She whirled to Pasha. “You, back to the palace.” Vika raised her arms, dissolved him, and evanesced him to the warm confines of the Winter Palace, all before he could utter a syllable of protest.
“And you.” She spun toward Nikolai, who still leaned against the Thunder Stone. He cocked his head at her expectantly. “As Imperial Enchanter, I’m sworn to the tsesarevich. Don’t make me fight you.”
Nikolai shrugged. “Our fates are already in motion. We cannot stop them.”
“I don’t believe you,” Vika said.
He hesitated. “If only you were right,” he said quietly.
For a second, Vika thought she could hear the old Nikolai in his tone.
But then he secured his hat and shrugged again. “Too bad you’re wrong.”
Vika’s heartbeat stumbled, like it had momentarily forgotten the steps to the mazurka. But she shook her head. Their fates had been in motion during the Game, and they’d averted that end. She had to believe they could do it again.
“We aren’t finished,” she said.
Then she dissolved herself and evanesced after Peter the Great.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Vika rematerialized on the back of the statue’s saddle. She yelped, for the speed at which the statue galloped almost threw her off the horse, and she looped an arm around Peter the Great’s thick bronze waist.
He snarled, the sound all sharp knifepoints and poisoned arrowheads.
Vika cringed. I can understand how he won so many wars, she thought. Even if this version was only a replica of the near-mythic tsar. But she maintained her grip on the statue and cast an enchantment to secure herself more firmly on the saddle.
Peter the Great snarled again, but when he couldn’t shake her from the horse, he turned his attention back to the streets before him. They were charging into the center of the city now, over bridges and along canals.
“Grand Prince Karimov is alive, and he is the true heir to the throne!” Peter the Great shouted, his voice full and commanding, echoing through the narrow alleys. “Shame on you, Tsesarevich, for the attempted murder of your brother!”
Candles began to light the insides of apartments, as Peter the Great shouted the same accusations over and over, and his horse’s bronze hooves roused the city from its slumber.
Vika whipped the wind to try to drown out the sound of the statue’s cries. But he only yelled louder.
He needs a muzzle, she thought.
As they tore around a corner onto Nevsky Prospect, Vika spotted a few flags outside one of the pastel buildings.
That will have to do. She ordered a blue-and-gold one to rip itself from its mast. It hurtled through the air toward the statue, its fabric flapping violently in the wind, and slapped itself across Peter the Great’s mouth like a gag. Vika charmed its loose ends around the bronze tsar’s head and tied it into a tight triple knot.
The statue bit clear through the flag and spat its shredded remains into the snow.
Oh, mercy.
Peter the Great yanked on the reins then. His horse bucked. It jerked the breath out of Vika’s lungs, and she lost her grip around the statue’s waist. If not for her charm that kept her in the saddle, she would have been hurled off the horse and smashed against one of Nevsky Prospect’s buildings. Or impaled by a flagpole.
But the most frightening part of it: this ruthless statue was Nikolai’s enchantment. Memories of the Game flashed before Vika as she was tossed to and fro on the bronze horse—recollections of the stone birds that had tried to kill her on this very boulevard, the invisible box in Palace Square that attempted to compress her to her death, and the Imagination Box, elegant and captivating on the outside but capable of murder on the inside.
Not unlike Nikolai. Perhaps he was not so different from his earlier self at all. Perhaps this malice had been inside him all along, and Vika had only chosen not to see. Her chest constricted at the thought.
Peter the Great craned his bronze neck and saw that Vika still sat on his saddle. He roared, then dug his heel into his horse, and they charged down Nevsky Prospect. Vika clasped onto his waist as he began to bellow again, “Grand Prince Karimov is alive, and he is the true heir to the throne! Shame on you, Tsesarevich, for the attempted murder of your brother!”
I cannot play nicely if Nikolai isn’t going to.
Vika climbed up onto her feet, balancing on the saddle in her boots, struggling to get upright even with the charm to keep her from tumbling off.
Finally, she managed to stand all the way up. “This ends now,” she yelled at the statue.
She looked to the night sky, cloudy but for the spot where the moon shone through. She took a deep inhale, breathing and sensing the particles of electricity in the air. It was mostly water in the clouds, eager to turn to more flurries, but there were enough sparks for her to work with.
“If I cannot stop you as you are,” she said to Peter the Great, “then I will change what you are.”
She swirled her hands above her, and the air grew prickly. It crackled at her command. Then the electricity coalesced and shot down at an angle, a lightning bolt headed directly for Peter the Great’s head.
Vika undid the enchantment that attached her to the saddle, and she leaped off just as the lightning struck the statue.
Peter the Great’s face melted instantaneously, and his proclamations about Nikolai and Pasha devolved into incoherent shouts, his mouth full of molten metal. And then his mouth liquefied completely, and the proclamations ceased.
Vika rolled on the ground from the momentum of her jump, but she continued to command lightning bolt after lightning bolt. They hit Peter the Great and melted the rest of him into a puddle of liquid bronze, streaming off the saddle.
The horse, no longer having a rider to direct it, came to a standstill in the middle of Nevsky Prospect. It whinnied, and then a moment later, it transformed—along with Peter the Great’s melted remains dripping off its back—back into lifeless bronze.
Vika propped herself against the Bissette & Sons storefront, the glass etched with a list of their tailoring services. She panted as she caught her breath.
Disaster averted.
Or so she thought. But then she looked up, above the shops that were shuttered for the night, and saw that many of the windows in the apartments on the second and third stories were open, their occupants in their nightclothes, hanging over the ledges. Some stared at what was left of Peter the Great with their mouths agape. A few shrieked hysterically.
But the worst were the ones who whispered to those beside them, yet never took their eyes off Vika. She caught the shape of the word “witch” on their lips, and heard the word “devil” in the wind. They crossed themselves, and she knew from Father’s warnings during her childhood that these same people would soon conspire to hunt her down.