Was Nikolai still there now, in the steppe dream? Vika had gone back every day since she’d seen him that single instance last week, but he had not reappeared. Yet the benches themselves still existed, which meant his magic hadn’t been extinguished. Perhaps that meant Nikolai was still, somehow, alive, too.

Then again, Vika could feel the old magic inside the statue of Peter the Great behind her, and that had been created decades ago by an enchanter who’d died in the Napoleonic Wars.

But hopefully the shadow boy Vika had seen was a scrap of life that Nikolai had managed to hold on to for himself. Not quite enough to be real, but enough to be more than a dream.

“If you’re still in the bench, I’ll find a way to get you out and make you yourself again,” Vika said.

As she uttered the promise, her chest constricted. But it wasn’t the invisible string that tethered her to Nikolai as enchanters; this pull on her chest was a different sort.

Vika pressed her gloved hand to her left collarbone, where the scar of the Game’s crossed wands had once burned.

Before the end of the Game, Nikolai had said he loved her.

It was possible Vika loved Nikolai, too.

But she didn’t have much chance to contemplate her feelings, for behind her, heavy footsteps approached the statue of Peter the Great.

Vika’s pulse sped up. Had someone seen her evanesce here? Ordinary people couldn’t know about magic. A long time ago, they had believed, and there had been witch hunts. Hysteria. Not to mention that the more people believed in magic, the more power Bolshebnoie Duplo generated, which in turn meant that enchanters were a greater threat to the tsar because they could possibly usurp him. It was why the Crown’s Game and its oath had been conceived, to ensure that any enchanter would work with the tsar, not against him, and why common folk’s belief in magic had to be suppressed.

After all she had survived, Vika didn’t want to meet her end on a flaming pyre.

The footsteps drew closer. Vika darted away from the embankment and ducked behind the Thunder Stone, the massive slab of granite at the base of Peter the Great’s statue.

A minute later, a young fisherman stumbled into view. He was singing.

No. Slurring.

Thank heavens, Vika thought as she relaxed against the Thunder Stone. He probably didn’t see me anyway, and even if he did, he won’t remember in the morning.

But then the boy reached the statue and stopped.

Oh, mercy, she thought. Anyone but him.

Vika lightened her steps as she inched around the Thunder Stone to a spot where he wouldn’t see her.

Because he might have worn a fisherman’s cap, but he was no ordinary drunk.

He was Pavel Alexandrovich Romanov—Pasha—tsesarevich and heir to Russia’s throne.

CHAPTER THREE

It was too late to be evening, yet too early to be morning, when Pasha tripped his way into Peter’s Square. There was nothing princely about him at the moment, for he hadn’t shaved in the fortnight since the end of the Game, and he wore a tattered coat and a threadbare fisherman’s cap, which had come from the secret chest where he stored his disguises. There was also the matter of the entire bottle of vodka he’d gloriously—or perhaps, ingloriously—drunk on his own, and as he came to rest against the base of the statue of Peter the Great, reality was a bit slippery for Pasha to hold on to.

“Bonsoir, Your Imperial Majesty,” Pasha said from the Thunder Stone. Towering above him, an enormous bronze Peter looked out across the dark river, while his horse trampled a serpent, symbolizing the enemies of the tsar and Saint Petersburg. Legend had it the statue was enchanted, that it would always protect the people and the city.

“Quiet out tonight,” Pasha said. “Looks like it’s just you and me, tsar and . . . future tsar.” He’d hesitated because he’d almost called himself a tsar, too. But Pasha was technically still only the tsesarevich, the heir to the throne, until the official coronation in Moscow next month.

This felt right, though. Tsar and future tsar. Pasha laughed and lowered himself down to the snowy ground. He rested his head against the Thunder Stone.

“Do you ever wish you could go back in time and do things over?” Pasha asked the statue. He tilted his head farther back until he was looking up at the underbelly of the horse, as well as in the general direction of the bronze tsar. Snow fell into Pasha’s eyes. The horse snorted.

Pasha startled. “Did your horse just—?”

But after a few moments of definite silence (he must’ve imagined the horse making a noise—damn it, how much had he drunk again?), Pasha returned to leaning against the stone. “No, I suppose you never felt that way. You’re Peter the Great. You’re great by definition. Whereas I will be, what? Pasha the Unshaven.” He waved his arms dramatically in the air. “Pasha the Unprepared. Pasha the Dreadful, who never apologized to his best friend before sending him to his death.” He exhaled loudly. “I just wish I could have a second chance. I would . . . I don’t know what I would do. But I know I wouldn’t demand the end of the Game. There must have been some other way.”

“Be careful what you wish for, Your Imperial Highness,” a voice said.

Pasha jumped to his feet and whirled. He looked at Peter the Great, eyes wide. “Did you say something? O-or . . . was it you again?” He shifted his focus to the horse.

A girl came from around the other side of the Thunder Stone. Her red hair flamed beneath the dull brown of her fur hat. “Are you talking to the statue?”

Pasha blinked at her. It took a few seconds for his addled head to process what had happened. Of course. The voice had belonged to a girl. And not just any girl. To Vika, his Imperial Enchanter.

“I’m not talking to the statue,” Pasha lied. How long had Vika been there, on the other side of the Thunder Stone? Might as well add “Pasha the Insane” to his list of illustrious monikers.

Vika came closer but stopped several yards away from him. Ever since the end of the Game, she’d maintained her distance. Pasha winced at the memory that the girl he’d once almost kissed now despised him.

“I mean it when I say you ought to be careful what you wish for,” Vika said.

“Why? What could happen?”

“Anything. Or nothing. I don’t know. But I’ve told you before, magic comes tied with many strings. Wishes, I’d imagine, are a bit like magic. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”