The entire surface of the counter was already covered with the morning’s loaves. There was a glass bowl filled with apple jelly, and another with sour cherry jam. The pech—an enormous stone oven that took up the center of the bakery—was full with trays of piroshki and an iron pot of kasha simmered in its hearth.

“Vee-kahhh!” Ludmila sang as she bounced around the kitchen, waving a wooden spoon. “How wonderful to see you. I’m just about to have a snack.”

“Actually, I—”

“Oh, my sunshine!” Ludmila stopped with her spoon in midair. “You look like you’ve flown through a hurricane of hail. Sit down and I’ll . . . I’ll get you something to eat. Cookies. You need cookies.” She pulled out a chair from the small table in the corner and practically shoved Vika onto the seat. Before Vika could say a thing, she’d already pushed a plate of sushki—ring-shaped cookies—in front of her.

“Please, eat,” Ludmila said. “No, first tell me you’re all right, and then eat.”

“I’m not going to lie and say I’m all right when I’m not.” Vika poked at one of the sushki. “But I’m alive, which I suppose is something.”

Ludmila’s forehead creased, and she shook her head. “They ask too much of you.”

Vika sighed. “It’s my job to do what needs to be done.”

“But fighting Nikolai again? That was not part of the bargain.”

The last time Vika had seen Ludmila was right after Nikolai had threatened to take the crown from Pasha. She had been too busy to visit the baker since. Ludmila would worry even more if she knew all that had transpired in the days that had passed.

Ludmila used a long, fork-like stick to pull the pot of kasha from the hearth but nearly upended the kasha in the process. Vika startled but managed to cast a quick spell to form a gentle barrier, protecting Ludmila from the pot, and the pot from Ludmila. The baker didn’t even notice anything had been unsteady. She set the pot on the counter and began to ladle kasha into bowls instead.

A white moth flitted in through a crack in the window and landed in Vika’s hair, near her ear.

Vika listened to it intently.

“That was quick,” she said, once the moth had finished. “Well done. Thank you.”

The moth fluttered its wings and took off through the opening in the window again.

“Do I want to know what that was about?” Ludmila asked.

Vika began to push her chair back from the table. “Poslannik’s army found Nikolai.”

“They did?” Ludmila set down the bowls of kasha so abruptly, some of the porridge spilled onto the tablecloth.

This time, Vika didn’t bother with a charm to clean it up. She was too preoccupied with the moth’s news. “He’s staying in Sennaya Square.”

“Sennaya Square . . . it doesn’t seem the sort of place a boy like Nikolai would live.”

“Not the Nikolai I used to know. But this one . . . perhaps he fits into Sennaya Square just right.” Vika frowned at the kasha. Not because the porridge had done anything wrong, but because it was the most immediate thing in her sight.

“So what will you do?” Ludmila asked.

“I have to arrest and imprison him.”

“Nikolai will hate being confined. He only just escaped from the steppe bench.”

“I know.” Vika buried her face in her hands. “But he tried to kill Pasha last night—”

“He did what?” Ludmila flung her hands in the air and knocked a basket of raspisnye paskhalnie yaitsa—intricately painted Easter eggs—off the edge of the table.

“My eggs!” Ludmila flew out of her chair.

Vika conjured a cushion onto the wooden floor. The raspisnye paskhalnie yaitsa tumbled onto it, a split second before they would have shattered on the ground.

Ludmila crawled on her hands and knees. “You rescued them. Bless you.”

There were several dozen, one for each year since Ludmila had been old enough to take part in the painstaking process each Easter of drawing on the eggshells with beeswax, dying them to color the unwaxed parts, and repeating the process many times with more wax and different layers of dye, until the eggs were multicolored and delicately patterned.

Vika crouched to help her and picked up a blue egg decorated with white spirals and a gold serpent in the middle.

“The symbols all have meanings, you know,” Ludmila said. “That one is a talisman against evil and disaster. Maybe you should carry one with you when you go after Nikolai.”

“I doubt a talisman will help against him,” Vika said. “He was powerful before, but now there’s something awful driving him, and with the increase in Bolshebnoie Duplo’s magic, I’m the only one who can stop him.” She looked at the egg. “It is beautiful, though.”

“Yes, it is.” Ludmila’s eyes brightened. “Nikolai appreciates beautiful things, doesn’t he?”

“Yes . . .” Vika cocked her head, not following Ludmila’s train of thought.

“What if you confined him not in an ordinary prison, but in a gilded cage, so to speak?” She tapped the egg in Vika’s hand, a little more firmly than necessary. “He was a gentleman through and through, even till the last of the Game, and I find it hard to believe some of the old Nikolai isn’t still inside that shadow. Perhaps a little kindness will coax him out.”

“I don’t under— Oh.” A smile spread across Vika’s face. The egg could be enlarged, and Nikolai could be evanesced and trapped inside. Vika could make it comfortable, and as handsome within as the eggshell was without. It would still be a prison, but it would be as pleasing as a prison could be.

“Would you be willing to part with this egg?” she asked Ludmila.

She nodded. “That egg has been waiting all its life to be called to a higher purpose. Much grander than sitting at the bottom of a pile in my old basket.”

Vika pulled her coat off the back of her chair and put it on. She tucked the painted egg into her pocket and headed to the door.

Behind her, Ludmila rose from the bakery floor. “You’re not going to eat?”

Vika turned around. “Oh! I . . .”

Ludmila smiled kindly. “I’m only teasing. I think I can make a dent in this food on my own. You have an empire—and an enchanter—to rescue. Go, go!”