royalunderachiever | may i present lord and lady ivashkov

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ai,
sydney

may i present lord and lady ivashkov

The deal for protection mandated that he and Sydney stay at Court and while Adrian was willing to do anything to keep her out of the clutches of the Alchemists, he didn't think they knew about the Nexus. Nobody knew about the Nexus except he and Sydney, it seemed, so it seemed like a safe enough place to hide out for the duration.

Oh, sure, they'd show up at Court just often enough to prove they were there; Adrian didn't put it past the Alchemists to call Lissa a liar and tell her to present them on command. He wasn't going to jeopardize that, not when he knew how much Lissa gave up in order to grant them both Sanctuary.

But he did want to enjoy his marriage and he didn't think he'd be able to do that while having his mother and everyone else breathing down their necks at Court. So the Nexus it was because once he got tired of being in bed for days on end, he wanted the freedom to go anywhere he wanted and he just couldn't get that anywhere else.

Sydney was still asleep so he poked gently at her shoulder. "Mrs. Ivashkov? Wake up. I think we need to change accommodations and go to the special place."

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The only response was a groan and a mumbled plea for five more minutes as Sydney pulled the pillow over her head. She managed one discernible word.

"Hyphenated."

"Nope. Lady Ivashkov," Adrian said, loving the way she sounded so annoyed when he called her that. He would keep calling her that forever because he would never, ever get used to the fact that she'd agreed to be his wife. He wasn't taking it for granted.

"Come on, let's go have an adventure."

Sydney peered out at him with a single eye from beneath the pillow - the better to hid the ridiculous smile on her face. Lady Ivashkov. She knew, logically, that with time it would just be her name and she would be used to it. That time hadn't come yet.

At his words, though, she shifted the pillow again to look at him more directly. "Didn't we just finish having an adventure?"

"We did, but I'm not going to be stuck in Court for the next thousand years while we wait on the Alchemists to give up on you," Adrian said. "So I think we should go back to the Nexus and stay there. We can at least move around there and not get bored to death."

A shiver passed over her, still not over the whole mess they'd stirred up when they'd returned from Vegas, the unexpected reactions from Lissa at the top of that list. "We can't just run away, Adrian."

The words were empty ones she felt she needed to say, but the idea of getting away from this and just finding some time to heal without being chased out of fear for Adrian's life, for her sanity, was so tempting. She just couldn't up and agree to it, not without some sort of token protest anyway.

"We're not running away. We can go back and forth," Adrian reminded her. "And I'm going to be less likely to break Lissa's rules if I've got a place I know I can run away to from time to time than if I try to stay here and endure being stuck in the same place for the rest of my life."

"Now that we know we can," Sydney said softly, her head still pretty much under the pillow. "Come back, I mean, and check. See what's happening. With Jill. With...everything."

And in that moment, that word, everything seemed so huge and insurmountable, Sydney lapsed into silence. Blindly, she reached out with her left hand, the ring winking against the light as her fingers searched for his. As if she was afraid he wouldn't be there; that she was still back in the facility. That she was alone.

"You know, I think Aunt Tatiana might have been okay with this," Adrian said, touching the ruby and diamond lightly. "She only ever wanted me to be happy. I think she could have accepted a human into her family for that. And, you know, a whole bunch of dhampir great nieces and nephews."

The warmth of Adrian's fingers on hers settled her, grounded her, and reminded her that he was really there, that she was really out of that nightmare.

It was a dangerous topic, she knew, but one she'd decided to pounce on since he'd opened the door. "Do you still hear her?"

"Sometimes," Adrian admitted. "But it's not really her. The things she says...they're not things that Aunt Tatiana would ever say to me. She wouldn't hurt me like that."

Some of the tension left her shoulders when he said that. If Adrian could appreciate that, could see that, he knew that it wasn't really his great aunt speaking to him, then they were in a good shape.

Then something else he said clicked in her head and she finally sat up and abandoned the pillow over her head. She hadn't had coffee yet, so she wasn't firing on all her logic, but the word had rattled around in her mind and came back to her now. "Wait. Did you say dhampirs a minute ago?"

"Well, yeah. We're going to have a whole bunch of them," Adrian said, grinning at her. "Not that I'm looking to do that right now, or anything, but we're definitely going to have kids."

"Good," Sydney replied, though whether that was in reaction to having kids someday or the confirmation that it wouldn't be happening soon wasn't clear. She couldn't think about that now, not when the idea of being married hadn't really settled into her mind yet. So much had happened in so short a time, her normally ordered and logical brain was having trouble processing it all. That alone made her uneasy. Maybe time away, in a truly safe environment, was just what she needed.

"All right. You're right. We should go back to the hotel."

"See? I have excellent ideas," Adrian said. He was glad Sydney was coming around to his thoughts on it because really, the Nexus was even safer than Court.

"Alchemists wouldn't even believe the hotel existed, so I think we're good."

Sydney brought up her left hand and placed it on his cheek so the cool of the metal touched his skin. "You certainly have some off the wall ideas," she agreed, then moved in closer to kiss him. "Can we have a day or two? Just a little bit of time where we don't talk about anything about Court, or the Alchemists, or any of it?"

She needed that, she knew, more than she needed to work through the problems they faced. She needed to just...be. And to just be with Adrian. If only for a little while.

"We'll call it a honeymoon," Adrian agreed. He would be more than happy to pretend nothing and no one in the world existed except Sydney. It had been too long since he'd had uninterrupted time with her and he'd never had the luxury of being able to be open about being with her.

He cupped her cheek and kissed her, slow and unhurried.

"Honeymoon," Sydney said when they came up for air. "It still feels a little unreal to me, but I like the sound of that part. Very much."

She laced her hand with his, gave it a squeeze. "Do you need to find a feeder before we go?"

"Yeah, probably, since I'm not going to ask you to do that for me," Adrian said. Not when she'd been in that Alchemist prison for so long. In the hotel, he had to, but he didn't want to make her do that if he didn't have to.

Honestly, she didn't know how she felt about that, but for now, she wasn't going to comment on it. Not until she had her head on straight again and could think without the bait-and-switch with her true feelings she'd had to do while in re-education. Even with that logic, there was a very big part of her that didn't want Adrian getting blood from anyone but her.

"When do you want to go?"

"Whenever," Adrian said. "It's up to you. I'll go ahead and get dressed so I can go see the feeder and then I'll be back?"

He waited a moment and brushed her hair back off her cheek. "You're safe here, Sydney. I won't be gone long."

Sydney took his hand and held it to her cheek for a moment. "I'll take a shower while you're gone and then we can go. I think it's going to take me a long time to get used to being able to take a long, hot shower whenever I want to. That was the worst part of those first months," she said absently. "The cold."

"Well, you're not going to run out of hot water here," Adrian promised. "Court has a lot of Moroi who are very, very picky about their showers."

And a lot of Moroi who did water magic if they were pissed off. He made quick work of going to the feeder and coming back, cheeks pink and feeling a lot better since he fed.

Sydney was standing on the balcony, looking up at the stars overhead and mentally charting the constellations. Just the simple act of tracing over the invisible lines connecting one star from another was enough to settle her after so long underground. She was safe. She wasn't going back.

She couldn't go back.

Adrian snuck up behind her and slid his arms around her waist. "What are you thinking about, gorgeous?"

Sydney still looked a little tired and worn from her ordeal in re-education but Adrian could see that a few more weeks with good food and plenty of rest would have her back up to par in no time.

"Just that I missed seeing the stars," Sydney said quietly, stepping back to get closer to him. Her eyes closed and she reveled in the warmth of his chest against her back, his arms around her in a semi-cocoon. "And trying not to be afraid that they'll send me back to the Alchemists."

She said "they" rather than "Lissa" because while she knew the Queen, and she was good friends with Adrian, Lissa's advisors would be telling her to do just that, marriage or no marriage.

"They won't. Besides, we have an escape plan already laid out if they do," Adrian said. He was confident that they could hide in the Nexus indefinitely.

"I hope you're right," Sydney responded and looked up at him. "I'll face it if it happens. I think I know I can face anything now; I would just really like for that not to happen."

"It won't. They have to go through me," Adrian said firmly. Maybe Spirit wasn't as impressive as fire or anything but at least he had something he could use to protect Sydney. And Adrian was willing to do anything he could to protect her short of turning Strigoi. "Do you want to get a Guardian assigned to us? We could do that."

Sydney shook her head at once. Even though Adrian was confident, Sydney had seen the looks their announcement had generated. However accepting their friends were, most of the people in that room had been shocked that Adrian had fallen in love with, and married, a human. "Let's see if we think we'll need one first. We never had a problem at the hotel before, there's no need to think we should now."

"I think we can handle it," Adrian said. "Between my Spirit and your magic, we should be able to keep ourselves safe. Besides, Bella's in the hotel and she's not going to let a regular strigoi get past her and hurt someone."

"She'd probably be pretty effective against an Alchemist, too, if we tell her what to look for," Sydney commented, nodding her agreement at the semi-scary vampire. "I mean, she's really nice, but she's got her share of scary, too. Freaks me out a little."

"Bella wouldn't harm a fly," Adrian said, completely unconcerned. "But I think that's just because she likes us. I guess if she didn't like us, she'd probably rip us from limb to limb because that seems like a total Bella move."

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may i present lord and lady ivashkov

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