The Crown's Game (The Crown's Game, #1)(48)

“I’ve never met him before.”

“He seems to have met you. Or at least seen you from afar.”

“But when would he have . . . Oh.”

“Oh?”

Vika nodded. He had known to look for her on the island, which meant . . . he had been one of the boys. The day she’d succeeded in escaping her father’s firestorm. The tsesarevich must have been one of the two boys she’d frozen before she fled the woods.

Oh, devil take her, she had frozen the tsesarevich.

Ludmila removed the caramel from the heat and wiped her sticky hands on a towel. Then she retrieved a card from her apron pocket and laid it on the counter. It was light blue and deckle-edged, with the gold double eagles of the tsar’s coat of arms embossed on the top.

The pleasure of your presence is requested at

A MASQUERADE BALL

In honor of Pavel Alexandrovich Romanov, Tsesarevich of all Russia

EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

SATURDAY, 22ND OF OCTOBER

WINTER PALACE

Vika blinked at the card. “This is real?”

“Quite real.”

Then the tsesarevich could not have been too offended that Vika had frozen him. Unless he meant to arrest her at the ball. Would he do that? On his birthday?

“He’s a sweet thing, that boy,” Ludmila said as she began working on assembling macarons filled with pistachio curd and fig jam.

All right, so perhaps he wouldn’t arrest her at the ball, if he was as sweet as Ludmila thought.

“And you would make an excellent princess.”

Vika burst out laughing. “Me, a wild girl from the woods, a princess? And can you imagine Father, in his tunics and rough trousers, living in the halls of the Winter Palace? No, I don’t think princess-hood, or whatever it’s called, would suit me at all. Besides, I highly doubt that’s what the tsesarevich is after.”

“I’m willing to wager a hundred chocolate truffles that that is exactly what His Highness is after.”

But Vika wasn’t listening, since it occurred to her that perhaps the tsesarevich wanted to meet her because of the Game. Perhaps his father had informed him of it. And surely the tsar himself would be at the ball. Vika would need to be at her best.

“We’ll have to decide on our costumes.” Ludmila held two green macarons over her eyes.

Vika groaned. “Not that. You look like a murky-eyed frog.”

“Then what will we wear?” She lowered the macarons. “Can you conjure costumes for us?”

“I could. . . .” Which was true. But Vika had never been any good at tailoring clothes. It was part of the reason why her dresses were not up to the standard of the gowns worn by Saint Petersburg girls. Perhaps it was because cloth was not a living thing, which made it more difficult for her to manipulate. Or perhaps it was because she had never much cared what she wore. She was very much like Sergei in that way. But no matter what the reason, Vika had only ever mastered making the simplest of clothes.

Yet there was another option: the armoire. Assuming it functioned like the one at Bissette & Sons, she and Ludmila could throw in old garments and voilà! New costumes would appear. Vika had seen a woman at Bissette & Sons leave with a dress made of white swan feathers and a black-and-white mask to match. Another left with a gown that was red at the hem but orange and pink near the bodice, with a yellow veil for her face like the rising sun. It would be easy to use the armoire.

It would also mean trusting her opponent.

“What are you thinking about?” Ludmila asked.

“The armoire.”

“It’s still in the hall.”

“I know.”

“It wouldn’t fit through the front door.”

“That’s because I have protections on the flat.” Vika had cast double protections, actually, ever since the day Nikolai’s Nevsky Prospect magic almost seeped in. “The armoire is enchanted. My charms wouldn’t let it in.”

“Ah . . . that makes so much sense. We measured and remeasured, and the dimensions seemed as if it ought to easily fit, so we couldn’t figure out what was wrong.” Ludmila finished assembling the last of the macarons. She offered one to Vika. Vika declined. “So the armoire from the other enchanter? What does it do?”

“If it is anything like the other one at the tailor shop down the street, you fill it with old clothes, and it changes them into something new. But not something ordinary. Something extravagant, for the masquerade.”

Ludmila clapped her hands, and cookie crumbs sprinkled down from them. “So we should use it.”

If only they could. If only Vika could give in and trust her opponent, enjoy his magic as a complement to her own. If only the Game did not exist. But no. She had allowed herself the pleasure of enjoying the wardrobe’s wood carvings, but only with her shields intact. Using it to clothe themselves was a more intimate matter. A dangerous matter.

“No,” she said to Ludmila. “We cannot use it.”

“Why not? It would save you some work.”

But that was another reason Vika couldn’t allow herself to utilize the armoire. She didn’t want to depend on the other enchanter. She didn’t need his help.

This couldn’t be explained adequately to Ludmila, though, without telling her about the Game.

Instead, she said, “I’m not the sort of girl who likes to be dressed by a man, as if I were his doll. I think it would be best if the costumes we wore were our own.”