Page 108 of The Tsarina's Favorite
“I know she means to embarrass us,” she rushed on, “but what if we get married because it means something to us and not just because the tsarina makes us do it?I can hear all your protests without you even saying a word, Kaylay — but what about my future or my brother or my political career or any other reason this might ordinarily be an outrageous suggestion — but that would be our final act of defiance against her, don’t you see?”
I saw.For a whole few moments of her suggestion, I had acquired some fragile, fleeting notion that maybe, truly, Alaina loved me too.Her suggestion that we willingly do what the tsarina imagined she was forcing us to do as resistance disintegrated all that wispy hope.It was a moral stance, a political stance, a prideful stance, meant to combat the cruelty and ridicule the tsarina would inflict.Love never entered into it.
“I am already devoted to you,” I said.“You do not need to take the vows of an absurd wedding seriously for that.”
“I may never have the children I always hoped to have, but I will marry again at least.Let me marry someone of my choosing?”
It didn’t matter if she loved me or not because I could not say no to her.
“Are you planning on making an honest bird of me then?”
“If you will let me.”
She plucked the ring from her palm and held up the perfect circle so that the light shone through it, the burnished gold like a brilliant glowing halo.She took my hand with her free one and looped the ring over my talon and pressed it past the joints.It wasn’t a perfect fit, but it stayed on.
I choked out, “I’m sorry it didn’t work.”
Alaina’s face furrowed.“What didn’t?”
“We’ve agreed to wed.I have a ring, like the stories, and still, no handsome prince am I.”
“Do not apologize.”She stroked my cheek.“I am not disappointed.”
She should have been.I was.
I stared at the ring again, the weight and heft on my finger a distant memory from before the tsarina’s heartless theft.Its delicacy and expense clashed horribly with the gnarled finger on which it currently resided.It was the most beautiful ornament I had ever worn.
Tears broke free, and I wiped ineffectually at them.Alaina had answered the one plea I had been making for months — I had a wedding band.Maybe not Irena’s, but mine nonetheless.And I would die wearing this one.
“What’s wrong, Kaylay?”
What could I tell her?Last time her gift left me undone, I covered it with prickliness and ingratitude.I would not make the same mistake now.But I still wouldn’t tell her the truth, tempting though it was.
“The tsarina has deprived me of everything I might once have been able to offer you,” I said.That at least was truthful.“I can give you nothing in return.”
“I have things,” she spread her arms out to indicate the room and her finery beyond it.“I have had things my whole life.I do not need more.What you give me is more valuable than all my things put together.”
How quickly would her regard for me vanish if I told her I was the former prince she so reviled?
“I would still like to give you more than flimsy comfort and warmth.”I could offer her nothing but paltry tokens of affection, but what did those matter when her life was threatened?Cuddling wouldn’t keep her safe.Or....I grabbed Alaina’s arm and startled her with my action and sudden intensity.“She didn’t think this through.”
“The wedding?”
“Our deaths.”
“The Royal Academy said that this is the coldest winter Ilyichia has ever experienced, and she is going to keep us overnight in an ice construction.What other outcome is possible?”
Maybe the Otherlander had helped us.Maybe that was why Alaina had never told me that she loved me, not even in the midst of our earlier passions.Maybe the Otherlander ensured that she wouldn’t because only as a bird could I protect her.My feathers were my gift and her salvation.
“We might live,” I spread my wings out, “because I can keep you warm.”
