Siren Star || Nikolai Lantsov

V

"You're gone, gone, gone away
I watched you disappear
All that's left is a ghost of you."
- Little Talks
Of Monsters and Men

Trigger Warning for blood

I was suddenly 12 years old again.

I hear a person behind me clear his throat. I turn around. "May I have this dance?" The boy asks, nervous but excited.

"Why not?" I ask and take his outstretched hand. He leads me into the middle of the ballroom.

"Do you have to leave?" He asks me, a hint of sadness in his voice.

"My parents obviously don't want me around," I say. "But I'll come back, I promise you."

"What if I'm not around?" He asks me.

"Well then I'll find you. Aren't you going to be here though?"

"I'm the prince, I'm going to have to be here."

"True," I say as he spins me around.

"Nikolai!" A snobby voice calls. "Get over here, you bastard!"

The boy stops, frozen. "I'm sorry," he says. "I have to go."

And he left.

↢ ᰔ ↣

"Can you describe it?" A voice says. Tamar's voice. I can't bring myself to open my eyes, so I just lay there, listening.

"I can," Sturmhond's voice. "But I'm not sure any of you will believe it."

"We just fought off the Darkling and put our lives at stake for you, kapitan," Tolya says this time. "We lost eight men, whatever happened with her, we deserve to know."

Sturmhond sighs, and gives in. "Before we got away, before the Summoner pushed back the darkness, I saw one of the, er," he pauses. His voice is shaking. "One of the nichovo'ya, the shadow soldiers, was behind her, behind Lyra."

They are talking about me?

"And then, it just- it just went inside her." He continued. "And then, she flew up into the air, but it looked like she got thrown up, and back down, hard."

I can't see him, but I can tell he's scared, along with Tolya and Tamar.

"There's something more, something you're not telling us," Tamar says, but it comes out as more of a question.

"When she was up—in the air, I mean—there was, lightning, purple lightning."

Tolya and Tamar both audibly gasped at this.