Too true. Vika knew the ballerina represented her, and the Jack the other enchanter. Like the puppets, she and her opponent had never had a choice: their destiny was a pas de deux, a splendor and a torment fated for the two of them.
And yet, there was something about the other enchanter, about the magic he chose, that drew her to him, as if the bond between them was not an altogether evil thing. It was more like a tenuous thread attempting to reconnect two halves of a whole.
And although Vika hated to admit it, she’d dreamed of him more than once. Each time, he would appear as a shadow boy, but each morning, just before she woke, she would catch a glimpse of his real face. . . .
The bubble around Vika quivered.
I am tied irretrievably to my enemy, she realized.
The Jack and ballerina continued to twirl around the sky. The music soared louder and louder. It crescendoed to a furious trill. And then it suddenly broke off into silence.
Every muscle in Vika’s body tensed. The Jack and ballerina halted their dance, as if they, too, were startled.
The crowd gasped then and pointed at the ballerina’s chest. Although she hadn’t heard Vika’s earlier warning, the ballerina heard the audience now. She looked down at the bodice of her dress. A red silk handkerchief blossomed from where her porcelain heart ought to be.
“I knew she couldn’t trust him,” Vika said.
The ballerina’s painted mouth formed a devastated O. She glanced at the Jack. He looked not at her, but at a cloud near his feet, his wooden mouth set in a grim straight line.
Then the ballerina went limp and plummeted from the sky into her box. The Jack hung his head. The ballerina’s lid lowered and latched with a click.
Palace Square burst into deafening applause. Everyone clapped and howled.
Everyone except Vika, for something had begun to press on her from above, forcing her to her knees. What? How? I have a shield—
But then she saw them, thousands of tiny needles protruding from the cobblestones at her feet. They must have appeared while she was busy watching the Jack and ballerina. The needles bowed in unison, as if they knew she’d finally seen them, before they retracted into the ground.
Those impertinent needles punctured and destroyed my shield! Vika hadn’t even known it was possible. But perhaps that was the problem. She couldn’t properly protect herself from something of which she was unaware.
She pushed her hands upward and tried to stand, but the pressure of whatever was pushing on her was too strong. Vika flung herself forward to escape, but smashed into an unseen wall.
She spun to the left. Trapped.
To the right. Blocked off.
Backward. Another wall.
It was as if she was inside the ballerina’s music box.
“No!”
The invisible cube kept shrinking, and Vika’s lungs burned as the air grew thin. She was nearly at a crouch.
In front of her, Ludmila cheered, oblivious to what was happening. Could nobody see Vika? The enchanter must have cast a deception shroud around her. And the invisible box was now almost the same size as she was, with little room to spare. Vika pressed outward with her palms one more time and kicked with her feet. She rammed the top of the box with her head.
If I stay inside, I’ll die, and I’ll never see Father again, never become Imperial Enchanter, never have a chance to become who I was meant to be.
As the sides of the cube squeezed out the last of the air, Vika felt all its edges against her. She pushed up, down, in every direction again, rebounding like a marble rattling in a box too small. The corners pressed inward. The walls crushed against the sides of Vika’s ribs.
Oh, mercy. She winced at the pressure that she knew would soon turn into pain.
But what if they weren’t walls? What if they weren’t solid, but vapor instead?
“Steam,” she gasped.
The inside of the box began to grow hot and humid.
Vika hovered on the brink of a faint. Just a little more . . .
She ran her fingers along the sides of the box and imagined them transforming from glass—or whatever they were—into steam. Please, please, turn into steam.
The walls of her near coffin exploded. Vika tumbled out of the stifling mist. She wheezed as air rushed to fill her empty lungs.
And then, from somewhere on the other side of Palace Square, came a voice. It was quiet, yet it cut through the noise of the still-applauding crowd.
“Bravo,” it said, and Vika knew the compliment was for her, not for the Jack and ballerina’s show. “Your move, Enchanter Two.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
She was still alive. He was still alive. Nikolai was glad, but he wasn’t. Because now it was the girl’s move, and every time she had another move meant another time Nikolai might die.
The next evening, just as an audience formed in Palace Square to wait for the Jack and ballerina to dance again, the sky darkened. It went from pale blue to storm gray in the time it took the nearby clock tower to chime six times. Nikolai looked up, along with everyone else in the square.