Page 71 of The Tsarina's Favorite
XXIII.
Days blurred into eachother.Alaina visited during the evenings when she could, although never for long.I did get my blanket, but I dearly wished that, in treating me like an abnormally large bird, someone would have decided that my cage should be curtained off during the night, both for peace and for warmth.
Nobles, both major and minor, milled about in the foyer most days with their attendants and distinguished friends, their footmen and pages occupying the space for longer durations when not permitted any farther.The engineer delegation for the ice palace construction came through several times, each time their faces more grim.And Drook and Klessa came by several times, maintaining their distance, but obviously there to see me.
I couldn’t wave them over.I couldn’t ask them to see me later.I couldn’t tell them the truth.I didn’t know that I wanted to.Mikhail was dead and had been for months.But they never came near enough for me to debate it with any seriousness.That made my decision for me.
No word on the tsarina’s health reached me, although, by her visitors, she must be feeling up to resuming her obligations.Perhaps that was why the delegation returned so many times, hopeful to be seen but turned away.But before I could be grateful for her forgetfulness of me, I was ushered back to her bedroom.
“Oh, look!Someone tried to make you pretty,” she said when she saw my wristband ties knotted into bows.“Who did it?”
The samovar that now lived full-time in her bedroom served as the only indication that she had been ill.I wanted to suggest that she not drink so much kvass too, but I didn’t care that much, except in how her ill-health might benefit me in the long term.
“A child who didn’t have the sense to be afraid,” I lied.
When she was done with me, she left without further conversation.
For time interminable, that was the most variety I had in my life until an unusually busy day in the foyer.The bulk of those waiting were not the usual palace residents, and while not serfs or peasants from the city, the fashions did speak of a lower-class populace.Had I still not been able to see them, I would have smelled them even over the stench of my own excrement in the unretrieved chamber pot.Unused to seeing the tsarina’s firebird, they crowded around my cage.I largely ignored them.And then someone grabbed my tail feathers and yanked.
As if torn directly from the end of my spine, I yowled.I circled to see a young woman standing at a distance from the cage holding one of my golden red feathers aloft.
“I want a feather from the firebird too!”others cried when they saw.
Dozens of arms reached in and grabbed at me, their searching fingers pulling and tearing feathers from my shoulders, wings, head, anywhere they could grasp.I lashed out.When my attackers started screaming from the wounds I inflicted, the guards stepped in to separate us.I didn’t hold any illusion that the guards’ intervention was for my safety.
My own wounds throbbed too much to care about the injuries I inflicted on others.I bled from the sites where hands tore indiscriminately, some rendered bald from the assault.Those patches did not reveal the truth of my origins, no human skin hidden by feathers, just wisps of down on flesh punctured by empty feather shaft sockets.
Eventually, the foyer cleared, those waiting for audience diverted to other halls and reception rooms to prevent another round of idiots from wanting their own souvenirs.And no one checked on me.I didn’t expect that anyone would, but the confirmation of my own pessimistic outlook on life vindicated me in continuing to hold it.Beloved pet, my arse.Maybe the willingness to be proven wrong constituted a type of hope, but I didn’t have the energy to contemplate the philosophy behind it.I hurt too much.
I slept, determined to make the most of the quiet and solitude despite the pain.
“Kaylay?”
My name on her lips pulled me from sleep.I blinked several times, banishing the lethargy so that I could be a fit companion.When I looked up, I gazed directly into her eyes.She sat beside the cage.The deep hollows in her face, pronounced beyond the shadows of evening, betrayed more than eagerness to see me.
“Princess.”
