“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?”
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