Page 56 of The Tsarina's Favorite
She led me patiently through the bed surround, through the room, and into her dressing room, the ankle bells noting each step.She dropped my hand just inside the doorway and went to the window to draw back the curtains.Morning light flooded the room.I stood stark against the sea of glimmering satins and pastel accessories.She returned to my side and took my hand again, leading me forward to her golden-framed pier mirror.
She didn’t drop my hand when I stumbled.She clung to it as if offering her strength while I did this impossible thing.But I just stared at the creature that stared back at me from the glass.My logic alone recognized it as my reflection, although every other aspect of my personhood said, no, absolutely not, this is not you.I couldn’t correlate any of the creature’s attributes with mine.Little wonder no one would recognize me if I could not see myself in this Otherland monstrosity.
I dropped her hand when I took another step forward, more fascinated than horrified, my shock still leading the motions rather than my horror repelling me.I reached out and touched the glass, my talons following the movement of the creature’s talons as they tapped along the surface.I stretched a shoulder, twisting it in the socket to loosen the arm, and the creature did too.Skin not covered by feathers had gained a scaled texture, black and gray in gradient, going darker as feathers took over.I tilted my face from side to side to better see myself.Even my eyes, the creature’s eyes, reflected only a dim light of what had once been.
I raised my clawed hand to my chest and stroked down to keep the feathers smooth, every rib a prominent bump along the way.Somehow, this was me.This.
I had never blamed anyone for exercising caution around a man-sized bird known to have caused harm.A creature of the Otherlands, in all its strange, monstrous glory, would give anyone pause.And somehow, even retaining all my faculties and higher reasoning, knowing that this monster of legend was me, I wanted to flee from it too.
She came up beside me and put her hand on my arm.
“You truly have murdered me,” I said, proud of my detachment, grateful for my calm.“There is none of me in this.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she whispered.“You are all here.All of you.There’s just one difference — I’m the only one who can see it.”
To anyone else, her sentiment might have seemed sweet, loving even, but she didn’t know who I was.Or she didn’t want to know.She had an idea of me, an old and outdated image of a former lover that she clung to beyond any new knowledge or circumstance.I wasn’t her idea, couldn’t be her idea.Not without giving up most of the pieces that made me who I truly was.There was no space in her daydream for a grieving widower, an unwilling lover, or a world-weary man.She rejected all parts of me that she couldn’t own or control — most notably, the part of me that did not want her.
“Come back to bed,” she said after an eternity of me staring at my reflection.When she managed to tear me away, she wrapped herself around my arm and led me back into the bedroom.“I have ideas on how to distract you and solve my boredom in the process.”
XIX.
“You’re back!”
I recalled myself from distant thoughts and looked up at my companion.
Alaina took a step backward and clutched her books to her chest.
We stared at each other.
“You’re not wearing the hood today,” she stated.
“I am aware.”
“Yes.Of course.”She took a deep breath and regained her step toward me.“You are just as ugly as I expected,” she announced to cover up her initial fear.
I could have been gracious and let it slide, but this was supposed to be my first time seeing her too, so I sized her up visibly, wanting her to squirm a little under my assessment.Her looks had been much maligned in my, mostly for her dark complexion and the larger nose associated with traditional Altanian features.Although not a beauty in Ilyichia, and probably not in Altania either, I could not bring myself to further insult her on something she had likely heard from everyone else many times.
