That choice was hard, but this one is easy.
I straighten the rows of bottles and shut the closet door. I cross to the window. When I press my face to the glass, I can see the lanterns lit across the palace grounds, and I can just make out the sounds of music playing in one of the ballrooms, the high human wail of violins. If I could see past the trees, through the dark, I might glimpse the wooded tunnel and, beyond it, down that gentle slope, the golden domes that top the Little Palace.
I think of Alina’s too-thin fingers gripping the edge of the sheet, the hope she can’t hide in her pale, expressive face as she writes out the tracker’s name.
I open the black wood box, and I feed the letters to the fire, one by one. It hurts, but I can bear it. Because I am a doll, and a servant. Because I am a pretty thing and a soldier all the same.