This is the Emperor. I think. Alexandr.
Queen Victoria's grandson, the foreign British power.
I feel his blood beat, thin, beneath his paper skin, in those blue veins. Something amiss. Something that's too weak in the Russian snow, the turned earth. His hand is cold against my cheek, thumb winding through my coiled hair.
"How can I thank you for saving my son's life?" He runs a thumb against my lower lip, waiting. Not pressing, just hoping with bated breath. The walls are thin. The walls whisper.
I pull away with a cold smile. I catch my eyes in his gaze, the forbidding ice of my home. Of what the snow made me. The wild, black hair of a vědma. "Haven't you heard? I'm the devil, Alexandr. You don't want to bed me unless you wish to lose your soul."
***
A parallel universe where Rasputin was born as Matryona Grigorievna Rasputina. There was real magic. And the tsar most certainly fell under her spell.
When she falls, so too will St. Petersburg.
***
DARK FANTASY
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