The Crown's Game (The Crown's Game, #1)(79)

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE


As soon as the sun rose, Aizhana heard the news of the tsar and tsarina’s departure.

It would have been easier if the tsar had stayed put in the capital. It would have made killing him much simpler. However, the past eighteen years had been anything but simple, and Aizhana would not let a small bump in her plans derail her.

She stowed away on the caravan of luggage at the Winter Palace. She would follow the tsar and tsarina to the South. They would not foil her vengeance so easily.





CHAPTER FIFTY


Two days after Vika’s uncharacteristic fainting incident, an envelope flew through the air and tapped its corner against her kitchen window. Vika leaped to open the glass pane and let the letter inside.

“What is it?” Ludmila asked.

The envelope was covered in frost, and the return address said only Siberia.

“It must be Father.” Vika smiled so brightly, the muscles in her face ached.

“How do you know?”

“Who else in Siberia would charm a letter to me this way?”

What was inside? Where precisely was Sergei, and what had he been doing all this time? Vika tried to tear the envelope open, but her hands trembled, and her fingers acted as if they’d been reduced to useless sticks. She dropped the letter, and it skittered across the tiles, under the table.

Vika crawled to retrieve it. The talon-shaped table legs seemed to stretch their claws at her. She scrambled to snatch the precious letter from their clutches.

When she had the envelope again, she tossed it into the air and flicked her middle finger and thumb at it. The wax seal broke, and the stationery inside slipped out and somersaulted down to Vika’s hands. She unfolded it along its deep creases.

But the letter was not in Sergei’s handwriting. It was something both harsher and more looping. Galina’s.

The bottom dropped out from Vika’s stomach.

Dear Vika,

We are not ordinarily to communicate with the enchanters during the Game, but in this instance, I believe the rules will permit it of me.

I am writing with the sad news that Sergei has passed. He wanted to let you know he was proud of you, and that he loved you as if you were his own.

Which brings me to another difficult point. On his deathbed, Sergei expressed his wish that I tell you the truth of your origins. He was not, in fact, your father. Like me, he was a mentor, and he found you on the face of a volcano, abandoned by a nymph. The identity of your father is unknown. But Sergei considered you his daughter until the end, and he wanted you to know he was sorry he deceived you. He had thought, perhaps wrongly, that it was for the best.

My brother’s death is as much a shock to me as I am certain it will be to you. My apologies that this letter does not bear a happier report.

With condolences,

Galina Zakrevskaya

The letter tumbled to the floor. There was no magic to suspend it. Vika stood paralyzed in the center of the kitchen.

There were no thoughts.

Ludmila picked up the letter and read it, a fat tear rolling down her cheek as she finished. She placed her plump hands on Vika’s shoulders and steered her to her bedroom.

“Sit,” Ludmila commanded.

Vika did as she was told.

Ludmila collapsed on the bed beside her. The mattress heaved with her weight.

“Come here, my sunshine.” She gathered Vika to her bosom. Vika did not resist.

There was nothing, nothing, nothing.

Nothing except Sergei being gone.





CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE


Nikolai sat restlessly at a table in the corner of the Imperial Library’s public reading room. It had been a week since Vika evanesced the tsar and tsarina—and nearly two since Nikolai created the Dream Benches—but Vika still had not taken her fourth turn in the Game. So Nikolai tried to pass his time here in the library until his scar alerted him that it was his turn, but he fidgeted so much that another patron complained, and the librarian had to ask Nikolai to relocate.

Now he stared again at the words in a book of French poetry, but he couldn’t make any sense of the verses. Why would a woman be compared to a carriage wheel? Or death to an otter in a creek? He considered going back to perusing the tomes on the occult throughout European history. They were soporific, but at least they seemed based in reality.

However, his thoughts wandered to Vika instead. At first, Nikolai had thought she needed time to recover after fainting by the canal. But then he remembered that she’d walked out of his house the other night almost her old self. She’d been a bit shaky, but nothing a little sleep wouldn’t fix. After all, she was the girl who’d conjured an entire island after a night at Pasha’s ball. She was not easily fazed.

Where was she? Even Ludmila’s pumpkin was closed. Perhaps that was it, something had happened with Ludmila, and Vika had gone to help her. It made sense. (He’d conjured a few new stone birds—harmless ones—but they hadn’t seen any sign of Vika, or Ludmila either.)

Nikolai pressed his fingers into his temples, so hard he actually drew blood from his skin. You have to stop obsessing. Having Vika in his bedroom had scrambled his brain. He needed to reassess his priorities again.

Forget how soft she was when you cradled her in your arms. Forget the way her hair smells like honeysuckle and cinnamon. Focus on the Game.