Page 42 of Last of Her Name

“Volkov took my friend,” I say quietly. “She’s being held prisoner on Alexandrine. If I do what you want, can you save her?”

“Become who you were born to be,” Zhar replies, “and you can save her yourself.”

I shut my eyes and say a silent apology to Pol for letting his killer outplay me. But I have to reach Clio. I can’t sacrifice her safety for the sake of revenge.

“What do you want me to do?” I ask tonelessly.

Zhar’s satisfied smile makes my blood burn. “Come with me.”

She stands and starts for the door again. I follow, hating her and hating that I have no choice. She takes me down the hallway and into a medical ward. Metal grates plate the walls and ceiling, revealing the asteroid rock behind them. I recognize some of the beeping machines from my mom’s practice, but these ones look older and show evidence of many repairs.

Dr. Luka is there, busy at an arrangement of equipment. He turns when we enter, brushing his hands together.

“Ah, here you are, Princess, excellent.”

Zhar gestures to a chair. I eye it warily, but it looks fairly normal—a metal folding seat, no shackles or electric wires hooked to it. “What is this?”

“Nothing to worry about.” She nods to the doctor, who rolls a squeaky table in front of me. “We need to be sure you are indeed our Anya.”

“I just need a bit of blood,” Dr. Luka says, far too cheerfully. “Skin and hair are too easy to replicate these days, you know.”

“Ouch!” Before I realize it, he’s already stabbed my arm and drawn the sample.

While I grind my teeth, he and Zhar sit at a table on my left, in front of a little white machine. Dr. Luka deposits the sample inside it, then nods.

“Scan checks out. She’s a Leonov, all right.”

I stare at the tiny hole he left in my arm and press a finger to the bead of blood welling from it. Something shifts inside me, another wall of defense crumbling. They have DNA proof. No more pretending this was all some colossal misunderstanding, that they had the wrong girl from the beginning. The evidence is written in my blood.

Dr. Luka looks down at me and smiles. “I served your family, you know, as the imperial physician. Your foster mother, Elena, was my top apprentice.”

I look up, surprised. “You know my mom?”

He gestures at my leg. “Let’s have a look at that wound, shall we?” As he inspects the bandage around my calf, he continues. “I knew her, and I knew your true mother, Empress Katarina. I knew all the imperial family quite well—or as well as anyone could. They kept so many secrets, even from their doctor.” He tilts his head. “You’ve heard, no doubt, of their supposed curse.”

“You mean how they were all insane?” I say flatly. That’s not something I’ve let myself think about too directly in the past few days, like trying to ignore a bad toothache. You know it only means trouble, but you don’t want to deal with it any sooner than you have to.

“They had their demons,” he concedes. He unwraps the bandage and studies the wound where the shrapnel cut me; it’s starting to heal over. “And what about you, Anya Leonova? What is your demon?”

“Oh, I’ve got plenty.” I glare at Lilyan Zhar. “And my name isn’t Anya.”

Dr. Luka chuckles. “If you are not frank with me, I cannot help you. I know Elena would have kept a close eye on you, but I must ask: Do you have any history of psychological irregularities?”

“Meaning?”

“Oh, you know. Hallucinations, paranoia.” He smiles, trying to put me at ease. My leg flinches as he injects something into the muscle and then deftly begins binding it again.

Something flickers in my mind—a memory, or a fragment of a memory—my mom holding my hands while I convulse with sobs. She’s saying something over and over …Not real, not real, Stacia …Then the memory is gone. I’m not even sure it truly happened, but it leaves me shaken.

I swallow. “Maybe I’m hallucinatingyou.”

He sighs. “You have Elena’s attitude.”

“Look, what do youneedme for? Why not stage your rebellion on your own? It’s not as if people will rise up to follow some girl from the outer fringe, no matter what her name is.”

“Believe me, we aren’t ready for this fight,” Zhar says. “The plan was to ignite a widespread revolution when you turned twenty-one, giving us time to assemble the strength and givingyoutime to grow up. But then Volkov captured one of our best spies. He has ways of getting answers even from the most loyal tongues, and by the time we realized our man had told Volkov all about you, it was too late. He got to you before we could alert your foster parents. And so here we all are: starting a war four years early.”

“If you want to rebel, then rebel. But leave me out of it.”