Ten Thousand Skies Above You

After Dr. Nilsson leaves, I sink back onto the sofa. This enormous room’s grandeur seems to taunt me, because as beautiful as it is it’s empty. I’m alone in ways I thought I never would be again, because I always thought that even when Paul wasn’t with me, he was a part of me.

Before long I have to move on. No matter how unsure I am about Paul at this moment, I will never, ever abandon him to Conley. Yes, Theo has gone to the home office in the Triadverse; by now, Conley should have given him the coordinates for the dimension where the fourth and final splinter of Paul’s soul is hidden. I’ve done Conley’s dirty work. But Conley will never let it go at that. He’d endanger Paul again, if that was what it took to get me out of this universe and back under his thumb. So I can’t remain in Paris for much longer.

What I need to do now is figure out what comes after.

My reverie is interrupted when the maid brings in my luncheon tray. She smiles as she delivers it to the dining area—which has a table and chairs so ornate they seem less like something you’d eat at, more like where you’d sit while writing the Constitution. I take a seat, primly as I did back in the Winter Palace, so the illusion of royalty is complete until she lifts the silver cover from the tray.

What awaits me isn’t anything out of the ordinary—some kind of fish soup, I think, plus vegetables—but for some reason, the fishy odor hits me like a blow. Never have I smelled anything so disgusting; the scent seems to seep into my nose and lungs and gut like poison. Everything inside me turns over, tightens.

My stomach wrenches as the nausea turns from figurative to literal.

“I’m going to throw up,” I say. The maid skitters back as I push away from the table and make a run for the nearest bathroom. I make it just in time to barf into the sink.

The smell of my own vomit almost makes me sick again. And in the bathroom there’s the scent of cleanser, and perfumed soap that for some reason now seems repulsive—I can’t stand it. Weakly I stumble out of there, and the maid gets me back to my bedroom. “I’ll leave your luncheon under the tray. If you want another later, ring,” she says as she backs out and closes the door behind her.

I flop onto my bed, now too queasy to be miserable about anything else.

It would serve me right, if after everything else I put the grand duchess through, I had to endure her bout of the flu. Groaning, I roll onto my stomach—but my breasts are tender, and I wince.

My eyes open wide.

The grand duchess has gained weight. Mom and I have the same problem: we almost can’t gain weight. Don’t even give me that crap about boo hoo hoo that’s not a real problem eat a sandwich. Easy to say when you’re not slightly wired all the time by your crazy metabolism. My body simply burns too many calories, too fast.

But here I am in a body that’s heavier. Some of that weight is in my breasts, which must be a cup size larger. My sense of smell has turned sharp, and I’m vomiting for no reason at all.

Three months after Lieutenant Markov and I slept together.

Oh God. I’m pregnant.

20

I CAN’T BE HAVING A BABY. I CAN’T.

I sit on my bed, hands on either side of my head, trying to talk myself out of it. Maybe you’re premenstrual. That would explain the boobs, plus my belly could be water weight. But my body never reacted like that to PMS before. Mostly I just break out, and start crying at the least little thing. You could have the stomach flu. That would explain why you’re throwing up. People don’t usually gain weight when they have stomach flu, do they?

All my denials fail. The truth is unmistakable on some level that goes beyond logic or even emotion; my body is telling me something that outweighs anything my brain could say. I’m pregnant, for real.

Slowly I reach down to splay my hand across my belly. No, it doesn’t yet look like I have a “baby bump,” but the weight I’ve gained there has a certain . . . solidity. A firmness that fat doesn’t have. I don’t feel the baby moving, but maybe I wouldn’t yet.

Does anyone know I’m having a baby? No—they can’t. Dr. Nilsson would have asked me how I felt about it. The tsar? I shudder at the thought. He probably would’ve locked me in a convent, if not a prison cell.

I’m horrified because this isn’t my body. I did this to the Grand Duchess Margarita. I made the decision, I slept with Paul, and now—

How smug I was, telling Theo how hard we tried to do right by the other selves we visit. I’m so full of it. I took more than this Marguerite’s only night with the man she loved; I took away her choices.

As bad as it would be for me to be pregnant at eighteen, for the grand duchess it’s about ten thousand times worse. This society believes in virginity until marriage—for women, anyway, because they’ve got all the nineteenth-century hypocrisy to go with the nineteenth-century tech. And the tsar wanted to marry me off to the Prince of Wales! I’m pretty sure showing up with an illegitimate child wasn’t part of that deal.

I have already endangered you, Lieutenant Markov whispered to me that night as we lay together in bed. He understood this society; he knew the risks. And he had the sense to fear the consequences.

No, I was the careless one. And these are the consequences.

I flop back onto the bed, and close my eyes tightly as if I’m holding back tears. But the remorse goes too deep for me to cry about it. There’s nothing I can do to help her. Nothing. I have to assume she doesn’t want to terminate the pregnancy, because surely she’d have done it by now if she could.

This must be why the grand duchess came to Paris. She knew she was in trouble, so she ran all the way across Europe. Obviously she needed to get out of Russia before her pregnancy began to show, before the tsar or any of the court nobles could guess the truth. Once the king of England learned that the grand duchess was not exactly sane—the engagement would be called off long before the truth could be revealed, and that would buy her more time.

The grand duchess might be smarter than I am.

I put my hand back over my belly, still trying to convince myself that there’s an actual baby in there. Paul’s baby. Paul’s and mine, together.

On the night my parents were such bad role models about Paul and me getting together, my mother wound up saying to me that the real reason he and I shouldn’t have a baby together yet didn’t have anything to do with our education or our careers, as important as those things are. She said, When you have a child with someone, you’re bound to them forever. That can be beautiful and miraculous, and yet a burden, too—the knowledge that your life is intertwined with another’s, for all time. It transforms your relationship in ways I can’t begin to describe.

Before you take that step with someone, you must be ready to accept the destruction of the life you had together beforehand—and have faith that what you two create afterward can be even greater.

There is no “afterward” for the grand duchess and Lieutenant Markov. That night in the dacha was all they ever had.

I remember the way he held me, and whispered against my temple, calling me his little dove. Even though that Paul is dead, something of him lives on. He’ll have a son or a daughter, someone who might have his gray eyes and his good mind. When I imagine holding that baby in my arms, I know—beyond any doubt—that the grand duchess wants this child.