Page 123 of The Tsarina's Favorite
No indeed.How could anyone miss that?Not Alaina, who had been both kind and painfully honest through my initial ordeal.
“I believed her when she told everyone that she had you put to death,” Alaina added.“It seemed highly plausible that she had had her fun and then tired of you.I didn’t put it together that you were him until just a few days ago.”
“But you’ve seen me before—”
“I’ve never seen you without a beak!”
We both fell into silence with the strangeness of that observation.
“I can see why she was so taken with you.”She put her hand on my shoulder again, and I didn’t pull away.“Even as a bird.”
“And what about you?Would you still prefer me with feathers and wings?”
“Kaylay.”
“That means yes.”It hurt more than I expected, even though I anticipated no other answer.“I have spent my life trying to do the right thing, the honorable thing, and she still took everything from me.Everything.And the only thing I had any personal ability to regain was my humanity.And even then—”
I broke off, unable to complete my thought.My voice already cracked on the words.I wasn’t enough.And I would never be enough.
“You don’t understand,” she insisted.“I didn’t love the beautiful man in the bird costume.I didn’t know him.But the bird in her menagerie was safe and kind even when I was a horrid little brat.And I did know him.And I did care about him.And it turns out that my friend,my love, really was just a beautiful man in a bird costume after all.”
“Your love,” I repeated, testing its veracity.
“My love,” she assured me.
My right hand fumbled with the blanket as it sought her out.I wanted her hand.I wanted her to touch me and ground me and remind me what I had tried to die for.But I could not find her, and I gave up when she did not breach the distance.Instead, I reached up and touched the linen shirt and then the featherless skin beneath it.I expanded my explorations to my neck and found it bare.
“I thought I was going to lose you,” she said when she noticed my discovery.“How dare you have the audacity to try and die on me after everything we’ve been through!”
“Alaina, be honest,” I pleaded.“Something is terribly wrong, and you are keeping it from me.”
“You had severe frostbite.”She found my hand and held it between both of hers.“The ship surgeon saved as much as he could.”
“Do I still have...?”I didn’t know how to describe my initial concern delicately.“Am I intact?”
“How like a man!”She choke-laughed, betraying the possibility that she had been crying.“Yes, you’re intact.”
That was a relief.But then other concerns followed.My left hand had been unresponsive in the cold, and I had not tested it since wakefulness.I freed my hand from her grasp and threw the blanket off me, hunting for my left arm.I found my elbow and traveled down the rest of my forearm.I met bandages at my wrist.I still had a wrist, and I could feel the base of my palm below that, no stump indicating a complete amputation.
“The surgeon took most of three fingers and the tip of a fourth.”
I took a deep breath.It could have been worse.
“Anything else?”I didn’t want to know the answer, but I had to know.
“Four toes on your left foot and the smallest two on your right.”
I could live without toes, even without fingers.But I also had bandages on my face.
“Alaina,” I marveled at my calm, “what do I look like?”
She didn’t answer.
Alaina loved me as a bird, and now she would have preferred me that way.I had to be ugly.A different kind of ugly.
“Please tell me?”
“Kaylay—”
