The Crown's Game (The Crown's Game, #1)

by Evelyn Skye

The Crown’s Game is an old one, older than the tsardom itself. It began long ago, in the age of Rurik, Prince of Novgorod, when Russia was still a cluster of tribes, wild and lawless and young. As the country matured over the centuries, so, too, did the game. But always, always it retained its untamed fierceness. For the winner of the game, there would be unimaginable power. For the defeated, desolate oblivion. The Crown’s Game was not one to lose.

The smell of sugar and yeast welcomed Vika even before she stepped into the pumpkin-shaped shop on the main street of their little town. She resisted the urge to burst into Cinderella Bakery—her father had labored for sixteen years to teach her how to be demure—and she slipped into the shop and took her place quietly at the end of the line of middle-aged women. One of them turned to greet her but shrank away when she saw it was Vika, as people always did. It was as if they suspected that what ran through her veins was not blood as in the rest of them, but something hotter and more volatile that might burn any who came too near. Her wild red hair with its streak of jet black down the center likely did nothing to settle the women either. The only thing “normal” about Vika was her dress, the pretty (albeit rumpled) green gown her father insisted she wear whenever she went into town—minus the dreadful yellow ribbon that cinched her waist too tightly, which she’d rather conveniently “lost” in Preobrazhensky Creek.

Vika stumbled as she hurried up the narrow dirt path that wound through the hills of Ovchinin Island and into the woods. She was supposed to maintain a practiced calm when she was out where people could see her, but it was difficult. Sergei said it was because Vika was like a jinni whose bottle was too small to contain her. One day, I’ll create a world where there are no bottles at all, she thought. For now, she wanted to get back to her father, and to the challenge he’d designed for her. As Vika crossed the perimeter of the forest, she leaned forward, muscles set yet relaxed, like a veteran racehorse on the starting line. Two more years, she thought. Two more years of training, and my magic will be powerful enough to serve the tsar and the empire. Maybe then her figurative jinni bottle would finally be big enough.

The trees were nearly upon her. 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.

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.”

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.”

“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.” “It might interest me.” “I am sure you will do plenty of traveling once you’re Imperial Enchanter. But my time with you is limited. Humor an old man and stay on the island with me a bit longer. It’s only seven more seasons until you turn eighteen.” Vika chewed on her lip. Sergei braced himself. He knew that glint in her eyes; when you had an enchantress as a daughter, disagreements often became more demonstrative than mere words.

“I’ll challenge you even more in your lessons.” Vika perked up. “Really?” “As much as you’d like.” “I’d like to be a menace to anyone who dares to trouble Russia.” “You already are a menace.” Vika pecked Sergei on the cheek. “Then make me a bigger one.”

Nikolai’s pocket watch clicked as the hour struck two in the morning. He ought to have gone to bed long ago, but here he still was, standing in front of a tri-fold mirror in his bedroom as a measuring tape and several pins flew around him, designing a new frock coat. For a once pudgy orphan from the Kazakh steppe, Nikolai had grown up to be rather striking. His eyes were dark and fierce, his face and body all sharp planes, and yet there was an impossible fluidity to the way he moved—in fact, even in the way he stood—that was both incongruous with his trenchant edges and an inseparable part of his being. It was a brooding sort of elegance not often seen on a boy of eighteen. The clothing he tailored was, of course, necessary for life in the heart of the capital. There was always an invitation to lunch or to play cards or to go to the countryside to hunt. But Nikolai had had to fend for himself in every one of these realms, for his mentor and benefactor, Countess Galina Zakrevskaya, was not about to spend a kopek on him for new boots or a proper rifle for shooting grouse, and certainly not for dance lessons, even though Galina’s friends deemed it fashionable to invite her charity case to their balls. And so Nikolai had learned to barter. He delivered packages for the tailors at Bissette & Sons in exchange for bolts of cloth. He sharpened swords for an army lieutenant in return for lessons. He served as an unpaid assistant to Madame Allard, the ballroom instructor to all the ...

worth at least the same as the noble-born boys in the capital, and he refused to give anyone an excuse to prove otherwise. So while Nikolai might not have belonged to Saint Petersburg society, he was in it, in his own ill-fitting way.

However, it wouldn’t be as easy as knocking on the Winter Palace door and asking for the job. Well, it would have been, if Nikolai were the only enchanter in Russia, but it so happened that there had been two enchanters born after the last one perished. It was an anomaly, having more than one enchanter at a time, but not completely unprecedented. Like Mother Nature’s occasional deviations from the norm, so Russia’s magic sometimes gifted the empire with a pair of enchanters rather than only one. But there was a solution for that. “It’s a game,” Galina had told Nikolai when she’d taken him under her tutelage. “The one with the best magic wins.”

“I doubt they will mind one less mouth to feed,” Galina said. Which was true. The villagers had traded him to Galina all too easily, in exchange for two horses and two sheep. They’d been happy to be rid of the boy with powers they did not understand, that seemed to them to stem from the devil. So now, even though Nikolai grumbled as he glanced at his pocket watch and at the empty space where his scissors and cloth had just been, he only half meant the curses he swore under his breath. I didn’t come all this way from the steppe only to revert to a sheepherder, he thought. And I certainly don’t intend to continue as an errand boy. He commanded the ivory-inlaid doors of his armoire to open, and clothes flew out to meet him. He didn’t know what Galina had planned, but he did know he needed to be more than presentable. She was very particular about appearances, which was ironic given that she’d never bought him so much as a handkerchief. It was as if she expected him to create something out of nothing. Perhaps that was precisely the point. Nikolai snapped his fingers, and a black cravat tied itself expertly around his neck. Next, a blue paisley waistcoat (which Nikolai had made last month) buttoned itself around him. Then, finally, a black frock coat enveloped him, although he smiled smugly as he chose one with notched lapels, because Galina be damned, it was two in the morning, and if there was any time that was informal enough for notched lapels, it was in these dead-eyed hou...

“The Game will begin soon. You can feel it, can’t you?” Can I? Nikolai stuck out his tongue, as if he could taste the difference in the air. And in fact, he could. It was like . . . cinnamon. With a dash of death.

“Don’t be pathetic,” Galina said. “Oh, and don’t let anyone catch you charming anything, of course.” Nikolai barely nodded. This had been drummed into him every time she gave him a lesson in a public place. He had to protect his identity. Galina was quite certain the other enchanter didn’t know Nikolai existed, but just in case, he had to hide who he was. It would give him the advantage of surprise when the Game commenced. Of course, Galina hadn’t bothered telling him who the other enchanter was or how she knew in the first place. “I’m a mentor,” she’d said by way of nonexplanatory explanation, invoking again her long bloodline of ancestors whose task it was to train enchanters. “And in any case, it isn’t important who the other enchanter is. It will only distract you from focusing on what is important: making yourself the best enchanter you can be. Moreover, I’m quite sure my teaching is far superior to what the other mentor can offer. As long as you do as you’re told, of course.” And so it went. Galina would make demands, and Nikolai would comply.

Yuliana glided down the halls of the Winter Palace, past white columns and crystal chandeliers and all manner of gold gilt on the walls. If she were any other fifteen-year-old girl, she would run, but she was the grand princess of Russia, and royalty did not run. Well, actually, her older brother, Pavel Alexandrovich Romanov, was running down the hall ahead of her, even though it was unbecoming of a crown prince. But Yuliana was not Pasha—that was what his family and closest friends called him—in almost every way. Yuliana cared about economics and politics (she was carrying an enormous, rolled-up map at this very moment), and Pasha cared about hunting and reading. He was quick to smile and chatty with all the servants, whereas she had the propriety to maintain the hierarchy of her royal rank. And his hair was always a mess! No, Yuliana was nothing like Pasha, and thank goodness for that. The Russian Empire needed at least one Romanov in this generation with her head screwed on straight. Pasha waited for her at the heavy gold doors that marked the entrance to their father’s study, not even out of breath. Two members of the Tsar’s Guard stood at attention, one on either side. They had likely already bowed to Pasha—he was the tsesarevich, after all—but they bowed again when they saw Yuliana.

Yuliana very much doubted Pasha would make an appearance. He’d been on the Kazakh steppe for over a month, which far exceeded her brother’s capacity for official duty. Not that he wasn’t responsible; he was. It was just that Pasha did not like doing things a tsesarevich was supposed to do. Especially in uniform. And under the tsar’s command.

“Commence the Crown’s Game,” she said as she retrieved a small but heavy chest from the hidden compartment. It looked, amazingly, like it had been painted and lacquered yesterday, as if magic repelled dust from its shiny surface. In fact, it probably did. “Give Russia an Imperial Enchanter, Father, so we can fight if we need to. Do it for Pasha, for his birthday, even if he doesn’t know.” The tsar gripped the armrests of his chair. “But how do you know about enchanters, let alone that there are two now? That information was closely guarded and limited to myself and those who practice magic themselves. How could you know about the Game?” Yuliana crossed the rug and set the chest on the tsar’s desk. Inside the chest, the ancient Russe Quill and Scroll lay dormant but ready to record the next Crown’s Game when the need arose. She glanced at her father’s throne-like chair. “I know many things.” She didn’t tell him that when she was very little, she used to hide in the large cabinet behind his desk and eavesdrop on his conversations, including the ones he’d have with himself when he thought the rest of the palace was asleep, about subjects like enchanters and the Game and a mysterious “tsars’ collection” (which Yuliana had deduced to be a library of ancient texts on magic—and presumably where her father had learned about enchanters and the Crown’s Game in the first place—though she had never been able to locate this so-called “tsars’ collection”). “Pasha may be heir,” she said ...

The tsar hesitated for a heavy minute. “Do it for Pasha,” Yuliana said. And she meant it. She loved her brother ferociously, as much as the tsar did. They’d both lay down their lives for him. “How old are you again, Yuliana?” “Fifteen, Father.” “But you act like you’re—” “Fifty. I know.” The tsar chuckled. “For Pasha, eh?” He touched his finger to the lid of the wooden chest. It was the one thing that Yuliana had never been able to pick open, and now she understood why: it was governed by magic that would unlock only at the tsar’s touch. The lid eased itself open, as if lifted by an invisible hand. A long, majestic black feather—plucked from the wing of a sea eagle centuries ago—and a yellowed parchment scroll floated into the air. Yuliana gasped, for even though she knew of magic, she’d never actually witnessed it. “So does this mean you’ll commence the Game?” The tsar nodded. She stared at the Russe Quill and Scroll. They spun lazily above the desk, the records of all past Games and so much of Russia’s history, just hovering. “But we probably shouldn’t tell Pasha,” she said. The tsar nodded again. “It’s why I’ve never told you about the existence of enchanters and magic. I knew this generation would require a Game. And I didn’t know if the two of you—Pasha, really—would be able to stomach its viciousness.” But Yuliana could. Her mouth curved up at the corners. Her smile was both a fierce and wistful thing.

“What are we hunting for today?” Pasha asked. “I believe grouse, pheasants, and mink are all plentiful in this part of the country,” Nikolai said. “Whatever Your Imperial Highness desires.” “‘Your Imperial Highness’? Why are you being so formal?” Pasha glanced over his shoulder at the rest of the hunting party, the sons of barons and counts and other lesser nobility, all social-climbing buffoons, in Nikolai’s opinion. “Don’t do it on their account,” Pasha said. “In fact, I rather wish you wouldn’t.” Nikolai bowed his head. “As you wish, my heavenly sovereign,

crown prince of all Russia.” Pasha laughed. Nikolai couldn’t maintain a straight face any longer, and he smiled. This was why they were friends, because Nikolai was the only one who didn’t kowtow at the tsesarevich’s feet.

Pasha gasped. “You know who I am.” His face was flushed from exertion and his hair wild again. Nikolai shrugged, still breathing heavily from running so hard and so far. “I won’t tell anyone.” “I . . . thank you.” “Of course. But one piece of advice,” Nikolai said as he glanced again at Pasha’s too-shiny shoes. “If you’re going to sneak out, you’ll need better disguises. For one, your boots. And . . . well, to be honest, everything you’re wearing is much too nice. Even the holes in your trousers are symmetrical. I could help, though. I know a thing or two about clothing. . . .” They had been best friends ever since.

Pasha hooted. Nikolai grimaced. Perhaps the Romanovs really were blessed with more grace. Or at the very least better balance.

Then the peace of the morning was shattered by a crash of thunder. It was so violent, it shook the leaves on the birches and vibrated through the ground. Nikolai and Pasha both leaped up. Nikolai lurched through the bushes, struggling to pull on his boot while squinting at the sky. It was still bright blue, save for a black cloud above the easternmost side of the forest. A sharp bolt of lightning split the azure, and for a moment, Nikolai wondered whether it could ever be pieced back together again.

“We need to take cover,” he yelled over the next crack of thunder. Another bolt of lightning flashed, and this one struck a tree in the distance, black smoke instantly feathering into the sky. Then, in a brief period of quiet, a girl’s scream carried from the east with the wind. Nikolai leaned in the direction from which it came. It did not sound like a call for help. It sounded like . . . a battle cry.

“You see, Father,” a girl’s voice said calmly, almost cheerfully, “I told you I’d master it today. Fight fire with fire, not water or ice.” Then she whistled a short tune, and the fire on her arms, her torso, her skirt, snuffed out. The only flames left were on top of her head, a wind-tossed mess of loose red curls, and one lock of black. She whistled again, and the fire on the fallen trees went out as well. Pasha stepped backward onto a leaf. It crunched, ever so softly, but the girl whirled around. “Who’s there?” Nikolai and Pasha stood frozen, and not just metaphorically. She had iced their feet to the ground. “Who are you?” Pasha whispered as he gaped at the cinder-smudged girl. She stared at them for another moment. Then she spun on her heel and fled, a streak of red hair and gray dress dashing into the woods and disappearing into its shadowed depths. But Nikolai didn’t need her to tell them who she was. He already knew. He had never seen the girl before, but she had to be the one. The other enchanter in the Game.

What? The Crown’s Game? Sergei sagged onto the threshold of the cottage. It couldn’t be. All this time, he’d assumed Vika was the only enchanter. He’d sent word to Galina when he discovered Vika’s abilities, but she’d never informed him that she had an enchanter in her tutelage as well. He clenched his fists. So typical of his sister! His anger was short-lived, though, for he did not have the energy to devote to it. Besides, what could be done about it now? Because Galina had kept from Sergei that she, too, had a student, there’d been no reason for Sergei to think another enchanter existed. It was the way it was supposed to be—when the Imperial Enchanter died, his or her magic returned to Russia’s wellspring, and there it recharged and eventually sought out another vessel in which to grow. It was rare that more than a single enchanter existed at once. As far as Sergei knew, it had happened only a handful of times in the thousand years since Russia was born. And he’d immersed himself so completely in the small sphere of his and Vika’s life here on Ovchinin Island that he hadn’t paid attention to whether another enchanter’s “otherness” lingered in Russia’s air.

Nikolai rubbed his face with both hands. He could tell Renata what he’d seen. Besides Galina, Renata was the only one who knew of his abilities. Not that he’d shared them with her purposely. Two years ago, he had forgotten to lock his bedroom door while he was reassembling a music box with his mind—these disassembly and rebuilding projects had begun when he was a child as lessons from Galina—and Renata had walked in with clean linens for his bed while the music box’s cranks and gears were suspended in midair. “Oh!” she had said. “Forgive me, Master Nikolai, I—I—”

The pieces of the music box had gone clattering onto the desk. He’d snatched them up and stuffed them into the pocket of his waistcoat. “It’s not what it seems.” She looked down at the scuffed toes of her boots. “That they were floating of their own accord? Of course not, Master Nikolai.” “I could make you forget what you saw.” He raised a finger to his temple. She trembled. “No need, sir. I promise I won’t tell a soul.” “How can I trust you?” “I read tea leaves, Master Nikolai. I don’t fear what you do.” Nikolai lowered his finger. “You read leaves?”

“Is she so formidable?” “She rose from a bonfire all aflame, as if she were a phoenix.” Renata’s grip on his hand tightened. “You’re as pale as one of the countess’s porcelain figurines.” Nikolai slumped farther into the hard wooden chair. How in blazes would he beat the girl when the day for the Game finally came? The girl need only cast one fiery lightning storm like the one on Ovchinin Island, and the tsar would declare it all over. “Her magic is enchantment beyond my grasp,” he said. “It isn’t,” Renata said. “You wield fearsome power of another kind. You can see through walls, remember?” “It’s not the same.” Renata shook him. “Precisely. Perhaps her power is elemental because she lives on that island. But yours is commanding in a cosmopolitan way. You can manipulate an entire orchestra at the opera, instruments and all. You can rearrange the insides of a clock to make it a microscope. You’ve simply learned to use magic differently.” Nikolai buried his face in his hands. “I hope you’re right.” “I hope so, too.” Renata reached up and brushed her fingers through his hair. She had never been so bold before, and Nikolai did not know what to do with the gesture. She let her touch linger, then withdrew her hand and lowered her voice. “And I hope this is not where the jagged leaf in your cup comes to pass.”

“You’re muttering to yourself again.” She tapped her sharp fingernails on the door frame. Yuliana was two years younger than Pasha, but most of the time, she seemed to think herself twice his age. “The servants could hear. You don’t want them thinking the tsesarevich is a madman.” Pasha sighed. “I think they’re rather accustomed to my mannerisms by now. If they don’t already think me mad, they will not think it because of today.”

As Pasha climbed the ladder to the upper reaches of the wall, a giddiness fluttered within him. Perhaps investigating the girl and her magic was one thing he could do better than Nikolai, who excelled at pretty much everything else, from dancing to sharpshooting to understanding the intricacies of bridge building. Not that Pasha was jealous; he didn’t begrudge Nikolai his talents at all, and in actuality admired him. But he could not help feeling the thrill of a little healthy competition, and Nikolai had seemed frightened of the girl, whereas Pasha had felt nothing but wonderment.

But he did not admit to himself, either aloud or even quietly in his own head, that he was interested in the girl for more than just her magic.

“We leave tomorrow for Bolshebnoie Duplo,” he said. “What?” The Enchanted Hollow. Vika knew the name like a pilgrim knew of Jerusalem. Every country—every country that still believed in the old ways, that is—had a physical, mystical heart from which its magic emanated, and Russia’s heart was Bolshebnoie Duplo.

“What aren’t you telling me, Father?” He scooped all the crumbs into his hand and crushed them. “Just say it.” He closed his eyes. “The tsar can have only one Imperial Enchanter. The enchanter who loses the Game dies.” “No . . . Why?” The mug in Vika’s hands melted from pottery to clay. “Each country’s wellspring emits a finite amount of magic at any given time. It is not without limits. So the number of enchanters must be limited as well.” “But there have apparently been two of us all these years, not to mention you and your sister—” “Yes, but the minor charms we conjure are relatively inconsequential,” her father said. “As for you and the other enchanter, you’ve been splitting Bolshebnoie Duplo’s magic between you. That’s fine while you’re training; in fact, it was likely better that you didn’t have access to all of it while you were young and learning to control your powers. However, to serve the tsar—and to protect the empire from its enemies—the Imperial Enchanter will need all of Russia’s magic, especially since Bolshebnoie Duplo is no longer as potent as it was when the people of our country still adhered to the old ways. The Imperial Enchanter must be the only major conduit of what magic remains. There cannot be any dilution.” It hadn’t occurred to Vika that there might be an occasion when she couldn’t execute an enchantment, for lack of magic. It had always been there when she needed it. But then again, she’d never attempted anything on as large a scale as Sergei ...

Her father scarcely pretended to smile. “Even Yakov Zinchenko wasn’t powerful enough to steal magic from so far away. And magic is loyal to its countrymen, for it is those very countrymen whose belief sows it. Morocco’s magic wouldn’t answer to a Russian.” The kitchen grew colder. Vika hugged her arms around herself. But why did death on the journey to becoming Imperial Enchanter shock her? Her father had warned her, hadn’t he? There had even been a lesson when Vika was younger—a horrible lesson—in which he’d asked her to resurrect a stillborn wolverine pup. Vika had clenched her fists and gritted her teeth and mustered all the power she had to focus on the pup’s heart, trying to feel if there were anything broken inside, anything she could move back together. She’d checked its muscles, its lungs, its stomach, liver, and every other organ, only to be met with silence. It turned out that had been the entire purpose of Sergei’s lesson: to show her that death was real, and an inescapable part of the Imperial Enchanter’s job. So it should be no great revelation that dancing with death—defying death—could be part of the Imperial Enchanter’s initiation. Vika packed the clay from the former pitcher in her hands. It hardened into a ceramic cannonball. “I don’t fancy dying.” Her father emptied the bottle of kvass. “Then the only option is, you cannot lose.”

The Game is beginning? “You do want to win, don’t you?” “I—” “Of course you do.” She smiled, now that she knew her makeup was flawless. “If you win, you’ll finally have wealth and respect. Well, respect in a warped sense, since no one can ever know exactly what we magical types do for the tsar. But regardless, they’ll know you’re an adviser of some sort, and besides, half his Imperial Council does nothing anyway. In any case, it’s everything a poor orphan like you never had and could only, until now, dream hopelessly of.” Nikolai clenched his teeth. It was just like Galina to think he was so unoriginal that his fantasies would be the same as the dreams of any other common boy. Of course he wanted to be Imperial Enchanter. Nikolai’s entire life—at least since he was seven—had been predicated on that one goal. He was an Imperial Enchanter-in-Training. There was nothing else he wanted to be. And he would certainly make a lousy sheepherder at this point. But becoming Imperial Enchanter was about much more than wealth and power to him, unlike what Galina was suggesting. It was also about becoming closer to Pasha, who was like a younger brother to him, and closer to a family of some sort, even if it wasn’t Nikolai’s own. Because, needless to say, Nikolai had no real family. He was, and always had been, alone.

“Kill them before they kill you. Do you want to know how you really win the Game? How you ensure it? You don’t play nice, Nikolai. If you’re smart, you’ll think of the Game like a chess match. You could take your time, plotting moves to frustrate your opponent, prancing about the chessboard and showing off your abilities while trying to paint the other enchanter into a corner. Or . . .” Galina’s smile grew sharper. “You could go straight for the king. The girl, in this case. Use your magic to kill her and end the Game yourself. Don’t give the tsar the chance to choose anyone but you.”

It was vital that Vika keep her identity from the other enchanter, for it would be harder for him or her to hurt Vika in the Game if the other enchanter didn’t know who she was and, therefore, at whom to aim. So a translucent haze surrounded Vika, shifting her appearance to whatever the onlooker expected to see. To the innkeeper at Oredezh, who had assumed the woman accompanying Sergei was his wife, she had looked like a middle-aged woman, with country clothes and rough features to match her husband. To the stable boy who saddled their horses, she had seemed to be a young man, an obedient son to a grumbling father. And to herself, when she had passed by a lake reflecting her image, she had appeared wild and feral, her outside as out of control as her inside. Or perhaps this was how she’d actually looked.

The door cracked open, and a dainty heeled boot issued forth. Like the carriage wheels, its owner did not feel the need to acknowledge gravity. She hovered above the paper steps and floated down. Even then, her feet did not meet the ground. Vika screwed up her face. She could levitate, too, of course, but it had never occurred to her to do it all the time. It seemed rather vain. Or arrogant. Actually, both. Upon catching sight of Sergei, the woman tilted her head, keeping her tiny hat perfectly perched on her chestnut curls. She lifted the hem of her voluminous dress and curtsied, albeit somewhat mockingly. “Bonjour, mon frère,” she said. “I would say you haven’t aged a day in the two and a half decades since I’ve seen you, but that would be a blatant lie, so I won’t. You may say that of me, though, if you’d like.” Sergei stood with his arms folded across his chest, both feet firmly planted in the dirt. “Hello, Galina. You are, indeed, the same as ever, if not in looks, then at least in manner.”

“Enchanter One,” Sergei said to Vika, “meet Enchanter Two.” Galina clucked. “On the contrary. Mine is Enchanter One. Yours is Enchanter Two.” “Absolutely not. My daughter is One.” “Ah, but I am older than you, little brother, and I believe seniority merits my side being Enchanter One.” “Well, I—” “This is ridiculous,” Vika said. “I’ll be Two, and he can be One.” She pointed at the shadow boy. “What does it matter anyway?” Galina grinned, baring her teeth. “Enchanter One gets the first move.” Vika scowled. “I know that. I simply meant it doesn’t matter to me if I go first or not.” Galina frowned at Vika as if the girl were a pebble in her shoe. An inconsequential pebble, given that Galina’s feet didn’t even touch the ground. “A bit of ego on your student, eh, brother?” No wonder Father doesn’t like her. If I think highly of myself, it’s because it’s well deserved. Vika took a step toward Galina to say as much but stubbed the toe of her boot on a rock and tumbled forward. The shadow boy caught her by the arm, his grip on her sleeve gentle but firm. The instant he touched her, his shadow flickered, and his real self flashed through. Vika sucked in a breath. Oh, mercy, he was handsome, all ebony hair and ink-black eyes and a face so precisely chiseled, Vika could almost picture the blade that had created him. And the sparks that danced through his magic! Goose bumps rose where his hand held her, even though there was a glove and a sleeve between them. Everything inside Vika qu...

Nikolai propelled himself through the fog of magic, trailing closely, but not too closely, behind the girl. She had a deception shroud around her, but its effect was lost on him, for he already knew who she was. Nikolai could see her clearly: her red hair, with its single black stripe, tumbling down her back in loose waves like a veil of smoke and flames; her slight shoulders, hunched forward as she ducked beneath a low ceiling in the cave; and her green satin dress, out of fashion by at least a decade but

somehow endearing on her, not awkward in the slightest. It could have been improved, however, with a ribbon around its waist. Preferably in yellow. If Nikolai hadn’t been on Ovchinin Island and seen what this girl could do, he might have been deceived by her appearance. But like the poisonous lorises Galina had planted in his room three days ago, it was the smallest and most innocent-looking of creatures who were the most deadly.

inside his own shadow. “To begin the Game,” the tsar said, “we—” “Pardon me, Your Imperial Majesty,” the girl said. “I have a question.” Nikolai shifted in place. Was the girl really so bold that she would interrupt the tsar? “What is it?” The tsar practically spat the question. The girl was unfazed in her shroud. Bold indeed. “Why must the Game end in death? I understand that the Imperial Enchanter needs to be the sole conduit of magic, but why can’t one enchanter win, and the other step aside?” The tsar huffed. “And what would the other enchanter do? Retire to the countryside and promise never to use magic again? Or move abroad and have no access to Russia’s wellspring? Would you be able to do that? Give up everything you are, in exchange for your life?” The girl contemplated this for a moment. Then she looked up. “It would not be a life, Your Imperial Majesty, if I could not enchant.” “Precisely.” “So you just execute one of us in the end?” Nikolai gaped. Was she really questioning the tsar again? The girl stood with her arms crossed. The tsar stared at the girl from his arboreal throne and shook his head as if unable to believe she was interrupting again, and doing so to ask about logistics, of all things. He rose from his throne and towered before them. “When I declare a winner, the Game’s own

magic will eliminate the other enchanter. Even if, for some reason, I did not declare a winner after you had each taken five turns, the Game would make the decision for me and extinguish one of you. Russia will have only one Imperial Enchanter to wield the full force of its magic. Understood?”

A pair of crossed wands branded themselves onto Nikolai’s chest as if by an invisible iron. Even after the branding was over, the scar still glowed red-orange on his skin like live embers. Nikolai bit the inside of his cheek to stave off the pain. The girl had not protested or screamed or made any sound other than a sharp inhale. Nikolai flushed, both at the heat of the fresh scar and at his weakness compared to this elfin girl. “Who is Enchanter One?” the tsar asked. “I am,” Nikolai managed to answer through gritted teeth, the scar still faintly orange on his skin. The tsar nodded. “The wands will burn until you have made your first move in the Game. Then they will go dormant as Enchanter Two takes her turn. They will reawaken on your skin once her turn has been taken. That is how you will know it is your move again. “The wands will grow steadily hotter the longer you take to execute your turn. As days pass, the pain will become more unbearable. And if too much time elapses—if you dally or for some reason refuse to complete the Game—the scar will eventually ignite and consume you.” Nikolai shuddered. Forfeiture by flame. “Is that how the Game ends?” the girl asked. The tsar didn’t even bother to look surprised that she’d interrupted. It would be more of a surprise at this point if she didn’t. “Does the losing enchanter combust?” “Yes. The scar will incinerate the loser of the Game.” “It will be quick,” her father said quietly. It occurred to Nikolai, though, that it was n...

Half a continent away, tall blades of grass trembled. The earth, still parched this early in the autumn, quaked in a cloud of dust. A fissure cleaved through the hard-packed dirt, and a shriveled hand punched its way to the surface, its sinewy muscle clinging to the bone like dried meat tethered to a brittle pole. It didn’t take long for the rest of Aizhana’s body to emerge. During her many, many years underground, she had slowly, painstakingly stolen energy from worms and maggots to consolidate into a life force strong enough to resurrect herself. Now she climbed out of the earth and stretched, her limbs stiff from being dead—no, nearly dead—and she brushed the dirt off her withered skin. She sucked in a breath between her teeth (what was left of her teeth, that is) and averted her eyes from the dry husk that hung from her body. The skin is the least important, she reminded herself. What matters is that my insides are healed. But why now? Aizhana had been hoarding wisps of energy for so long, but nothing until this moment had been able to pull her completely free from her decomposing half slumber. What was it that had shifted the balance in her world? Aizhana drank in the endless brown horizon around her. She reached for the sky, cracked her joints, and rattled her aching bones. Whatever it was that had woken her, she did not know. But whatever you are, she thought, I will find you.

Ludmila puffed out her generous bosom and held a long loaf of bread suggestively. Mischief sparked in her eyes. “A girl? Why, I am a girl. I can be the one you seek.” The women burst into another fit of giggles.

The frenetic energy on the streets and canals matched the chaos in Nikolai’s head. But while the people outside were driven by the promise of celebration, Nikolai was driven only by the specter of death. 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.

“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. “Her name is Vika. I overheard the countess saying it to herself in her rooms before you left for Bolshebnoie Duplo.” “I . . . I don’t like the girl having a name.” Nikolai shook his head, as if he could shake her name right out of his skull. It made it harder to hurt her if she had a name. He could only kill her if he forgot she was a person. Maybe. Because he knew where she lived, and she didn’t know his identity. He could go to Ovchinin Island and find her house. Then when she least expected it, he could cause it to cave in on her. Or he could charm her pillow to smother her in her sleep. Impale her with a garden hoe. The thoughts turned Nikolai a dismal shade of green.

“Nikolai?” Renata asked. He broke away from his planning. He’d forgotten Renata was still there. “Yes?” “You looked . . . like you’d been enveloped by a storm cloud.” “Sorry.” He charmed an apple tart to float to him, and he ate it, although he didn’t pay enough attention to taste it. “So you’re all right?” Nikolai brushed a stray flake of pastry off his collar. “No, I’m not all right. I’m not sure I’ll ever be. But I’ll do what I have to. It’s what I’ve always done.”