Chapter 12
XII.
Someone moaned.
After the third time, I had to consider the possibility that it came from me. But I had burned to death out in the forest. I had been attacked, torn apart, and consumed by flame. The dead did not groan in pain. So, was I alive or dead?
Unless this was some strange afterlife where both could simultaneously be true.
Would such an afterlife belong to the domain of The Kind and Fair or the Great Holy?
I did not know enough about either religion to have any enlightened perspective and, in the absence of that, I disbelieved in the afterlife entirely.
My body, distant though my limbs might be, registered the ache of an unyielding floor beneath me. My swollen tongue filled my mouth. I rolled onto my side. My head swam with the movement, and I heaved. Blood and bile splattered the ground, droplets flying back at me.
I couldn’t be dead and still produce such undignified bodily responses. But I should have been dead. I had been engulfed in fire out in the cold. And I was sure, before much longer, I would wish to be dead. Again.
Everything pinched and pulled. My legs constricted as if running for days. My numb feet no longer registered socks or boots. My hands refused to function. And my back. If I were told that someone had slit my back open and torn my ribs out from behind, I would have believed it.
I just wanted to sleep. Sleep would cure the pain. And a sweet, forever sleep would ensure that I never suffered again.
“I would caution you not to go in,” a man said.
“I had no intention,” a woman replied.
I tried to locate the source of the conversation, my eyes nearly swollen shut and bleary in the dimness of the room.
As I propped myself up to a sitting position, my head spun again.
Another round of heaved fluids forced me to my elbows, and the undignified dry retching after shook my body like a toddler having a tantrum.
I trembled with pain and exhaustion and the knowledge that my visitor couldn’t be any of my jester friends this time. The crushing weight of my spectacular failure caused another heave of my belly.
What would she do now? How could anything be worse than what she had already done? Even death offered more solace than her former decree.
“I wish to observe my new prize,” she said.
I was an old problem, not a new prize.
“Would you like us to stay with you?”
“That will be unnecessary.”
The echoes of boots drifted away and all again returned to silence.
After a prolonged quiet, the empress harrumphed.
“I’m disappointed,” she said. “I thought you would be raging at me by now. I suppose I shouldn’t have raised my hopes. The guards tell me you gave them almost no challenge at all.”
I could barely form thoughts. How could I rally enough to scratch her with words?
I fought to push myself upright and find her so that I could address her properly.
As I did so, my hands came into view. I now wore black feathered gloves with long hooked talons.
The black feathers extended up the backs of my fingers, hands, and arms. I groaned, not with pain but with frustration.
What ridiculous costume had the tsarina chosen for me this time?
“That’s why you haven’t protested,” she said. “You haven’t seen.”
Another bird outfit then. Worse than before if she expected my fury.
I took long, measured breaths. I refused to break in front of her. I could nurse wounds later and address my much-abused pride in solitude. But now, I needed to stay together.
I hastily assessed the situation: a black feathered suit this time. And she had shoved me back into the loathsome beak mask. The sores on my nose and around my mouth from prior wear barely registered in the wake of my other pains. My suit, though fluffed with feathers, was not padded.
My head throbbed. Still, I managed to keep my panic in check. “What do you intend to do with me?”
“Why, my dear, I intend to keep you as my beloved pet.”
“More nest sitting? More public squawking?” I snorted and pushed myself onto my knees. “Your court has already seen it, ma’am.” I turned to the doorway where she stood behind the barred window. I had long been empty of shame and horror. She had wrung it all out of me. “I fear we are all bored.”
“Fear not,” she said, a smile creeping into her voice. “I found a way to make it more exciting. If not for the court, at least for me.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. I did not see how much worse it could get.
“Then do it and leave. Surely, you have better things to do than waste your time on me.”
“It is done,” she said. “I was rather hoping you would have figured that out by now. As I said, disappointing. I wanted your arms to become your wings, but alas, I am as subject to the magic of The Kind and Fair as any of us.”
Wings? Magic?
My nausea welled up as I turned my head.
If the tsarina had not mentioned wings, I would have doubted my senses.
Black feathered appendages loomed over the equally feathered crest of my shoulder.
I reached to touch one of the alien limbs.
Despite the lightness of the touch, it radiated down my back.
It couldn’t be.
I withdrew my hand as if the wing burned. My back still did.
They were part of me. And if the wings were part of me.... If everything was a part of me....
Another wave of nausea passed over me.
The tsarina’s low chuckle echoed off the walls.
“What have you done to me?” I stared up at her, too stunned for the tears I would shed later.
“I won our game.” The tsarina’s mouth twisted into a triumphant smirk. “You told my ladies that an evil witch cast a spell on you. If I am to be accused, I may as well do the deed. And so I, through The Kind and Fair, gave you ugliness you cannot remove.”
“I’m....” Numb horror sent tremors down my limbs. I needed to discover the extent of my terrible circumstances, but I couldn’t bear to do it in front of her. “You’ve made me....”
“I couldn’t get an actual firebird,” she lamented, “so I had to make one myself.”
My chest convulsed. My throat tightened.
I nearly stopped breathing. I couldn’t break.
I couldn’t. Not now. Not in front of her.
Later. I would do it later. Whatever else, I couldn’t give her my moment of breaking.
She had taken everything else from me, and I refused to give her that final satisfaction.
“I told you I could not win,” I snarled. “Your victory is hollow.”
“If your Great Holy had been powerful enough, it would not have been impossible.”
“All this,” I surveyed my hands and arms, “because I did not wish to become a lover after becoming a widower?”
“All this,” she repeated, “because you forgot that you cannot say no to me.”
“And you imagine, after everything you have put me through, I will submit to you now?”
“Now, my dear, you have no choice. I made an example of you, and once my point was made, I no longer needed you.”
“Have you not already punished me?”
“Punished you, yes, but it did not achieve what I intended. Now, I will have you however I like, and no one will turn you into a martyr.”
“Others will still look for me.”
“No one is looking for you,” she assured me. “Former Prince Mikhail’s execution was announced yesterday. If I choose to starve you, or chain you to my dais, or blind you, or muzzle you for the rest of your life, no one will say anything. You are a part of my menagerie now.”
The heat of panic chilled. No one would rescue me. No one would come to my aid. My friends in my time of trial would not know that I needed their support and company more than ever. Trapped. In body. In will. In every meaningful way.
The impulse to scream burned my lungs, but I refused to do it. She wanted to see me panic, and I would not give it to her.
“Only your exterior has transformed,” she continued, “but it’s remarkable how such a shallow change can make all the difference, isn’t it?”
“Why?” I asked, a pitiful, breathless question as I considered the bleak, miserable future ahead of me. “Why me?”
“It’s not personal.” She paused as she made to turn from the window, reconsidering her words.
“That’s not true. It is personal. Extremely personal.
You betrayed me. But, my dear, do not flatter yourself that you are all that important in the scheme of things.
You aren’t, and you never were. That’s why. ”
I stared at the door long after she abandoned it, trembling with fatigue, sick with fear and fury.
I did not dare look down again, terrified of seeing the evidence of what I had become.
So long as I did not look, did not feel, did not explore, I could pretend.
I could pretend this was just another prison cell.
I could pretend that I was waiting for Klessa or Drook or Agara or anyone to come visit me.
I could pretend that I wore a costume that could be removed.
I practiced breathing as Drook had once suggested as a way to abandon shame, hoping it would bring a moment of calm. Even the simple exercise came with difficulty. I closed my eyes to concentrate.
Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. Hold. Breathe in. Breathe out. In. Out.
The tremors vanished after a time. My fury cooled. My heart slowed its frantic beating. I opened my eyes again, not wanting to face the inconceivable truth but ready to try.
I raised my hands and arms for inspection.
Gloves were standard uniform for most of my life.
From the coldness of Ilyichia inspiring such protection, to the military requiring the formality of dress, to the ballroom demanding that dancing partners not touch hands directly, gloves featured as everyday attire.
And these horrible, long, black feathered things embellished with realistic-looking talons were nothing other than gloves too, I lied to myself.
I would wear these gloves, scaled, gnarled, and feathered though they were.