Chapter 7 #2
“You don’t care for priests, do you?” Mikhail grinned. “Good thing I’m not one.”
“It seems stranger to hang onto a name a priest gave you, of all things.”
“I have my reasons.”
“Why wouldn’t you want the name your mother gave you, Mikhail?” Anastasia quipped, getting more frustrated with this man’s presence in her apartments.
There was an immediate change in Mikhail, whose good-natured grin vanished, replaced by a stone-cold expression that froze over his face. The transformation made Anastasia’s eyes widen.
Mikhail fought the sudden urge to take out his revenge in that moment, to leave the room and burn down the entire Winter Palace and everyone in it. Her family must have told them that he was Asya’s son, and this spoiled brat was mocking him.
“Do not call me by that name,” his voice was low and threatening. “You speak of things that you do not know, your grace. Do not mistake me as a pawn of the tsarina’s or someone who gives a fuck about the golden cage you’ve grown up in.”
Anastasia’s magic sparked between her fingers, and she stood up, stepping closer to Mikahil for the first time. She only came up to Mikhail’s shoulder, but the venom in her expression was ten feet tall.
“You speak of things you do not know.” Anastasia’s cover cracked, and fifteen years of pent-up anger threatened to come to the surface. “How dare you assume anything about the life I lead or the life I’ve been imprisoned in.”
“What could you know about imprisonment?” Mikhail growled, turning around and waving at the settings around them. “It certainly looks like you’re struggling, duchess. Tell me, are you cold at night? Is your little belly full?”
Anastasia bit down on her lip and crossed her arms, burying her hands close to herself to keep her magic at bay. It was getting harder every minute she was around Mikhail.
“You know why you were sent here,” she gestured dismissively, matching him in tone.
“Am I cold at night? Only when they force the windows open to see if the weather affects this power.” Anastasia cracked her knuckles.
“Am I full? I haven’t been, not for fifteen years, in case hunger drives its potency.
I’ve been caged, kept, and pushed to the edge of desperation and back to see what makes me tick.
Fuck you, Mikhail, if you think I’ll listen to a word you have to say! ”
Anastasia spun on her heel and stormed off to the door leading into her bedroom, slamming it for good measure.
She leaned back against it and sank to the floor, burying her head in her hands.
She had stayed calm and kept her cool for fifteen years.
In fifteen minutes, this strange man had ripped her limb from limb… and left her wanting more of him.
???
Mikhail stood on the other side of the bedroom door, shocked. He had spent the past fifteen years imagining what Anastasia would be like, and she had shattered every preconceived notion that he had.
He’d expected a spoiled grand duchess, with her every whim catered to in order not to invoke the wrath of her magic.
He’d assumed the palace had decided to hide her gifts as a weapon or as part of another convoluted religious plot of the tsarina.
Surely, Anastasia had been wreaking havoc on the Winter Palace as a result.
In reality, she had been forced into captivity. That fact sparked a flicker of something in his chest he didn’t want to react to. He sat down in Anastasia’s chaise, inhaling the scent… violets and something heavier, darker, smokier.
He peered over the spells they had her writing and scoffed at the idiocy of everyone in the palace.
Mikhail had learned a good deal from his mother growing up.
While he could tell Anastasia’s magic was much more potent than hers, the basic mechanics were the same.
That meant he understood the ins and outs of controlling and manipulating the gift.
Ironically, he was the person the tsar and tsarina had been looking for to help Anastasia, but he’d be damned before he did the monarchy any favors.
He was only there for revenge, and he’d do a good job of remembering that.
He stared down at the parchment, noticing how haphazardly her lines had been drawn, almost like her hand had been cramping.
Suppose I could find the… ahh. There it is. Iron. Idiots.
The iron pen would bother Anastasia’s magic like a thorn in her side, but without any counterspells on it, it was useless to inhibit her.
Mikhail correctly assumed the palace had no idea the iron affected her at all.
He dipped his fingers in the inkwell and rubbed them together, giving it a cursory sniff.
His mother had taught him to look for dark magic in the most benign places, because only there could it thrive, overlooked and out of the way.
Mikhail sighed and leaned back in his chair, his thoughts drifting to Asya and his anger returning.
She knows that Asya is my mother. Why else would she mock me so? What a self-righteous… his thoughts trailed off, and he cursed himself for not being able to finish them and give over to the rage entirely.
Their meeting was brief and explosive. He could see how trapped she was; it was written plainly on her face for anyone who bothered to really look. If she was telling the truth, she really was a puppet to the tsar and tsarina’s will.
No matter what he felt about Anastasia, it made him hate the empire even more than he already did, which he didn’t think was possible.
The idea they could abandon their daughter and subject her to the will of these lecherous men, all aching for a hit of her power…
Mikhail stopped himself before he tossed the ink well against the wall, partially out of the self-hatred that began to tangle in his chest when he realized how protective he was of her already.
It has nothing to do with her. It’s only because it’s wrong. It has nothing to do with her; it’s the situation.
Mikhail ran a hand through his dark hair and leaned back in the chaise, one hand resting behind his head. He needed a plan.
Anastasia was going to get under his skin if he wasn’t careful. She killed his mother. That’s all he needed to remember.
When he called upon the memory of Asya’s kind face, all he could hear was her promise to help protect the Romanov magic. Even Asya’s ghost wanted him to protect her, to help Anastasia.
He scoffed in a turmoil of self-hatred and anger, unable to diffuse, and began wondering which door was his.
Upon arrival, he was told Anastasia’s chambers consisted of ten rooms in total, most of them sitting empty as she wasn’t allowed private maids anymore.
There was her main sitting room, where she was forced under the tutelage of crackpots and charlatans, her bedroom, and one room set up for the current tutor.
Mikhail felt something sink in his gut when he thought about how these men were allowed to sleep in her chambers.
A new feeling entirely swelled in his chest when his mind dwelled on how baseless these men could be and how many had probably tried to breach Anastasia’s door at night.
She had likely not fallen asleep feeling safe in years.
A feeling I can relate to, dear duchess.