The air over Moscow was cold as a blade, clear as crystal. We stood on the balcony of the Senate Palace, hidden in deep shadow from the jubilant crowd on Red Square below. Snow fell in large, unhurried flakes, melting on the warm velvet of my crimson imperial mantle, embroidered with silver. Under my palm, I felt the rough, precious fabric of his new uniform—not that of a general, but of an Emperor. No one could have foreseen this. Not even us at the start of our long, bloody road.

Vladimir gazed silently into the distance, at the sea of lights beyond the Kremlin wall. His profile in the gloom was sharp and immobile, like a statue on a triumphal arch. Looking at him, I recalled not today’s triumph, but the long years that led us here.

I was his shadow, his trusted confidante, his most reliable tool in the titanic game he had begun. It started in the basement of a regional PMC headquarters. He was just a commander then, though the most formidable one. And I was a girl with a sharp mind, ice-cold nerves, and an insignificant surname, whom he, against all odds, entrusted with his logistics, then his finances, then all the secrets of his organization.

I walked the entire path with him: from mercenary contracts in godforsaken countries to the first, cautious steps across Russian soil. I crunched the numbers for his operations. I found the weaknesses in his enemies' armor before a strike. I spoke with politicians and oligarchs in the language of figures and hidden threats, while he spoke to the world in the language of force. I entered the innermost circle of his people—a place where neither wives nor lovers were admitted. Only soldiers and those who delivered results. I became the person for whom he had no secrets, the one to whom he could say just two words before a decisive move: "Everything ready?" My nod meant more than the oath of a legion.

Ten years. Ten years of meticulous work invisible to the world, where our progress was measured not in kilometers, but in broken destinies, bought loyalties, and competitors quietly fading into oblivion. Until one morning we awoke in a world where his word was law. He did not become President—that title was too small, too temporary for his ambition. He revived the Empire. And at the first audience, before the stunned silence of the new elite—his former commanders, generals who switched sides, frightened and greedy technocrats—he turned to me, standing just behind the throne, took my hand, and raised it.

"Before you," his voice rang out, resonant and absolute, "is the one without whose loyalty and intellect there would be neither this victory nor this Empire itself. Henceforth—your Empress. Her will is my will."

Vladimir turned his head. And in his eyes—those steely, all-seeing eyes with which he had burned holes in reality for a decade—something tired and human suddenly appeared.

"Did we want it?" He snorted quietly, his breath mingling with mine in the cold air. "We achieved it. Day after day, year after year. The difference is vast. But now," his gaze swept over my face, over the heavy, cold diadem in my hair, "now this is our reality. And our responsibility."

From the square, through the noise of the crowd, came the first, languid chord of a waltz. An old, pre-revolutionary one. Vladimir stilled, listening. And then a smile crept across his face—across those harsh, familiar features. Not the predatory one he showed the world. But another. A real one.

And before I could say anything, he led me into a dance. Not a stiff, ceremonial parade waltz, but the same careless, lively one we once danced among crates, celebrating our first small, unknown victory. We spun in the confined space of the balcony under the falling snow, laughing quietly, happily, like children. My heavy mantle swirled, the diadem slipped sideways—but it didn't matter. In that second, there was no Empire, no triumph, no weight of a crown. There was only him and I.

"You know," his voice sounded hushed, for me alone, "I never thanked you. For everything. Thank you, My Empress"