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

by Evelyn Skye

“Do you think she’ll come?” Renata asked, her eyes on the placement of Nikolai’s hand on his scar. He dropped it down to his side. “I don’t know.” She wrinkled her forehead, studying him. “Do you want her to come?” Nikolai charmed his face to smooth out the emotion so Renata couldn’t read him. “I don’t know that, either.” But it didn’t matter what he wanted or how he felt, for in the same heartbeat as Nikolai uttered those words, Vika appeared in the entry. A hush blew through the ballroom until even the couple bowing to Pasha rose to see the cause of the quiet. Pasha turned. All eyes were on the girl on the stairs. Her ordinarily red hair was pale blue tonight, and the black streak had been transformed to silver, like a sliver of mercury. On her face, she wore a mask made of birch wood, rough white with flecks of gray. But it was the gown that had triggered the silence, for it was unlike anything the guests had ever seen. The bodice appeared to be carved from white ice, reflecting the light from the chandeliers on its polished surface, and yet it hugged the curves of her frame and moved with her as if made of water. The skirt was similarly frosty, an endless eddy of snowflakes, like a blizzard erupting from the ice above. Even the air seemed to chill around her. This was not from Nikolai’s Masquerade Box. This was far beyond his tailoring and imagination. She was a diamond in a quarry full of quartz. Even the majordomo stood agog. It was a good minute before he gathered h...