It would be her downfall, as it was his. If he didn’t care about his men, if he didn’t want to keep them alive, he would escape, or rush the spear-laden soldiers and let the metal pierce his heart.
But he didn’t because as long as he lived, they lived. Anatoliy had no doubt that as soon as he became useless, Aleksandr would kill him. As soon as he became more trouble than he was worth, his time would be up.
Anatoliy found the threadbare rug and gripped it in his teeth, moving it into a small shaft of sunlight. He sat on it, curling his legs under him and rested his heavy head on his huge paws. He let his eyes close. Morning would come soon enough, and with it, whatever fresh hell Aleksandr saw fit.
A Secret Society Adopts a Tiger
Polya tried to sleep. She curled up under her blankets, and when her eyes wouldn’t close, pulled them over her head. The warm darkness was soothing, but every time she closed her eyes, she saw the horror-filled expression of her victims.
Sleep might never come again.
“Mače?”
Polya didn’t answer, but stayed cocooned in her nest. The bed dipped, and then her father’s hand touched her side. “Mače,” he said. “I need you to come downstairs.”
She shook her head.
“Mače.” His voice took on the directive tone that refused opposition.
“I’m sick, Papa.”
He sighed heavily. “Please, Mače. Just for a little while. There are important people here.”
Polya turned her face into the mattress, pressing into it, wishing she could scream. If there were “important people here,” it meant that she was going to be inspected and gawked at.
“I don’t want to. Please.”
“Polina.”
Polya let out a growl and threw the covers off her body, glaring at her father and snarling warningly.
“Get dressed, Polina, and come downstairs. Leave off the bustle.”
Polya stood up. “Papa, no!”
He crossed his arms. He was looking at her differently. The gleam from earlier today was still there, and it felt like, for the first time, he wasn’t really seeing her. He’d never looked so… anxiously excited for one of his gatherings before.
“Papa,” she tried one more time. “I feel sick and sad. Please don’t make me do this.”
Her father crossed the room and put his hands on her shoulders. “Polya, this isn’t just for me. You saw what happened today? This country needs me. It needs you.”
“No, Papa. I didn’t do anything good. I killed someone!”
“And you saved me! And your mother!”
“But…”
“Would you rather we died? That you hadn’t acted? Would you rather your conscience clean and your parents dead?”
Polya took a step away from him, the harshness of his words and tone giving her pause. “Of course not, Papa, I—”
“Polina,” he said, checking his cuffs, pulling and evening them. “Please get dressed and meet us downstairs.”
She snapped her mouth shut with an audible click. Her father gave her one last look—a warning—before he left her.
What just happened?
He didn’t ask her if she was all right. He didn’t hug her or talk to her. He just demanded she become the evening’s entertainment.
Everything felt changed. Everything felt different now.
She put a dress on over her head, buttoning up before she sat in front of her vanity. From the cushioned seat, she stared at her reflection, wondering if perhaps she would have horns now. She had a tail. It wasn’t such a stretch to imagine horns could sprout, especially after what she’d done today.
But she didn’t look any different. She had the same hair, the same skin. She peered closer. There was no blood stain left, but she could feel it. It was like a slickness that coated her skin. Perhaps it would always be there and she would have to get used to feeling unclean. Quickly, she brushed through her hair and plaited it, wrapped it around, then pinned it in place.
She opened her mouth, peering at her teeth. Fangs.
She should just call them what they were, and they were fangs. The fangs of an animal. A soulless, brainless animal—something that reacted without thought or planning.
But she didn’t feel that way. She felt like herself. She cupped her face in her hands. She decided to touch her face. She had feelings. She did.
How then did she marry these two parts of her? The one who acted without thought, and the one who was left with the guilt of her actions.
A knock sounded on the door. “Your father wants you.”
She checked her reflection one more time before pulling the bustle down over her tail. She might be a freak, but she refused to be on display.
When the door to the library was opened, she heard her father. “Ah, there she is!”
The number of people in the room took Polya aback. There were far more than ever before.
Some were familiar. There was the man with the small round glasses who barely met her gaze, there was the second or third cousin, the spoiled one who smelled of perfume and wore medals he hadn’t earned on his jacket.
The others were strangers. Some smiled widely, as if delighted with her. Others gazed hungrily, their eyes roaming her body, examining her, looking for the tell-tale marks of a tiger. Others refused to look at her at all, as if they understood that this was a show, and part of them rebelled against it, even if a larger part of them was curious.
“My daughter,” Papa introduced. “Polina.”
The cousin bowed, manners instinctual.
The bespectacled man nodded then looked away quickly.
The others crowded forward, surrounding and trapping her.
“I don’t see a tail,” one man said. He had a bushy mustache and a monocle, which he held in one hand while he examined her. His face close enough Polya could see the sweat beading on his forehead.
She took a step away from him and into the hard chest of another man. This one was younger, still older than her, but not by much. He had thin, white scars that trailed from his temple, through his dark eyebrow, and across his nose. Polya hadn’t seen him when she’d arrived, and his position just at the door made her think he hadn’t chosen to be so close.
“My apologies,” he said in a rough but cultured voice before he moved aside.
Another person took his place immediately and dove his fingers in her hair, separating the strands. “She has human ears, Pytor. I thought you said she was tiger.”
Polya snarled warningly, and slapped away the hand, attempting to back away, but the bodies just pressed further. She had nowhere to go—but up.
So she did.
Her legs bent, muscles coiling, and she sprang. She sprang over their heads, seven feet in the air, and landed on a chair that cracked under her weight, leaving her sprawled on the floor.
She hissed, drawing back her lip, and scanned the room for her father.
The men began to clap and laugh, overjoyed with her performance.
“Marvelous!”
“Make her do it again!”
“Did you hear her hiss and snarl? Wonderful. So amusing!”
“I saw her fangs. Did you see them? White like pearl! She looks like a princess, a tiny doll, but she hisses! Delightfully distracting, Pytor!”
Polya was horrified. With each compliment, they stepped closer and closer to her.
“Papa!” she cried, afraid of their hands now outstretched, ready to grasp her.
But her father didn’t come to her. She met his eyes. They were crinkled in joy, the smile on his lips one she saw only when he was well and truly happy.
This made him happy? To see her like this?
Something snapped inside her: the only thread of affection she’d ever received. It rewound, coiling around her heart like barbed wire, piercing the organ, and making her bleed inwardly.
And yet.
It hardened her, protected her. Part of her recognized the threat and said, all right then. I can trust
no one. Not Papa, she corrected herself, not my father, not anyone.
“Gentlemen,” a deep voice said, it was the voice from before, from the man who looked as if he’d been through war. “Please control yourselves. This is a princess, and she is not here for your amusement.”
But she was.
“Dara!” someone complained. “We just want to examine her more closely.”
“I truly doubt the Prince wishes you to touch his princess with your disgusting paws,” he said, laughing as if it was a joke and didn’t carry a trace of warning.
The men laughed at the one who had spoken, but it did the trick. They backed away, collected drinks, and gathered into groups again.
Polya realized her fingers were clutched in her dress like claws and her body was tense, readying itself to fight.
“I believe they won’t bother you again,” the man said.
Polya turned to look at her rescuer curiously but said nothing. She curtsied, and moved away. Whatever his motivation in helping her, she’d learned her lesson tonight. He must want something.
“Wait.”
He wanted his reward sooner than the later. Fine. Polya would find another of those stupid eggs her mother loved and toss it to him.
He lowered his voice while simultaneously bringing his glass to his lips to cover his mouth. “Trust no one. They will use you. If you can run. Run. If you can hide. Hide.”
Polya was able to stop herself from reacting and gave him the slightest of nods before joining her father.
She folded her hands neatly in her lap and sat in a chair near him. He took a sip of brandy before leaning over slightly. “I told you not to wear the bustle.”
“They don’t need to see my tail, Father,” she replied, not an ounce of emotion in her voice. “I put on a show for them. They are quite satisfied by my performance without seeing my tail.”
Her father glared down at her. It was not a look Polya was used to seeing aimed in her direction. “When I tell you to show your tail, Polina, you will show it. You will obey me.”
Polya felt her face heat and a snarl began low in her chest, a quiet warning.
He just chuckled. “Mače,” he said, trying another tactic. “This is important. It is not just for me. It is for our country. You must show discipline, control. If they see you disobeying me, they will come to think I will be disobeyed by generals, royals, and ambassadors.”
“Don’t ask me to be on display, Father,” she begged quietly. “You saw what they did.”
“They are just curious, Polina,” he affected, “and you can’t blame them. There has never been anything like you.”
Polya couldn’t help the small bead of blood that welled up as the barbed wire tightened around her heart. Anything.
Not anyone. Not any royal, or any princess.
Anything.
What a day of revelations this had been. Polya found she didn’t have the stomach for it anymore.
“What must I do before I am dismissed?” she asked tiredly.
“Remove the bustle,” her father said, “and perhaps you can balance on the arm of the chair?”
Polya stood, whipping aside the bustle so fast that the material ripped audibly. She leapt, straight up, landing on the small wooden arm of an ancient desk chair. She held out her hand to a footman who was carrying a silver tray of champagne flutes. He placed one in her outstretched hand.
Delicately, Polya sipped. “Gentlemen,” she said, and leapt again to balance on the back of the chair, which wobbled slightly. “I bid you adieu.”
Her tail slashed gracefully through the air, upending the chair so it tipped to the ground. Before it crashed, Polya jumped off, all without spilling a drop of the champagne held in her hand.
The room erupted into thunderous applause again. She nodded to the servant who opened the door, and she left.
As soon as the door closed behind her, she ran for the stairs, dashing up as fast as she could before the threatened tears could fall.
Twice in one day. Roughly, she wiped them with her glove. She slammed the door to her room, turned the lock and pulled out the key. She threw it as hard as she could, but it landed on the bed with a soft thump.
Wholly unsatisfying.
With a huff, she fell onto the bed and buried her face in the pillows.
What would her life become?
She thought of what the man, Dara, had said.
Run, if you can run. Hide, if you can hide.
Where would she go? How would she survive?
She was stuck, but she refused to be at the mercy of those who would only use her and discard her.
Her eyes were dry now. Her heart scabbed over.
She would make a plan.
Anatoliy’s Squadron Hasn’t Forgotten
Dara and his men gathered in the small Quonset hut. They were quiet, though none of them could have been called talkative before this all began.
This.
This mess of a life. They were honorable men, loyal men, made dishonorable and treacherous by the one to whom they’d sworn devotion.
The men stared at him with anxious faces, waiting for him to speak.
“It’s true,” he said finally.
One of the men, the youngest of the group, shut his eyes tightly, and when he opened them, it looked as though his soul had bled out. “How long do you think we have?”
He expected, they all expected, with the appearance of a new beast, and a girl at that, their leader would be slated for death. And by extension, them.
“She is young,” Dara said quietly. “And she’s alone.”
“I thought she was the prince’s daughter?” Dara’s second-in-command asked.
“Yes. But he—” he paused, the next words he uttered could mean his death, the death of the prince, the death of the girl, the death of his men. “He is a traitor.”
The men’s eyes widened, but none of them said a word. They looked at each other. Gazes exchanged, laden with assumptions, and just a glimmer of hope.
“He would use her as the king uses Anatoliy.”
In the time since Anatoliy had changed from their leader to a bear, they had changed the way they thought of him. He was no longer, Ser, or Kapetan. He was a man. Which was ironic because he was actually a bear. But somehow, he’d become more human after he’d emerged from the forest transformed.
None of them would forget that day. The way he had rushed toward the woods, destroying the enemy, eradicating the entire squadron, before he’d lowered his head to their guns, and waited for them to shoot him.
They had all known, somehow, it was their leader.
Dara had recognized his eyes, and it wasn’t just their color. The bear had blue eyes like Anatoliy, but it was the humanity in them. The awareness.
That’s how he knew.
Dara wasn’t an aristocrat. He wasn’t nobility. He came from an ancient village. He participated in festivals for saints that were the same as festivals his forebears had had three thousand years before. Except those were for a long-forgotten god.
His people weren’t disconnected from the spiritual. They recognized the need for sacrifice and balance. They saw the lights in the middle of winter shining like daylight over the village, and they saw angels reflected in their brightness.
They knew that if there was good, there was bad.
Reap, sow. Live, die. Good, evil. Angel, devil.
When Anatoliy had come out of the woods, Dara recognized the hand of something more powerful and primeval than anything he’d ever seen before. His instinct wasn’t to destroy, but to hide and protect.
They’d never had the chance, and for that, Dara was eternally sorry. If he had acted faster, told Anatoliy to run, then they could have avoided this fate.
It was his fault they were in this mess, poised upon a knife’s edge. They were all dependent upon the whims of a megalomaniac.
“Do we tell Anatoliy?”
Dara paused.
Anatoliy would be set on this girl,
and made to kill yet again if the king saw her as a threat. He would use the squadron against Anatoliy, threatening to kill them all if he didn’t follow his orders.
“The Prince proposed a different government,” Dara said. “One where people like us have a voice in the decisions.”
The soldiers chuckled. “Men like us will never be allowed to make decisions. The nobility will never share their power.”
“But we will have more than we have now.”
“We would still be puppets.”
“We could free Anatoliy.”
The hut was silent again. The opportunity to free the man who was tortured in order to protect them was all they wanted.
“Then we do it,” Dara said, recognizing their acquiescence. “We support the prince, and we assassinate the king.”
One by one the men nodded their heads. They agreed.
The Prince Devises a Plan
The night had been a success.
Pytor watched the sunrise while he held a tumbler of water in his hand, rolling the liquid in circles. His heart still pounded, and his hands were still sweaty, though he stared out the window, sitting in his easy chair. His mind was too frenetic to allow sleep.
Darling Polya. She had been the key. She had turned the tide, and given the disillusioned aristocrats and intelligentsia something to believe in. She was the symbol of change, of hope.
At first, she had amused them. She disarmed them with her beauty and innocence. But when she had snarled and growled, they had recognized her power. Her potential power.
And by extension, his power.
He had created her, and in order to create a being such as her, he had to be powerful, born to rule.
The newspaper editor would slowly turn public opinion toward him. A turn of phrase, a sentence, then a paragraph, all building toward a belief Pytor was the leader they needed. The others, the cousins, the hangers-on, and the gossip-mongers, they would start the feelings. A whisper here and there, until, without even realizing it, the masses would fall in love with him.
Wrath and Ruin Page 8
