Sonya had never seen so many people in her life.
The crowd at the Gare de l'Est surged like a river around her, carriages rattling, voices shouting, the smell of smoke and bread mingling in the warm air.
She clutched her bonnet against the wind, eyes darting to every passing marvel—the polished uniforms of French soldiers, the sweeping arches of the station, the sheer tide of humanity moving in every direction.
For Elias, stepping into Paris had been another move on the chessboard.
For Sonya, it was stepping into another world.
He noticed the way her eyes widened at everything, and for the first time, he saw the city through another's gaze.
Not through maps and ledgers, but through the wonder of a girl who had spent her life in a stone hut on the edge of a Montenegrin valley.
Her wonder made her forget herself.
At their hotel, she leaned against the balcony rail, hair catching the light, and declared with a grin,
"It feels like we're husband and wife, here on holiday!"
Elias's eyes flicked from the street below to her.
"You forget your place,"
he said evenly.
The smile faltered, and she turned back to the city.
She knew better, yet the words had slipped out.
The months of working at his headquarters had taught her discipline—reading, writing, numbers, manners—but Paris was too much.
The world was larger than she had ever dreamed, and for a moment, she had imagined herself part of his life, not merely in his service, getting lost in the cacophony of voices all speaking languages she couldnt understand.
Their spats came in flashes, always the same.
She would grow bold, speak as though she were his equal, and he would remind her—firmly, but never cruelly—that she was not.
Yet, in the quiet, he allowed her rebellion more than he admitted.
He could have left her in Montenegro, running ledgers with the other administrators (Freed slaves).
He had chosen to bring her.
A test, perhaps.
Or perhaps he enjoyed seeing the world reflected in her astonishment.
They walked the boulevards together.
Elias's stride was measured, deliberate.
Sonya's was restless, skipping from one sight to the next.
"Look at this!"
she exclaimed, tugging at his sleeve before remembering herself and drawing her hand back.
Before them stretched the new boulevards of Baron Haussmann, vast avenues lined with uniform façades, wider than anything she thought a city street could be.
"It's like an army could march through."
"That is precisely why they were built,"
Elias replied.
"Not for beauty. For control. Wide streets are harder to barricade. Easier for cannon to sweep clean."
Sonya blinked, her excitement checked by his explanation.
Where she saw marvels, he saw weapons.
At Notre Dame, she craned her neck at the soaring towers.
"How did men build this?"
she whispered.
"With labor,"
Elias answered.
"With peasants and masons who worked their lives away and never lived to see it finished.
Architecture is not art—it is discipline turned to stone."
She frowned at his tone.
"You make everything sound so cold."
"And you make everything sound like a fairy tale,"
he replied.
But there was no malice in his voice, only an observation.
The Louvre overwhelmed her.
She wandered through galleries with wide eyes, staring at paintings of saints, kings, and battles she could not name.
Elias followed, patient but distant.
She stopped before Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People.
A woman, bare-breasted, carrying the tricolor flag, leading men across a barricade of corpses.
Sonya studied it, silent.
"She reminds me of myself,"
she said at last.
Elias arched a brow.
"You see yourself as Liberty?"
"I see myself as someone who would fight. Someone who would not be sold again, even if it cost me my life."
Her voice had steel in it now, and for a moment, Elias saw the girl who had survived chains and hunger, not the assistant he had shaped.
"You are free now because I freed you,"
he said quietly.
"Do not forget the difference."
She flushed, but did not look away from the painting.
"And yet… if I had the chance, I would free others too."
Elias said nothing.
He understood her fire, but he knew where it led—revolution, instability, chaos.
His path was different.
Order first, freedom after.
Their days in Paris settled into rhythm.
By morning, Elias moved through the city's political salons, listening, learning.
By afternoon, he walked with Sonya, letting her experience the metropolis.
By evening, they dined in cafés or theaters, and sometimes quarreled when her tongue ran too freely.
Once, as they crossed the Pont Neuf, she asked,
"Why do you never laugh, Elias?"
He looked at her, surprised.
"I laugh."
"Not truly. Not the way people here do. You smile, sometimes. But it is never from joy. Only from.. actually i dont know why you smile."
He did not answer.
Perhaps she was right.
One night, they attended the opera.
Sonya wore a simple but elegant dress chosen for her by one of Elias's agents in Vienna.
She walked at his side, proud despite her nerves, and for a fleeting moment, it was easy to believe she was not a servant, but a companion.
Inside, as the music swelled, her hand drifted near his on the armrest.
He felt the warmth, the hesitation.
And then he withdrew, folding his hands neatly in his lap.
Her expression faltered.
Later, as they left, she muttered,
"Sometimes you make me hate you."
He did not slow his step.
"Then you are still useful. Hatred sharpens ambition. Comfort dulls it."
She bit her lip, angry tears in her eyes, but she did not reply.
In quieter moments, when she slept in the adjoining chamber of their suite, Elias would sit by the window with his ledger.
Credits ticked upward—226, 229, 231.
His men upgraded slowly but surely.
The machine of his empire turned without pause.
And yet, he found his gaze wandering, not to the numbers, but to the sleeping form beyond the door.
A girl once broken, now rising.
A servant who dreamed of being free.
A firebrand who could not yet be trusted, but who made him see the world anew.
For all her rebellions, Sonya had become part of his plans—whether she realized it or not.
Elias closed the ledger, watching the lights of Paris burn in the night.
The city was brilliant, fragile, and doomed.
But for now, he allowed himself one concession: through Sonya's eyes, he had remembered what it was to marvel.
Tomorrow, they would quarrel again.
Tomorrow, she would forget her place, and he would remind her.
But tonight, Paris belonged to them both—the master with his schemes, and the girl who dared to dream of more.