Alexei looked even more distraught. “I’d hoped you would join me . . . and help in the war.”
“I am sorry, my tsarevich. I would have liked that.” Dochkin adopted a serious tone. A soldier-like tone that returned Alexei to a state of strength. “The most I can do now is heal your body.”
Dochkin’s eyes flicked to where Yurovsky stuffed a spell bottle into his coat. “It’s time to go, Nastya. You need to keep him from destroying or taking those spells—those are the spells that might save you. Let me show you where they are.”
He directed me past Yurovsky. I still squeezed my body tight so I wouldn’t touch him, even though I would have passed through him. Dochkin pointed to a metal tin beside a half-eaten loaf of bread. “Those are minor healing spells. They can help with pain.”
He pointed to a cupboard opposite us. “There is a pistol on the second shelf, but I ran out of bullets after the last commandant hunted me.” He gestured to the bullet straps crossing Yurovsky’s chest. “Those should work, but you have no chance of retrieving both pistol and bullet before he stops you. You don’t want the pistol to fall into his hands either. Use that as a last resort.”
I nodded, though a pistol sounded awfully handy just now.
He stopped by the windowsill where two glass vials sat pushed against the wood frame, soaking up the light. He pointed to the larger one. “This is for Alexei. You must pour it over his bare skin. All of it. There is no spell word. Just say Romanov and the spell will do the rest. It must soak into his skin, so do not let his body be disturbed after you’ve applied it.”
I nodded, my heart thundering at each clink of Yurovsky thumbing through spells and vials and jars. Any second he could turn and find these. Smash them.
“There was another request that came with that Matryoshka spell,” Dochkin said softly. Zash stilled from across the room.
“Mine,” I breathed. “The one that will reverse this tragedy—that will take us back to that night so I can save my family.” Tears sprang to my eyes. “Please. Tell me you’ve made it.” I scanned the windowsill and captured the smaller vial with my gaze. I wanted to erase the pain. Erase the loss. This man had created a spell to heal Alexei. He could do it. I knew he could.
Dochkin rested his hand by the smaller vial.
“Nastya . . .” Zash’s meek voice came from behind me.
“It is not what you think.” Dochkin’s hand dropped to his side. “I cannot reverse time.”
I backed from the window. “But the first spell I used . . . this spell that we are in. It reversed the attacks on our bodies!” I was very careful not to say the word ajnin because that would send us back to the physical realm.
“That was not reversing time. That was reversing the actions taken on your body after the spell was used. It is a very different thing.”
“Can’t you reverse what Yurovsky did? The firing squad? The massacre?”
His expression showed that he wished he had a different answer for me. “Unless the proper spell was enacted beforehand, there is nothing I can do.”
I gestured halfheartedly at the little glass vial. “Then what is this for?”
“That is for you, Grand Duchess. And it is only because you are my grand duchess that I made it. For anyone else, I would have refused.”
I sensed Zash behind us but didn’t turn.
Dochkin knew my desires—that spell of his had whispered my secrets to him and he’d made me this new spell. “What does it do?” I peered into the liquid and caught some dark letters floating around.
“I used a Russian spell word for this one—pustoy,” Dochkin said.
“Blank,” I translated, entranced by the liquid.
“It will erase your pain.”
I tore my eyes away from the vial. “How? How can anything do that?”
“It will erase your story. Your memories. You will not know of the hurt—therefore you can never feel it.” He nodded as though officially passing the spell to me. To keep and to use as I willed.
Blank. It was exactly what I wished . . . for myself. To never have to think of Papa’s face again with a stab of loss. To never revive memories of my sisters being bayoneted and dumped down a mine shaft. I would never have to remember Zash’s betrayal or the fear that came from Yurovsky’s pursuit.
I would be free.
Free to start over. To start fresh.
“Nastya, wait.” Zash reached for my hand, as though to stop me from using the spell then and there, even though my ghost form couldn’t touch it. “You . . . can’t.”
“Why shouldn’t I, Zash?” I asked softly.
Dochkin raised an eyebrow at Zash. “It is her right. You have been part of her pain. It is not your choice to deny her healing.”
Zash’s hand slid from mine. Defeated. “But . . . Nastya, I want to be part of your healing. I want to be part of your life.”
“You need to go, Nastya,” Dochkin urged. “Remember that wherever you’re standing when you reverse the ajnin spell is where your body will join you.”
I turned from the windowsill to find Yurovsky stuffing bottle after bottle into his pack. I strode past Zash, not strong enough to meet his eyes after what Dochkin had given me.
“That spell does not carry over,” Dochkin warned. “It can be used on only one person—it’s not strong enough for two.”
“Nastya, please . . .” Zash jogged after me.
“I have to go.” My heart was breaking. “I can’t think about that right now. I have to save Alexei.”
Zash closed his mouth and nodded.
I didn’t want to silence him. But I meant what I said. I couldn’t think about that spell yet. I had to get this right. Once I returned, I would have mere seconds to try to save Alexei. My gaze slid to Dochkin’s body.
How could I leave him there to die? He was alive for the moment . . . and Alexei so craved Dochkin’s knowledge and guidance. I needed him to teach me spell mastery. Otherwise, what future did we have? Even if we stopped Yurovsky?
“You cannot save me,” Dochkin said, as though reading my thoughts.
“You should know,” Alexei said. “Nastya doesn’t really like when people tell her she can’t do something.”
I kissed Dochkin’s cheek. Then I ran and gave Alexei a tight hug, even though he’d yet to stand this entire time. “Please . . . hold on as long as you can.”
“I will, Sister.”
I took his face in my hands and stared hard into it. Painting it into my memory. A desperate flutter in my heart whispered that this was the last time I’d see his brave smile. No. No. I couldn’t acknowledge that. I had to cling to hope.
Finally, I faced the room. I faced Zash. He strode up to me as though to embrace me. But instead, he grabbed my shoulders and steered me to the river stone on the ground beside his body. The stone he’d dropped when Yurovsky smashed the spell ink jar against his head.
“Wake up here and use this to defend yourself. He’s too close to the hunting knife for you to start there.”
I nodded, trying to muster up the courage that used to come so easily when planning something risky.
Yurovsky examined a bottle of spell ink from the big table, sneered, and then threw it into the brick fireplace where it smashed to pieces. He reached for another, but then his eyes alighted on the windowsill—on Alexei’s healing spell.
My nerves spasmed. “I have to go.” I knelt by Zash’s unconscious body, my hand poised over the stone.
“Aim while his back is turned.”
I nodded and took a breath to say the spell. At the same time I said, “Ajnin,” Zash whispered with a desperate edge, “Don’t leave without letting me say good-bye.”
I was glad I didn’t have a chance to give an answer.
37
This time, there was no disorientation. I was back and instantly my hand gripped the river rock. Yurovsky’s back was to me. Though Zash, Dochkin, and Alexei had returned to their dying bodies, I still felt as though Zash was behind me—in my
ear—whispering strength into my limbs.
My neck stung from Yurovsky’s knife prick before the ajnin spell was enacted. But it was only a prick. A nervous swallow proved that my throat was intact. I straightened, my heart beating to the rhythm of a chant. Alexei, Alexei, Alexei.
I cocked my arm back and let the stone fly. Unlike with Papa’s paperweight, my aim was perfect this time.
Maybe it was my intake of breath, or the whoosh of stone through air, or the prickle of defeat flying his way . . . but something alerted Yurovsky. His soldier instincts sent him ducking.
The stone whizzed past his head and sailed through the window above the two spells, clipping the top of the vial holding my memory spell. The glass vial teetered . . . and then toppled off the sill, disappearing into the garden shrubs outside.
I didn’t stand or gape at my failure. I’d known there was a chance I’d miss, so by the time Yurovsky straightened and spun to face his attacker, I had scrambled to the space near his feet and risen with the knife in my hand.
Alexei, Alexei, Alexei.
“How?” Yurovsky growled. “Why won’t you die?”
“Because I have a story I was meant to live. And not even you can unwrite it.”
Wild and feral, Yurovsky dove at me. I swept the knife in front of me. It met flesh but then spun from my hand. He slammed me to the ground. His weight crushed the air from my lungs and he straightened, keeping me pinned. “I don’t know what spell you used to survive, but I will finish you.”
His fist connected with my face and a flash of black blocked my vision.
I dug my fingernails into the skin of his forehead, but he hit me again. All the while, my mind kept screaming, Alexei’s dying!
Yurovsky got his meaty hands around my throat and squeezed as though to snap me in two. He trapped what was left of my breath in my lungs. My chest heaved. But with his two hands occupied, mine were now free.
I could go for his hands.
I could go for his eyes. But his wild fury told me no amount of pain would distract him from his mission.
So I went for the knife.
I threw my hands over my head and sent my fingers searching, my mind praying, my feet kicking. If I didn’t find it within the next seconds, my muscles would liquefy. My mind would shut off. My brother would die.
Yurovsky squeezed harder. Spots swam across my vision. I made it halfway through a prayer before my fingers felt metal instead of wood.
I gripped the blade with both hands and slammed it against Yurovsky’s face.
No one could withstand a knifepoint to the eye. Yurovsky screamed and reeled backward. My own hands still gripped the blade, gushing blood of their own, though I didn’t feel the wounds yet.
I scrambled to my feet, unable to fully see the room, but I stumbled toward Yurovsky’s scream as I sucked in air through a pinched windpipe. He pulled at the edges of my skirt, clawed at my ankles, trying to bring me down. I tore my foot free and stomped on his temple with my heel. He went limp as a blini.
I wanted to retrieve the knife. To plunge it into his heaving chest. To watch his blood leak out of him the way Alexei’s had. But that would be a false victory. Yurovsky’s death was not the end goal. Not yet.
Alexei, Alexei, Alexei.
I tripped over his body to the windowsill, grabbed the spell for Alexei, and then sprinted to Alexei’s spot on the bed, unstoppering the spell as I ran. His shirt lay open, but blood created a vest of death over what should have been his skin. I upended the bottle and sent the spell ink dribbling up and down his torso.
In a last frantic moment, I stopped the pour so there was only a tiny splash of spell left. Everything in me wanted to dump the rest onto Alexei, but I heard Alexei’s voice in my head. Demanding I do what I could for Dochkin.
I spread the spell across Alexei’s body and his wounds with my palms, making sure it touched all the skin it could. “Romanov, Romanov, Romanov,” I muttered, hoping to feel some sort of magic pull in my chest from the spell working.
I felt nothing except blackened hope.
I hurried to Dochkin’s body and rolled him onto his back, not sure he was even alive. Then I poured the last bit of this powerful healing spell directly on his slit throat. “Romanov.”
Please, Iisus. That seemed to be the only prayer coming from my mouth these days. I left Dochkin to the will of the spell and returned to my brother. I hovered over his body—prayed over his body—but nothing seemed to be happening. No increased breathing. No action from the spell ink. Alexei lay with his mouth open but no inhale.
“Work,” I croaked.
I bounced on my toes for a moment longer before tearing myself away to the other healing spells. I had more injuries to take care of. I unscrewed the tin that Dochkin had pointed out and applied one to Zash, then one to Dochkin in case that would couple with the last splash of the healing spell. I also applied one to Joy, who still lay limp against the wall. I didn’t know how spells worked on animals, but it was worth a shot.
Lastly, I applied one to myself.
The slices on my palms stung as they sealed but didn’t fully heal. Other parts of my body—my neck, my ribs, my feet, my face—snapped in protest too. Once I finished, I returned to Alexei. No visible change. The spell ink hadn’t even sunk into his body. It floated among his blood like a film of oil.
I slid to my knees and moved to take his hand but then remembered that Dochkin said not to disturb his body. So I pressed my forehead to the bedcover beside him and closed my eyes. “Please, oh please. Don’t leave me.”
Scuffles of cloth on wood came from behind me. I spun and scrabbled for where I’d left the dagger. But the movement wasn’t from Yurovsky. It was Zash, climbing gingerly to his feet.
I was no longer alone.
And I was no longer strong.
He took one look at me, his eyes shining, and opened his arms wide. “You did it.”
I stumbled into his embrace and pressed into the tight safety that came from his presence. The tears came and I tried to muffle them against his coat. He didn’t ask me what was wrong. He didn’t ask if I was okay.
“I d-didn’t. Zash, I . . . I failed.”
“No,” he said forcefully. “No, you didn’t. You are alive. I am alive. Yurovsky is dead. That’s because of you.”
I shook my head. “He’s not dead.” I wished he was. With all the blood gushing from his eye wound, he should be dead.
Zash held me at arm’s length. “I should tie him up, then. We don’t want him waking.” I shuddered and let him bend over Yurovsky’s body. He loosed his belt and wound it around Yurovsky’s ankles.
“I think . . . I think Alexei’s gone,” I said.
Zash’s hands stilled, but he didn’t look up. Not at me. Not at Alexei. “Don’t give up hope yet, Nastya.”
Words. Just words. There was no reason—no extra knowledge—behind his assurance. Empty soothing.
The grief in my heart welled as it did moments after my family’s execution. The double feeling of being hollowed out and refilled with all things shadow and darkness. The pressure climbed from my midsection to my lungs. Up my throat and demanded release. I didn’t have the strength to swallow it. An aching groan tore from me and I doubled over.
I couldn’t handle this. I couldn’t live with this.
I needed to pour my sorrow somewhere else—into another vessel. My tight gaze found Yurovsky’s body. And I released my sorrow into a vessel of fury. He hadn’t killed me, but he’d still won. I wanted Yurovsky dead. I wanted him to bleed out and decay under the open sky where vultures could turn up their beaks at the disgusting meal he would make.
“We need to kill him,” I growled.
Zash faltered in his tying.
I didn’t care if he disapproved. “He’ll wake soon and might escape his bonds—”
“Not likely.”
“Even if he doesn’t, what will we do with him? Take him with us?” I talked as if we had a future. As if Zash and I would walk awa
y from here and start a new life. But my mind had drifted through the window and started searching the bushes for the memory spell that Dochkin had made me. That was my end. That was my future. “We can’t let him continue hunting spell masters.”
“I agree.”
I strode across the room and pulled Dochkin’s pistol from the cupboard. Once back over Yurovsky’s body, I slipped a bullet from the strap on Yurovsky’s belt, loaded it, and aimed toward his head. My heart pounded with the anticipated relief the gunshot would bring.
Nastya. Papa’s voice echoed in my mind, and I remembered how he abandoned the Ipatiev House rescue plan because he refused to risk the lives of any of the soldiers. Any of our enemies.
But this was Yurovsky. This was a leader. He murdered spell masters. Zash’s grandmother. He murdered my family. And yet . . . Papa would tell me to forgive him. Even my own words from a lifetime ago echoed in my head. “I am a Romanov, and I will value life.”
I clenched the pistol, my finger tightening around the trigger—half wishing I would accidentally pull it and blow him to pieces.
“Nastya.” Zash placed his hand on my arm and pushed until I lowered the gun. “Let me do it.” His own hands trembled as he took the pistol from me. He held it in his lap for a long moment. “Perhaps you should go outside.”
And there was my release. My opportunity to go find my spell—my freedom. To let someone else do the dirty work.
I wanted to see if the blank spell had broken. I wanted to hold that opportunity in my hands. It was Dochkin’s gift to me. Everything would be erased the moment I used it. I would be pain-free.
I nodded and moved toward the door, but not before Zash said quietly, “Come back to me.”
He knew I was going to search for the spell. I couldn’t bring myself to respond. The door creaked on its hinges as I shut it behind me.
38
Resting in a bed of grass beneath the sill of the open window lay the vial. Whole. Shining. Beautiful and full of promises.
I scooped it up and relief mixed with the sorrow swirling in my heart. Straightening, I took in the garden. The sun hung in the sky like a newly blossomed daffodil. My surroundings were like stepping back home. Back into Papa’s arms. A small trimmed lawn of flowers and a creek bed lined with stones. Around all of this—forest. But not the brown taiga forest we’d been traveling through the past three days. No, this forest glistened under the sun, reaching for the sky and embracing it the way I wished I could.
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