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The people will forever remember me for my warmth. Nothing to do with my personality, of course—I may yet learn to rule wisely, but it is beyond my power to make myself a beloved or even well-liked czar in my own right. No, I’m referring to strictly physical heat, a… well, perhaps I can call it a gift left behind by my despised possessor. With Czernobog gone, I can no longer burn or melt what I touch, but I have retained some trace of his heat. One moment’s touch of my fingertips will leave any living thing with a true, bone-deep warmth that lasts for days, perhaps weeks. In the winter I go out to meet the people, especially the sick, the elderly, and the very young, and I clasp hands and kiss the foreheads of infants, giving the most vulnerable among us a little strength to wield against the cold. It makes me feel powerful, in ways both rather pleasant and utterly horrifying: the looks of gratitude as old joints relax with bestowed warmth, the wonder and delight of a babe no longer pinch-faced with the discomfort of the biting Lithvas winds. I will never in my life have to wear furs against the chill, and the people will continue to accept my gift with gratitude and, I hope, more respect than fear. And then there is the effect of my touch upon the czarina.
She is the one of us who is beloved of the people. I give them heat, but she brings them light: because of her, they can hope—hope for enough food to last the winter, for safety from bandits, for at least one generation of rule by one who is both sane and just. And she is truly welcome to their trust and adoration; I’m happy to let her be the focus of all those hopes and expectations while I paint and rest and go out for an occasional laying on of hands.
I never thought I could grow to want Irina, let alone love her, but I have somehow come to do both since she freed me. My radiant Staryk lady: her eyes flash like sunshine reflecting hard off frozen peaks when she looks at me. I never found her physically cold before, but now every touch of her pale skin makes me tingle so that I can scarcely tell how much of my shivering is cold and how much is desire. When we lie together, steam rises off the points of contact between us in great clouds that hover around us until we fall away from each other at last. Nothing else in the world can cool my skin, but inside her I feel an overwhelming, euphoric chill that makes me gasp in surprise every time. She tells me that my hands on her give her the most ecstatic, crackling ache, as if she were being pushed right up to the point of melting and then pulled back to freeze against my impossible heat. After, we wonder sometimes what sort of child we would make, an heir born of two extremes such as we. But we are in no hurry to find out—for now, we just watch wisps of steam rise off the places where our hands and lips are joined.