The Inner Struggle

Boiham City's theater remained brightly lit on snowy winter nights, like a warm golden jewel on a frozen wasteland.

In the square outside, carriages lined up in a long queue. Wrapped in heavy furs, the nobles chatted as they streamed into the building, which smelled of a mixture of pine and paint.

Tonight's performance was a hugely popular farce about all the trouble a country squire got into in the big city.

Pavel sat in the family's reserved box. A scarlet velvet curtain and a gilded, carved railing separated it from the noisy seats below.

Onstage, actors in brightly colored costumes entertained the audience with exaggerated delivery and dialogue, sending people doubling over with laughter.

Laughter surged in waves, crashing against the theater's domed ceiling.

Yet in the middle of this sea of joy, Pavel was an island.

He sat ramrod straight, his gaze resting on the stage but seeing nothing, utterly unfocused.

The actors' comic pratfalls and a string of witty barbs reached his ears as no more than a vague buzz.

His fingers absently rubbed the cold bottle of Happy Water as a silent tsunami churned inside him.

Olga's clever, smiling face and her enticing, calculating words replayed in his mind over and over.

On one side stood Olga and the friends he had grown up with in Boiham City, the local aristocratic circle they represented.

They were his roots, his natural allies, bound to him by blood.

He knew their way of thinking and their rules of conduct better than anyone.

In this small world, held together by personal connections and social savvy, rejecting Olga would be almost the same as cutting himself off from the entire circle. His path ahead might be strewn with invisible thorns.

On the other side stood the Duchy of Weissen.

There