Water! No, ice! Vika flung herself to the forest floor and waved her arm over her head, generating a dome of ice around her. She trembled as tree after tree slammed into her shield and sent icy shards stabbing into her neck and back. Crimson rivulets of blood trickled down the bodice of her dress. Vika squeezed her eyes shut.
The fiery assault seemed to last an eternity, and yet she held her position. Then, finally, the last trunk crashed into her ice shield, the earth shuddered, and the sky ceased to thunder.
Her smile burned even brighter.
CHAPTER TWO
Sergei sat on a nearby boulder the entire time Vika was crouched beneath her shield of ice. If he could, he would have helped her. But he couldn’t. It was part of her training. She would face dangers greater than this when she became Imperial Enchanter.
At the end of five hours, Vika had charmed the last of the fifty fallen trees to rise off her shelter, and the ice melted. She emerged in a puddle, shivering.
She clucked her tongue at Sergei. “Father, you could have killed me.”
“You know I would never do that. If I did, who would fetch my bread from the bakery every morning?”
“Well, the joke is on you, for it’s well past noon now, and you left your bread with me.” Vika winked as she reached into her basket and tossed him the icy loaf.
He defrosted it as it flew through the air, and it was toasty by the time he caught it. “You know I wouldn’t do anything that could kill you, but the tsar isn’t looking for someone to perform parlor tricks. Yes, there will be fancy balls and state dinners for which your aesthetic talents will be called upon. But there will also be politics and backstabbing and war.”
A smile bloomed across Vika’s face. “A little peril has never stopped me.” She tipped her head toward the charred remains of the bonfire. “In fact, it makes me want to be Imperial Enchanter even more.”
Sergei shook his head and laughed. “I know. You’re fiery and you like things even better when they are challenging, just like your mother did. Nothing is too daunting for you, Vikochka.”
She wrinkled her nose at the nickname. It was too cute for her now that she was grown, but Sergei couldn’t help it. He still remembered when she was a baby, so small he could fit her in his cupped palms.
When she was younger, Vika had sometimes lamented not having other magical children with whom to play. But she quickly outgrew that, for Sergei had explained that it made her special, and not only in Russia. Most of the world had forgotten about magic, and so enchanters had grown rarer. It was rumored that Morocco had an enchanter, as their sultan was a patron of the old ways. But that was it, really, besides the tsar, who tried to keep his own belief in mysticism quiet. It was a political liability to believe in the “occult.” Besides, concealing the fact that he had an Imperial Enchanter allowed the tsar a secret weapon against his enemies. Not that it was foolproof. Imperial Enchanters were still human, as evidenced by the unexpected death twenty years ago of the previous enchanter, Yakov Zinchenko, in the battle against Napoleon at Austerlitz.
Once, when Vika was six and just beginning her lessons, she had asked why Sergei wasn’t the Imperial Enchanter.
“My magic is much too small,” he’d answered, which was the truth, but only part of it. He’d swallowed the rest, a secret he kept for himself and hoped she’d never have to know.
“But my magic is big?” Vika had asked, oblivious.
“The biggest,” Sergei had said. “And I will teach you as best I can to become the greatest enchanter there ever was.”
Now, ten years later and a hundred times more powerful, Vika asked, “Are you worried I won’t be ready to become Imperial Enchanter?”
Sergei sighed. “No . . . I didn’t say that. I only meant . . . well, I want to keep you here on Ovchinin Island. For selfish reasons. I’d rather not share you with the tsar.”
“Oh, Father. You’re all gruff beard on the outside, but mush on the inside. Wonderful, sentimental mush.” She smiled in that way she used to when she was small, eyes big and innocent. Well, as innocent as was possible for Vika.
Sergei crossed the muddy patch of forest between them and wrapped his arms around her. “I do not envy you. It is a burdensome calling, to be the tsar’s enchanter. Promise me you’ll remain my mischievous Vikochka, no matter what the future may bring.”
“I swear it.” Vika touched a finger to the basalt pendant around her neck. It was something she did for the most unbreakable of promises, because swearing on her dead mother’s necklace seemed to lend solemnity to any commitment. It was also a tad theatrical, and Vika was fond of self-aware melodrama. Still, Sergei knew that the few promises she’d ever made on the necklace were sworn in complete earnestness.
“But you know,” Vika said as she pulled away from his embrace, “I wouldn’t mind leaving the island once in a while. Or ever.”
“I don’t like Saint Petersburg,” he said.
“What about Finland? It’s not far.”
“The Grand Duchy of Finland does not interest me at all.”