"I don't want to be someone else's cause."

It is a miracle that she is still managing to keep walking. Her feet already know the way back home even if her mind is racing, her thoughts a mess. A vice has clamped down around her heart, squeezing tightly. This is the first time that what they both knew about the likely endgame of his return to Russian has been spoken aloud. The Party would not stand for such a brazen betrayal. They would have made an example of him, just as they would have made one of her. Perhaps they would have secreted him off, worked him until he was broken beyond repair.

The end result remains the same — Gleb would not have lived. She would have stayed alive, remained a lost grand duchess found, but not him. Anya has a hard time imagining that life. She spent months practicing, rehearsing and memorizing, playing at something that is actually the truth. But the memories she has of her childhood as scrambled, filled with light and warmth, but also coldness and fear. One thing is certain: the Anastasia whom the world imagines from those postcards died in Yekaterinburg, if she ever really existed at all. In an odd way with each piece she recalls, the more that Anya feels that she is both Anastasia and something new, something more than just Anya the streetsweeper/dishwasher/nursing assistant. She just does not know quite what that is.

Staring at Gleb, her eyes are fixed on his. Her hand lets go of her purse and she reaches out for him, touching his arm. "I am glad that you lived," she says almost urgently. "No more bloodshed for either of us."