“I don’t want it to be both.”
He cast his facade so he would look like the boy she’d once trusted. He held out his hand to her. “Then reconsider my offer. Join me.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
He looked precisely how Vika remembered him before he’d become a shadow—like a poisonous autumn crocus, deadly beautiful with no antidote. Her breath caught and her entire body went weak for a moment, just like at the masquerade ball during the Game. It took a great deal of restraint not to take his hand or to reach up and caress the elegantly sharp lines of his face.
But, hard as it was, Vika resisted.
Nikolai held her gaze, though, and she couldn’t look away.
“Why did you come to my house?” he finally asked.
She blinked and broke from the trance induced by his eyes. Had he done that to her on purpose? Or was it merely a side effect of being near Nikolai?
Both, most likely.
“I wanted to see you,” she managed to say.
“Is that the only reason?”
There were many reasons, but right now, wanting to see him seemed to overshadow them all.
“It’s the only reason that matters,” she said.
The walls in the black room suddenly glowed with specks of orange, as if lava had been resting deep inside and now came closer to the surface through the basalt’s pores. Vika’s heart slammed against the bodice of her dress.
Nikolai’s new brand of magic, cold and smooth, wrapped like black silk around them. Vika shivered as he looked down at her, and she, up at him.
“I’m sorry about your mother,” she said.
“I’m not.” His eyes, despite his shroud, were still shadow, but they shaded even darker after he said that.
The lava behind Vika began to seep out of the walls, viscous and too slow to be a threat yet, but definitely hotter.
Nikolai grasped her arms, whether to keep her with him or out of instinct, to protect her from the lava, she didn’t know. She also didn’t know if she wanted to break free from his hold. A different sort of heat ran through her at his touch. Fire through her core.
And to think, they weren’t actually even touching each other. This was a fantasy. Their real selves were elsewhere.
“May I have the honor of dancing with you?” Nikolai asked.
Vika looked all around. The lava had flowed down the walls and to the floor now, pooling and flaring in a circle around them. “Here?”
“Why not?”
She didn’t move. “Why now?”
“Because you didn’t take my hand earlier when I offered it. You came to my house, but you haven’t decided yet what to do with me. So I must convince you. Perhaps a dance will do it. And if not, well, it’s possible you or I may die soon—truly die—with you on Pasha’s side and me on mine, and if that’s the case, then I would like to have danced with you once more.”
She hesitated. But perhaps, if he still loves me as he did during the Game, a dance will remind him of what he used to be like. Perhaps I can still help him.
“What shall we dance?” she asked. “I must warn you I don’t know the waltz or the polonaise or anything fancy.”
He laughed, and in that laugh, she heard a small measure of the former Nikolai. Her breath hitched with hope.
“You know the mazurka,” he said. Music began to play in the volcano, a very lively tune.
But she didn’t, not anymore. Nikolai had changed too much, and her heart had forgotten their rhythm.
Yet when he offered his hand again, there was no possibility of her saying no, even if he’d wanted her to dance with him off the edge of the earth.
Because the mazurka was the essence of their beings.
Nikolai held one of Vika’s hands in his and placed her other hand on his shoulder before wrapping his free arm around the middle of her back.
Suddenly, she remembered how it had felt to dance with him at Pasha’s masquerade.
“Will you trust me?” he had asked.
“To do what?”
“To dance for you?”
“No,” Vika had said.
Nikolai had shrugged. “No matter. I’m not giving you a choice.”
Then magic had rushed around her and levitated her off the floor. Without needing to think, Vika and Nikolai had glided and spun, swiveled and sidestepped, a blur of movement together, as if lifted by the music and the wind.
Vika wanted to feel that again. Here. Now. In this volcano dream.
“Charm my feet,” she breathed into Nikolai’s ear. “Like at the masquerade.”
He squeezed her hand and pulled her closer.
Smooth black silk unfurled around Vika, chilling and beguiling her at the same time. But she would not let go of Nikolai. The lava swirled ever closer around them.
The music flared. Their feet glided over the black rock, their bodies turning and stepping and twirling in perfect unison. It turned out that her heart had not forgotten the mazurka after all, merely locked its memory deep inside to protect her. But now the lava glowed brighter, and everywhere there was black silk and orange flame, and Vika was a wild girl with fiery hair, dancing with the Prince of Darkness and not caring that they spun together through this imagined hell.
They danced at a furious pace, blowing up all the dust from the volcano floor and surrounding themselves in a whirlwind of it. Vika’s boots lifted off the ground, and Nikolai levitated, too, and soon enough they were dancing above the lava, weaving in and out of the plumes of smoke. Vika let out an insouciant laugh.
Eventually, though, the song ended, and Vika and Nikolai floated back down to the ground. Their breath still came and went with the rhythm, inhales and exhales in triple time.
They held on to each other longer than they needed to.
“I love you, Vika,” he said softly. “Nothing about that has changed.”
“But everything else has.”
He tightened his grip on her arms, and a surge of his magic, a black part of it that he’d kept cleverly hidden from her until now, swept through her, skittering like a thousand centipedes that nipped at her with their venomous beaks.
She gasped at their touch.
Vika shivered, despite the lava creeping nearly to where they stood in the center of the room. Nikolai’s magic couldn’t keep her warm. It could only take from her, and from everyone else.
She tried to break away. But she couldn’t. This was his Dream Bench, his creation, and she was just an ordinary girl.
“If you joined me against Pasha, we could dance like this together forever,” he said. “Tsar and tsarina. Magic on the throne.”
She shuddered at the ambitious lust in his tone. What would a Nikolai like this do once he had power? There would be no one to counter him.
No one, unless Vika stood her ground against him. The sense of duty—and of what was right—that Sergei had instilled in her burned in her core.
“I don’t want to rule Russia with you,” she said.
“We would be magnificent.”