~ Six ~
When the snowy ground shimmered with such shine that she could see the reflection of her pink cheeks in it, she loved him. Yes, yes, yes, she had said it in her dreams through the night; yes it is the Lithuanian, the protector. It was in the sweetness of his touch. It was in his promise to carry her, bride-style, all the way back to the hellish Soviet Mansion when she froze and sickened, which she did. At least hell would thaw her from her icy coffin.
Natalia that night found that being accustomed to the Siberian cold was not something to take for granted. The proximity she shared with Toris melted her, the numbness dripping and slithering from her like a stream. When the winds picked up and the snow fell in silvery buckets, the Belorussian felt it: the deathly white air eating away at her warm pink skin. Her fever manifested her soul: icy skin and a beautiful, frigid face like a stinging ice sculpture, and a warm body inside. The chills were only from the wind. Inside, she was warm.
Toris was shivering though, throughout her hot sweats. The coldness in his bones was out of fear as he watched her cough and the blood drip from those tender lips. In the pits of silence between her hacking fits, Toris fidgeted nervously, the crystals sealing the valves in his heart and he was positive the blood under his pinkish skin was fading into midnight blue.
That was when he knew he had no choice but one.
By the time night was settling, her knees were folded over one of Toris's arms and her back rested on the other. The footprints he made, the Lithuanian noticed, were barely deeper with the slight addition to his mass. He was carrying her, bride-style. But he was carrying her down, like the dead descending to the inferno, where her temperature would rage and her fever would ignite her mind in flames.
They reached the mansion just when Toris was absolutely positive that he only felt the silent heartbeat of death ringing against his skin from the angel he carried. The door was unlocked. Inside it was no warmer and there was only more darkness.
Toris brought the sleeping figure, whom he was careful to leave intact, down onto the antique sofa and removed his arms from beneath her only when the patterned flowers had complete grasp of her. Even the sickness that emanated from Natalia was beautiful to him. He covered her with a blanket and, though she laid dying before him in a heap of contagious pathogens, he grew so passionate for her even in that instant that he leant down and kissed her with a brush of his freezing lips. Perhaps it was in the half-belief, half-wish idea that the true-love's kiss would wake the poisoned princess; instead, he tasted only death. He choked on the flavor that was not his love's and on his tears, all the while running upstairs to fetch his brother for help.
He shook awake Eduard in a fury that knew no bounds. "She's…!" The young Estonian heard the words and rolled out of his bed into the sobs of his elder brother. "Natalia's dying! You must know something we can do for her-!"
Downstairs, the younger man's glasses glimmered as he took her pulse, listened to her breaths, and shook his head. Somewhere, a lone flute played a grieving pavane.
Sorry for the month-long wait. I was the lead in a musical that is ~thankfully!~ over now.
Please keep reading…remember the story's not over yet!
Also, just an author's note: A pavane is a slow, waltzing piece of music. I'm referring here to Ravel's Pavane for a Dead Princess. Listen to it, it's beautiful. Oh and being a flautist myself means that I have to sneak that in somewhere