captured on a mission, and you succumbed to jurda parem. In the back of your mind, a cruel voice whispers, pathetic. Nikolai will be spending his time with the finest diplomats, the noblest princes and princesses. He will not want a Grisha who could not hold out against a drug.

You gather your borrowed cloak about you, pulling the hood down over your face. It’s a size or two too large for you, by virtue of it belonging to someone else, and right now you’re glad for the extra fabric to disguise you. Nikolai is looking for a ghost, and probably out of necessity. He’ll likely be relieved that he won’t have to handle you like a difficult situation.

The coach pulls to a stop. Many rescued Grisha are crammed inside, so you blend into the crowd as you all pour out. Other Grisha from the Fjerdan prison are there already. It’s easy to slip amongst their ranks, keeping your head down. Nikolai is there in front of you as promised. His head is tilted up slightly, his gaze sweeping row after row of visitors. Maybe he isn’t even looking for you at all.

Then, his eyes catch yours briefly. Immediately, you look away, and start backing through the crowds again, trying to lose his gaze. When you feel it’s safe to look again, you breathe out quiet relief when you notice that he’s still scanning the crowd where you had been. Lost him. It’s a victory, but it’s an awful pain nonetheless.

Once everyone has arrived, Nikolai says a few kind words about how he’s glad everyone has returned home and how apologetic he is about the time it took to get you all back. No one seems to hold it against him, though, and how could you? He rescued you in the end, and managed to get you the cure to jurda parem to boot. It’s a fine success if you’ve ever seen one.

Nikolai releases you to the Little Palace to rest. Grisha stream past Nikolai, but he doesn’t stop to talk to any of them, looking again for someone. For you, maybe. You pull the hood down low again. If you move quickly, maybe he’ll miss you. You give him a wide berth, keeping your eyes low. You’ve almost made it to the edge of the courtyard when you feel a hand rest on your arm, carefully pulling you to a stop.

You don’t look up, not at first. You don’t have to look to know who it is. You’ve known Nikolai for years. You would know how he walks, the precise pattern of his boots against the cobblestones. You would know how the breath hitches in his throat when you’re reunited after too long a separation. You would know how his hand feels on you. You’ve dreamed of it a thousand times, but this isn’t a dream anymore, this is real.

“Excuse me, moi tsar,” you whisper. Maybe he doesn’t know it’s you yet. Maybe you can still escape with your dignity intact.

Any hope you had of avoiding recognition vanishes in an instant when Nikolai murmurs, “Y/N,” in such a desperate voice that you feel you could hardly move if you tried.

You stand still. A strong wind could blow you over, maybe. You watch the ground as Nikolai’s boots cross the ground to stand in front of you. His other hand rises to brush your hood back from your face. A gasp is ripped from his lungs as he takes in the sight of you.

“I look that bad, then, do I?” You can’t help but laugh quietly. It’s a bitter sound. You used to sound happier when you laughed with him, you think. A lot has changed.

Nikolai’s hand leaves your hood, drifting to your face. He raises your chin with a soft finger until you’re looking him in the eyes again. “Not to me,” he says, voice hardly louder than a whisper. “I’ve always thought you were beautiful.”

A quiet scoff escapes you. “I have been a prisoner of Fjerda for months, moi tsar. I doubt that was conducive to beauty.”

“You’d be surprised,” he tells you. Then, a bit more insistent, “You don’t need to refer to me with a title, Y/N. You didn’t when we were little.”

“I didn’t know better,” you say. It’s not quite true, and he knows it.

“Don’t say that,” Nikolai pleads. “We were friends, excellent friends. Now we’re older and you’re avoiding me. Why?”

You look away again. “Don’t ask me that,” you say with a laugh. You meant it to be a joke, but it comes out as a plea.

“I will,” he insists. “I have always been stubborn, you know that about me. Stubborn enough to search every single Fjerdan prison my spies could find when you went missing. Stubborn enough to stand here and wait in the cold until I could find you. And certainly stubborn enough to wait here with you until you tell me why I’m no longer good enough for you.”

This, at last, is enough to make your eyes fly to him. “That’s not true,” you insist hotly. “Quite the opposite, in fact. You’re a king and I’m a Grisha. And a Grisha that couldn’t even withstand jurda parem, to be specific. Saints, you win wars and I lost the first one that ever came to me. If there is anyone that has ever been insufficient, it would be me.”

The hand on your arm slips down to your fingers, and Nikolai squeezes once, twice. A heartbeat. A prayer. “You have never been insufficient to me,” he tells you. You make some sound of disagreement and he repeats it, insistent as ever. “No, you listen. You aren’t. Jurda parem is notorious for the pain it causes. You think you lost the war? The fact that you’re still alive in front of me tells me that you won it. Every day since you went missing, I woke up and went to bed terrified that you were dead and I would never know. I need you, sweetheart, and I need you to stop punishing yourself for something that wasn’t your fault.”

You stay quiet for a while, letting the words turn over in your mind, then, impulsively, you ask, “Sweetheart?”

He grins, easy as always. “It fits you. Don’t argue with me, I’ve had plenty of arguments prepared to convince you otherwise.”

You laugh, and this time, it’s real. “I wouldn’t dare, then. I just would have thought that you’d have plenty of princesses who would have won that nickname for real by now.”

Unable to stop yourself, you cast a glance towards his left hand. No ring. When you look back up at Nikolai, he’s beaming. “No queen for me, I’m afraid. I was waiting for mine to return from captivity.”

You roll your eyes. “Still haven’t given up on that, have you? I seem to remember you trying and failing to convince me to marry you since we were six.”

Nikolai grins, slipping your arm inside his so he can guide you back to the Little Palace. “I will never give up. Not until you say yes.”

You laugh again, shaking your head in mock disbelief. It’s been a while since you saw him. It’s been a while since he asked. If he were to do it again, you think you might have a different answer than when you were both so small.

Nikolai turns to look at you, his eyes shining. He’s always had a gift for knowing what’s on your mind, and judging by the light in his smile, you think he’s predicted your thoughts yet again. He’s got some time before he attempts another proposal. This time, though, he’ll have a better outcome than before.

grishaverse tag list: @rogueanschel, @deadreaderssociety, @cameronsails, @mxltifxnd0m, @story-scribbler, @retvenkos, @mayfieldss, @eclliipsed, @gods-fools-heroes, @bl606dy, @auggie2000, @baju69, @crazyhearttragedy, @aoi-targaryen, @budugu

all tags list: @wordsarelife

141 notes · View notes

heliads · 8 months

Note

can you make a nikolai lantsov x reader?? i've been thinking about one where reader was one of sturmhond's crew as a tidemaker and they were together for a long time, but when nikolai became king, the two separated because royalty had done too much harm to r family and she didn't want to become one of them (besides her being Grisha). maybe after RoW they finally talk and get back together??

yesss pirate!reader x nikolai my beloved

masterlist

If Nikolai Lantsov were to regret anything in his life, anything at all, it would be how he handled her. It’s not that he regrets her, he wants to make that clear. He couldn’t if he tried, and Nikolai has tried many times to get over her, to find some flaw out of an improbability of perfection so he might not feel as achingly heartbroken as he always does.

But when Nikolai lies awake at night, unable to sleep despite a gilded bedroom and dozens of lush pillows and luxurious blankets, the worries troubling his mind are not of a country to run, nor the endless cycles of politics constantly reinventing new problems to crush his world beneath his boot. No, he thinks of one woman. He thinks of you.

Before Nikolai was the latest Lantsov king, before he was a homeward bound prince, he was a boy, and a boy who wanted to run. A much younger Nikolai in body and spirit had signed onto a pirate ship the second his guards turned their backs. It was a terrible decision for a golden prince to make, but the best choice for the bastard who never wanted to see another silver spoon again unless he was stealing it.

When Nikolai was a young man, he determined that he would be the captain of a ship, and a captain always needs a crew he can depend on to carry him through thick and thin. Nikolai sailed to countless foreign shores, finding friends and enemies in oceans sapphire and stormy, cerulean and calm. He wore dashing waistcoats and ruined them with the blood of slashed throats. He blockaded and benefitted small towns with equal joy.

And, most importantly of all, Nikolai found his first mate. It is a difficult thing, of course, choosing someone who could be your successor. If he picked someone a little too captivating, he ran the risk that they could depose him in a mutiny. If he gave that spot to someone the crew hated, though, his leadership would be undermined all the same.

He was just starting to think it would be impossible to find the right sort of figure, and then this young woman he’d never met before had simply walked up and asked for it. Technically, it wasn’t such an easy meeting as that. She had actually stolen one of the rowboats off of his ship while it was tied to their ship in the harbor with her abilities as a Tidemaker, then used the water to ferry her over to him.

From anyone else, Sturmhond would consider that a punishable offense. However, the privateer in him was also a politician, and one used to fronts and facades at that. Nikolai looked at the woman in front of him and realized that she wasn’t looking to use him as an avenue for a coup to captainship. She’d done her research and figured out that he was the best captain to serve under, and was simply ensuring that she made a good impression.

There is nothing Nikolai can appreciate like a fine display of showmanship, so he’d accepted her acceptance of his non-offer and told her to move her belongings into the first mate’s cabin that night. The crew woke up to a new member, and they took to her as readily as Nikolai himself.

After that, it was easy. Nikolai skimmed over frothy waves and he had someone by his side, a proper companion. He has liked his crew heartily all this time, but Y/N– he likes Y/N even more. Saints, he loves her. It takes him a while to realize that, but he does. Once that knowledge is common to him, the fact that he could have felt anything else is nothing short of absurd.

He’d given her his name a long time ago. Part of it, at least. They’d been on night guard together one shadowy twilight and she’d begged him for some sort of name she could use. Sturmhond, although great for inspiring fear and leadership as he saw fit, wasn’t personal enough for a friend, and Captain was too formal. Nikolai had witnessed many years of his father forcing everyone to refer to him as the king and nothing more. Never will he force a title on anyone.

So he’d said Nik, she could call him Nik, and that was more than good enough. It feels like cheating, a little, to have her bypass his real name and go straight to the familiar nickname. If anyone could do it, though, it would be her. Captains aren’t supposed to have favorites among their crew, but this is Y/N, and he loves her, so she calls him Nik, and he– he lets it happen.

All this truth, this love, and he never told her who he was. Not by choice. How could he? Y/N hated the monarchy, and so did he. The elder Lantsovs did not treat Grisha kindly, only tolerating them in the confines of the Little Palace. There was nothing Nikolai could do to protect them, to protect her, half as well in Os Alta as he could as Sturmhond, so he kept it a secret.

You could call that selfishness. You would be correct in doing so. Nikolai did not tell Y/N he was a prince because he was terrified of how she would push him away. In the end, there was nothing he could do to avoid that. The Darkling called on his help in capturing Alina Starkov, and Nikolai revealed that last ace in his sleeve the night before he was to dock in Ravka and personally escort the Sun Saint and her friends back to Os Alta.

He will never forget how Y/N had looked at him when she finally learned what he was, not as long as he shall live. He had asked her to come to his office, to lock the door so no one could hear. Y/N has been host to a great many of his secrets, good and bad and terrible, so she thought she could handle just one more.

She was wrong. Nikolai stood before her, and said, “I am the son of the king.”

She’d laughed, actually, but that had dried up when she realized he wasn’t joking. “No. You can’t be serious. All this time we’ve been out here, and you haven’t told me? You would have told me.”

Her eyes were desperate, pleading. Y/N L/N is one of the finest pirates Nikolai ever had the pleasure of meeting. He’s seen her go into no-luck gunfights with a grin on her face, and now she looks like all of her luck has finally run out. How awful, that he would be the one to finally crush her spirit underfoot.

“I knew you wouldn’t like it,” he tries to explain.

Y/N shakes her head. “No. I don’t like it when Tolya borrows my knives to slice fruit. I don’t like it when we stay in small towns too long. Nik, it’s not that I don’t like it that you’re a royal. It’s that you’ve betrayed me. You know how the Lantsov kings have treated Grisha, how they’ve treated anyone who isn’t an elite.”

It occurs to Nikolai that this might be how he loses her, in truth. “Y/N, please. We can change everything. Why do you think I came out here in the first place? I want to help Ravka. I want to help my people. Just come with me. We can do it together.”

She waves her hand dismissively. “No. I don’t want to be one of them.”

Not like he is, at least. Nikolai is endlessly, ineffably them, but she doesn’t have to be. She’s safe from them. From him. “Y/N. I love you, and I want you with me. Please, come to Os Alta with me.”

She turns to him abruptly, eyes violent. “No. That’s final, Nik.”

Ah. So it ends. And so Nikolai had gone to bed alone, heart a bitter mess of hurt, and he had disembarked from his ship with Alina and Mal and the rest. He had taken them to Os Alta, he had reclaimed his position on the throne, and all the while, he knew that he would never want anything in the world half as strongly as he just wanted her.

It’s funny, isn’t it? Nikolai is a king now, and despite all his reach and power, the one thing he desires most will never be in his grasp again. She will always be the sea’s, and, as of late, that means she will never be Nikolai’s. Nikolai is chained to the crown; he will never leave it, he can never leave it. Y/N will be out there on the storm-tossed waves forever, as wild as the night he met her, and that will cause him grief until the day that he dies.

Nikolai grows up and it gets no better. He watches friends lose themselves to war and misery. He wears the crown upon his head, and then, surrounded by the clamoring voices of those who wanted him gone, he relinquishes it. Nikolai had tried to do his best while he was in office, but, walking back from the meeting with a strangely light feeling upon his head and shoulders where a great burden no longer rests, he wonders if it had ever been enough.

No one can ever be enough for Ravka. This he has known since he was a child. He had tried, though. The trying should at least get him somewhere. Nikolai passes blind laps around the Great Palace, attempting to remember every garden and room before he leaves it. He’ll have to pack his bags at some point, move out and find somewhere else to call a home after so many years in this one place.

Zoya has already offered for him to stay here, albeit in a different room. He’s a valuable advisor thanks to all his years on the throne, and he’s still as good a diplomat as ever. Nikolai will probably take her up on it; he wants to help Ravka, and this seems like the best way to do it.

About a week later, Zoya knocks on the door of his new rooms before letting herself inside when he invites her in. She’s taking to her new royal title very well, even if this seems to include her stealing his tea far more times than is strictly proper.

This time, though, she isn’t here to stop and talk. Instead, Zoya hovers hesitantly at his door, and says, “There’s someone here to see you.”

Nikolai arches a brow. “I didn’t realize relinquishing my crown meant I got to have the Dragon Queen herself here to announce my visitors. Will you do this every time?”

Zoya laughs sarcastically, but her voice is still stilted when she adds on, “Just this time. She says she knows you. She was on your crew. First mate.”

Nikolai swears his heart stops in his chest. This is– no, it couldn’t be. He told Zoya about Y/N a long time ago. She’d asked why he hadn’t been more invested in finding a suitor and he’d admitted that he was pushing it off for as long as possible, knowing he couldn’t love unless it was her.

He nods a little frantically. “Alright. Where is she?”

“Here,” says a voice behind Zoya, and then the queen of Ravka is disappearing back down the hall and Nikolai is alone in a room with someone else and– and it’s Y/N, Y/N after so long, and he doesn’t really know how to think straight, let alone say anything at all.

She pauses over the threshold before finally going inside and shutting the door behind you. “I suppose I should be glad you’re speechless. Shows you still care, at least.”

“Of course I do,” Nikolai chokes out. “But– you do too? You’re here.”

She inclines her head, taking a seat on the chair opposite him. “I came as soon as I heard that you would no longer be king. I thought it would be hard. To lose this one last thing from your family.”

Nikolai frowns. “You hate my family.”

“I don’t hate you,” she says simply, “and even if they treated you harshly, they were still your blood. That means more than any of us want to admit, I think.”

Nikolai sighs. “You’ve always been the wise one, Y/N.”

She smiles at that. “Isn’t that why you hired me, Nik?”

The nickname again. His heart contracts painfully in his chest. “I should have told you,” he blurts out. “I should have told you everything.”

“I knew a lot,” she replies, “Enough to love you. I’m glad for every moment. There would have been fewer if you had told me sooner.”

Nikolai grimaces at the truth in that. “So you’re alright with me being a Lantsov now?”

She furrows her brow. “I heard some whispers that you aren’t entirely a Lantsov at all.”

He can’t really argue with that. “Who am I, then?”

“You’re Nik,” she tells him, “My Nik. My captain. And yes, my king, even if you’ve given over the throne. I always kept track of what you were doing during your reign. I was always proud of you.”

A bright burst of pride flares in his chest. “What do you advise I do now, if my reign is over?”

She stands, extends a hand to him. “We could always go back to a good time. The sea only gets bigger.”

Nikolai looks up at her, and he thinks– this is what he’s missed. Nikolai makes a fine king, but he has always missed adventure. He’ll have that now. And, when they both get old and tired, they can come back here, and continue making policies now that they’ve lived the lives of both the rich and the outlaw. It sounds wonderful to Nikolai.

He takes her hand. “Shall we go, then?”

She smiles. Radiant. He loves her just as much as he did at the start. “I think we shall.”

all tags list: @wordsarelife

#nikolai lantsov #nikolai lantsov imagines #nikolai lantsov x reader #nikolai lantsov oneshot #grishaverse #grishaverse imagines #grishaverse x reader #grishaverse oneshot #shadow and bone #shadow and bone imagines #shadow and bone x reader #shadow and bone oneshot #grishaverse nikolai #grishaverse nikolai imagines #grishaverse nikolai oneshot

267 notes · View notes