Book Review: Anastasia

Title: Anastasia
Author: Sophie Lark
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Historical Fiction, Magic, Fiction

What It’s About: In Cairo, a man concentrates on keeping the hotel lobby at a cool 72 degrees all the time in order to make it comfortable for the tourists, when he is enchanted by a woman who sits at the bar. He begins to talk to her and after his shift is over, he asks her if she would like to be shown around, to which she agrees. As they walk towards the riverfront, she attacks him though he is strong enough to fend her off with his ice magic, at which point a second man appears to speak with her and ends up killing the man, while taking his ice magic ability into himself. The man freezes the river and both he and the woman are surprised at how strong and powerful the magic is.

In Russia, Anastasia plays around with her sisters in the yard of their palace, when they hear that Nikolasha–their father’s cousin–has arrived from the front with information. All of them go running into the parlor to meet with Nikolasha, though Anastasia gets scolded for being so dirty by their governess, Margaretta, and has to clean up before she can even see her beloved uncle. Alexei, Olga, Maria and Tatiana had already said hello to Nikolasha, when Anastasia arrives in the room, and then Alexei rummages through Nikolasha’s saddle bags, finding a sword that he could use. Nikolasha hands out beautiful pieces of clothing to Olga, Maria, and Tatiana, but he knows Anastasia enough to know that she would not be satisfied with a scarf. Instead, he gifts her a box with holes that Anastasia knows is most likely an animal. She finds out that it’s a Gyrfalcon with a broken wing that Nikolasha had found during his hunting while they were out fighting.

Nikolasha isn’t staying long with them as he has to head back to meet the Tsar Nikolas at the Steppes to sign the agreement between the Tsar and the Cossacks, who had rebelled against him. As part of it, he was tasked with bringing Alexei with him because Nikolas wants his own son to see how everything is done for the day that Alexei himself may have to deal with the Cossacks. As a result, there is a feast in Nikolasha’s honor, and one of Tsarina Alexandra’s friends by the name of Liza Taneeva attends the dinner. She pokes fun at Anastasia’s lack of magical ability and wonders when will her magical abilities manifest as Anastasia is eleven and thirteen is the cutoff for the time of those powers to manifest. As a result of talking back, Anastasia is sent up to her room, and Nikolasha comes by to help her feed the gyrfalcon, which Anastasia names Artemis.

Soon, it is time for Nikolasha to leave, and the whole family goes to the trains to say goodbye. The Tsarina worries about Alexei due to his condition and while she is otherwise occupied, Liza tells Anastasia to go in a different carriage than the rest of the family. Anastasia, having always wanted to do something other than be a princess, decides to hop on the train by making it seem like she’s going to meet her sisters under Liza’s watchful eye, but then gets on with Nikolasha’s hunting dogs. She is not discovered until some time later when the train is already midway to the Steppes, and Nikolasha has to send out telegrams to her mother and her father. When they arrive at the Steppes, Nikolas is unhappy with Anastasia but quickly forgives her.

The following day, they dress Anastasia in Alexei’s uniforms to make her appear like a boy, which makes Anastasia happy. Then the whole retinue heads to meet the Cossacks, and Anastasia notices a boy not much older than her all because she feels something shift underneath her feet. As Nikolas walks to meet with the Cossack Leader Taras Kaledin, the boy takes out a whip-like sword to strike him, and Anastasia calls out a word of warning. Suddenly, time stops, and she runs towards her father, pushing people aside left and right. As she reaches and touches him, time snaps back to normal, resulting in her father snapping back the weapon onto the boy, cutting him across one of his eyes. He’s about to kill the boy, when Taras Kaledin falls to his knees and begs mercy for the boy, saying that it’s his son. Nikolas shows mercy but changes the contract saying that the boy will go back with him and hands him over to Nikolasha so that Damien Kaledin (as the boy reveals he is called) will go to the military school. Nikolasha is not happy with the decision, but does not argue with him, and Taras also agrees with handing the boy over while he is mandated to give another 10 years of his life to the Tsar’s army (after already having given 10 years per the earlier agreements). The family head back on the train with Damien, and Anastasia briefly talks to him–but they have such different view points on things that they end up arguing.

Some time later, Anastasia grows and she is introduced to Grigori Rasputin. Liza Taneeva throws an event at her new house, having gotten married to an aristocrat just like Rasputin had predicted, where he shows up and makes an event out of it. Olga gets a reading from him telling her that she needs to find a person who will challenge her in all things, that beats her at what she’s good at, and then she will have all of the happiness that she wants. Baronness Sophie Buxdoeveden who is another close friend of the Tsarina but in competition with Liza, gets a reading from Rasputin who tells her that she will get to see everything that she wants, but she has to take the first steps. As all of this is happening, Anastasia is watching as the puffs of smoke that Rasputin creates as part of the reading, and she is able to read the future as well. The Tsarina declines to have a reading, but Rasputin tells her that she will call for him at some point. Anastasia decides to get a reading, and after Rasputin exhales the smoke, she is able to see the images but he doesn’t tell her anything, only asking her if she has done this before. She tells him no, but she is enchanted by it.

Then, Anastasia prepares for her show to introduce her magical ability to the world–which is really her speaking with Artemis. She is able to hear and converse with Artemis, and while at the Steppes she had been able to stop time as her father had explained to her, she hasn’t been able to replicate that power again for that length of time, though she is able to freeze time. She hears that Nikolasha is there and knows automatically that Damien will be there too, so she goes in search of him, finding him at a bridge. While hiding, she sees that he is harassed by other members from his academy, and gets electrocuted by one of them, as the leader takes particular pleasure in torturing Damien. She intervenes, though Damien does not want her to, and gets them to leave him alone. Together, they return to the event, and Anastasia shows off Artemis’ ability to hunt, and then also her ability to know which flag was raised while blindfolded because Artemis is her eyes. That receives pushback from one of the boys that tortured Damien that same day, who claims that she could have easily faked that. In response, Anastasia asks Artemis to capture the band on the guy’s arm, which Artemis gladly does because he pissed her off too. But then Anastasia decides that she wants to take this further and claims that she has the ability to freeze time like her father, offering to do the same trial that he did at his own showing. So soldiers bring out the cabinets with the Fabrege eggs, and she has 3 minutes to move as many as she can. And Anastasia does move nearly all of the eggs from one cabinet to the other–nearly beating her father’s record from his own showing–except she trips and brings the whole thing crashing down. At the ball after the fact, Anastasia dances with many guys even though it’s not her official coming out party, but ultimately she ends up dancing with Damien after arguing with him, and gets screeched at by her Aunt Xenia.

Sure enough, not long after Alexei gets ill due to his hemophilia and does not appear to be doing any better, so the Tsarina calls for Rasputin who comes and tells the family that he can take a look at it and fix Alexei but that he will need to be alone with Alexei. The family spends two hours worrying about Alexei and when Rasputin finally comes out to tell them that Alexei is good, everyone goes to see him, only to find the boy looking healthy and happy. As a result, Tsar Nikolas tells Rasputin that he will speak to the Archbishop at St. Petersburg’s Church to grant him a place and a position there.

Three years later, Grandma Minnie visits Anastasia, and they walk around the room full of portraits of the former Tsars, where Grandma Minnie tells Anastasia the story of how Mikhail Fyodorovich (the first Tsar) encountered a group of people who used flecks of purple jade called Charoite in their ceremonies. Mikhail followed the river to the source, and found the stone in large quantities. He and the rest of his band of men swept the rest of the land, cleaning it out of monsters, and forcing the Cossacks to sign a treaty of indenture in exchange for the right to govern their own people within the lands that they had helped him capture for Rusya. When Anastasia states that her friend (meaning Damien) said Charoite is dangerous, Grandma Minnie states that its been a blight on the Romanov tree for generations, which surprises Anastasia as she always saw Grandma Minnie as the core that keeps the family together. Grandma Minnie continues on through the portraits, giving Anastasia history lesson after history lesson, at the end of which she produces a music box, and tells her that it’s a memory keeper that she got from her mother on her sixteenth birthday and is now giving it to her. She shows Anastasia the memory she’s always kept in the music box–a memory of her and her first betrothed Nikolas, who passed away after their engagement, and she ended up marrying Alexander III. Grandma Minnie tells her how to use it to record a perfect day, and that it will store all the best memories and play them for her of that day. Anastasia then had to go to her 16th birthday ball, which is when she gets presented to society for marriage, yet she’s the only one out of all of the Romanovs that can Time Walk, though Alexei had turned thirteen, looked healthier than other and his telekinesis was stronger than ever. People were talking more and more because Alexei was showing up in public more and more, while Rasputin has been invited to all of the events and often visited the family to heal Alexei, who conveniently couldn’t remember what Rasputin was doing to him. In the meantime, outside of the doors of the palace, people begun rioting and it got so bad that the family had spent over six months in Denmark. Anastasia then looks forward to seeing Damien for the first time in years.

At the same time Damien wakes up at Nikolasha’s house, and recalls how they started to trust each other and Nikolasha treats him kindly. He hated the drills, the academy, the rules, but was grateful to Nikolasha that he had taken him out for a hunt and showed him a lot of things. Damien found out the source of Nikolasha’s unhappiness–he was in love with a woman named Stana who was married to a man she did not love, who treated her horribly and was in an unhappy marriage. She tells him to come see her in St. Petersburg because she’s dreamed of him, and when he tells her that he doesn’t want to know his future, she tells him that he is all of their futures. Damien has kept up contact with his father and his uncles even though he’s been away from the steppes for a very long time, and in his dreams he always dreamt that when he returned home, no one recognized him or remembered him at all. But at the same time, he as used to a certain level of isolation, because of his magical ability that he could not touch living things or he would kill them, and with that came a level of loneliness was the one thing that he and Nikolasha had in common, so that’s how the bond formed. Many friends had followed after, of course, including Dimitri Pavlovich who took him into his cavalry division at Anastasia’s behest, and the two of them became fast friends. But he also got to see Anastasia, when Nikolasha took him to the different events with him, including a trip on the imperial yacht, and a visit to the Bolshoi theater, where they talked briefly. Damien was never sure what drew him to her over and over again, and it made no sense to him, but he did want to feel the energy that surged between them when they were close. He also knew how difficult it was to see her outside because she didn’t live in St. Petersburg, but fifteen miles south in Tsarskoye Selo, resulting in controlled visits with lots of protection, which he knows because he was one of those who accompanied them once. During that trip, he took Anastasia to an animal shop that she wanted to go to but none of her sisters wanted to attend, and watches her mingle with Varvara, the owner of the shop. Anastasia mentions that her father hasn’t been teaching her magic at all, but someone else. They then head over to a coffee /tea shop with Aunt Olga and talk politics, where Damien says that he owns the Tsar 10 years of service, and the question of whether Rusya will be drawn into the war comes up, which leads to more arguments, but someone changes the topic. When there’s a moment of silence, Anastasia asks Damien if he really will have to go to war with Germany, to which he responds he doesn’t have a choice, and asks about Ollie’s demeanor, which has Anastasia telling him that she’s upset because their father said that she has to marry someone. It is then that Damien realizes that the same fate will befall Anastasia. That was the last time he saw her, but since then he has completed his last year at the academy and got his first orders–placement in the city garrison with a regiment full of Cossacks. He thanks Nikolasha for the horse and they make small talk about Stana and her husband, before Nikolasha asks if he wants to come with him to get some costume/outfit for Anastasia’s Ball. Damien agrees.

Later on they leave through the city that has begun striking, and Damien had donned the outfit of a Cossack who led a rebellion along the Volga River. He muses as to why he has always refused to dress like a Rusyan, and no matter what anyone has done, he has continued to find ways to cling on to his Cossack identity. He does find immense pleasure, however, at the thought of Anastasia’s bedroom being far away from the rioting of the steelworks. When he gets to the party, he immediately finds Anastasia, who is dressed as the Royal falconer. He remembers how different he was at fourteen, and how different he is today, and then the Tsar speaks to him dressed as the Tsar who signed the death warrant of the Cossack rebel that he is dressed as. Tsar Nikolas asks him about the costume that he will wear the next day, to which Damien says he will be dressed as the imperial guard, which he has promised and taken the oath to do. After the Tsar leaves, Anastasia argues with Damien as to why he has to antagonize her father. He asks her if she hears all the rioters, and tells her that they’re not stupid, but Anastasia tells him that the Tsar is dressed as Aleksey Mikhaylovich, who dealt brutally with rebellions all through his reigns, and it’s because he’s trying to send a message. They debate some more, but then Anastasia sees Rasputin, and pulls Damien aside to hide him, telling him that she doesn’t want Rasputin to see him or recognize him. She tells him why she doesn’t want Rasputin to see him–the visions–and his name is a bargaining chip. It’s then that Damien realizes that Rasputin is the one who has been teaching her. Damien warns her that she’s not the one doing the manipulating as he doesn’t trust the Black Monk and they begin to argue a bit about that until Anastasia points to Alexei who looks like a healthy young boy. Anastasia tells Damien that her dance book is filled out but that she saved the last one for him, to which he reminds her that she can’t have a dance with him without Rasputin seeing, and says that he’s going to be on his way as he has to start with the city garrison.

The day after the ball, Anastasia wakes up in her own room which was converted from a sitting room, and heads out to the White Tower to meet with Rasputin for the training. She was curious about him, though she knew there were tons of rumors about Rasputin–none of them good–which were dismissed by her mother because of how much he’s helping Alexei. He has also wormed his way into the patronage of a lot of people by his fortunetelling abilities, including getting Aunt Olga to admit that her husband has not once visited her in her bed, but she wants children so desperately. Anastasia’s keen observation picked up on the fact that Rasputin has many powers including pyromancer, clairvoyance, reading of minds. The first thing that Rasputin does is tries to assault Anastasia’s mind, especially after she mentions being able to see images in the smoke, and knowing that he was lying. It’s then that she decides to lean into the assault, and the rummaging starts to melt away, before Rasputin is able to even get to the name of the boy that he was looking for. He tells her that Anastasia has an affinity for magic. He had let her in at the time, and this is where Anastasia was heading this morning after the ball–for more lessons with Rasputin. She learned about how affinity for magic works–seeing things that others cannot.

Damien in the meantime goes to the garrison that he’s stationed and together they all ride out that morning into the riots in the city. It so happens that the rioters got it into their head that the Tsar will hear them, and while his regiment is trying to push them back, a rider from a different garrison comes up telling them that people are marching on towards the Winter Palace. His regiment tries to make it towards the Winter palace, where they run into the 198th regiment in full-out war with the protesters. That regiment raised their gun and starts shooting indiscriminately into the crowd, where people of all ages get hit. The bloodbath that ensued became known as the Bloody Sunday with 133 people reported as dead officially though illegal newspapers stating that it’s higher than that.

In the weeks and months, things got worse–bombings and looting–and thousands of conspirators were arrested including members of the Tsar’s own guard, former ministers and a few low-level aristocrats. Those were interrogated and then hung, shot, sent to labor camps in Siberia or exiled. People hissed when the Royal carriages went by, and when Anastasia saw Damien again, it was a month after the Bloody Sunday. She saw him riding his horse, and went up to him while riding her horse, but he ignored her, and then when she pressed him, he was frosty but they got into another argument. Then when she was confined to the Palace, Anastasia chose to visit Rasputin to teach her the magic she wanted to learn. At the same time, they played a game where he would invade her mind, and she would try to block him from seeing things. After this particular meeting with Damien, Rasputin almost discovered Damien’s identity, but Anastasia went through his mind instead, and found a memory of Rasputin sitting with his family, looking a few years younger. He was playing with his daughter and his wife. Rasputin tells her that he did have a daughter, and pulls out his bird skull, which is a memory keeper, and he shows Anastasia a bit about his life from the time of his daughter’s birthday, but admits that his family is gone.

The riots continued to rage into November, and the Tsar was caught up in a bomb explosion that left his back badly burned, and one of his ministers dead. Thankfully he had been in a carriage gifted by Napoleon III who reinforced it to protect from bombings, but it was the closest that anyone had gotten to killing him. He tried to instate martial law and have Nikolasha run it until the revolt is repressed. Except Nikolasha rejected the position, telling him that he would shoot himself but begging Nikolas to reconsider. So the two men sat in the room to talk, and in the end Nikolas gave the people what they wanted–the Duma–and appointed the laziest bureaucrat at its head hoping that the guy would do nothing at all, while he retained the power to veto any laws. But this resulted in the Tsar becoming withdrawn, so Anastasia entered his study through the hidden passageways leading directly into his office, where she found him looking over the map of Rusya and Europe. The two of them talk about what next steps he should take–the Duma limited conscription, but the war is brewing and who would protect the people from the German Armies. It’s the first time Anastasia realizes how hard it is to rule and convince others to believe in what you do, if you don’t know what to do, and how Rasputin has become so embedded in her parent’s lives. Especially since Alexei continues to look healthy and grow, but she’s noticed a marked difference in him–quieter than usual, with a blank expression on his face from time to time. There was a barrier between the two of them that never used to exist before, and when Anastasia brought it up with her parents, her concerns were dismissed. Sylvie Buxhoeveden never warmed to Rasputin after her reading with him, and noticed the difference in Alexei as well. While reading in the library with Anastasia, Sylvie had questioned what Rasputin had meant by her having to take the first step, and the two pondered it for a bit before Sylvie mentioned that she was reading Anna Karenina, and that she would lend it to Anastasia when she was done.

Anastasia then corners Damien to ask him if he’s happy about the Duma, and he asks her if she knows who is actually running it. She mentions the minister chosen by her father, but Damien tells her that it’s actually this much more brutal-looking minister called Yaro Vyachevslav, and warns her that he is not a friend of any of them, because the Duma won’t be powerless for very long. The riots continued so the girls were banned from visiting the theaters or doing the balls, until the winter time. After a lot of pleading from his daughters, Tsar Nikolas ordered a private ballet for their Chinese Theater, which included Anna Pavlova, a famous ballerina who was known for being so passionate about her work though she wasn’t made for the ballet. The day of that ballet, Ollie tells Anastasia to use the memory keeper but Anastasia had the feeling that she would only use it once in her life and it would be hard to give up something that was already captured. During the Ballet, Liza Taneeva shows up and she had been the talk of town because her husband was packed off to an asylum in Switzerland as he’d been found muttering and drooling; not himself. Damien also arrives at the ballet, late and sits next to Anastasia, which would have put him in full view of Rasputin; however, Rasputin never looks back, and throughout the ballet, Anastasia and Damien hold hands. After the Ballet, Anastasia speaks to Anna at a champaign party that her mother held for them, and Anna tells her that no one believed that she should be a dancer because her bones were hollow like a birds and prone to breaking, but that did not stop her from following her dream.

Tsar Nikolas had told Ollie that she needs to marry but she hadn’t found anyone of her caliber to marry, though she has had several engagement with guys. She often rebelled by sneaking away with Irina to tea parties but in reality meeting with Felix Yusupov. Irina’s mother Xenia loathed Felix Yusupov and tried to keep them apart, but he had no profession to occupy his time and had unlimited resources to devote to the pursuit of Irina. One particular afternoon, Ollie, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia visited Irina’s house when her parents were out and Felix stopped by along with his guys that included Damien. They ended up racing in sleds and throwing snowballs at each other, and Damien and Anastasia were going to win the race against the others until they hit a rock and the sleigh turned over throwing Anastasia and Damien out. This resulted in Anastasia getting hurt with a broken arm, and Damien scooped her up, sprinted off towards the house to get a doctor. That’s when Anastasia looked up and saw Xenia along with her husband returning home. When the girls returned home, they all got yelled at by the Tsar, who decided that it’s time to send Ollie with her Aunt Olga to the Danish Court to shore up interests with their allies, effectively exiling her. It was a bad time because Austria had declared war on Serbia, and World War I started. Alexei on the other hand was also equally mad because his sisters did not invite him to go with them, and Anastasia tells him that it’s because it’s harder to get him out of the palace considering how restricted he’s become due to the training it takes to become the Tsar. It’s then that Anastasia notices that Alexei has a dark bruise, the first one that she’s seen in a while.

As a result of all of this, Tsar Nikolas sends Damien to the Russian 1st Army, where he’d be shipped off to a training camp and be the first sent off into conflict. Damien sent Anastasia a letter through Nina Ivanova–who had been demoted from Ollie’s lady-in-waiting for letting them get away with meeting with Felix. Anastasia doesn’t truly believe that it’s in their best interest to go their separate ways, and goes to her father to confront him, only for him to tell her that Damien is not her friend but a subject–one that is being trained to take control of the Cossack host and lead his people under his command. When she yells at him, he reveals that he sent Damien a few weeks early, but his whole unit is also shipping out because the Germans are at the border. Afterwards, Anastasia visits Artemis and spends time with her lamenting Damien’s departure–the gyrfalcon tells her that the boy isn’t made for the city and it’s better this way.

When Ollie left for Denmark, Tatiana went with her, and the Tsar did not hesitate to let them both go as the girls were twenty-three and twenty-one respectively, and it was high past time for them to get married. At first Ollie sent letters with complaints, but her notes grew shorter and more cheerful as she made friends, while Tatiana was impressed with a new friend she had made. This in turn changed Maria’s routine, leaving her as the oldest Grand Duchess in Rusya, which meant she had to take on additional responsibilities and pressure. Then Germany invaded Belgium and amassed troops in Prussia, right along the border of Rusya–Nikolasha was appointed as Commander-in-Chief and went to lead a counter-offensive. This in turn caused tension between Alexei who wanted to go into battle with Nikolasha with the belief that an emperor doesn’t send his mean where he wouldn’t go himself, and Tsar Nikolas who believed that emperors are not expendable and would result in more soldiers at risk. When Alexei runs off, Anastasia finds him, and they talk. It is then that Alexei comments that he’s trapped, can’t breathe and that the trap tightens around him every day, which startles Anastasia. He hadn’t been looking well after all, being very irritable, sleeping 10 hours during the night and napping in the afternoon. Anastasia continued visiting Rasputin when he returned from Siberia and brought his sister with him, Katya. They’d continued to develop her magic, but it was all pretty weak magic. Rasputin also showed Anastasia Charoite, which he claimed to have gotten at a large expense, and they talked about the gem for a bit, with Anastasia thinking about the Charoite cache that they have under the palace, and what she wouldn’t give to actually see it.

Alexei became enthralled with Katya as well, and would follow her around. Katya became very popular in St. Petersburg to the point that Sylvie Buxhoeveden had listed to one of Katia’s poetry readings, and confided in Anastasia that it didn’t quite seem what it was. As Rasputin’s prestige increased, so did rumors and illegal newspapers published caricatures of Rasputin and the Royal Family, which in turn pissed off the Tsar, who started thinking that the fliers were coming from student presses at the St. Petersburg University. Anastasia had a different theory–Yaro Vyachevslav had taken over the Duma, and it began passing laws that would undermine the Tsar, while also criticizing the Tsar for the war, and the illegal papers parroted Yaro’s criticisms too closely.

Damien finally meets his father in Riga as planned–years of being away changed them both, and there’s a lot of emotion in him for all of the years he had missed, but most of all there’s dread that he’d not be recognized. Instead, Taras pulled him, recognizing him, accepting him, and seeing what Damien felt. The two along with his uncles and some other members of his Cossack tribe catch up on everything that’s changed while Damien has been away from home, and then they go their separate paths. He wonders about his friendships and yearns for a letter from Anastasia. He also sees the war at hand–how technology is beginning to surpass magic and that even though Rusya started to modernize after their war with Japan, they were still far behind the German military machine. And when he arrived at the front, it was easy to decimate the Germans because they did not expect for the Tsar to mobilize and move troops so quickly, but then it seemed like the Germans began to anticipate their movement only for them to find out that they had begun intercepting their radio transmissions because the commanders hadn’t bothered to encrypt the messages as they didn’t know it was possible to intercept. The Germans eradicated the 2nd army, and turned on the 1st, forcing them against the Masurian Lakes, where Damien was shot in the arm, and lost many of his friends in the command, but was lucky to not die himself as he had been unseated from his horse, Hercules, in the midst of the battle by an enemy–and used his bare hands (he never wore gloves in battle) to kill the man. He’d returned to his tent that night to find a letter on his pillow from Anastasia.

Back in St. Petersburg, Anastasia sees the mood of the nation turn sour after the loss of the 1st and 2nd Armies, with more newspapers sprouting up faster than could be quashed claiming her father as Nikolas the Bloodstained–a nickname he’d received at his coronation ceremony when people got trampled in a mad rush to get gifts from the royal couple. Her parents had stopped the balls, having learnt from the backlash of the last costume ball. Ollie had met someone in Denmark–Prince Axel–a cousin of the Crown Prince of Denmark, who was evenly matched with her athletically, even occasionally beating her at tennis. The Tsar agreed to prolonging her stay, but Tatiana returned home with more tales for Anastasia about magic being taught in school. Anastasia found it difficult to hide from her sisters how she disappeared for hours at a time, and that her magic was improving drastically. But Tatiana also quickly realized that something was off with Alexei–something that Anastasia has been trying to bring to her parent’s attention for months, but they brushed her off. So one day Anastasia asked Rasputin if he would teach her how to heal Alexei, but he tells her that no one else can do what he can as it exacts a very heavy toll from Alexei though it won’t kill him. Anastasia tries to read Rasputin’s mind on what he does with Alexei, but he catches her and hurls her back displeased with her and telling her that she needs to be careful as not other sorcerers would be as merciful as he. That bothers Anastasia immensely but she doesn’t know why until she visits Artemis and encounters Farad who tells her how his nephew, Hamza, had helped a horse birth a foal that was stuck. She’s surprised that he’s so proud of Hamza being better than him, and Farad tells her that it’s the point–he’s the mentor so that Hamza can be better than him.

Tatiana then confronts Anastasia–she had overheard Anastasia confirming with Rasputin the time of her magic lesson with her special hearing–and surprises Anastasia by telling her that she wants to learn magic too. She asks Anastasia to teach her what she learns from Rasputin, and Anastasia did, though Tatiana was not able to replicate any of the other magic. Instead she honed her hearing and her ability to shoot arrows, which became fairly fearsome, especially as Anastasia let loose trapped lures for Artemis to capture. The bird and the sister competed against each other to see who could bring down the targets faster. The other thing that Anastasia and Tatiana did was try to figure out what was wrong with Alexei. Tatiana was looking at it with fresh eyes, and Anastasia relayed as much as she could of what Rasputin told her, little as it was–what helped was that Tatiana never liked Rasputin as much as the other three girls all because she never heard him say something that he didn’t want heard. It was as if he was too careful and had secrets. So the girls turned to the libraries to find out the truth on Alexei, but got nowhere. So they decided to break into Rasputin’s tower. The plan pretty much goes according to plan, except that the girls are interrupted with Sylvie Bluxhoeven entering Rasputin’s tower and stealing some papers. She touches the hourglass that awakens the bat, and then leaves, but then Rasputin comes and the girls are forced to run away in the rain with the books they stole. The two girls didn’t have to wait long to learn what Sylvie had stolen from Rasputin–she accused him of being a spy and showed letters written in a language no one could translate to various people in Germany, Austria and other locations as proof to the Tsar and Tsarina. Neither of them wanted to believe her even though they did know that Sylvie’s power was to detect lies. The Tsar called in Rasputin who claimed that the language he wrote in is a dialect of Yeniseian which is what they all speak. Sylvie doesn’t trust him that all of the people who he corresponded with are family who speak this obscure language across the globe, none of which have the last name Rasputin. He tells her calmly that there are some named Rasputin, which unnerves Anastasia because she had seen him get angry when she’d bested him in magic or when things didn’t go as he anticipated. No matter what Sylvie told the Tsar and Tsarina, it was dismissed on lack of evidence and not only that, it appeared that Sylvie had been unstable lately–she had not been taking care of herself the usual way, losing weight, and having dark circles, shrieking–which was a contrast to Rasputin’s calm and collected confidence. When Maria, Tatiana and Anastasia leave the hidden path after listening to this accusation, they all have different opinions–Tatiana doesn’t believe him, Maria thinks he’s good, and Anastasia doesn’t trust him but is going to see him anyway.

Maria then visits Anastasia in her bedroom and confides in her that she’s been volunteering at the hospital every day and she fell in love with a soldier named Daniel who was injured at Tannenbery. It’s clear that he’s not a lord or a baron, but his father was a baker and Maria continues gushing about him. Anastasia opens her mouth to burst her bubble, but then tells her that she’d love to meet him, which surprises Maria as she was expecting Anastasia to tell her that their parents wouldn’t approve. Anastasia tells her that it doesn’t matter–to take a chance. Then Tatiana and Anastasia continue reading through books, and Anastasia comes across a passage late at night in Demons, Succubi and Creatures Most Foul–which is full of stories and information on all of the monsters that roamed Rusya before the first Tsar cleared them out. In the second to last chapter, she finds information on the Vampyr, and suddenly all of Alexei’s symptoms matched someone who was fed on by the Vampyrs, and it would only last so long as Rasputin continued doing it. Some parts of the chapter didn’t fit Rasputin, so Anastasia waited until the next time she knew Rasputin was treating Alexei. She crouched in the tunnel to Alexei’s bedroom during one of Rasputin’s visits, and overhears Rasputin tell him that change is on the horizon, which Anastasia can feel. She has been following the news on Rusya’s 1st army which Damien was a part of, and would grow irritable if she did not receive letters from him for a long time. She also sent some of her own to Damien with frivolous news–Irina had told her parents that she would never accept a proposal from anyone but Felix, Stana had run off to Galicia perhaps she might be meeting someone there and more. By that point Damien had been gone a year.

Anastasia focused back on the moment with Rasputin and Alexei, as Rasputin begins to chant in a foreign language with hard consonants which thickened the air. She enters the room and watches Rasputin work his magic on Alexei, putting him into sleep and then he picks up Alexei’s hand as if he intended to check his pulse or kiss it, but instead she hears a sound that may have been gulping. She leaves the tunnel and barely is an arm’s length away when Rasputin turns to face her–blood smeared on his lips, and with long and sharp incisors. He confirms that he is a Vampyr of sorts, and when Anastasia claims that all of them were killed, he claims that his father is the only one left standing. He reveals to her Alexei would have been dead if he hadn’t been feeding on him–he drains him of the blood and then fills him up with his own instead–but Alexei’s body is rejecting the treatment. A discussion between the two of them ensues, with Rasputin stating that he lied to them because the look on her face is one he’s seen before-hatred and hunted–and that she’s no different than anyone else. Anastasia rebukes that she’s not the same because she hasn’t called the guards, and he tells her to do it then. She considers it but then decides not to call for the guards and instead questions him about what he does for her brother and how a vampyr can mate with a human. He tells her that his father attacked his mother, left her for dead and it took her months to recover with her belly swelling, hoping that it was her husband’s child. He tells her that they pretended that he was normal and that he belonged to his mother and her husband, but that when they had more children they were not exactly alike and he saw the differences. She had given him blood in his food and milk, but when he started to become a man, he needed more blood and he had the hunger but also the magic. He was sensitive to the sun like most vampyrs but could live like anyone else. His mother gave him the blood he needed, and later he met his wife Natalya who would do the same for him. Rasputin tells Anastasia that men in their village discovered what he was and came to the house he lived in with his wife and daughter, nailed the door shut and set the roof aflame–he couldn’t save them and nearly died as well. Anastasia feels sympathetic to him, and decides to withhold the information from the rest of her family for the sake of Alexei.

After a rough night, Anastasia heads to breakfast, where she finds out that her father is heading to Galicia to see Nikolasha. Tensions are high, even though their mother doesn’t want him to go, he still goes through with it saying that he can’t trust anyone else to carry it. Anastasia realizes that he’s referring to the Charoite, though Nikolasha has said before that he wouldn’t use it again. Alexei starts asking if Nikolas will stay to fight, and a squabble ensues about emperors staying behind to fight which Nikolas promptly shuts down. Maria brings up the news that their father will be bringing Ollie back with him when he returns, which makes Anastasia happy. She catches Tatiana’s eye and through silent communication, Tatiana knows to ask their father to see the Charoite. All of the children agree to go with him to see it, so Tsar Nikolas takes them into the vault that is guarded by six men, and also by a purple fire that only allows people of Romanov blood to get through. He shows them that they only had a quarter left of the stone, and he tells them that miners haven’t found the stone in large pieces for years. Maria wonders what they will do, and he tells her that there’s more than enough for them all, as they shouldn’t use much of it at once. Tatiana touches the stone and picks up one piece in her hand. Anastasia tells her to put it back but she doesn’t until Nikolas picks it up and puts it back into the chest. Before Nikolas leaves, he appoints his wife as the regent to act in his absence.

Alexandra begins to lean heavily on Rasputin who meets with her and Nikolas’ ministers, as well as in one of her rooms alongside with Liza and some of Alexandra’s ladies in waiting. None of those is Slyvie, who has been rumored to be found wandering around at a Station in a nightdress, which was strange. Anastasia was invited to an event in which Katya would perform her poetry, so she got ready with her lady in waiting, Annette, who tells her that General Danilov was let go that morning by the Empress. This surprises Anastasia because Danilov has been in service to the crown since her great-grandfather, though she knows her mother didn’t like him. Anastasia heads out with her sisters to Madame Lessigner’s house to listen to Katya, and Tatiana teases Maria about her soldier, which gets Maria upset at Anastasia, only for Tatiana to tell her that her soldier has a friend whose sister works in the scullery. Things in Rusya hadn’t been going well–between the war, blockade by the Germans and a wet year that rotted wheat, merchants went bankrupt and peasants starved. At the event, Tatiana asks about Rasputin only to be told that he’s very close with Madame Lessinger, and she wonders if there’s anyone he’s not fucking in all of St. Petersburg, to which Anastasia quips “not mama,” and the girls share a look knowing that this is not what the press believes. The girls split up and Anastasia goes around asking some people if they know who Rasputin is, only to be told by one of the students there that he’s the holiest man in Rusya and predicted this war many times–she notices that there’s a lot of admirers who seem to be worshipping Rasputin. Alexei arrives with his friends including Felix Yusupov, who talks to Anastasia about Ollie coming back and mentions that they lost half of their ministry this week. This doesn’t surprise Rasputin, but it surprises Anastasia and Felix lists off some names that her mother sacked that week. Rasputin asks him if he’s questioning the decision of the empress, and Felix says that he doesn’t question her, but questions the advice that she’s given. This puts tension between Felix, Rasputin and the rest of the room. Felix asks them if Rasputin should be the one that is replacing the ministers who have been keeping bread on the shelves, and no one responds at first until he presses again, and someone says that Rasputin is only the most powerful seer in Rusya. So he asks Rasputin to make a prediction for him then. Anastasia’s hair prickles at this, and she has this desire to pull back Felix’s hand, but Rasputin pulls out his skull and gives him his future–Anastasia sees two boys with reddish hair playing around the kitchen, then growing up together, then the younger one pulling the older one, then there was a gunshot, and images of Irina. Rasputin tells Felix that he will finally have what he desires and sooner than he thinks. Tatiana comes by and says that it doesn’t make sense, because if you can see the future you can change it. The event starts, the poetry happens and when it ceases, Tatiana tells her sisters that Ollie is coming back with Prince Axel, which means that they’ll be engaged. Then comes the news: Sylvie jumped in front of a train.

A week later Anastasia visits Sylvie’s house and looks through her personal effects, choosing to pick up the book Sylvie had promised to lend her–Anna Karenina. None of it makes sense to her because Sylvie was fine and still had so many places to travel. The Tsar then returned with Ollie who was now betrothed to Prince Axel. Liza was tasked with cleaning the palace in anticipation of their arrival and she was never happier because she was granted a divorce by the Tsar alongside Stana Leuchtenberg. Nikolas signed the divorce papers because Nikolasha forced him to do it, flatly refusing to accept the Charoite from him or to continue leading the armies without Stana. The Tsar was furious when he left Galicia, and even their mother thought he had gone too far as divorce was a mortal sin. When Anastasia argues back, Alexandra is not impressed and worries that her daughters think love matters more than the sacrament of marriage. Anastasia continues to keep in touch with Damien, even going as far as telling him that Rasputin is a Vampyr. She also reads the book and Sylvie’s notes in the book, which further became obscure and deranged, often not making sense with the story. It was just odd that she accused Rasputin and a month later she was dead, which reminds Anastasia of a passage about vampyrs–that you should never meet it’s gaze or listen to its persuasion as it twists the minds of men. She reaches the part where Anna Karenina throws herself beneath the wheels of the train, and Anastasia recognizes the train that was drawn on the pages of the book–it was the same train that she had seen in Sylvie’s future when they first met Rasputin. Anastasia tries to visit Rasputin, only to be told by Katya that some lord invited him to dinner–the one from the party. She returns to the palace, towels off and goes to dinner with her family. There Aunt Xenia claims that her husband is dining with his brothers, and does small talk about him with Liza. Anastasia asks about Alexei, only to be told by her mother that he was dining with friends, but she wasn’t sure which ones. Irina doesn’t look well, and Alexandra tells Anastasia that she received a letter, which Liza had been holding onto and trying to read. Liza hands it over to her and tells her that it’s from Galicia but it’s not Nikolasha’s handwriting. Xenia asks if she’s writing to the Cossack and Anastasia admits that she is, and reminds Xenia that he will be Ataman some day. Then she tells Liza that she will get her own mail, to which Liza retorts that she’s busy enough. This results in an argument where it turns out that Alexandra sacked Nina Ivanova today because the girl had come with accusations that Rasputin had interfered with her, but when Liza went to her room, she found an officer (Nina’s fiancé) in her room. When Alexandra admits that she questioned Rasputin, Tatiana yells that it’s not true that Rasputin didn’t speak to Nina. As a result, Alexandra sends her to her room, and then the women continue talking while Anastasia is bugged by Rasputin’s disappearance, his attack on Nina and Alexei’s disappearance. When the ladies move to the parlor, Irina tells Anastasia that Rasputin is at Felix’s dining there, which makes no sense because Felix hates Rasputin, and when she presses Irina, she admits that she think he’s planning to kill Felix.

Anastasia runs out of the house, to the stables and heads for Felix’s house, but she’s too late. Turns out that Felix had laced the glass of wine meant for Rasputin with Arsenic, but instead mixed it up and drank it himself. Anastasia figures out that Rasputin had read Felix’s mind and switched the drinks, resulting in Felix being taken to the hospital for arsenic poisoning. Rasputin had fled. When she returns to the palace, there’s more chaos, and Alexandra refuses to believe that Rasputin could have poisoned Felix and fled. She demands to know where Alexei is. Using the pretext to assist in searching for Alexei, Anastasia reads Damien’s letter in response to Rasputin being a vampyr and it feels like a slap to the face, because how can she know how he’s affected her? Suddenly an alarm starts going off and Anastasia is told to go to her room because someone is breaking into the vault. Except the vault was broken into hours before, with the Charoite stolen, and Alexei had hit the alarm himself–pale and delirious. Turned out that Rasputin had stolen it and Alexei had given it to him, and Anastasia realizes that Alexei is under Rasputin’s power, making herself feel guilty because she could have stopped it months before. They race to find Katya but she’s gone too, and everything in the tower was gone.

The family hides that the Charoite was stolen and plasters on smiles on their faces when the Tsar, Prince Axel and Ollie return. No trace could be found of Rasputin, and rumors were swirling about the poisoning of Felix as well. Anastasia then confessed everything to her parents about her visits to Rasputin and that he was half-vampyr. Alexandra sent an apology to Nina Ivaonva and offered her position back, but Nina declined. There were worries that Rasputin would sell the Charoite to another government, but nothing came of it. Anastasia realizes that Rasputin’s prediction for Ollie comes true and tries to remember her own which has the Lorne Mountain that contains that Charoite. She takes it to mean that she was warned that the Charoite may have been stolen and tries to figure out the remainder of the future including the images of Damien–she didn’t understand why Rasputin was afraid of Damien, but luckily she’s always kept Damien safe. Ultimately, she questions everything that Rasputin has ever told her or done because she believes all of them were lies. All summer there’s no movement or sign of Rasputin, and Anastasia speaks to Alexei who worries about what would have happened if had become Tsar while Rasputin controlled him. Eventually, they stopped worrying about it and began planning the double wedding–because Xenia consented to Irina marrying Felix, and they decided to do it on the same day as Ollie’s and Prince Axel’s marriage. Anastasia received a piece of good news–Damien was returning to St. Petersburg to a hero’s welcome. Suddenly the day of the wedding arrived, and Anastasia decided to depress the memory keeper and tucked it into her robe. She rode out to meet with Damien.

Damien had left Galicia and headed back to St. Petersburg with his men, pushing his men to get to Anastasia as soon as possible. Even the day of the wedding, he’d woken his men up early and headed to meet her and when he saw Artemis, he knew that it was just a matter of time before he saw Anastasia. He comes up to her and kisses her, forgetting his ability to kill with bare skin, while she freezes all time. They share a few more moments together, and she rides back with them to the city. On her way back to get changed for the parade, her guard–Kolya–tells her that there’s still a feeling in the air that has become associated with Rasputin, which he thinks means that Rasputin hasn’t left St. Petersburg. Later on, Damien and his men march through the city to cheers for having taken over Lemburg in a parade meant to honor them. During this parade, Anastasia picks off a flower from one of the bouquets nearby and throws it to him from the balcony–he catches it, and carefully kisses it to ensure that he doesn’t touch it with his bare lips and kills it, before he puts it away.

Olga got married that night to Axel and Irina married Felix in a grand ceremony at the palace’s chapel. Damien could not keep his eyes off Anastasia during the ceremony, and images would flash of her getting married, which upset him, though he tried to hide it. Damien was invited to the wedding as well as the reception, where he speaks with Stana and her sister Melitza for a bit, and sits down to eat but cannot stop looking at Anastasia. Eventually the dancing starts and Anastasia dances with him throughout the reception. They talk about the first time they met, and Damien remembers the moment vividly but he is unable to admit to himself what it meant when they saw each other for the first time. The two of them are able to keep dancing for quite a while until Damien invites her to take a drink. There he sees Stana looking ill, complaining of a headache, and he agrees that Melitza should see Stana out to her home so she may rest. Once Stana is gone, he admits to Anastasia that he saw Stana and Nikolasha get married outdoors, but before she could say anything, Tatiana interrupts them with an urgent need to talk to Anastasia. When Anastasia returns to Damien, she tells him that a Telegram came from Galicia that notified the Tsar that Lemberg was retaken, and Taras Taledin had been killed. The world feels like it crashes around him and he walks away from her to another soldier to tell him that they’re leaving. Anastasia follows him around to tell him she’s sorry, but he snaps at her, and pushes her away–telling her that he wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for her; that he’d come to see her, not get the laurels and if he’d had stayed with his father, maybe, just maybe he’d have lived. Damien stalks out of the reception, past the Tsar and Tsarina who seemed to have gotten over the loss of Lemburg and did not seem to care how many men died, angry that they’ve taken everything from him, and the only thing that he’d ever want–they would never give him. He gets on his horse and takes off, never looking back at Anastasia running after him, and he wishes that he had been able to go back to that moment and make a different choice.

Anastasia watches him ride away as the clock strikes midnight and the memory keeper stops recording. She walks back to the ballroom, and slumps against her sisters. Tatiana apologizes to her and tells her that she shouldn’t have told her, but Anastasia knows that it wouldn’t have mattered –she would’ve lost Damien anyway. She looks around the ballroom, noticing things happening around the room, and for the first time began to see just how spoiled, selfish and callous the noble class was. As she looks around, a gong goes off that reverberates in the room, and the room began to get colder. The Tsar called for Guards but none came, and many of the servants set down their trays, turning on their guests. Screams and chaos erupted–Tatiana’s arm was ripped off by her maid, other members of the royal family were being speared. Anastasia tries to use her magic but she was unable to stop time, and she watched as her family and friends were murdered by none other than vampires. Even Rasputin had entered the ballroom, and made his way for Alexei, who was the only individual unharmed in the ballroom. Tsar Nikolas tries to protect him, but Rasputin turns on the Tsar and snaps his wrist, showing that his body is saturated with the stolen Charoite from the Royal Vault. Anastasia tries to save her father, but Rasputin catches her by the throat, only for the Tsar to stab Rasputin with his knife all the way in the shoulder. Nikolas shoves Anastasia and tells her to Run, transferring the last of his magic into her, so she ran avoiding everyone and everything until she came face to face with Katya in the Kitchens. She tries to make a step towards her when a voice speaks in her mind, and she loses control of her body, turning to face Rasputin.

Anastasia wonders why he’s doing this when they’d welcomed him into their home and trusted him, and when Rasputin tells her it’s because he had something she needed, she knows he’s lying because they were friends. She also clearly sees that he lied to her about his family. Rasputin tells her that he only told her a mirror of the truth; so she flips story he told her and realizes that his parents, Rasputin and Katya are vampires, but his mother got pregnant by a human, and Rasputin began to manifest magic in his teen years. He was the first vampire who could do magic with a powerful affinity for it. She realizes that his wife wasn’t human but also a vampire, and continues to keep him busy talking because Anastasia notices that it was distracting him; that his hold on her body was loosening. Rasputin gets lost in a memory, while Katya shivers, and tells Anastasia that his wife was a powerful vampire who forced him to take his daughter and flee while she stayed behind in the village that ended up cutting her up and nailing pieces of her to crosses all along the road. It turns out that Katya is his daughter, and Rasputin confirms that they are older than they seem–which puts everything into context for Anastasia in terms of the old style of clothing, the ancient language he used and the toy he carved by hand. Rasputin shows her an image of men on horseback, Cossacks and Rusyans following a man that Anastasia recognized–Mikhail Fyodorovich, the first Romanov Tsar–and tells her that three hundred years of bloodshed and oppression ends tonight. Before Anastasia is able to do anything else, he takes over her mind and forces her to cut herself with the knife in her hand several times. He compels her to give him the name of the man from her vision, and she thinks of Damien which fills her up with so much hope that it strengthens her to lock his name away in her own mind so deep down that Rasputin would have to destroy her. Rasputin then put the blade directly in her face, directly lined up with her eye, but before any further damage could be done, Artemis dove at Rasputin’s eyes, only for him to be pushed aside by his daughter. After taking some blows, Katya catches Artemis by her wind and wrenches, snapping it and flinging the bird across the room. Artemis’ shriek jolted Anastasia into action and she snatched her out of the air, before diving through the glass of the palace into the frozen river, where she got carried away by the frigid water.

A year later, Anastasia woke in the morning inside Varvara’s animal store. Varvara had found her after the water carried her all because she recognized Artemis, and she brought Anastasia and Artemis home, where she fixed Artemis’ wing up though it was crooked. As Varvara’s daughter, Nina Ivanova had died from the Spanish flu brought back by soldiers coming from the front, she handed Nina’s identification to Anastasia to keep her safe. Anastasia dyed her hair black to keep herself hidden, and Artemis only hunted at night as she was too recognizable in the day but sometimes brought game though she had to fly further and further away from the city to find game. Soon after the October Revolution, the new secret police swept through St. Petersburg looking for someone though they weren’t forthcoming with who they were looking for; rumors did swirl around a missing girl with red hair, though the police claimed it was to find the assassins of the royal family. Still Anastasia lives with survivor’s guilt, which is further compounded by the fact that the mother of a humiliated maid to the royal family is the one extending a kindness to her. As part of the new order, Nina’s ID card benefits Anastasia as everyone has to report for duty to work somewhere. Varvara prepares their lunch, and Anastasia lets her mind wander to Damien; that he probably thinks she’s dead as that’s what everyone has been told. The war had ended, though in reality it was surrender–Rasputin had given Germany large pieces of territory that included parts of Ukraine, all of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The women walked to the mill in silence, just like everyone else in the city for fear as a large swath of people had either been murdered or hauled away to labor camps. It was the middle of December and no one could afford anything–they got 35 rubles a month for salary but the price of everything had skyrocketed.

As Varvara and Anastasia walked to the mill, Varvara asked her if she brought her ID card with her, and tells her that the secret police had checked every single worker at a different factory. This makes Anastasia paranoid because she thinks that Rasputin is still trying to kill her, and wants her dead, though Alexei is the current Tsar. Varvara tells her that they took a trainload of people out of the city, and Anastasia assures her that she had her ID card, though both of them know that it wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny because she looks nothing like Anastasia. At the Mill, Varvara went to the spinning workshop, while Anastasia stripped to her undergarment and went to the finishing section, where she worked with heavy chemicals. Anastasia had been angry when she started at the mill and a child’s arm was crushed in the mill, wondering out loud who sends their children to the mill, to which Varvara said that families do what they have to and children always worked in cotton mills. When Varvara confirms it, Anastasia was forced to recall the very first conversation she had with Damien about the workers in the mine. After working all morning, there is a break for lunchtime, which Anastasia shares with Varvara and another woman called Katinka, who once had been a cellist in the St. Petersburg orchestra. Katinka tells them stories and mentions that she still practices in case the orchestra resumes, before heading back in. Varvara stays silent, which surprises Anastasia as she likes to burst bubbles, but when Anastasia presses her, Varvara tells her that there’s too little hope left in the world to take it away. Varvara also confides in her that she used to tell Nina she’d open a dressmaker’s shop in her own store once they saved some more money–though that never happened. After lunch, Anastasia goes back to work and saves her fourteen year old coworker from being crushed by the machine, though the images of the six year old girl who she witnessed die at this machine remain in Anastasia’s mind, and she suffers mentally for a while. The fourteen year old girl tells the overseer that she will be fine, and uses Nina’s name which snaps Anastasia back to present. She tries to go back to work but is interrupted by a bell, and her manager tells her to get out to the main room. Sure enough, the secret police were there, and after everyone had lined up, they started going down the line of people working in the mill, checking their identifications and calling out that there was a mistake with some of the identification cards for some of the individuals. Anastasia quickly realized that they were pulling aside the healthier and strong looking individuals, who technically did not have anything wrong with their cards. She found herself amongst the group of individuals with incorrect identity cards, and though Varvara screamed, Anastasia shook her head, which quieted Varvara. The police then took Katinka to the side and shot her behind the mill. She waves good-bye to Varvara and knows exactly where she is going.

The police loaded up the people on a car, took them to another warehouse where they did the same thing, and then took them to the trains, which in turn took them to the Lorne Mountains. She gets taken with the group of people into the entrance of the cave, where she looks back, sees Artemis alight on a tree and waves good bye, hoping that her beloved bird will find a place to return to that will have plentiful food. And thens he enters the caves, where she is given clothing and food, before being assigned to a cell, where a woman speaks to her that Anastasia recognizes as Anna Pavlova, the ballerina. Anna tells her that she’s been there six months, and the two become fast friends, so much so that when Anastasia misses her quota of Charoite the following day, Anna gives her some. Anna shows her how to find the Charoite so that Anastasia can meet the daily quotas.

For a year, Anastasia works hard in the mines, getting whipped and seeing horrors, including witnessing Anna’s death. On her deathbed, Anna gives Anastasia a large chunk of Charoite, telling her to use it to get out, and that she recognized Anastasia before, but never wanted to betray her anyway. Anastasia continues to work in the mines for a lot longer, and uses some bits of Charoite to power the memory-keeper where she sees a memory of Damien riding away from her, but looking back at her with sadness and regret, and she knows that he would forgive her. This fuels her hope to get out of the mines, and so she works harder looking for the Charoite–which she eventually finds. Entering one of the pathways that was collapsed by blasts and she’s thin enough to pass between, she finds a thick vein of very bright Charoite, and realizes that it’s a bigger cache of the material than what Rasputin had stolen from the Royal Vault. She takes a bit of it, before covering the rest of it up in hopes of hiding it for longer, and returns to her cell. She then hatches her plan, and using the Charoite to boost her time magic, she makes it out of the cave, finds a horse, and starts across the forest towards the steppes–towards Damien. Artemis rejoins her, having waited for her so long and together they make their way but are surrounded by wolves, and for the first time Anastasia comes face to face with the King Wolf which is bigger than all the other wolves. She manages to outrun him long enough to get to a waterfall, and Artemis flies off, leaving her to fend for herself, but she’s too week to stay above the water. Then Artemis returns and starts gouging out the wolves’ eyes, while strong hand grip Anastasia and fling her out of the water. She saw Damien surrounded by the wolves, though he used his magic to kill them. They were surrounded too much, so Damien kills the draft horse as a sacrifice to the wolves which gives the two of them enough time to get onto Hercules. Anastasia sees the King Wolf jump and urges him to go, but then cuddles up to Damien and feels electrifying magic fill her, so she uses it to unleash flame directly behind them, stopping the King Wolf, but in turn passes out.

Damien heads back to his village with Anastasia in his lap, sort of disbelieving that it’s her. He had been riding along the edge of the Frost Forest during twilight when he felt a lifting of his spirits, which is something he hadn’t felt in two years, and Anastasia’s face flashed into his mind. And he knew that he was feeling her–it was the same sensation he’d had when he first met her at fourteen, and every time thereafter when he was in her proximity. He sensed she was close, even though he thought it was impossible, but he was operating on blind faith by racing forward. Damien had made loops, calling out to Anastasia until he heard the wolves howling and headed off towards that direction, but wasn’t sure where he was heading until he saw Artemis fly overhead, and circle back. He hauled her out, feeling how light she was, and began killing the wolves in blind fury, only stopping when she was spitting water. Damien sacrificed the horse, and pulled her onto Hercules, realizing just how light she really was, though he was glad that she was really alive. It’s only then he’d realized he’d ridden in blind and hadn’t expected the largest wolf that Nikolasha had called Karol Volk to appear. He felt Anastasia blast fire, and fall backwards, but he caught her before she fell, disbelieving that she was alive this whole time and he could have found her. He rides back to his village, and settles Anya down in front of the fire with wine and food, before telling her that he thought she was dead. Anya tells him that she couldn’t reach out as mail was searched in the city, and he tells her that he would have come, wherever she was; he’d regretted riding away from her two years ago, and it haunted him since that night. Anastasia apologizes to him about his father, and tells him that she’s seen so much since that night and that she’s changed. Damien’s men bring in water, but she’s too tired and weak to do any washing, so Damien takes care of it for her, getting angry when Anya tells him that Rasputin had her stab herself with a knife, hence the scars. Anastasia becomes self conscious of the scars, but he tells her that she is beautiful to him. After he washes her again, they kiss and he tells her that he loves her. Damien carries her to his bed and uses a feather to touch her skin, and tells her that he worships her, always had, before he gives her some pleasure.

The next day, Damien catches Anastasia up on what happened to him–he returned to St. Petersburg when he saw fie but was turned around, and then his regiment killed the 20 soldiers sent to inform them that they now fought for a different government, before they returned to the steppes. He became Ataman, though things are hard. Anya tells him that it’s because of Rasputin though he doubts it. She tells him of her experience in the mine and the fact that she found a huge cache of Charoite, more than was stolen from the palace. She tells him that they thought that the Charoite would kill Rasputin, but he had taken a lot from the stolen cache and wasn’t dead. She tells him that they need to stop Rasputin and kill him, and mentions that his whole coven is in her house, including her brother, who really isn’t her brother. Anastasia tells him that the mine needs to be collapsed and when Damien suggests that they dig the crystal out, she tells him it needs to be gone and stay gone. Damien thinks it’s not possible to kill Rasputin without the Charoite, but Anastasia tells him that they can defeat him without it, as long as they do it together because they are stronger when they are together. Damien tells her that they can forget about Rusya and just be together, but Anastasia reminds him that he was the one who taught her not to ignore what was happen right next to her, as it spreads out. Then she explores the town with Damien, and meets the members of his Cossack host, which fascinates Anastasia because the women were very different than Rusyan women–they were independent and fierce, doing things their own way, and often taking lovers even when married. Then the two of them go for a horse ride throughout the steppes.

Anastasia is fascinated with Cossack life and gets to know Damien’s way of life better. But she was surprised that women would have flings with men, and not marry them. Damien tells her that if a baby comes along, a woman might marry the man or she might marry a different one, because a healthy baby is always welcomed. She notices the way Damien is different now that he’s the Ataman, and learns that Cossacks are competitive about everything and anything. She’s seen brawls and dances, and fell in love with the fire dance that would disqualify people if they fell out of step or beat–she kept losing it, but was totally obsessed with it. Even as she enjoys it, she also cannot help but worry about the people that she left behind in Moscow. Caravans of people escaping the city had come by and while Damien allowed them to stay, he was always nervous that someone would recognize Anastasia. This came to pass–Stana and Melitza–had come through the steppes with some of their servants and a toddler just learning to walk that Anastasia immediately recognized as Nikolasha’s daughter. Stana had looked at Anastasia with little surprise and told her that she knew they’d meet again. They catch up about everything that has transpired over the course of two years including that Nikolasha knew about their daughter. Later, Damien and Anastasia take off on their own into the forest as they had been for a while, and continue to practice their magic. Damien confides in her that while he wants to believe in what she says–that their destiny together means something, he has been wrong before, most particularly on the night he attacked Anastasia’s father thinking that he was made with the purpose of killing so that his people could be free. He then shows her the flower that she threw to him during the parade and how it’s been preserved in time, telling her that it gave him hope, which is how he felt her that day in the woods. They continue practicing magic, with Anastasia freezing things and animals in the air. Then they truly make love for the first time in the grove that they practice their magic in.

They return to the village, and Damien reminisces about his dad who always said that he had his love, and he had his boy, so he was rich and there was no need to be greedy. It’s the first time he’s able to think of his father without pain. And seeing Anastasia there beside him, he believed that he wouldn’t lose her. They make it back in time for the fire dance, and this time Anastasia tells Damien to take his glove off as she will do better dancing if she can touch him. He can see that Anastasia really wants to win the Fire Dance this time, and he tells her that it’s meant to be instinctual, not practiced. So they dance together, feeling free, and for once Anastasia stays in the running, even winning the Fire dance with Damien. Afterwards, Anastasia and Damien wander over to Stana, and when she offers to read for him, Anastasia asks that she reads for them both. Stana does, and tells them that Rasputin will die at Damien’s hand, before wandering off with her daughter to get milk. Damien asks his grandmother to read his future for him in her bones, and one time they turn white, another time they turn black, and the next time they turn in every which way. When asked, the grandmother says that’s readings have never agreed, but that Stana is right–Damien has a death bond with Rasputin and Anastasia was the phoenix–if he goes with Anastasia, he will never come back. Damien decides that he can kill Rasputin and save Anastasia.

He plans to go with Anastasia to kill Rasputin, so they start making a plan with his uncles, who at first are not willing to help the Rusyans. None of them was blind to the fact that Anya was truly Anastasia, and they have a hard time believing her when she says she doesn’t want the Charoite, but she shocks them even more when she tells them that she wants the mine destroyed. One of the uncles wants the land in exchange for helping her, and even though she’s not able to do it, she agrees to give them the land in exchange for help. The seven days between the plan and the execution pass by very quickly, with a melancholy Damien who knows that he will sacrifice himself to kill Rasputin so that Anastasia may win. On one of the last days, he asks Anastasia to put on a dress worn by his mom before she passed, and he memorizes how she looks twirling in the dress at his home, which now feels like home because of her. He suggests to her that they get married, which she agrees to. Later on that day, they take off on their horses through the steppes into the forest, and find a boar that Damien shoots, which leads them to a cave full of ice and the two of them go in and marry each other. Their magic strengthens both of them and they begin melting the ice inside the cave. They return and have the wedding feast with the boar that they had shot.

Damien takes three of the bombs that one of his cousins had purchased in Minsk, as the whole contingent prepares to carry out the plan–one group goes to the mines to destroy it, and another group goes to the palace with the intention that both groups attack at the same time. Anastasia, Damien, Damien’s uncle Evo and Petro, another of Damien’s cousins come with him to St. Petersburg. The begin their travel by making it into town, showing their fake paperwork on the train, and bribing an official to get their horses on to the train. The train ride is long, so they pass time playing poker, chess and also revealing their powers–Petro has special eyesight, but Evo heals from cuts and is nearly unkillable. When they arrive to St. Petersburg, Damien and Anastasia find an inn to rest, but spend that time making love with Damien being aware that it could be his last time with Anastasia. Then the group of four use their transfer papers to leave the city for farmland outside, but they turn by Tsarskoe Selo to get onto the grounds, where they proceed to enter the palace through the Masoleum. As they make their way into the kitchens, Anastasia comes face to face with Margaretta, who tells her that Rasputin sleeps in her parent’s bedroom. She takes the group up to the bedroom through the servants hallways and Anastasia enters first to the smell of her mom’s perfume–she then recognizes that the bed in front of her was not her parents bed and instead he slept next to the headstone of his wife. The door closes behind them, and Anastasia throws a fireball at the bed, when figures swarmed into the bedroom from a different room–Rasputin, Katya, a dozen vampires and Alexei, a shadow of himself.

Anastasia immediately turns into the magic of time-walking and starts setting the rushing vampires on fire, while the rest of her team fight off the remaining vampires. She faces Rasputin, who hasn’t aged but changed as the Charoite had taken its toll on him. It quickly becomes evident that the vampires had known they were coming as many pour into the room, and Petro is the first to fall, and Evo was the second to fall to the vampires at the hands of Katya who manages to convince him that he has no bones in his hand. This results in Damien fighting back, at which point Rasputin rushes him, walking so fast that Anastasia realizes he could time walk. Anastasia stops him from reaching Damien, but Rasputin tells Katya to take Damien, and Anastasia tries to stop her but loses her focus on Rasputin, who takes her down with his cold. Katya leaped on Damien’s back and wrapped her hands around his throat managing to knock him out despite the fact that he used his power on Katya. Then after he was unconscious, blood burst out of Katya’s nose and eyes, and she was dead, which inflames Rasputin and even though Anastasia tries to use her powers to twist away from him, he blasts her back into the wall.

Damien wakes up in a stone cellar, and sees Rasputin holding up Anastasia by her neck, trying to get information out of her, that she refuses to give him. Realizing that he’s awake, Rasputin attempts to use Damien as leverage for Anastasia to reveal what she knows, but she does not–surprising Rasputin by stopping him from using his own powers to break Damien’s arms or torture him. Damien knows why she’s able to stand in the face of Rasputin and so easily defeat him despite the fact that Rasputin was so full of Charoite–and it’s because he’s awake and he’s loving her. Infuriated, Rasputin calls for Alexei to bring him the Charoite–the one that he stashed back in the vault that only Alexei can access. Alexei picks it up and comes back out to the same side with the chest, but Anastasia tells him not to do it, looking at him full of love. For a moment, he seems to struggle between being told what to do by Rasputin and Anastasia, but ultimately he chooses to help Anastasia by chucking the chest to the other side and telling Rasputin to do it himself. Rasputin pushes too far, and kills Alexei, which causes Anastasia to shriek and release a sheet of fire, one that Rasputin bats away, but that was purposefully meant for the ropes bounding Damien. Damien gets up and before Rasputin could do anything about it, Damien grabs him with his bare hands on his face, and drags him backward into the wall. Anastasia calls out to him, and he tells her to run knowing that she can out run what was about to happen if she used the last of her magic. With four bombs strapped to his chest, Damien pulled Rasputin into the fire, while Anastasia sprinted towards them using her magic to stretch out time.

Suddenly she was falling through dark space, and found herself in her old room, battling a disjointed dead hand and the ghost of Rasputin, who wrenches out memories from her including the location of the large cache of Charoite. Anastasia also rummages through his mind and finds some memories of his, before he disappears through the window shattering it. That’s when she looks around and wonders how she managed to get up to her room, and then realizes that it’s the room of her childhood. She realizes that her hands are unmarked by scars and Maria and Tatiana run into her room, alive and well. Anastasia is in shock, and picks up the memory-keeper which is warm as if it had been working. Tatiana tells her that it’s the morning of Ollie’s wedding, and Anastasia realizes that she has turned back time 2 years. Then she has to spend the next 2 hours explaining to everyone everything she lived, and until Grandma Minnie comes in to tell them that the music box is a memory keeper, not a vision keeper, most of her family think she’s crazy. The whole royal family including Aunt Xenia, uncle Sandro, Nikolasha, Grandma Minnie and Aunt Olga are attending the meeting about what to do, debating what is going on, and everyone keeps having conflicting opinions on what to do. Nikolasha stayed mostly silent though he realizes the risk of Rasputin getting his hands on the Charoite cache. Grandma Minnie asks Anastasia if she will tell Damien everything, and Anastasia remembers that Damien doesn’t know his father died–she decides that she will tell him. Xenia is outraged that the Cossacks abandoned them, and even more so when Anastasia tells her that they want their land in return. Nikolasha tries to ask if they really need them, and Anastasia tells him that he was ripped apart by seven of them, which in turn causes Nikolas to become stubborn about not engaging them. Anastasia tries to convince him, but he threatens to hang the Cossacks for not following his orders, and seemingly also Anastasia for not obeying him. Nikolas makes a decision to stay inside the palace and barricade them, and when Anastasia attempts to rebut him, he yells at her that she’s in charge. In return she tells him that a person in charge doesn’t have to tell people that, before she uses her magic to swipe a vase of flower, freezing them in mid air and sending them back into their original position. This surprises her, because she didn’t knows she could do that–all she wanted to do was show them that she had grown. Nikolas tells Nikolasha to escort her to Maria’s room, and lock her in, which he does but during their walk up Anastasia tells him that he knows that Nikolas is wrong, and implores him to ask Stana about it. He tells her he will talk to the Tsar and then leaves her in Maria’s room.

Anastasia is furious at the time wasted debating, and decides to give it two hours before breaking out of the room. Nikolasha shows up with Tatiana, and tells Anastasia that nothing is moving forward as Xenia is stuck up against not giving the Cossacks independence, and another person had the idea of checking the teeth of the palace staff. He lets Anastasia go to Damien, by escaping out of the window, and Tatiana tells her that she will be working on getting everyone together to fight against Rasputin. Before leaving, Anastasia tells Nikolasha that his daughter is beautiful and that he will see her too. She heads out of the window, meets up with Kolya and gets on her horse before calling for Artemis, who doesn’t have a broken wing. She rides with Kolya to the camp where Damien is at, and when she arrives, she recognizes a lot of the men, though none of them recognize her at all, and block her path. Feo, the man she recognized, agrees to let her through so long as the guard and the bird stay behind, and she agrees to it, but then realizes that everyone is drinking and somber as she walks towards the camp. She then sees Taras Kaledin’s armor and saddle, and Feo tells her that a rider came an hour ago to let them know. She was on time to save her family but not Damien’s family, and on her own, she finds Damien in his tent, drunk, in disarray and angry. They talk and Anastasia tells him everything, though he’s in disbelief at first and she struggles to see the Damien she knows because this Damien is harder, leaner and angry enough that she’s afraid of him. Damien dispels some of his magic into the tree, and Anastasia puts her hand over his, taking back all of the magic into her that he was dispelling, which surprises him. She tells him that she’s able to do this because she’s so happy to see him as she had just watched him die. He starts believing her, and she takes him out to the camp, talking to people she knows and subtly using her magic to change things, as she tells him that he brought her to his village and they got married. She then shows him their connection through the fire dance, asking Ivash to play the one Taras danced to with Larysa, Damien’s mother.

Damien is surprised by what Anastasia is able to do; how she’s so familiar with his regiment, and knows that she’s against a lot because the whole Cossack regiment is hurt by the loss of Taras. He doesn’t comprehend how he’s able to touch her with his bare fingers, and she tells him that it’s the two of them doing it, but she needs him to love her and charge her up. As they dance, the ice inside Damien cracks and he feels the anger meld into something that he could use as a weapon. She urges Damien on to remember their first meeting and how they’ve always been connected through time, and he knows it is true; that they were meant to love each other. Damien agrees to help her with her crusade, and as they continue dancing, members of the army falling out of the fire, they stay dancing until his father’s armor falls apart in the fire–supposedly the members of the Cossack regiment saw the embers forming a shape of the phoenix out of the death of the Firebird, as Taras was known. Two hours past midnight, Damien and his whole regiment were on a train heading towards the mountain, and Anastasia watched while Evo played Petro and lost him, which makes her remember the other version of the game. Damien then realizes that there were experiences that she had with him, that he is not a part of (at least any longer) and he notices the sadness in her now that wasn’t there before. Anastasia makes him promise to stay with her no matter what as there’s no point in living without each other. Then Artemis shows up and tells them that she found Rasputin’s coven–which is a much larger number than the regiment of Cossacks.

They ride for Rasputin’s army, and a group of the Cossacks including Evo shear off with the intention to go to the deepest tunnels of the mountains, clear out any miners and set their charges to bring the mountain down. Still, there is fighting in the way and the battle is fierce between the Cossacks who ride like demons and the supernatural monsters who run like wraiths. At one point, Damien and Anastasia together take down the King Wolf, with Anastasia slowing down time, while Damien shoves a spear down the wolf’s throat. They fight side by side, with Anastasia controlling time while Damien used his bare hands around the monster’s throats. They almost beat them until Rasputin showed up with Charoite the size of the Faberge egg, and sucks it dry, magnifying his power, and blasting Damien’s family to smithereens. Both Damien and Anastasia turn to face him together, when they hear the hooves and see Nikolasha, Tsar Nikolas, Alexei, her sisters and a regiment of soldiers as well. Nikolas went to meet Rasputin on the battle field, and began fighting with each other. Anastasia heads over to her father, getting to him only once Rasputin had bit into him and brought him down. Nikolas apologizes to her; that he should’ve come before, and he hands her his ring. Katya tries to attack Damien, but Rasputin tells her to go for the Charoite, and so Damien and Anastasia are left to face Rasputin holding hands. There’s some talking between them with Rasputin claiming that he had won, but then the mountain comes down–shocking Rasputin. Turns out he had just sacrificed Katya again, and in anger he kept at Anastasia, grabbing her by the throat, while Damien put his hands on Rasputin’s face. Then, the fight turns into a mental fight between Anastasia and Rasputin. He throws images of all her family at her saying that they always die, but Anastasia knows better because she had spent two years dealing with that guilt, so then he throws her fears at her, but she knows that it will only hurt her if she let it. She calls out to him, telling him that she saw his memories too and that he only ever thought as a power-hungry demon because he figured out he could do magic and went to the humans to learn from them, which is how they found out about him. She then ripped him apart mentally starting with his weaknesses–his arrogance and selfishness–as his quest for power came at the cost of people he loved. And that destroys him, while Damien sucked Rasputin dry of everything that kept him alive as the god of death. Anastasia then stabbed Rasputin with the beak of his memory keeper, and once Damien took the last bits of his life, she passed her hands over Rasputin’s corpse so it rotted away. When the sun rises, the battle had ended mostly with Rasputin, as every monster ran away. The members of the army see Anastasia’s ring, given to her by her father, and take the knee to swear their oath. Afterwards, Anastasia and Damien share a moment, glad that they are together.

In the months following, Ollie, Axel, Felix and Irina were married, but the mood was somber, without a ball. Ollie and Axel left shortly afterwards, and Anastasia was busy with all the things that came with ruling, though Xenia took some time to come around to Anastasia. Late in December, she visited the theater and saw Anna Pavlova dance, but it was clear that Anna didn’t know anything else. Having told Damien the entirety of their other life, Anastasia and Damien did all they could to reward anyone who stood by them in the different time, including Nina Ivanova who received an anonymous donation large enough to set up a seamstress shop, after having gotten married to her fiancé. It turned out that with Anastasia’s knowledge of the timeline, she quarantined the soldiers returning from the War, which dampened the spread of the Spanish Flu and resulted in smaller losses than originally. She found the girl from the mill and sent her to school, while Grandma Minnie worked with the Duma to raise the minimum age of laborers and improve the conditions inside the factories. One of the most miraculous gifts they received in return was from Evo, who had seen Alexei fight alongside him with bravery and set the charges together to bring down the mine on top of Katya. Alexei quickly began to fail after the fight, and Evo came to the palace, which at first made Anastasia think that something happened to Damien. Turned out Damien had shown her letter about Alexei’s sickness to Evo, and on his own, the guy had come up to St. Petersburg and given the prince a pint of his own blood. The treatment lasted longer than Rasputin’s, and Evo was willing to keep it up as long as he didn’t have to return to St. Petersburg, so Alexei went with him to the Steppes. Nikolasha’s daughter was born, and Damien and Anastasia had gone to meet them all. After some talking, Damien asks to have his future read, and sees an image of him holding a baby girl with red hair in his hands. Stana tells him that it will happen whenever he’s ready.

Two years later, the law was passed, gifting the Cossacks the land that they wanted. At first she told Damien, and they make some agreements to always tell each other the truth and be honest with one another. Then after a time of lovemaking, the two ride to Damien’s village and present the news–he also was giving up the chance to become the Ataman to come to St. Petersburg to be with Anastasia. Instead, Ivash was chosen as the next Ataman, and they had their land. Anastasia also signed a decree granting her Aunt Olga a divorce, and Olga ended up meeting a man some months later, then later still they got married and their first son was born ten months after that. Maria went ahead to marry the man she loved, and moving to the country. Tatiana went to the Danish court and chose not to return, and Anastasia’s mother reconciled with Grandma Minnie. Irina had a boy, and Ollie birthed twins, but Dimitri Pavolovich remained single and when he returned to the palace, he turned out to be a useful assistant, helping Damien with the complexities of the court.

In the end, Anastasia and Damien were married all over again in a ceremony that was grander than anything else. Later at the reception, Anastasia changed into the dress that belonged to his mother, which was emotional for him.

My Thoughts:

I really enjoyed this re-telling of Anastasia’s story and also making it into something that had an alternate timeline. For a long time, I was fascinated with Anastasia and the idea that she was the only one of the Romanovs who had escaped captivity, even though it has been proven as factually inaccurate. And I still am fascinated with the idea of Anastasia getting away the night her family was murdered, which is why I do love this story, but more importantly I love the relationship between Anastasia and Damien, and how that love grows through time with them–how they come together and fall apart before they realize that they need to be together as that is when they’re at their strongest. It’s often said that when people can challenge each other’s thought processes and their beliefs, they can be the truest versions of themselves, and I truly believe that’s true.

Overall, loved this book and would recommend reading it if you are looking for a magical spin on a historical fiction.