The Crown's Game (The Crown's Game, #1)(77)

The tsarina gasped, but clapped her hands, delighted. “I should have thought to change. How silly to travel in a nightgown.”

Nikolai dipped his head and smiled. “Even evanescing ought to be done in style, Your Imperial Majesty.”

She smiled back kindly at him. “Indeed.” She turned to Vika. “I believe Alexander and I are truly ready now.”

The tsar nodded, himself pulling on a fur-lined greatcoat.

Vika glanced at Nikolai. Again, he gave her his subtle nod, his confidence. She turned to the tsar and tsarina.

One breath. Two breaths. Three . . .

And she evanesced the tsar and tsarina out of the Winter Palace, all the way to the sea.





CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN


Sergei cried out from his bed. Galina dropped the armload of firewood she was moving near the fireplace—with nothing else to do in Siberia, and with Sergei indisposed, she had begun finding solace in the daily chores of their household—and rushed to his side.

His forehead beaded with sweat, and his black eyes were open but seemed not to see her. “Galina . . .”

“Shh, mon frère.” She dipped a nearby washcloth in a basin of water and dabbed it on his head. “I’m right here.”

“Something happened. There’s no more.” Delirium tinged his whisper.

The composure Galina had been trying to keep fell from her face. Her jaw tightened. “No more what?”

“No more of me left.” He rolled toward the sound of her voice, his eyes still unseeing. “Tell Vika the truth about who I am. Who she is. And tell her I loved her.”

Galina dropped the washcloth back in the basin. “Sergei, no.”

“I am finished.”

“No! I shall write to the tsar. I’ll request that he declare a winner and end the Game. You will recover.”

“Hm?” Sergei grunted.

“You’ll get better.”

But he ignored her. It was as if his ears were failing him, as well. “Tell Vika I am proud of her. And not to be upset at me for the bracelet, and for not telling her about me, or about her mother. I did it all because I love her.”

“Sergei . . .”

His eyes drifted closed. Then they flitted open again, only to droop and fly open once more.

“Please don’t go,” Galina whispered.

“Sing to me,” he said.

She swallowed the dread lodged in her throat, and she began to sing his lullaby. Her voice carried out from the cabin across the fields of snow.

Na ulitse dozhdik,

S vedra polivaet,

S vedra polivaet,

Zemlyu pribivaet.

Sergei sighed when she finished, and she tucked the sheets tightly around him. “Sing again,” he said.

So Galina did.

At the end of the song, Sergei let out a low moan. Buzzards screeched outside. And then the light in Sergei’s eyes snuffed out.

Her brother was gone.

She buckled on the bed beside him and cradled him in her arms. And for the first time since their father died, Galina cried.





CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT


The night was shaded in midnight blue, and quietude kissed the air. Moonlight shimmered upon Saint Petersburg’s streets, and sleepy ripples rolled through its canals.

There was no one out at this hour but the two enchanters. Nikolai smiled as Vika’s footfalls on the cobblestones fell into sync with his. Unintentional and yet so inevitable.

After the tsar and tsarina had gone, he and Vika had taken a winding path through the city. Neither of them spoke, but they were both content with having no real destination at all. The Game was still upon them, of course, but the restlessness, the disquiet it normally inspired, had lifted, at least for now.

Nikolai watched as Vika moved beside him, impossibly light, impossibly strong. She had evanesced two entire people to the southern edge of the empire. She was a marvel. She was magic itself.

She glanced over at him and smiled.

If only tonight could stretch on forever, Nikolai thought.

But suddenly, Vika gasped. She grabbed onto the leather bracelet around her wrist. Her knees gave way beneath her, and she collapsed.

It was so fast, Nikolai didn’t have time to catch her. Her head slammed into the cobblestones. If not for the embankment, she would have tumbled into the canal.

Nikolai rushed forward. “Vika, are you all right?”

But she didn’t move or even murmur. She lay limp on the ground with one arm hanging over the embankment, her fingers dangling over the canal. Nikolai’s own heart pounded as he reached to take her pulse.

It was there. Stuttering, like a broken metronome, but there. Barely.

Thank the heavens.

He scooped her up and cradled her against his body, and for a moment her magic, albeit weak, meshed with his, and he felt again that hot jolt like their connection at Pasha’s ball. And then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone, and Vika was just an unconscious girl in his arms.

Nikolai held her tighter. “It’ll be fine,” he said, both to Vika and to himself, as he hurried toward the Zakrevsky house, which was only a few blocks away. “Everything will be fine.”

But that was a lie, for there was nothing about him and Vika that would ever be fine. What a fool he’d been to think tonight could be any different.

When they arrived at his house, he charmed open the front door, hurled away all the protection charms he’d cast, and rushed her straight upstairs to his room. The door swung shut behind him.