Page 122 of The Tsarina's Favorite
I asked without time to think better of it, “Would you prefer feathers?”
She pulled her hand away.
“I wanted to tell you,” I confessed.“So many times I went to and then thought, why burden you with it?”
“No, of course,” she said.“Why would I have expected you to tell me the truth?”
“I did not foresee any reversal of my fate.”
In our first days, I waited on her in silence and in the dark.Her words were balms, her presence a comfort.But for her, she had been with her bird friend, and I was now but a stranger.Her silence suffocated me.
“You should have just let me die,” I told her more bitterly than I intended.
She put her hand on my shoulder, and I pulled away from her grasp.I could not bear her touch even though I craved it.She didn’t want me, not like this, not anymore.And maybe she never truly had.Our coupling had been her defiance, her demonstration of autonomy in the face of one who would have seen her spirit broken, not a statement of true desire.
But for me....
If the last year of my life had not numbed me to grief and heartache, I might have given in to the infantile urge to weep.
Alaina might have told me that she loved me, but I was still someone else to her then, and we were facing death.I couldn’t believe it now.
She tried to touch me again.“I know you’re upset—”
“Damn right, I’m upset!”Anger served me better than tears.“That was supposed to be the end.I was supposed to die.And then I would never again have to worry about disappointing anyone.But I’m alive.And I am still found wanting by the only person I give a shit about.”
“That’s not true, Kaylay.”
“I’m not your Kaylay!”Didn’t she see that was the point?“I’m a complete stranger to you.”
“You’re not a stranger.”
“You screamed when you saw me.”
“I was being held by a magnificent bird one moment, and in the next, I’m being held by a man.Screaming was a perfectly reasonable reaction!”
She wasn’t wrong.
“You’re not a stranger,” she repeated.“When I got to Ilyichia, everyone spoke of the tsarina’s favorite lover.”
Blyat.
The chill of her knowledge combatted the heat of my shame.A fallen prince reduced to servitude and subjugation owned more humiliation than some pretty, anonymous servant the tsarina plucked off the street and made her slave.
“You know who I am.”
“I know you were a respected soldier.I know you worked tirelessly to earn back the honor of a powerful and influential family that your forefathers jeopardized.I know you were considered one of the most eligible bachelors in the royal households of the continent.”
I could not dispute any of it.
“You were also said to be the most handsome man in Ilyichia,” she added.
“Maybe fifteen years ago.”
“I saw you the other day,” she asserted, “and there was no lie.”
“You know too then that I am disgraced,” I reminded her lest she get caught up in her own fanciful and romanticized idea of me.
“No one could miss what she did to you.”
