The Crown's Game (The Crown's Game, #1)(57)

Only Vika and Nikolai stood in the center of the floor. Their chests rose and fell in rapid, synchronized rhythm. He released the mazurka charm he had cast.

“Let’s dance again,” he whispered.

“It would be poor form,” she quipped.

He smiled his blush of a smile. If only she could capture it and keep it in a bottle.

“Then probably for the best that we don’t,” he said. “I believe we’ll have an uprising if I do not relinquish you soon.” Nikolai gestured behind her, and Vika shifted to see a line of knights and devils and gentlemen tigers waiting their turn to ask her to dance. They were apparently unfazed by the speed of her last performance.

“My two left feet will be revealed.”

“Not while I am here.” Nikolai waved his hand over her heeled boots, and she floated imperceptibly off the ground. “Do you trust me?”

The question seemed altogether different now than before the mazurka. Nikolai no longer seemed like the enemy. He was that tugging. That tenuous thread. He was her other half on the end of the string.

And yet she would be a fool to trust him.

But they could have a détente, at least for tonight. Vika looked up at him and tapped her mask. It went transparent, although only for him, and only for a few seconds.

He nodded, as if he understood exactly what she meant, and he mirrored her movement. His mask went invisible for a moment as well.

Oh. Heaven help her. Nikolai was more striking than she remembered, and the darkness in his eyes was more dangerous than she recalled. He was a poisonous autumn crocus: deadly beautiful with no antidote.

She wanted the flower anyway.

And Vika remembered the dreams of him she’d had, when she’d wondered what it would feel like to run her hand along the sharp line of his jaw, to touch her fingertips to the scar beneath his collarbone, to press her lips against his mouth. He was so close. She could put to rest all those questions now. And he wasn’t even a shadow in a dream. He was real.

But Nikolai was a gentleman, and there was no possibility that he’d kiss her in the middle of the ballroom, in front of the tsar and tsarina and the rest of Saint Petersburg’s nobility, even if he felt the pull as strongly as Vika did. Instead, he offered her his arm and led her off the dance floor. Then he bowed before he gave her up to the knight rattling in his armor.

“I hope to see you again, Lady Snow,” Nikolai said softly.

Vika gathered herself—stashed away her dream thoughts and dream wants—and curtsied. “I am sure you will, Harlequin.” She let her eyes linger on Nikolai for another moment. Then she turned and allowed the knight to take her back to where the floor manager was assembling the next set.

She danced a quadrille with the knight, a polonaise with the devil, and a cotillion and a gavotte and countless other steps. Pasha managed to squeeze in another waltz, and during one set, just for ladies, she even danced with the peacock girl. The dances were all at ordinary speed.

Nikolai did not invite Vika onto the floor again. He stayed on the fringes, near the drapes and the café, and closed his eyes, as if both listening to and channeling the music. He might not have been there with Vika, but his magic was with her for every step. When the violins swelled, she would feel a surge of energy in her boots; when the woodwinds crooned, her feet would glide with equal gentility. It was as if each dance was a dance with him.

And with each quadrille and cotillion and gavotte, the warmth of Nikolai’s magic grew brighter. Like Vika’s own power, Nikolai’s pushed at the boundaries that contained it, yearning to burst like starlight and wash over everyone and everything with its glow. She wanted again to hold on to him, and have him hold on to her, so they could whirl together through the cosmos like galaxies that could not—and would not—be confined.

If only he weren’t the other enchanter in the Game.

Forget about it, Vika told herself. Just for tonight.

But the longer the ball went on, and the longer she allowed Nikolai to dance for her, the more undeniable the horror of her reality became. This one night is a farce, she thought. The Game hasn’t actually gone away.

Her gown grew suddenly heavier. The swirling flurries of snow in her skirt began to melt, and the snowflakes transformed to icy raindrops. Vika shivered as her gown shifted from blizzard to sleet, soaking through her petticoats. Weighing her down. Chilling her through and through.

At the end of the next song, she curtsied hastily to her partner and rushed off the dance floor, retreating to the side of the ballroom into the curtains. “Off,” Vika said as she ran her hands frantically over her gown. “Get off.” She could feel Nikolai’s magic on her, fine invisible threads everywhere, as if she were covered in cobwebs. “No more dances. I can’t. I can’t do this. Get off.”

His magic tangled and clung to her. She slapped and swiped at it. It was too much. He was too strong.

And then her fingers found a loose tendril, and another and another. His enchantment’s edge.

Oh, thank goodness.

Knowing where it began and ended, Vika could push it away. She gathered the threads of Nikolai’s charm and flung them all aside. Her feet were free. She recast her own shield. And she hurried off to find Ludmila.

“We have to leave,” Vika said, pulling Ludmila away from a conversation with a tuxedoed brown bear. Out of the corner of her eye, Vika could see Nikolai rising from where he’d been sitting in the café. There was concern on his face. Or so she thought. Was it possible to read his emotion even though he wore a mask? Regardless, Vika didn’t want concern.