Chapter 6
“This is the definition of insanity,” Anastasia muttered under her breath as she stared at her hands with a defeated sigh.
It had been three weeks since she saved Alexei’s life and seemingly ended her own. She had been unprepared for the gilded cage that her parents’ acceptance of her power brought her.
Tolerance is more like it.
Anastasia fought the palpable urge to scream as loud as she could for as long as she could. She avoided the gaze of the newest tutor who had been assigned to her.
True to her father’s threats, Anastasia had been removed from court. There was no formal announcement or any decree that explained her absence, so most of the nobility believed she was pregnant out of wedlock.
They whispered the tsar was trying to save face. Her father doubled down on controlling her meals. Her tutor suggested Anastasia keep a “clean mind” to pursue her curse. Now, they call it a gift.
While hundreds of guests and nobles in the palace gorged themselves on caviar and sturgeon, Anastasia now survived on cold oats for breakfast and buckwheat cutlets for lunch and dinner.
It was driving Anastasia insane.
Her mother assigned a new priest to her side, one who claimed to be more proficient in the magical arts. Anastasia knew better and rightfully assumed this meant he had a proficiency for dark magic rituals that looked terrifying and accomplished nothing.
She was returned to the Winter Palace alone, while her family spent a few more warm weeks at the summer property.
Even though the Winter Palace was not the court seat, the court was held wherever the tsar went; she was only allowed to leave her chambers for a walk in the gardens once the social hours ended.
The hangers-on of the upper class lingered around the out-of-season palace, those without enough money or status to follow the official royal schedule. It reduced Anastasia’s walk schedule to the middle of the night, if that.
Daily messengers were dispatched to the Summer Palace with updates on Anastasia’s progress, and to date, not a single letter held any real news.
The last remnants of rebellion in Anastasia’s soul were flickering like a gas lantern; only occasionally did they flicker with desperation. She was a defunct, rusted weapon, locked away in ten-room chambers, lined with precious metals that left a disgusting, metallic tang in her mouth.
She stared at her hands and couldn’t decide if she wanted something or nothing to happen. The idea of using her magic still terrified her; someone always seemed to die when she tried.
If she ever got her magic to work, that also meant she would quickly be deployed like a warhorse in her father’s army. Her life was lost to her either way.
Barely anything happened as she rubbed her palms together. She could feel a warmth between them, but nothing else, even the sparks she used to entertain herself with as a child, didn’t appear.
She snapped her fingers to see what would happen. She was ripped from her thoughts as a switch struck across her upper back. Anastasia hissed and swallowed her reaction as best as she could, turning around to face the tutor who never left.
“Don’t do that,” the priest hissed. Anastasia refused to remember their names as her sole act of defiance, a tradition she had carried from childhood. He shook his head, brandishing the switch like a broadsword. “You must tell me before you do something.”
Anastasia grinned as she studied the look on his face. He was afraid of her. He had no clue she didn’t have the slightest idea how to use her magic. None of them did.
She smiled wider, mimicking the cruelty in the faces of those she had grown up around, and waved a hand in front of her. Nothing happened, and the priest fell backward as he tried to scramble away from her in terror.
The last of Anastasia’s resolve started to crack, and she began to laugh. It was not a joyful or merry sound, but a heartbreaking one. The sound of a soul resigning itself to nothingness and expunging any sounds from its lungs that could mimic mirth.
She laughed louder and louder, spinning in circles and throwing her hands out wide.
“Stop that!” The priest screamed, waving the switch at Anastasia haphazardly, managing to get a few hits in.
The pain dulled with every blow as she let herself slip into the delusion that nothing could hurt her.
She kept spinning, spinning, spinning… until she didn’t even realize she was crying, falling to her knees, and screaming for Asya for the first time in years.
Anastasia didn’t know how long she had sat there in her chambers, delirious with the shambles of her life and the heartbreaking knowledge that there wasn’t a single person alive who knew who she was, including her.
She tipped her head back and screamed as loud as she could.
A wave of power burst from her fingers, burning her palms, sending shockwaves across the chambers.
The wind picked up inside the room, blowing heavy curtains in opposite directions.
Every mirror shattered, and the lights went out, sending glass and sparks flying around her.
Anastasia froze, her eyes fixed on the swinging chandelier above her, before she scrambled into a corner.
She sat in silence, surveying the room, waiting for the cavalry to descend, but no one came.
The lights were still trembling in the aftershocks, and she hugged her knees to her chest, watching. Waiting.
It was not until she saw the dusk descending that she realized the priest had gone, and she was alone. No one was coming.
???
“This is your fault,” the tsarina’s voice was flustered and high-pitched as though she had just stopped running. The priest was on his knees in front of her and the tsar, in a private audience, far away from the listening ears of the court.
“She is the devil’s daughter, I’m sure of it,” the priest wheezed.
He had left Anastasia amid her breakdown, convinced he would be killed, unaware of the explosion that had shaken her rooms. “There is no harnessing her magic! She’s the only one who can control it,” he was cut off as the tsar waved his hand, two guards stepping in and hauling the man away.
Anyone who had been brought in to help Anastasia control her magic had been killed shortly after they’d failed. This priest would be no different.
“What do we do?” The tsarina dropped back in the overstuffed chair she lounged in.
“We should just marry her off. Send her to Siberia or Crimea and give her to some lord as a war prize.” She waved her hand passively as if she were discussing wallpaper samples she didn’t like instead of her daughter.
The tsar turned to face her, his expression growing even stonier as he picked up a vase and threw it at the wall. It exploded behind the tsarina, and she shrieked, covering her head with her hands.
“Do you know what she could do for me?” he yelled, “What that kind of power could do? Have any of your charlatans even come close to replicating it? Even that khlyst in the gardens had more power than anyone you’ve managed to find!”
The tsar’s face was red, and spit got caught in his mustache as he bellowed. The tsarina rolled her eyes, used to her husband's tirades, which had only grown worse as their grip on the court and country had weakened.
“What do you suppose we do?”
The tsar was quiet for a moment before he stopped and looked at his wife. “That boy. The one we sent away,” he snapped his fingers. “That woman. Her nanny. She had magic.”
“She had kitchen magic,” the tsarina scoffed, downplaying it in an attempt to self-soothe against the fact she couldn’t headhunt the magic practitioners she truly fancied.
“It worked, and that boy already knows about Anastasia. We won’t risk anyone else finding out about her curse. If he fails, there are enough rumors about his mother. We pass the blame. Label him as a heretic. Jail him. Move on.”
The tsarina sighed, not wanting to admit it was a better plan than throwing another failed Orthodox priest at their daughter.
“Fine. Send for the boy.”
???
Russia was famous for its impenetrable weather. The wind that blew off the water and over Solovetsky Monastery carried a bitterness that was all its own.
The monastery was fortified by an outer wall with three separate turrets, giving it a more castle-like appearance than a house of prayer.
Any god worshipped there was angry. Beyond the external wall were three steeples rising from the ground, the onion-shaped lúkovichnaya glava domes visible from miles away.
Over the years, Rasputin had grown to hate those domes that always seemed to watch him.
Whenever he left the monastery walls to fetch food, run errands, or haul luggage for traveling religious emissaries, he was able to find a few brief moments of freedom.
But he was never able to escape the towers, their bulbous appearance staring after him and constantly reminding him of every overinflated priest he had to deal with.
The monastery’s chapel was covered in stained glass windows, gilded arches, and silver incense burners. It was a holy testament to the wonder of man's greed, not God. Once you had spent a few minutes in the chapel, the facade began to slip.
The benches were threadbare, and the altar set of silver and gold pieces was mysteriously flecking off paint.
The stained glass was cracked, leaving the chapel prone to blasts of cold air.
At one point in his tenure, Rasputin had been forced to kneel in prayer in front of a massive crack until his fingers turned blue.
It was safe to say the past fifteen years had been as hard on Rasputin as they had been on Anastasia.
After he was tossed to the predators of the monastery, it was at least five years before he had surrendered enough to their whims to make his daily life digestible.