The Crown's Game (The Crown's Game, #1)(3)

A smile bloomed across Vika’s face. “A little peril has never stopped me.” She tipped her head toward the charred remains of the bonfire. “In fact, it makes me want to be Imperial Enchanter even more.”

Sergei shook his head and laughed. “I know. You’re fiery and you like things even better when they are challenging, just like your mother did. Nothing is too daunting for you, Vikochka.”

She wrinkled her nose at the nickname. It was too cute for her now that she was grown, but Sergei couldn’t help it. He still remembered when she was a baby, so small he could fit her in his cupped palms.

When she was younger, Vika had sometimes lamented not having other magical children with whom to play. But she quickly outgrew that, for Sergei had explained that it made her special, and not only in Russia. Most of the world had forgotten about magic, and so enchanters had grown rarer. It was rumored that Morocco had an enchanter, as their sultan was a patron of the old ways. But that was it, really, besides the tsar, who tried to keep his own belief in mysticism quiet. It was a political liability to believe in the “occult.” Besides, concealing the fact that he had an Imperial Enchanter allowed the tsar a secret weapon against his enemies. Not that it was foolproof. Imperial Enchanters were still human, as evidenced by the unexpected death twenty years ago of the previous enchanter, Yakov Zinchenko, in the battle against Napoleon at Austerlitz.

Once, when Vika was six and just beginning her lessons, she had asked why Sergei wasn’t the Imperial Enchanter.

“My magic is much too small,” he’d answered, which was the truth, but only part of it. He’d swallowed the rest, a secret he kept for himself and hoped she’d never have to know.

“But my magic is big?” Vika had asked, oblivious.

“The biggest,” Sergei had said. “And I will teach you as best I can to become the greatest enchanter there ever was.”

Now, ten years later and a hundred times more powerful, Vika asked, “Are you worried I won’t be ready to become Imperial Enchanter?”

Sergei sighed. “No . . . I didn’t say that. I only meant . . . well, I want to keep you here on Ovchinin Island. For selfish reasons. I’d rather not share you with the tsar.”

“Oh, Father. You’re all gruff beard on the outside, but mush on the inside. Wonderful, sentimental mush.” She smiled in that way she used to when she was small, eyes big and innocent. Well, as innocent as was possible for Vika.

Sergei crossed the muddy patch of forest between them and wrapped his arms around her. “I do not envy you. It is a burdensome calling, to be the tsar’s enchanter. Promise me you’ll remain my mischievous Vikochka, no matter what the future may bring.”

“I swear it.” Vika touched a finger to the basalt pendant around her neck. It was something she did for the most unbreakable of promises, because swearing on her dead mother’s necklace seemed to lend solemnity to any commitment. It was also a tad theatrical, and Vika was fond of self-aware melodrama. Still, Sergei knew that the few promises she’d ever made on the necklace were sworn in complete earnestness.

“But you know,” Vika said as she pulled away from his embrace, “I wouldn’t mind leaving the island once in a while. Or ever.”

“I don’t like Saint Petersburg,” he said.

“What about Finland? It’s not far.”

“The Grand Duchy of Finland does not interest me at all.”

“It might interest me.”

“I am sure you will do plenty of traveling once you’re Imperial Enchanter. But my time with you is limited. Humor an old man and stay on the island with me a bit longer. It’s only seven more seasons until you turn eighteen.”

Vika chewed on her lip. Sergei braced himself. He knew that glint in her eyes; when you had an enchantress as a daughter, disagreements often became more demonstrative than mere words.

Suddenly, the red and orange leaves around them fluttered to the forest floor, and autumn rushed away. Then a blast of snow set in on the bare branches. A moment later, the icicles melted, and flower buds shot out of the damp ground and blossomed in full perfume. They were quickly replaced by the lush greenery of summer. Then autumn again. And winter. And spring. All in less than a minute.

“Looks like seven seasons have passed,” Vika said.

Sergei crossed his arms over his chest. “Vikochka.”

“Oh, fine.” She changed the season back to autumn, as it should be. The leaves on the birch trees were golden once again.

“Is it truly so unbearable to be here with me?”

“No, of course not, Father. I just—”

“I’ll challenge you even more in your lessons.”

Vika perked up. “Really?”

“As much as you’d like.”

“I’d like to be a menace to anyone who dares to trouble Russia.”

“You already are a menace.”

Vika pecked Sergei on the cheek. “Then make me a bigger one.”





CHAPTER THREE


Nikolai’s pocket watch clicked as the hour struck two in the morning. He ought to have gone to bed long ago, but here he still was, standing in front of a tri-fold mirror in his bedroom as a measuring tape and several pins flew around him, designing a new frock coat. For a once pudgy orphan from the Kazakh steppe, Nikolai had grown up to be rather striking. His eyes were dark and fierce, his face and body all sharp planes, and yet there was an impossible fluidity to the way he moved—in fact, even in the way he stood—that was both incongruous with his trenchant edges and an inseparable part of his being. It was a brooding sort of elegance not often seen on a boy of eighteen.