“He’s getting away! Hurry!” yelled a voice that was much, much too familiar.

Turning around, I saw the small service door flung wide. And standing right there in the doorway, the light pouring from inside and over him, was…was…but how could it be? How did he-? No, this was impossible.

“Sasha?” I muttered.

My entire body flushed with horror. Yes, it was indeed my sweet Sasha. Only he wasn’t coming to my rescue. No. He was…was…

“Hurry!” he shouted over his shoulder into the palace. “Bring a gun. You’ve got to shoot him again!”

I felt like a tiny bird that had flown full speed into a large pane of glass and then, stunned, fallen to the ground. What invisible reality hadn’t I seen before? What hard truth was I facing now? The betrayal was too much, I couldn’t comprehend what I was witnessing. And if I hadn’t been in such shock, I would have cried out in horror. Sasha hadn’t come to our rescue, but to make sure of my father’s death?

“Where, Prince, where?” shouted Purishkevich, that infamous monarchist with the famously pointed mustache.

“Out there!” replied Sasha, pointing directly at my father.

I tried to call to my father, to beg him to run, but nothing came out of my mouth except a horrible piercing cry. I watched as my father glanced back and laid his eyes on the man who I thought was my lover-but who was, in fact, one with my father’s murderers. Oh, dear God, what had I done? What web of deceit had I fallen into?

Finally, I managed to scream, “Hurry, Papa!”

His face awash with terror, Papa hobbled on, hurrying toward me, pleading, “Run, Maria! Get away! Save yourself!”

I couldn’t move. Behind my father I saw Purishkevich struggling to load a revolver. First one, then a second bullet dropped from his shaking hands into the snow. Frustrated and furious, Sasha ripped the gun from Purishkevich and raised it high. And then Sasha-none other than Sasha!-took careful aim at my father.

“No!” I shrieked. “No!”

The very next instant Sasha fired, shattering the night. Before I knew it, something went screaming through the air not far from me. Sasha had missed! Papa, I realized, was still struggling onward!

“Run!” I called to my father.

But before Papa had taken three more steps, Sasha was again raising the gun. How could this be? How could the sweet young man I had kissed so passionately and given myself to now be so consumed with anger? How could his face be twisted with such hatred?

To my horror, this time Sasha took longer, straining to steady his wavering arm. And then, when my father was only some twenty paces from me, Sasha fired a second time-and again missed! With every bit of his strength, Papa pressed on, half stumbling, half running.

“Please, God, give him strength!” I sobbed.

But then several more figures burst from the palace, including Prince Felix and none other than Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich, that young dashing member of the royal family, a pistol in hand. My entire body shuddered. The grand duke was an Olympic athlete, a trained soldier, a seasoned hunter-and a Romanov bent on eliminating the “stain” of my father from the dynasty. When I saw him take confident, godlike aim at my father, I knew there was no hope.

The grand duke fired…and the bullet struck my father in the back, causing him to halt in his tracks. Slowly and with great effort, my father turned around, his hand rising slowly as if to make the sign of the cross. With great care, the grand duke fired again…the second shot struck my father directly in the forehead…and I screamed through the night as Papa tumbled to the ground, his hot red blood quickly melting away the cold white snow.

April 1917

Four months after Rasputin’s death

“And then what happened?”

Wiping my eyes, I raised my head and stared across the wooden table at him, at Aleksander Blok, the man who’d once been my favorite poet and who was now my interrogator.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” I asked.

“What happened next?”

How, I wondered, had the world been turned so on its head? I gazed around, craning my head and studying this columned room, St. George’s Hall, buried in the heart of the Winter Palace. Just weeks ago this had been the elegant throne room of the greatest monarchy on the face of the earth. Now it had been trashed by angry revolutionaries. And there it was again, I thought as I looked toward the dais, a distant noise coming from behind the grate. So the looting of the palace continued unabated. Yes, I thought, beware the peasant with the ax.

How strange. Just when I had begun to understand my own father, he had been killed. And just when I had found someone to love, that young man had betrayed me as had no one else.

“You understand Sasha’s real identity?” I said, looking up through a mist of tears.

“Yes, of course, Prince O’ksandr of Novgorod. A great friend of Prince Felix and Grand Duke Dmitri.”

And, I thought, a dabbler in the sects of Russia, particularly the Khlysty, which was why, of course, Prince Felix had first drawn Sasha into the plot against my father.

Blok dipped his pen into some ink, took a deep breath, exhaled as if in pain, and said, “I need specific information of that night.”

“Why? What do you care for truth?”

This man, one of our greatest purveyors of words whom many called the heir to Pushkin, flinched. Sure, I had just insulted him, but so what? His religion was using fine words to slice apart the complexities of the world and thereby expose the truths and the lies. Yet did I think my story, no matter how honestly he recorded it, even embellished it, would ever see the light of day? Never.

“You will write my story, but do you think it will actually be seen by any but a few officials? Do you think people in general will be allowed to read it?” I shook my head, and as confident as only a Rasputin could be, said, “Absolutely not. I’m quite sure these pages will be buried away and disappear.”

Aghast, Blok looked up at me. “Why in the name of the devil do you say that?”

“Because the real truth of Rasputin is not what your people need, it’s not something they can use to justify what they’ve done or something they can now use to fuel their revolution.”

“But-”

“Everyone is running around saying that first my father was poisoned, next he was stabbed, and then he was shot, but still he lived. He lived, and nothing killed the holy devil Rasputin until he was thrown into the frozen waters of the Nevka and died by drowning. But none of that’s true! I saw him killed! My father was murdered, first shot in the stomach and then in the back and finally in the head. Even the most cynical of revolutionaries wouldn’t believe that even the great Rasputin could survive a bullet wound in the head. After all, he nearly died at the hands of a small syphilitic woman, so he was obviously as mortal as the rest of us.”

Blok stared at me, not daring to contradict my words.

I said, “You know, of course, why Prince Felix and the others started this awful story? It’s perfectly obvious, isn’t it?”

After a long moment, he finally nodded. “To maintain the myth of your father.”

“Exactly. There was no way a Yusupov could say that they had simply shot a peasant in the back as he tried to run away. Nor could they say that a defenseless and unarmed holy man from Siberia was easy to kill. Either statement would have enraged the liodi.” I continued, my voice full of anger. “So to make sure that the murder wouldn’t inflame the common folk, they made up the whole story of how difficult it was to kill Rasputin, the mad monk. And then they threw in the final tidbit, that my father died not by poison, or being stabbed or shot, but from drowning. You understand why that’s so important, too, don’t you?”