The next afternoon, Vika rode beside Pasha in the open carriage as they departed the Winter Palace. Pasha might have been a wreck on the inside—he purposely averted his eyes from where the Jack’s and ballerina’s boxes used to be in the square—but on the outside, he was nothing but regal serenity. He wore a crisp black military uniform with gold epaulets on his shoulders, red piping along the edges, and mirror-shined brass buttons down the front. His hair was neatly combed (this alone let Vika know that his appearance was but a facade), and a stately black feathered hat that marked his training in the cavalry.
I feel the same way, Vika thought. Composed on the outside, but a bundle of nerves on the inside. Yuliana had insisted that Vika could not appear by Pasha’s side wearing her favorite green dress. It was, apparently, “an out-of-date eyesore” that was “an affront to the empire.” So now Vika wore a tightly corseted blue gown, as pale as Pasha’s uniform was dark. The contrast, Yuliana had insisted, was necessary. Everything in how they presented themselves to the public had been calculated down to the last thread by the grand princess. Vika had actually suggested she conjure a dress like the blizzard she’d worn to Pasha’s birthday masquerade, but Yuliana had quickly squashed the idea. Vika was to demonstrate magic to the people, but not too much, or they would be frightened rather than reassured. (However, Yuliana had approved the use of magic to keep the carriage unseasonably warm, which would negate the need for heavy overcoats and better show off the outfits she had meticulously chosen. Vika had rolled her eyes.)
Their carriage arrived at the beginning of Nevsky Prospect, the very same boulevard where Vika had tamed the statue of Peter the Great. People already spilled out from shop fronts and leaned over their apartment balconies and windows, for word of the tsesarevich’s procession had come well in advance of Pasha’s arrival. But a collective gasp echoed along Nevsky Prospect as the citizens realized who else rode in the carriage beside their prince. Some of the windows slammed shut. Shouts sliced through the frigid air: “Witch!” “God have mercy upon us!” “Burn her!”
“I suppose Yuliana didn’t announce that I’d be in the procession,” Vika muttered.
“Sorry,” Pasha said.
Of course he’d known. But from the crowd’s reaction, Yuliana had probably been right to omit that part. Even Vika had to concede that.
Pasha’s Guard slowed their horses. Gavriil, the captain of the Guard, shouted, “His Imperial Highness, the Tsesarevich, Pavel Alexandrovich Romanov!”
The people, who would ordinarily fall to their knees and cheer for Pasha, remained eerily silent.
Unfazed—at least outwardly—Pasha rose in the carriage, which now moved at a tortoise’s pace. He offered his hand to Vika.
She tilted her head in question.
“Stand with me,” he said quietly. A soft smile reached his eyes.
Vika hesitated. But the cuff tightened around her wrist.
This was what I wanted, she reminded herself. To be Imperial Enchanter. To be free to use my magic without limit or having to hide.
But was that what being Imperial Enchanter really was? Vika looked at the bracelet. It marked her accomplishment. It also shackled her to less freedom than she’d had before. She hadn’t imagined that achieving her greatest desire would come true, but with the precise opposite of what she’d wanted: to fly without bounds.
“Vika?”
She slipped her gloved hand into Pasha’s. Her breath caught at both the softness and steadiness of his fingers, and for a brief moment, she remembered the maple grove on Letniy Isle, where they’d almost shared a kiss. Of course, it wasn’t that she wanted that now. Far from it. But the memory was a sudden reminder of Pasha before the tsar’s death turned him and everything else horribly sideways. It was easier to take his hand when Vika remembered that he was just a boy—a golden-haired prince, but still, a real boy beneath the royal facade.
“My dearest citizens,” Pasha said, his voice as bright and intoxicating as one of Saint Petersburg’s sunlit summer nights, “I know some of you have recently witnessed magic, which may seem unreal and frightening. I understand your fear, for evil can come from such power. But you have nothing to worry about, because magic has always been with us. Enchanters have existed throughout all of Russia’s history; they have been quiet advisers to the tsars and defenders of our empire.
“Today I have the honor and pleasure of introducing you to my Imperial Enchanter, Baroness Victoria Sergeyevna Andreyeva. Although I hope she doesn’t mind if I simply introduce her as Vika.”
“Vika . . .” Whispers of her name passed over hundreds of lips, like a haunted wind blowing through the boulevard. Vika shivered, despite the enchantment to keep the carriage warm.
“There is no reason to fear her, or magic itself,” Pasha continued. “With Vika by my side, our empire is stronger against its enemies, and that will mean peace, prosperity, and happiness for all of you.”
His grip on Vika’s hand tightened.
Vika did not squeeze back. Who am I that I succumb so easily to a lie?
And yet it was what was necessary to restore calm. Being Imperial Enchanter—and being part of the machinery of the tsardom—compromised Vika’s natural compulsion to speak the brash truth. Her skin crawled, as if allergic to what she had to do.
“I want to see the witch up close!” A little girl, around seven years old, broke free of her mother and ran toward the carriage. Pasha’s Guard and their horses immediately closed ranks around the carriage.
Her audacity reminded Vika of herself at that age.
“Let the girl through,” she said.
The Guard looked to Pasha, who thought for a second, then nodded. The Guard parted slowly, and Ilya slipped off his saddle to take the little girl by the hand. He led her to the carriage and motioned for the mother to follow.
The woman trembled, paralyzed over what had just happened and what to do.
After all, Vika thought wryly, her child has just approached a very dangerous witch.
“She’ll be all right,” Pasha said loudly so the woman could hear. Then he leaned over the side of the carriage to be closer to the girl.
The girl pointed at Vika. “What I want to know is, what if she does bad magic?”
Vika’s fingers twitched, a reflex of defiance—or perhaps defensiveness—yearning to prove everyone here wrong. She clutched her hands into fists to still them.
The crowd listened intently, as if their fates were in the hands of this little girl’s words. They held their breaths for Pasha’s response.
He shook his head solemnly. “Vika won’t do any bad magic. But you are a very brave and perceptive girl to ask. What’s your name?”
“Lena.” The girl peered at Vika like at an exotic animal in a circus cage, menacing but fascinating all the same. “How do you know for sure she won’t be bad?” Lena asked Pasha. “Mama said Vika is a hag riding the devil’s broom into Saint Petersburg.”
Vika crossed her arms, hands still balled into fists. “I’m not a hag.”
Lena took her in from head to toe. Then toe to head. “No,” she said, after she’d finished her assessment. “You’re very pretty. But it could be a trick to make us like you better.”
Pasha cleared his throat.
Vika bent down and stretched out her left arm toward Lena. “Well, even if it was a trick, I wouldn’t be able to be bad, because of this.” Her stomach curdled as she took off her glove and revealed the gold bracelet circling her wrist. “I am bound to serve the good of the Russian Empire. The cuff will burn me if I do anything against His Imperial Highness’s commands.”
Lena’s mouth dropped open. She reached a pudgy hand toward the bracelet.
“Lena, no!” her mother shouted.
Lena didn’t withdraw her hand but stopped short of the cuff.
“It’s all right,” Vika said. “You can touch it. It only gets hot if I’m naughty.”
Lena glanced at her mother, who still stood trembling on the side of the boulevard. Then the girl giggled as if she’d just discovered how free she was to do whatever she wanted in the moment, and she ran her little fingers over the bracelet’s gold vines. She petted the feathers of the double-headed eagle.
After a minute, she looked up at Vika again. “But what about the statue that went mad? And the exploding boxes near the Winter Palace?”
“Um . . . those were mistakes,” Vika said as she tugged her glove back on.
Pasha raised his brows quizzically.
Trust me, she mouthed. Vika wanted to keep Nikolai’s current, tainted existence a secret. Then, when she figured out what was wrong with him, he could return as a beloved prince. It was better this way for Nikolai, and for Russia. And selfishly, for Vika, too. If the people feared and hated Nikolai, Yuliana would have a stronger argument for executing him. But if Vika could protect Nikolai until she was able to save him from himself . . .
She didn’t want to explain all that to Pasha, though, and even if she did, now was not the time. Trust me, she mouthed again.
Pasha’s brows stayed up, but he nodded slowly.
Lena huffed, reminding them she was there. “Prove it,” she said.
Vika frowned. “Prove what?”
“That you’re nice, not naughty.”
Vika glanced at Pasha. He nodded. It was time for the Christmas tree.
She opened the door to the carriage to step out. Ilya was quickly there to offer his assistance.
“Thank you,” she said.
His eyes lingered upon her a few moments longer than necessary. The way he looked at Vika was not the admiring gaze of a young man, however, but rather, an appraisal—an assessment of good and evil—similar to Lena’s.
Interesting. Vika tucked away the observation to consider later.
She walked away from the carriage. Lena began to follow, but Vika looked back at her and shook her head. Pasha invited Lena into the carriage instead, and from the way Lena beamed as she sat beside him, it was obvious Pasha had won over another adoring admirer for life.
He doesn’t need magic, Vika thought. Pasha is his own quiet force to be reckoned with. He just doesn’t entirely know it.
Vika walked a few more blocks from where the initial crowd had gathered. Here, too, there were people along Nevsky Prospect, but they were fewer and farther between, and they shifted away to give her a wide berth when she stopped in the center of the boulevard.
Vika closed her eyes, and with Nevsky Prospect quiet, focus came rather easily, even though the stability of the city hinged upon her performance. She pictured the fir tree that grew outside her cottage, and the thought of home made her smile, despite the circumstances. She and Father used to decorate it every year, dressing its lopsided branches with golden beads and wooden ornaments and Vika’s favorite, moths she enchanted to flutter around it with glowing wings. She’d heard, as a child, of lightning bugs in warmer climes, so she’d worked with what she had here in Russia to create her own sort of fireflies.
When Vika opened her eyes, what seemed like stars on a string appeared in the sky. They twinkled brightly, even though it wasn’t night. As they drew near, their forms came into view. Moths, with lighted wings, carrying a twig from her fir tree.
They dropped the thin branch into Vika’s waiting hand.
“Spasiba,” she thanked them.
They bobbed in the air for a second, then flew to the rooftop of the nearest building, landing to rest after their speedy flight from Ovchinin Island.
Vika examined the twig the moths had brought. The wood was healthy and strong; the leaves, full and dark green. She brought it to her nose and inhaled. There was possibly nothing better than the smell of Christmas. Hopefully, the people of Saint Petersburg would think so, too.
“Let’s make you into a tree, shall we?”
She knelt and set the twig on the ground. She rubbed her gloves together and flung her hands apart.
The twig seemed to explode as it burst from one small branch into thousands of enormous ones. The crowd gasped, and the force of the twig’s instantaneous growth pushed even Vika backward.
The tree trunk kept expanding and expanding until it was several feet across, and the treetop reached at least a hundred feet high.
Vika’s smile broadened, amplified by the heady perfume of fir mingled with sap and snow.
“And now for decorations.” Vika clapped her hands, and immediately, lacy garlands of pale-blue flowers—blue mist sage, one of Father’s favorites—appeared and draped themselves around the tree. Chunks of ice creaked and leaped up from the Neva, then melted until they formed themselves into glistening crystalline orbs hanging like ornaments from the branches.
The moths resting on the palace rooftop flew back toward her and fluttered their wings impatiently. Vika nodded.
They zipped through the air to the tree. As they did so, even more glowing moths flew in from all around the city, lighting the sky. They wove in and out of the branches, swooping up and down—magic, glimmering tinsel.
Vika looked around at the people on the boulevard. The crowd was much closer now. Most of their eyes didn’t glisten with fear anymore, either, but with the wide-eyed curiosity Lena had earlier displayed.
But Vika wasn’t finished. She still needed to charm the tree to give gifts to children who approached it.
What could the tree give? If this were Nikolai’s enchantment, he could conjure intricately wrapped presents, each with a different toy—a kit for building model bridges, a windup doll, a music box that played Christmas songs. But that wasn’t the sort of magic Vika excelled at. She was better with the elements and nature, but a child like Lena wouldn’t be happy with a box full of snow.
There was, however, food. It would be tricky, because food conjured from magic was never, as Father had claimed, as delicious as that cooked by hand.
But what child was ever picky about candy?
Vika snapped her fingers, and deep-violet sugarplums appeared all over the tree, hanging by black licorice stems. The lower boughs of the tree grew heavy with enormous candy pinecones, each a different color and flavor, from strawberry red to marmalade orange to honeysuckle-berry blue. And tufts of white cotton candy, like sweet snow, floated down onto the branches. Wherever a child could reach, a treat could be found.
Vika stepped back to survey her tree. It was impressive and lustrous and above all . . . innocent. She couldn’t use something this pure as a weapon. And she wasn’t going to kill Nikolai anyway.
I’ll give it fire, Vika thought, but not as Yuliana wanted.
Vika conjured a small flame at her fingertips and blew on it. It flew to the base of the tree and wended its way to the center of the trunk. From there, it began to light the tree from within, fiery and hot. The flame burned in the trunk but remained contained inside the thick layers of bark, and it shot up, up, up through the middle. The fire destroyed the tree’s soul and at the same time fueled it, imparting the wood itself with light and life from the inside out.
Finally, the flame reached the very top of the tree and exploded forth, flickering fiercely into the sky.
Lena cried out and clapped her little hands together.
But Vika didn’t celebrate. She looked at her enchantment and saw herself. And Pasha and Nikolai. It’s only a question of whether our bark will hold . . . or whether the fire will eventually consume and kill us all.
The rest of the people on Nevsky Prospect remained quiet and still. They no longer shouted about witches and devils, but they also didn’t clap or cheer. It was as if they understood how precarious everything was, and that darkness could not be deterred by a single fiery Christmas tree.
Or a single fiery girl.