#rheabio

RHEA TERESHKIN

TWENTY-FIVE ❈ HUMAN THE ROYAL COURT | COUNTESS

The idea of being extraordinary has always been just out of reach for her – it is a reflection in the water that wavers just as she grows close, threatening to dispel completely. It is less substantial than a memory, for she has never known what extraordinary tastes like; how it might sit and taste upon the tip of one’s tongue. Would she be able to savor it like something delicate and sweet? Or would it coat her tongue completely, until she knew nothing but its everlasting flavor? But she would never know – it was a fact that her parents did not mind telling her. They told her it so often, so very often, that it was the first thought that greeted her before the light of the morning sun and bid her good night as she closed her eyes to the light of the moon. Little Rhea was nothing that could be mistaken as exceptional, astounding, or a creature of phenomena. She was a rose in a garden that teemed with an abundance of rose bushes. She was a daisy in a meadow full of the bright, yellow flowers. Though her parents tried to school her, oh how they tried. They bought the best tutors that Ravka had to offer, tried to teach her how to make her voice as tempting as a siren’s, or perhaps teach her how to move the way the Suli women do – so lithely, so gracefully as if every step is an unfinished dance. They tried to mold her into something with potential, but there came a time where they lay their chiseling tools aside and had no choice but to stare at the unfinished sculpture of disenchantment that was their plain daughter.

Little did they know that every slight was a cut that she picked at until it became a scar. Every curl of the lip, bat of the eye, and contemptuous brow was received with little more than a quiet duck of her head. But they did not see how her fists clenched so tight into her palms that she had no choice but to wipe away the spots of blood so blithely, so deftly. Although her parents did not have many teachings to offer her – for no teachings could be found between the words that taught her a lesson she knew all too well; she was a disappointment – she was more than able to teach herself the worth of one’s own ambition. It began with the multiplicity of tutors that lay at her disposal. She spent hours in her room, holed up with nothing but the candlelight and the company of books as the moon hung high in the sky. Her lessons were tedious and by no means easy – she scrabbled with those words like an impish thief of a child, trying to glean some coin from a man who had a knife in his pocket. Which is to say, the words did not lay themselves before her as easily as they did for others, but eventually she began to coax them into submission. Then there were the lessons of her song – and oh how she dreaded them. But she began to coax value out of those as well, for is not the different languages and accents new melodies to the same song? Eventually she learned how to move like a lady – not quite like a dancer, but it was enough to entice some suitors to her parlor door.

She was never going to be worthy of the opinion of her parents, but she was worthy enough for herself. Though she was still a rose in a garden that was lush with them – she would at least rest easy knowing that her thorns were the sharpest. So, she thought, might as well make sure they are sharp enough to draw blood. And she did, making her parents bleed the gold that they had accumulated over the years, hoarding it like dragons that knew not the size of their cavern and the proportions of their hoard. Oh, how she longed to see them smothered in it, suffocated by their own greed. They knew not how fixedly she would listen as traders and mercenaries passed through the doors of their great house, of how she soon became a more cunning trader than her father could hope to be. He knew the power of money, but he did not know the power of loyalty. All it took was a couple of words to her favorite servant boy, who shared the bed of one of her father’s partners when his wife was away. He lowered his prices so quickly, so drastically, that one might have thought a demon itself had appeared to him and taken his money away. How astounded her parents had been when fortune had fallen upon their house, as if the god of trade had offered them a special blessing. But the only god that could be found was their disenchanted daughter, who they hid in the corner room.

Imagine the wrath that this god laid upon them once her name was no longer tied to theirs. Useless, they had hissed at her as she sat at the table – head bowed with the weight of their disappointment, as plain as the dirt we step upon and as stupid as it too. So she showed them just how plain and stupid she could be, tearing from them all the gold and riches that they had once lavished in. The sympathies of her fellow courtiers became as invaluable to her as the coins which she had stolen, her tears and grievings at the loss of her parents a mask that hid the defiant smile which she longed to wear. They had taught her lessons of pain and despair, but even in their deaths they did not realize the weapons they had handed her. For, who could expect small, useless, disenchanted Rhea to truly be worth something other than being a lamb that ought to be slaughtered? Ah, if only they could have seen the lioness that lay beneath the softness of the white wool, the teeth that were hidden by a gentle, quiet mouth. It is a particular sort of pain, an ache that stains the soul, that truly shapes the likes of gods and goddesses. Pain is the only language they know, and it is the most familiar on her tongue. She greets it like an intimate friend. Why does one suppose that the gods demand brutal payment in the form of blood? Blood alone unbinds divinity.

CONNECTIONS

FARID TEREHSKIN: There are worse wolves that lambs like she could be wed to. Her parents had been won by the size of his fortune, where she was not able to be won by him at all. She supposes that in their years of marriage, if it could be called even that, they have come to an implicit understanding -- for, such is the way of lions and wolves. Bite and scratch and growl though they might, they are both predators and in that one commonality a certain amount of respect is understood. Although in the court’s eye, she defers to him like a zealot at his altar, there is to be no mistaking that she is as much as a creature to be deified as he. His first mistake was believing that the girl that was offered to him could be tamed, his second was believing that Ravka could worship more than one god. His third, and likely most damning mistake, was believing that their marriage was a game, with Ravka as their chessboard. Stupid man, thinking that he was a contender to begin with. 

VASILY BARANOV: She had taught herself to never let anyone, other than her own reflection, see her flinch. Unfortunately, such self-made promises are rather difficult to keep in mind when swept away by the drunken fervor that one’s first fling often entails. She had allowed herself a moment, a singular night, to indulge in something other than her iron will. It had been quite a safe bet too, considering that there was supposed to be not one, but two oceans between them. One more nefarious than the other. But since she has no choice but to deal with his persistent presence in the court, she supposed that she might as well make the best of it and practice her hand at the much-revered art of blackmail. The court has begun to become a rather exciting place, so why not thrown in her own dice too? 

LUKA MRAVINSKY: She has seen the fealty with which the one pyro has served the Crown Prince, how she beckons at his every call -- ready to spill blood like a drunkard spilling wine when the situation demands it. Rhea wants that and more, she wants a soldier so indebted and taken by her that all she had to do was wish it and it be granted. All the courtiers have someone in their pocket, Grisha and human alike, so she is beginning to feel rather desperate -- as if everyone wears armor but her. It is not with malice she hunts him, but with a rather desperate desire for her own protection. She can see the tenderness of his soul, it is one that she hopes to foster one day in herself, but if he will not respond to the call of a woman who is worn, then she will have no option but to force him to.