The Crown's Game (The Crown's Game, #1)(32)

The Neva Fountain, eh? How nice that they’ve already given it a name. Vika smiled despite her morally dubious insides. Or perhaps she smiled because of them. She did not want to know which.

She looked again across the Neva to the other enchanter. He seemed to be staring straight back at her. And then he tipped his top hat, as if saying, Nice try. Thank you for the amusement. Have a wonderful day.

Why, that arrogant, insufferable . . . argh! “It’s not like you managed to kill me either,” Vika said, even though he couldn’t hear her.

All right. So the other enchanter had survived. Vika had created the Neva Fountain, which, enchanted once, would now retain the charms in the water and be able to replicate the show on its own, every hour. But she’d set out to far better the other enchanter, and if she couldn’t win outright, she would make sure her first turn shone exponentially brighter than his.

Vika’s eyes fluttered shut, and she imagined all the canals flowing in and out and through the city. Then she thought of the colorful building fronts along Nevsky Prospect. As she stood there, bracing herself against the statue of Peter the Great, the waterways throughout Saint Petersburg began to shift in hue.

First ruby red, then fire-opal orange. Golden citrine and emerald green. Sapphire blue, violet amethyst, then back to red to start the rainbow again. Even though the other enchanter had painted Nevsky Prospect first, Vika’s colors were so vivid, it was as if his palette of pastels were merely a faded reflection of hers.

The canals were a jewel-toned taunt, really, at his move.

Vika finished charming the waterways enough to cycle through the colors on their own, then sank to the ground. The base of Peter the Great’s statue was the only thing propping her up. But despite her exhaustion, Vika grinned.

The gleam in her eyes was one part gloat and ninety-nine parts mischief.





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE


Late that night, something hard struck Nikolai’s bedroom window on the second floor. Then another, and another, like hail hurling itself sideways at the pane. He peeked through a sliver in the curtains. Damn, how quickly the girl had played her turn! Even though it was his move, he was still wary of attack. She had tried to drown him in front of a crowd in broad daylight! Who knew what she’d do under the cover of moonlight?

Nikolai squinted out into the darkness. What in blazes was going on?

A pebble hit the window, right where Nikolai’s nose was. “Mon dieu!” He cursed as he stumbled backward, halfway across his room.

Another pebble smacked against the glass. “Nikolai, open up!” a boy shouted from the street.

Was that . . . Pasha?

Nikolai tiptoed to the window. It could be a trick. He cracked open the curtains. A pebble hit the pane at the spot in front of his nose again.

It had to be Pasha. No one else had such impeccable aim, other than Nikolai.

He lifted the window. “Cease fire!”

Pasha laughed. “Nikolai, you devil of a fellow! You’ve been avoiding me.”

“I have not.” It was not a lie, exactly. Nikolai had simply been . . . preoccupied.

“You have, too,” Pasha said. “It’s been nearly a week since I’ve seen you. Have you not received my invitations to go hunting and watch polo matches?”

“You know full well you never actually do those things.”

Pasha shrugged. “Technicalities. We would have had other grand adventures. But in any event, you admit to receiving the invitations, and yet not responding. You see, I was right. You have been avoiding me. Well, I have come to you, so there is no escape now.”

Nikolai leaned against the windowsill. His eyes were now adjusted to the streetlamps outside. “Does your Guard know you’ve left the palace?”

“Do they ever?”

“I sincerely worry about their competence. I may need to request an audience with your father to discuss it.”

“Or perhaps the answer is that I’m simply a brilliant escape artist. Now come on. Are you going to let me up? Or are we going to Romeo-and-Juliet the night away?” Pasha smirked.

Nikolai looked at his own position, like Juliet perched on her balcony, and then at Pasha on the street below. “Oh, be quiet. You’re the one who came romancing at my window,” he said, but he stood up and curtsied. “My room is a mess, Romeo. Give me a minute, and I shall come down.”

Nikolai closed his window and recast the charm to secure it. Then he glanced about his room for a frock coat. And his boots. And his top hat. If only everything weren’t buried under canvas drop cloths and two dozen different jack-in-the-boxes, disassembled. Not to mention the marionettes sprawled across the bed. But it was all necessary. The other enchanter had far outdone him with her fountains in the Neva and the color in the canals. Nikolai had to counter-move by better showing off his skill—and that would be best done by focusing on his mechanical talent.

However, it did not solve the problem of his clothes being buried under all the cranks and gears.

“Oh, forget it.” Nikolai snapped his fingers, and the frock coat waltzed out from under one of the drop cloths—spilling screws and springs in the process—his shoes tap-danced their way from under his bed, and the top hat spun out from the top of the armoire. “You don’t have to be so flamboyant,” he grumbled as he slipped his arms into the jacket and stepped into his boots. But the laces hung limp, as if pouting.