[Later, you learn that Anastasia has not merely been allowed to accompany her parents. Nicholas II has gone so far as to grant her permission to come to the library on her own, provided you consent.]
[This is a privilege neither of her two older sisters has received. You understand why she is so happy, and you also know that your own life is about to become much livelier than before.]
[Sure enough, from then on, Anastasia runs to the library whenever she has the chance. At first she still pretends she is there to look for books. Before long, she abandons the pretense altogether.]
[Whenever she sees that you are not occupied, she rushes over to talk to you. She asks countless questions—about the outside world, about the beautiful or tragic tales she has read in books.]
[Whenever that happens, you deliberately tease her about the first time you met, when she pretended to be searching for military strategy: "Wasn't it you who said you weren't reading romantic novels?" Every time, you annoy her into trying to prank you again, only for her to be pranked in return.]
[Her little tricks never work on you. But from you she learns many new ones, and according to the palace servants, the two older grand duchesses begin to suffer terribly as a result.]
[At times, she grows sentimental and melancholy in front of you. At times, she shows that same shyness she had when you first met.]
[Every time, you tell her she's being strange again.]
[Every time, Anastasia flares up in embarrassment.]
[This is your first year in the Tsarist court.]
[In this year, you defeated Rasputin and thwarted the Holy Church's scheme. By means of Mystery, you cured the imperial heir Alexei and won the approval of Nicholas II and Alexandra. In this same year, you and Anastasia move from acquaintance to closeness.]
[And in this same year…]
[Your research into inheritance begins to take solid shape.]
[You begin trying to fuse magecraft and miracles.]
[To fuse "magecraft," which preserves the phenomena of the past, with "miracles," which gather the faith of humankind—this becomes the conclusion you arrive at after a year of thought. In your view, magecraft represents the past, miracles represent the present, and you attempt to use the present to preserve the past, and the past to create the present.]
[On the 312th day since arriving in the Kremlin, you shut yourself in the library and refuse all visitors, devoting yourself wholly to research. Even Nicholas II is turned away.]
[Apart from your initial confrontation with Rasputin, you have shown no further overt displays of Mystery to Nicholas and Alexandra throughout the year. Yet the two of them continue to revere your "wisdom" more and more, and do not dare disturb you.]
[Anastasia comes and returns, her face full of disappointment.]
[Day 313: you continue to refuse all visitors.]
[Anastasia's mood continues to sink.]
[Day 314: you continue to refuse all visitors.]
[You remain immersed in research.]
…
It was now 1913, and autumn was nearing its end.
The lush trees had shed their leaves and now stood bare, little more than branching lines against the cold sky.
For the Russian Empire, it remained another year of suffering.
Ever since its disastrous foreign war eight years earlier, the state had never fully recovered. The oppression of local elites and the displacement of millions of peasants had driven society into turmoil.
A statesman named Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin had once, through harsh force, crushed uprisings and gained Nicholas II's favor. He had led land reforms that sought to divide and win over the population while suppressing rebellion, and from the outside it seemed that the internal crisis had eased.
But all of that vanished with Stolypin's assassination.
His reforms had never touched the root of the empire's problems.
And after his death, the condition of the country became even worse than before he had risen to power.
So no matter how Nicholas II slammed his hand down during ministerial meetings, no matter how desperately he tried to produce new reforms and conceal the mounting crisis, the empire's decline could not be reversed.
Yet none of that atmosphere truly penetrated the palace itself.
However anxious or angry Nicholas II might be, he always presented a steady and confident face before his family, making them believe there was nothing he could not bear.
And within that almost isolated world of the Kremlin—
inside the luxurious chambers of the youngest grand duchess—
Anastasia sat by the window at her writing desk, a fountain pen in hand, staring out at the birds perched on leafless branches.
She was thinking.
And worrying.
Not about state affairs—she was still a girl raised inside an ivory tower, far removed from the true severity of the times.
What occupied her instead were the tender, uncertain feelings of youth.
"Anna's daydreaming again?"
The sudden voice beside her snapped Anastasia back to herself.
She brushed a hand through her shining silver hair and turned toward the doorway, where she saw a girl peeking in. Anastasia let out a little huff.
"I was only thinking," she said. "And besides, Lord Lu Kang has already told me that peeking at other people is bad behavior, Maria."
The newcomer was her sister.
Maria Nikolaevna—the third daughter of the Tsar.
"Oh, please," Maria said, puffing up a little. "I know you're the only one of us who gets to see Lord Lu Kang by herself. You don't need to remind me every day. I'm nearly deaf from hearing it."
"And besides, I wasn't peeking. I knocked. It's just that someone was too lost in thought to hear me."
She stepped inside, her pale dress trailing softly behind her.
"Was I really that distracted?" Anastasia blinked.
"Obviously," Maria said. "Ever since Lord Lu Kang declared he wouldn't see visitors, you've been like this all the time."
Then, grinning, she added, "Sometimes I genuinely worry you're going to be so distracted walking somewhere that you'll fall straight into a ditch."
"You're the one who'd fall into a ditch," Anastasia shot back at once.
Turning toward her sister from where she sat, she said loftily, "My devout faith guides my steps. It would never let me wander astray."
"Was that another line Lord Lu Kang told you?" Maria asked curiously.
"No. It's from the Bible."
Anastasia answered very seriously.
Then she paused—very deliberately.
Seeing Maria visibly relax, Anastasia finished the sentence:
"But Lord Lu Kang wrote that as a special note for me."
Maria fell silent.
She thought to herself that her little sister had become more and more fond of teasing all of them ever since meeting Lu Kang.
But looking at the bright expression on Anastasia's face, she could only shake her head and laugh.
"Do you know what you look like right now?" Maria asked after a moment.
"What do I look like?"
Anastasia raised her face toward her.
"You look like a little girl pining after the one she likes, my dear sister."
Maria reached out and tapped the smooth forehead partly hidden beneath Anastasia's bangs.
"Though I suppose that's not surprising…"
"I've seen Lord Lu Kang from a distance before. He really is an extraordinarily handsome and charming young man. No wonder Father and Mother think so highly of him. They've even given up returning to the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg and decided to stay in Moscow instead. And Saint Petersburg is the actual capital…"
Then, with a faint shrug, Maria added, "Though it's rather nice not to have to keep traveling."
Anastasia froze again.
As she turned her sister's words over in her mind, a flush began to creep steadily across her face, and when she tried to speak, even her voice became hesitant.
"I—I don't… and besides, handsome or not, that's…"
Her words grew softer and softer, until they almost disappeared.
She bit lightly at her lower lip.
Watching her, Maria's smile deepened.
This side of Anastasia was a rare sight.
But at the same time, a small flicker of jealousy rose in Maria's chest.
Jealousy that her younger sister could be so close to the wise and handsome Lord Lu Kang.
Jealousy that Anastasia could smile so openly and naturally in front of him.
And yet Maria also knew, deep down, that Anastasia was the most outstanding of all of them.
In appearance.
In quickness of feeling and cleverness.
Perhaps in sheer charm, too.
There had even once been talk, when Anastasia was little, that she had encountered some kind of spirit from winter legend.
So perhaps…
"If you keep denying it," Maria said in a lower voice, "you may not get to be the first one there."
"The first what?" Anastasia asked automatically.
Then she looked into her sister's narrowed eyes and suddenly understood.
"I just heard Father talking in the hall," Maria said. "Lord Lu Kang is ending his retreat today. The library will open again—"
She never got to finish.
Anastasia sprang to her feet in a rush, lifted her skirts, and dashed out the door.
Maria remained standing there alone.
She looked at the papers and pen left on Anastasia's desk, then out the window toward the bare branches and the birds upon them—
and finally at the grand library building visible not far away.
A strained smile touched her lips.
She wished, sometimes, that she could be as decisive as her younger sister.
But she knew very well that she could not.
Just like that first time—when she and her sisters had egged one another on to defy their father's prohibition and slip into the library, yet in the end, only Anastasia had actually done it.
And it was because of that courage—
because of that moment of childish recklessness—
that Anastasia Nikolaevna had first met Lu Kang at all.
-------
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