Free The Unfailing Light by Robin Bridges Page A

place in St. Petersburg.
    There was a soft knock on the door. “Excuse me, I believe this is my room?” A pretty young girl with dark-blond hair swept up in a neat bun entered.
    I recognized her immediately. “Princess Alix?” It was the German princess, sister of the Grand Duchess Ella Feodorovna.
    She smiled shyly, but said nothing.
    An older girl brushed past her and sashayed in. “I was told this would be my room this year as well,” said Princess Aurora Demidova.
    Elena rose regally from her cot. She was not happy to see Princess Alix. “I’m Elena of Montenegro. And I take it you already know Katerina of Oldenburg.”
    Alix did not curtsy, but instead moved quickly to put away her things. “I am honored to be here.” She took a small black box out of her trunk and carefully slid it under her cot.
    Aurora Demidova looked at all of us before turning her back to us and disdainfully examining the bed linens. “I’ve heard there are new rules this year because someone here was disobedient. Is it true we are not allowed to leave the school premises at all?”
    No one knew of the empress’s spell, but the headmistress had mentioned that she would be very strict this year about permitting students to leave.
    Elena looked at Princess Aurora warily. She did not approve of either of our new roommates. I had a sinking feeling that the school year was going to be very difficult. Elena did not like it when she was not the center of attention.
    I sat down on Alix’s cot, careful not to disturb her neatly folded pile of white school uniforms. “And what has brought you here?”
    Alix frowned. “My sister wanted me in St. Petersburg, closer to her. And my father wished for my education to be polished. He distrusted the English nanny my grandmother had sent to us.”
    “A nanny? At our age?” Aurora Demidova snorted and turned back to her unpacking. Elena snickered, deciding to side with Aurora over the German princess. Aurora was no rival to Elena for the tsarevitch’s affections. But the tsar’s son had been extremely attentive to Princess Alix during her visit to St. Petersburg last year. I wondered which princess he would dance with at the upcoming Smolny Ball this year.
    At that moment, the Bavarian princesses, Erzsebet and Augusta, burst in. “You’ll never guess what has happened! Madame Metcherskey has left! We don’t know why. But isn’t that wonderful?”
    “Thank goodness,” Elena said as she poked through Aurora’s basket of hair ribbons. “That skulking bat was horrible. I know you must be ecstatic, Katiya. She was always scolding you for something.”
    I said nothing, but smiled at Alix and shrugged. It was true that the pinch-faced Madame Metcherskey had made my life miserable last year. Despite the facts that I really wished to be somewhere else, that I was again sleeping in the same room with a bloodsucking witch, and that there were undead soldiers outside our front gates, the prospects for the coming school year suddenly became just a tiny bit brighter.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

 
    I did not mean to test the empress’s enchantment. The next afternoon, I was walking in the courtyard with the Bavarian princesses when they decided to race out to the cluster of birch trees by the front gates. The leaves had turned from deep green to blazing yellow and were beginning to fall to the ground. Augusta wanted to collect a few of the leaves to press inside her journal.
    I had no idea the empress’s spell did not stretch across the entire school campus. We reached the boundaries of the spell before we could have left the courtyard.
    My body reacted violently. I was repelled backward, with bone-jarring vibrations racking my limbs. My ears were ringing. I fell to the ground, out of breath and feeling bruised and sore all over.
    My friends turned around and stared at me in fright. They had passed through the invisible barrier without noticing athing. There was nothing unnatural about the Bavarian