The bath after the confession went more or less how Oskar expected.
Tanya had cried herself into hiccups, then quieted, leaning against his chest. He held her carefully in the warm water, feeling the bite marks sting on his collarbone. She muttered insults at him under her breath — ass face, idiot, bastard — but she stayed. That, more than anything, told him there was still a thread between them.
He didn't know what to do next.
Then the bathroom door creaked.
All three of them froze.
A figure stood in the doorway — naked, hair disheveled, walking with the hesitant, careful steps of someone very sore between the legs.
Anna.
She smelled faintly of sweat and last night's chaos, not yet washed. Her eyes were half-lidded with exhaustion, but the scene in front of her snapped her fully awake.
Prince Oskar.
In the bath.
Holding Tanya.
Tanya crying into his chest.
The door swung shut behind her under its own weight.
For one heartbeat Anna just stood there, paralyzed.
Tanya's puffy, tear-reddened eyes snapped toward the door.
The two maids locked gazes.
Anna's hands flew up to her mouth.
Tanya inhaled sharply, as if about to scream.
Instead, Anna moved.
She dropped to her knees on the wet tiles so fast they slapped, then crawled forward until she reached the edge of the tub. She bowed her head so low her forehead almost touched the porcelain.
"I'm sorry!" she blurted. "Miss Tanya, Your Highness, I—I'm so sorry—please forgive me—I… I don't know what came over me—please, punish me if you must, but—"
She shook, words tumbling over each other. The picture of a lowly servant about to be dragged out and dismissed, or worse.
Oskar's gut twisted.
This was wrong.
Tanya's fingernails dug into his skin hard enough to sting. Her body was tense, every muscle coiled as she glared down at Anna with a mix of hurt and fury.
But to Oskar, the image was unbearable.
Anna begging.
Tanya shaking.
Both of them bleeding because of him.
It should be me kneeling, he thought. Not her.
Before either woman could say another word, he moved.
With one arm he gently shifted Tanya higher against his chest. With the other he reached out, grabbed Anna by the forearm, and pulled her smoothly up and into the tub.
She yelped in surprise as the hot water closed around her.
"Oskar, what are you—?!" Tanya choked.
The tub was large — a ridiculous royal-sized monstrosity of porcelain and brass. Even with three people in it, there was room.
Tanya ended up pressed to his right side, back against his chest, his arm around her shoulders.
Anna, bewildered and drenched, sat to his left, half-turning toward him, half toward Tanya, not daring to move.
He wrapped his arms around both of them, pulling them close as if they were made of glass.
Under his chin, their heads almost touched — Tanya's golden hair on one side, Anna's dark on the other. The two maids glanced at each other over his chest, faces full of confusion, anger, shame, and a hundred other things they didn't yet know how to name.
Oskar drew a slow breath.
"I'm sorry," he said, voice low and solemn. "Both of you. I'm the one who did this. So if you need to hate someone, hate me. Not each other."
The bathroom went quiet.
He continued, slowly, searching for words.
"I can't deny either of you now. Not after what I've done. Whether I deserve it or not… you're both important to my heart now. That's the truth." He looked from one to the other. "So please… don't let me be the reason your friendship breaks. Don't turn on each other because of me. If you need to scream, hit, cry, whatever—do it at me. Let me be the one you throw it at."
For a long moment, nothing moved.
Anna's fingers tightened around the edge of the tub. Her heart hurt for Tanya. Tanya had been here first. She had the right. Anna hadn't planned any of this. She'd just… fallen. And last night she'd let herself be swept away.
Tanya… Tanya, on the other hand, felt like she was standing at the edge of a cliff.
Without Oskar, there was nothing. Darkness. A future empty of him. The very thought made her feel like she was about to step into a bottomless pit she would never climb out of.
She knew, from his words, that he wasn't going to let Anna go.
He wasn't that kind of man.
He took responsibility — even when it hurt. Even when it made a mess.
So now what was she supposed to do?
She wanted him.
She needed him.
She hated what he'd done.
And she also knew that Anna was just… another woman drowning in the same tide.
Her chest burned.
Oskar squeezed them gently.
"It's alright if you can't say anything yet," he murmured. "Just… stay here a moment. Be quiet together. Let the silence and time… patch things a little. We don't have to solve everything in one breath."
His deep voice filled the small room, steady and grounded.
Both women were used to taking orders. As a prince, when he spoke like that, it felt less like a suggestion and more like a command wrapped in concern.
Anna swallowed and looked at Tanya, eyes full of pleading.
In her world, Tanya was above her: higher rank, closer to the prince, smarter, braver. Compared to Tanya, Anna felt like a rabbit staring at a small, furious cat who could shred her if she wished.
If she tells me to leave, Anna thought, I'll leave. If she tells me to stay away, I'll do it.
She waited.
Tanya didn't speak.
Her jaw clenched. Her eyes shimmered. Her mind chased itself in circles.
Oskar broke the silence again.
"Fine," he said quietly. "If you two can't decide… then I'll decide."
He tilted his head back, looking at the ceiling.
"From now on," he said, "you're both mine. That's my word."
He glanced down at Tanya.
"Tanya… you were first. You hold the first place in my heart."
Then at Anna.
"And you… came second. In that order I think of you both. But both of you are my women now. That's my decision. For now, at least."
It sounded like an order.
To him, it was taking responsibility — not running away, not hiding, not pretending it hadn't happened.
To them, it was a verdict.
Something in Tanya's shoulders loosened. It hurt. It stung. She hated sharing him—hated it viciously. But at the same time, his words lifted a jagged weight from her chest.
He wasn't casting her aside.
He wasn't saying, "I chose Anna instead."
He was saying:
"You're both mine. I'm not letting either go."
She bit her lip, then let her head drop against his chest.
"Stupid… ass face," she muttered, voice muffled. It was half-insult, half-acceptance.
Anna watched them, heart pounding.
Slowly, copying Tanya, she rested her head lightly against the other side of his chest, eyes lowered.
"I'm sorry," she whispered in a small, squeaky voice. "Miss Tanya… Your Highness… I'm so, so sorry…"
Oskar tightened his arms around them both.
For a moment, the three of them just breathed. Hearts raw, eyes sore, but together.
Then Tanya moved.
She glanced sideways at Anna's stomach, then lifted a hand and placed it gently over the other woman's belly.
"For the baby," she muttered, as if explaining it to herself more than anyone else. "If there is one."
Anna's eyes filled with tears.
"It's alright," Tanya said quietly. "But you're still cleaning the floor and whatever mess you two made."
Anna's thoughts crashed back to earth.
The floors.
The windows.
The corridor.
The Prince's room—
Her face went pale.
She had abandoned half her cleaning route last night, forgotten everything, his bed alone probably looked like a battlefield. And she had no idea where her maid uniform had ended up, only that it definitely could not be worn again.
She sat up straight and nodded so fast her wet hair slapped her cheeks.
"Y-Yes, Miss Tanya!" she squeaked. "I'll see to it right away!"
Tanya sniffed, then leaned back against Oskar again.
Oskar held them both.
For now, it wasn't peace.
But it was a truce.
And for a man about to negotiate with Krupp, juggle two pregnancies, and redesign the German Navy, a truce in his own bathroom was already a miracle.
When the three of them finally stepped out of the bathroom—clean, red-eyed, but at least not actively exploding—Oskar felt like a man walking across thin ice with a cannon on his back.
Tanya moved first.
She dressed quickly in her maid uniform, wiping her cheeks, rebraiding her golden hair with practised motions. From a distance she looked composed again. Up close, only the slight redness around her eyes betrayed what had just happened.
Anna, still mortified and not wanting to meet either of their eyes for more than half a second, scurried into Oskar's room to find something—anything—to wear.
Tanya watched her go, sighed, and muttered under her breath:
"If I leave her alone, she'll come out in your spare uniform and a bedsheet. I'll fetch her a proper dress before she starts trying on your trousers."
She squeezed Oskar's arm once—hard enough to hurt, which was probably the point—then followed Anna inside, closing the door behind her.
Oskar exhaled.
He still felt awful.
He still felt guilty.
But Tanya and Anna were not trying to drown each other, and they had both stayed.
For this hour, at least, that was a win.
He took a warm roll from Tanya's abandoned breakfast cart, bit into it, and walked down the private corridor to the guard door.
The guard standing there straightened immediately, heels clicking together.
"Good morning, Your Highness," he said, saluting.
Most royals preferred their guards to stand like carved statues and not breathe too loudly. Oskar preferred his to actually talk.
He clapped the man on the shoulder.
"Good morning, my man," he said. "Oh, and—" He lowered his voice conspiratorially. "You didn't hear anything in there, right? No strange noises. No women coming and going. Isn't that right?"
The guard blinked.
He looked like a man who had just been handed a live grenade labelled conversation.
For a heartbeat he hesitated, and in that heartbeat Oskar realised:
This wasn't the same guard from last night. The night guard had already gone off duty hours ago.
Of course.
Shift change.
Still, Oskar kept his hand firmly on the man's shoulder, smiling without humour.
The guard swallowed.
Then—wisely—he nodded.
"Oh yes, Your Highness," he said quickly. "I didn't see anything. All was quiet and clear this morning."
"Good man," Oskar said.
He broke the remaining half of the roll and handed it to the guard.
The man took it with both hands and ate it in two quick bites, not daring to refuse.
Only after that did Oskar turn away and head out into the main corridor.
Karl appeared about thirty seconds later, hair windswept, coat askew, spectacles slightly crooked—the universal sign of a man who had sprinted across a palace full of protocol and somehow not been arrested.
"Your Highness!" he panted. "There you are. We are officially… ten, maybe fifteen minutes behind schedule."
"Then we are early by my standards," Oskar said, clapping him lightly on the back. "Come. Let's go terrify Krupp with big numbers."
They left the palace through a side entrance reserved for private business and stepped into the cold air of the courtyard.
Waiting for them was a gleaming, dark-green Mercedes touring car—one of the newer models the Emperor had taken a liking to. Brass lamps, a polished radiator grille, leather seats, and that faint smell of fuel and oil that still felt exotic in a world of horses and coal smoke.
The driver jumped down, saluted smartly, and opened the rear door.
Karl climbed in first, barely taking up half the seat. Oskar followed, folding himself into the car with the controlled contortion of a man clearly a bit too large for early 20th-century automotive design. The springs dipped noticeably when he sat.
The engine coughed, roared, and settled into a steady growl as they pulled away.
Potsdam slid past in a blur of winter trees and stone facades. Soon the city thinned, the countryside opened, and then the industrial heart of the Ruhr began to rise on the horizon — chimneys, smokestacks, rails, cranes.
Karl, now fully awake and in his element, opened his notebook.
"Your Highness," he said seriously, "I've been doing some market research about the cat sand—"
Oskar's brain, still full of bathtub tears, future fathers, and the feeling of Tanya's nails in his skin, locked onto the words cat sand like a man hearing the word "tomato" in a physics lecture.
"…what?"
"Cat sand," Karl said, unperturbed. "And brushes. If we export them. I have some preliminary thoughts on which countries are best. Britain first—huge pet culture, cat shows, ladies with nothing to do but pamper animals—then the French bourgeois in Paris, then perhaps New York. And Belgium and the Netherlands, by the way, are small but extremely promising. Urban, middle class, many cats in flats, very good test markets for hygienic products—"
Oskar stared out of the window.
Rail lines. Factories. A sky smeared with smoke.
Karl continued, enthusiasm building:
"Germans will buy, but the British are almost insane about pets. If we shape the marketing correctly—packages with charming illustrations, phrases about 'clean homes for gentle cats,' we could easily—"
"Mhm," Oskar said.
He was not hearing a single number. His thoughts were stuck on:
Tanya is pregnant.
Anna might be too.
I'm going to be a father.
Multiple times.
Oh God, I'm going to Krupp today and I smell like soap but also guilt.
Karl was now flipping pages.
"And if we place the first export hub in Hamburg, then from there to London, Amsterdam, maybe Antwerp, then later we can consider Scandinavia—there's a good overlap of cleanliness culture and pet-keeping that we can leverage, and—"
"Very good, my man," Oskar said automatically. "We will bully the world with cat toilets."
Karl paused.
"…yes," he said slowly. "That is… one way to put it."
The car crested a rise.
Ahead, Essen spread out beneath a low winter sky—a city of smoke and steel, spires and chimneys, the dark skeletal silhouettes of cranes over yards and rails.
And rising above it, on a hill outside the city proper, stood a vast stone and brick complex framed by bare trees and manicured lawns:
Villa Hügel — the Krupp family seat.
An industrial palace.
From this distance, it looked like a fortress for bankers: not delicate like the Hohenzollern palaces, but heavy, solid, full of right angles and quiet menace.
Closer in, at the base of the hill, the administrative buildings of the Krupp corporation lined the streets—big, rectangular, serious. Dark brick, tall windows, iron gates with the Krupp ring logo worked into the metal.
Order. Discipline. Steel.
Karl closed his notebook with a snap.
"Your Highness," he said, sitting a little straighter. "We're here."
Oskar straightened too, rolling his shoulders.
Whatever he was at home—a man with too many women and too many feelings—out here he was:
Prince Oskar von Preußen.
Designer of a new battleship.
Owner of a new shipyard.
A man about to ask the Krupp empire to reshape German steel around his ideas.
The Mercedes rolled through the gates into the ordered world of Krupp.
And for a moment, with chimneys on the horizon and the rhythm of rails and hammers in the distance, Oskar felt something that pushed aside his anxiety about baths and babies:
This is where the future is forged.