TOGETHER

TOGETHER

Chapter 1

The Funeral

Isn’t it supposed to rain during a funeral?

Out in the Summer Palace’s central courtyard, finches fill the budding trees with sweet Spring serenades. A gentle sun coaxes early blooms to dapple the beds with specks of warm pinks and inviting yellows. A truly lovely day. Which bothers George more than she can comprehend. The sky is the wrong color. It isn’t a depressed shade of grey, the heavens are not weeping, the air saturated with sadness. Everything feels wrong. How could the world be so beautiful without her mother still in it?

George balls her fists around the black skirts of her gown. The silence of her mother’s rooms suspends her in a cage of glass. The shuffle of her skirts fractures the glass, digging shards deeper into her ringing ears. She’s dehydrated from crying so hard for so long and feels the headache pulsing behind her eyes.

The mighty mahogany doors groan open. A similarly black-clad figure slips through the opening like a shadow, his footfalls nearly undetectable. Alexi says nothing when he finds his twin sister frozen within a nest of their late mother’s gowns. She had taken them directly from the wardrobe. Many are still on their hangers. She takes up an emerald number, the gown their mother wore for last year’s New Year’s ball, and presses her entire face into the layers of satin and silk, filling her lungs with the oh-so familiar scent of lilies from her perfume and cinnamon from the spiced cider, along with the sharp pain of remembrance and longing.

Alexi sits beside his sister. Sunlight pours in through the mullioned windows lining the far wall. The palace maids drew the curtains back earlier in the morning. Now Alexi sits backlight to the point that George must squint in order to see his puffy eyes ringed in an angry shade of red. It occurs to her that he has spent the morning similarly to her. Tucked away somewhere within the Summer Palace, struggling to understand what life will look like from that day on.

“It’s too nice out today,” her voice cracks, and she wishes for a glass of water to appear in her hands. From the courtyard below they hear the birds continue chirping their tone-deaf songs.

Alexi pushes onto his feet, turns, and offers his hand down to George. Her heart leaps into her throat, and she thinks she’s going to choke on it. With this simple gesture, he tells her it’s time. They can’t put it off any longer. Reluctantly, she places her hand in his.

They’re still holding hands when they leave their mother’s rooms. George drops her head onto her brother’s shoulder as they float further down the corridor, putting far too much space between them and their mother’s rooms. The twins snap into rigid attention when they hear someone clear their throat behind them. They do not need to turn around to recognize the culprit but do anyway.

The dowager empress and her handmaids blockade the corridor in a cumulonimbus cloud of black silk and brocade corsets. She folds her bony hands before her. A thin veil struggles to conceal her notorious look of impatience plastered across her aging face. Her hair has been pulled back too tightly in an attempt to smooth out her wrinkles. The effect resembles bone-white leather stretched over a hollow skeleton.

She scrutinizes the twins with lethal accuracy. After fifteen years of practice, she has gotten it down to a cruel mastery.

“A proper man does not allow himself to weep like a court lady.” she bites each word off from the tip of her tongue. Her gaze narrows onto Alexi’s red, puffy eyes. “Losing your mother does not preclude you from comporting yourself appropriately.”

In unison the twins answer, “Yes, Grandmother.”

“I blame your father. You inherited this weakness from him. But that is what one can expect when we allow illegitimate halfbloods to roam the palace.”

“Yes, Grandmother.”

The dowager empress’s face hardens with marked annoyance. She detests when her grandchildren speak to her as one, which is precisely why they do it. Their one small act of defiance against someone as powerful as she is.

“That’s more than enough, Anastasia.” The twins stand several inches taller when their father’s voice cuts through the corridor. They listen with measured relief to the sound of his wooden soled shoes approaching.

Anastasia glowers at the man standing before her. “General Yamamoto. Do not intervene. It is a woman’s duty to instruct insolent children.”

Haru Yamamoto now stands directly behind George and Alexi. “Hurl another insult at my children on the worst day of their lives, and I will not be held accountable for my actions.”

With powdered nose pointed stiffly upward, Anastasia and her dozen-head entourage saunters off to the sound of swooshing skirts sweeping across the marble floor.

George melts within her father’s open arms. She smells incense and a cold breeze on his vest. He was outside, meditating at the temple. He had been doing that nearly nonstop since the day her mother died. Haru stretches a hand out to pull Alexi into the hug, but he steps out of his reach.

*****

The orthodox church holding Donya Romanov’s service swells as members of the royal family, the court, military officers, and their wives pour in. Pews moan under the weight of so many mourners. As Frusta’s only princess, the occasion is marked with a heightened sadness. The nation’s loss of the royal daughter. Incense hangs in heavy, low clouds. This isn’t the same incense Haru burns at the temple, those narrow sticks smelling sweet and soothing. These are smoldering bricks wafting through the aisles within lanterns dangling from checked-out altar boys’ chubby hands. After two hours of being trapped within this sooty cloud, Alexi’s resolve begins to waver. A lifetime of asthma teaches him he can hold out for only so long. He holds his breath, squeezes his throat shut, everything within his power to keep from an outburst of coughing. Anastasia sends him a hateful glare when she catches him squirming from across the aisle.

“Take your brother to get some air, before he chokes.” Haru whispers to George.

She begins to rise but stops when Alexi protests, “I’m fine. I want to stay.” Before he adds in a softer tone, “please.”

Haru and his children stand closest to the crypt within the royal family’s mausoleum during the internment ceremony following the funeral service. George casts her eyes to her feet, unable to watch as her six uncles carry her mother’s coffin down the central corridor of the mausoleum. Her breath catches in her throat, she chokes on nothing, forgetting how to breathe the closer the coffin gets to her. She knows this is the very last time she will ever be this close to her mother, and the thought of that stops her heart from beating. In a few short moments, Donya will no longer exist in the same world as her children, trapped within this marble wall, caught between the world of the living and that of the dead.

Because he and Donya never wed, Haru is barred from being one of her pallbearers. Similarly, Alexi is not old enough and must also stand on the side, watching as his mother’s casket disappears within the black void cut into the wall. Beneath Donya’s plot in the marble rests two crypts reserved for her children. Alexi is thankful his and George’s names are not etched into the stone as of yet, unlike their mother, but he is still unable to look directly at the slots.

The Patriarch begins his sermon, rife with self-importance delivered with a blustering affectation. George does what she can to block his empty words out, replacing them with her father’s eulogy instead.

“It is with heavy heart that we bid a final farewell to. . .” went the Patriarch. In her head George transports herself to the night the family bid Donya a final goodbye, her father’s words still sitting heavy on her heart.

“Losing Donya does not feel real, because she so often did not feel real herself. The woman I knew lived her life with unapologetic clarity, a love for her nation almost as strong as the one she held for her family, always learning and growing, becoming more incredible every day.

“I made her a final promise. To be as dedicated to our children as she always was. To ensure they know they are safe and loved. Together, we will find our way through this tragedy.”

The warmth of Alexi’s hand sliding into George’s pulls her back to that moment, back to the mausoleum. Where the smoke of incense is too thick, the candles too dim, the mourners too abundant.

Within the black sea of veiled faces and misty eyes, a pair of older court ladies whisper to one another. Their attention is fixed upon the late princess’s twins. George feels their unyielding gaze from her highly visible position nearest the crypt.

“What a shame it is to lose a mother at such a delicate age,” one of them says, shaking her head sympathetically.

“An act of God we may never understand. He truly does work in mysterious ways.”

“At least they have each other,”

George squeezes her brother's hand. She’s thrown back to the previous night, when they were both called into their father’s study. As they approach, they notice two royal guards posted at the closed doors. George, Alexi, and Haru are not considered part of the royal family, and do not receive royal guards. This means a member of the royal family waits for them on the other side of those doors. They exchange the same hesitant, concerned expression before ultimately going inside.

“What’s going on?” Alexi asks when he sees their uncle standing behind the desk next to a disgruntled version of their father. Czar Zury holds a tumbler of dark liquor in his massive hand. Strangely, he is not wearing his crown. A perplexing attempt at dressing down for this sudden audience. Zury’s trio of hunting dogs trot across the study and aggressively sniff the twins, their tails curiously wagging. George ignores the dogs, too distracted by her father. She’s never seen him like this, so visibly riled up.

Haru Yamamoto-- the monk general-- runs his hands through his silver-blue hair, the famed hair of the Yamamoto family. He releases a notably unsatisfying exhale. In this moment he is anything but serene.

Their father is of a lean, agile build. This coupled with his brilliant hair shimmering like fish scales in crystalline blue waters evokes images of a pensive koi. Reserved, observant, an understated confidence that reassures as much as it soothes. Haru is a tall man but nearly vanishes when standing beside Zury. Aptly named the King of Bears, Zury exudes an overpowering presence with his glorious beard, booming voice, and shoulders broad enough to carry a wagon across. His pack of loyal dogs return to him without him having to beckon them, gathered at his boots, ears flicking, attentively awaiting their master’s command.

The silver koi and the grizzly bear.

“Children, have a seat.” Zury gestures one of his paws to the two chairs positioned in front of the desk. The twins do not move. Alexi eyes his uncle suspiciously, glances over at his father, then back to his uncle. Again, he asks, “What is this about, Uncle Zury?”

George catches something she hadn’t initially seen. The twitch in her father’s eyebrow, the clench of his jaw. Haru Yamamoto is many things. A brilliant strategist. A master swordsman. A life-long lover of historical fiction novels. But an angry man, he is never.

“Papa, what’s wrong?” She asks, concerned. Her eyes go wide, moving from the pile of broken glass atop the desk to her father’s hand, thin trails of blood slicing across his palm.

“Alexi has been named your uncle’s successor.”

“I’m not even in the royal family-- I can’t succeed the czar.” Alexi lets out.

“After your mother’s passing, we thought it prudent to review the line of succession,” Zury explains. “Donya was the eldest child, and because I do not possess an heir, her son is next in line.”

“What about Alexander or Peter or Ivan or Michael or even Paul?” George asks. “Why wouldn’t one of your brothers succeed you?”

“Because the laws were written two hundred years ago, when people didn’t live as long, and sticking the youngest relative on the throne took priority." Haru lets out critically. Pieces start falling into place. It’s becoming clear why their father is in such a mood. Zury declares his son next in line, and Haru does not condone such a move.

“I’m illegitimate,” Alexi says what the rest of the room is thinking but too timid to outright say. “My parents never married. I can’t take the throne.”

“I’ve been over all of this with the lawyers. They assure me this is final. As it stands, Alexi, you are my successor.”

Alexi drops into the chair directly across from his uncle. George remains standing. She watches him twist the single strand of silver-blue hair amongst his rich brown locks. Although they both possess this unique attribute-- a shock of their father’s hair-- only Alexi tugs on his when feeling particularly overwhelmed.

“You’ll be attending the Royal Academy for Boys in order to properly instruct you on the necessary rigors ahead. Their spring semester begins in a week. Palace staff will help you pack your things and take you to the boarding school.”

The look on Alexi’s face is that of a man just struck by an out of control cart. “You’re separating us?”

“What?” George chokes, feeling her heart fill with tears at just the thought of such a thing. She does not notice when she lowers to the chair opposite her father.

Zury hangs his head, speaking in a softer tone. “I am sorry, children. I wish it were not true. We all must do what is asked of us.”

Silence creeps in from the pointed eves and down from the crowded bookcases. George feels the glass cage forming around her, sealing her off, thinning her air. Her brother’s voice acts as a diamond tipped mallet, used in case of emergency, setting her free from her own imprisonment.

“What will become of George?”

Zury and Haru exchange a knowing glance that does not put the twins’ nerves at ease.

“Georgina will be sent to live with your Aunt Rin in Koku while Alexi finishes his studies here.”

Alexi scoffs. “That’s just cruel-- there’s no need to send George halfway across the world, to a country neither of us have ever been to.”

Haru raises a brow at his son, insisting he do not speak out against the czar, even if the man is his uncle.

“It’s quite alright,” Zury assures Haru. He turns back around to his niece and nephew. “This palace has become a tomb for you two. With you leaving, and your father still tied up overseas with the war in Great Franco, your sister will have no one here but ghosts to keep her company. Your father and I both think it best for George to spend some time away from this place.”

“Isn’t Aunt Rin insane?” Alexi asks genuinely.

Zury’s booming laughter fills the room. He slaps Haru on the back harder than the man would have preferred.

“She is a highly decorated officer and is more than excited to host George.” Haru says.

Zury sets his tumbler down on the desk before addressing the rest of the room. “Your father returns to the front in two days' time. I suggest the three of you spend the time together. Making arrangements for the adventures ahead.”

TEN MINUTES EARLIER

Haru receives a notice of summons earlier in the day. He is instructed to arrive at his study ten minutes to eight. There he finds Zury already posted behind his desk. After several sleepless nights, consoling his children, arguing with Anastasia over funeral arrangements, and entertaining his sister who is anything but manageable, Haru does not possess an ounce of energy left to predict why Zury has called upon him.

He takes some solace in seeing the dark bruises beneath the czar’s hazel eyes.

Zury fills a tumbler with cognac. When he sets the bottle on the desk, Haru notices the liquid only comes halfway up. Zury reads his reserved expression of concern and says, “We are all coping the best we can. Please, join me.” Zury nods at the second, empty glass, but Haru abstains. Despite being a fish, the man does not partake in drink.

Zury does not waste Haru’s time-- he respects the man too much to beat around the bush. He explains what the lawyers have already told him.

Alexi will succeed Zury.

Haru’s fists clench so tightly his knuckles crack.

“I know this is not what you wanted to hear,” Zury offers. The words fall flat. Haru slams his hands on the desk. “After everything I’ve done for you and your family?” He struggles to keep his voice from swelling into a yell.

“This is not--”

“I won you two wars. I’m entrenched in a third. I was your father’s personal body guard for years.” He snarls. “And you intend to paint a bull's eye across my son’s back? To do the one thing your sister never wanted!”

Zury lowers his glass, setting his sad eyes on the raging man on the other side of the desk.

“The sole reason Donya and I never married was to keep our children out of court politics, out of all of this madness. The life of a royal and every horrible thing that comes with it, and you’ve undone all of that. You dare defy her when she isn’t even in the ground yet. Give me one reason why I shouldn’t leave now and stick Alexi some place your family can't get their gnarled hands on him.”

The corner of Zury’s mouth sweeps up into a youthful grin. “You’ve never spoken to me like this before. The monk general frothing at the mouth.”

“Do not toy with me, Zury. You have another thing coming if you think I’m going to stand down and let you take him. Either of them.” His eyes close heavily, his shoulders lower. “I will not lose all three of them in the very same week.”

“My hands are tied, Haru. These are the laws.” Zury pushes out a sustained exhale. “Donya knew what it meant to make the necessary sacrifices for her country. I have to tell myself that, because the thought of going against her will breaks my heart. You must believe me when I say no one wished for this. There are things even I am powerless to stop from happening.” The unspoken sentiment sits too heavy in the air between them. “I have always thought of you like a brother. I would never do something to endanger you or your family.”

Haru curls his hand around the second tumbler. He upturns the glass to reveal the royal seal stamped onto the base. A regal, dignified looking bear. The mark of royalty he fought so hard to keep from staining his children, the one now branded across his son’s forehead. He channels his anger into his fist and shatters the tumbler in his crushing grip.

The czar possesses the power to take whatever he sees fit, and he has just taken Haru’s child from him.

“If this is how brothers treat one another, then I am grateful to only have a sister.”