"One I am most humbled by." She might not speak russian - but the dulcet tones of born nobility, the quiet language of implication, she picks what she thinks is his fondness for her. Whether he loved her or not, wasn't her business, but they seemed to talk to each other. Something she hadn't been sure of, plenty of men weren't interested in even so much as that.

She falls quiet a moment, as she hangs on the words to proceed with. There are a dozen ways she supposes she could play and all of them ill fitting to her, but she has long proven that she will become what she must, not what she prefers. Queens aren't needed for themselves, after all, they are needed as their people wany them to be. Perhaps she should play softer with him, given what Olivia had said. His sternness, the way the men already treat them both them as outsiders, and her as a woman insisting on acting like any other soldier. No doubt he would be more of the same and it would be better to play to his better graces, whatever they might be. To then - what? She ponders, make him doubt them and her later? No, that wouldn't do.

This time, she elects instead to begin as she means to go on. Stiff, straight-backed, a soldier at attention and as bullheaded now as she has ever been and will continue on. But her tone is even, level - and alright, demanding just slightly, she's not so well at hiding that arrogance as she'd sometimes hope. "If she has spoken of me, did she relay my request?"