Page 47 of The Tsarina's Favorite
“Just like that!”She laughed.“I didn’t expect you to be ready for me so soon.”
I struggled to shift her off me, leveraging my body against the floor to free my legs or find the strength in my belly to sit.She grabbed at larger, sensitive feathers and shoved me back down.I struck my head against the tile.Tiny lights flickered through my vision, and when I turned my head to clear it, blood pooled from beneath me.
I tried to beg her to stop.I tried to plead with her that this was an action too low and too base for her.But it wasn’t.It wasn’t beneath her at all.And when she mounted me, I could do nothing about it.I breathed.I tried to breathe.I struggled with even that as she forced every ounce of strength out of me until I broke.
She continued even then, even as I shrank beneath her.I shivered and made myself small.And when she was done, she slid herself off me and stood, wiping her hands on a handkerchief she pulled from the folds of her skirts.
“I didn’t want it that way,” she said as if it made a difference.“I tried to give you everything, and you turned me down.Why have you made me do this to you?”When I did not acknowledge her, she huffed.“You’re going back to your pen soon.But I will have you brought back.Don’t ever make me do it like that again.”
When the doors shut behind her, the tears started.Every indignity, every humiliation, every pain and discomfort and struggle over the past few months, everything, had been for nothing.
XVI.
Once brought back tomy enclosure, I struck my head against the wall with persistent determination.It was a messy, ineffective, and crude method of trying to kill myself, but I had exhausted my options.I had played every card of my hand and lost.Not just lost.I had lost spectacularly.The caretaker found me trying to bash my brains out.He dragged me from the wall and called for aid.I was too weak to fight.
While he cleaned me up, others tied my jesses to a bolt set into a boulder that was then set into the ground, where I could not repeat my attempt.The next day, although they removed the muzzle, they fitted me with a falconry hood.Silenced by my circumstances, collared by the tsarina’s will, and now blinded by a precautionary measure, my days existed in the chill of the outdoors, in darkness, and in fear of the next time I would be brought to the tsarina.
I didn’t know what I was anymore.Not a prince.Not a jester.Not a man.Not even a bird.I was lower than any creature of the menagerie, a depth to which I never imagined one could fall.Did that make me a monster?
Each day, the caretaker came by, but I didn’t stir for him.Not even when he removed the hood to check on my head wound.Not even when he unbound my wings.I just sat there, defeated.I barely ate or drank.I withdrew from every other action or indication of awareness.Even without a muzzle, I kept silent and still for unknown stretches of time.I did little more than sit or sleep now.Perhaps the caretaker thought I sustained damage from my foolishness.I would let him think that.I would let everyone think that if my disinclination to react discouraged them from visiting the famed firebird.I hoped the tsarina heard about it.Maybe she would have no more use for me if she thought me mentally compromised too.
I grew accustomed to silence and darkness.I never wandered more than a step or two from my tether in the ground.If I somehow got loose, I would never have known, and I wouldn’t have cared.This wasn’t a life, and mine had become too cheap to fight for.
The rustle of skirts one afternoon perked my attention as my body stiffened with horrible expectation.I did not move or otherwise shift from my curled-up position on the ground.If it were the tsarina, she would have ample access without having to fight for it this time, and I could remain blissfully distant from my body.If it were anyone else, I would not give them the satisfaction of a reaction.
But the skirts did not venture close to me.They stopped just inside the enclosure, and I guessed that the person had taken a seat on the bench.When the skirts stopped filling the space with their swishes, only then could the muffled sniffling be heard.A lady was crying.Why not?And why not my enclosure?After all, misery had dogged my footsteps for so long and finally taken a firm foothold in a tortured shape destined to be misused.Why shouldn’t everyone with tears to shed come here?It was private enough, at least if they didn’t mind a hooded, silent Otherland creature keeping them company.
She sniffled and hiccupped for a long stretch of time, ignoring me.Eventually, tears dried and hiccups stopped, and only her skirts could be heard.And then they rustled again, this time louder as she approached.
“I don’t know if you’re the firebird,” she said.“The tsarina says you are.I know it’s too much to hope for, but if you could, grant me a wish?”
It was Princess Alaina.Although she spoke low and secretively, the faint Altanian accent betrayed her to my sightless eyes.
I probably could have lived up to my reputation as the firebird and stopped her there.I could have told her what her wish was — to go home — and she would have gaped and gasped and would have run to tell everyone else in the palace that I truly was the firebird.And then I would be treated to months of everyone, nobles and staff and groundkeepers alike, lining up to see if I would grant their deepest longings and secret desires.
I didn't say anything.I had more than my fill of being displayed.
