"They may be good to you, but all I get from them is resentment and scorn. I didn't ask to be here. You demanded that I stay, for your sake and for theirs. Well, I stayed, and I've tried to do what you asked - no, what you commanded - but now that it's clear that I'm not going to live up to your expectations, let's just agree it was a mistake and let me go home!"
"No," cried Katerina.
Calmly Ivan began removing his clothing.
"What are you doing!" she demanded. "I told you not to expect to claim any marital privileges - "
Ivan stopped. "I don't want your body, I want mine. I'm here as a slave, so I'm going to dress like one."
"You're not a slave! You're my fiance."
"No, I'm sorry, that's simply a lie. A fiance would be your equal, a man you loved, a man who was going to be your husband. But you don't even speak to me, you avoid me and everyone sees it. I'm shamed after every meal, when you go off and leave without a word to me. I'm not here because you want to marry me, I'm here because I'm the tool you need to hold on to your kingdom. I'm like a milk cow, only I'm not giving enough milk. So what do we call a man who is forced to work against his will at tasks he hates, to benefit someone else while he's treated with contempt by everyone around him? If he's a captive and he can't escape and has no hope of ever getting his freedom? What is he, but a slave?"
"I didn't choose you," said Katerina. "You chose yourself."
"So my mistake was saving you, is that it?" he said softly. "You'd rather have waited another thousand years asleep than be stuck with me, is that it?"
"We could have waited a few months more."
"You should have posted a sign," said Ivan. "Don't fight the bear and kiss the princess unless you're very good with sword and battleaxe. Oh, but wait, a sign would have been useless. The kind of man you want wouldn't know how to read anyway."
He said it with such scorn that she realized: He feels contempt for people who can't read.
"I know how to read," she said. "But I haven't yet thought of a way to make the Widow's army disappear by reading them to death."
"In my land, it is Taina that has disappeared. Utterly forgotten, because no one wrote a word about it. I want to write the story of this land, and hide it somewhere that someone will find it in the future, and read it, and know that this land existed, and who you were. I'm trying to save Taina from oblivion."
"You fool!" she said. "We don't want to be remembered! We want to survive."
"And I'm no help to you, am I," he said coldly. "So take me back. Let me cross that bridge to my own world."
She could see how miserable his situation was. And how little she had done to make it better. But she could not let him leave. Not yet. "As soon as we're married."
"How can I say this without breaking your heart, Fair Princess? I don't want to marry you."
This was the conversation she had been trying to avoid. These were the words which, if he acted on them, would ruin everything. She flailed about for some way to turn him away from this decision. "If you didn't want to marry me, you shouldn't have asked me."
"There was a bear," he reminded her. "And you told me to ask you."
"You asked me and I said yes. It was an oath. Are you a man of no honor?"
"Ask the knights who mock me, the women who laugh at me behind their hands. I have no honor here for keeping my word."
"A man like you has no word to keep," she said.
She regretted the words as soon as she said them. His face closed off, as if he had moved beyond anger. "You know nothing at all about men like me." He turned and left her room.
She wanted to call after him, to say, "There are no men like you!" But she would not shout like that in her father's house. Besides, she wasn't even sure what she meant by it. That he was not a man? No. He was a man, she knew that, a man to be admired in many ways -