She just disappeared.
That was what was going to happen.
She began to braid her hair in one long, thick braid down her back.
She hoped it didn’t hurt.
There was a knock on her door, and her father opened it.
“Let’s go, Polya.”
She stood, looking once more at her reflection. She would miss this body, she decided. It was perfect. It wasn’t beautiful. It was strange and unlike anyone else’s, but still, it was hers. She hoped if she ever got to come back, to have another shot at life, she’d get another tail.
Lara closed the door behind her and covered her mouth with her hand. This was the moment she’d been preparing herself for since meeting the priest inside St. Svetleva Cathedral.
It still hurt.
She had thought that the little hurts she’d experienced throughout Polya’s bringing up had been painful. Each time she saw her daughter, her untamed daughter who held her father in the palm of her hand, she’d been struck by equal combinations of jealousy and longing. She wanted to be as carefree as she was. She wanted to bind Pytor to her the way he seemed bound to Polya.
They had been that way before Polya’s birth. Until Lara had realized that the deal she had made had no end point. It would chip away at her soul and her kindness until she was unlike the girl she’d been. She was not the mother she’d promised herself she would be if she was ever able to have the impossible and have someone love her.
It would have been better if Polya had died. Why hadn’t she died? If she was just a baby and Lara hadn’t seen her grow and blossom, it would hurt so much less!
“Lara?”
She didn’t turn. She used the darkness of the hall and the years of practice at hiding her emotions to school her features.
“She’s getting ready, Pytor.”
“Did you say goodbye?”
“It wasn’t really necessary.”
“She’s your daughter, Lara.”
Lara felt a crack in the mask she’d carved so well and whipped around to face her husband. “She is. I’m surprised you remembered that before you agreed to send her to her death.”
Pytor took a step back, the vehemence in her voice surprising him. “Lara?”
“I was never meant to keep her. I have spent years and years distancing myself. But I couldn’t. She is beastly and beautiful and wonderful. And we’ve killed her. She will go to her death believing I hate her but that is better than her being worried that her death would cause me pain.” She didn’t realize she was stepping forward, chasing Pytor to back him into the wall until her hand smacked his chest. “Because she will die, Pytor. You will be king.”
His eyes widened, his mouth opened.
“You thought I didn’t know? Of course I know. I watched the meetings, and I saw messages exchanged. I know you, Pytor. I know that you’ve yearned for something more, and I have wanted it for you.”
“Lara!” he said wondrously.
“I love you, Pytor. You’re all I have ever wanted.”
Lara pointed over her shoulder at the closed door. “But she, she is what you’ve always wanted. Are you truly prepared to sacrifice her?”
Two bright red spots appeared on Pytor’s cheeks. “Do you think I make this sacrifice easily?”
“I don’t know!” she answered.
Pytor turned, placing a hand against the wall to brace himself. “There is no other way. I have consulted diplomats, historians, priests! There is a chance for us if we do this.”
Lara waited.
“The bombs, Lara, the disquiet…It’s going to rise up and swallow us whole. Change is coming. I can be that change, or I can be consumed by it.”
She touched his shoulder, and leaned her head on his back, feeling the strength in a body as familiar to her as her own.
“She could survive,” he whispered.
“She probably won’t,” Lara said.
“There’s a possibility.”
“It’s very small.”
“But it’s there.”
Lara let her hand slide away from him. “Say your goodbyes,” she said quietly, turning to return to her room. “Make it count.”
Anatoliy Prepares for the Hunt
The guards affixed the chain around Anatoliy’s neck, looping one end through the other so if he was to pull, the chain would tighten and choke him. It was old, rusted in places, but heavy, so it weighed around his shoulders. The links were huge, and caught his fur where they connected with other links. When he moved, tuffs of fur were yanked out of his skin.
He didn’t struggle. This was the chain that was always used when he’d done something to especially annoy Aleksandr.
A perceived slight was corrected by extreme discomfort.
He was used to the chain.
He shuffled along behind the guards, down the stone stairs and out of the palace. Instead of being led to the iron carriage that typically transported him, he was led through the gates. Soldiers surrounded him. All of them in their dress uniforms, medals affixed, fur hats standing erect and low over their eyes. As they traveled, people came out to gawk at him. Word the king’s Beast was being marched through the capital traveled fast, and soon people lined the street. He tried not to look at them. One glance at their faces, masks of anger and fear, and he withdrew inward.
The first stone hit his flank. It was small but well-aimed. The second was bigger and hit his hind leg, causing him to stumble. Soon, people were yelling.
The soldiers surrounded him, closer than they’d ever been, and began to double time the march. The rocks still flew, but when the sergeant-at-arms called out the order to prepare to fire, the stones stopped, even if the yelling didn’t. Their cries and calls echoed in his ears.
“Murderer!”
“Fiend!”
“You killed my son!”
“Demon!”
“I hope you rot in hell!”
They were all true, every word. He had killed one man’s son. He had killed many men’s sons. He was a demon, created by a demon, and every day—every second of every single day—he was in hell.
They arrived at their destination—the train station. The engine puffed and hissed, ready to depart. The soldiers lined up in front of a car, its door wide. Someone poked his back with a bayonet, which he took to mean he was to pull himself up. He placed his front paws on the floor of the car before pushing with his powerful legs.
Soldiers waited for him inside. Some held tools in their hands, others held spears. They yelled out commands. “Left, right, steady.” When he was in the position they wanted, the others stepped forward to fasten iron cuffs around his forepaws and hind legs. Each cuff was connected to a chain which was then linked through a bolt on the floor. They tightened the chains on the cuffs, pulling it through the hook in the bolt until Anatoliy couldn’t move, or sit, or stand comfortably.
He didn’t know where they were going, or how long he would have to maintain his position, but whenever they did arrive at their location, Anatoliy would be sore and stiff and tired.
They left the heavy chain around his neck, further securing him into the wall, just enough so he couldn’t dip his head or rest it against the floor.
It was a deliberate move on someone’s part, putting him at a disadvantage for what was to come.
He heard the hiss of steam and felt the jerk as the wheels spun before locking into gear to propel the train forward.
His body lurched as the train moved out of the station. From the corner of his eye, Anatoliy saw the sliding door had not been closed when the soldiers had left. Earlier, the wind was brisk and autumnal, but it was fast becoming icy. As the train’s speed increased, even with his thick fur, the blast of cold froze him. In this position, he couldn’t fold into himself to conserve his warmth.
Anatoliy tried to keep track of the time he spent traveling, but soon his body began to feel sluggish and his eyes started to close. The train lunged, and he choked, his restraints pulling and stretc
hing when his fatigue made his muscles lax.
It was a hellish way to travel, and though Anatoliy shouldn’t have been surprised by this additional cruelty, he did resent it.
He gave into his fatigue over and over, and each time, his body was punished. His fur yanked out, his skin swollen, and his muscles and bones bruised.
The next wrenching pull was not from the chains, but from the train stopping.
His movements, the small incremental ones he could make, were slow and imprecise. His body had almost shut down to keep him alive.
Soldiers hopped into the car. He didn’t know these men, but he did know malice, and it shone from their eyes. “Is this the beast everyone so fears?”
The soldiers laughed, one of them lifting a metal device into the car. It had a handle on one side, reminding Anatoliy of a phonograph he’d seen at the party when he’d become an officer.
One of them wound the handle and the device crackled and snapped. A smell filled the car like a field after an electrical storm. Someone tossed in huge rubber mats, and the soldiers stepped onto them.
The man—Anatoliy refused to think of him as a soldier, for he had no honor—reached toward the device and a wand was passed to him while the other man cranked the handle faster and faster.
The wand moved closer to his face, and Anatoliy couldn’t help the reflexive flinch he gave, trying to move away from the wand. But the chains held him in place.
The men laughed, and then there was nothing but white-hot pain.
It coursed through his body the way Anatoliy imagined his blood passed through his veins. It lit up his brain. He roared until his brain short-circuited and it cut off in a strange snarl-howl.
It went on and on, and then, when he thought it was over, it happened again. His heart pounded in his chest; Anatoliy worried it would explode. But then, it didn’t matter if it exploded, because it would mean it was over. This life. This burning agony. It would all be over.
He opened and shut his eyes, and his mouth filled with blood. The soldiers hefted and rolled him, but he could not make his body follow his orders.
He could not run, not that he would, but he could barely breathe. He watched fields pass by. The sun reflecting off the yellowed stocks. Entire fields lay with their crops dried, wasted.
He let his eyes close. The motion of whatever carried him, soothed him, even if what held his body was cold and hard.
Eventually, Anatoliy fell into an exhausted sleep full of flashes of things that had happened and the things he feared would happen.
Polya’s First Train Trip
When Polya and her father arrived at the train station, they were met by soldiers and hustled onto a train car. Polya didn’t allow herself to stare at the car in fascination. Her mother had trained her. She was a princess; she was not to gawk at velvets and gilding like a peasant.
But she wanted to.
Everything was plush. The seats were deep, and when Polya sat on one, it seemed to envelop her body, cradling her. Thick velvet curtains held back by silk cords covered the windows. A footman stood ready to meet any request they may have.
Her father crossed his leg, his foot jiggling nervously.
Polya folded her hands and stared pointedly at his foot and back to his face. He shifted his position immediately, assuming an expression of ennui.
He didn’t fool her; she could smell the fear coming off him.
Polya glanced away from him. She could feel herself absorbing his anxiety, mixing it up with her own to heighten her own fear. She faced the window and watched servants pack up luggage and travelers led to other cars until the platform was empty.
A flash of blue and gold caught her attention, and she leaned forward without thought. She saw one soldier, and then another, and another. They marched forward stiffly but quickly. They were in their state uniforms, the ones with the tall ridiculous hats designed in the middle ages when the nobility didn’t wear the veneer of manners or civility.
They were surrounding something. She couldn’t see what it was, but it was being herded to the train.
It must be the king’s Beast.
Polya’s heart ached in sympathy. Here was a creature as trapped as she was.
She stopped looking. She didn’t want to see what they would do to him, but then she leaned forward again.
He was alive, and deserved to have someone witness what was happening. She didn’t know if he was evil and thoughtless, but she didn’t think so.
A flash of brown, perhaps fur, and it was gone. She craned her head, almost climbing onto her knees to see where they brought him, but he was gone. Instead she saw the blue and the stupid hats.
“Polya?” her father asked.
She turned around, sitting back. “It was nothing.”
A few moments later, the train hissed and steamed, moving roughly and hesitantly until it gained the momentum it needed. It ambled out of the city, over bridges and the Svetla River. Polya stared down at the water. It looked black like jet. She imagined jumping in. The cold would take away her breath.
Polya wondered how long she could hold her breath underwater. Would her body let her stay underwater, unmoving until her eyes closed and she floated away? Or would she be forced to gasp and sputter, kicking and clawing her way to the surface.
She closed her eyes, not wanting to see any more of the city or the countryside that would inevitably remind her of Bishmyza. If she survived this, she would go there, and it would be hers.
Polya pretended she would inhabit her favorite place. She pictured the silvery birch leaves and the way they swayed around the lake. She would make a dock for the water, have it stretch from the shore to the center of the lake so she could jump off and let the water cover her head. She’d float on her back and stare at the blue sky.
At Bishmyza, she would be warm and the air would be clean. When it filled her lungs, it gave her life. She wouldn’t feel like she was sucking in the ash and dirt of a million bodies.
“How far is it?” she asked despite herself.
“We have hours, yet,” her father answered.
Polya kept her eyes closed. Her eyes ached from exhaustion, but the uncomfortable, dry, throb of pain in her brain eventually eased. There was nothing left to worry about. The worst had happened. She would live, or she would die.
It was that thought that finally soothed her to sleep.
“Polya.”
“No, Papa.”
“Polya.”
“Tell Mama I’ll skip breakfast.”
“Polya.”
She opened her eyes. The train had slowed, and the countryside she saw out the window was different from any she’d seen before. She could see mountains in the distance as the train traveled through fields high with yellow corn.
“Why isn’t the corn harvested?”
“They needed the farmers to dig the trenches in the arena.”
Polya swallowed. “The cows will starve.”
“Yes.”
Polya studied her father. “This can only benefit you, can’t it?”
Her father shrugged, but the gleam was back in his eye. He had once brought her to see a film. It was the first time one had come to Konstantin. The aristocracy had filled the opera house where it would be shown. In the film, there was an evil man who had kidnapped the beautiful fair-haired girl and tied her to a railroad track. Her father had the same look as that man when he thrust his head back to the sky and silently, maniacally, laughed.
It was all coming together for him.
Let the Hunt Begin
When the train stopped, the door to the carriage immediately opened, and a man Pytor had never seen before entered.
He bowed, snapping his heels together. “Prince Pytor,” he said, “I will bring you to the arena.”
Pytor stood, stepping forward. “And my daughter?”
The man snapped his fingers, and Pytor bent at the waist to look out the windows. Four soldiers stood, guns drawn, waiting.
Pytor raised
an eyebrow. “I don’t think so.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I am not allowing my daughter to be brought, unaccompanied except by four soldiers, to an undisclosed location.”
“You wish to accompany her?”
Pytor looked at the men, there was a hardness to their features he didn’t like. “Yes.”
“Very well,” the man said. “But you will miss the beginning of the first challenge.”
“It will happen now?” Polya asked.
Pytor could hear the slight tremble in her voice.
“Yes.”
Pytor stood and held out his arm for Polya. She wrapped her arm around his elbow, and he tucked her gloved hand tight against him. He expected her to flinch or pull away, but she didn’t. She squeezed him tightly, like he was a lifeline and she was about to drown. They exited the train, meeting the soldiers on the platform.
“Is that your beast?” one of the soldiers asked, his eyes raking Polya’s form.
Pytor stepped forward, dropping her arm. “That is my daughter,” he answered. “She is a princess, and you would do well to remember that. Who gave you permission to address me?”
The soldier’s face reddened unattractively. Pytor was a large man, strong and handsome. Everything about him overshadowed the weakling in front of him. Pytor let his eyes go flinty and distant, all of his breeding and superiority oozing from him.
“My apologies, Prince.”
Pytor glanced at the man who had met them. “He is to be discharged,” he said. “I want him brought back to St. Svetleva for court martial.”
The man’s eyes widened. “Prince,” he began, “I am not the man to…”
“Then find the man who can make that happen,” Pytor snapped.
The man bowed, and Pytor faced the other three soldiers who eyed each other nervously. “You heard me. He is no longer of your ranks. Arrest him, and bring him to the brig. We will wait for you here.”
The soldiers responded to the threat and command in his voice. They took the man’s rifle and sidearm, as well as his ornamental dagger, and led him away from the platform.
Wrath and Ruin Page 12