Page 13 of The Tsarina's Favorite
“That’s why I am here this early,” she said.“I hate it here, and I want to go home.She’s usually in a better temper in the mornings to hear petitions.”
“I hope she hears you,” I said, trying to be slightly more gracious to someone who had just so recently come to my aid.
“She hears me, but she never grants it.This will be my thirty-second petition in two years.”
“Then I hope it is different this time.”
She stared at her hands folded in her lap in an attitude of defeat.
“Thank you for your assistance,” I said when she seemed disinclined to continue our conversation.“But for your sake and the sake of your petition, you may not wish to be seen speaking with me.I am not her favorite person.”
“I had no idea,” she said, an almost-secret smile touching the corners of her mouth.
Noises echoed outside the chamber.The princess’s smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared, and she scrambled to her feet, putting as much distance as she could between us.
I retreated to use the chamber pot and to wash off as much blood and food as I could.The former was much needed, and the latter lamentably did little.I did not have time to shave though, and I returned to the chamber feeling only marginally better than when I had left it.Only petitioners had gathered when I took my place in the basket.
The tsarina arrived a short while later, a sea of bobbing heads and bowing forms preceding her.She made her way through the room and headed straight to her chair.Once there, she surveyed her gathering per usual and stopped her examination when she saw me.
“Whatever happened to you?You look appalling.”
“Nothing, ma’am.”
“He was beaten,” Princess Alaina said at my refusal to disclose details.
The tsarina glanced at her niece-by-law and then back at me.“I warned you.Let it be a lesson to you to mind that mouth.”She then returned her attention to the princess.“And what have you to say today?”
“I came to formally ask if I could return to Altania.”
“No.Next!”
The princess curtsied deeply and withdrew, having been summarily dismissed.She gathered her skirts and walked to my side of the room so that she could make her escape.She sought me out with her eyes and held my gaze when she found it.She mouthed no words and made no gestures, but for that tenuous moment of connection, I understood her perfectly.I might have been in a costume and she might have been in a gown, but we were both prisoners of the tsarina and therefore exactly the same.
V.
When someone ambledinto the empty chamber during the evening later that week, my body tensed up and I plotted an escape through the servant passageways.I still could not fight without the fear of dire retaliation, but I planned on taking the threat of harm more seriously.I had no desire to be trussed up again for another night.
