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

by Evelyn Skye

“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 ...