“Oh.” Renata nodded slowly and sank into the seat. The snow was fresh, soft powder, and its cushions were airier than goose down. Renata let out a little sound, something between confusion and pleasant surprise.
Once she was settled, Vika sat down, too. “I came to you because I need your help.”
Renata looked up at her and blinked.
“You see, Nikolai didn’t exactly die at the end of the Game—”
“What?”
Vika had to pause. It was harder retelling this than she’d anticipated. “He didn’t defeat me, but he defeated the Game, in a way.”
Renata paled. “Nikolai is alive?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“I—I don’t understand.”
Vika frowned. “Honestly, neither do I.” She took Renata’s hand and began to tell her everything she knew, from how the final duel had concluded to the shadow boy who’d appeared. Renata trembled the entire time.
The snow flurried a bit more fiercely around them.
Renata pulled at her braids. “But if he’s a shadow, how do we know he’s alive? Can Nikolai touch things, and can he feel them? Does he eat and drink and breathe like a real person? Does he even know who he is?”
Vika clutched the snowy armrest. “I don’t know. I saw him only once, and that was a week ago. I’ve tried to find him again since but haven’t been able to. That’s why I sought you out. Perhaps your tea leaves will know what’s happened to him.”
“The last time I read your leaves, I was wrong.” Renata frowned. “I prophesied that either you or Nikolai would die soon, but if what you’re saying is right, then my reading was not, because neither of you died.”
“Your leaves only predicted that death would come. They didn’t say for whom. So they were accurate, actually, because the tsar and tsarina passed, as did . . . Sergei.” Vika plucked at the sofa. A thread woven of snowflakes came out between her fingers. But the thread dissolved, seemingly as quickly as Vika was losing those she loved. She looked away from the droplets of water on her fingertips. “I just want to know something, anything, about Nikolai. Will you do it?”
Renata nodded slowly. She rose as if to fetch tea from the kitchen but then stopped as she saw the flurry of snow around them. “But, uh, where do we—?”
Vika held out an open palm, and a single steaming cup of tea appeared on it. It was a simple blue cup and saucer from her own table at home.
What if Nikolai did not appear in her leaves? What if their fortunes had crossed only in the past, but were no longer intertwined in the future? If so, then asking Renata to read these leaves would amount to nothing. And yet there were no other prophecies to read, because Nikolai was not around to drink tea and offer his cup.
Vika swallowed the tea as quickly as she could. She ignored the fact that it scalded all the way down. When all that remained were spindly leaves, she set the cup on its saucer.
Renata steadied the quivering in her hands and leaned forward. She pursed her lips as she studied the leaves, which clung to the inside of the cup with no discernible meaning. At least, nothing discernible to Vika. But that was why she had come to Renata.
“Is he in my leaves?” Vika asked.
After a few more seconds, Renata leaned back into the sofa. Snow puffed up around her. “Yes, he’s there,” she said.
Vika smiled.
The Game might be over, but their story was not.
But Renata coughed and wrapped a braid tautly around her finger, and Vika’s smile vanished in an instant. “What else is in the leaves?” she said.
Renata sighed. “You’re fighting over something again. And this time, death isn’t a small presence.”
“What do you mean?”
Renata released her grip on the braid and pointed to the black tea leaves, twisted and splayed from the bottom up to the rim. “Death is all over this cup. Whatever you’re fighting for, it will affect more than just you or Nikolai.”
Vika sank deep into the snowy cushions of the sofa. Her heart sank with her.
“I don’t know what to do,” Renata said as she stared at the cup.
Vika sat up. “We have to tell him.”
“What?”
“About the leaves. We didn’t last time, and it was a mistake. What if things could have been different if Nikolai had known?”
Renata hesitated but finally nodded. “You should go see him right away.”
But now Vika froze. Because she hadn’t been able to find him in over a week.
Perhaps the problem is me, she thought. Perhaps he’d appear for Renata, though. After all, he had kissed Renata right before the last duel of the Game.
Something fluttered inside Vika, something not entirely pretty. It was not butterflies but more like bats, jealous that Nikolai might be more amenable to seeing Renata than her. After all, Vika had been in his life mere months. Renata had been in Nikolai’s life for years.
But Vika pressed her palm to her chest and quelled the bats inside. I may have known Nikolai only a matter of months, but our relationship was far from shallow. Besides, this was not the time for something as petty as jealousy.
“No, it should be you who goes to the steppe bench,” Vika said, her voice tight. “Nikolai won’t show himself for me, but perhaps he will for you.”
Renata’s eyes lit up at the suggestion. “It’s worth a try. Ludmila would tell us to be optimistic, right? She’d say the glass is always half-full.”
But Vika didn’t respond. She merely bit her lip and hoped, but not too much. For when it came to her and Nikolai, optimism was made of warped glass.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The smell of laundry soap floated across the steppe dream. Nikolai would know that scent anywhere.
Renata.
He scrambled to his feet from where he lay in the brown grass. He wouldn’t hide from her, for he knew Renata was here for him, unlike Vika, who seemed to have come for Pasha’s benefit.
As soon as Renata saw him, she cried out and ran, alternately tripping in the grass and shoving it away.
“Oh, Nikolai, it’s true, you’re alive!”
She opened her arms as if to embrace him, but Nikolai stepped back.
“Careful,” he said. “I’m alive, but I’m not quite solid. You’ll fall straight through.”
Renata stopped, arms still outstretched. “I don’t understand.”
“Nor do I.” He exhaled loudly. Nikolai was accustomed to knowing the answers, and if he didn’t, to being able to reason them out. But his current predicament didn’t appear to care for logic. “I seem to have some substance, but not much. I’m a bit of a conundrum.”
Renata smiled. “You always have been.”
Nikolai made a small sound under his breath—something akin to laughter, but not quite—and dipped his head to concede the point. Then he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Renata, loosely, so that his shadow would not blur into her.