Dimmuborgir

Chapter 5: Russia, part 2

A couple of days go by. She is left to her own devices within the confines of the apartment. A cursory look on the first day tells her that the place has been swept clean of any phones or computers. Perhaps the rightful owners eschewed digital devices and modern technology, but more likely is that Tom made them all disappear.

She tries not to think. That way lies madness. She puts his latest revelation, his grasp of a language that shouldn't exist, firmly in a dark, labyrinthine part of her mind. She will have to take it out and look at it sooner or later, she knows that. She will have to hold it up to the light and see it for what it is, but not….not now. For now, it is safely tucked away.

It doesn't help though.

Once again she finds herself trapped in the bizarre, paradoxal grip of numbing ennui and heightened fear, and it's wearing her down. She feels like she is becoming unspooled, falling apart at the seams. Something is happening to her, inside her, something is….changing.

She isn't all that sure she ought to let it, but she doesn't know how to stop it.

Staying away from Tom seems to be key. A pity only that it's impossible.

He seems to have set up camp in the living room, and she avoids it as much as she can, tries to keep herself as busy as possible within her limited means.

At first she wanders back and forth between the windows, seeing Saint Petersburg only through glass. She longs to go out exploring but is met with incredulous, contemptuous silence when she pokes her head into the living room and asks him if she may.

She directs her attention to the apartment itself. She finds women's clothes in an enormous walk-in wardrobe. Most of them are useless to her, being low-cut, slinky evening gowns and tailored suits made for someone a lot taller. But there are a few cashmere pieces, and some tops and leggings in wool and silk that she can make work. She finds a fur coat, a fur hat, fur lined boots, and she hoards it all, stuffing it into a large backpack she finds in the utility room next to the kitchen. All the while tamping down the disquiet and unease at scavenging a dead woman's things. She needs it more, she reasons, Tom's idea of providing her with necessities clearly haphazard at best, non-existent at worst.

Besides, the original owner is more than likely very dead.

She makes herself sandwiches of dark rye bread and hard cheese in the kitchen, drinks black strong tea as it is, because there isn't any milk. In fact there is not a lot of food or drink at all, the previous inhabitants clearly not overly bothered with keeping the larders stocked with anything but champagne. She is careful with what food there is, not wanting to run out.

She is very tired, but her sleep is haunted and broken into sharp pieces. She is certain that she dreams, she is certain that those dreams are nightmares, but she can't remember a thing. All she knows is that each time she wakes it's with a beating heart and a scream at the back of her throat, trying to claw its way out.

She always bites it to pieces before it can leave her mouth, stubbornly unwilling to let Tom hear her struggling.

She finds some books. Judging by the garish covers they are romantic fiction, though it's hard to tell for sure what with them being written in Cyrrilic. Same goes for the few fashion magazines laying about, though the pictures entertain her for a few minutes.

So she walks. Back and forth, from room to room, window to window; caged and fretting, wretched in her inability to understand and catalogue the situation she is in.

It doesn't take her long to reach the conclusion that there is nothing she can do to occupy herself. Hers is a flitting, restless mind to go with flitting, restless hands. Being trapped in a highly charged, impossible position doing nothing tilts her askew, spins her wildly off her axis. Something is happening to her and she needs to think of something else while she works out what it is.

She tries not to laugh at that.

Eventually, the boredom and the uncertainty makes her approach Tom in his lair.

So very foolish.

"I want to help."

He doesn't answer. He doesn't even look up, leaves her standing before him as he is bent over a thick leather-clad book with fragile-looking pages. He is looking as unkempt as she's ever seen him. Hair standing on end, his usual high collared black jacket thrown carelessly on the floor, the black shirt underneath open by several buttons. The sleeves are pushed up to his elbows, his boots shoved underneath the chaise lounge.

She stares at the alabaster skin of his neck and chest, at the strong, elegant shape of his forearms, and she thinks that this is the most she's seen of him, and she doesn't like it.

"Well?" she prompts.

"I think not," he tells her, voice bored, but his movements almost jerky, uncontained, a dully glowing sort of anger about him. He's riled, she thinks, he's annoyed. He mustn't be getting anywhere in his search for the sapphire, the frustration making him display unusual emotion.

Perhaps she could use that. For what, she isn't sure.

She looks around while she is trying to think of a new angle, and she sees what she should have noticed as soon as she entered the room: there are books everywhere. Books and papers and piles of old notebooks.

"What is this? These weren't here before."

"Your powers of observation never cease to astound me."

"Did you go out?" Her voice is raised, but she can't find it in herself to calm down. A part of her realises that it is of course ridiculous of her to be angry that her captor is afforded more liberty than her, but that part is small. "Where did you get these?"

"Borrowed them from a collection at the Winter Palace," he says lighty, and in a way that ensures she knows that he hadn't "borrowed" them at all. Then he correctly anticipates her next question: "I nipped out while you slept. I would have woken you, but," his smile down at the book is vicious, "- well, you seemed to dream so sweetly."

She goes cold at this, his insinuation that he knows of her nightmares. Then she thinks one step further, wonders if he directly caused them in order to keep her trapped in sleep while he was out.

She decides that for the moment, she'd rather not know. Cowardly, perhaps, but right now she needs to divert her own attention, not focus it further on her absurd situation. So instead she sits down on the little chair and reminds herself of her resolution: play along. Learn. Experience. Then get the fuck out.

"I'm an academic. Research and reading is what I do. I could help."

He's still refusing to look at her, and it's antagonising her; her fingers are itching with the need to... something.

"Oh? So you can read Cyrillic now?" he mutters.

"Well," she hedges. "I could learn. I am a very fast learner."

He scoffs, turns a page, speaks to the letters on it, not her.

"Bored, are you?"

Fucking... fuck.

"Yes. Yes, and I can't bear it," she tells him hotly, even though she suspects, no, she knows, that she oughtn't expose any more weaknesses to him.

"Too bad," he drawls and turns another page.

She wants to pick up the old book and hit him right in the face with it. Instead she again tries to distract herself, and learn more at the same time too.

"Rasputin...was...was he really holy? Did he have spiritual powers? Could he have cured the tzarevich Alexei?"

A week or two ago she would've dismissed the notion entirely. Now...now she's not so sure.

Tom throws the book he's reading down with a sharp bang, making her jump. He picks up another book and flips it open with unnecessary force. She considers leaving the room, but braces herself and stays. He's already said that he won't kill her.

Yet.

"He was crazy," he says sharply, "and he was charismatic. A very potent cocktail when it comes to gullible people desperately wanting to believe. And he certainly convinced Empress Alexandra of his abilities. But no. He was not holy."

He spits the last word out as if it's a grievous insult.

"But according to trustworthy historical sources Alexei did get better. And hemophilia was an incurable disease back then," she says, playing devil's advocate.

"Rasputin persuaded the boy's mother to keep the doctors away, because in his fevered mind only the divine could cure the boy. The doctors treated him with aspirin. What is one of the properties of aspirin, Hermione?"

"Well, it thins the...Oh."

"Indeed. A happy accident, not that it did any of them any good in the end."

"Fine," she says. "But you are still certain that he stole the diadem?"

"Yes," he answers impatiently. "The man had rather sticky fingers. The diadem was not the only thing he helped himself to from the vast possessions of the House of Romanov, but it was certainly the most valuable. Priceless, in fact."

"And he didn't... sell it on? Pawn it? You're sure?"

"The last time it was seen was some weeks before his death. He was wearing it on his greasy head as he danced atop a table in a tavern of some disrepute," he says drily. "Very drunk, he was. Amusing."

At her nonplussed look he shrugs.

"Guess you had to be there."

She shivers, and casts about for a change in subject. She picks up a pile of leatherbound notebooks, sorts through them one after one.

"Ah, here's one written in French," she says triumphantly. "I speak fluent French."

"Splendid," comes his muttered reply.

She looks closer, squints to better read the fussy cursive in which the diary is written.

"Oh! This is a diary of Princess Irina! Tzar Nicholas' niece. She was married to the man responsible for killing Rasputin. Yusupov." She flips some pages. "And this seems to be written about the right time! 1916, 1917. Perhaps some information, clues, could be found here. You know, Irina's family spoke more French than Russian, so it's hardly strange that she would write her diary in French. I suppose it had the added bonus of servants and others in her orbit not being able to read her secrets."

She is aware that she is sounding like a swot, an insufferable know-it-all as one of her dour Oxford tutors had once called her, but knowledge is safe. Everything else has been taken from her. Her world-view has been carelessly tossed into the air, and she is helpless to do anything but watch the pieces glint in the light on their way down. But her knowledge is her crutch. It's what she leans on when she's flummoxed, scared, out of her depth. History and her grasp on it; it is there, it is tangible, it is unchangeable.

….isn't it?

Well, fine, maybe not. But she is being given the opportunity to add to it, explore beyond the outer limits of what she always thought she knew.

And anyway, he ignores her chattering completely.

She falls silent at last, loses herself in the day to day minutiae of Princess Irina Alexandrovna. Her bemused preoccupation with her toddler girl. Her musings on her complicated husband. Her view on the politics surrounding her, and what she'd like for lunch today. Hermione doesn't know how much time passes, can measure it only by the turning of pages and the movement of daylight across the room, the breaths of her and Tom, curiously aligned.

Finally, something catches her interest.

"Oh!" she exclaims. "This is interesting. Here is a passage dated at the beginning of December 1916. That's just a few weeks before Rasputin was killed. Irina writes:

"I saw that awful man again today. He came to visit Felix, and I could not very well leave immediately. He was sitting downstairs in the salon, staring at me with those queer eyes of his, drinking our best wine and throwing that wretched stone from hand to hand. Eventually I had managed all the pleasantries I could stomach, and excused myself to go see to Bebé. I believe he left not long after."

She puts the diary down, looks at Tom.

"Irina must mean Rasputin, right? And the stone could be the stone you're looking for. That means he somehow took it out of the diadem."

"I know," says Tom. "I already read that one."

"Oh."

She's deflated, but not ready to give up and leave him alone, and she realises she is now skirting the real reason she voluntarily approached him, has spent time sitting in here with him even though he clearly wants her out of his sight.

"Who...cast you out? From your home?"

He stiffens, she can see it only in her peripheral because she is careful not to fully look at him. She thinks he will refuse her question, perhaps even hurt her for daring to ask, but when eventually he speaks it's in a very even, bland tone of voice.

Too even. Too bland.

"My father."

She finds that she is not surprised. Perhaps she had guessed as much, even though she doesn't want to acknowledge it.

"What is your father like?"

She does cut her eyes to him now, and she can't ever begin to desciper the look on his face; there are too many elements to it, and all of them unstable. Rage, most definitely. Something she might have called sadness, had he been someone else. Perhaps longing. Surely vengefulness. When he speaks though, his voice is just as flat and measured, his eyes reined in and held tight.

But she can still hear a vibrating note of...something….something indescribable in the tone of his voice.

"He styles himself a benevolent, wise old man. Twinkly eyes, grey beard, grand gestures. He is much loved by his subjects, his acolytes: blindly loved." His voice lowers. "But he...he is really the most manipulative, ice cold strategist there ever was. Kills scores, just swathes of people, on whims unknown to anyone but perhaps himself - for the "greater good". He abides no objections or questions to his rule. He is a craven, and a hypocrite."

He looks at her, smiles a lopsided smile.

"At least I am honest about what I am."

She nods at him, and she thinks that she will not ask anything else of him tonight, perhaps ever.

She goes to her room.

He wakes her roughly.

She's sleeping in a silk nightdress she found in a chest in the walk-in wardrobe, and his hands on her naked shoulder unnerves her. The touch brings on that almost-sound again, that forgotten melody just out of range, making her bones thrum.

"I have arrived at the conclusion that we will simply have to go and dig the monk up," he says conversationally, as if they are sitting in the drawing room making small talk about the weather.

She sits up, tries to shake sleep and confusion out of her hair and his hands from her shoulders. She succeeds only in one of those things. She looks out the window - it is dark, but she can't tell if it's evening or in the middle of the night.

"Why do I have to come?" she asks. "You've had no qualms leaving me behind before."

"That was for mere minutes. Do you even for a second believe that I would let you out of my sight for longer than that? Besides, I thought you wanted fresh air? I thought you wanted to look around?"

Not around a cemetery in the dark, she doesn't tell him, because she is distracted by the way his fingers move on her shoulders. Slow circles, his thumbs dipping low on her clavicle. It makes her break out in goosebumps, and she doesn't think he's quite aware that he's doing it, but it's sending soundwaves through her, it's making her move restlessly under the cover. A whisper just out of reach, a rush far away, and there is a look in his eyes, swirling and somehow familiar, that she is trying to press down on with her finger. Keep still long enough for her to name it.

"But...there is nothing to dig up. Rasputin was burned. They exhumed him and burned him after tzar Nicholas abdicated. Scattered the ashes."

She looks him over. He's changed. No longer is he dressed in the timeless all black clothes to which she has grown accustomed. Now he's wearing blue jeans, a woolen polo neck and a black peacoat. She's got no idea where he's acquired these clothes. She doesn't want to know.

He's still holding her, touching her.

"Not true. I finally found something of worth in those excruciatingly boring diaries and logbooks. It was an obscure mention in passing, but it would appear that tzar Nicholas had Rasputin's body moved while he and his family were held at Alexandra Palace."

"I didn't know that. Are you sure it's true?"

"There are a lot of things you do not know."

She's not even sure why she is arguing about this. If he wants her to come with him to god knows where then there isn't a lot she can do about it.

"Leave me so I can get changed."

He doesn't answer her at first, and when she turns her head she sees him looking at her naked shoulder, at his hand splayed on it.

"Tom?"

"Fine," he says, releases her and leaves the room.

She dresses as warmly as she is able, then heads out into the hallway where he is leaning against a wall, waiting for her.

"Come here."

He pushes off the wall and wraps his arms around her, then they are somewhere between here and there.

They appear underneath a massive tree, which is fortunate, because she can lean against it for support when he releases her. She might be getting used to transcending space, but it's certainly not becoming more fun.

At least she gets to keep down the bread and cheese.

Tom as always seems entirely unperturbed by the transition, and starts walking away from her almost immediately. He seems convinced she will follow, and after a few seconds she does.

The snow is deep, the night is cold. She watches how her breath turns to frost and is grateful for the fur coat, the boots.

They walk in woodland, lit up by the moon on snow. It is quiet, she can hear only the crunch of her boots. The night is pleasant, she thinks, freezing cold but no wind, and the stars appear bloated and cold between the branches above her. She takes comfort in them, in the loved winter constellations.

"We are in Tsarskoye Selo?" she calls to Tom, who rather to her surprise stops and waits for her to catch up.

"Yes."

"There is some stunning architecture here," she says. "The palaces themselves, and all the buildings in the parkland. I've alway wanted to…"

"Yes, well, we are not here as tourists," he snaps, and leads her deeper in among the trees. She follows silently, careful where she is treading, mindful of roots and uneven ground hidden by snow that could trip her up. She suspects he would welcome a broken or twisted ankle; it would keep her in one place.

"Here," he eventually says. He kicks something under the snow. "It was levelled by the Nazis, but this was the site of a chapel. Empress Alexandra convinced Nicholas to move the monk's coffin here. He actually did it himself, helped by some of the servants. Sentimental fool."

She looks where he is indicating, and can see nothing.

"You're sure?"

"The stone is here. I can feel it." He turns to her. "Can you not feel it?"

"I can feel only you," she says, and he looks sideways at her, and she could kick herself because she has said too much.

He makes no mention of it though, just does something elaborate with his finger, and a dead branch by his feet transforms into a spade. He hands it to her with an exaggerated gesture.

"Start digging."

She rolls her eyes at the theatrics. Then she thinks about how far she has come, that she would only shrug at him transforming an object into another object, rather than attempt to run away screaming.

"Can't you just…" She waves her hand vaguely over the snowy patch of earth he indicated.

"Can I not just...what? Reanimate him?" His eyes flare, she can actually see the crimson in them light up in the shadows. "Perhaps I could, but he has been in the ground for over a century. Not a lot left of him, I am afraid. Might frighten you."

"I didn't mean that! Can't you just...unearth him?" She hacks demonstrably at the ground with the spade. "Frozen solid. If you expect me to dig we'll be here all week, and I'm sure you've got better things to do. Diabolical plans to spin, and so forth."

He sighs, and she can see him clench his fists.

"Fine," he snaps, and raises his hands.

"I find the number of our activities that involves grave robbing to be rather disconcerting," she says as he closes his eyes and seems to focus.

He ignores her, says nothing of her use of the word "our". She ponders it though, how she seems to have subconsciously began to align herself with whatever his cause is. She's always thought of herself as someone too intelligent for Stockholm's Syndrome.

Then she stops thinking, because the ground begins moving in front of her.

She is astounded and distraught by how easily and violently he rents the earth. She believes she can hear the soil shrieking in protest at this contained earthquake, how it cleaves roots and sunders everything in its path. The worms and the woodlice, the shivers and the shakes, the noise. Oh the noise.

Eventually though, a rotting coffin becomes visible. Tom takes the spade from her limp grip, easily jumps down into the hole and hacks at the lid until it falls aside.

"Jesus fucking Christ."

It doesn't smell, the body having been in the ground for too long and well past the state of decay. But the way the grinning skull gleams in the moonlight, the way the rotted cassock hangs over the sunken bones...she has to bite her fist not to whimper. There is something so inherently dark and twisted about the scene, about the fate of this man, about the fate of his benefactors, and it all rushes at her at once, threatens to drown her and once again she is struggling to breathe.

Tom though, he's on his knees in the casket, rummaging around among the remains without a care. She can only watch, aghast, as he finally comes up clutching a blue stone the size of an egg.

"Got it! He must have had it up his…"

"Yes, thank you," she says and backs up a step as he climbs out of the hole. "Let's go. Please let's go."

"You do not want to touch it?" he asks and takes a step closer to her, holds the sapphire up. His eyes are more red than blue and green, she sees, his grin wide and mordant. "You certainly wanted to touch the Grail." She looks at the stone as he holds it towards her. It glints and sparkles madly, and she knows, knows , that if she looks too closely into its facets she might go mad. There is an aura of blind, indiscriminate power about it, power too great for her, a pure fire that might burn her clean to the bones, she knows it just from looking at it.

"No," she says, and averts her eyes. "Put it away."

"Intriguing," he mumbles, and does not put it away, he puts his hand on her cheek instead.

She's not in direct contact with the sapphire, but him conducting it seems to be enough.

She is rushed. It blows straight through her, this wind of power, singes her blood, paints shadows on her bones. She can feel the place within her rib cage light up in response, and without realising it she is pressing herself closer to Tom even as she throws her head back. She is opening her mouth to scream or maybe to sing or maybe to laugh when he abruptly lets go of her.

She looks at him, and she's panting. She can see how quickly her frosted breaths comes spilling out of her mouth, far too quickly, great big clouds of life force on the air between them. Tom says nothing, but his pupils are vast crimson eclipses swallowing the skies of his eyes.

She realises that she's still pressing herself against him, and takes a step back.

"Where are we going now?" she asks, her voice so hoarse that she can barely speak.

The look on his face is thoughtful. Thoughtful and...rapacious.

"Oh, I think we'll stay in Saint Petersburg for a couple of days. Deciphering the palimpsests is boring and slow going, and the apartment is comfortable enough." He holds out his hand. "Shall we?"

He takes her back, then disappears into the lounge again, leaves her standing out in the hallway held fast by a simmering sense of unease. There had been something in his face, his heavy-lidded eyes, the way his upper lip curled… triumph, certainly, but something else too. Something hot, something restless and primitive. Something she hasn't seen in him before.

She hesitates, considers going after him, but instinctively knows that it would be a terrible idea, that it couldn't possibly end well for her. Instead she goes to her room and locks the door. Then she heads into the opulent en-suite, locks that door too. Thinks for a second, and drags a small, fussy linen cabinet in front of it. It won't do any good if he for some reason decides he wants to get in, but she still feels a little better.

At least she's tried.

Then she takes her first shower since Glastonbury, washes the graveyard dirt and sweat, ink and magic from her skin and hair and tongue. It's a quick affair, just enough to get clean, then she gets out, dries off, and selects another expensive nightdress from the dead woman's drawers. She crawls into bed, and she falls asleep almost straight away, there's not even time to be surprised.

She wakes to screams.

At first she believes they are hers, that her unknown nightmares have finally grown so bad that her pleas for help are breaking through sleep into waking.

But when she sits up in bed she hears screaming again. It's naked, primal fear beating against her eardrums; animalistic, barely human. It's coming from somewhere outside her room, but within the apartment. Another scream, and her heart beats just as if she's in the midst of a night terror, and perhaps this is a nightmare, but of a different kind.

As she climbs out of bed she sees that it's still night outside. Through the window the domed roofs of The Church of Spilled Blood curve against the black sky, moonlight glinting off the enamel and the brass. There is no hint of dawn at the horizon; she can't have slept for long.

When she runs out into the hallway it is quiet again, but she carries on towards the lounge where she is certain Tom is lurking. She throws open the double doors, then cuts her forward momentum into pieces as she tries to make sense of the scene before her.

Tom is standing in the middle of the floor, and his burning eyes might be enough to wholly hold her attention, had it not been for the dead girl by his feet.

The doors swing shut behind her.

The girl is definitely beyond saving, Hermione can tell with just one glance. Her mouth is still open in a silent scream, but her eyes are staring at nothing; wide open and shattered. They are brown, notes a distant part of her, brown and empty. She lies facing the doorway, one hand stretched out in front of her as if she'd been trying to reach for it.

Hermione takes in more, much more than she wants. The thin, pale limbs. The cropped top, one breast on display above the pulled-down neckline. The short skirt hiked up almost to her waist, exposing cheap, lazy underwear. The sparkly platform heels, the childish pink of her badly painted nails. Old bruises on her white legs, fresh needle marks in the crooks of her arms. Long brunette hair, clearly cared for, in stark contrast to the drawn face, even though the cheeks still retain an element of roundness, a faint echo of lost youth. Around one small wrist hangs a charm bracelet in tarnished metal. There is a little heart, she sees, a little heart swinging from the looped chain.

"Oh dear. My apologies," drawls Tom. "I had not meant for you to wake. A lively one, this one. Good lungs."

She lifts her eyes, stands there stock still and looks at him over the girl's dead body. He meets her head on, entirely unrepentant, his upper lip curling into a vicious sneer, and even when he distorts his face thus he is beautiful, she thinks. Flushed cheeks and dilated pupils, tousled hair. Eyes flashing with violent delights.

A Caravaggio angel in jeans with blood on his hands.

"Why...what," she starts, feeling vertiginous, desperately ill, cold. "Why would you...why would you do this?"

Tom throws his hands out in a supposedly placating gesture that he manages to make mocking instead. And even through her terror she recognises how furious he really is, how poorly reined.

"The need to sleep, and eat, and shit and piss; they were not the only limitations placed on me when my father forced me from my home. There are other urges too," he tells her by way of explanation. "And it has only increased now, when I'm in such close prox..." He cuts himself off, and toes the body instead, indifferent. "Anyway. And so there is collateral damage."

"Collateral...I...you...you kill them...after?"

His smile at her is truly monstrous.

"Oh, you misunderstand me, little one. I kill them before. I will not degrade myself with something so base, something so despicably human, as fornication."

From a distance, removed from herself, she notes that her breaths are coming too fast. Tingles in her finger and toes. A shrill ringing in her ears. She's never had one, but even so she is able to recognise and catalogue the symptoms of an approaching panic attack. She can't let it grab hold of her, she knows, can't lose herself right in front of him. He would tear her to pieces.

"That is...Tom.. you can't..." She struggles to get the words out, looks at the little heart dangling on the bracelet around that fragile, limp wrist. "You can't do this. It is inherently wicked. Evil. Stop. Please stop."

"You are being ridiculous. She barely suffered."

"I heard her. I heard her screams. She was terrified."

He scoffs.

"Maybe so, but her death was relatively painless."

"No. No!" she chokes out, and he tilts his head, laughs.

"Oh Hermione. Since I was forced to come here I have killed thousands upon thousands of people, and likely I will kill thousands upon thousands more. Yet you wish to squabble over the one individual?"

"Yes," she says without hesitation, bolstered by the utter conviction that she is right. "Perhaps I can't save the thousand, but maybe I can save the one."

"Admirable," he says blandly. "However, too late for this one." Again he prods the girl's body with his boot.

"How can you do this?" She whispers, still trying to control her breathing. "How can you twist an act that ought to be a thing of closeness and beauty between two people, into something so completely grotesque? Into murder?"

He shakes his head at her.

"You are too tender-hearted."

"'Tender-hearted"? You mean human?"

"Yes. Yes, that's what I mean. Human."

He looks revolted when he spits the word from his tongue, like it's a disgusting, rotten thing in his mouth, and just like that she loses her tenuous grip on her control.

"You are reprehensible!" she screams at him, taking a step forward. "A monster! A twisted being doing twisted things!"

He becomes so very still. Too still.

"Be quiet." His voice is low, even, and terrifying, but she can't stop now. Fear and sadness and fury carry her onwards.

"No wonder you were cast out, no wonder your father rejected you! Who could possibly want such a wretched, pitiful creature as you?"

"Silence!"

The way he says that one word shuts her up immediately. She's never heard anything like it from him before: it's a command with all his power thrown behind, her teeth ache with the force of it. She looks at him, truly looks, then she takes a step back.

He seems bigger. Darker, somehow wrapped in shadows. There is a singing tension, finely tuned, in his jaw, neck, shoulders. His light eyes are flat, hard, and the way his head is thrust forward, his fists clenched at his side, his nostrils flared...as he takes a step towards her she takes yet another step back, for now he is truly a predator and she is prey. She hasn't felt this terrified since he forced her to the ground by his feet in Iceland.

He smiles a smile that is only bared teeth, like he can taste her terror on the air between them and it's the most irresistible olfactory sensation to him.

Another step.

"Tom. Tom, please stop." She hates how her voice shakes, hates how she begs.

But he keeps coming, carelessly tramples the body of the girl on his way to her. And she, she backs straight into the double doors, and breathing doesn't come naturally anymore, it's a boon no longer easily afforded her.

"Oh, you."

He takes the final step towards her, steps into her, and there is nowhere left to go. She can feel his legs and hips and chest against hers, the coldness of him. He slowly wraps a hand around her throat, clenches almost experimentally, seems to enjoy how her pulse flutters like a moth against his palm.

"You, you think yourself so noble, do you not? Hmmm? Well then, would you offer to take their place?" His smile when it comes is a knife, and it cuts straight into her neck. "You, who I actually will not kill?"

The yet hang in the air between them, ugly and bloated and unmistakable.

She turns her face away.

"No. I thought so," he says quietly. "Not as altruistic and self-sacrificing as you like to believe. And no act actually so "close" and "beautiful", is there?"

He uses her own words as bullets against her, and it hurts terribly when they hit. She realises that she is crying, can feel how warm her tears are as they run down her cheeks, pools in the corners of her mouth.

"You...you corrupt everything," she says, and the accusation is a sob.

He's been following the trajectory of her tears with curious eyes, and with an air of fascination he touches a fingertip to the corner of her mouth. She jerks against him with the touch, with the thrum it wakes inside her, and then again when he takes one of her tears on his finger, brings it to his lips and slowly sucks it into his mouth. And then he blinks, and just like that the lethal threat drains out of him, right in front of her eyes. His hands move from her throat out to her shoulders, and he brushes them as if he's helping her get rid of dust while his eyes go from frozen water to northern lights.

"Oh, Hermione," he finally says, his smile full of dark glee, " - it's what I do.

Authors note: I feel I should point out here that I do take some liberties with historical facts when I need to, in order to make the story go the way I want. In this chapter, for example, it is not correct that Rasputin was exhumed and reburied - he was, as Hermione points out, exhumed and then cremated, as the Bolsheviks didn't fancy the site of his burial to become a rallying point for imperialists.

Furthermore, Rasputin never stole the wheatsheaf diadem - the Bolsheviks sold it at auction in 1929 along with a large collection of Romanov crown jewels, and it hasn't been seen since (though a beautiful replica was made in 1980). The centre stone in the diadem was indeed a sapphire, though it was a yellow sapphire (to represent the sun), not blue. I changed it to blue because I wanted it to have been chipped off from the stone tablets on which Moses delivered the Ten Commandments. These tablets were made out of sapphire (or, depending on which scholar you ask, lapis lazuli) and some say they were actual slices of Heaven.

It's pretty certain that Princess Irina Alexandrovna of Russia never met Rasputin, even though her husband killed him. No idea if she kept diaries. Tzar Nicholas II certainly did, and in its own way it's a fascinating read.