There’s no escaping death. Either I’ll be defeated and therefore die, or I’ll triumph but live with the guilt of sentencing the girl to her end. There is no such thing as a winner in the Game.
There was a soft knock on his door. Nikolai startled and dropped the dagger, which embedded itself in his windowsill. Who was it? He had ordered no one to disturb him unless it was time for a meal. . . .
He charmed his pocket watch out of his waistcoat. Oh. Two in the afternoon. It was, indeed, time for a meal.
He crossed the room and unlocked the door, opening it a crack. He expected one of the older women from the kitchen with a tray, but instead it was Renata. Nikolai almost smiled—smiles were hard to come by since the oath—and opened the door wider.
“I thought you might like some company while you eat,” she said, slipping into his room with a tray laden with bouillon, chicken à l’estragon, and apple tarts. She shut the door behind her with her foot.
Nikolai furrowed his brow as he took the tray from her. “Are we expecting guests?” As Galina’s “charitable project,” Nikolai usually ate what the servants ate unless she had company. Only then did he get to take part in such lavish meals.
“I convinced Cook that you needed some cheering up, and that a nice lunch might do the trick.”
“You’re really too kind to me.”
“I know.” Renata smiled as she cleared a space on Nikolai’s cluttered desk, which was littered with crumpled papers full of discarded ideas for the Game. She folded a tablecloth to fit on the small square of free space.
“Will you join me?” Nikolai asked.
“I already had my piroshki and cheese in the kitchen.”
“I refuse to eat if you don’t.”
She wrinkled her nose and flattened a crease in the tablecloth on his desk. “Don’t be difficult.”
“I’m not. I’m being courteous.”
“The countess would have my head if she found out I ate any of this food.”
“The countess is indisposed. By a magical cyclone.”
Renata smirked.
Nikolai set down the tray on the tablecloth. “After you, mademoiselle.”
She hesitated.
“It’s quite all right, Renata. I promise. You won’t turn into a frog if you eat something.”
“It’s not that . . . it’s . . . I’ve never eaten anything prepared so beautifully before. But you wouldn’t understand.”
“Believe me, I do.” And he did. He still recalled his first formal dinner in this house after Galina had taken him from the steppe. Important-Someone-or-Other had been visiting from Moscow, and the Zakrevskys—the count had still been alive then—had served a feast of soups and oysters and roasted pheasant, so different from the sparse helpings of tough mutton Nikolai had grown up on. But what he remembered most was the crème br?lée, a decadent custard topped with a delicate pane of caramelized sugar “glass.” It was the most heavenly thing Nikolai had ever seen, let alone tasted, at that point in his young life.
“Have dessert first,” he said to Renata. “And eat it with your hands. Galina isn’t around.”
She smiled shyly, as if he had read in her mind exactly what she had been wanting to do. Then she picked up an apple tart and bit in.
Nikolai did not, though. He wasn’t hungry. He hadn’t been hungry since the oath. He’d eaten, of course, but only because he needed the energy to function, not because he found any pleasure in the consumption of his meals.
Instead, he walked back up to his window and unwedged Galina’s knife from the sill. Then he charmed open his desk drawer, unlocked the enchanted hidden panel he’d constructed within, and secured the knife back inside.
He rubbed the back of his neck. It was something he’d done for as long as he could remember, whenever he was stressed. It helped him focus. Although it was questionable whether it was doing any good now.
“All I can think about is how ugly the city is,” Nikolai said, “and how they ought to dress up the grandstands for Pasha’s birthday, and how Nevsky Prospect, one of the supposed gems of Saint Petersburg, ought to have been repainted. I should be focusing on the Game, but my mind keeps wandering to stupid details about birthdays.”
The scar beneath Nikolai’s collarbone flared at the mention of the Game. It had been burning hotter every hour, as if impatient that Nikolai had already taken three days after the oath and not made his move. But this first play would set the tone for the entire Game, and he wanted to get it right.
“Aren’t you supposed to do something for the tsesarevich’s birthday?” Renata said. “You could repaint Nevsky Prospect as your move. You’d kill two birds with one stone.”
“I’m not supposed to be killing birds. I’m supposed to be killing the girl.”
“Her name is Vika.”
“What?” Nikolai flinched.