“He’ll freeze to death.”

Vika scowled but snapped her fingers, and a fire roared to life at her side. There was no wood, just flame rising out of the snow.

Yuliana shut her mouth, another unprecedented move. But there was no time for Vika to gloat.

She began to unbutton Pasha’s greatcoat. He moaned and gripped it closed.

“Shhh. I’m trying to see where you’ve been hurt. Then I’m going to heal you.”

She finished removing his greatcoat and took off his uniform jacket and shirt.

“The rabbits are dancing in the clouds,” Pasha murmured. “They’re pretty.”

“You’re losing him,” Yuliana said. “Hurry.”

Vika rested her hands on Pasha’s muscled chest and listened to his pulse. It fluttered, but it was there. His breathing was ragged but consistent. Then he shivered.

“Cold,” he said. “Winter is so cold. Even the polar bears are gone.”

The fire wasn’t enough. He needed heat directly on his skin.

She could be that heat. . . .

Vika’s temperature certainly rose a little at the thought.

It wasn’t appropriate in the least. But if he was dying, that called for drastic measures, whether respectable or not.

Besides, this was about saving Pasha’s life.

Of course it was.

She rested her cheek on Pasha’s bare chest and curled her body alongside his, laying her arm across him, her hand on his right shoulder blade. But despite lying on the snow, Vika flushed at her proximity to him. She felt all his muscles—from fencing, from archery, from the myriad other activities he did—and she tensed. But Pasha sighed and relaxed against her.

Yuliana, surprisingly, did not say a thing. And Ilya stood stoic, the consummate soldier.

Vika breathed Pasha in. He was sweat and blood, but he was also soap and a hint of clove.

Don’t think about him like that. He’s the tsesarevich.

He’s also a brave, wounded boy. He’s Pasha.

Vika’s resentment over the end of the Game had already begun to thaw before this, but now the rest of it melted away.

She shut her eyes. With her cheek pressed against him, she could more easily see the fibers of his flesh. Not literally see them, but she could sense them, how they wove together and layered. And where they were torn apart and frayed.

Oh, heavens. What lay in his stomach might have looked like a tart when he ate it, but now it was a gear, like a component of one of Nikolai’s machines. Except the spoke-like edges were razor sharp, a wheel of knives in miniature. And that wheel had rolled all the way down Pasha’s insides and left a shredded, bloody mess in its wake.

Nikolai was probably pleased with himself for tricking Pasha, a boy who loved being in disguise, with a deadly weapon, also in disguise.

“What happened to him?” Yuliana asked.

Vika opened her eyes but didn’t answer, only shook her head. Then she closed her eyes once more and lay back down on Pasha’s chest.

I can fix him, she told herself. She’d healed injuries in the animals on Ovchinin Island for years. She’d stitched herself back together after the knife slashed through her organs at the end of the Game. Just like fixing a broken bone, I can do this, too. I have to.

She cast an enchantment to pin him down. “Pasha, this is going to hurt, but trust me. I know what I’m doing.”

It was an utter lie, but she wasn’t going to tell Pasha—or Yuliana—that. She just had to hope that the increase in Bolshebnoie Duplo’s magic would be enough to push her power farther than she’d accomplished before. And that she’d be able to keep the magic steady. It was already jittering and sparking inside her, like racehorses about to take off on a steeplechase.

With her head on his chest, Vika placed her hand above his stomach and focused on the spot where Nikolai’s gear lay. She was going to evanesce it out, but it was imperative that she get it right, for she could not afford to evanesce away a crucial part of Pasha’s body.

She concentrated until she saw every sharp ridge. Every protrusion. And every bit of muscle and organ and blood that touched the metal. Then Vika took a deep breath and imagined the gear transforming into bubbles.

It dissolved, but as it did so, Pasha shrieked and shuddered beneath the enchantment that kept him immobilized against the ground. Yuliana and Ilya jumped forward at his cries. Vika threw a wave of magic to keep them back. “There’s a wheel of knives inside his body that is making its way out,” she said, trying to maintain as even a voice as possible. “The evanescing particles still need a path on which to travel, so a wound has opened, and he’s feeling it right now.”

Vika pressed her cheek against Pasha’s chest and shook along with him, her trembling coming from holding tightly to the magic to control it, and his from the pain. She blew what she hoped was warm, numbing air from her lips to the nearly undetectable opening on his abdomen from which the bubbles streamed.

As the gear’s particles made their way out of Pasha’s body, Vika could feel them scraping against the wet fibers of his flesh while they tore open an exit route. She cringed, feeling Pasha’s screams as if they were her own. But still, she held the magic steady, even though it wanted to burst out like water freeing itself from a dam.

Finally, the last of the gear came out. It rematerialized in Vika’s palm, and she dropped it onto the snow, red splattering on white. She shook nearly as wretchedly as Pasha did.

But she couldn’t take too long, for Pasha’s insides had been shredded, and he would die soon if she didn’t save him.

Keeping her face pressed to his chest above his heart, Vika splayed her hands over Pasha’s stomach and at the base of his throat. Knit yourselves back together, she commanded the sinews of his muscle. Now she could let the magic flow more freely, for she wasn’t extracting knives anymore. The power gushed forth smoothly, like warm honey.

She guided Pasha’s broken muscle fibers. The veins and nerves that crisscrossed his torso slowly wove themselves back into place. He cried out as she guided his organs back together again. His entire body convulsed.

“I’ve got you.” Vika wrapped herself around him tighter. “Shh. I’ve got you.”

And then, finally, the last of his muscles smoothed over. Thank goodness. Vika collapsed on top of him.

Her basalt pendant lay askew on his chest. She almost kissed it. Kissed him.