The Crown's Game (The Crown's Game, #1)(28)

But now, living in an apartment full of oddities didn’t seem like such a good idea. Any one of them could harbor a trap. She tiptoed to the first bedroom. Were there signs of an intruder?

But the bed was perfectly made, its satin sheets shiny in the early morning rays. The hat rack stood guard on the other side of the room. The dressing table, with its gilded bronze mirror and dozens of bottles of perfumes left by the flat’s owners, seemed as frivolous as ever.

The wands on Vika’s chest throbbed again. She slunk down the hall to the other bedroom, but it also appeared undisturbed. She slipped into the kitchen, her eyes darting from the stove to the oven to the cabinets decorated with scenes from Russian fairy tales, but saw no one and nothing alarming, other than the feathered talons that served as the dining table’s legs. Nothing, that is, except for the sense that there was magic other than her own floating about, as if the air were several particles heavier than it ought to be.

She flung open the windows in the kitchen. “Out!” she commanded the air, to cleanse it of anything dangerous her opponent might have planted. But instead, air even more enchanted tried to push in from outside.

“What? No!” Vika passed her hands over her head and up and down her body, fortifying the invisible shield she had cast around herself as she slept. She had protected the apartment from his enchantments, but his magic was trying to bully its way in. She doubled the charm around the window.

And then Vika saw the building across the street from her own. When she had gone to bed, that building had been a faded gray. Now it was a delicate powder blue, and its white trim, previously dull, had taken on a pearly tone.

If it had been only one home, she would have thought nothing of it. But she scanned the visible length of Nevsky Prospect, where the buildings, like many in the largest cities of Europe, were built right up against one another, and every single facade seemed a part of a candy wonderland. There were yellows soft as lemon cream, and greens like apples for pie. Purple like lavender marshmallow, and pink like rosewater taffy. Vika gasped. The buildings along the boulevard were the most breathtaking thing she had ever seen.

“This is his first move?” she said to herself. As if to confirm, the wands beneath her collarbone heated up, and she gasped again.

But the pain dissipated after a few seconds, and soon Vika’s shoulders relaxed. She let down the shield around herself as well. If it was her turn now, she needn’t worry about being attacked. And then it sank in that her opponent’s first move had been a peaceful one for the tsesarevich’s birthday. Vika’s heart beat out of rhythm at the hope that the other enchanter was less bloodthirsty than Sergei had assumed.

Then she noticed the tiny statues on the buildings, and she immediately cast the shield back around herself. The statues were stone birds, so small they could easily be mistaken for real sparrows hopping on the ledges and rooftops every ten feet or so. They hadn’t been there before, had they? Or was she just noticing them now because the entire boulevard had been brightened and was actually worth looking at?

She had to suspect the worst. As much as she’d wanted to believe that her opponent had laid down an amicable move, that someone as elegant as he wouldn’t resort to violence, the Game would in fact end upon one of their deaths. And there was something about the way he carried himself, she thought. Mesmerizing, but subtly perilous. Perhaps the stone birds were enchanted to attack as soon as Vika appeared on the street. But would they be able to do that if her opponent didn’t know who she was? She’d kept up her shroud diligently all the way home from Bolshebnoie Duplo. And Vika certainly wouldn’t be able to charm something into tracking an unknown person.

Then again, the other enchanter could be exponentially more skilled than she. It was an unnerving possibility.

However, she couldn’t remain in her apartment for the rest of the Game. She would have to go out and face the birds, whatever they were. Her father had prepared her well for this. He had taught her how to defend herself, from using the wind to blow dirt into a bear’s eyes to creating ice barricades for protection from flaming trees.

So Vika fortified the shield around herself and left the flat, taking the stairs one slow step at a time. When she reached the first floor, she opened the building’s door only a crack and poked her foot outside, like a tentative dancer testing the stage.

She waited. The stone birds did not fly off the ledges at her shoe. She slipped the rest of her body out the door, turning her head from left to right to take in all her potential avian assailants.

And then they attacked.

They dived from every direction—north, south, east, west—like shrapnel magnetized especially for her. The first ones slammed into Vika’s invisible shield, and she shrieked upon their violent impact. But she held her shield steady, and they ricocheted off, shattering on the ground and against the building walls.

Then hundreds—no, thousands—more stone birds circled overhead, calculating, and Vika knew she wouldn’t be able to hold the shield if they all came at her at once.

Heaven help me, I need my own birds.

She jammed her thumb and index finger in her mouth and whistled so shrilly, a dozen of the closest stone sparrows shattered. Their ranks, however, were quickly filled in by others.

Come on, come on, come on, Vika thought. Where are my birds? She fended off another wave of suicidal stone birds smashing into her shield. Each collision rattled through her magic and into her bones.