Page 55 of The Tsarina's Favorite
“She was not a whore,” I whispered.“She was a gentleman’s daughter, and I married her.”
“Yes, ever the noble one, aren’t you?”She knelt in front of me.“I heard about your other mistresses too.Did your uncle introduce you to the one you took in Alfinia?I heard she bore a child that could have been yours — a head full of dark ringlets and skin like milk.Did you know that?I did.I heard about everything.”
I didn’t know anything about a possible child.Could the tsarina be lying to me, just to hurt me?That seemed a likely possibility, but maybe it wasn’t a lie.I had been involved with a woman in Alfinia — which I thought I had kept sufficiently quiet — and a child was a possibility too.
“You flew from one woman to another, never caring who you hurt in the process.”
“I never wanted to hurt anyone,” I said.
“But you did anyway.And then you returned.So I made you a bird.The most ridiculous one I could think of, so that no one else would be swayed by your charms.So that I wouldn’t be swayed again.”She reached out and put her hand on my cheek.“And it didn’t work.”
The touch from anyone else might have been sweet and soft and warm, but I well knew the cruelty that lay hidden in her palm, the tenderness of muscles that could turn sour in moments, the possession that permeated her bones.She conflated obedience and ownership with love.I did not think she could truly love anyone, not now, not after so long of hating those who would not give her what she wanted, I among them.
“And this form?”
“In this form, no one but me would want you.”She stroked her thumb over my cheek.“You are the only thing I would have asked for from the firebird, and so now, I get both in one.”She smiled, truly smiled, devoid of bitterness and hate, a rare expression that I had once appreciated my first round of being her lover but now found unspeakably sad.“You are my perfect companion.”
Her perfect companion.That sounded like a forever kind of thing.I had already guessed that her offer of a way out was false, so I didn’t despair any more than I already had.But even like this, I would have preferred a forever anywhere else but at her side.
But, smiling, contented, she was in a place where I could ask things of her.Not all things.I couldn't ask to have my ankles unbound.After the removal of the hood and the release of my arms, she would shrink if I asked for more of my restraints to be removed.But other things, yes.I just couldn’t phrase them like asks.
“I have such a poor diet,” I said.“I may not be with you long.”
“That can be fixed, my dear.Just behave, and then everything gets better.”
“Will I always be chained?”I looked meaningfully at the leash tied to the bed.
“Show me I can trust you, and that will go away too.”
I didn’t know how to do that because she couldn't trust me.I would always be looking for the way out.But I nodded as if I understood.
She slid her hand from my face, down my neck, and over my chest appreciatively, finally resting it over my heart.
“You are not alone,” she told me.“I know this is difficult, but it doesn’t need to be.You have me, have always had me.Rely on me.Need me.And I will prove to you how much I care about you.”
The lies issued forth so convincingly that she likely did not think them lies at all.Somehow, she had rationalized all of it, and I, lowly creature as I was, should forgive her entirely because she claimed to do it from a place of caring.
“What do I look like now?”The question, though originating from my throat, surprised even me.“I know I am ugly,” I said, heading off any vague description she might use to placate me.“You and all others have made no secret of it.But I haven’t seen.Not everything.Not all at once.”
Her hand slid off of me entirely and fell back onto her lap.“You don’t want to.”
Maybe I shouldn’t want to, but now I had to know.
I had guessed at much since I could see a beak and feathers and could extrapolate from there.But I hadn’t touched my face, at first too afraid of what the truth would be beneath my fingers and then unable to raise my hands to my face at all.I could look down and see a full torso of feathers, legs of feathers, feet of feathers and scales.I could feel the weight of wings pulling muscles in my back.Like the mosaic floors of Varnasia, I could see the tiles, but I had not yet stood back far enough to see the whole.
I reached out, trembling as much from weakness as with hesitance.The leather strips that dangled from the band brushed her wrist.I laid my horrible, clawed hand on top of the one she had withdrawn.
Her eyes traveled down to our hands.A fleeting expression of guilt passed her face.She glanced back up to me, her brows knitted.
“Please,” I asked.
She took the hand that lay on top of hers and stood.With her other, she unclasped the chain lead from the bed.She dropped the leash and tugged on my hand.I shifted my legs to position them beneath me, and then I stood.I stared down at her, through feathers and over a beak.
“Are you sure you want to do this?”she asked.
I wasn’t sure.By the moment I turned more cowardly.But I had to know.I had managed rather well when stuffed into a costume not to look at myself beyond absolute necessity, but that had been a costume.I knew what I looked like outside of it.I didn’t know who or what I had become now.
I nodded, words nowhere to be found.
