The sun announced the queen’s arrival, three days since their previous conversation. Loud as always, she burst in with the guards without a knock or a warning. One of these days they’d find him on the pot, Bozmaroff thought, and then they’d have another precious story to share.

“I think I’ve got something” - the bard said, holding the papers in his hands - “It’s only a beginning but it lays out the ground for the whole story”

“You finally decided to make haste. Delightful” - she replied.

“I’d be happy to read it… But I’d read it only to you” - the bard replied

“Go on then”

“Only… to you” - he repeated, eyeing the guards around them.

“You’re not staying alone with the queen” - one of them hissed.

“My queen” - Bozmaroff said - “There are topics in his journals that I’m sure you’d like to hear first”

A moment later, the door closed behind the last armored man, and the queen prepared to hear the words that would immortalize her husband.

“I still feel insignificant beside these ancient, broken statues…” - Bozmaroff started.

“Stop, stop. Why does it start like this? Shouldn’t it start with when and where he was born?” - the queen interrupted him.

The bard rolled his bloodshot eyes so far back he almost saw the inside of his skull.

“I don’t think that’s what he’d want”

“I tell you what he wants now, and that’s not it. You’ll never write a story about a czar telling how he felt insignificant”

“Had the czar wanted a piece of paper with facts on it he could’ve got any scribe in the keep to do it. He wanted a story everyone would understand.”

“You will rework it” - she said it like an unquestionable fact.

“Please give this a chance” - he pointed at the papers in his hands - “And I promise you, you’ll hear something beautiful”

She took a deep breath, forcing down the rage in her chest.

“One chance. But if I don’t like it, colonel Markoff will sit here until you write it properly”

“One’s enough” - Bozmaroff said, cleared his throat and lifted the pages again - “I still feel insignificant beside these ancient, broken statues. Their forms battered yet still imposing, outliving countless rulers, bearing witness to the hopes, dreams, and fears of generations. They’ve seen love strong enough to make stone smile and horrors that could force it to avert its gaze. I fear this statue will endure long after my name is forgotten, a silent guardian to the stories of both the great and the small”

The room remained silent as Bozmaroff continued reading about the broken statues and the czar’s earliest memories. As he turned the page, he allowed a breath, a pause, to let the queen’s mind sink into the moments that shaped her husband, the echoes of past conversations lingering in the air.

“As kids, my brother and I sat on a bridge, two storms swirling overhead but never quite reaching the city. I told him about my dream of becoming a general. My brother asked me if I was echoing our father’s wishes more than my own. He urged me to carve out my own path, not just follow in the footsteps dictated by our lineage. We pondered destiny as the storms raged around the city, a fierce dance of light and sound in the sky. I wondered whose dream I was really chasing, a question that lingered as the storms parted ways and spared the city. A question that I think about to this day”

The queen knew about her husband’s childhood, but hearing the story this way was like Roman himself was telling her about it. Telling her all the things he never did when he was alive.

“My father secured the peace with the empire with his signature and my exile. I grew up a stranger in a foreign land, yet embraced and molded by its people, amidst the remnants of a dead god. Our nation’s greatest enemy turned into my caretaker. News from home brought tales of upheaval, of a society abandoning its old gods and traditions overnight. Despite the outward peace, I felt the storm of war brewing in my homeland, a conflict I could only imagine from afar. As I grew older, the expectation became clear - to return home, now as a part of the empire that raised me.”

When Bozmaroff was done, he threw pages on the table and looked at the queen in anticipation, his eyes lit up like a child seeing the first snowflakes in winter.

“What do you think?” - he asked, expecting her to jump out of the chair, scream how she never imagined it to be this good, and tell him how she already wanted to read the rest.

“I’ll give you three more days for the next part” - she replied before she left.

It could’ve gone worse.