Page 46 of The Tsarina's Favorite
Something fitted around my neck moments later.
Blyat.
I couldn’t figure out how they fastened it, although with my hands bound, it hardly mattered, as I couldn’t get at it anyway.
Everyone rose and then released me, the pressure of hands and knees easing until I could shift without being forced back to the ground.I struggled to my knees and waited.The tension in the air spoke of more to come.
One of the guards stepped forward and attached a chain lead to my new collar.Then he tugged.I took the hint and rose.Progress was slow with the jesses since they were for birds being carried on a falconer’s arm, not one forced to walk.And again, I was marched in through the palace, up the stairs, and back through the wing to the tsarina’s quarters.
Of course, she wanted me where she had kept me before.In her bedroom.
I shivered, not with cold, but with apprehension.
She was not there to greet me in her study.And my escorts took me through the same rooms as the tsarina had led me last time: the receiving room, sitting room, little dining room, Kilikwa dining room, drawing room, then through the monarch’s corridor and to her bedroom.She did not greet me there either.
The cot had been removed.
They fastened the lead to the foot of her bed.
“Is that all?”a guard asked.
“She said to leave it,” answered another.
Scanning the faces of the escorts, the caretaker was not among them.Did he know what the tsarina wanted me for?Did any of them?Had that rumor already started circulating?I wished I could tell someone.The jesters knew that had been the case before, but now, when I was beyond recognition, would they still suspect?
“Then we have done our job,” said the first and turned to go.
The other guards turned with him and left me, filing out of the room a bit too eagerly.
I tested my bonds.I tugged on the chain.I tried yet again to reach my hands down to my ankles to undo them with no more success than the first time I tried it.The tinkling bells annoyed me beyond reason.Maybe that’s why the tsarina had requested them, knowing they would drive me half-mad.Maybe I already was.Maybe I should want to be by the time she joined me.
I huddled up against the bed and closed my eyes.
Breathe in.Breathe out.
I practiced my breathing, trying to ease my frantically beating heart and to stop my spinning mind.I sought calm, even if my situation did not enable it.After all, what could I do?I had tried so many desperate things and ended up right back in her power, each time worse than before.I would be too tired to fight soon.Should I have just agreed from the start?How much more would I hate myself if I just let the inevitable happen?
“You look marvelous,” she said from the doorway.
I took another deep breath and looked up at her.I couldn’t respond, not with the muzzle, but I was tired and had no wish to banter with her.I just stared.That took all the energy I had.
She passed me on the way to her dressing room and disappeared for a few moments.She returned, still in her day dress but without her gloves.She eyed me.
“I wish things could have been different,” she said, “but you have left me no choice.”
She stood over me and sank to the floor beside me.From there, she found my sheath of feathers.I squirmed and fumbled, fighting against her.I positioned my legs in front of me and forced several strikes with my knees to move her hands.Pressed back against the headboard as she clutched at me, I doubled over with the painful grasp on my anatomy and the tiny feathers around it.She took the opportunity to force me to the ground.Unable to go anywhere else as I recovered, she climbed over me and sat atop my legs, preventing any additional strikes or intervention from them.With her weight on me, and my hands and wings bound, I could not find leverage to roll or dislodge her.
“I hope your principles bring you comfort in moments like this,” she cooed at me.
She removed her hands from my body, affording me a moment to breathe, and set about arranging her skirts.
“I hoped this would be more challenging,” she remarked as she began to renew her work.“But your little guard at the gate still responds even when you don’t want it to, doesn’t it?”
I shuddered.
“I love the noises you make.”She stroked my face with her fingertip, gentle and appreciative, tracing the beak and the muzzle that kept it shut.“And the sound of the bells as your legs shake only makes me want this more.”
My legs jerked with a particularly effective maneuver of her hands as if to illustrate the sound she liked so much.
