Anastasia stopped immediately, her eyes wide with fear, afraid that she could hurt herself. She sat in silence, surveying the room, waiting for the cavalry to descend, but no one came. The chandeliers were still trembling in the aftershocks and she hugged her knees to her chest, watching. Waiting.
It was not until she saw the dusk descending that she realized the priest had gone, and she was alone.
???
“This is your fault,” the Tsarina’s voice was flustered and high-pitched as though she had just stopped running. The priest was on his knees in front of her and the Tsar, in a private audience, far away from the listening ears of the policy rooms.
“She is the devil’s daughter, I’m sure of it,” the priest wheezed. He had left Anastasia in the midst of her breakdown, convinced that he would be killed, unaware of the explosion that had shaken her rooms, “There is no harnessing her magic! It’s only controlled by the —“ he was cut off as the Tsar waved his hand, two guards stepping in and hauling the man away.
Anyone who had been brought in to help Anastasia control her magic had been killed shortly after they’d failed, this priest would be no different.
“What do we do?” The Tsarina dropped back in the overstuffed chair that she lounged in. “We should just marry her off. Send her to Siberia or Crimea and give her to some lord as a war prize.”
She waved her hand passively as if she was discussing wallpaper samples that she didn’t like instead of her daughter.
The Tsar turned to face her, his expression growing even stonier as he picked up a vase and threw it at the wall. It exploded behind the Tsarina and she shrieked, covering her head with her hands to protect herself.
“Do you know what she coulddofor me?” he yelled, “What that kind of power could do? Have any of your charlatans even come close to replicating it? Even that khlyst in the gardens had more power than anyone you’ve managed to find!”
The Tsar’s face was swollen-red and spit got caught in his mustache as he bellowed. The Tsarina rolled her eyes, used to her husband's tirades, which had only gotten worse as their grip on the court and country had been weakening.
“What do you suppose we do?”
The Tsar was quiet for a moment before he stopped and looked at his wife. “That boy. The one we sent away…,” he snapped his fingers. “That woman. Her nanny. She had magic.”
“She hadkitchenmagic,” the Tsarina scoffed, downplaying it in an attempt to self-soothe the fact that she couldn’t headhunt the magic practitioners that she truly fancied.
“It worked and that boy already knows about Anastasia. We won’t risk another person knowing about her curse. If he fails… There were enough rumors about his mother. We pass the blame. Label him as a heretic. Jail him. Move on.”
The Tsarina sighed, not wanting to admit that it was a better plan than throwing another failed Orthodox priest at their daughter.
“Fine. Send for the boy.”
???
Russia was known for its cold winds; they were somewhat famous for it. The wind that blew off the water and over Solovetsky Monastery seemed to carry a bitterness that was all their own.
The monastery was fortified by an outer wall with three separate turrets, making it look more like a castle than a house of prayer… or a house of prayer for a very angry god. Beyond the external wall were three steeples that rose from the ground, the onion-shapedlúkovichnaya glavadomes visible from miles away.
Over the years, Rasputin had grown to hate those domes that always seemed to watch him. Whenever he left the monastery walls to fetch food, run errands, or haul the bags of traveling religious emissaries, he was able to find a few, brief moments of freedom.
He was never able to escape the towers, their bulbous appearance staring after him and constantly reminding him of every overinflated priest that he had to deal with.
The chapel of the monastery was covered in stained glass windows, gilded arches, and silver incense burners.
Upon first glance, it was a holy testament to the wonder of man's greed, not God. Once you had spent a few minutes in the chapel, its facade began to slip.
The benches were threadbare and the altar set of silver and gold pieces were mysteriously flecking off paint. There were cracks in the stained glass that left the chapel prone to leaks and blasts of cold air. At one point in his tenure, Rasputin had been forced to kneel in prayer in front of a particularly cracked window until his fingers turned blue.
One cannot compare the pain of those who are broken, but it was safe to say the past fifteen years had been equally as hard on Rasputin as they had been on Anastasia.
After he had been tossed to the predators of the monastery, it was at least five years before he had surrendered enough to their whims to make his daily life digestible.
The first few weeks and months saw Rasputin refusing to accept his new name, missing prayers, neglecting lessons, and generally being more than willing to start fights with the other novitiates.
The other men who had been brought to the monastery were a mixed group of those who had volunteered and those who had been sent there as an alternative to imprisonment or death.
For weeks after his arrival, Rasputin had refused to succumb to any of the whims of the priest, Andrei, who had renamed him. He had not been assigned living quarters, instead dragged to an abandoned wine cellar, stripped naked, and left in irons.
