Chapter 5
ПЯТНАДЦАТЬ ЛЕТ СПУСТЯ - FIFTEEN YEARS LATER
The steps of the Summer Palace were Anastasia’s favorite place to read, as obnoxious as it was. It was an unusual reading place, not known for its quiet or its seclusion. Over the past fifteen years, Anastasia had come to fear her solitude for what it might reveal.
The back steps leading up to the Summer Palace held a gilded fountain in the middle, with water shooting up around the steps in a dazzling show. They were some of the most ostentatious steps in existence, designed and manicured by Catherine the Great.
Priests with dignitaries would come to walk the steps, showing off the gilded statues and shining archways.
Men would frequently take their mistresses, as their semi-public status meant they needed no special permissions to see them, and could still boast of their presence on the palace grounds. It made it a beautiful spot.
It was here that the grand duchess pushed herself up against a railing. Her nose was buried so deeply in her book that it could have been carved there. Not far behind her were two members of the leyb-gvardiya, the Russian Imperial Forces, who were constantly assigned to her.
True to her father’s threats, Anastasia had not been alone for a moment since that fateful day fifteen years ago. Her personal cabinet had all been replaced by women selected by the tsarina and her priests; the priests often gave the positions to their mistresses to spend more time together.
Anastasia tucked away the knowledge that these women could be bribed. She used the power sparingly, often to secure privacy in the water closet. The chambermaids continued to report on her whereabouts.
Anastasia, now twenty-eight, was a shell of the teenager she had once been. Her father’s gaze followed her when the guards didn’t.
Only the priest, her parents, and three silent lords knew what had happened that night—and the boy who had seen too much.
I’m so sorry! She wanted to find him and scream; I don’t know what happened, you must believe me!
She had once inquired about his whereabouts, in the hope of sending an apology or even expanding her circle by just one more person.
She was rewarded immediately with a heady slap across the face by the tsar.
One of his rings had clipped Anastasia beneath the eyebrow, where she still bore a tiny scar. She never spoke of it again.
To most of the court, it seemed as though Anastasia was her father's favorite — a prized possession that he always kept at his side.
While St. Petersburg had become a den of sex, wine, and filigree for its patrons and the ruling class, it wasn't surprising that a highly Orthodox man would keep his unwed daughter from the festivities. Now, close to thirty, Anastasia was the only one of her siblings unwed.
During the many masked balls and soirees, she was never allowed a dance with a single suitor or visiting nobleman. Her father's obsession with keeping her magic under wraps had morphed into a reputation that had accidentally made Anastasia the most desired treasure of all of Russia.
“The finest opulence from the tsar's table that no one seems to be allowed to taste,” a lord had sniveled in the dark recesses of a ball one evening, “Such forbidden fruit.”
A spy loyal to the tsar overheard him. His tongue was cut out, unceremoniously left behind a velvet curtain for some unfortunate young lovers to find during the next masked soiree.
The tsar had tried on several occasions to arrange Anastasia’s marriage, but it was the only time she could put her foot down. She had become a quiet, timid woman, not because she was shy or sparing with her time. Instead, she was perpetually on guard.
There was a fire behind Anastasia’s eyes that had been dimmed, and while not yet extinguished, and she had the face of a woman silenced.
When the topic of marriage was brought up, her fires roared, if only for a few fleeting moments. She argued, rather effectively, that if she was truly to eradicate herself of the curse, they must be sure it had been exorcised from her before she was sent to a marriage bed.
“A nasty surprise if it is not, don't you think?” Her gaze would turn icy. She would often stare down whichever of her mother's priests had been granted an audience with her.
The threat that her magic would be unleashed and their secret exposed was a constant enough reason to delay marriage. The lack of matrimony didn’t keep her from learning herself, however.
Anastasia snuck off when she was a teenager and had several trysts with stable boys who didn't know who she was, but it behooved her greatly to push a false picture of ignorance and modesty. That worked well enough for many years, but the tsar was growing impatient.
The point of hiding her magic was to keep the gossips and revolutionists at bay. Instead of losing interest, the gossip seemed to morph like a hydra with every year the grand duchess went unwed.
Anastasia's thoughts often drifted as she read and found that reading proved a wonderful pretense for avoiding conversation. She gripped her book tighter and flinched, the fresh cuts on her knuckles cracking.
According to gossip, Anastasia was one of the most pious women at court, due to the time she spent with religious tutors.
It couldn’t be further from the truth. It was a never-ending audience of the tsarina's eclectic clerics, who all promised new ways to test the grand duchess’s magic and banish it.
Anastasia tried to feel the thing coiling inside her, but she found only emptiness.
Unfortunately, that meant she had no protection against each new method of testing her magic.
Every test ended with its own bitter reminder.
Scars littered her knuckles, wrists, and back from various whips, switches, and, at one time, even a mace allegedly brought back from King Richard’s holy crusades.
She had unknowingly influenced court fashion with the long-sleeved and high-backed gowns the tsarina demanded of her.
She turned to tug the lace trim of her gown down a little farther as a trickle of blood appeared between her fingertips.
“Sashy!”
Anastasia looked up as she heard her younger brother, Alexei's, voice across the steps. While their time together was also monitored, he was one of the few joys in Anastasia’s life.
Now eighteen and already two years married, he was the genuine pride of the Romanov family. However, whenever greatness was thrust upon him, he ignored it as if he knew that it would never be his.
She smiled as he ran to her, his grin bright, his blonde hair catching the light. “Yes, Alexei?”
"It's much too lovely a day for a book, dear sister. Will you come riding with me?"
Riding was one of the few pleasures Anastasia was allowed, since it was easy for her guard to follow. Anastasia’s sanity had become dependent on her rides, especially with Alexei.
"I can deny you nothing," she grinned, her voice still quiet and repressed within the earshot of her attendants. Alexei laughed and gently grabbed her elbow as the two of them descended the steps and headed towards the stables, falling into easy conversation.
???
The scent of freshly cut grass whipped past Anastasia and Alexei as they slowed their horses to a walk.
They were still on the palace grounds, where the gardens were surrounded by a small wood often used by hunting parties.
It wasn’t large enough to hold any actual wild game, but trapped stags were frequently set loose here for a mockery of the hunt to be enjoyed by the often-drunk lords.
Alexei was deep in a story of something embarrassing that a local emissary had done as Anastasia’s thoughts began to drift, staring at the edge of the dark wood. Something in it seemed to call to her, to encourage her to kick her horse and flee, if only to see how far she could get.
One of the guards seemed to read her thoughts and moved his horse in between her and the tree line.
“Nyet,” his voice was low, angry, ready for a fight. Something in his tone and the call of the land beyond her made Anastasia feel unsparingly bold, for once.
“I am the Grand Duchess Anastasia,” she straightened in her saddle, old scars flaring up like a sick warning, “You are tasked to watch me, are you not? So, watch.”
Her taunt was cut off with a sharp scream, which she recognized belonged to her brother Alexei.
Anastasia turned around in her saddle and saw Alexei’s horse rearing back, the young monarch gripping onto its sides with his legs to avoid sliding off.
The horse’s hooves struck against the ground, dirt flying up around its legs.
Her gaze flew past them to find a large wolf emerging from the underbrush.
She gasped, and her blood ran cold as the animal stared her down. She had never seen a wolf in person before and found herself shocked by its size, larger than a man and at chest level with Alexei’s horse.
Its eyes seemed to flicker red in the sunlight, with a beastly glow that, if you blinked, you might miss. The creature stalked towards Alexei and the horse, struggling in one place as though it was tied to an invisible post.
Alexei shouted desperately and tried to kick his horse into motion, but its coat grew damp with sweat, and its foam-flecked face was anguished as it kicked fruitlessly.
Anastasia could barely rip her eyes from the scene as she turned to yell at her guards for assistance, only to find that they wore vacant expressions.
The guards sat on their horses, their arms relaxed at their sides, eyes glazed over as if they were toys a bored child had suddenly abandoned.
Anastasia’s heart raced as the air electrified around her and static danced between her fingertips. She gasped as it tore quietly at the new lacerations on her knuckles.
No, no, no, no… her blood went cold as she remembered the last time she remembered this feeling.