The Crown's Game (The Crown's Game, #1)(35)

“Of course,” Pasha said. “But listen. I have an idea. Unrelated to that ruckus.”

“Another drink?” Nikolai reached for the vodka.

Pasha waved him off. “I’m going to hold a ball for my birthday. Father will think I’m finally rising to the level of pomp expected of a tsesarevich, and Mother will be thrilled that I might find a wife.”

“And your real purpose?”

“I’m going to invite the lightning girl.”

The bottle of vodka slipped from Nikolai’s hand, and he lunged to catch it and also charmed it at the same time so it would not crash and spill all over the food on the cutting board. But as soon as he snatched the bottle, his eyes darted up to Pasha’s. Had he seen? Nikolai should not have done that. In his tipsiness, instinct had taken over.

Pasha looked at the bottle and Nikolai’s hand for a few seconds. Then he shook his head and said, “Nimble catch, Juliet.”

Nikolai exhaled.

“So . . . ,” Pasha said, as he fiddled with the cutting board, “I went back to Ovchinin Island the other day. I discovered the girl’s name.”

Nikolai thumped the bottle of vodka onto the table. “You went to the island to look for her? Are you mad?” Perhaps Pasha was included in the fools whom Nursultan harbored.

“Are you afraid of her?” Pasha asked.

More than you’ll ever know, Nikolai thought. Not only because the lightning girl could very well kill him, but also because her Canal of Colors had stirred something in Nikolai he hadn’t known was there. Of course, her waterways were a swaggering jibe at his work on Nevsky Prospect. And yet, there was also something deeper there, something more untamed. All these years, Nikolai had been alone, with only Galina’s minor magic keeping company with his own. But now there was suddenly another enchanter in his life, and he felt a paradoxical kinship with her. It dissolved the edges of his loneliness, like finding the path home after years of wandering the wilderness on his own.

And although it was arrogant how she’d changed the colors in the canals just to taunt him, Nikolai also admired that she wasn’t afraid to do so.

Which made the girl all the more dangerous. She was the enemy. Nikolai could not afford to be drawn in.

He was also afraid that Pasha would fall for her, seeing as he had already gone far out of his way to track down her details on Ovchinin Island. How could Nikolai kill the girl if his best friend became infatuated with her?

Aloud, Nikolai said, “A rational person would be wary. A rational person would not go seeking to invite someone like that to a ball. Why invite her? To entertain your guests with feats of fire? You can hire the flame-eaters from the circus for that.”

Pasha picked at the label on the vodka bottle. “Or perhaps I will ask her to dance.”

“Pavel Alexandrovich.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Fine, then. Pasha.”

“What?”

“You can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

“Invite her. Dance with her. You’re . . .” Nikolai lowered his voice to a whisper. “You’re the tsesarevich of the Russian Empire.”

“So?” Pasha threw up his arms. “Doesn’t that mean I can do whatever I please?”

“You know it doesn’t. Your mother has rules about whom you can even flirt with, let alone dance with.”

“Guidelines.”

“What?”

“Whom I can flirt with. They’re guidelines, not rules.”

“Pasha.”

The tsesarevich slumped in the booth. He jammed his hands in his hair, and it rumpled to such an extent, it finally looked as if he were a patron of low enough birth and means to frequent this tavern. Someone like me, Nikolai thought. He, too, sank lower in the booth.

After a bit more wrenching, Pasha finally released his abused locks and said, “You know, I’ve been reading a great deal about mystics and enchanters. They’re not evil, contrary to popular belief. They’re misunderstood. And the Church and the people’s irrational fear of their powers have driven them underground, to hide their magic. How dreadful is that? Imagine how taxing it must be to hide your true self every minute of your entire life.”

Nikolai bit his lip.

“I want her to know it’s all right,” Pasha said.

“To what?”

“To live in the open.”

“Married to the heir to the throne?”

Pasha scowled. “That is not what I meant.” He picked up the now-warm shot of vodka Nikolai had poured for him earlier, muttered a toast to the tsar’s health, and gulped it down. His mouth puckered, but he didn’t bother to chase the vodka with beer.

“She’s not the type of girl you can send a glass slipper to and make into a princess,” Nikolai said.

“You never know.”

“She could turn out to be the wicked fairy godmother instead.”

“Now you’re conflating your fairy tales. The wicked fairy godmother is from The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, not Cinderella. And why are you convinced the lightning girl is dangerous?”

So many reasons.

Nikolai rubbed the back of his neck. “We know nothing about her.”

“Her name is Vika.”

Nikolai’s scar burned at the same time that the knot in his chest—that foreboding sense of kismet that had begun when he saw the Canal of Colors—tightened.