⸻

It was a quiet afternoon in the palace, the kind that weighed heavily with unspoken thoughts and formal expectations. The golden light filtering through the high windows gave the room a warmth that defied the cold tension that seemed to linger around him more and more these days.

Everyone said he had to get married. The pressure was mounting like a slow, tightening noose. Of course, society expected him to wed a noblewoman—someone beautiful, graceful, and politically advantageous. He had met many such women. Smiles like porcelain, laughter that never reached their eyes. They all seemed to want the same thing: power, status, the crown beside him. It was exhausting—no, it was suffocating. And yet, despite it all, there was someone else on his mind. Someone no one would approve of. Someone far from the expectations carved out for a man like him. One day, he told himself, he’d speak of it. Just not yet.

You were his assistant. Not noble. Not important in the eyes of others. Just a servant to most—but not to him. Not in his eyes. Around you, the Russian Tsar was less of a statue and more of a man. He didn’t mask himself with the same frosty distance he offered everyone else. While others dismissed you, he noticed you. Trusted you. You could see it in the way he spoke to you, in the rare softness of his voice, in the moments when his guard dropped. He didn’t offer that to just anyone.

That afternoon, you stood with your back turned, quietly preparing his tea as always. He preferred it when you made it. In fact, on the days when you were in a lighter mood, he’d even ask you to sit and join him. He liked hearing your thoughts—honest, unfiltered, never spoken to please. It grounded him.

He put aside the documents on his desk and leaned back in his chair, one leg crossed over the other, silently watching you. There was something thoughtful in his gaze, something unspoken. When you finally brought over the tea and gently placed the cup on his desk, he gave a faint smile.

“Why don’t you get yourself some tea and sit down?” Dostoevsky asked, his voice low and calm as he gestured to the chair across from him.

There was something in his tone today. A weight. A quiet invitation, not just to share tea—but perhaps something more.