The Crown's Game (The Crown's Game, #1)(96)

Nikolai scuffed the heel of his boot on the gravel. “My father also died recently. Although I didn’t know he was my father until after his death. Nearly the mirror opposite of your experience.”

Vika blinked at Nikolai. “Oh. That’s terrible. I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “I hardly knew him. But thank you.” He looked at her and held her eyes. Vika thought she saw a flicker in his, a shape like a golden eagle, like an echo of their time together on the dream steppe. But then Nikolai looked down at his knife, and the memory of their shared moment evaporated into tense air.

The dagger gleamed. “I don’t want to do this,” he said.

“Then don’t.”

“It’s the only way.”

Vika jerked back to the reality of the Game. She checked her shields, and she began to pace along Candlestick Point, so as not to be too easy a target in a single static space. Who knew what that knife was capable of? Sergei’s simple leather bracelet had been enough to drain his life. Surely Galina’s gift would be equally as powerful, and likely much more vicious.

But Nikolai did not move to aim it at Vika.

“There’s one more thing,” he said.

“Yes?” Vika forced herself to continue walking. If only he would hurry and make his move. If he was going to kill her, she wanted him to end it now, before her own dread choked her.

“I love you,” he said.

“What?”

He smiled sadly. “I was lost from the moment I saw you on Ovchinin Island. It took a long while for me to realize it, but it’s true. I’ve spent my entire life scrambling to fit in and to change myself, Vika, but where I’ve belonged, and who I needed to be, has been right here the whole time. I love you.”

Vika stood in one place, no longer pacing. “But . . . but you kissed Renata.”

Nikolai shook his head. “She’s only a friend.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve never wanted anyone but you.”

Vika gasped as the invisible string that connected them pulled taut. She wanted to let it reel her in, to pull her to Nikolai, and him to her. And yet . . . the dagger. “Then what is the knife for?”

“To end the Game.” Nikolai gripped the handle, and sunlight glinted off the sharp edges of the blade.

Suddenly, it seemed as if the air grew thinner, and Vika’s head swam as she tried to make sense of everything Nikolai was saying, everything Vika wanted him to say. And to not say. But she had to ask.

“You love me, so you’re going to kill me?”

“I love you,” Nikolai said, “so I want you to live.”

“I don’t underst—”

“Galina said this knife would never miss.” He pointed the dagger at his chest. “This is my fifth move.”

No, he couldn’t mean to— “Nikolai! Stop!”

Vika lunged and threw a wave of magic at him.

But he was too quick. He thrust the knife deep into himself. It plunged up under his ribs on a direct path to his heart.

The violence of his act pierced through Vika, and she felt as if her heart, too, had been impaled. Her scream split the sky and shattered the morning’s remains.





CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE


Nikolai was still standing. He didn’t feel a thing, when he should have felt the blade slicing through muscle and grating against bone. When he should have been buckling in a pool of red. When Death was supposed to have come to claim him.

He looked down at himself. There was no knife in his hands. What? How?

And then he looked up at Vika, who had just screamed. Her eyes were wide, and a hilt protruded from her chest. Blood drenched the bodice of her dress.

“Nikolai . . . ,” she gasped.

“Vika!” Unlike the night along the canal, he was quick enough this time to catch her before she hit the ground. He cradled her tenderly against his body. Her breathing was already shallow.

Galina had said the knife would not miss. So how . . . ?

Nikolai drew in a guillotine-sharp breath. Galina. The conniving, venomous harpy. She had known before Nikolai did that his weakness—his compassion for the tiger, for the lorises, for Vika—might lead him to attempt to end the Game by killing himself. So Galina had charmed the knife to hit the target she thought it ought to. Like she’d said, the knife would never miss.

“Vika. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know . . . It was supposed to be me, not you.”

She turned her head toward him, but her eyes were far away. Even the green in them seemed diluted.

He pressed his fingers to her throat and felt her pulse beneath her skin. The beat faltered. Then it recovered, but the rhythm was uneven.

What have I done, what have I done, what have I done?

“Vika, listen to me. I’ll fix this. There must be some way to reverse it. You need to hold on. Hold on while I figure out how to right this.”

She wheezed and more blood gushed from her wound.

I have to close it, Nikolai thought. But he had never done anything like it before. Galina had trained him as a master of mechanics. But what good was shipbuilding and fabric manipulating at a time like this? And the only way she had taught him to handle life was to end it. Damn her and her blasted tigers.

If only Vika could heal herself, like she did for the animals on her island. But she hadn’t the strength. “Why can’t I give you mine?” Nikolai let out a tortured wail.