Page 87 of The Tsarina's Favorite
I was an idiot Ilyichian prince who never learned his lessons, it seemed.Alaina, who the tsarina had tried to recreate in her own image, would be the last person in the world the tsarina would tolerate being the recipient of my affections.So, of course, who else would I love but Alaina?If the tsarina ever found out, she would have both our heads.
I did not love the tsarina, not because someone else took pride of place in my affections but because the tsarina had never evolved beyond the stage of conflating ownership and obedience with love.She had not been asked to step aside because I loved another.She had been bypassed by all because she made herself impossible to love.She just refused to see it.
It wouldn’t matter that my love for Alaina, or anyone else, did not preclude me from loving another.I could love infinitely in infinite ways.My love for Alexei was not the same as my love for Drook.My love for Drook was not the same as my love for Klessa.My love for Klessa was not the same as my love for Alaina.And my love for Alaina was not the same as my love for Irena.It couldn’t be.Yet my love for all of them coexisted peacefully within me, did not drain my supply or impede my capability, and perhaps rather enhanced them.
It wouldn’t matter that Alaina didn’t reciprocate.Although if I said the words first, maybe Alaina would say them in return.And if Alaina reciprocated....
If Alaina reciprocated.If she told me.If the tsarina wasn’t lying about there being a way out of wearing feathers and a beak for the rest of my life....
If Alaina reciprocated and we were still in Ilyichia, the tsarina’s fury would be all the greater.There had never been a promise of freedom, at least not beyond not being a bird, not for me.And no promises had ever been made regarding Alaina.And even if the tsarina made promises, they could not be trusted.
I paused just outside of the door to Alaina’s apartment and gazed down into her sleeping, peaceful face.Oh, to share in a moment of that tranquility!
What if the tsarina told me the truth?What if, in her drowse, Alaina murmured the words?Would I condemn her to greater suffering at the tsarina’s hands by returning to my natural state?Surely, the tsarina would have to have everyone who bore witness to my continued existence executed to preserve her lie that I was dead.
I could only think of one absolute way to ensure that Alaina would never say those words to me.I could tell her who I was.
Still convinced that the tsarina was lying to me, I could be worrying about all of this for nothing.There was no way out.There would be no physical manifestation that someone had dared to tell me they loved me as I currently was.There would never be a trace that I had once been the disgraced prince Alaina so reviled.
But if the tsarina wasn’t lying to me, telling Alaina who I was would both remove any possibility of the hope of changing again, which at this juncture might be the more merciful action, and it would ensure that she could not risk greater peril on my account.
Maybe I would tell her that I was Mikhail then.
It would hurt.Oh, Great Holy, would it hurt!When my confession hit and recognition finally settled, I would be unable to look at her, unable to bear her disgust.She would put distance between us.She would relinquish my care back to the tsarina.And why wouldn’t she?She never wanted anything to do with a man in a costume, especially one he could not remove.
But it would assuage my conscience.And Alaina would be safe again.Well, safer than now.
I spied the door lever and gripped Alaina more tightly to my chest, preparing to go within.I wouldn’t get many more opportunities like this to hold her, to be gentle with her, or to care for her while she would allow me.I pressed my cheek to the top of her head.
I would tell her in the morning.For now, I would let her dream of her friend, the one she wanted clad in feathers and with wings.
“Even if you end up hating me, I really am trying to do the right thing,” I whispered to her.But I didn’t know what I was doing.I had never had to navigate a plurality of identities before.I never had to pick which choice of all possible wrong choices was the least bad.“I’m so sorry.”
“Kvasnik?”
My head jerked up.My back stiffened.Alaina stirred in my arms.A shiver traveled through my spine.That the speaker did not use Mikhail pricked at my skin.A call for Mikhail could mean any Mikhail.But she used Kvasnik, and Kvasnik could only mean me.
No.There could be no way.Granted, perhaps the timing between Mikhail’s execution and my appearance on the scene might have been a little close together, but one did not immediately follow the other.I had been unconscious and detained for who knew how long before I ever showed up inside the palace again.And I had shown up as a different creature.
I had been on display in the audience chamber, in the foyers, at the tsarina’s feet, in council, through the halls, outside in my enclosure.Everyone had seen that my feathers were part of me.Everyone had seen that my wings were attached.Everyone could see that this wasn’t another, more extreme costume forced onto a man.
How then could anyone guess?Was magic something others believed in?I had never seen it.I had never even heard of it spoken of seriously.It wasn’t something people witnessed.And if it had not altered me in undeniable ways, I might still not believe in it.How then did someone else identify me when I had been so careful?
“It is you, isn’t it?”
I turned to look at the speaker.
She was a plain woman, perhaps around my age, dark eyes, her posture and manner straight and upright.Dressed like most other servants with a simple dress, apron, and covered hair, I could not place her.She had not been one of the servants to guide me in the early days of my disgrace.Perhaps she attended Alaina or the tsarina when she was ill.But why then would she call me Kvasnik?That was my name among friends, and I did not know her.
Alaina stirred again.She gathered the robe in her fist, dug her fingers into my chest, and murmured something.
I glanced between the sleeping princess and the servant who used my private name.
I wanted to interrogate the servant, determine what her relation to me had been that she might still see through this disguise, discover if one of the jesters had hired her to find out if it was truly me.
But I could not do it in front of Alaina.
If Alaina knew....
