Three hundred and fifty-two excruciating ticks and tocks later, Nikolai arrived.
“Vika,” he said as the guard who’d escorted him closed the door to the room. Nikolai’s face was composed, elegant as ever, but the slight quaver in his voice betrayed him.
“Fancy seeing you here,” Vika said, trying to lighten the sense of impending doom before it crushed them both. “You manage to dress impeccably, even in the middle of the night. Although I can’t say I’m surprised.”
His carefully controlled rigidity cracked, and he gave her his shy smile. “You look lovely, as well.”
“I thought I might attempt to be presentable if I’m to die.”
Nikolai’s smile wilted. Vika bit the inside of her cheek. So much for witty banter saving this night.
“Do you know why we were summoned?” Nikolai asked. He didn’t sit in any of the chairs, and the guard did not command him to.
Vika shook her head. “I haven’t a clue.”
An interior door burst open at that moment—Vika and Nikolai must have been in an antechamber of some sort—and the tsar strode out. Vika’s stomach again leaped to her throat. Nikolai gripped the back of a chair and appeared equally ill. But somehow, they both managed to curtsy and bow to the tsar.
“Rise,” he said. Then he waved his guard out of the room. When the soldier had shut the door firmly behind them, he said, “This is not about the Game, enchanters, so you can stop looking like cattle going to slaughter.”
Oh, thank heavens. Vika exhaled. Although the image of cattle going to slaughter stuck with her. It might not be tonight, but it would be some night (or day) not too far away.
“The tsarina is unwell,” the tsar continued, “and she and I need to go to the South, to the restorative weather of the Sea of Azov. But I fear she will not survive a weeks-long carriage ride. Therefore, I need your help.”
Nikolai bowed his head. “Your Imperial Majesty, I am happy to be of service. I can enchant your coach to carry you there faster.”
The tsar grunted. He turned to Vika. “And you? Can you do any better?”
Vika bristled. Was this part of the competition, or was it not? The tsar had claimed it was not technically part of the Game. So why did it still seem as if she and Nikolai were being pitted against each other?
And yet this was what Vika had always wanted. To use her magic for the tsar. Perhaps she could heal the tsarina.
But, no. From what Pasha had told her on the island, the tsarina’s condition was far more dire than anything Vika had worked on before. Mending the broken bones and stomachaches of animals was nothing compared to healing a sickness that even doctors could not cure. And Vika did not want to make a mistake. What if she made the tsarina worse? What if she killed her?
But the tsar hadn’t asked Vika and Nikolai to cure the tsarina. He’d asked them to get her to the Sea of Azov.
“I can evanesce—magically transfer—you and the tsarina, Your Imperial Majesty,” Vika said. But she didn’t look at Nikolai. She didn’t want to see if she’d upset him by showing him up.
“You can do that?” The tsar raised his brows.
“Yes, Your Imperial Majesty.”
“Will it hurt the tsarina?”
“I . . .” Vika wasn’t sure. She’d only evanesced someone else once. And really, she’d only ever evanesced herself twice, if she didn’t count the two-foot experiment at Preobrazhensky Creek when she was younger. Blazes, what had she just committed herself to?
“No,” Nikolai said, his tone steady. “It will not hurt the tsarina when Vika evanesces her. It’s mildly disorienting, but not painful.” Nikolai glanced over at Vika and gave her a subtle nod.
She felt the tug at her chest again, that connection to him, and she smiled. He wasn’t angry that her solution to the tsar’s problem was better. He supported her. Vika stood taller. Nikolai’s confidence in her shored up her own.
“Very well then,” the tsar said. “I shall make arrangements so the rest of our belongings will follow by coach, but the tsarina and I will leave tonight.”
The tsar marched to the door that led to the hall and flung it open. He gave orders to the guards stationed outside. A minute later, he strode back into the room, straight past Vika and Nikolai, and walked through the other, interior door into a different room.
“I suppose everyone will just think they left in the night for a romantic rendezvous,” Nikolai said quietly.
Vika flushed. Not at the thought of the tsar and tsarina running away together, but at the sudden fantasy of her and Nikolai, escaping the city and the Game for their own secret tryst. She remembered what it felt like even just holding his hand in the steppe dream, how keenly aware she’d been of every single point at which his glove had pressed into hers. How her skin had tingled beneath the satin. How her composure had dissolved to jelly.
Now she looked up to find Nikolai watching her, and the heat rose in her cheeks again. He couldn’t know what she was thinking, could he?
He smiled, then looked away.