“Fitting, I suppose.” Nikolai wanted to pound his fist against the wall, but then he’d scare her away. Why couldn’t they be together? Why was there always something between them? And why was that something always the tsar’s game or the tsesarevich’s actions? Clearly, the tsardom is the problem. Or, more precisely, the ones who have been wearing the crown. It would be different when Nikolai was on the throne.
“Nikolai?”
He blinked.
“Nikolai.”
He blinked again. “Pardon?”
Vika pressed even closer against the outside of the eggshell. The corners of her mouth turned slightly down. “Why are you doing all this? What’s happened to you?”
He sighed, the adrenaline of a moment ago now gone as Vika pulled him back to the present. What had happened to him? There was no adequate answer.
“You tried to kill Pasha. Please, stop. Find a way to make amends, however you can. Don’t you care about us at all anymore?”
Nikolai crossed his arms. “How could you be with Pasha after what he did?”
“What do you mean, ‘with Pasha’?”
“The end of the Game . . . I—I just don’t understand. You should be with me, trying to destroy him.”
Vika shook her head vehemently. “No, I shouldn’t. Besides, you don’t know the whole story.”
“Then tell me.”
Vika yanked off her glove, pulled up the sleeve of her coat, and held her arm up against the outside of the egg. An intricate cuff of gold vines encircled her wrist. The double-headed Romanov eagle was affixed to it, its ruby eyes on her like a guard. Not a guard to protect her, though. A guard to watch her. It did not seem like a gift for a beloved, as Renata had thought.
“What is that?” Nikolai whispered.
“Ownership,” Vika said. “I’m bound to serve the tsardom.”
“So you’re not together.”
Vika snorted. “You thought I was betrothed to Pasha? I hated him after the Game, Nikolai. I suffered from it, too, you know. But since then, I’ve come to understand Pasha and his actions a little more. Like me, he made horrible decisions in reaction to grief. But he regrets it, and because of that, I’ve forgiven him. But promised in marriage? No. The only way I belong to him is through the vow I made at Bolshebnoie Duplo. As Imperial Enchanter, if I disobey the ruler of the empire, the bracelet burns me.”
Nikolai’s hand went to his left collarbone. He could still remember how it would scorch him. The phantom pain would likely haunt him his entire life. But Vika had a new mark that was anything but a ghost.
“If I became tsar,” Nikolai said, “you wouldn’t have to do Pasha and Yuliana’s bidding.” His voice grew louder as adrenaline began to rush through him again. “If I became tsar, it could be you and me together. Imagine how powerful we would be.”
Vika shook her head.
All right, then. Power did not appeal to her. “We could do so much for the Russian people, you and I. With more and more magic from Bolshebnoie Duplo, we could increase the harvests by tenfold, and no one would ever be hungry again. We could give everyone the finest coats so they wouldn’t die in winter anymore. And someday, our magic might be so great that we could cure all the disease in the empire.”
“You don’t have to be tsar to do that, Nikolai. We’re enchanters. If Bolshebnoie Duplo’s magic is strong enough, we could do those things anyway.”
“It would be more fun, though, if we were tsar and tsarina.”
“Fun?” Vika threw her arms up. “You’ve attempted murder of the tsesarevich and poisoned thousands of others. I may be bound to Pasha, but it’s as if you’re bound by something else, too.”
Nikolai laughed. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps being a shadow was changing him.
Vika bit her lip again. “Nikolai . . . Tell me how to help you. Is there something else controlling you? Who—or what—was that at the Black Moth with you?”
Merde. Vika had seen Aizhana? The thrill of imagining himself as tsar vanished, and Nikolai rested his forehead against the eggshell wall. He and Vika were both positioned that way now, as if they were sharing an intimate secret rather than pitted against each other.
“That . . . person is my mother,” he said. “She saw you when you evanesced me?”
“‘Saw’ might be too tame a description.”
“Aizhana is passionate, to put it kindly.”
“And to put it unkindly?”
“She takes wrongs to me very personally and very violently. She killed my father for making me play the Game.”
Vika pushed away from the eggshell. “Your mother killed the tsar?”
“I had no part in it,” Nikolai said. He pressed his fingertips harder into the wall, as if that would somehow draw Vika back.
But she stayed where she was, boots planted in the gravel, there being no snow here in Letniy Isle’s eternal summer.
“If you want to help me,” Nikolai said, “fight with me. We’re two enchanters; we’ll figure out a way to circumvent the bracelet.”
She moved farther away, shaking her head. “It’s not right.”
“Vika—”
“No. Your mother killed the tsar. I have to tell Pasha. I have to go.” And just like that, she disappeared and left Nikolai standing there, alone.
Always, always Pasha. Pasha better than Nikolai when they were kids. Pasha demanding the end of the Game. Pasha taking Vika for his enchantress by his side. It was only a small consolation that Pasha hadn’t also convinced her to marry him.
Nikolai slammed his fist into the wall, since there was no one on the other side to scare away anymore. The eggshell didn’t even dent, let alone crack or indicate a means of escape. He grabbed a book off the stone desk and hurled it across the parlor. Then he enchanted all the books, and they flung themselves miserably and futilely at the walls, breaking their spines and tearing their pages until the carpet of flowers was littered with paper and words.
Nikolai shuddered. He took in the mess of the room. The beautiful room Vika had created for him.
The beautiful prison to which he’d been condemned.
But Pasha wasn’t the only prince who was good at escaping. Nikolai had found his way out of the steppe bench.
And I’ll find my way out again, he thought. But this time when I get free, Pasha will die.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
I’m actually glad I don’t know who my real parents were, Vika thought as she rematerialized inside the Winter Palace halls. A tsar and a monster had given birth to an enchanter. What horrors might have combined to create an enchantress? Vika bit her lip and tried to shake the thought away. Sergei, she reminded herself. He might not have been her biological father, but he was all she’d needed. She clung to his memory and regained her focus.
Then Vika strode toward Yuliana’s apartment. The halls along the way were decorated with holiday garlands made of hand-blown glass—too expensive for anyone other than the imperial family—but Vika didn’t have time to stop to admire their delicate beauty. She whisked right past them.
“I have something important to tell the grand princess,” Vika said to the guards as soon as she turned the last corner to arrive at Yuliana’s doors.
The bearded, older one on the right lurched toward her. “How did you get in here? These are the imperial family’s private residences.”
Vika evaded his attempt to grab her. “The tsesarevich let me in,” she lied.