Page 35 of The Tsarina's Favorite
I took another few paces and froze.I heard no sound and spied no movement, but there was something, a sensation, a fear, that breathed down my neck like a predator.I sheltered behind the nearest tree.When silence convinced me of my paranoia, I peered around the tree to assess my surroundings.
The burning heat of an attack flayed my back.I stumbled forward and fell, catching my toe on a root and slamming into the ground with a force that would leave me bruised for weeks.I clawed at the creature that had struck such a blow, struggling to my knees as the wild feathered thing continued to tear my back apart.I slammed my back against the trunk of the tree, landing an impact to dislodge the creature that clung to me.It threw me again to the ground.My back burned all the more, strips of fabric and skin ripped away.I fought to rise, but my feet refused to hold me.They too were on fire.My entire body was ablaze in invisible flames.
Against all self-preservation, I screamed with the pain and blinding heat.Something ripped my face open.Blood filled my mouth.My hands lost sensation, and I could not find the footing to flee.
One thought lingered before I blacked out.Somehow, the tsarina had won.
XII.
Someone moaned.
After the third time, I had to consider the possibility that it came from me.But I had burned to death out in the forest.I had been attacked, torn apart, and consumed by flame.The dead did not groan in pain.So, was I alive or dead?
Unless this was some strange afterlife where both could simultaneously be true.Would such an afterlife belong to the domain of The Kind and Fair or the Great Holy?I did not know enough about either religion to have any enlightened perspective and, in the absence of that, I disbelieved in the afterlife entirely.
My body, distant though my limbs might be, registered the ache of an unyielding floor beneath me.My swollen tongue filled my mouth.I rolled onto my side.My head swam with the movement, and I heaved.Blood and bile splattered the ground, droplets flying back at me.
I couldn’t be dead and still produce such undignified bodily responses.But I should have been dead.I had been engulfed in fire out in the cold.And I was sure, before much longer, I would wish to be dead.Again.
Everything pinched and pulled.My legs constricted as if running for days.My numb feet no longer registered socks or boots.My hands refused to function.And my back.If I were told that someone had slit my back open and torn my ribs out from behind, I would have believed it.
I just wanted to sleep.Sleep would cure the pain.And a sweet, forever sleep would ensure that I never suffered again.
“I would caution you not to go in,” a man said.
“I had no intention,” a woman replied.
I tried to locate the source of the conversation, my eyes nearly swollen shut and bleary in the dimness of the room.As I propped myself up to a sitting position, my head spun again.Another round of heaved fluids forced me to my elbows, and the undignified dry retching after shook my body like a toddler having a tantrum.
I trembled with pain and exhaustion and the knowledge that my visitor couldn’t be any of my jester friends this time.The crushing weight of my spectacular failure caused another heave of my belly.
What would she do now?How could anything be worse than what she had already done?Even death offered more solace than her former decree.
“I wish to observe my new prize,” she said.
I was an old problem, not a new prize.
