Rasputina and the Witch's Tsar

Chapter Twenty-Six

            "You're clever, Rasputina." Tsarina Nikola sits in her study, each finger wielding a ring. Each finger wielding enough power to have me dead in six different ways. She turns her eyes on me, like ice. No emotion in them. Nothing but a mirror for my own confused face. "But if you're so terribly clever, clever enough to keep a dying boy alive and do sosilently, then why did you make such blatantly stupid choices?"

I bow my head, lowering my lashes, staring far too closely at my shoes, the laces slightly undone. "Tsarina?"

"Don't tsarina me and think a curtsy will get you out of this, clever girl." She gets up, waves a hand dismissively. My eyes dart about the room, noting uneasily that even the servants have gone. She reaches out a hand to me, then just as quickly retracts it. Won't even touch me. But those eyes... God, I wish she'd stop boring holes into my head with that glare. "You think I care for Alexandr? He's given me children, given my empire a future. That's all I need from him. I have servants to coddle me in my old age. An army to fight for my so-called honor. But rumors..." A deep inhale, a shaky exhale. I look up, shoulders still stooped to remain shorter than her. "Rumors I cannot stand for."

"Tsarina..."

"Again with the tsarina. Like you can cast any spell to save you from your own conscience." A deep breath again, taking all the air from the room. "Really, in front of the children? Right in front of..." She walks to the other side of the table, a rolled-up military map, a scattered pile of books, and a mahogany desk between us. "Let that eat away at you. You got your magic from God? How much will you continue to be supported like this?"

"But love is only natural. God asked that humans love one another and that their senses would be heightened after eating the apple..."

"You love spouting theology when it suits you, don't you? Twisting reality, that's your true magic, isn't it? And what sort of reality do you live in to think that love matters in this, in anyof this?"

"I was brash, I realize—."

"Do you realize?" Nikola sits in the chair, her head in her hands. Her hair tied so tightly back that her skin goes with it, a wisp of gray shining through in the gray light. "Rumors make me weak. I have monarchy in my blood. We are weak enough as is. Assassination attempts, and now this affair. They say I'm in danger of losing my husband to a witch. It was already bad enough I married a foreigner, but mollifying a witch?"

"You throw parties while people work themselves to death."

"And now you have the audacity to tell me how to be a ruler? Rasputina, I could have you shot out in the cold. I could have you bleeding out in a concrete room somewhere. Wouldn't be so pretty then, so enchanting without your teeth..." Nikola turns away from me, the quickening thunderstorm of anger on her face giving way to something else. Bitterness turned like quicksilver to a painful acceptance. "But you have children, don't you? A husband who, God save his soul, relies on you. For them, I won't kill you. No, but you will leave. Leave St. Petersburg. Die in the cold or the snow or a tiny cottage somewhere, but for your own sake, do it in silence." I stare into those eyes as the soldiers come in to escort me from the room. "You willbe silent, Rasputina. No one will remember you."

I toss out one last remark as I am dragged from the room, thrown out like a mongrel by someone I respected. Once considered almost a friend. "Because you spared my life, I won't curse you!"

I feel my stomach roil as that rat-faced duke and Prince Yusupov come from a room behind her, a door hidden behind a blood-red curtain.

Judases, all of them.

"Oh, my dear," Nikola folds her hands over her heart, "how funny that, even now, you still think you have power here."