Chapter 459: Fire and Ice
While Bruno and Nicholas discussed matters of strategic importance, their children had gone off to enjoy a more casual environment. Ledgers and secrets were traded for tea and biscuits.
And for the first time, since Elsa and Alexei began to see one another, in the traditional dance of courtship, the ice, so to speak had truly been broken between them. After all, Elsa had revealed, standing in the hallway with her father, that she was more than just a porcelain doll—she was a living, breathing person.
It had taken her far longer than she’d wanted to grow comfortable enough to speak with Alexei the way she did with others close to her. And if she was being honest, it was only the circumstances—unintentional but appreciated—that forced her hand.
She smiled with the grace of a fairy, accepting the tea that Olga and her sisters poured for her, while eagerly listening to stories of her father’s time in Russia and its effect on the House of Romanov. Normally, it might be considered poor manners to ask so openly about a relative in a setting of proper courtship.
But the Romanovs adored Bruno, especially the younger generation. Olga’s feelings were well known. Her sisters admired him. And Alexei—he saw Bruno as a man to emulate, though he knew only the sanitized version broadcast through propaganda, not the grim embodiment of war that had emerged from the trenches.
From the stories Alexei spun, most of which were myth canonized as truth, Bruno appeared an almost angelic figure—the savior who prevented the rise of the greatest which mankind most wicked inclinations had ever given birth to: Bolshevism.
Elsa, however, knew better. She understood her father more intimately than perhaps anyone but her mother and the brothers Bruno had fought beside. It was easy for her to tell that the stories were heavily embellished, partial truths mingled with grandeur and palatable simplifications.
She could see it in how her father received their praise: not with pride, but with a heavy, hidden sorrow. The man she knew had carried terrible burdens out of this land—burdens that weighed on him even now.
And for that, Elsa felt bitter.
A part of her father had died here in Russia. He had given it—for strangers, for a dynasty, for millions of lives he had no obligation to save. And while Elsa adored him with all her heart, she couldn’t deny the wish that he had lived a simpler life—free from the scars he now bore.