Felix

It became clearer by the day that Felix had never met anyone like Sofia before. Her presence helped to offset Sasha’s sudden absence, for it seemed that the mere mention of the pale-haired woman was enough to make him vanish. It was all deeply irritating, and irrational on top of it. The old stories were full of spirits—the domovoi, the banniki, the vila—but they were stories, not descriptions of everyday life. Felix knew that war had made Sasha prickly at best, but the least he could do was be civil to the woman. Fortunately, Felix knew enough about being an impeccable host for the both of them.

He spent most days alone with Sofia, their afternoons together melting into evenings that became night with a thief’s secrecy. She never spoke about where she’d come from, and Felix considered it impolite to ask, but she adjusted to palace life as if its luxury were as mundane to her as it was to him. By the second day of her recovery, she was sitting sideways in a silk-upholstered armchair, her long hair tossed into a loose braid, smoking an ivory pipe like a common muzhik while they talked about the French novel she had borrowed from the palace library or Felix’s two-year-long quest to find a satisfactory chef. At her request, Felix had gathered the simplest garments his servants could scrounge from the palace’s wardrobes, loose-fitting morning gowns in black and dove gray and pearl, the kind of heavy shawls that would have made anyone else look like a grandmother but on her looked as if they’d come from an expensive couturier. When she was nearby, the richness of the palace seemed pathetic. Felix felt that he might punch a fist through the finery of his own sitting room and send the whole production crashing to the floor, like the scenery of some provincial play. Before long, they began to move their conversations outdoors. The park surrounding the Catherine Palace was no less artificial, but at least it imitated nature more skillfully.

Today, their walk led them south, along the rim of the great pond that marked the formal border of the tsar’s private estate. It was a beautiful day, clear and cold, the new snow on the pond undisturbed by bird or beast. A companionable quiet sat comfortably between them—a novelty for Felix, who had always considered silence a sort of failed conversation—until Sofia, gradually guiding their steps east, spoke first.

“Kutuzov drove the last of the Grande Armée out of Vilnius a few days ago. They’ll be fully across the Niemen by now, though they won’t stop running till Paris.”

This was news to Felix. The conflict between his father and Emperor Napoleon had lost all interest for him now that Sasha had returned. International politics was his father’s concern and his brother’s pet interest. The last time Felix had shown any enthusiasm for the business of governing Russia, the tsar had all but taken Felix by the collar and dragged him from the council chamber for having the temerity to agree with the chairman of the State Council that the tsar’s current approach to rationing could lead to popular uprisings before the year was out. Of course, the opposite approach had done him no favors either: he’d gone directly from the council chamber to the servants’ wing, and—Sasha attending to other business at the time—thoroughly distracted himself with two of the better-looking palace laundresses. Which led to quick detection, the dismissal of both laundresses, and Felix’s undignified exile to Tsarskoe Selo, in that order. So in a way, Felix reasoned, it was displaying an interest in politics that had gotten him exiled in the first place. It wasn’t a mistake he intended to repeat.

“Bravo, General Kutuzov,” he said. “I hadn’t heard. It takes more effort to keep up with the news when I’m so far from the city.”

Tsarskoe Selo was fifteen miles at most from Petersburg, and from Sofia’s scoff, she didn’t intend to let him forget it. “And I’m sure you put in so much effort when you lived in the capital.”

“Have I mentioned I like it when you shout at me?” Felix winked. “It’s quite stirring.”

“I’m glad one of us enjoys it. Come on,” she added, gesturing along the road. “How do you feel about warming up?”

Felix followed her gesture until he sighted the bathhouse ahead of them, a respectable-looking building painted white and pale orange, within shouting distance of the palace. He laughed. “Together? Well, of course. I’ve wasted the day if I haven’t scandalized an entire court before the end of it.”

He expected her to ignore this as she’d ignored his prior insincere flirtation. Instead, she frowned. “I didn’t think you cared what others thought about you.”

Felix swallowed an indignant reply. Of course he didn’t care. He couldn’t afford to, not after his father had banished him from court, out of sight and out of trouble. Caring what people thought only promised disappointment. Tsarskoe Selo was practically his own kingdom, and here no one’s opinions mattered but his.

Except for Sofia. He cared deeply what she thought of him.

Not in that way—or at least not only in that way. Yes, she’d be one of the most beautiful people he’d brought to his bed, if it came to that. But his attraction to her had been brushed aside after a few short minutes. What he wanted now was simply to be around her, with her, part of her, dissolving the barriers between them any way he could. And if social convention was one of those barriers, well then, adieu convention.

The bathhouse door opened onto a small antechamber with fine linen towels folded on a stool and pegs along the walls for bathers to hang their clothes. There had been an attendant at one point, but Felix had shifted him to a different post a year ago—with the kind of activities Felix tended to use the bathhouse for, a spectator was explicitly not wanted. He looked at Sofia, intending to pace the extent of his disrobing against hers. Just outerwear, perhaps, if she seemed concerned with modesty…

He quickly turned away. Sofia had already begun to peel off her clothes and showed no intention of stopping. He followed her lead. Gloves first, then coat, her fur hat left on the floor like a small animal that had crawled in from the cold. Boots, stockings, then—with increasing hesitation—Felix pulled off his waistcoat, and cautiously undid the buttons at the cuffs of his Parisian shirt.

Christ. And now what?

Nudity had never bothered Felix; Sasha used to joke that Felix spent at least a quarter of his waking life naked. Add in the steam of the bathhouse and the outcome seemed inevitable. But for the first time in many years, Felix found himself uncertain. He frowned, irritated. Nerves were ridiculous, he told himself, stripping the rest of the way and hastily wrapping a towel around his waist. This was a bathhouse; this was what people did. The fact that he’d reached for a towel at all would be considered unbearably prudish in most circles. Besides, he’d sweat to death in ten minutes otherwise.

“Can I—” he began awkwardly.

“Of course,” she said. “You took your time.”

Red-faced even before the steam, Felix turned. Sofia wore nothing but the towel. He found his eyes lingering on her exposed knees, the length of her calves, then forced himself to look at the single spider crawling along the joint between wall and ceiling. He felt like he’d been caught pissing outdoors by a priest.

In the central room of the bathhouse, the air felt luxuriously thick, each breath slow. The stove at the center of the room was alive with heat, and Sofia doused the hot coals with water from the bucket beside it. A rush of steam spilled upward, followed by a smooth waft of warmth in defiance of the gut-piercing cold outside.

Felix sat on the bench beside Sofia and leaned his head against the wall. The steam rose around them, blurring her edges and adding a veneer of anonymity to the encounter. He couldn’t stop thinking of the half foot between his unclothed body and hers. When was the last time Felix had felt flustered like this? Surely not in adulthood. This feeling belonged to a fifteen-year-old boy.

“I’m surprised your father didn’t invite you back to Petersburg,” Sofia said. “Given the victory.” The words seemed almost disembodied, drifting through the steam. It was the first time since her arrival that Sofia had raised a subject he did not want to discuss.

Felix wiped his palm across his mouth, brushing a trail of sweat from his upper lip. “Why on earth does that surprise you? My father wants nothing to do with me. Frankly, I’m surprised he only exiled me here and not to Sevastopol.”

“I know you don’t get on,” she said—Felix laughed, genuinely amused by the understatement of his father’s disdain for his existence as “not getting on”—“but you’ve won the war, haven’t you? Flaunted the Komarovs’ control of every handful of dirt in the empire? Aren’t they celebrating in the capital?”

No doubt they would be. Felix’s father had an inexhaustible supply of money and a fearsome pride in his country, which inevitably added up to celebrations on the grandest scale. Felix could picture it now: the capital alight with lamps and fireworks, a ball in every ballroom, women in impossibly brilliant gowns packed four to a carriage. Tsarevich Anatoli and his beautiful Prussian wife leading off the first dance, the empire’s golden children, the promised future. The Winter Palace was at its best during a party, every facet of its gemlike face polished to a shine. Petersburg had been built from nothing overnight to give the wealthy somewhere to peacock. And Felix would be here, in exile. A dozen miles away, but it might as well have been a thousand. Rotting here alone, while the country rejoiced.

Sofia leaned forward, her forearms on her thighs, and watched him intently. She watched him in a way no one had ever watched him before. He was no stranger to people looking at him, but that sort of attention was for a performance, the character of Felix rather than his essence. Sofia looked at him now, not at a grand duke. With a blend of respect and curiosity, as if he had earned his power but not yet revealed his next move.

“You could do it yourself, you know,” she said.

“Do what myself?”

“Celebrate the victory,” she answered. “Be the strong, triumphant prince they want. Don’t you think your people deserve that?”

Under other circumstances, Felix’s response would have been a thoughtless and immediate yes. He loved a party the way he loved anything else that made him feel purely and utterly alive, and it had been so long since Russia had anything worth celebrating. He could host a victory ball like no one else in the country, one to rival his father’s.

That, of course, was the trouble.

“My father would never allow it,” he said. To his disgust, he found himself jogging his left foot against the floor.

Sofia shook her head, and her hair—damp from both melting snow and a trickle of sweat that beaded down her cheek—rippled with the movement. In its loose strands, Felix saw feathers, saw fur, saw scales. “I don’t recall asking your father,” she said. “I asked you.”

The thought was foolish, dangerous, but tempting. It was ridiculous, after all, for someone within arm’s reach of the throne to hide and cringe at his father’s will. He was nearly thirty now. No longer a child.

“You have the Catherine Palace,” Sofia said, as if she knew his thoughts. “It’s not Petersburg, but it could be so much more than what you’ve made it.”

A capital of his own. As if his father’s banishment had been a test and not a punishment. He could take the reins of this little secondary court, and the people here might see him as a person worth listening to. Instead of shame, they might associate him with victory, heroism, triumph.

“The people would be thrilled to see it,” she said casually, though there was nothing at all casual about the light in her eyes, which sliced through the steam like a saber. “First, the grand duke commanding the Catherine Palace. Then, who knows? The council chamber?”

The thoughts in Felix’s head didn’t feel like his. But they fit there so neatly, as though Sofia had carved a place for them to live. In her eyes, he could see himself reflected back, the wings of the double-headed eagle sprouting from his own shoulders. A man who governed for his country and not himself, one who put domestic concerns before foreign wars. One who could help the people when they needed it. One the people loved as well as feared.

If Felix were tsar, he’d be a man worth respecting.

A coal clattered to the bottom of the iron stove. Felix flinched, and they were only two people again, sitting together in the swirling steam of the bathhouse. He blew out a long breath, then stood, securing the towel at his waist with one hand. It must have been the heat. Sending his thoughts into corners they had no business exploring.

“A ball,” he said, as if nothing they’d spoken of since that idea had been worth mentioning. His voice seemed to bring them both back to earth. “Yes. It’s a good thought.”

Sofia grinned like a mischievous schoolchild as she stood up. “I know,” she said. “I don’t have bad ones.”

He laughed and followed her into the antechamber. His back to her, he reached for his shirt, hastily pulling it over his sweat-damp chest. Dressing was no less awkward than undressing had been. He laced his boots and waited a great deal longer than necessary before turning to face her.

“Would you help me with the planning?” he said. “Since you’re possessed of so many brilliant ideas.”

“I’ll be here if you need me,” she answered. “But I don’t think you will. As far as I can tell, you’re perfectly equipped to manage this yourself.”

“Time will tell,” he said wryly, and he opened the door to a gust of freezing air.

Almost immediately, a sharp voice rang out across the park.

“Felix!”

Sasha. Dressed in his dark green overcoat, he veered off the path, taking the most direct route through powdery snow in their direction. Felix turned toward the door to the bathhouse, but there was no one behind him, and the only footsteps in the snow were his own. Felix craned his neck back just in time to see a snowy owl beat its wings, gaining altitude as it soared north, above and past the palace. It filled him with a strange urge to cross himself.

Was it—

Certainly not. Sasha was the superstitious one, not him. Mère de Dieu, but foolishness must have been contagious.

“Good afternoon,” Felix said cheerfully, sweeping the unease from his mind as easily as a layer of dust.

Sasha emerged from the snow onto the path. The powder clung to the coat, forming tiny clumps along the hem. “What were you doing with her?”

“With whom?” Felix made a great show of checking over his shoulder. Sofia did not materialize—frankly, if Felix had known an irritable soldier was waiting for him on the threshold, he wouldn’t have come out either.

Sasha clenched his jaw so tightly a single vein rose along his temple. It must have taken all his strength to keep his voice as level as he did. “Felix, I mean it. I don’t trust her. I don’t know what she wants with you, but it can’t be good.”

Irritation flicked in Felix like a cat’s tail. Surely it wasn’t madness to think that another person took Felix seriously, and believed the rest of the country might too. “Sasha, it’s all right,” he said testily. “You don’t have to like her. But at least trust that I know what I’m doing?”

With one last, cold look at the bathhouse, Sasha turned back to the Catherine Palace. He walked slowly, clearly expecting Felix to follow but too proud to turn and make sure of it. Felix watched him go. With every step, Sasha became smaller and less familiar, until in less than a minute Felix felt he was looking at a man he hardly knew at all.

When Sasha was nearly out of sight, Felix turned north, along the cleared path running through the park. The cold had already sunk its fingers into him, but he had no desire to return to the palace just yet.

Sofia saw him, not the way he was now, but the way he could be. No one else had ever done that.

Privately, and with a fervor that startled him, he hoped her vision was right.