Vika stood waiting for him to respond to her.
Nikolai shrugged. “Things have changed. And what I used to be doesn’t matter.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
If Vika had had any hope for Pasha and Nikolai to make up, to shake hands and be friends again, it died with this declaration. And it seemed there was no need now to tell Nikolai of Renata’s prophecy, for it was laid out here, as clear as ice. Or as murky as ice. The analogy worked either way.
Vika shook her head. Nikolai had always been ambitious. He hadn’t taken it easy on her during the Game. But this sort of ambition was different, driven by malice rather than self-preservation. This wasn’t the Nikolai she knew, the one she might have loved. Had turning into a shadow done this to him?
Did I do this by condemning him to ante-death at the end of the Game? Her arms, which until then had remained outstretched to keep Nikolai and Pasha apart, fell to her sides.
Meanwhile, Pasha simply stood staring at Nikolai. Pasha’s hand remained on his other glove, but rather than tearing it off, his fingers now pinched the edge of the leather tightly.
“Why are you doing this?” Vika asked Nikolai.
He laughed, its ringing laced in black at the edges, like a funeral ribbon, pretty but mournful at the same time. The sound tied itself into a hard knot in Vika’s chest.
“Pasha demanded our deaths without even flinching.”
“I was irrational with grief,” Pasha said.
“And he regretted it,” Vika said, her defense of Pasha spilling out and catching her by surprise. But despite her anger at him, she knew commanding the end of the Game had not been without consequence for Pasha. “He apologized.”
“After the fact,” Nikolai said. “It doesn’t change what he actually did. He was supposedly my best friend. And he claimed to love you. Yet you forgive his betrayal and cruelty so easily?”
Vika looked at the statue of Peter the Great. She couldn’t look at Nikolai. She couldn’t look at Pasha, either. Because Nikolai’s right.
Pasha advanced, his hand no longer holding on to the glove. “I inherited the Game. I had to do it.”
“No, you didn’t,” Nikolai said. “You could have just let it play out. You could have expressed sadness, regret, at the Game’s very existence. You did not have to force an ending.”
“I . . . I know that now.” Pasha averted his eyes to the snow at his feet. “Are you going to kill me?”
“Eventually,” Nikolai said. “But in the meantime, I’m going to make you wish I had done it quickly.” He opened his arms and swept them around him, as if encompassing all of Saint Petersburg. All of Russia. “To start with, I’m going to turn the people against you. You may not always have cared about being tsar, yet you’ve always been Russia’s golden heir, their beloved prince. But by the time the coronation takes place next month, the empire will loathe you. And it will be upon my head that they set the Great Imperial Crown.”
The moonlight cast a white glow upon everything beneath it, but Pasha’s face paled even more at Nikolai’s threat.
“Is this what you really want?” Vika asked Nikolai. “To rule an empire? To take on all the responsibility that comes with it? Your life will no longer be your own.”
Nikolai paused. But a few seconds later, he looked away from Vika, and it was clear whatever internal argument he’d had was done.
“My life was never my own anyway,” he said. “It was Galina’s, and then it was the Game’s. If you think about it, my life always belonged to the empire. This isn’t much different. My decision is made.”
Nikolai reached out to touch the Thunder Stone and looked up at Peter the Great.
“What are you—?” Vika began to ask.
But she stopped, because the massive statue shifted on his saddle. The horse came to life beneath him, the corded muscles flexing like living bronze.
“Nikolai . . . ,” Vika said. “Don’t.”
Pasha gaped. “What do you intend to do?” he whispered, the question nearly lost under the stamping of the horse’s enormous hooves.
Nikolai dusted off some snow that clung to his shadow coat, his movement casual, as if it were an everyday occurrence that a statue came alive beside him. “Legend has it that Peter the Great guards our city from the enemy,” he said. “As such, he’s going to warn the citizens that an enemy walks among them. And this is the story he will tell: the tsesarevich discovered that his brother was the rightful heir to the throne, so he attempted to have his brother murdered, in order to secure the crown for himself.”
“That isn’t true, and you don’t have any evidence of it!” Pasha said.
He hurled himself at Nikolai before Vika could do anything to stop him.
But Nikolai had a shield around himself, and Pasha rebounded off it and fell backward. He landed on the snow-covered cobblestones with a hard smack.
“It doesn’t matter,” Nikolai said. “Once the story is out, it’s out.”
“Don’t,” Vika said. “Not only because of His Imperial Highness, but also, you’ll expose us. You’ll expose magic, and chaos will ensue.”
“That’s part of the point.” With that, Nikolai waved a shadow finger in the air, like a conductor’s baton, and the bronze horse reared and whinnied. Peter the Great shouted, his voice as low and sonorous as cathedral bells. His horse leaped off the Thunder Stone, and they charged out of Peter’s Square, toward the rest of Saint Petersburg.
“Vika, please,” Pasha said, staring after the statue, which kicked up snow and chunks of stone as it galloped away. “Do something!”
Nikolai leaned against the Thunder Stone, watching them. Vika recoiled. This cruel, detached boy was nothing like her Nikolai, not even when they’d had to fight each other in the Game.
This is my fault, she thought. He gave me his life and became a shadow.
But I can’t watch him lose his soul. She’d have to save Nikolai from himself.
Beneath her coat sleeve, however, the bracelet had begun to heat. She had to obey Pasha, to stop the statue of Peter the Great. Although there was no way of knowing whether Pasha or Nikolai was the rightful heir to the throne, Pasha was still the one officially next in line. Vika’s loyalty was bound to that.
She curled into herself for a moment, as her soul seemed to tear itself in two. How could she be Imperial Enchanter when she had to fight Nikolai to do it? How could she be true to herself when a vow required one thing of her, but her heart tugged her toward the only other person like her?
What is it that I truly want?
But the cuff didn’t care. It seared into her skin. Vika inhaled a sharp, strangled breath.
Debate later. Action now.