The Crown's Game (The Crown's Game, #1)(43)

Electricity buzzed in the air. Nikolai tried to conjure another shield, but it sputtered out.

“I don’t blame you.” He tipped his hat in the ballerina’s direction, but unlike the time he did so after the other enchanter had tried to drown him, there was nothing mocking in his gesture now. “I don’t blame you if this is the end.”

Then the sparks in the sky extinguished themselves, and the gray clouds blew away with a hiss. Not a trace of violence—or even rain—remained.

And the scar at Nikolai’s collarbone warmed.

She’d ended her turn. Nikolai exhaled. She had spared his life. He let his posture slide.

Whether the girl was actually showing him mercy or simply toying with him to draw out the chase, Nikolai would take it. He would live to play another day.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX


It was the fortitude in his voice. And the grace in his poise. That’s why I wasn’t able to kill him, Vika tried to convince herself.

But in reality, it was his eyes. There was a sadness in them, a deep pool of it, which she could see even from where she hid inside the ballerina’s box. The lid was cracked open just an inch, but it had been enough for her to falter.

There’s always next time, she thought as she curled up next to the limp ballerina with the red handkerchief spilling from her porcelain heart. Vika had thought she would relish the irony of her opponent trying to kill her in a box, only to turn it on him and kill him from the box. But it hadn’t worked out for either of them.

It’s all right, she told herself. I still have three more turns. I’ll kill him the next time.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN


The next morning, Pasha was once again in the palace library, although this time, instead of reading Russian Mystics and the Tsars, he was poring over reports from the Imperial Council. He had fallen asleep during yesterday’s meeting—he had, at least, attended it, as he’d promised his father—but afterward, Yuliana had shoved into his arms these stacks of paper on topics ranging from the state of the corn and sunflower harvests to the worsening siege in Missolonghi.

“The ministers are thorough, I’ll give them that,” Pasha said aloud to himself as he flipped through yet another pile of papers. He yawned and tapped his pen on the top page, which was filled with tables of data on wheat yields. Surely there must be a better way to rule a country than to read reports from afar.

And yet, what other way was there, when the country was so vast? The tsar could not be in all places at once.

Pasha yawned again. He was just about to skip the wheat tables to read an account of the current situation in the Crimea when Gavriil, the captain of his Guard, poked his head into the library.

“Your Imperial Highness, please forgive the disturbance, but you asked to be informed of any, er, important developments.”

Pasha threw the report onto the table and sat up straighter. “Yes?”

“Well, Your Imperial Highness, a, uh, giant glass pumpkin has appeared along the Ekaterinsky Canal.”

Pasha grinned. “Excellent.” Because he hadn’t wanted to miss a thing, Pasha had ordered his Guard to inform him of any new happenings around the city, especially if they seemed . . . unusual. He disliked reducing his Guard to messengers and gossipmongers—he suspected they resented it—but it gave them something productive to do instead of the typical routine of losing track of him and panicking before his return.

Pasha rose from his armchair, no longer seeing the Imperial Council reports stacked before him. “Inform the stables to ready my carriage. I’ll go to the pumpkin at once.”

The guard knitted his brow.

“Is there something unclear about my instructions, Gavriil?”

“No, Your Imperial Highness. It’s just . . . I was confused because you informed me of your intended whereabouts rather than . . .” He trailed off.

“Rather than sneaking out?” Pasha grinned even more brightly. “It’s only because I have greater roguishness planned.”

Pasha could see the line stretching from the bakery kiosk before he saw the pumpkin itself. Word had spread quickly about Madame Fanina’s incredible confections, and the carriage had to stop a block away because the crowd was too thick to pass through.

A handful of his guards dismounted their horses while Pasha disembarked from the carriage.

“Make way for His Imperial Highness, the Tsesarevich Pavel Alexandrovich Romanov!” Gavriil called.

Pasha flushed. “I could have waited in line,” he muttered.

But it was too late for that, for everyone on the street had turned to catch a glimpse of the crown prince. And then the entire queue bowed low, like a line of dominoes tumbling onto its knees. The Ekaterinsky Canal glittered red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet beside them.

As Pasha walked past, men and women rose and reached to kiss his hand. He smiled kindly as they declared their love for him and prayed for his health, and his heart swelled to span the far reaches of the empire. He loved it, not because they kissed his hand, but because the people of his country were infinitely more real in the flesh than in Imperial Council meetings and reports.

Halfway through the line, the pumpkin rose into view. Pasha bounced in his boots. I knew it! It was the glass pumpkin he’d had commissioned for the baker on Ovchinin Island! Well, a very enlarged version of it. Pasha recognized the crystalline curl of the green vines around the stem, and the ripples the imperial glassblower had chosen to incorporate into the pumpkin’s orange ribs. The only modifications that had been made to the pumpkin—other than its size—were a window cut out of it and a counter tiled with enormous pumpkin seeds from which to serve Ludmila’s patrons.