Romanov(65)

Darkness took years to arrive. By the time it did, I was walking with my eyes closed. Tripping and catching myself, sweating beneath the reindeer clothing. Finally we stopped and I didn’t care how near or far Yurovsky was. I lowered Alexei to the ground and curled up beside him.

The air was chilled, already preparing for the upcoming August frosts. I’d take that over the mosquitoes. Soggy ground gave way beneath our movements. Zash rolled out the two soldier bedrolls he’d been carrying. He moved Alexei to one. “Take the other. You will sleep better without the wetness of the ground.”

I didn’t want his kindness. I didn’t want his sacrifice. And a dark part of me thought that, yes, of course I should have the last bedroll and Zash should sleep on the damp marshy ground. But the human part of me—the part that loved Papa and now heard his voice in my heart—asked, “What of you?”

“The cloth of the stretcher is sufficient. I will keep watch for a time.”

Keep watch. How could he possibly imagine keeping his eyes open? Even Joy had already snuggled beside Alexei and drifted off. “We are the safest we’ll ever be. Sleep now. Tomorrow and every night after is when we will need to be on alert the most.”

He didn’t argue. As one, we all accepted the embrace of darkness and weariness. A sleep that comforted and revived the saint, the sinner, and every being in between. A night that would finally separate us from the longest and blackest day of our lives.





29


I woke coughing on the thick, wet fog rising from the forest ground and then grinding my teeth from the pain it caused to my ribs. The sun was up and warming the day. Joy licked my face. I petted her head and sat up. That was when the wave of reality struck me in the throat as I recalled the previous day’s events.

Papa.

Mamma.

Olga.

Tatiana.

Maria.

Their names flowed in my chanting blood. Boiling. Bubbling until they sent me scrambling away from our little camp and heaving yesterday’s borscht into the bushes.

Romanov. Romanov. Romanov.

My blood was lonely. I couldn’t do this without them. Without my family. All the hope we had clung to had been held as a family. Every dream, dreamed as a family. We planned to live together or die together.

But I was left behind.

The tears came swift and hot. I dug my fingernails into the ground and wept. Wept for the life ripped from me. “The bond . . . of our hearts . . .” I gasped.

Maria wasn’t here to finish it for me. I pictured her voice. Her face. Her smile. “. . . spans miles, memory, and time.”

But what about death? Did it span death?

I stayed in that spot. Weeping the names of my family. Weeping for my loss. Weeping for my helplessness and confusion. Until, finally, I managed to shove the sorrow away. Not forever, but for today.

I’d spent so long waking to joyless days that it was easier to move forward than to look back.

Back at our spot in the woods, both Alexei and Zash still slept. Joy whimpered and licked my hand, as though she knew where I’d gone.

I allowed tiny thoughts to trickle back in. Alexei’s wounds. Vira the grandmother. The Matryoshka doll. Dochkin. I pulled the doll from my corset and stared at it. No new seam. The gold and red swirls gleamed against the black body. Such elegant mockery. It was as solid as the previous layer before it had been used prior to my using it to escape our execution.

I gripped it tight. “I need you,” I hissed to the doll, thinking of Dochkin. “I need this spell to heal Alexei. To reverse time and bring my family back. I need to find him.” I twisted the doll. When in the Ipatiev House, I had thought the seam appeared because of our need. That’s what Papa hinted at. I’d used it and it saved Alexei and me. But now Alexei was dying and I needed it more than ever. Why wouldn’t it open?

“Would you like me to try?” Zash asked softly, pushing himself into a sitting position from his place on the stretcher. “I could—”

“No,” I snapped. “It was entrusted to me.”

“Perhaps a different person has to alternate spells.”

“Then I’ll wait for Alexei to wake.” I tucked the doll back into my corset. Alexei hadn’t moaned or expressed pain since Vira’s spells. But my eyes strayed to the purple bruise on his head. Was I at risk of letting my anger at Zash hinder getting help for Alexei?

I tossed Zash the doll. “Fine. Go ahead and try. We need all the help we can get.”

He examined the doll just as I did. I turned back to Alexei and covered him with my reindeer overcoat to make sure he was warm enough. Hunger and injuries were likely taking a toll on his body temperature.

“Oh, here’s the seam.” Zash held the doll close to his face and slid his thumbnail along a tiny line around the center.

No! That definitely had not been there when I tried. He gripped the top and bottom in his fists. I reached for it. “Wait. Let me—”

The doll popped open, and before either of us could react, a shimmering rainbow light sped from the inside of the doll and disappeared into the trees like a startled pixie.

“The spell!” I squeaked, scrambling to my feet. “You let it escape!” Joy ran after it, yapping as though it were a squirrel. I stumbled a few feet, but the streak of light was long gone. Joy disappeared into the underbrush, but soon her barks communicated that she’d lost it, too. “Wasted!” I threw up my hands. “Did you even see what the word was?”