Robin Bridges: The Gathering Storm

Militza smiled. “Necromancy is the most vile, the blackest of the black arts, Duchess. Certainly you cannot think the tsarina could allow one such as you to remain under her roof? Or indeed, even to continue attending Smolny?”

She had me trapped in her web. “What do you want from me?” I whispered.

She smiled once more and put her arm through mine, leading me back toward the ballroom. “I want you to meet the rest of my family. My mother would put your talents to good use. Come home with us for Christmas holidays.”

I tried to pull away from her. “But my parents—”

“Will be very shocked and disgusted if they discover what their clever daughter has been doing. Unless they already know? Do your parents know how to raise the dead as well?”

“Of course not!” I felt the panic rising in my body. “And they know nothing of my problem.”

“Problem?” Militza laughed. “In my family, it would be considered the greatest gift. You’ll see.”

As soon as we returned to the ballroom, Militza joined her fiancé for a waltz. I retreated to the pretty winter garden. I had no desire to dance anymore. I just wanted the night to be over.

I stood in front of the fountain, lost in my own thoughts, and did not know anyone else was in the garden until a voice whispered in my ear, “Whatever spell you are casting now, I promise you it won’t work.”

I spun around to see Grand Duke George Alexandrovich glaring at me. My heart dropped to my stomach as I curtsied feebly. “Your Imperial Highness, I can assure you—”

“Your aura is tainted with the blackest magic. You have been doing something sinister and I know my brother’s dinner was involved.”

I squirmed under his intense gaze. I wanted to tell him that I’d just saved his brother from the clutches of the Montenegrins, but I was terrified they would come after my family.

Nor did I want my parents and brother to incur the tsar’s wrath. What had I gotten myself into? And how did the grand duke know the color of my aura?

There was a power struggle, subtle but deadly, within the aristocracy of St. Petersburg. There was a Light Court and a Dark Court, each presided over by a powerful faerie. Everyone within the nobility aspired to be claimed by one of these ladies. One could be loyal either to the empress or to the grand duchess Miechen, but everyone was loyal to the tsar. The Romanov dynasty had traditionally been aligned with the Light Court, even though none of the tsars had ever married a faerie until Alexander married Dagmar of Denmark in 1866. His brother shocked the entire Romanov family by marrying the Dark Court faerie Miechen in 1874.

All that was known of the faeries was that they were ethereally beautiful and tended to read minds. No one knew the full extent of their powers. The superstitious lower classes knew only that our tsar was incredibly strong, and that our empress looked as young and beautiful as she had when she’d married the tsar.

And who knew what mysterious gifts the tsar’s son standing in front of me had inherited from his mother? “Your Imperial Highness, please forgive me. It … it was nothing more than a schoolgirl dare.”

“A dare? Meddling with magic? Against my brother?”

“It was extremely foolish. We … I mean … I meant him no harm.” If he did not see the auras of the Montenegrins and recognize Princess Elena for the witch that she was, I would not be the one to enlighten him.

He glared at me as I tried to remember how old the grand duke was. Seventeen, perhaps? A year older than me, but surely not as old as my brother. He certainly made a handsome faerie. His soft brown hair fell down into his eyes, which, although not as kind as his brother’s eyes, were quite attractive. Mon Dieu, where had that thought come from?

He took my gloved hands in his as I tried in vain to stop trembling. “Black magic is punishable by exile,” he said.

“And any attempt to cast a spell on a member of the imperial family is punishable by death.” He stared at me, no doubt seeing much more of me than I wished him to. “I am certain this will not happen again.”

Punishable by death? I felt weak and nauseated and realized he was holding me up. “Never again, Your Imperial Highness.”

“Very good, Duchess.” With a click of his boot heels, he made a sharp bow and left me. Of course he did not offer to escort me back to the ballroom. We did not want to start any more rumors that evening.

I wondered about the auras he claimed to see. The popular author Marie Corelli wrote romantic novels in which pulsing bodies of energy surrounded all living beings. The grand duke might have been able to see auras as well as Princess Militza, but I saw something much more ominous surrounding everyone.

The light I saw was not life but death. A cold light that seemed to grow stronger as a person drew nearer to the end. When a person died, sometimes the cold light was all that remained: the ghost of an individual. Perhaps it was the doppelganger I had read about in my cousin Dariya’s German romances. Perhaps it was an aura that I saw detaching itself from a dying body. Everyone has a cold light. Little by little, we are all dying every day.

I used to sneak out of my bedroom and watch my mother conduct séances at her parties. Spiritism may have been fashionable, especially among Maman’s friends, but reanimation of the dead was another thing entirely. What I had done tonight was unholy. I swore to myself I would never do such an abominable thing again.

I might have saved the tsarevitch from a malicious love spell, but from the moment I had used my terrible power, the cold light of everyone at the Winter Palace had grown brighter. Death was now closer than before.

That night, after the ball, I dreamed about hundreds of moths, fluttering through my bedroom window and down the dark hallways with their gray paper wings. One slipped into each room, landing on the mouth of the sleeping girl inside. What they were doing on all those girls’ lips, I could not tell.

I woke up to a cold room, my breath visible in the gray light of early morning. The last remnants of the strange dream faded away as freezing air shocked my lungs. Someone had opened our window again in the middle of the night. I tiptoed across the icy floor and shut it before anyone became sick.

Dariya suspected Elena, who shared our room, but I believed it was the headmistress, who insisted night air was beneficial for young girls’ growing lungs. I could never find any medical studies proving her theory. I felt a little rebellious closing the window against Madame Tomilov’s wishes. But I hated waking up with frost on my quilt.

The following week, everyone swarmed around Elena with a thousand questions about the tsarevitch. The teachers were just as curious and excited as the girls were. Madame Tomilov asked her to lead the younger girls in the mazurka during dance lessons. At tea, the servants gossiped with her about the tsarevitch’s favorite foods. Elena enjoyed the attention.

I tried to put the ball out of my mind. Especially everything Princess Militza had said to me. She had called me a necromancer. It chilled my heart to think of it—especially since I knew it to be true. Even more terrifying, I was not sure of the scope of my abilities. I’d never wanted to experiment. It frightened me to imagine what I might be capable of. What I’d done at the ball was horrible. I’d resurrected a dead insect. But there were certainly worse acts I could have committed. A thousand times worse. It wasn’t as if I’d meddled with a human soul. Deep in my heart, though, I feared that I had the power to do so.

The last time I’d purposely used my powers, I was ten years old, and I’d believed it was for a noble cause. I resurrected Maman’s poor cat Sasha. I’d found him in our garden, his neck broken from a fall from a tree. I knew that the loss of her beloved Sasha would break my mother’s heart. Not wanting Maman to be sad, I wished Sasha back to life. Maman never noticed the subtle difference in him afterward. Not the dull look to his eyes, nor the way he hissed every time I came near. Even at that age, I’d known what I’d done had been terribly wrong. I’d sworn I would never do such a thing again. But I had.