The Crown's Game (The Crown's Game, #1)(80)

Nikolai scratched his fingernails down the sides of his face until they found their familiar place behind his neck. He stared blankly at the French poem below him and lowered his forehead to the pages, resting, ostensibly, on the library table.

He was still in that position when someone thrust a heavy book onto the table.

Nikolai started.

Pasha slid into the seat across from him. He wore his best—or worst, depending on opinion—disguise, that of an unkempt fisherman. He was unshaven and dressed in a rough tunic and trousers, so bedraggled he could have emerged straight from the bottom of the bay. It was certainly not the look of a tsesarevich. But it also was not the look of someone who would ordinarily frequent the Imperial Library. A few patrons eyed Pasha with disdain.

“What are you doing here?” Nikolai whispered.

“Searching for you. You’ve been avoiding me again.”

“No. I’ve only been . . . ill.”

“But not too ill to read French poetry?” Pasha tilted his head to better see the slim volume on the table.

Nikolai flipped it closed. “On the contrary, the poetry made me only more ill.”

Pasha smirked. “Regardless, I’ve tracked you down once again.” He tapped the cover of the book he had brought. “This explains everything.”

Nikolai glanced down at the book, and his stomach lurched, as if Pasha had brought the smell of fish past its prime into the library with him. Russian Mystics and the Tsars. “Where did you get that? And what do you mean it explains everything?”

“I’ve had it for a while, but you were so against me pursuing Vika and seemed . . . repulsed, almost, by the idea of magic that I hadn’t shared the book with you. I didn’t want you to think me a fool. But it really does explain everything—the enchantments around the city. The island. Vika.”

Nikolai swallowed but didn’t speak. Had Pasha finally caught up to Nikolai’s deceit?

“I thought the charms around the city were merely amusements well timed with my birthday,” Pasha said. “Oh, how vain I was! They are a game, but an ancient one: the Crown’s Game.”

Nikolai gripped the edge of the table as if the library were a ship heeling beneath him. His knuckles were bone white.

“Don’t you want to know about the Crown’s Game?” Pasha asked.

Nikolai shook his head.

“Well, I’ll tell you anyway.” Pasha began, in a low voice, to relay the details of the contest between enchanters. He started at the beginning, in the age of Rurik, and wound his way through a catalog of past Games, his eyes lightening and darkening as he recounted the history. Nikolai held the table even tighter.

Only when Pasha had finished did the color seep back into Nikolai’s hands. Pasha had not mentioned Nikolai’s involvement in the Game. Yet.

Pasha poked the Russian Mystics book. “Have you nothing to say? Nikolai! I’ve just informed you that there’s an ancient contest of magic taking place in our midst, and that the girl I almost kissed is in the center of it and might die.”

Nikolai groaned and brought his head back down to the incomprehensible French poem. “You almost kissed her?” he asked into the table. Jealousy blazed inside him. So much for trying not to think of Vika in that way. “When? Where?”

“On the island, soon after the benches appeared,” Pasha said. “I tried to kiss her, but she told me she wasn’t ‘in a position to fall in love.’”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. But she promised I’d know if it changed.”

Nikolai wanted to disappear into the table. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you sleep too damn much and never come out with me anymore. But I’m telling you now, and you’re flat on the table, falling asleep again.” Pasha thumped his hand on the book.

Someone nearby shushed him, then made a fuss of standing up and relocating to a table much farther away.

“I’m not falling asleep,” Nikolai muttered. It would have been impossible to. Pasha had (almost) kissed Vika. How could Nikolai have even thought he’d have a chance with her? Of course she would fall in love with Pasha. Pasha was the heir to an empire, and he was smart and dashing and could win a war with his smile. He was also not at risk of dying in the Game.

And that explained why she’d told Pasha she wasn’t currently in a position to fall in love. She still didn’t know how the Game would end. But if she won, then she would be in a position to fall in love. She would be Imperial Enchanter, and she would no longer fear commitment to Pasha, for she would know she could live happily ever after.

And Nikolai would be alone. No, dead. Exactly as his tea leaves had predicted.

Pasha knocked on Nikolai’s head. “Then if you’re not asleep, talk to me. You’re my best friend. I think I love her, and she might die.”

Nikolai peered up from the table. “You cannot love her. You hardly know her.”

“If there were ever a girl a man could fall in love with without knowing, it would be Vika. I have to stop the other enchanter. Say you’ll help me.”

Were the library truly a ship, this would be the moment that it sank.

“Nikolai.”

He shook his head.

“Say you’ll help me.”

Nikolai exhaled deeply. Why did Pasha have to get involved?