But she couldn’t take too long, for Pasha’s insides had been shredded, and he would die soon if she didn’t save him.
Keeping her face pressed to his chest above his heart, Vika splayed her hands over Pasha’s stomach and at the base of his throat. Knit yourselves back together, she commanded the sinews of his muscle. Now she could let the magic flow more freely, for she wasn’t extracting knives anymore. The power gushed forth smoothly, like warm honey.
She guided Pasha’s broken muscle fibers. The veins and nerves that crisscrossed his torso slowly wove themselves back into place. He cried out as she guided his organs back together again. His entire body convulsed.
“I’ve got you.” Vika wrapped herself around him tighter. “Shh. I’ve got you.”
And then, finally, the last of his muscles smoothed over. Thank goodness. Vika collapsed on top of him.
Her basalt pendant lay askew on his chest. She almost kissed it. Kissed him.
But Vika tore her gaze away. She had to get him somewhere that was actually warm and safe for him to recover. She had to stop thinking about him as more than . . . whatever he was. Her employer. Her ruler. Her . . . friend.
“Let’s go,” she said. Then, knowing he was slightly less fragile now, she evanesced Pasha back to the Winter Palace.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Nikolai had stayed for most of the fete, although he’d remained shrouded and hidden in the dark. It had been a pleasure, at first, to watch his plans fulfilled, to see people eating and laughing and toasting Pasha for the party. And then there had been the moment when he’d recognized Pasha in the crowd and sent the doll with the tarte à l’oignon. Nikolai had laughed, the thrill of power washing over him, cold rushing through his veins.
But his laughter had been cut off by Vika’s appearance. He’d watched helplessly while she healed Pasha, both unable to get past her shield and horribly fascinated by the work she undertook. For Nikolai’s poisoned gear should have shredded Pasha’s insides beyond repair; it wasn’t a clean slice like a knife. The growth of Bolshebnoie Duplo’s magic was affecting Vika’s strength, too.
As she evanesced them away, Nikolai threw his top hat into the snow. His knuckles cracked as he balled his hands into fists. Damn it! Pasha was still alive. And Vika . . . how quickly she’d appeared at Pasha’s side, and how tenderly she’d nursed him.
Nikolai grumbled and glared at the revelers around him. Many were beginning to clutch at their stomachs, their complexions tinted slightly green now, rather than ruddy from the wind and snow.
“The fete is over,” he said.
He snapped at his stone birds. They dropped their decorations from the sky and started to dive at the partygoers instead. People shrieked, fell to their hands and knees on the ice, and cowered under tables. The birds smashed around them, explosions of rock, leaving nothing but dust.
Nikolai nodded at the dolls, who until that second, had still been bustling about, serving dessert and wine. Now they began to fling whatever they had in their hands—food and platters and bottles—at the crowds beneath the tables.
The people screamed even louder. They crawled out of their hiding places and scrambled to their feet, standing, then falling, then trying to get up again on the icy Neva. Wine and vodka bottles shattered. Plates crashed. Syrniki pancakes splattered everywhere, making the ground even more perilous with cottage cheese and honey on top of the already slippery ice.
Everyone fled. Nikolai’s dolls made sure of it. And then, when the last of the partygoers was gone, he slashed an arm through the air and decapitated all the dolls. Their lifeless bodies smacked into the ice, their porcelain heads shattering.
The Neva was a graveyard of revelry and regret.
Nikolai’s edges were a blur. Standing suddenly seemed too much effort. He sank down onto the bank of snow.
He shivered, but not from the cold that had fueled his rampage, for he’d expended so much energy, he could feel only a trace of that powerful chill inside. Instead, it was the actual weather that got to him. He pulled his greatcoat more tightly around himself.
The more Nikolai faded, the less single-mindedly angry he became. Or was it the other way around? Regardless, as he sat on the snow, taking in the disastrous remnants of his party, he began to remember another time when Pasha had fallen ill.
Nikolai had been fourteen then, and Pasha, thirteen. They’d spent an afternoon in the woods near Tsarskoe Selo, building elaborate traps to capture squirrels, However, they had used up all their lunch as bait, and after a few hours, Pasha complained of starving. Nikolai, in his youthful arrogance, picked mushrooms, charmed the poison out of them, and gave them to Pasha, assuring him they were safe to eat.
Pasha gobbled them up without hesitation, and fifteen minutes later, he was pale and sweating and then fell unconscious. Nikolai panicked, punched Pasha in the stomach to try to make him vomit, shook him to try to jostle him awake. Finally, Nikolai’s senses returned, and he levitated Pasha and charged through the forest to their horses. He’d never ridden faster than that in his life to rush his best friend back to the palace at Tsarskoe Selo.
Now Nikolai looked at the spot near the fete where Pasha had lain only minutes before.
What have I done?
But immediately, a tiny chill roused itself and trickled in his veins.
No. This is what I wanted.
Well, not exactly this, for Nikolai had wanted Pasha dead, and he was not. But this devastation was part of a plan that Nikolai had set in motion, and he would see it through. He was not a quitter. The coldness inside him, although running thin, persisted.
Nikolai stood. He needed to glean more energy. He tripped, though, and nearly toppled into the snow.
First, before finding another source of energy, he needed some rest, to get his head straight again, to refocus. He turned toward the Black Moth.
And this time, he looked forward to the sordid inn.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The clock on Madame Boulangère’s wall struck midnight as Renata kneaded dough for the bread the bakers would put in the ovens in a few hours. And yet, despite how late it was, Renata felt lighter on her feet. A second wind, perhaps, like the kind that comes after one has been awake so long, one bypasses sleep and starts over again?
But Renata frowned. This was more than that. It was as if her blood was twirling through her veins, when all it was supposed to do was flow from heart to limbs and back again.
Heavens. She knew this sensation. Like she’d drunk nectar offered by mischievous fairies. It had been the same when Aizhana had transferred energy to her earlier tonight, unforgettable not only for the feeling itself, but also for the surprise that embracing a corpse could have produced such impish joy.
Now that thrill whirled through her veins, except it was wilder and brighter than before. I wonder if this is how magic feels to Nikolai?
She laughed at the thought. Magic? In me? How silly.