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"Petritsky?" Arkady did not dare raise his voice, so his words only came out as a whisper. "Are you there?"

He did not know how much time had passed - hours? Days? But he could remember quite precisely the eternity he had spent tied to the back of a horse, its horrid stench.
the merciless howls of the wind had been his only companions,
as the Circassians had dragged them to this shapeless place, bound him tight with ropes that cut into the delicate flesh of his writs and wrapped a blindfold around his head.

He expected some terrible form of revenge. Divine justice for the cruelty of this war, he the lamb about to be slaughtered.
What should it be? His head sent in a decorated box to Krassotkin? Oh, the Kapitan would only laugh.
Nevertheless, sweat covered his palms.

Finally - in this eternal darkness- was Petritsky's voice.
"Arkasha?" He slurred, as if awaking from a drunken stupor. "I think I realised that I might have overestimated myself. Courting opera singers in a state of undress behind closed curtains is most definitely the more honorable way of life."

"You cannot possibly be serious-" Arkady hissed,but a sharp "Quiet" suffocated his words.
His jaw was shut.
It did not do him any good.

A fist grabbed his uniform and before Arkady knew, he was dangling in the air.
"Wait, what are you doing", Arkady managed to screech, but blind as he was, the stranger already dragged him across the stone floor. At least Arkady presumed it was stone. It could have been anything. Any cold, slippery, yet hard surface.
Something wet struck him from above and water slithered down his chin.
He shivered, but the Circassian finally teared the blindfold from his face.

Bright light flooded his vision, blinding him for only a second.
The only thing he could make out was the silhouette of a woman sitting in a chair , her edges flickering like bright flames. Just as her eyes shone like hot embers.

"Ah, the young officer with his pretty face", said bela, rising gracefully from her chair.
Only now did Arkasha realise his surroundings- and how much he was trapped.
He was in cavern. Walls and floor carved out of the heart of the Caucasus itself, but where the mountaintops managed to touch sky itself and tower above the world, this here was a prison. Tight and dark and wet.
The only specks of color were carpets woven with red and orange wool, draped across the cold rock.

"Leave", Bela barked to the soldier that had brought Arkady and with a little salute, he obeyed her without question.
Finally, her gaze fixed on the young officer. He did not dare move.
Arkady swallowed hard, but this throat was dry as ash.

"The last time we saw each other", she remarked, approaching him while he instinctively took three steps back. "I promised I would kill you the next time we meet."

His back met the wall. There he was, caged between two forces of nature.
Cold sweat ran down his neck.
"Who are you?" He squirmed. "One of Shamil's lackeys? A witch? A queen?"

She simply tilted her head.
"I am far worse than that, my dear. I am a dshigit."
She flicked a dagger in her hands. It was engraved with gold and silver. Like drops of blood, rubys lay embedded in its hild . A khanjali.
With crude admiration, Arkady could only marvel at the weapon as she pressed it against his throat.

"So what will it be?" He whispered. With all his power, he tried to show countenance, tried to keep his voice from trembling, but he failed miserably. "Cut my throat? Send my ashes to the Russian commander? Throw my body in the next river?"

"Maybe", she replied, increasing the pressure on the weapon. He let a whimper as it cut the first layer of his skin.
"But you have a pretty face. Do you know the novel one of your comrades wrote about a Circassian princess with a pretty face? About her lover? Pechorin?"

Arkady's face turned the color of dead grass.
"By Lermontov." His voice was rasp. "Yes. Yes ."

"Of course. How could a sophisticated young gentleman like you not know!"
She snorted.
"Maybe we should switch roles, the Russian officer and the savage princess. I trick someone into kidnapping you from your home, to never see your friends and family ever again, only to lock you in some dark room and shower you with gifts, I your only contact to the outside world. Only to grow bored with you eventually. To discard you like a broken toy. Wouldn't that be romantic? Wouldn't I be heroic? Wouldn't you love me for it?" Bela's voice grew louder with every syllable. Every word was soaked in bitterness. For a moment, he was afraid she would just slit his throat in a burst of wrath.
"Should I be your hero, young lord, or the Circassian brute and robber? What do you prefer? Or is there another role you allow us to play?"

"I- I-"

"I-I- I what?" She mocked him.

Shame burned in his cheeks. Shame and something else. Waves of heat and frost crashed against each other in his chest.
I'm sorry, he wanted to say, but he could not force these words across his lips.
Instead, fire roared inside of him. He rembered his trial. His friends. Krassotkin's abuse.
Wasn't that the worst punishment of all? To die for something you despised? At least he could have become a martyr for his cause if he had just been shot or dief in the katorga.
Now Bela saw him as what he had always hated. Some mindless soldier, a criminal in a uniform. A cog in the machine of an empire.

"Dou you think I chose this?" He yelled, leaning forward into the blade. Blood trickled down his throat like a string of rubys. Arkady barely cared anymore.
"Do you think I chose to die in this godforsaken place? Believe it or not, I do not. So please, kill me, but I won't die as some feeble minded servant of an autocratic czar."
Fuck you, czar Nicolas, with my dieing breath.
He could barely believe his words - is own thoughts- but they poured out of him regardless.

Bela's and his noses nearly touched.
"Choose? Oh, poor you. As if any of my people ever had the ability to chose in the last thirty years!", she sneered, her words like poison. "My father was the chief of my settlement. When your Colonel Zass attacked us and demanded negotiations, did my father choose to be shot by your soldiers even though he carried the flag of peace? Did I choose to fill in his role after all of my brothers were murdered? To lead my people, only to watch our daughters and sisters be abducted by your commander? I would have chosen to be this pretty Circassian princess of yours, but I was never given a choice."

"Bela-" He bit is lip. "I'm sorry. If I can-"

"Don't be", she interrupted him. "It doesn't help."
But for a second, something else flickered across her face.
"They wanted to get rid of you? That's why they discarded you here? Is that another way to dishonor us, to send you here?"

"I guess so. Either you or the Ottomans in Crimea. Or a labor camp."
He dared to shrug his shoulders.

"Quite delicious. So my pretty lord is nothing but disgraced waste?"
He gave her a shy nod.

"You are pathetic and stupid," she snarled, and her lips twisted into a crude smile.
"I like that in men."

Heat coloured his cheeks red and Arkady blinked rapidly.
"Ehm..." he muttered. "Thank you?"
In the next instant, she had already let go of him and thrusted her dagger into its sheet.

Arkady blinked.
And blinked again.
He was still alive?

"And now?" He croaked. His back was still pressed against the wall, just like an animal who had realised it was prey. "What are you going to do with me?"

She smiled and revealed a row of bright teeth.
"Well, my pretty friend, you are going to accompany me to a wedding."

"Pardon me?" His face nearly derailed. Oh lord have mercy. He had not drunken any water in a while....

"Chief Jamaleddin is about to marry his daughter to a fellow Circassian noble. It was one of his villages Krassotkin burned. Jamalledin is weakened, many of his people are dead. If he does not want to be annihilated, he has to submit to Krassotkin. So he will invite the commander as his kunak. His friend and guest of honor. As an offering of peace."

"What does that have to do with me?"
There was suspicion in his voice.

"Since I was invited, too. Well-" She smiled widely. "You will be my hostage."

"Your what?" Hysterical laughter emerged from his throat. "You- If you even thing that Krassotkin would give you a single kopeck for my life, you would be horribly mistaken!"

Bela simply shrugged her shoulders.
In an instant,she had closed the distance between them, and her coarse fingers carassed his cheeks.
"Either you give me an advantage over Krassotkin or you get me close enough to the man who slaughtered my kin, so I can return commander's favor. I can only win."

The flickering candle was the only source of light in the darkness.

Cuddled in unfamiliar furs and blankets, Arkady waited. And waited even more, while large pools of shadow swallowed everything else in the room.

In the distance, he could hear Bela's faint prayers.
Arkasha had no idea why she had allowed him to stay here in the first place- these part of the cavern in which she had made up her quarters - but she had done so regardless.
Nervously he kneaded his palms.

The golden rays of the candle bravely kept the night at bay.
But outside of the light, the shadows curled like a pack of starved wolves. They were like fingers, slowly approaching the light, cautiously penetrating its golden circle.
Stretching out to Arkady, both as if so seek comfort and devour him whole, only to recoil from the bright flame.
He could feel them. They longed for him. The faint touches of an old love.
As if he only had to stretch out his palm and they would willingly jump to his fingertips, obeying him like-
"Arkady?"

He twitched as he heard Bela's voice, only to see her figure right before him, beautiful in the way only the Caucasus was beautiful.
Lethal, cold and marked by survival.

Her black hair plunged from her shoulders like a cascade of black silk, while her body was wrapped in nothing but a simple linen shift.
Beneath it, he could see pale scar tissue where bullets, fire and iron had cut her open.

"Since when do you know my name?" He only managed to articulate, but she replied:
"Your mannerless friend told me."

His fingers clawed the blanket.
"What did you do to him?"

She crinkled her nose in disgust.
"You don't have to worry about this imbecile. Sending him back to Krassotkin is more punishment than giving the commander the blessing of getting rid of this creature of a man."
With these words, she sat down on the fur and crossed her legs.
Arkady noticed that they were uncomfortably close.
Shyly, he lowered his gaze.

"There is a tale I keep thinking about", Bela finally broke the silence. "About a nart, I forgot her name - a half-goddess, born from the mountains itself. She watered the crops when relentless summers turned the earth into a scorched wasteland and wove beautiful tapestries from sunlight itself. But in one particular dark and cold winter, where babes and mothers froze to death while huddling around their fireplace, a darkness emerged from the north. Many daughters disappeared that year. They never found their corpses. Some claim it was some dark wizard playing his tricks."
For a second, the candle flickered and threatened to suffocate the light.

Arkady remembered Tatiana's tales. About the deathless wizard abducting maidens.

Slowly, Bela continued.
"With the aid of a foreign warrior queen, who had battled this evil before, the nart managed to defeat this evil. Only with their combined might did they manage to entomb this creature in the depths of a fortress."

Their were countless bastions in the Caucasus.
Akhulgo, Derbent, Kisljar.
But as he whispered "In Lovushka", he simply knew it was true.

She made a vague gesture.
"It is just a story. But creatures lurking in the dark, hoping to tear you apart were stories, too, at least once."

He shivered and wrapped his arms around his chest, but Bela already leaned closer and dragged a blanked over his shoulders.
Her eyes -deep, dark seas of ink- pierced him.
"What are you thinking about, Arkady? What keeps you up at night?"

His tongue laid swollen and numb in his mouth and still, something about her made it impossible for him to refuse her question.
"I am hungry", he finally admitted. "I have never starved and yet..." He hesitated.
"I crave warmth, yet I prefer the cold of night. I want to be loved, yet I hate the attention.
I feel so alone - so lost- but I don't even know where I want to be."
He bit his lip.
"I am scared, Bela."

"Shhh", she gently stroked his face. "Don't be. There is no reason to be scared."
Silence conquered her, but only for a moment, bevor she drew him closer.
Here, lieing in this unfamiliar darkness in this unfamiliar country, thousand of verst away from the place that should have been a home to him, Bela's embrace was more intimate than anything he had felt before.

"I am hungry, too", she finally admitted.
"But I hunger for blood. For vengeance.
I'd rather be a monster than a princess. A princess is loved, a monster feared. A monster is in control."

With these words, she blew out the candle.
They were devoured by the darkness and Arkady by her.

♧___________________________♧

So, I don't think I have ever drawn these characters before, so here they are

The Bela that is vs the Bela that could have been

Arkady, more twink than ever before