Once she finished capturing the scene on the steppe—and having heard nothing that would imply an immediate threat from the Kazakhs—Vika evanesced back to Saint Petersburg, to the banks of the frozen Neva River. Behind her, an enormous statue of the legendary tsar Peter the Great sat atop a bronze horse and watched over the capital he’d built, this glorious “Venice of the North.” The city’s bridges were dark at this hour, their holiday garlands that sparkled in the daytime now swallowed by the night, with only an occasional streetlamp casting ghostly halos upon the snow-covered cobblestones. And all the people of the city were fast asleep. All but Vika, of course.
To anyone else, midnight was silent. But to Vika, who could feel the elements as if they were a part of her soul, the darkness was full of sound. Water beneath the thick ice of the river, sluggish and near frozen, but still stirring. Winter moths flitting through the chilly air. Bare branches, bending in the wind.
She wouldn’t be able to sleep for a while, if at all, not after spending the last few hours immersed in the steppe. Heavens, how she missed Nikolai. For a brief period of time during the Crown’s Game, there had finally been someone else who could do what she could, who understood what it was like to be one—or two—of a kind, who knew who she truly was.
So instead of going home, Vika looked out at the frozen river in front of her, in the direction of the island she’d created during the Game. The people of Saint Petersburg had dubbed it Letniy Isle—Summer Island—for Vika had enchanted it as an eternally warm paradise.
But she shuddered as she remembered the end of the Game. Nikolai had attempted to kill himself, but the knife Galina gave him was charmed to “never miss,” and by that, she’d meant “never miss the target that Galina intended.” So when Nikolai plunged the dagger into himself, it had actually pierced through Vika. And to keep her from dying, he’d siphoned his own energy to her.
Vika closed her eyes as the echo of both Nikolai’s and Father’s deaths reverberated through her bones. Two incredibly important people had given their lives for her. She was unworthy of the sacrifice.
I would have stopped them if I’d known what they were doing.
But that was why neither had let her know.
The wind nipped more bitterly around her. Father was gone for good, but Nikolai . . . Well, she’d seen him—or a silhouette that looked like him—in the steppe dream. There was an entire series of enchanted park benches on Letniy Isle; a person need only sit on one of the Dream Benches and he or she would be whisked away into an illusion of Moscow, Lake Baikal, Kostroma, or any of the other dozen places Nikolai had conjured. Each bench was a different dream.
Was Nikolai still there now, in the steppe dream? Vika had gone back every day since she’d seen him that single instance last week, but he had not reappeared. Yet the benches themselves still existed, which meant his magic hadn’t been extinguished. Perhaps that meant Nikolai was still, somehow, alive, too.
Then again, Vika could feel the old magic inside the statue of Peter the Great behind her, and that had been created decades ago by an enchanter who’d died in the Napoleonic Wars.
But hopefully the shadow boy Vika had seen was a scrap of life that Nikolai had managed to hold on to for himself. Not quite enough to be real, but enough to be more than a dream.
“If you’re still in the bench, I’ll find a way to get you out and make you yourself again,” Vika said.
As she uttered the promise, her chest constricted. But it wasn’t the invisible string that tethered her to Nikolai as enchanters; this pull on her chest was a different sort.
Vika pressed her gloved hand to her left collarbone, where the scar of the Game’s crossed wands had once burned.
Before the end of the Game, Nikolai had said he loved her.
It was possible Vika loved Nikolai, too.
But she didn’t have much chance to contemplate her feelings, for behind her, heavy footsteps approached the statue of Peter the Great.
Vika’s pulse sped up. Had someone seen her evanesce here? Ordinary people couldn’t know about magic. A long time ago, they had believed, and there had been witch hunts. Hysteria. Not to mention that the more people believed in magic, the more power Bolshebnoie Duplo generated, which in turn meant that enchanters were a greater threat to the tsar because they could possibly usurp him. It was why the Crown’s Game and its oath had been conceived, to ensure that any enchanter would work with the tsar, not against him, and why common folk’s belief in magic had to be suppressed.
After all she had survived, Vika didn’t want to meet her end on a flaming pyre.
The footsteps drew closer. Vika darted away from the embankment and ducked behind the Thunder Stone, the massive slab of granite at the base of Peter the Great’s statue.
A minute later, a young fisherman stumbled into view. He was singing.
No. Slurring.
Thank heavens, Vika thought as she relaxed against the Thunder Stone. He probably didn’t see me anyway, and even if he did, he won’t remember in the morning.
But then the boy reached the statue and stopped.
Oh, mercy, she thought. Anyone but him.
Vika lightened her steps as she inched around the Thunder Stone to a spot where he wouldn’t see her.
Because he might have worn a fisherman’s cap, but he was no ordinary drunk.
He was Pavel Alexandrovich Romanov—Pasha—tsesarevich and heir to Russia’s throne.