Katerina is sold by her father to the highest bidder that will take her, and promptly shut up. In the corner of an umnamed forest they take her to, there is a lone tower, glowing white against the green of the trees.
"Go up," They say, and she does.
Her rooms are comfortable- painted duck egg blue, hung with famous portraits and landscapes.
"Ask us if you need anything," They say, and she understands she will not be leaving for a while.
She paints, pretty little miniatures from her tower at first, the brushstrokes sloppy and the paints smeared from where her hands shook. Crying will do you no use now, she tells herself firmly as she continues to paint miniatures of baby girls with olive skin and huge black eyes.
They burn. She burns the likeness of her daughter herself and refuses to cry while she does it. The lord whom she was sold to (after she defiled herself- sold to some English lord who had a thing for pretty young Bulgarian girls that were worth nothing back home) is the only thing keeping her alive, and she must practice how she should appear before him.
The servants come to her like clockwork, every morning before the sun rises and every evening after it sets. She only has to say something, any word, and whatever she wishes for will be placed in front of her. At first she wants expensive delicacies: a platter of sweetmeats she used to get each year on her birthday; a set of expensive oil paints; a new gown of crushed velvet that she barely touches she is so in awe of it; even amethysts and diamonds and sapphires. After a time, however, she finds herself aching for human company and asks only for the berries that used to go on her families' farm in Bulgaria.
I will go mad, she thinks after a week of no human company, and resorts to painting places where she wishes to be instead of this high tower she will never leave.
She walks amongst her own paintings in her mind; one moment she feels tiny grains of sand under her feet, her gown lifted just the slightest bit to expose her feet to the sea, which is cold enough to make her shiver and warm enough to make her laugh.
(There is a man. A man whose face she has worked so hard to forget, one who laughs at everything she says and one who looks at her as if she hangs the moon.)
Or maybe- a palace with an empty throne, a palace covered in dust that waits for Katerina Petrova to come and bring it to life.
Her hands stain pink and purple and green and red, and she runs her fingers over her own face and imagines throwing herself from the tower, until she lies broken on the stones below, young enough for all the smallfolk to claim- oh, such a tragedy, she died far too young- and her mother and father to cry and wish they'd never let her go.
"Bring me wine," She says on the second week, and drinks herself into oblivion.
I can't go on, she writes with shaky hands stained red with wine, I can't- I will not- and flings the letter from her window.
"Fly," She whispers into the cool night air, folding the letter into a bird like one of the stable hands told her to.
She will fly soon, she promises herself. If no one comes for me, I will fly.
x
On the third week, she is told one of the Lords is coming to meet her. She spends hours selecting a gown from the ones she has been provided with, finally choosing one of purple velvet with gold brocade.
She instructs the maids to pull her corset tighter, to push her breasts up higher- for a Lord is still only a man after all, and Katerina understands men.
Understands men well enough to smear wine on her lips and bite them to increase their fullness, to pinch her cheeks the slightest and smear kohl under her eyes to make them glitter, and to leave her hair unbound and perfumed to her waist.
"Hello," he says before he kisses her hand, and she tries to think of the correct greeting in English and finds herself fumbling, so only inclines her head and looks at him with a smirk.
He is slow to lift his lips from her knuckles, and when his eyes meet hers, she notes the darkness growing in them with a silent satisfaction.
"Hello," She echoes after he steps back (but not far enough to be proper, no, this man already craves her far too much for propriety).
"Bulgaria, right?" He says in her mother tongue, and she is transported to her homeland where she could speak freely and roam freely, in fields of wheatgrass or in the town centre.
"You are beautiful," He whispers to her after a few too many glasses of wine, as if it's some huge secret she is unaware of. She scrapes her nails gently over the soft skin of his face, and thanks him prettily.
"I like to paint," She admits when he asks, but refuses to show him her paintings.
He stays until the sky is awash with pale blue, and when he takes his leave of her, she wants to scream at him for leaving her- he can't, not when this is the first human contact she has had in nearly a month.
"Goodbye," my lord, she curtseys, dipping her head low to the floor and feeling the unfamiliar clink of diamonds inside the crevice of her breasts.
"Call me Elijah," He says, and then he is gone.
She sleeps in a simple white nightgown, soft cotton against her bare skin. More often than not, she cannot sleep, and all she does is pace around her round tower cell, her steps a careful- one, two as she does.
In her dreams, she dies, in a number of horrifying ways. She watches blood run from her throat in a river as she falls to the floor, like a tree that has been felled. She watches herself thrown from the tiny window of her tower, her pale neck at an odd angle to the rest of her body.
Death is not poetic, she thinks, and death is not pretty.
He comes to sit with her every evening, but she only becomes more and more restless. He asks her to sing one night, and she snaps at him that she can feel a cold coming on, and abruptly begins to cry.
"Whatever is the matter?" He asks, and she wishes she was not crying like a little child, for her tears are a powerful weapon and should be wielded properly.
"I have no one to talk to here, I am so incredibly lonely I feel I must die rather than continue like this," She spits at him from the floor of her chamber, and he comes to sit next to her. Katerina curls up against him as if she was the family cat, burying her face and smile in the soft, thick fabric of his sweater.
"You have me," and he sounds surprised, as if he is the only one she should ever want, and she thinks men, always giving themselves far too much importance.
"But you cannot be with me all the time," she strokes his face with soft fingers, and wonders if she is to be his mistress. She would not mind that. Mistresses can manipulate, and they can do anything they please.
"I shall look into it," he promises, and she brushes her lips against his in thanks. It's difficult, trying to make him fall in love with her, while she herself is doing her best not to fall in love with him.
She curls her fingers into his hair and brings his face close to hers- so close she can hear that he is not breathing (he is holding his breath at her proximity, how delightful).
"Thank you," she murmurs against his lips.
She was born to do this.
The man sent to keep her company is called Trevor, and he lives in awe of her and everything she does. She enjoys pushing him, exposing a little more of herself every day, little by little until he burns for her. She waits with flashing eyes until he can take it no more, and falls to his feet professing his absolute love for her…
(Elijah required a gentler touch than this one, and the man before was easier still. Katerina thinks she can take over all of the world with nothing but her face and sparkling wit.)
"Show me your paintings," Elijah asks again, and she replies in near perfect English, tossing back the length of her perfumed hair so the scent of roses catches in his nose.
They are beautiful, she knows, she is much improved since she began, and barely a day goes by now without her turning to her paints to paint a scene she pictures in her mind's eye. She paints her family farm, she paints the church, she paints the outside of her tower, she has even painted the meadows where she first fell in love, but she never again paints her daughter.
"Can you paint me something?" He asks, and she smiles and turns to her easel.
"I have a brother who enjoys painting," He adds, taking a seat next to her on the plush window seat.
His thigh brushes her own and she pauses, discarding her brush and turning to him. "Maybe I can meet this brother of yours someday," and she leans over and brushes her lips across his again, feather light.
"I am tired of waiting," He says, and kisses her.
It is not like the other fumbling kisses she has given- Elijah is firm yet gentle. He handles her as if she is a porcelain doll, and it is she who initiates the deepening of the kiss, running her tongue gently over his lips and climbing fully on top of him.
When they finish, she is blushing deeper than she ever has before, and his big hands are bunched in the silk of her gown, his forehead resting against hers. She exhales a ragged breath, torn like the letters she wrote in the first week of her captivity, and bites her already swollen bottom lip.
"I must confess I haven't been completely honest with you," she threads her fingers through his and nods encouragingly.
"My brother wants to kill you." It's a statement, it has fallen from his lips, but Kat cannot hear it. She finds herself pulling away from him, but his arms tighten around her and lock her in place.
"Listen to me- Katerina please- I have a plan- you have to trust me!"
"Of course I trust you," so simple, so sweet, he can't possibly know she is crossing her fingers behind her back.
"Get me out of here!" She shrieks to Trevor, once the terrible, awful truth about Lord Niklaus is revealed to her. "You have to! Please, help me!"
He kisses her, more feverent than Elijah and she holds onto him because he is her last hope.
She tries to ignore the fact that she feels like she's betraying Elijah, but she can't- not when Elijah has spent weeks dawdling, and she's just been informed by Trevor that Klaus is coming for her.
I cannot place my life in this man's hands, she thinks. I must deal with things myself.
The clock on the black fireplace in her room begins to tick very loudly. Katerina finds herself listening for the chime of the hour with strained hours, waiting for proof that she has indeed, survived another night.
Elijah comes to her the night before Klaus is due to come for her with a grim face that she takes to mean he understands that this night will be their last.
"I was waiting for you," She stands when he enters her chambers and walks towards him with large strides, pulling his face down to meet hers by his collar.
I do not blame him, she realises, although a wiser woman would.
Katerina has never had sex that was anything but passionate, and this time is no exception. She finds herself comparing Elijah to the one before, finds herself analysing every last hitch of breath, every gasp, every moan.
Even after he has rolled off her and is stroking her hair, she watches flames dance from beneath closed eyelids.
"You have ruined me," She whispers even though she knows it is a lie, that he is as much a monster as Klaus, wrapping herself in the bedsheets and sitting up on the bed. She hears the rustle of bedsheets as he sits up behind her and presses a kiss to her back, then her neck.
"My only option is to marry you then," Katerina feels her eyes fill with tears because she should be ecstatic, little ruined Kat who has just been proposed to by a lord.
A lord who will stand by and do nothing while his brother rips into her throat and drinks deep, and all because he is honourable.
"Marry me now," She twists to face him and cups his face in her hands, in a last resort to convince him she is worth saving. "Let's run away together, Elijah, and make a life for ourselves elsewhere."
It is only when he shakes his head that she feels the cold stone of disappointment slide into her stomach and realises she has made the right decision.
She steals away in the dead of night, when the moon is nothing but a glittering halo in the starry night sky. The woods seem to come alive- every rustle, every snap of twigs convinces Katerina that she is going to die.
"Katerina-" Trevor says, pulling her round to meet him and she knows instinctively that he will come no further with her.
"No," She gasps, clutching his hand tighter, and he disentangles himself from her and cups her face.
"You will be fine," He starts, and she forces herself to nod, breath coming out in helpless pants. "Find a cottage, and say I sent you. You will be safe." He drops a kiss on her forehead and she knows it should not him here, and that Elijah should be the one helping her escape.
As she hurries away from him into the darkness, she cannot help but think of Elijah, sitting in her tower, waiting for her.
They meet again in the Sahara Desert, undercover of night, and he finds her just as much of a monster as he is.
Katerina looks up at him with tired eyes that still sparkle, and flinches.
"You betrayed me," she says, and it is his turn to flinch, because she is telling the truth. He plucked up the courage to stand up to Klaus far too late and he has paid the price, in the last hundred years since she has seen him.
"I know," is all he can offer, sitting down in the cool sand beside her. "And I'm sorry."
She looks at him sadly, reaching out to place a hand in one of his own. "I loved you, and then I hated you, and now I'm tired of being alone, and more tired of running."
"Let me help you," he clings onto her hand like it is the only thing that could ever keep him anchored.
"Can I trust you?" She breathes, and he watches the pale glow of her skin in the moonlight with an odd feeling that he knows is love.
"Yes," He promises, clasping both of her hands in his, and kneels to the sand by her feet.
"Get up, you fool!" She laughs at him from where he stands, and they think that maybe, just maybe, there is a future for them after all.
A/N; Shoutout to LisaLevine for convincing me to do this.
Does anyone have any fairytale requests? I just want Katherine and Elijah to be happy :(((((