The Crown’s Game (24 page)

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“I’m only asking about you.”

Vika focused on a deformed crystal of syrup on her thumb. “I’m not in a
position to fall in love. With you, or with anyone else.”

If he could, Pasha would have sucked the sugar off her finger. But it wasn’t appropriate, and she’d made it clear she wasn’t interested, so he settled for removing his glove and wiping the sugar crystal off her fingertip, lingering for a second as their hands touched. Even that sent sparks through every one of Pasha’s nerves.

“Will you
tell me if that ever changes?” he said, his voice a touch hoarse.

She frowned. “I doubt it will.”

“But if it does?”

She looked up at Pasha, and it took everything in him not to bend down and steal a kiss. “Yes,” she said. “If it changes, I will tell you.”

He sighed again.

“You have a lot weighing on you,” Vika said. “I’ll leave you to enjoy the island and sort through your troubles. I hope
for the best for your mother.”

“You don’t have to go—”

But she had already vanished. How? Now Pasha allowed his hand to run through his hair. It was the third time in an hour she had startled him.

He dashed to the other end of the island to the pier, and there she was, already halfway across the bay on her leaf. He watched her all the way until she made it to the opposite shore.

She was unlike
any girl he had ever known. And likely would ever know. His nerves were still on edge from their encounter.

He started to head back toward the main promenade, perhaps to sit on the steppe bench or the Ovchinin Island one. Vika was right. Pasha did have a great deal to ponder. But as he walked, he turned to look at the water one last time. She was gone, but her presence was not.

Tied to the dock
was a gift. His own enchanted leaf.

I
n his study, the tsar pored over his maps of the Crimea, as well as his generals’ most recent reports on the activities of the Ottomans. It was as Yuliana had warned. He should have made this trip south a while ago.

There was a gentle knock from the hall. Followed by a cough, weaker yet louder than the knock. The tsar hurried to open the door.

The tsarina smiled and coughed
again into her handkerchief.

“Elizabeth, my dear,” the tsar said, offering his arm and leading her to the armchair by his desk. “Why are you here? It’s late. You ought to be in bed.”

She wore a white dressing gown with lace at the collar and sleeves. Her hair was swept up in a loose bun. When younger, she’d been known as one of the most beautiful women in Europe. But even now, older and ill,
she was arresting. “I just wanted to see you, love,” she said.

The tsar kissed her on the top of her head. He had
disregarded her for decades; they had married too young, when he was fifteen and she only fourteen, and the tsar had openly had many affairs. But age had worn him down—as had politics and too many wars—and in the end, it was Elizabeth he wanted. She had been regal and patient through
everything, and when he came back to her, she forgave him his trespasses right away. The tsar was not so kind to himself.

“I am looking forward to the Sea of Azov with you,” he said.

“As am I, love. You deserve the rest.”

“There is no rest for the tsar. But at least I will be with you.”

Elizabeth nodded. But then she coughed into her handkerchief again.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes . . .” She
wheezed as she drew in a shallow breath and devolved into another fit of coughing so deep, blood sputtered from her throat.

“You need the doctors—”

“No.” Elizabeth waved her handkerchief at him. “I’ll be fine. I only need you and the sun in the South.” She leaned her cheek on the tsar’s arm. “Will you help me to my room, love?” Her voice frayed at the edges.

He softened. “Of course, dear.”
He pulled her up to her feet, but she stumbled and collapsed against him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

The tsar shook his head. Then he wrapped one arm around her shoulders and slipped the other behind her knees. She had lost so much weight, he lifted her as easily as if she weren’t even there.

What a wicked twist of fate that Elizabeth might be ripped away from him when he had only now begun
to appreciate her. He needed to get her to the South as soon as possible. It was the only hope of saving her.

As he carried her out of the study and into the hall, the captain of his Guard fell in line behind him. The tsar didn’t even look at him as he gave his order: “Get me Nikolai Karimov and Vika Andreyeva. Immediately.”

T
he guard led Vika through the Winter Palace, past all the paintings and mirrors and wall upon wall of windows, all dark at this hour of night, until they reached a door flanked by more guards. They nodded at the soldier who escorted her, and he opened the doors and let her in.

Vika’s stomach had been in knots since the moment the guard appeared at her flat, and she’d hardly
breathed the entire carriage ride here. The streets of Saint Petersburg had passed in a blur of nondescript night, and all she could think was that the Game was over. Either she or Nikolai was done. The tsar would declare a winner and a loser tonight.

But as she stepped into the room in the palace, some of the tension in her body eased. For this was no stern throne room. With its peach silk drapes
and pale-yellow furniture and the scent of roses perfuming the air, it seemed completely opposite of a place from which the tsar would sentence one of the enchanters to die.

“You may sit until the others arrive,” the guard said.

Vika didn’t feel like sitting. Although the surroundings placated her a little, her nerves still jangled. But she sat on a daffodil-colored settee, because the guard
wore a sword on his hip that she was quite certain he would use should she prove to be anything other than compliant.

Vika listened to the small clock in the nearby cabinet tick.

Tick.

Tick.

Tock.

Tick.

Tick.

Tock
.

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.

Oh, mercy.

Soft coughing came from the room inside. Then, a minute later, the tsar reappeared, his countenance much softened, with the tsarina clutching his arm. They were quite a picture, him in his formal military uniform with his brow knitted tight with worry, and her in her white nightgown, smiling kindly but looking anything but regal. Vika pulled herself together to refocus on the task at
hand. Scandalous thoughts about other enchanters would have to wait.

“I am sorry to trouble you at this hour,” the tsarina said to Vika and Nikolai. “But Alexander said you could help me.”

Alexander.
How humanizing to hear the tsar referred to by his name. For the first time, Vika saw him as simply
another person, not the heaven-appointed ruler of an empire, and not the final arbiter of the
Game.

“Yes, Your Imperial Majesty,” Vika said. “I believe I can help.”

“Are you a doctor?”

Vika shook her head at this gentle, frail woman who had thought Vika’s snowy gown at the ball had been a mere illusion of fabric. “No, Your Imperial Majesty. I am not a doctor.”

“My dear,” the tsar said, “these two are enchanters. They work with magic.”

“Magic?”

He squeezed her hand. “Yes. Magic. It’s
real.”

The tsarina’s eyes widened, and Vika could see Pasha in her expression. That innocent wonderment at the existence of “otherness” in their previously ordinary world.

“I am going to evanesce you to the Sea of Azov,” Vika said.

“Oh, my. What does that mean? And . . . right now?”

“It means I will magically transport you there, whenever you are ready.”

“What do you need me to do?” the tsarina
asked. “How will it feel?”

“You don’t need to do anything,” the tsar said. “Correct?” He directed the question at both Vika and Nikolai.

Nikolai stepped forward. “Your Imperial Majesty, do you like champagne?”

She smiled up at him. “I do.”

“Well, evanescing is a bit like being transformed into champagne. Vika’s magic will turn you into tiny bubbles, and you will fly through the air, a bit
giddy and a great
deal effervescent, all the way to the sea. And then when you arrive, you’ll morph from bubbles back to yourself again, with the tsar by your side.”

The tsarina smiled even brighter. “I rather like the idea of being champagne.” She turned to Vika. “All right. I am ready.”

“Your Imperial Majesty, just one thing, if I may . . . ,” Nikolai said.

The tsarina nodded.

He flicked
his wrist and transformed her nightgown into a burgundy traveling dress. A thick mink coat appeared as well and settled on her shoulders.

The tsarina gasped, but clapped her hands, delighted. “I should have thought to change. How silly to travel in a nightgown.”

Nikolai dipped his head and smiled. “Even evanescing ought to be done in style, Your Imperial Majesty.”

She smiled back kindly at
him. “Indeed.” She turned to Vika. “I believe Alexander and I are truly ready now.”

The tsar nodded, himself pulling on a fur-lined greatcoat.

Vika glanced at Nikolai. Again, he gave her his subtle nod, his confidence. She turned to the tsar and tsarina.

One breath. Two breaths. Three . . .

And she evanesced the tsar and tsarina out of the Winter Palace, all the way to the sea.