Nikolai's smiles are like the fall of leaves when winter comes: plentiful, and useless.
They don't say anything about what's really going through his head, except in the most indirect of ways: he would always be smiling, always be pleasing people, if he had his way, and so when he's trying especially hard, he has to be feeling especially low. Now, his expression only tells her the obvious, the nightly anxieties about the monster inside of him, uncertainties for Ravka's future, the never-ending task of pulling their nation from the brink. What's more telling is the way his hands move on the chain, the shadows under his eyes, the lines of his shoulders and set to his spine as he turns from her.
"What a comfort that is," she says acidly. "If you'd broken your neck, at least we would've known you had faith in us. I'm sure that would've carried us through the next civil war."
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They don't say anything about what's really going through his head, except in the most indirect of ways: he would always be smiling, always be pleasing people, if he had his way, and so when he's trying especially hard, he has to be feeling especially low. Now, his expression only tells her the obvious, the nightly anxieties about the monster inside of him, uncertainties for Ravka's future, the never-ending task of pulling their nation from the brink. What's more telling is the way his hands move on the chain, the shadows under his eyes, the lines of his shoulders and set to his spine as he turns from her.
"What a comfort that is," she says acidly. "If you'd broken your neck, at least we would've known you had faith in us. I'm sure that would've carried us through the next civil war."