Being the only remaining enchanter in Russia did mean Vika could ask more of the empire’s magic, since she no longer had to share it. And she’d always been able to understand animals, like her albino messenger rat, Poslannik, by casting an enchantment over them. It had simply never occurred to her to translate another human language, because she’d needed only Russian, rudimentary French, and the speech of wolverines and foxes on Ovchinin Island.
As Vika walked, she began to conjure a dome, of sorts, to surround the entire marketplace. The enchantment began on the ground, like a shimmering veil of liquid crystal rising from the dirt. At least, that was how it appeared to her, for Vika could see the magic at work.
The enchantment trickled upward toward the sky, flowing as if it were not subject to the rules of gravity. It climbed the outside of the marketplace, then arched over the tops of the tents, enclosing the shoppers and vendors and their goods inside.
But not really. The dome wasn’t solid; the people couldn’t see it or feel it, and they could enter and exit as they pleased. Vika’s magic would only capture the scene, and then she’d be able to take the enchantment back to Saint Petersburg to replay it for Yuliana and Pasha, who could walk through the memory dome as if they themselves had been here.
It also included an enchantment to allow Vika to understand Kazakh. Or an attempt at an enchantment like that, anyhow. If she could listen in, she could better root out whether there were any new developments in the region’s unrest.
She smiled grimly at the marketplace before her. I hope this works, she thought, for if it did, she could capture scenes in other places, like the borders where the Russian and Ottoman empires chafed at each other. Such information would be invaluable.
She also hoped it failed, because spending the rest of her days alone, spying at the edges of the empire, would be no life at all.
The dome enchantment glistened lazily under the winter sun, its liquid crystal walls ebbing and flowing as the magic soaked up every word and action taking place within its confines. Vika picked up bits and pieces of the conversations. “Two pairs of boots . . .” “That’s too expensive for a leg of lamb . . .” “But Aruzhan hates dried apricots—”
But then there was a lurch at the top of the dome, and Vika gasped as ripples stuttered over the surface of her enchantment, and a hole broke open into a jagged crack. Her power stumbled, as though the flow from Bolshebnoie Duplo—Russia’s magical source—had suddenly been blocked. The sparks that normally danced through her fingertips were snuffed out.
What?
Her chest tightened, as if the air were being wrung from her lungs. The ripples threatened to build into something more, to cascade down the sides of the dome, undoing it all.
Vika opened her arms to the air, palms up, and labored to catch her breath while attempting to control the enchantment. She pulled on the magic that already existed, attempting to draw it up and over to patch the crack at the top of the dome. It was like tugging on fabric that was already stretched too tight; there wasn’t enough of the magic to go around.
But then, as quickly as it had hitched, the power flowed smoothly through Vika again. She was almost certain it wasn’t her doing—the magic had hardly budged when she pulled on it—but somehow, the ripples on the dome flattened into a serene surface, flowing over the crooked tear at the top to make it whole.
She dropped her arms by her sides, sweat beading on her forehead. What could have possibly caused a hitch like that in the magic? Her power had never faltered so completely before.
Fatigue suddenly trampled her, like being run down by a carriage pulled by half a dozen spooked horses.
And Vika laughed at herself, for in her head, she could hear what Ludmila would say, what she had been saying: Too much work and not enough cookies. You need to take care of yourself, my sunshine. Rest and eat more sweets.
Rest. Vika shook her head. There was no such thing as rest for an Imperial Enchanter, certainly not one at Yuliana’s constant command.
But that doesn’t mean there can’t be more cookies. Vika’s stomach growled.
She evanesced a few more coins to the nearby bakery stall. A moment later, a chakchak cookie appeared in her palm, a cluster of fried dough piled together with syrup and walnut bits. Vika took a crunchy, honeyed bite.
She smiled. Popped the rest of the cookie into her mouth. And sent money for a handful more.
Being Imperial Enchanter wasn’t all bad.
CHAPTER TWO
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.