Hazel
The gates are taller than any I have ever seen.
That's the first thought I have, stepping out of a car I didn't pay for and straight into a cold that takes the breath out of my mouth before I can use it.
Real cold. My coat is the warmest thing I own and the wind goes through it like it's nothing, and the snow keeps coming down in big slow feathers that don't bother to melt where they land — they just settle on my sleeve, on my lashes, like the weather here knows it has all the time in the world and I have none of it.
It's the first thing the country tells me about itself: it is cold, and it was cold before you got here, and it will be cold a long time after you're gone.
In front of me a palace takes my breath away. Black iron gates, gold at the tips, in case you forget whose house this is.
A man in a grey uniform takes my suitcase before I can offer to carry it. "This way, miss."
Miss. Nobody has ever called me miss. At Sweet Pea Daycare in Tacoma they called me Hazel-with-the-glitter, because I was the one who let the toddlers use glitter, because I am, apparently, a person who learns nothing.
Inside, the air smells like beeswax and woodsmoke. The ceilings go up and up. There are more flowers in the entrance hall than I've seen at every funeral I've ever attended combined.
I keep my hands folded so I don't touch anything and accidentally break something.
A woman meets me on the second landing. She's older, elegant in the way that costs money to maintain, with a face arranged into a welcome that doesn't reach the rest of her posture.
"You're the new girl." She has a heavy accent. She looks at the suitcase and then looks at me. "I am the Dowager Tsaritsa. You'll address me as Your Majesty. You understand you are here for the children, and only the children."
"Yes, Your Majesty," I say, and the title comes out clumsy.
Something in her settles, like I've passed the first of many tests by being exactly as small as she hoped. "Good. The Tsar is — particular. You'll keep out of his way. The last three did not, and the last three are gone."
***
The nursery is the warmest room I've stood in for years, and it has nothing to do with the ornate fireplace.
There are two of them. The boy is small, three, with a mop of dark hair and a fist jammed in his mouth, sitting in the middle of a rug, fenced in on every side by scattered wooden blocks.
The girl is older, seven, sitting very straight in a chair by the window with a book open on her knees that I'd bet anything she isn't reading.
"Hello," I say, and crouch down, because I am five foot two and I have never once made a child come up to my height. "I'm Hazel."
The boy takes his fist out of his mouth, considers me with the total, unembarrassed honesty of the very young.
Then he gets up, crosses the entire rug, and climbs directly into my lap like he's been waiting his whole short life for a lap to climb into. My heart squeezes so hard I feel myself tear up.
"That's Mikhail," the girl says, from the window. Cool. A little voice doing a very good impression of a grown woman's. "He does that with everyone. He shouldn't. You could be anyone."
"I could," I agree. "But I'm not. I'm Hazel. I’m your new nanny."
"I know." She turns a page she isn't reading. "I'm Yelena. Nannies are all the same. The others were nice, learned my favorite color, and then they left."
I look at this child holding her book like a shield and I recognize her so completely it aches. I know exactly what she's doing. I’ve lived it.
"Okay," I say gently. "I won't ask your favorite color. But I'm going to be around, so if you ever decide you want me to know it, you can just tell me. No test."
She doesn't answer. But she doesn't go back to pretending to read, either. She watches me, wary, the way you watch weather.
Misha sighs against my collarbone and goes heavy, the boneless trust of a kid who's decided you're safe. I sit on the floor of a palace holding a Tsar's son and think, with the particular doom of a girl who has wanted to belong somewhere her entire life: oh no. Oh no, I'm going to love it here.
Shortly after, there’s a knock at the door.
The same grey-uniformed man, his face carefully blank. "Miss. His Majesty will see you now."
I follow the man down a corridor that gets darker and quieter and more serious with every step, away from the warm room and the children. I wipe my palms on the only nice skirt I own, and I tell myself there's no reason on earth my heart should be going this fast.
It isn't listening.