CHAPTER 1-At the Beginning

It was a lazy summer afternoon and Anastasia was lounging in a tall tree, the skirt of her pale purple dress scrunched up beneath her, skipping another one of her horrible dance classes. She couldn't stand her teacher because he was so boring and a terrible dancer himself. He would always stomp on her feet, claiming it was because he wasn't used to dancing with someone so much younger than him.

'I'm only seventeen…' she thought as she looked at the roses, lilacs, and other flowers in the nearby garden, swaying in the breeze; it looked as if they were part of a constantly moving rainbow. Anastasia knew even though she was basically an adult, she was still considered the baby of her family, besides Alexi.

Her older sisters, Olga and Tatiana, were married now to important Russian generals that helped her father regain control of Russia and completely overthrow the Bolsheviks. The reason that Russia and her family was in one piece was partially because of them, so even though her mother would have preferred Olga and Tatiana to marry a duke or a prince. However, she happily consented to these heroes as their suitors.

Now, it was just her and Maria, along with Alexi, who wasn't suffering as much from hemophilia as he used to. It would not be long before her parents would be bothering her, just as they were doing with Maria, to find a handsome, wealthy suitor worthy enough of her.

She sighed, thinking about the daunting prospect and attempted to distract herself by playing with some of the emerald green leaves dangling in front of her face. Suddenly, she was brought out of her reverie when she heard a small rock smash into the tree, not far from where her face was.

"What the hell?!" she screamed, frantically looking around for her assailant.

Someone was laughing below her, and when she turned to look, she saw one of her favorite people in the world. Dimitri was a kitchen boy that had been working in the palace since he was very young. She had met him when she was on one of her many mischievous escapades and she found a hidden passage into the kitchens, crashing into him and sending the stack of plates that he was carrying flying everywhere. After some awkward apologies and some friendly conversation while cleaning the mess, they have been friends ever since.

"Such foul language for a delicate young duchess Miss Anya." he teased, a crooked smile on his face.

Not for the first time, Anya felt her heart race when he looked at her or spoke to her, but she didn't know why. Ignoring the feeling, she stuck her tongue out at him and threw her shoe at his head, missing by a mile. "Nice aim," he mused, arching an eyebrow as he watched it fly by.

"Shut up," she said, rolling her bright blue eyes, "They don't teach us how to aim properly in princess etiquette classes."

He laughed again, "Are you coming down any time soon? I was just inside, they've all completely given up on looking for you."

"No," she said, crossing her arms over her chest and pouting, trying not to look at his chocolate brown eyes.

Dimitri shook his head, sending his dark brown locks askew before pushing them back with one hand. "Honestly Anya, you act like you're twelve sometimes."

She quickly proceeded to throw her other shoe at him, and this time, she hit her mark.

"HEY! That actually hurt!" He protested.

"Men are such babies..." she said, mocking him.

Dimitri responded to that by picking up her shoes and throwing them farther away. "There, now lets see you get down now without your pretty little shoes to protect your pretty little princess feet."

Anastasia simply turned away from him, "I guess I'll just stay up here all day then."

Before she knew it, Dimitri was on the branch next to her, with a childish grin on his face. "I guess I'll just have to join you then."

She snorted, already used to the playful banter that took up a good part of their conversations for the past nine years.

"You're so dead if anyone from the palace or my family finds you up here with me."

Since he was a lowly servant in the palace and she was a grand duchess, their friendship was obviously forbidden. Anastasia secretly hoped that if her father found out, he wouldn't really mind, but if he didn't like it, the consequences weren't very good.

"That's a risk I'm willing to take," Dimitri said, playfully ruffling her auburn hair, effectively ruining the ponytail it was in.

"Gee, thanks," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm as she pulled the lilac bow out of her tangled hair and attempted to tie it up again.

"No problem." And with that, he messed up her hair once again, for the umpteenth time that week.

"AGH!" she cried out in frustration, "You're such a pain sometimes, you know that Dimitri?"

"Hey," he said with a shrug while he pushed back a lock of her hair, "it's my job."

"Well, maybe you should quit your job." Anastasia said, punching him lightly on the shoulder…or so she thought…

He started to fall backwards and before she could grab him, he completely fell off of the branch.

"Dimitri!" she screamed, somewhat terrified, until she realized that he was still clinging onto the tree with his knees hooked over the thick branch.

"Yes?" he replied calmly as the green vest he was wearing fluttered to the ground due to his little stunt. Even though she couldn't see his face, she knew he was grinning madly.

With an irritated huff, she leaned back onto the trunk, paying no heed to his crazy antics. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack!?"

"Nah, just trying to see whether or not you'd try to save me." he said as he was trying to right himself again with some difficulty.

"Next time you do that, I'm just going to let you fall-"

"DIMITRI, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

Both of their headed snapped towards the direction of the booming voice that was coming from the terrace behind the garden. It was the head maid, Mrs. Katrina, who was like an angry, old bull most of the time, but on rare occasions, the gray-haired maid was somewhat friendly.

"Get down, get down!! She's gonna kill us if she sees you with me!!" Anastasia hissed as Dimitri quickly untangled himself from the tree and landed on the ground with a rather ungraceful 'thud', somehow managing to grab his vest in the process. She hid herself behind more leaves and branches as Dimitri ran off to the impatient old woman.

Anastasia snickered as she heard Mrs. Katrina's chastising voice, "What have you been doing? There's been a spill in the kitchens and we've been waiting for half an hour for you to clean it up!"

She peeked through the branches to see Dimitri being dragged back into the palace by his ear, loudly protesting his capture with, "OW, OW, OW, OW!"

Giggling once again, she reached up to tuck some hair behind her ear and to her surprise, there was a small yellow flower. "He must've put it there when he was messing my hair up…" she thought as she twirled the flower with her fingers. Smiling, she leaned back once again, putting the flower back behind her ear and closed her eyes, thinking about the boy that had never ceased to surprise her after all these years.