Allegories of the Tarot by Annetta Ribken, Eden Baylee Read Free Book Online Page A

glove, raking his hand across the
ice to dislodge the leather. The blistering chill stole his skin’s warmth and
the shock screamed into his wrist, a blazing sensation as sharp as the first
rays splitting the ice.
    This piercing reality, both sweet and blinding, cut his
perceptions away from the fog of the night. Dmitri Pavlovich knew clarity in
his Romanov bones.
    He twisted his fingers into the snow, his enhanced
strength gouging the ice, and dug deep. Strength sliced into him, sliced into
his body and cut with his voice. “Dog!”
    Rasputin gurgled. Bone crackled as the monster’s skull
knitted. His face showed the first hints of animation—a twitching cheek, some
reflection in an eye.
    Dmitri swung his hand toward the monk’s head, feeling
the give of skin and the grease of the peasant’s hair.
    Pressure pushed against the walls of Dmitri’s veins. It
shaped his healer ability into a bullet like the one lodged in the monk’s
skull, a solid force the squish of a man’s brain could not counter.
    Rasputin grunted. His mouth opened and closed but only a
high-pitched wheeze escaped. The breath he dropped onto Dmitri tasted of filth.
Let him whine. Let him whimper. This thing with its hand curled around his
cheek was nothing. And he would no longer infect all that Dmitri held dear.
    Air rushed into the monk’s lungs. The wheeze dropped
into a gasp. Then words: “Why do you want the boy to die? He will be Tsar! Not
you.”
    The boy? This was not about the
boy. The Tsesarevich would be dead by his eighteenth birthday. The family knew
it. The world knew it. The boy’s blood made him immaterial. Only the Empire
mattered—only the Empire glowed so bright in the morning sun that the rest of
Europe dared not look upon it. The Empire would not bend to the whims of a
German whore.
    “Stay dead!” The words croaked out of Dmitri, still
strained but louder than the monk’s.
    All Dmitri’s anger—all his will and his ability—moved
from his fingers into the monk’s scalp. He’d seen that woman’s influences from
the beginning. Only Dmitri had the will to deal with her lapdog. She had no
right. And she let this obscenity touch the Tsesarevich? A growl escaped, a deep sound that bounced across the ice to the
other shore before it echoed back to Dmitri.
    “You want to be Tsar?” Grayness returned to Rasputin’s
skin as he spoke—it crept from Dmitri’s fingers toward the fiend’s revolting
eyes.
    Dmitri did not want to be Tsar. No sane person wanted to
be Tsar. But if called, he’d serve. He’d do what was right.
    Rasputin panted. Dmitri’s power flowed through the
fingers he cinched around the villain’s head. He’d end this.
    “Be the Tsar!” Rasputin’s suddenly paled to ash. A bolt
ripped from the monk’s temple into Dmitri’s fingertips as Rasputin’s eyes
rolled back into his head. His snarls bubbled away.
    He stiffened one last time then dropped, lifeless, onto
the ice.
    Dmitri pushed against the body. His jaw cinched
closed—the skin of his face burned as if he’d washed with acid. As if the twinkling, malicious snow faeries had returned and now
slashed at his cheeks with their ice wings.
    Agony flicked on an off as it moved from his face,
across his tongue, and down his neck. It spread like slush into his joints. He’d
need days, perhaps weeks, to heal himself from this. He’d claim a winter’s
chill, retreat to his estate, and await his cousin’s gratitude. Then perhaps
he’d propose to the other daughter—the prettier one. They’d make a proper
Tsesarevich.
    The dawn’s cold bit into the
oversensitive skin of his bare hand. The same agony that burned his face
fired up his forearm.
    He reached for his glove. A fingertip pushed out of his
sleeve, followed by another, then another. Then the back of
his hand.
    He stared. His flesh swelled. His fingers would not
move, all as bloated as sausages. His hand and wrist had turned the dark
purple-green of a bruise and now it spread up his arm