Elizaveta thought they should have added some urgency to the ransom note. Now she rolled it around her mind. Like, "For every day you don't show up we'll cut off one of her fingers." Not that they would actually do it. But it felt appropriate; a rise in stakes.

The Queen was spacing out while repairing the sails. They gave her piles of ugly fabric and a single silver needle and thread to weave the ship's pieces back together.

The job was almost finished. For the last week and a half, everyone had committed themselves to the body-wrenching slave labor left in excess by Alfred's horrid cannon balls. The ship was slowly limping back to health between The Queen's tortured sewing and the rest of the crew's hammers and nails.

A bead of sweat slid along her face.

Even though it was 'just' sewing, the work was still hard. Sometimes the patches would be thick as a damned door mat and impossible to push the needle through. Each stitch became its own Herculean task, as if forcing that goddamn point through both layers of stiff fabric was like doing battle with a legion of deformed monsters.

It might as well have been. The poor woman expended the same amount of energy.

This was the last sail that needed fixing and each stitch forward was like trying to run a marathon with a concussion. It hadn't started out so badly. Each night, Elizaveta would return to bed looking just as weepy and exhausted as Gilbert, who was given one hammer and infinite nails and infinite splinters. And each night, he would reach out a cracked and battered hand half way across the floor to meet up with Elizaveta's cracked and battered hand.

That must have been the worst part of all this. Not only had that bastard Alfred pushed human life into the ocean with his violence, but he blew holes into everyone's speech and left nothing but wide and gaping silence.

The only thing Elizaveta could do with silence was fill it up with her nagging subconscious—that turned into her regular conscious.

Especially when she sat all alone, performing an activity as tedious as sewing.

She'd come out of her dungeon with holes worn into her bottom lip. They were put there form the impact of her teeth, that hit like asteroids crashing into earth.

There was the guilt. Elizaveta never wanted to be cruel. But then there were the small and infectious thoughts that should have come with more guilt than they actually did. They were thoughts that grew from the stem of her heart flower, that had practically grown past her lips in liveliness and glowed a brighter yellow than the sun.

But those thoughts did not come in emerald and light.

They came in snow and rubies and punched her in the stomach every damn time she saw them. And Elizaveta would—Oh sweet Jesus, would she try—to push them back into the soil around her heart. Because they weren't supposed to exist. But they just grew into their own plants that afflicted her dirt like an entire colony of weeds.

It was like putting out a fire with gasoline.

The more she tried to burn them alive or tear them up, those impure, un-wifely thoughts hit even harder like the business end of an infection.

The woman practically broke the needle.

And within that set of hours, she finished her work. And they put the sail back in without any joy or celebration. Because now they had to resume the normal work with about half a crew and any determination dropping straight into the bowels of Hell.

It was that night, after trudging all day through impossible fabric and her unkind brain that Elizaveta stood outside in the cold. Looking at the full moon and those tiny stars that framed its face the way Elizaveta's hair framed hers.

They were running further into winter and the woman could practically pull back her hair.

Gilbert stood next to her and set the edges of his fingernails touching gently to hers.

"I can't really sleep either."

Elizaveta's little palm ate up the calluses on the servant's knuckles.

They met halfway inside a stare.

"I would pass out if I could. But I think all this sewing keeps me awake. I'm so wound up I'll probably just faint any given hour with no warning at all. If I land in my eggs tomorrow, promise you'll pull me out of my plate."

Gilbert made a crooked smile that forced Elizaveta to make another red and white bud.

She asked him: "Are you excited to go back home soon?"

It was a stupid question, but either of them needed noise.

He looked at her as if she went insane.

"What?"

"King Roderich is going to decapitate me."

"I already told you, I'll see to it that he won't. I don't even care what I'll have to do, but I won't see you hurt. This whole fucking thing was my idea anyway."

"Yeah. You are pretty dumb."

Gilbert just laughed when Elizaveta tried to hit him. They found that they were both too tired for even a fake fight. But the untrue smack landed them slightly closer together.

"I'm still going to grant you that wish. So think about what you want if you haven't already."

"I don't want anything." There wasn't an absent second between the two of them. The white haired man answered like a clap of thunder. "I'm too simple and stupid for wishes. Even if I come up with something I wanted, I'm sure whatever it would be would kill my ass. It's better that you don't even put those ideas in my head."

Elizaveta stared at Gilbert. Then at the moon, making out what she could form inside her strained eyes.

And she couldn't come up with any rational response. Her mind was somewhere in between smacking him upside the head and cussing him out. Because who in the hell refused a wish from a Queen?

There was a fire in her guts that turned all the red and white weeds purple. The sort of purple that you'd achieve by blushing too hard or giving a flea too much blood.

Her heart swelled until her ribcage hurt.

And Elizaveta couldn't understand any of it.

Her unintentional glare was hurting Gilbert.

"Hey—what's that look for? What the hell were you expecting anyway—"

She kissed him.

Not on the cheek.

Not on the hand.

But right on those big, dumb lips.

Part of it was from desperation of wanting him to shut the fuck up. The other part must have been to alleviate the pressure building up to her throat. The same damn pressure that had been there when she saw him at the castle the very first day they had met.

The one those gorgeous red eyes made.

Gilbert held her tight and kissed her back. And somewhere inside the dizzying hallucinogen their chemicals caused together, their tongues met up. They were lost for a moment, in their own small world of everything and nothing rolled up together in the opiate haze.

But then the cool breeze came back in.

And Elizaveta broke away.

"I'm so sorry, Gilbert—"

Her little boots clapped against the restored wood of the deck.

Their hands disconnected.

"I'll see you later—I'm going to go to bed now—"

The Queen ran away before she began to weep in front of him.

Because with unlocking Gilbert's mouth came the horrible realization that she could never, ever go back.

The moon shined cold.