Rasputina and the Witch's Tsar

Chapter Twenty-Four

He closes the door. Face cleanly shaven. Eyes wide, patient.

This is the Emperor. I think. Alexandr.

He clasps my hands, my bruised peasant hands, between his slender fingers.

This is the grandson of Queen Victoria, the foreign British power.

I feel his blood beat, thin, beneath his paper skin, in those blue veins. Something amiss. Something that's too weak in the Russian snow, the turned earth. His hand is cold against my cheek, thumb winding through my coiled hair.

This is wrong.

"How can I thank you for saving my son's life?" He runs a thumb against my lower lip, waiting. Not pressing, just hoping with bated breath. The walls are thin. The walls whisper. "I never thanked you, did I? Not really."

I pull away with a cold smile. I catch my eyes in his gaze, the forbidding ice of my home. Of what the snow made me. The wild, black hair of a vědma. "Haven't you heard? I'm the devil, Alexandr. You don't want to bed me unless you wish to lose your soul."

He pulls away, eyes glassy. "You don't think I've heard every rumor about us since you arrived in St. Petersburg?" He laughs. "Alexandr, the fool. The victim. The easy target. If he were Russian, he wouldn't have fallen so easily into the witch's trap. But he's a foreigner. He doesn't believe in true magic, and thus, he falls as easily as Eve eating that apple."

"And Eve? Was Eve wrong in taking the apple?"

Alexandr cups my face in his hands. "Eve wasn't wrong. There's a Classical myth, Prometheus. A man who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity. A man who was hailed as a hero for furthering the human experience, sacrificing himself for our sake. If Eve were a man, would he not be treated as a sacrificial hero, bringing the gift of knowledge to mankind?"

"But that's just a story."

"We're all stories, in the end, aren't we?"

"This is real life, Alexandr," I warn him, the empty expanse of opulence behind us. The whisper of sheets. The open window, snow whirling in across lands streaked with moonlight. Lamps along streets. Lovers strolling across lanes, whispering their secrets into the quiet. "Stories have consequences only on the page. But reality, the consequences cause pain. Real pain."

"I'm not the fool the gossipmongers make me out to be." Alexandr chuckles again, the sound getting caught somewhere between sorrow and cynicism. "I know what this means."

"Do you? Someone told me once," I run a finger down his nose, memorizing his features, "that desire brings you closer to heaven."

"Wise words." Alexandr's laughter rings true. How can laughter be bad? Why is love forbidden? Perhaps history will forgive us. Perhaps it won't, but I'll be long gone and unable to care any longer. "I've been bewitched after all."

I understand the prophetess Cassandra's pain.

One cannot beat forces that are stronger than the gods.