Anya
It's hard to adjust to Paris, to aristocracy.
For a few days, Anya hasn't realized it, taken as she was by the fact that she had a family, but it's hard to adjust to Paris, to aristocracy.
Her grandmother's words earlier – You have the beauty of your mother. Alexandra. Empress of all Russia. – they forced her to remember that while she was an orphan still, skinny and streetwise and not at all inclined to luxury, she was one whose inheritance was Russia.
Russia, a tract of land and sea vast beyond imagination. In her ran the blood of long-ago kings, and it boggles the mind because she's Anya, who is used to orphanages and icy winters and disappointment and who is happily content with a sugar cube or less, who had memories like fields of mist and who, by one wrong step down a crossroad, would have been in a fish factory. She should've been ready, given the weeks she spent convincing herself that she may be this princess that communism exiled and thought dead, but when she pulls open the curtains to watch the city lights and the material is more luxurious than anything she remembers touching, she thinks she's not ready at all.
To the east, Russia lies in slumber. Anastasia watches her reflection on the frosted glass of the French windows, remembers a time when she was just a face in an endless city, watching the dilapidated palace through a fog of debris and memory, and sleep eludes her.