"you're awake," she says, and he doesn't protest that fact. he merely draws his cloak around him further, thought they both know he doesn't need it. he is koschei, and he does not feel the cold. she, however, feels it as he moves away from the bed, their marriage bed. a bed he only keeps warm out of obligation and not love, she feels. "why don't you come back to bed with me? sleep?"

"better people than you have charmed me to sleep for longer," he says. it's an unnecessary, stinging barb.

he walks away from her, from the room and shuts the door. she stands up only to watch him out of a window as he treks across the cold buyan to the one of the many places she is forbidden from: the mausoleum.

he built it with his bare hands, after the fire bride died. it's been there longer than she has ever been, and it represents everything she cannot have. yes, koschei has given her a kingdom, yes he has given her shelter, yes he has taken her away from a life that she would have died in. but he hasn't given her everything the fire bride ever had: the power, the respect, the love she desperately wants.

night after night, he leaves her and comes here, his footprints in the snow or her, awake for once, able to see him outside of her window as he walks inside. she tries with everything she has to convince him to give him what belongs to her, the sweet death that meant that she was truly his wife, the same as the fire bride -- if not more, if the domovoi are right in their little meetings she's heard. that of all brides, the one who never asked was the fire bride.

she decides that it if she gets it from him, it makes her more. it makes her the true bride of koschei, to find his death. as she watches him enter the mausoleum, a thought springs in her head: that maybe his death was closer than the riddles her gave her or the cutting looks or the rolls of his eyes. maybe... maybe it was in the place he fled to the most, the one place he considered to be holy. she bites at her lip and grins.

it was where she thought: buried in the urn full of the fire bride's ashes. it is darker than ink, the shell, and she holds it between her fingers with triumph. triumph enough that she isn't afraid when he glares down at her, the air almost quite literally electric with the power exuding from him. "put it back," he says, with no happiness in his tone, with nothing except clear contempt. "my death doesn't belong to you. it never has."

"it does now," she says, and she notices how his eyes follow her hand but not her face. she notices that he glances down only once: at the scattered ashes before her, at the overturned urn and it makes her angry. that he refuses to step on the ashes of a long dead bride, that he refuses to give her what was owed her and she does it without thinking: digging her fingers into the shell of the egg.

it surprises them both when he cries out in pain. true pain.

he's finally on his knees. he's finally desperate to please her, desperate to do what she wants even though there are tears down her cheeks, even though with every puncture of the egg, she hurts him. he's finally submissive to her will, and she cries out, "give me what i want! give it to me and i'll stop!" she says it even though in truth she wants to continue. she wants to smash the egg to hurt him in equal measure as she wants to kiss him, take him here like this, as helpless as he is. she wants and wants more of him, she wants to take everything owed to her, and she wants him in pain.

"please," he begs and it is sweet, the pain, the desperation. "you have-- you have everything you want. why do you care what i feel for him? what does it matter when he's gone?"

he still doesn't get it. he doesn't understand that even that hurts, that she doesn't want to hear that now, and rage over takes her. "you stupid old man! yes, he's dead but you act as if he'll come back any moment! what am i to you but a bauble? i wanted children, i wanted to be the bride above all brides and you never--!" before she can puncture the egg again, something pierces her back. she shrieks as something else pierces her stomach, the explosion of pain forcing her to drop the egg right into the ashes she had ignored before. she sinks to the ground, and she glares hatefully at him -- he must've used magic or some secret thing on her at the last moment to save his skin.

she loses.