The muse didn’t leave Bozmaroff alone as he prepared the next chapters. She worked through him, using him like a puppet, pulling his fingers, nudging his eyes to Roman’s words that would fill the narrative gaps. Ink flowed like water and he couldn’t lift the quill from the page even if he wanted to.

Page after page, the czar’s memoir took shape, even as Bozmaroff’s own sense of self began to blur.

The bags under his eyes were a permanent fixture beneath his eyes, for the muse saw sleep as an unneeded luxury. The moment he closed them, ideas errupted in his mind. One eye open, he jotted down notes to save them for the dawn. But those thoughts dragged more behind them and before he knew it he emptied another inkpot. Bozmaroff played with his beard as he wrote, thinking about the last time he allowed himself to become so scruffy. Only those with idle hands have the luxury to keep a good appearance.

He was seeing it all unfolding before him - Roman writing in this very room, receiving guests, brooding over his losses on the battlefield. He bargained with foreign diplomats inside the same walls, spoke to his wife over the same table, maybe dipped his quills in the same pots.

The queen walked in without knocking, finding the bard slumped over the table, his head in his hands. Tired eyes looked at her under a wrinkled forehead. It wasn’t fear that drove him anymore. It takes enough out of a man so he doesn’t get punished, but Bozmaroff was giving this his all.

“Has it been three days already?” - a question came from under Bozmaroff’s unkempt hair.

“And a half, actually. The czar’s funeral was this morning.”

“Oh… I realized never offered my condolences. I’m sorry for your loss, your highness.”

Roman’s death had turned into the culmination of a story for the bard. The events taking place outside this room had lost all significance - the politicking in his court, the scheming in the empire to the west, and even the sorrow of his wife. But if there was a glimmer of sadness somewhere under her stone facade, she kept it hidden well. Only her black clothes gave away that she was a widow now.

“Read to me, bard. Take me some place that’s not here.”

She needn’t ask him twice. He cleared his throat and grabbed the pages.

“As I returned to my homeland from the empire, I found the north under siege by tribes, the air thick with the cold stench of death. My brother was just chosen to lead the army instead of me. An act that showed me that I was now a foreigner not only in the empire, but at home too. A whoring drunk was chosen instead of someone who knew the last three hundred years of imperial warfare strategy by heart. In my frustration I remembered what the emperor told me once - why fight over a general’s seat, when you can be czar? He urged me to learn from my brother’s errors and prepare. Taking this to heart, I studied my brother’s strategies against the tribes, ensuring I wouldn’t repeat his mistakes. And take advantage of them if it came to that.”

Bozmaroff told a tale of childhood dreams. But the older Roman got, the darker and grittier it became. He was no older than seventeen when he fought his first war - a civil one, a conflict against his own brother.

“Blood-soaked and weary, I returned to a silent city. The horse too felt my guilt and shame, its head slowly bobbing as it carried me. No rose petals were flying over us. I set aside the life of a good man behind together with the last people I ever loved. One I buried, the other I abandoned. No room for two heads under a crown. So I carried the most gruesome military conflict this land has ever known. War is a nightmare, but civil war is a punishment reserved for a special kind of ruler. A weak one.”

Bozmaroff told her a cruel story of a boy forced to me a man. A young ruler, willing to sacrifice even his own brother for his ambition. The czar with the bloodiest path to the throne.

“How much of this is actually his writing?” - she asked him when he put the pages down.

“It’s all his. I’m paraphrasing it, adding continuity, filling in the gaps - making it read like a story”

“He never spoke about the war with his brother, not to me, not to anyone. Nor did those who fought alongside him. I don’t know if it was terror or shame, but they did the deed, got home and that was it.”

“He wrote that civil was was the worst kind of war because you have one people on both sides. I found an account of a boy who killed his cousin because he fought for Roman’s brother. And I doubt he was the only one.”

“Will you include that?”

“Only Roman’s feelings about it. That’s what truly matters here, as harsh as it may sound.”

“You’ll tell me about it in a few more days” - the queen said, and stood up, ready to leave.

“My queen…” - Bozmaroff started - “Your husband’s later years in power don’t get better than this, and he didn’t seem to… appreciate them. I’ll stay true to his journals, but I’m not sure you will appreciate the rest”

“Bozmaroff” - she started, after a moment’s pause - “I didn’t appreciate my life with this man, I don’t expect to appreciate his memoir”

And she left the bard in that painfully familiar pose, slumped over the table. Just like she used to leave Roman.