Anastasia

by Sophie Lark

She might as well have said she was the goddess Isis. Writers were the source of everything he loved best.

“The man who waits for ‘someday’ waits all his life …”

Husani was only allowed to leave when the heat of the day had all bled away.

“Anything lovely by daylight is even better by night.” “You are,”

the way her eyes seemed to flicker and her face changed in some incomprehensible way, as if someone had gripped the crown of her hair and pulled tight, yanking the skin back.

He had the bleeding disease, what Dr. Atticus called “haemorrhaphilia,” and Margaretta called “the royal disease” because only the noble houses seemed to catch it.

It’s not that I wanted to misbehave, but the most interesting things were always forbidden. My curiosity was a demon that lurked inside me, awake and watching.

“Who’s Karol Volk?” “The king wolf. A wolf far larger than a horse, Anastasia. White as frost, cruel, and wickedly clever. Some say he’s a sorcerer who has been living as wolf so long he’s forgotten that he was ever a man at all—”

“Damien Kaledin, son of Taras Kaledin, leader of the Free Men.”

“What happened, Papa?” “You slowed time.”

He was supposed to be my enemy, but I wanted to know all about him. I wanted to ask where he lived, what he ate, whether he had a mother.

“Find the one who can beat you where you thought you’d never be beaten … the one who was lost and then found

Only I could understand her—the words formed in my head, while all anyone else heard was a gyrfalcon. I think that’s what kept her coming back once she was flying free. She liked being understood.

It was the same as when I saw him in the steppes—even stronger this time. My feet were rooted to the ground, my fingertips welded to the bark of the lime tree, as if I were connected to the earth and the plants and the air going in and out of my lungs.

Almost as soon as the fragile bloom touched his skin, it began to wilt. Spots of brown materialized upon the edges of the petals, eating away at the flower like a lattice of rust. The peony blackened and died in his hand, crumbling away to nothing.

“Anything I touch, I kill,” Damien said. “If I hold on long enough.”

“What if I touch you?”

“Go ahead.” It was a dare. A challenge. He didn’t think I’d do it.

The moment our bare skin touched, I felt a sucking sensation, like my body was a bathtub and our linked hands had pulled open the plug so all the water drained out. Whatever was in me began to flow into him. My legs went weak. The color leached from my vision so the summer leaves hardly looked green anymore, cinder colored against an ashy sky.

“You’re brave,” Damien said. “Or stupid. Most people won’t even touch me through my clothes.”

Damien ignored my sisters and everyone else. His eyes were fixed on me alone. I felt them burning on my skin everywhere I turned.

I knew Damien was still watching me because I could feel it, hotter than the summer sun beating on my skin.

The connection between us fueled me—strongest when his eyes were locked on mine. Then the link was so clear I almost thought I could read his face like words spoken aloud. The smile he couldn’t quite hide that said, “Do it. I dare you.”

I wouldn’t be the screw-up anymore. The fourth daughter nobody wanted, always underfoot, always in trouble. I’d be impressive for once.

“Someday when you’re betrothed, your ability will make you a valuable match. But it’s not appropriate for you to flaunt your power. You’re a young lady, a Grand Duchess, and a future queen. You shame yourself, Anastasia. You shame all of us. And you paint a target on your back when you display ability without skill.”

“Nothing is more dangerous than showing weakness. Remember that.”

“You’re my little firework, Stassie. You go out with a bang, but you light up the sky.” “Fireworks don’t go out with a bang, Papa. They start with one.”

I wondered if there was something symbiotic in our magic. If so, that was another irony of the gods, because in every other way we were oil and

My brother was dying.

“When I die, I want to be buried in the woods, in the trees,” he croaked. “With a stone marker.”

“It hurts because we love him. That’s the balance of life, hard as it is to accept. A heart open to joy is a heart vulnerable to sorrow. There’s no family without loss, no love without pain.”

“Whatever else is taken from you, never lose hope. Even if you see how dark the world can be, choose to believe it could be better.”

“All magic’s alive. That’s why it’s so goddamn unpredictable.”

I idolized Catherine the Great because she was clever instead of beautiful, and she ruled Rusya well for thirty-four years, longer than any other Empress.

lust for power will poison your mind. It strengthens you … but bends your sense of what should be traded. Be careful what you allow to shape you. Ruling is a responsibility, and a heavy one. It’s what we owe to the people, not what they owe to us.”

You were born to power, by birth, by position, and by ability. Some are satisfied with their place in nature. And some are hungry for more.”

he’d been raised to believe that the people had no idea how to govern themselves. Handing them power only emboldened their worst impulses.

“You can record any day you like. One single day. Start in the morning, when the day is full of promise.

“You kept this one all these years?” “It was the only one I ever took of Nixa. He died a week later.”

“Do you love him still?” “I grew to love your grandfather in time,” Minnie said. “But I loved Nixa desperately. That doesn’t go away. It can’t.”

I was still the only Romanov of my generation who could time-walk. Not even any of my little cousins could do it.

It made us all realize how much we’d become prisoners at home, barely able to leave the palace grounds.

“I don’t know if I want to know my future.” “Your future is all our futures, boy,” she said softly.

I was used to a certain level of isolation. When you can’t touch any living thing, when people are afraid of you, you accustom yourself to distance.

But to be hated by everyone you encounter, to have no friends or family or anyone who will even smile in your direction … that was a new level of loneliness.

I didn’t know what drew me to her over and over. Maybe I only wanted to feel that crackling energy that surged through my body whenever we stood close.

I wondered if she was fucking with the flow of time. Everything seemed to pause when our eyes met.

“Do you hate us still?” Those blue eyes were water on fire. They put me out in an instant. I sighed. “I don’t hate you. Sometimes I want to … but I just can’t seem to do it.”

The sound of my name on her lips made me shiver. Yet I was hot with something like anger and fear, all mixed up together. It might have been jealousy.

Nobody wanted us to dance together. Nobody but me.