Oh, please. Vika scowled at herself. As if I ever want to be the sort who plays by the rules.

She sank onto the edge of Pasha’s bed. She did, however, sit closer to his feet than his hand, and she kept both her own feet firmly planted on the ground. She was an Imperial Enchanter and a baroness, after all.

Pasha retracted his hand and frowned. “I wasn’t going to do anything untoward.”

“I know,” Vika said, even though she didn’t. Or maybe she was worried that she would be the one to do something untoward, so great was her relief that Pasha was all right, and that her attempt to heal him had actually worked. Even though she was no longer angry at him, and even though she could no longer love Nikolai—not as Nikolai was—Vika would not allow herself to fall into someone else’s arms, simply because they were open. She didn’t say all that, though. Instead, she asked, “What if Yuliana came in and thought there was something inappropriate going on?”

“I didn’t know you cared what others thought.”

“I don’t.” Vika crossed her arms. But then she dropped them to her sides, onto the blankets. “Well, sometimes I do.”

Pasha smiled. “All right, sit far away if it makes you feel better.” He had the grace not to rub it in that Vika had been acting, well, self-important. Just because he wanted to kiss me once, on Letniy Isle, doesn’t mean he always wants to kiss me when we’re alone, she thought. Or that he even wants to kiss me at all, after the nasty things I’ve said.

But then Pasha’s hand crept toward hers on the bedspread, although he stopped before he actually touched Vika. His fingers were long and impeccably manicured, evidence of his life in the Winter Palace. Hers were smaller, of course, with nails smooth but permanently stained from dirt beneath them, a fond reminder of her life in the unkempt woods of Ovchinin Island.

When she glanced up, she found he was looking at their hands, too.

“There’s a story that Plato told,” he said softly. “That people were once happy and whole. They were so powerful, they seemed a threat to Olympus. So Zeus split each person in two, such that they were then halves, each imperfect and damned to wander the earth, flawed and no longer competition for the gods. But if a half happened upon his or her other side, they could be united, happy and whole and perfect again.”

Vika looked at their hands as she contemplated the anecdote.

“So I’m a half?” she asked.

“Everyone is a half.”

“Then you’re saying I’m imperfect.”

Pasha laughed. “Of course that’s what you’d gather from my story. Everyone is imperfect. That’s the point. You can’t keep looking for perfection, because it doesn’t exist on its own.”

“Only when you’re united as a whole.”

“Exactly. Then somehow, two imperfect halves come together and form a perfect whole.” He leaned a little bit forward so his fingertips could just graze hers. Vika’s entire body tingled.

Pasha retracted his hand and smiled to himself.

“What?” Vika asked.

Pasha shook his head, still smiling. “Nothing. Just . . . that was nice. I’d like to keep that moment. I’m going to tuck it away somewhere safe.”

Vika blushed at his sweetness. This was why she’d liked him in the past. This pure Pasha, who could appreciate a single moment of life even in the midst of attempted murder and an unknown future.

He closed his eyes and leaned back against the headboard. She listened to him breathe, and once again thanked the heavens (and magic) that he was still alive to do so.

Then Pasha opened his eyes, and the crease between his brows reappeared, heralding the end of their respite. “I suppose we should discuss how to deal with Nikolai. He’s clearly gone beyond civil disobedience now.”

Pasha’s eyes were rimmed red, and his hand went to his stomach again. “I can’t believe he actually tried to kill me.”

Vika’s breath caught, as she felt again those memories of Nikolai pulling and piercing her at the same time.

“Yuliana wants him dead,” Pasha said softly.

Vika clutched the bedspread in her fist, even though she’d known this was coming. “And what do you want?”

“Too many things . . . including not making the same mistakes again.” Pasha bit his knuckles as he thought. “But what can be done? He tried to kill me, Vika. My own brother. And part of me has already died, just by Nikolai making the attempt.” Pasha pounded his chest, as if trying to revive his heart.

“You have to catch him, Vika. And I hate to ask this of you, but then you’ll also have to help to execute him. An enchanter won’t die by simple hanging.”

For a moment, Vika lost control of the powerful magic in her fingertips, and she singed the bedspread. Smoke spiraled up in menacing swirls.

Pasha jerked back.

She doused the smoke but didn’t apologize. Vika was sorry for burning the blanket, but she was not sorry for having and showing her emotions.

She had been tasked with killing Nikolai five times during the Game. She would not do it again, not if there was any possibility of saving him.

But Vika turned to Pasha and said, “I’m at your command.” She might be a dragon on a leash, but she was still a dragon. She would stall. She’d find a way to fix this, bracelet or not.

Or, like witches, she and Nikolai would both burn.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Ilya returned to the barracks after seeing the tsesarevich back to the Winter Palace. He preferred staying in the Guards’ quarters even though his family’s mansion was only a few streets away; as the fourth son, no one paid him much attention, for there was hardly enough attention to go around for three boys, let alone for number four. But Major General Volkonsky had noticed Ilya when he was a cadet training for the Guard, and ever since then, the army felt more like home to Ilya than his parents and brothers at Koshkin Place.

Tonight, however, he was not greeted by smacks on the back from his fellow soldiers, but instead by their retching into buckets and moaning through cold sweats in their beds. The sole medic darted from cot to cot, also sweating, but from exertion rather than whatever ailed the rest of the men.

“What happened, Boris?” Ilya asked, throwing his greatcoat onto a hook and rolling up his sleeves to help in whatever manner he could.