Vika waited just outside the door of Madame Boulangère, a snooty French bakery on Nevsky Prospect, the main boulevard through Saint Petersburg. She was there to intercept Renata, a servant in the house where Nikolai had formerly lived, because Renata could read tea leaves and might be able to see what was happening with Nikolai. But Renata thought Nikolai was dead, and Vika couldn’t simply appear at the Zakrevsky house and talk openly about what had happened in the Game, for other servants might hear. Not to mention that Galina Zakrevskaya, Nikolai’s mentor and the tyrant of the house, hated Vika.
So here Vika was, hovering by Madame Boulangère, where Renata was inside, picking up Galina’s daily order of baguettes and pains au chocolat. (Funny, in a way, that Galina was like her brother in that sense; Sergei had also had a standing order at a bakery for bread every day. Although Father’s preference had always been hearty, practical Russian fare, not extravagant French confections.) While Vika waited, she watched the people around her scurrying up and down Nevsky Prospect with brown paper parcels full of Christmas cakes and boxes with new suits and hats for holiday fetes. She wondered for a moment what ordinary life would feel like, the kind where days were filled with mundane concerns like what color ribbon to wear in her hair for Christmas night.
But Vika did not want an ordinary life.
Finally, the bell above the door to Madame Boulangère tinkled, and Renata hurried out with an armful of baguettes wrapped in old Parisian newspaper and a box presumably full of sweets. She stopped short and nearly dropped the bread when she saw Vika waiting.
Vika shot a quick charm to keep the baguettes cradled in the crook of Renata’s arms.
“Privet, Renata.”
Renata clutched the bread tightly again. Too tightly, in fact. The crust of the bread crackled under her hold. “Zdravstvuyte,” she said, returning the greeting but using the formal form of hello.
Renata looked mostly the same: a gray dress with a white apron, and intricately woven braids swaying against the nape of her neck. But there was no spark left in her eyes. Even near the end of the Game, Renata had been a candle flame of bravery. She’d leaned against the bars of the cell in which she was trapped and wished Vika well.
No trace of that courage remained. Nor was Renata’s telltale kindness present. She merely looked at Vika blankly. “How can I assist you, Baroness Andreyeva?”
It was the same way Vika acted toward Pasha. Detached. Reluctantly dutiful. Using her official title, not her name.
“I need to talk to you. Can you spare a few minutes?”
“I don’t think I have a choice.” She looked at the snow at her feet.
Vika gritted her teeth. She knew what it was like not to be permitted choices. She would not impose the same on Renata. “You always have a choice, at least with me. But thank you. Come this way, please.”
She led Renata off busy Nevsky Prospect onto a quiet side street. Vika looked up at the snow drifting from the sky. She issued a silent command, and the snowflakes began to flurry in a protective cylinder around them. “There,” she said. “Now no one will be able to hear or interrupt us.” Any passersby would simply see a heavier burst of snowfall.
Renata forced a smile despite not wanting to be there, the learned reaction of a servant, born and bred to be polite. “That’s a pretty bracelet you’re wearing.”
Vika glanced down at where the sleeve of her coat had shifted when she’d conjured the flurry. “Oh. Um, thank you. It’s from His Imperial Highness.”
“The tsesarevich?” Renata’s eyes widened.
“It’s supposed to mean I belong to him. To the extent I can ever belong to anyone.” Vika snorted, which actually showed a great deal of restraint, considering that every time she looked at the bracelet, she wanted to punch the tsesarevich and the grand princess in their haughty faces.
But Renata didn’t laugh, either because she was too well mannered or because she was too entranced by the gold and the rubies.
“Anyway,” Vika said, shaking the sleeve of her coat down to cover the bracelet, “I wanted to say I’m sorry. I should have come to you as soon as the Game was done. I was distraught and confused, and . . . It’s no excuse. But I’m here now, because I wanted to tell you—”
“You don’t need to.” Renata stared again at the icy street beneath her scuffed boots. “I know . . . I know it’s not your fault how the Game ended. Nikolai had said from the start that you were more powerful than he. And someone had to die. But I had still hoped he would win, that somehow, he’d find a way to defeat you and survive. It was naive of me. I’m sorry, because I know that means I was hoping you would die.”
Vika swallowed a dry patch in her throat.
But she forced away the hurt of Renata’s comment, because if Vika had been in Renata’s place, Vika would have hoped the same thing. She shifted her focus and snapped her fingers at the street.
A sofa and a table, both made of snow, sprouted from the cobblestones, like mushrooms do from the forest floor. “Please have a seat,” she said as she took the bundle of bread and the box from Renata’s arms and led her to one of the chairs. “Don’t worry, the sofa is warm.”
Renata gaped.
“Magic, remember?”
“Oh.” Renata nodded slowly and sank into the seat. The snow was fresh, soft powder, and its cushions were airier than goose down. Renata let out a little sound, something between confusion and pleasant surprise.
Once she was settled, Vika sat down, too. “I came to you because I need your help.”
Renata looked up at her and blinked.
“You see, Nikolai didn’t exactly die at the end of the Game—”
“What?”
Vika had to pause. It was harder retelling this than she’d anticipated. “He didn’t defeat me, but he defeated the Game, in a way.”
Renata paled. “Nikolai is alive?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“I—I don’t understand.”
Vika frowned. “Honestly, neither do I.” She took Renata’s hand and began to tell her everything she knew, from how the final duel had concluded to the shadow boy who’d appeared. Renata trembled the entire time.
The snow flurried a bit more fiercely around them.
Renata pulled at her braids. “But if he’s a shadow, how do we know he’s alive? Can Nikolai touch things, and can he feel them? Does he eat and drink and breathe like a real person? Does he even know who he is?”
Vika clutched the snowy armrest. “I don’t know. I saw him only once, and that was a week ago. I’ve tried to find him again since but haven’t been able to. That’s why I sought you out. Perhaps your tea leaves will know what’s happened to him.”
“The last time I read your leaves, I was wrong.” Renata frowned. “I prophesied that either you or Nikolai would die soon, but if what you’re saying is right, then my reading was not, because neither of you died.”
“Your leaves only predicted that death would come. They didn’t say for whom. So they were accurate, actually, because the tsar and tsarina passed, as did . . . Sergei.” Vika plucked at the sofa. A thread woven of snowflakes came out between her fingers. But the thread dissolved, seemingly as quickly as Vika was losing those she loved. She looked away from the droplets of water on her fingertips. “I just want to know something, anything, about Nikolai. Will you do it?”
Renata nodded slowly. She rose as if to fetch tea from the kitchen but then stopped as she saw the flurry of snow around them. “But, uh, where do we—?”
Vika held out an open palm, and a single steaming cup of tea appeared on it. It was a simple blue cup and saucer from her own table at home.
What if Nikolai did not appear in her leaves? What if their fortunes had crossed only in the past, but were no longer intertwined in the future? If so, then asking Renata to read these leaves would amount to nothing. And yet there were no other prophecies to read, because Nikolai was not around to drink tea and offer his cup.
Vika swallowed the tea as quickly as she could. She ignored the fact that it scalded all the way down. When all that remained were spindly leaves, she set the cup on its saucer.
Renata steadied the quivering in her hands and leaned forward. She pursed her lips as she studied the leaves, which clung to the inside of the cup with no discernible meaning. At least, nothing discernible to Vika. But that was why she had come to Renata.
“Is he in my leaves?” Vika asked.
After a few more seconds, Renata leaned back into the sofa. Snow puffed up around her. “Yes, he’s there,” she said.
Vika smiled.
The Game might be over, but their story was not.
But Renata coughed and wrapped a braid tautly around her finger, and Vika’s smile vanished in an instant. “What else is in the leaves?” she said.
Renata sighed. “You’re fighting over something again. And this time, death isn’t a small presence.”
“What do you mean?”
Renata released her grip on the braid and pointed to the black tea leaves, twisted and splayed from the bottom up to the rim. “Death is all over this cup. Whatever you’re fighting for, it will affect more than just you or Nikolai.”
Vika sank deep into the snowy cushions of the sofa. Her heart sank with her.
“I don’t know what to do,” Renata said as she stared at the cup.
Vika sat up. “We have to tell him.”
“What?”
“About the leaves. We didn’t last time, and it was a mistake. What if things could have been different if Nikolai had known?”
Renata hesitated but finally nodded. “You should go see him right away.”
But now Vika froze. Because she hadn’t been able to find him in over a week.
Perhaps the problem is me, she thought. Perhaps he’d appear for Renata, though. After all, he had kissed Renata right before the last duel of the Game.
Something fluttered inside Vika, something not entirely pretty. It was not butterflies but more like bats, jealous that Nikolai might be more amenable to seeing Renata than her. After all, Vika had been in his life mere months. Renata had been in Nikolai’s life for years.
But Vika pressed her palm to her chest and quelled the bats inside. I may have known Nikolai only a matter of months, but our relationship was far from shallow. Besides, this was not the time for something as petty as jealousy.
“No, it should be you who goes to the steppe bench,” Vika said, her voice tight. “Nikolai won’t show himself for me, but perhaps he will for you.”
Renata’s eyes lit up at the suggestion. “It’s worth a try. Ludmila would tell us to be optimistic, right? She’d say the glass is always half-full.”
But Vika didn’t respond. She merely bit her lip and hoped, but not too much. For when it came to her and Nikolai, optimism was made of warped glass.