Chapter 1
Anastasia hated her prayers. It was hypocrisy of the highest order, watching her mother prostrate herself in submission.
As she pushed a blonde curl back behind her ear and mouthed the words she was forced to memorize, she couldn't help the look of exasperation that worked its way into her features. The only person who saw it was the gleaming marble statue of the Virgin Mother.
"Anastasia," her mother, Alexandra Feodorovna, hissed, kneeling beside her on the bench, "Do it again." Her mother's delicate hand reached over and pinched Anastasia’s arm so hard she almost yelped, which was impressive, considering the layers of Anastasia’s dress. Apparently, it wasn’t just the Virgin Mother who saw her grimace.
The church in the Winter Palace looked more like an opulent dressing room than a sacred space.
While it was littered with relics and mystical objects alike, an uneasy energy hung in the air, keeping people on edge.
It was far from the kind of consecrated ground that would make one feel at peace or closer to a higher power.
Instead, it felt like something dark and sinister. The cruelest irony of all was that, due to its location inside the Winter Palace, the church only served those who viewed themselves as the mouthpieces of God himself, which didn't include the clergy.
With its arched ceilings and gold filigree, the domed ceiling created a permanent echo, making the space feel cold and empty. Thick incense smoke mingled with that of a hundred candles, hanging in the air and clinging to the plush tapestries on the wall.
Anastasia knew how often her mother traded acolytes like dinner plates, always fawning after some new cleric. Each one allegedly held all the answers to their woes, which always made Anastasia's stomach turn uncomfortably. What woes? They were praying in a golden silo.
"Anastasia Nikolaevna," her mother hissed, "Do it again."
This time, the priest had overheard them, turning towards the duo in prayer with a mocking expression of contriteness.
Anastasia didn't know which priest this was, only that he was a new possession in her mother’s occultist pockets that she’d spent little time with.
Alexandra's face was one of genuine disbelief and horror as she stared at the priest with dismay.
"Father, she won't say her prayers. I told you," the tsarina's expression shifted from dismay to frustration. "You said that this would work."
Anastasia stopped, sitting up on her knees as she leaned away from the prayer bench.
"What would work?" Her stomach dropped as she saw the look passing between her mother and the priest. At only thirteen, Anastasia had seen enough political and religious conflict to know when she was being used as a pawn.
"It's for your own good," Alexandra turned and grasped her daughter's hands as her face turned white, an expression Anastasia believed her mother could summon at will, given her tendency to fall into a religious fervor.
"You must say your prayers, perfectly, one hundred times tonight, so that your child will save our family. "
The tsarina’s face was tight with worry, but Anastasia only scoffed. She was used to her mother's fits of religious fancy, but the idea of her own children seemed too ridiculous to comprehend.
The tsarina gripped Anastasia’s arms tighter, forcing her to face the brewing storm of panic in her mother’s eyes.
Anastasia was sure that Alexandra had been swindled once more by the priest in front of them.
He had shown up during her salon hours, undoubtedly, to relay a terrible premonition—something foreboding about the Romanovs’ future.
Anastasia stood up, pulled her hands from her mother's grasp, promptly adjusted her dress, spun on her heel, and walked out in a bustle of fabric that echoed off the ivory walls.
She ignored the sounds of desperate pleas from her mother and the protests from the priest that followed her into the hallway, setting off to find her lady-in-waiting.
What Anastasia didn’t know was that the tsarina had good reason to be obsessed with prophecies of all kinds.
In the tsar’s blood stirred magic — real magic.
Not the type sold by charlatans or traveling fanatics.
The trouble was that magic was fickle when presenting itself; how the craft appeared was as unpredictable as the practice itself.
Nicholas’s family had fought for centuries to dampen it, tamper it, and tame it, believing the women in his lineage who possessed the gift were cursed, as the Orthodox Church began to rise to more significant and untamable political power.
When Alexandra made it to womanhood without ever expressing any ability, the bloodline was deemed pure, and she was free to have her marriage secured. Nicholas’s family jumped at the opportunity to secure a bride who had no ties to the dark practices. She had won the future tsar for her betrothed.
The tsarina was obsessed with the burden of being the family’s savior and was constantly worried that magic would emerge in her or her children.
She spoke to every priest, did every ritual, and went as far as drinking a goblet of goat’s blood at a full moon before consummating her wedding to the tsar.
As she watched Anastasia exit the chapel without a moment's hesitation, she felt a deep dissatisfaction in her bones that no ritual would bind whatever was brewing in her daughter.
"You're fired," she said, standing up and staring at the newest priest. Alexandra adjusted her skirts, fidgeted with a particularly heavy gemstone on her wrist, and snapped at the guards who jumped into action, dragging the priest through a side door exit, presumably to the dungeons.
He would await his judgment day with the other failed occultists of the tsarina.
???
Anastasia had left the chapel without a moment's concern for the priest's well-being. She assumed most of the men were charlatans, and anything that befell them during their con was just.
As she walked down the long corridors to her chambers, she couldn't help but stop and stare at the finery on the walls.
Despite having been born and raised amongst it, she knew that it wasn't normal. The ever-increasing wings added to the palace were not necessary, but a tool to soothe her father’s never-ending desire for conquest.
She had never felt at home in the palace. She had never felt at home anywhere. She despised how stale and archaic the chapel felt, despite how her sisters seemed to find refuge when they knelt in the pews to say their prayers.
Without thinking, Anastasia began fiddling with her fingers at her side, something she always did when she felt out of place, which was often.
Tiny light fragments danced between her fingertips like sparkling pieces of dust. You could hardly see them in broad daylight, especially when each room of the palace had jewels inlaid in the walls themselves.
It was the opulence of the halls themselves that had hidden Anastasia's secret for so long. It had hidden them so well, in fact, that Anastasia didn’t even know about the fire sparking beneath her skin.
With a twitch of her pointer finger or the tap of her nail, the sparks would kick up and expel some of her nervous energy.
The rooms were so often full of the nobility, overflowing with hundreds of court members who never seemed to leave the palace, stuffed to the sides with servants and housekeepers and butlers, that no one noticed that whenever her fingers danced, so did the lights.
It wasn’t just the lights that spoke to her magic. Gas lamps would flicker, candles would shoot up higher, or people would find themselves gasping momentarily for air and blaming it on the wine.
The curse they had attempted to breed out the Romanov bloodline had returned. It was lying among them, hidden in their ostentatious wardrobes, ducking behind the light that flickered off the plated gold walls, tucked behind the ermine robes in portraits of rulers long dead.
Two men guarded the doors to Anastasia's chambers, rotating so frequently that she never bothered to learn their names. She went to open her doors, only to have them opened for her, Anastasia’s presence being announced to her own chambers as though she was the tsar himself returning to the throne room.
She rolled her eyes and skipped past them, the candles on the wall going out behind her as she snapped her fingers to an imaginary tune.
"Asya!" Anastasia's voice rang out as she began peeking through her drawing-room, "Are you in here?"
A middle-aged woman poked her head out from the bedroom, wiping her hands on an apron and smiling warmly at the Grand Duchess.
"Your Highness," she grinned like the greeting was a little secret between the two of them, and in a way, she supposed it was. She despised it when people used her title, but Asya had convinced her that it would be a joke between them and said it only when others were within earshot.
Asya Ivanova had worked in the palace kitchens her entire life. Through a stroke of good fortune, she was the only woman available as a wet nurse when Anastasia was born. That made her nonexpendable, promoted to take care of the new Grand Duchess on the spot.
Asya had lost a daughter of her own and quickly became attached to Anastasia. That meant putting her gifts into raising the girl—ancient gifts.
She knew that Anastasia's magic was different from hers, something far greater and more powerful than she was used to dealing with, but similar in its origins.
Asya's family had been kitchen witches and healers for centuries, always lending a helping hand and making themselves indispensable in their villages.
As the Orthodox Church began crying heresy on anything that didn't align with their doctrine, those with power had fled underground, forcing Asya to bind herself to nothing more than potions that worked subtly enough to give her plausible deniability.
The more unpredictable part of her gift was the visions — the oracle talent that popped up as sporadically as spring rain.
In Anastasia, she knew some flames could topple entire regimes, which was no sort of revelation to give a girl who was barely a teenager.
So instead, she latched onto Anastasia as if she were her mother, slowly telling her stories of her home, the village, her other children, and the struggles the people faced.
How hungry many often went, how their homes looked nothing like the Winter Palace, and how they lacked enough firewood to warm themselves in the winter.
Asya had known for years that she would never see Anastasia's full powers unleashed, so she was content to wait, biding her time and encouraging her in every way she could.
She fed Anastasia with the truth hidden behind the opulent smoke and mirrors of the Romanov dynasty until Anastasia understood that there was no reason for nobility to eat sixteen-course meals while the villagers starved.
She knew every time she handed Anastasia a cup of tea — that had been stirred counterclockwise three times for luck — she'd done all she could.
"Are you listening?" Anastasia's voice pulled Asya out of her thoughts as she watched the candles go out.
"Oh, silly me," she grinned and pointed to the cakes on the table, "Are you hungry? Let's sit. Tell me all about the latest dancing bear your mother put in a priest’s robe."