Chapter 28 #2
“How long do I have you today?” I asked.
“I do not have any obligations until tonight.”
“Might I suggest a change of configuration then?” I sat up and inched over to her. I grasped her hand as it lay beneath mine and squeezed. “Let me lead?”
Her eyes narrowed, and she sat a little straighter.
“I have been in such need,” I whispered like a confession. “It’s been too long since last you called me to you.” I raised her hand to my cheek. “Let me make you happy as I once did.”
I released her hand, but she kept it on my cheek. Instead, I brushed the backs of my fingers against her face, suggestive and gentle.
“I know I am not the man you wanted, not anym—”
“I have always wanted you.”
She stroked her hand down my face and neck. She stopped at the collar and traced her fingers over it. She paused when she reached the lead, tied up with Alaina’s blue hair ribbon. She unclipped it from the collar and tossed it behind her.
With no additional persuasion, the tsarina surrendered to my undressing of her and my ministrations. She cooed and moaned and shook and, at length, she lay contented, spent utterly. I made sure of it.
I left her only to take a long drink of water from the pail that was left for me.
Like any considerate lover, I poured tea from the samovar into a prepared cup and brought it over to her, anticipating her thirst as well.
I sat on the edge of the bed and held it for her as she propped herself up to drink.
She drained the cup, and I returned it to its place beside the samovar.
“Lie with me?” she asked from the bed.
I slipped between the blankets, holding my arms open for her.
She pressed herself against my chest and closed her eyes.
It was a matter of minutes before she slept, but I remained a while longer to ensure that the sleeping draught I had prepared in her cup before she entered the room, taken from among her medicines, set in.
I pried myself out of her arms and abandoned the bed. At the doorway to her private gardens, I attempted to borrow her wool cloak, but it wouldn’t sit properly with the wings.
More incentive to be quick then.
I snuck out. My breath misted in the frosted air.
Although snow had fallen, the frozen layer did not yield to my footsteps, and I breathed relief at not having left betraying tracks.
I descended and followed the path the tsarina had first taken me on when I wore no feathers.
When I reached the rose courtyard, I stopped just inside the doorway.
There were no roses on the bushes. There wouldn’t be now in the cold, of course.
I had no experience with roses, but they were like any flower, weren’t they, even if they were magical?
I should have known. But I wasn’t thinking of flowers or seasons.
I was thinking of the game I could not win and hoping I could replicate the tsarina’s results in service to Alaina.
Appallingly shortsighted and naive, my impulse had been well-meaning but ultimately pointless. What did I do without roses?
I may as well try anyway, after all the preparation to ensure this attempt.
I hadn’t been guaranteed success even with roses in full bloom.
I wasn’t a worthy supplicant anyway. Would a Kind and Fair with any power listen to a prince with no title, a man who wore the shape of a monster, and a convert of the Great Holy?
The basin in the middle of the bare bushes had frozen over, unreceptive and useless for an offering of blood.
I addressed the nearest bush instead. I grasped a branch and pressed a fingertip into one of the thorns.
It poked and sent a sharp pain through the finger, but it did not break my thickened skin.
Instead, with my talons, I chose a place on the inside of my arm that would not be noticeable.
The blood trickled out from the wound, and I wiped it up, transferring it to the branches.
It soaked in, muted and negligible, a stark departure from the aesthetic tableau red blood on a backdrop of white snow should form.
“Please hear me,” I whispered to the wind.
I waited, no sound or sign forthcoming. Nothing indicated that I had connected with the Otherlands or found a willing ear among The Kind and Fair.
How long did it take? It happened for the tsarina in minutes, but presumably she left offerings frequently.
If it happened for me, would it happen now? Should I wait?
I gazed up at the palace, at the line of windows that comprised the tsarina’s apartments. She should be asleep for a couple hours, both from exertion and the tea. Still, I worried.
A small brown sparrow flew past me and perched on a twig of the bare rose bush. It studied me, the little head tilting and bobbing from side to side.
“Little friend,” I cooed at it, “you should be south by now, enjoying the parasol pines in the Varnasian sun. If I could but fly like you, that’s where I would be, not here in this miserable land.”
It stared at me as if it understood what I said. I couldn’t remember all the lore of The Kind and Fair, but didn’t Otherland animals sometimes serve as messengers?
“If you are of the Otherlands, little friend, could you take a message for me?”
“Am I not a sufficient recipient for your message?” asked someone behind me.
I spun around. My heart beat frantically.
I had been caught, found out, not just out of her apartments as if in another escape attempt, but speaking, and all would know that there was something else wrong and unnatural with me.
And maybe others would figure out that I had once been Mikhail.
Alaina would abandon me, and I would again own all the shame of before in a shameful form.
But it wasn’t the tsarina, and it wasn’t a guard.
Someone stood off to the edge of the tsarina’s garden, as pale and as brilliant as the white roses that graced the bushes in summer.
The stark white hair lay coiled in a loose braid over their shoulder.
They wore pale gold robes flecked with silver thread.
Their mask and gloves, also pale gold, bore heavy, intricate metallic embroidery.
Although nothing shimmered or glowed, the light reflected off them in a way that almost caused me to step backward.
This had to be a Kind and Fair Protector. An impressive one.
The sparrow flew passed me again and took perch on The Kind and Fair’s shoulder, studying me from its new vantage.
“Forgive me, my lord.” I lowered myself to my knees and bowed my head. The Otherlands had answered, and this was no mere underling sent to relay a plea for help. “I did not realize that you had arrived. I have never done this before.”
“Do you not find us worthy of your offerings?”
I did not look up to confirm my impression, but I could feel the assessment.
My heart thudded against my ribs for a different reason than being caught by the tsarina.
The tsarina could order things to be done, and people, earthly people, agreed to see her words carried out.
This being, this Kind and Fair, possessed true power, the like of which needed no other to see it come to fulfillment.
“I have never needed to ask for anything until now,” I said. “I never realized that I could.”
“What then would you ask of me?”
I should have had my requests well-rehearsed and ready to offer. But I didn’t believe that I would get this far, and I didn’t have anything eloquent prepared. Words abandoned me in the presence of a being whose existence I had not believed in.
“As if I need to ask,” the Otherlander continued in my fumbling silence.
“No,” I said with the surety I could not muster for anything else. I looked up at the Otherlander. “I have nothing to ask for myself.”
“But you are human. Do you not wish to be again?”
“Fixing this,” I held my hands out to him, “fixes nothing.”
“I see.” The tone grew more serious. “How came you to be this way?”
“I am not permitted to speak of it.”
The Otherlander stepped forward and leaned down to get a closer look at me. He reached a gloved finger out to catch one of the leather ties on my wrist bindings. Then he withdrew.
“Who keeps you collared?” he asked.
“The empress.”
“As a pet?”
“And more.”
The Otherlander stiffened at that, his body poised in tense rigidity. His eyes narrowed. Waves of fury rippled off him.
I bowed my head again. Although I was not the target of his rage, I did not wish to further his frustrations and have them aimed at me.
“As you ask nothing for yourself, what is it you want?” he asked again after a long pause in which he regained his composure.
“There is a princess here at court who has become dear to me,” I began.
The wish sounded infantile now that I put words to it, unworthy of the power of this being who protected nations, but it was the only desire that deserved attention.
“I fear for her safety here in Ilyichia. I desire her protection above all else.”
“How much would you give to see her safe?”
“Everything.”
“Would you die in service of her safety?”
So it would come to that.
I did not grieve. I had never deluded myself into thinking that something miraculous would give us a happily ever after.
Even if Alaina brought me to Altania, we could never truly be together.
Being human once more was a hope I no longer entertained.
I would never kiss her. I would never see the summer sun again. I would never have children of my own.
But Alaina might if I could keep her safe.
“Yes, my lord. I will die for her.”
“Loyalty is the virtue I prize above all others.” The Otherlander approached me and knelt.
His dark eyes stared into mine, compassionate, empathetic, kind.
He raised his finger, the tip beginning to glow through the glove, and he put it to my forehead.
“Even when it may cost you dearly, be true to her and she will be safe.”