𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭 // 𝐧𝐢𝐤𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐢 𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐬𝐨𝐯

𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐥𝐯𝐞. 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐥

CHAPTER TWELVE

Control

     That night, Estelle snuck away to take a walk in the gardens by herself. The crescent moon illuminated enough, but sometimes, Estelle had to squint to see. She didn't dare use her powers for something as simple as seeing in the night.

Her thoughts couldn't help but wander. And what did they wander to?

Prince Nikolai Lantsov.

Of course. Who else?

They met in Ketterdam, while Nikolai was just beginning his studies at the University there. Estelle was trying to live inconspicuously after having run away from the most notorious Grisha in the world.

Somehow, they clicked.

Nikolai offered Estelle food and helped her get work while she tried to help him study for school. But it just wasn't enough for Nikolai. He needed to do more. He wanted to help people, instead of learning useless things he was sure he didn't need to know.

So for a few years, they separated. Estelle knew he went to find another purpose to his life, he had never elaborated what that meant. She couldn't live off of scraps on the street anymore.

A life on the seas called to her.

Being on the run was easier when you had a ship and a loyal crew. No one could find you. You could slip away in the night, and live on the sea with only a few stops once in a while.

Then, they found each other again. They made the same stop in the Southern Countries, and the moment Estelle saw him, she recognized the sketches he'd drawn of an alter-ego privateer. Rust-colored hair, muddy green eyes, that teal frock coat he adored.

Obviously, friendship between two captains on wanted ships couldn't be easy. Nikolai angered a lot of people and the former captain of the Izoćeici was trying to reclaim his ship.

They communicated with coded letters. A decoder only the two of them owned, they left secret messages everywhere they went, sure that the other would stop there for supplies soon.

Jobs came and went. Find a missing son. Break a blockade. Wherever the money came from, whether they did it together or alone, they always had a new story to tell.

And occasionally, they even met up. A day or two out of a year, their ships would dock at the same place at the same time and their crews would have drinks together. The crew aboard the Volkvolny were nervous about Estelle's crew at first, it was bad luck to have a woman aboard ship, but they soon learned that they weren't too different from each other. Runaways, people who get a high off the chase, peacekeepers, loyals.

One of these nights was the night Estelle drank a little too much with Nikolai and ended up sleeping with him.

They both agreed that it was a mistake, no matter how much it hurt Estelle to say. They were both drunk, not thinking properly. She hated that it happened that way, and not some way they'd remember for years to come.