Rasputina and the Witch's Tsar

Chapter Thirty-Two

My knees are scraped raw as I lie with my arms against the floor. Legs tucked beneath me, pressing sharply into my stomach.

"Deliver him. God. Deliver him."

Tears stream down my face. A letter crumpled in my fist.

It was on the hunting grounds at Spala. The young tsarevich Alexei, there was an accident while riding. He is in horrible pain. He cries for you.

Please save him. Do whatever you must.

Eternally yours,

Alexandr

"Please God. He is only a child. Spare him. Spare Alexei."

I think of us by the Neva. When little Alexei, whose glittering eyes see all, asked me whether I loved his father. I hated him for a moment. Just long enough. Because I feared him.

I was afraid he would bring it all tumbling down. The illusion that a tsar could love me.

I bang my forehead against the ground, aching to feel the lifeblood of the earth passing through me. To walk amongst the burning sands of the Holy Land. To feel something other than grief.

"God will spare the Little One." A voice, mine but not quite my own, tears out of the hollow beneath my throat. "God has heard your prayers."

Exhausted, knees burning and lungs expelling a cold, foggy mist into the frozen space. I hold my neck back, face turned towards the heavens.

"I have done wrong loving him, the foreign tsar." I whisper. "But not Alexei. I will not bow down for loving little Alexei like my own blood." Tears stream down my face, I see him. The tiny child, all broken. Shivering in fright. "Take me before you take him. Take—."

A feverish spasm, and I am on the floor again.

Save him. Alexei.

Listen to a witch's prayer.