Page 91 of The Tsarina's Favorite
“I will not tell you that it is impossible.Like you, I don’t think she wants me either, but she will not let me go.So we must tread carefully.Leave me behind the next few events, and if she asks, tell her I’m being difficult.”
“I don’t like it.”Nonetheless, Alaina resumed petting me.“We need to leave Ilyichia soon.We need to go somewhere she can’t touch us.”
“Wouldn’t that be nice?”I didn’t see it as a realistic possibility.If the tsarina would not let Alaina leave, then she was stuck here.And if she was stuck, so was I.“Maybe someday.”
Alaina finished her tea, yawned, and then guided me off her lap.She stood and smoothed her skirts.She petted the top of my head as she passed me and disappeared into her bedroom.
I stood also and put out the candles.I rearranged the cushions and grabbed my blanket off the chaise.I settled back down in front of the hearth to wait for her to come back so that I could say good night.
She floated in like a ghost only a few minutes later, her white nightshift stark against the shadows, the chamberstick flame thin and tenuous.She crossed over to me and held out her hand palm down.As per what had become our nightly ritual, I took it and pressed the back of her hand to my temple, in deference and in affection in the absence of the kiss I could not bestow with a beak.
“Good night, princess.”
Instead of her usual “good night, Kaylay,” she set the chamberstick down on the side table, took a seat on the chaise, and never let go of my hand.Instead, she put her newly free hand over mine.
“Is everything all right?”The shift in routine alerted me to new stiffness in her posture and resolve in her grasp.
“Yes,” she said.She smiled, the gesture absent and distracted, secondary to thoughts she had not yet given voice.“You know, Kaylay, you don’t have to sleep on the floor.”
“I know.”I squeezed her hand, touched by her concern.“But the chair doesn’t accommodate me, and the chaise is not long enough.”
“I didn’t mean the chair or the chaise,” she whispered.
“Then?”I stared at her a moment, and she didn’t elaborate.“I know you don’t mean the cage,” which still resided in the anteroom.
“Of course not.”
“And you certainly aren’t proposing that I climb into bed with you.”
Alaina averted her eyes at that suggestion and nibbled her bottom lip.The implication silenced me as effectively as the muzzle.And she didn’t say no.She flicked her gaze to me, a question set deeply into her brows.
“You’re not serious,” I gulped around my shock.
“Why shouldn’t I be?”Alaina’s gaze fully returned with her affront.“The tsarina keeps you in her bed.”
“She keeps me on the floor.”
“Even for....?”
“We don’t sleep,” I said, correcting Alaina.“And I never share her bed.”
“I hate her!”She worried at my hand in her grasp.“You should be afforded a bed.I would like to share mine with you.”
“I cannot.”
“I am not a maiden,” she argued.
“I did not realize you were proposing that kind of arrangement.”
Not that I hadn’t had silly little daydreams about being able to be freely affectionate and intimate with her.But that’s all they were — daydreams, what ifs, illusions of possible joys — all devised to keep me alive for the here and the now.That was all.They were never intentions or plans for the future.She was a princess.It didn’t matter what the folktales said.A princess wouldn’t want a monstrous bird.I chose to ignore that the tsarina did.
“I was just reassuring you that in accepting my offer, you wouldn’t be sullying my purity,” she said.
Things had somehow become very serious very quickly, so I asked to keep it barbed, “What purity?”
“Then you should have nothing to worry about!”
I glanced at the doorway of her bedroom.“I cannot.”
