Gleb sat in the chair for another hour, watching the minutes tick away in the clock on the mantle. He was itching to go to her, to apologize for…something. But he had promised her he would not invade her personal space, not without her permission…

He got up, unable to sit still any longer. As he began to pace, his steps pulled him closer and closer to their room, but he kept his gaze in front of him, not wanting her to catch him peeking.

He couldn't resist for long, though, and one brief glance showed him that she was huddled on her side of the bed. Gleb clenched his fists to keep from acting on his urge to comfort her.

Yet she had always had a knack for sensing him. "You can come in," she said. Her voice was more even now, but she still didn't face him. "It's late. You should rest."

"I'm sorry," he blurted out from the doorway.

She sat up and finally looked up at him, her eyes still damp and red. "It was a lovely thought, Gleb. It just…wasn't what I expected."

"I thought it was broken," he rambled. "I didn't know –"

"I know." She folded her hands in her lap, staring down at them. Slowly, he approached and sat down beside her, wrapping an arm around her hunched shoulders. She leaned into his chest, and he left her to her thoughts, content to not speak, to not ask questions as long as she let him stay there.

But as he feared, her nightmares worsened that night, and she was more agitated than she had been all week.

"Why must you go?" she cried out, almost weeping. "Take me with you. Take me with you now."

As he cradled her and whispered reassurances, he wondered if she was recalling the day she had been abandoned all those years ago. What if the music box's tune had been a reminder of who had left her?

He found no sleep all night, leaving him exhausted the next morning. He opted to remain in his office all day, relieved for the first time in a long time that it was a quiet day with very few reports coming in. It seemed that the very public capture of Dmitry and Popov had stunned the people, made them far more cautious.

For his role in that success, none of his comrades had begrudged him his lack of productivity. As the afternoon fell, he pulled out the notebook he had recovered from Popov and began leafing through it.

Nestled in between the pages was an envelope containing a half-written letter addressed to a Countess Lily Malevsky-Malevitch in Paris. It seemed that she was the former Dowager Empress's lady-in-waiting, and all communication with the old woman passed through her. Had Popov made it to France, she, apparently his one-time lover, would have been his contact.

Not that it mattered now. They would never meet.

He closed the notebook and waited for the evening to fall. As soon as it did, Gleb hurried out the doors of the headquarters, anxious to see if Anya was better. When he entered their flat, it was dim and quiet.

He found her in their room, the music box in her hands, and he hesitated in the doorway.

She shifted, turned, and saw him. She was no longer crying, but there was a deep sadness in her eyes that was far worse. Putting the box down on the table beside the bed, she beckoned him over.

"It makes me think of Paris," she confessed. Gleb tried not to twitch as he curled his arm around her waist.

"I wonder sometimes if I gave up too soon," she continued softly, gazing at the box with longing.

"Gave up?"

"When I married you." Anya started suddenly, as though she had let something unintentional slip.

Gleb's chest tightened. "Do you regret this?"

"That's not what I meant to say." Her focus was back on him now, her face creased with worry in addition to the sadness. "Don't misunderstand – I wanted it. I wanted you. Too much."

He let go of her. "I don't understand," he said flatly.

She inhaled sharply and bit her lip as though to steady herself. "Do you remember what we talked about after you proposed? When you told me who you were…are?"

He nodded stiffly.

"I was so afraid of you that night," she admitted. "I was afraid of everything you did. What you do."

He flinched involuntarily. He should have known it would come back to haunt him…that her acceptance had been too good to be true.

"But I couldn't watch you walk away." She reached for his hand, pleading. "You were honest with me – you told me the truth of what it meant to be your wife, and that mattered so much. I couldn't take the chance that you might not come back, so I accepted it. And I try so hard to reconcile myself to it every day, Gleb. It hasn't been easy, but I try because I love you."

He swallowed, caught between relief at the assurance of her love and fear – the fear that she was about to tell him that she could no longer try handling who he was. That she would rather try her fortunes in France.

"Can I trust you to let me be honest with you?" she asked in a small voice.

He took a deep breath and nodded slowly, preparing himself for the blow. To his surprise, Anya stood up and went to her drawer instead, rummaging. He felt his breath catching in his throat.

She returned with something small clenched in one fist. "Hold out your hand," she instructed him. He did as she asked.

A diamond tumbled into his open palm, and his jaw dropped open.

"The nurse at the hospital found it sewn into my underclothes when they found me," Anya explained, hands twisting in her dress. "She hid it from me, until the day I could go. A secret she kept – although I didn't know why. She told me not to tell a soul until I must…I had to make sure I found someone I trust."

Gleb's heart began to pound hard. Diamonds sewn into undergarments…he'd heard of it. And he knew of only one group of people who did such a thing.

"It was all I had. I didn't know how much exit papers cost, and so I always thought I'd use that to buy passage to Paris if I failed to get enough money working. That day you saw me at Yusupov Palace, I was planning to find out." She gave him a shaky smile. "Then you were there, and I felt like I didn't need to know anymore."

He didn't know if this was how his honesty had made her feel those weeks ago, but hers was ripping him apart with revelations both beautiful and terrible. If only it could have stopped at her saying she had chosen him over Paris, that she trusted him with everything… He could have lived forever on that knowledge, but the proof of her trust made him feel more like dying.

Because it meant that Anya, his Anya, was a lost royal. The evidence lay in his own hand.

She might not know who she was, but it would not save her from a firing squad. The orders on dealing with surviving aristocrats were very clear. His nightmare of her being dragged away and shot flashed in his mind, and he convulsed slightly.

"You gave me everything I had ever wanted," she continued, oblivious to his turmoil as he struggled to hide his emotions. "And I thought I could be happy with that. But there's so much my heart still needs to know about my past."

His tongue felt like lead in his mouth as he tried to form words. "I don't know if I can give you that."

He didn't even know if he could give her her life.

She was silent for a few minutes, then she sat down beside him and firmly closed his hand over the jewel. "That's why I'm giving this to you. I have found someone I trust. If I never find my past, then the day may come when we need it for our future. I see no better use for it."

"Anya –" He prayed she would take it back, that she would hide it again so he could pretend he had never seen it –

"I don't want to hold on to it and have it tempt me," she said simply.

She had just given him, in trust and love, what he needed to seal her fate. Wordlessly, he set the diamond down beside the music box and pulled her into his arms.

Perhaps there was still a way he could keep Anya without betraying Russia. She might have been royalty, but that was in a previous life, and there were no traces of that in the person she was now, except for what he knew. And Russia didn't have to know what he knew – Anya was exactly the kind of citizen she hoped to cultivate after all. Maybe it didn't have to be one or the other.

Yes. He would feign ignorance, for all their sakes.

He gazed into Anya's eyes to find the resolve he needed to carry out his decision – and froze.

The eyes of the Romanovs were staring back at him.

Gleb blinked, trying to clear his vision. No – he was thinking too much of the new revelation, and now seeing things that weren't there. None of the Romanovs had survived – that was the reality. And he had seen Anya every day for months – he would have noticed those eyes –

The image of the Romanovs from his dreams slammed into his head, their eyes flashing again in accusation. The memory of the young Anastasia resurfaced – her stance proud as she walked past the gate even though her blue eyes were confused.

The same eyes.

When he proposed to her, Anya's eyes had looked so familiar… If he had not been caught up in his emotions that day, he might have seen it then.

"Gleb?" Anya's voice sounded like it was coming from far away. The air suddenly seemed too thin from where he sat, and he found himself drawing breath in great wheezing gulps as the room spun and his ears rang. He was vaguely aware of his body being shifted until the back of his head was resting against the headboard. Dimly, he noted that she was really quite strong.

"Don't try to move." She hurried out of the room, and after a few moments, his surroundings began to take shape again now that those eyes were no longer in sight. His head began to clear, and to try and piece it all together.

Anya was royalty. Not just any royal, but possibly the very girl whose memory he was tasked with quashing for Russia's sake.

Yet he couldn't make it make sense. How had she escaped the scene that haunted him to this day? The soldiers had made sure… Gleb's own father had made sure… Gleb had seen, and he had heard, and he had suffered the silence…

Anya returned, bearing a cup that smelled strongly of lemon. She held it to his lips, and he tasted hot tea with lemon. The very first drink they had had together, and now it was bitter to the taste. If he had never asked her to tea that day, he might never have seen her again – might never have found anything out... Might have found it easier to do what he must.

"You look better," she said, relief suffusing her voice as he drained the cup. "I told you too much – I'm sorry."

"When did they find you, all those years ago?" he croaked out. He needed to know that her discovery as Anya did not coincide with the death of the Romanovs – it was his only hope that he might be wrong after all –

She looked confused. "Gleb, what does that have to with anything –"

"Please," he begged.

She frowned, her brow furrowing. "It was ten years ago. I think it was sometime around the start of the revolution."

His heart sank as the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. There was no way of knowing how she had been missed in the massacre that night, who left her on the roadside, or the circumstances that had led her to forget everything. But all he'd seen and heard tonight pointed to one thing.

Anya was Anastasia. Duty dictated what he now had to do – Anastasia could not be allowed to survive.

But Anya…

She had placed her hands on his temples, massaging them. "I'm sorry," she murmured again. She kissed the tips of her fingers and touched them gently to his forehead.

Anya…

Gleb reached out and trailed a finger from her hairline down to her jaw, willing himself to look her in the eye as a mix of defiance and despair filled him. If he, as Deputy Commissioner Gleb Vaganov, had to do his duty where Anastasia was concerned…then Anya deserved to get as much of Gleb her husband as she could tonight.

Russia could spare him this much. For a few more hours, happiness would matter.