The Crown’s Game (18 page)

V
ika gaped at Nikolai, unblinking. The harlequin pattern on his mask matched the harlequin outfit of the Jack. It was really him.

But she hadn’t even felt his magic, his otherness, despite his proximity during the last dance. He must have cast a barrier shield as part of his disguise.

“I will, indeed, steal her,” Nikolai said to Pasha.

“You forget I outrank you,” Pasha
said.

“A bit of an unfair fight from the outset, I’d say. But you underestimate the demand for me on the dance floor.” Nikolai’s brows arched over the top of his mask.

Pasha laughed again. “Believe me, I do not. Your skills are legendary. But you underestimate my charm.”

“I remain steadfast in my intention to steal her from you.”

Vika wrinkled her nose. Were they still talking about her? Yes,
they were. As if she were an inanimate object. Especially Nikolai, who spoke of “stealing” her. Did he think
he’d be able to carry her off like a prize without consulting her? If so, she would show him—

“But only if
mademoiselle
consents, of course.” Nikolai turned to Vika. “Lady Snow, may I have the honor of dancing the next mazurka with you?” He bowed.

Oh. Well, then. He had manners, so .
. . Right.

The girl in the peacock gown reached out toward Nikolai as if she wanted to stop him from dancing with Vika. But when Vika looked at her, the peacock girl backed away. Who was she?

“I know even less how to dance a mazurka than I do a waltz,” Vika said as she took several steps back. She surreptitiously checked her own shields.

“I have no doubt you will dazzle the room,” Nikolai said.

Pasha bowed to her. “Thank you for the lovely waltz.”

Vika curtsied. “The pleasure was all mine. Happy birthday.”

Pasha lingered a moment longer than he needed to before he turned to the peacock girl. “May I have the honor of dancing with you?” The girl blushed and accepted. He offered her his arm, and after she cast one last look at Nikolai, they drifted away.

When they’d gone, Nikolai pointed
at Vika’s gown and said, “You didn’t use my Imagination Box.” He allowed her to maintain the several steps of space between them.

Vika touched the ice on her dress. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I didn’t trust you. Should I have?”

Nikolai smiled, and there was both shyness and mischief in it. “No, I suppose you shouldn’t have. After all, I must look after myself. The armoire would have made you a
beautiful
gown, though.”

“Which would have squeezed me to death?”

His smile fell away, as if off a cliff. “Am I so obvious?”

“The corseting would have been convenient. Would the dress really have killed me?”

Nikolai rubbed the back of his neck. “Only if I had commanded it to.”

“Clever.”

“Not clever enough. You didn’t fall for it.” Nikolai offered her his arm.

Vika didn’t take it.

“There is no charm
on my arm, I promise. You can test it.”

She hovered her hand over his sleeve. There was no hint of magic, not even anything residual on the cloth.

“The coat is an ordinary one from Bissette and Sons,” Nikolai said. “A gift last Christmas from the tsesarevich. But if you leave me standing here like this and don’t take my arm, I’ll never hear the end of it from him. Spare me his teasing, will
you?”

She pursed her lips and nodded. Then she slipped her arm through his, although carefully.

But she didn’t die when her white glove met his black sleeve. Instead, every one of his turns in the Game flashed back in an instant. She gasped. It was like the shock of touching Nikolai at Bolshebnoie Duplo, when she had suddenly seen him so clearly. Except this time, rather than seeing his face,
she saw and understood his magic. Quiet euphoria coursed through her as she relived the first moment she saw that breathtaking, powder-blue building on Nevsky Prospect, and all the other candy pastel buildings that followed.
Then she recalled the Jack and ballerina’s bittersweet duet, and the tugging began again at her chest. Oh, and that feeling when she’d placed her hands on the Imagination
Box and it carved everything she longed for . . .

It was as if the attempts to kill her faded into the background, and now she saw the truth at the core of it all: Nikolai’s magic was gorgeous and powerful and . . . and . . .

Her lungs faltered. Even the mere memory of his magic was so strong. And touching Nikolai, even through her gloves and his sleeve, was like being pummeled by a stampede
of wild horses. No, wild unicorns. Beautiful, wild unicorns.

Vika stumbled.

Nikolai reached to brace her. His breath also stuttered.

Had he felt their connection, too?

Their eyes locked. They didn’t move.

The orchestra began to play in the background.

After a very long moment, Nikolai cleared his throat and asked, in a hoarse whisper, “The mazurka?”

She nodded slowly. “Yes. The mazurka.”
She merely repeated his words without processing them. A mazurka could have meant a death drop into the ocean, and Vika would have agreed to follow him. Nikolai led her in a daze to the far end of the ballroom.

But the orchestra’s upbeat, chirpy tune soon roused her. Vika suddenly remembered she did not know the dance.

She gripped Nikolai’s hand tighter. “I don’t know how—”

“Will you trust
me now?”

“To do what?”

“To dance for you?”

She didn’t know what that meant. But the other couples around them had begun to trot, and from across the ballroom, the tsar seemed to frown at her. And the grand princess watched her as if just waiting,
hoping
for Vika to fail. Vika and Nikolai needed to dance, or they would create chaos in the carefully planned set.

Yet what had she whispered to
the ballerina in Palace Square when the Jack had offered his hand?
Don’t trust him.

Vika touched the basalt necklace at her throat. “No. I still don’t trust you.”

Nikolai shrugged. “No matter. I’m not giving you a choice.”

Magic rushed around her like the floodgates of a dam had been released, and Vika levitated several inches off the floor on its flow. “Oh!” He must have released the shield
he’d used earlier to contain his power. It nearly swept her away.

Nikolai smiled, and this time it was different from the first. There was no mischief. It was purely a blush in smile form. “I’m sorry. But I really want to dance with you.”

A part of Vika—the nonrational part of her—melted.

And the rational side of her was too shocked to fight back. She’d never encountered magic that surged and
glowed like this before. It wrapped around her like silk, and she found herself reveling in its warm elegance. Nikolai charmed her feet and her arms, and immediately, they joined in on the lively mazurka. Without needing to think, Vika glided and spun with him, as perfectly synchronized as if they had been dancing together forever. He twirled her out, and like the other men, he knelt, and Vika
and the other ladies pranced around them. Then he rose and drew her back in, and they
were a couple again, stamping and whirling together.

There was, of course, another irony: Vika was now Nikolai’s puppet, his ballerina in a music box. But Vika also knew that if she wanted him to release her strings, she could force him to. She had magic, too. Only, she didn’t want him to stop.

They didn’t
speak, but, rather, let the music carry them. They swiveled and sidestepped, came apart and back together again, each time united with Nikolai’s hand resting gently on Vika’s waist and the snow on her skirt flurrying fiercely. To counter the chill, she threw her arm out toward the fireplace behind the orchestra, and the flames blazed and warmed the room. He smiled at her small enchantment.

Then
he spun Vika quickly, and she was a blur, blur, blur, and they danced as if lifted by the wind. He commanded the instruments and their musicians to match their blistering tempo, and the mazurka accelerated faster and faster and faster.

All around them, couples attempted to keep up. They stepped and twirled. They tripped and stumbled. When the song finally ended, one dancer fainted, and her chaperone
and a gaggle of others hurried to her side. The orchestra declared a break. And despite the fire in the fireplace, the servants rushed to serve hot tea and warm cakes to their shivering guests.

Only Vika and Nikolai stood in the center of the floor. Their chests rose and fell in rapid, synchronized rhythm. He released the mazurka charm he had cast.

“Let’s dance again,” he whispered.

“It would
be poor form,” she quipped.

He smiled his blush of a smile. If only she could capture
it and keep it in a bottle.

“Then probably for the best that we don’t,” he said. “I believe we’ll have an uprising if I do not relinquish you soon.” Nikolai gestured behind her, and Vika shifted to see a line of knights and devils and gentlemen tigers waiting their turn to ask her to dance. They were apparently
unfazed by the speed of her last performance.

“My two left feet will be revealed.”

“Not while I am here.” Nikolai waved his hand over her heeled boots, and she floated imperceptibly off the ground. “Do you trust me?”

The question seemed altogether different now than before the mazurka. Nikolai no longer seemed like the enemy. He was that tugging. That tenuous thread. He was her other half on
the end of the string.

And yet she would be a fool to trust him.

But they could have a détente, at least for tonight. Vika looked up at him and tapped her mask. It went transparent, although only for him, and only for a few seconds.

He nodded, as if he understood exactly what she meant, and he mirrored her movement. His mask went invisible for a moment as well.

Oh. Heaven help her. Nikolai
was more striking than she remembered, and the darkness in his eyes was more dangerous than she recalled. He was a poisonous autumn crocus: deadly beautiful with no antidote.

She wanted the flower anyway.

And Vika remembered the dreams of him she’d had, when she’d wondered what it would feel like to run her hand along the sharp line of his jaw, to touch her fingertips to the scar beneath his
collarbone, to press her lips against his
mouth. He was so close. She could put to rest all those questions now. And he wasn’t even a shadow in a dream. He was real.

But Nikolai was a gentleman, and there was no possibility that he’d kiss her in the middle of the ballroom, in front of the tsar and tsarina and the rest of Saint Petersburg’s nobility, even if he felt the pull as strongly as Vika
did. Instead, he offered her his arm and led her off the dance floor. Then he bowed before he gave her up to the knight rattling in his armor.

“I hope to see you again, Lady Snow,” Nikolai said softly.

Vika gathered herself—stashed away her dream thoughts and dream wants—and curtsied. “I am sure you will, Harlequin.” She let her eyes linger on Nikolai for another moment. Then she turned and
allowed the knight to take her back to where the floor manager was assembling the next set.

She danced a quadrille with the knight, a polonaise with the devil, and a cotillion and a gavotte and countless other steps. Pasha managed to squeeze in another waltz, and during one set, just for ladies, she even danced with the peacock girl. The dances were all at ordinary speed.

Nikolai did not invite
Vika onto the floor again. He stayed on the fringes, near the drapes and the café, and closed his eyes, as if both listening to and channeling the music. He might not have been there with Vika, but his magic was with her for every step. When the violins swelled, she would feel a surge of energy in her boots; when the woodwinds crooned, her feet would glide with equal gentility. It was as if each
dance was a dance with him.

And with each quadrille and cotillion and gavotte, the warmth of Nikolai’s magic grew brighter. Like Vika’s own
power, Nikolai’s pushed at the boundaries that contained it, yearning to burst like starlight and wash over everyone and everything with its glow. She wanted again to hold on to him, and have him hold on to her, so they could whirl together through the cosmos
like galaxies that could not—and would not—be confined.

If only he weren’t the other enchanter in the Game.

Forget about it,
Vika told herself.
Just for tonight.

But the longer the ball went on, and the longer she allowed Nikolai to dance for her, the more undeniable the horror of her reality became.
This one night is a farce,
she thought.
The Game hasn’t actually gone away.

Her gown grew
suddenly heavier. The swirling flurries of snow in her skirt began to melt, and the snowflakes transformed to icy raindrops. Vika shivered as her gown shifted from blizzard to sleet, soaking through her petticoats. Weighing her down. Chilling her through and through.

At the end of the next song, she curtsied hastily to her partner and rushed off the dance floor, retreating to the side of the
ballroom into the curtains. “Off,” Vika said as she ran her hands frantically over her gown. “Get off.” She could feel Nikolai’s magic on her, fine invisible threads everywhere, as if she were covered in cobwebs. “No more dances. I can’t. I can’t do this. Get off.”

His magic tangled and clung to her. She slapped and swiped at it. It was too much. He was too strong.

And then her fingers found
a loose tendril, and another and another. His enchantment’s edge.

Oh, thank goodness.

Knowing where it began and ended, Vika could push it away. She gathered the threads of Nikolai’s charm and flung
them all aside. Her feet were free. She recast her own shield. And she hurried off to find Ludmila.

“We have to leave,” Vika said, pulling Ludmila away from a conversation with a tuxedoed brown
bear. Out of the corner of her eye, Vika could see Nikolai rising from where he’d been sitting in the café. There was concern on his face. Or so she thought. Was it possible to read his emotion even though he wore a mask? Regardless, Vika didn’t want concern.

“Why do we have to go?” Ludmila asked.