Anastasia was not unaccustomed to her likeness being displayed so publicly, for surely there existed no shortage of photographs and artistic recreations of her face and those of her late family. In the aftermath of their untimely demise and the subsequent discovery that Anastasia's body was not amongst those of her slaughtered kin images of her face were splashed across the front page of every newspaper accompanied more often than not by a series of conspiratorial headlines, her name frequently skating the curve of a stranger's tongue with the most salacious gossip. It had been a time of political tumult and chaos for her beloved Russia, and in their hunt for her, the last of the Romanovs, her countrymen had found a welcome distraction.

But not in decades had Anastasia premitted herself to be witnessed in such close proximity to her own likeness, especially not one of the sheer scale as the portrait that hung before them, for this particular artisan had done well to capture every austere line that crafted each of their faces, making the resemblence naught but undeniable. She recalls him them: a spindly man, elderly in the traditional, mortal sense, his stark silver hair thinning about the edges of his aged face, seeming to retreat from the deep wrinkles that pinched their fleshy trenches into his forehead while he went about his work. He had smelled faintly of the rich, savory smoke of a cigar recently enjoyed. He had spoken very little and had smiled even less.

The Russian woman does not need to see the wandering eyes of her youthful charge as they flicker between the Anastasia of flesh and the one of oil, for she can feel the anticipatory tension as it rises, nearly can she hear the veritable gears in Calliel's head as they grind towards the epiphany that was, she supposed, always an eventuality. Calliel was clever, so Anastasia had only to wait. She had only to allow curiosity and circumstance to evolve upon their separate trajectories until they would collide with one another.

The Duchess remains in a state of silent consideration for a long, drawing moment in the wake of Calliel's queries, the brilliant and soft green of her eyes never straying from the painted faces of the loved ones that had been pilfered from her life in a matter of a few brutal moments, their transitions into the life that lay beyond marked only by the cracks of fired weapons and the metallic stench of gunpowder.

"I have known Alexander for quite some time now," she utters softly, her words meant solely for the young woman who stands at her side, "well over a century. He is my father, after a fashion, because it is he who made me a Hunter." Only then does Anastasia's gaze part from the portrait of her kin, falling upon the blonde youth beside her, so incredulous in nearly all of the ways that Anastasia herself once had been. "And yes, Calliel, I am Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanov."

Anastasia Romanova

Grand Duchess of Imperial Russia