Chapter 1
Declan is twelve when he realizes he can understand Volkhovian.
He's at a hockey camp in Crestwood, his first one so far from home.
He's buzzing out of his skin with excitement and pride, because getting in shows that he's good at hockey.
Not just Riverton good, but
Like, internationally good.
There are kids from all across the world at the camp.
He meets a boy from Gallica named Marcel, and is excited that he can speak the same language as someone from so far away.
But then Marcel laughs and makes fun of his accent, and Declan isn't as excited anymore.
There's only one other kid from Riverton at the camp, Kevin Pritchard, but he and Declan play for different clubs and aren't really that close.
Plus, he's obsessed with showing off to the Swedish players that he can understand their language, and Declan decides that Kevin Pritchard is tacky.
So what, Kevin Pritchard understands Swedish.
It's not like he can
Swedish, which would actually be cool.
He just has a soulmate who speaks Swedish.
Sorry if Declan isn't impressed that some random Swedish girl speaks Swedish.
Three days into the camp, he goes to face off against Daniil Karpov, one of several Volkhovian campers.
Unlike Declan, Daniil has already hit puberty, so he stands at least a foot taller.
They're supposedly the same age, but Daniil practically looks like he could be his babysitter.
"Wow, wasn't the under 10 camp last week?"
Daniil laughs as they face each other.
"How old is this kid?"
"I'm twelve," Declan answers.
He's pretty sure Daniil was making fun of him rather than genuinely asking, but it's hard for him to tell sometimes.
Daniil looks up at him in confusion, and Declan is even less sure now whether or not it was a chirp.
Did he not expect Declan to answer?
Daniil 's confusion works out in Declan's favor, though, because he wins the face-off.
He ends up scoring three goals in the game, and he feels like he's on top of the world.
Later, as he unlaces his skates on the bench in the locker room, Daniil approaches him.
He still looks confused, which makes Declan feel confused.
He knows he hasn't hit a growth spurt or anything yet, but surely he doesn't look
young?
"Can you understand what I'm saying?"
Daniil asks.
Declan furrows his brow.
"Is this some kind of trick question?"
Can you understand what I'm saying right now?
And what I said at the face-off?"
Daniil asks again.
For someone asking such a weird question, he sure sounds annoyed.
"Um, yeah?" Declan confirms.
Daniil 's eyebrows raise, and Declan feels like he's missing a crucial piece of information here.
"Why does it matter?"
"Because I'm speaking Volkhovian."
Declan drops his skate, the loud clatter as it hits the ground causing several other boys to look their way.
He nods at them, and soon enough no one is paying attention again.
"Because your soulmate, yes?
I am guessing," Daniil says, in heavily accented English this time.
Declan has a soulmate.
His hand flies to his right ear, to the skin right behind where a soulmark would appear.
Could appear, apparently, if he's lucky enough to meet her, and fall in love with her.
One in a hundred, they say.
About one in every hundred people has a soulmate.
The odds are not in anyone's favor, and yet somehow they worked out for Declan.
But, shit, she speaks Volkhovian?
Does she live in Volkhovia?
"Whitfield, hello, are you okay?" Daniil asks, and Declan realizes he's gone nonverbal.
He needs to stop doing that.
His mom is always getting on his case about it.
"Yeah, sorry.
It's just a big thing to find out, you know?" He laughs to cover his sudden burst of insecurity.
I guess
," Daniil shrugs, switching back to Volkhovian.
"I don't think I have a soulmate.
Or if I do, she must speak Volkhovian."
Now that he's heard Daniil speak English, Declan realizes the difference.
He can't believe he didn't notice Daniil was speaking a completely different language at first.
It's different than when someone speaks Gallican, because he also speaks Gallican, so his brain just switches to Gallican mode when he needs it to.
But with Volkhovian, it's different.
He can understand everything Daniil says, but it's weird, almost like he's reading subtitles on a foreign film.
Except there's no subtitles, it's just his brain.
If he thinks about it too hard he'll get a headache.
He can't
Volkhovian, he knows that.
He's pretty sure the only Volkhovian word he knows is "vodka." If Daniil asked him to repeat anything he said back, he wouldn't be able to do it.
It's an odd feeling.
Daniil turns away, probably bored of the way Declan's gone quiet again, and a strange anxiety rushes through him.
"Daniil , wait," he calls out.
Daniil turns to look at him, his smile looking a little forced now.
Declan rushes towards him, hushes his voice so no one else can hear.
"Don't, uh, don't tell anyone, okay?"
Daniil looks at him like he's crazy, but he nods.
Relief floods through him.
He isn't sure why he doesn't want anyone to know, but something about this feels private.
Daniil walks away then, and he and Declan only interact a handful of times for the rest of camp.
When he gets home, he lays in bed and tries to picture his soulmate.
He doesn't know how to imagine someone as Volkhovian, so he just imagines a generically pretty girl wearing one of those Volkhovian fur hats he's seen in movies.
His stomach feels uneasy with the image, but he can't pinpoint why.
Declan doesn't think about his soulmate for a long time.
He buys a book about learning Volkhovian when he's fifteen, but finds it to be ridiculously difficult.
When he looks it up online, he reads several articles about how—ironically—understanding a soulmate's language can actually make it more difficult to learn, because your brain keeps trying to translate the foreign words instead of letting you learn them.
He gives up after that.
He doesn't tell his parents about his soulmate.
Every time he tries to picture her, he gets uncomfortable and anxious, and he doesn't feel ready to answer the hundreds of questions his parents would inevitably ask.
His mom would probably make him sign up for some sort of study, god forbid.
When he plays in the World Juniors at seventeen, he considers his ability to understand Volkhovian a secret asset more than anything else.
The players don't know that he can understand the little things they say to each other.
When he finds Mikhail Volkov smoking outside the rink and struggles to explain the no smoking rule, he briefly curses himself for giving up on learning Volkhovian so quickly.
"Sorry," he laughs, awkward.
"I don't speak any Volkhovian."
"Is okay," Volkov replies, unimpressed.
"I understand English."
"Right, yeah, of course.
I wasn't trying to comment on how well you speak—"
"No, not speak.
I understand English.
My soulmate speaks it," Volkov interrupts, and Declan feels as if the ground falls out from under him.
Mikhail Volkov has a soulmate.
Why does that information feel like a tectonic shift?
"Oh wow, I—that's cool." The words seem to slide out of Declan's mouth before he's even fully aware of them.
"Do you—do you know her?
I mean, do you—"
"I have not met her yet, no," Volkov replies, easy.
Like sharing this sort of information is nothing new.
Like it's just another detail about him.