Merde. Vika had seen Aizhana? The thrill of imagining himself as tsar vanished, and Nikolai rested his forehead against the eggshell wall. He and Vika were both positioned that way now, as if they were sharing an intimate secret rather than pitted against each other.

“That . . . person is my mother,” he said. “She saw you when you evanesced me?”

“‘Saw’ might be too tame a description.”

“Aizhana is passionate, to put it kindly.”

“And to put it unkindly?”

“She takes wrongs to me very personally and very violently. She killed my father for making me play the Game.”

Vika pushed away from the eggshell. “Your mother killed the tsar?”

“I had no part in it,” Nikolai said. He pressed his fingertips harder into the wall, as if that would somehow draw Vika back.

But she stayed where she was, boots planted in the gravel, there being no snow here in Letniy Isle’s eternal summer.

“If you want to help me,” Nikolai said, “fight with me. We’re two enchanters; we’ll figure out a way to circumvent the bracelet.”

She moved farther away, shaking her head. “It’s not right.”

“Vika—”

“No. Your mother killed the tsar. I have to tell Pasha. I have to go.” And just like that, she disappeared and left Nikolai standing there, alone.

Always, always Pasha. Pasha better than Nikolai when they were kids. Pasha demanding the end of the Game. Pasha taking Vika for his enchantress by his side. It was only a small consolation that Pasha hadn’t also convinced her to marry him.

Nikolai slammed his fist into the wall, since there was no one on the other side to scare away anymore. The eggshell didn’t even dent, let alone crack or indicate a means of escape. He grabbed a book off the stone desk and hurled it across the parlor. Then he enchanted all the books, and they flung themselves miserably and futilely at the walls, breaking their spines and tearing their pages until the carpet of flowers was littered with paper and words.

Nikolai shuddered. He took in the mess of the room. The beautiful room Vika had created for him.

The beautiful prison to which he’d been condemned.

But Pasha wasn’t the only prince who was good at escaping. Nikolai had found his way out of the steppe bench.

And I’ll find my way out again, he thought. But this time when I get free, Pasha will die.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

I’m actually glad I don’t know who my real parents were, Vika thought as she rematerialized inside the Winter Palace halls. A tsar and a monster had given birth to an enchanter. What horrors might have combined to create an enchantress? Vika bit her lip and tried to shake the thought away. Sergei, she reminded herself. He might not have been her biological father, but he was all she’d needed. She clung to his memory and regained her focus.

Then Vika strode toward Yuliana’s apartment. The halls along the way were decorated with holiday garlands made of hand-blown glass—too expensive for anyone other than the imperial family—but Vika didn’t have time to stop to admire their delicate beauty. She whisked right past them.

“I have something important to tell the grand princess,” Vika said to the guards as soon as she turned the last corner to arrive at Yuliana’s doors.

The bearded, older one on the right lurched toward her. “How did you get in here? These are the imperial family’s private residences.”

Vika evaded his attempt to grab her. “The tsesarevich let me in,” she lied.

The guard froze. “Uh . . .”

Was he thinking that she’d just emerged from Pasha’s bed? But if so, what did it matter? Let them imagine what they would. This was important.

“I need to see the grand princess,” Vika said.

The other guard, also bearded but much younger, said, “It’s half past six, mademoiselle. The grand princess will have our heads if we wake her for some trifle.”

Vika glared at him. She had half a mind to magically toss these guards in the air and cast open Yuliana’s doors herself. But in a moment of extraordinary restraint (which she made note of to congratulate herself for later), Vika kept her magic and her temper tamped down and said, “This is not a trifle. And I guarantee the grand princess will have your heads if you do not wake her for it.”

The young guard looked to the older one. Perhaps it was the early hour, or perhaps it was the ferocity of Vika’s glare, but they nodded to each other.

The older guard knocked and slipped inside. She heard him apologize for the intrusion and announce her name to an attendant. A few seconds later, he reemerged and said, “The grand princess will see you now.”

He held open the door, and Vika strode inside. She paused for a moment, though, wondering if she’d come to the right place. The room was far from the tidy sanctuary she’d imagined Yuliana’s antechamber would be. Instead, piles of letters were strewn all over the floor, the mess evident even in dim candlelight.

Yuliana came in through another door that connected to her bedroom. She wore an elegant silk robe wrapped around her nightgown, and even in the early morning, every ringlet was in its place. Now that was more what Vika expected. In fact, it was likely that Yuliana hadn’t been asleep at all, but wide awake and hard at work on something.

There was a reason Vika had chosen to come see Yuliana, rather than Pasha, when she learned that Aizhana had killed the tsar. (Besides the fact that Pasha was still recovering from Nikolai’s attack.)

“Is something wrong with Pasha? I checked on him an hour ago, and he was sleeping peacefully.” Yuliana sat in the only seat not covered in stacks of paper, the chair at her desk.

“No, no. He’s fine.”

“Oh. Then what is it?” Yuliana said, even more blunt than usual. Which was almost forgivable, given the time.

Vika stood in the middle of the antechamber, because she hadn’t been invited to sit. Not that there was any open place to sit. She did, however, charm several more lamps to light. Her news was too grim to be delivered in the dark.

“Your father didn’t die of typhus,” she said. “He was murdered.”

Yuliana didn’t flinch. Growing up in the imperial family probably involved frequent assassination plots against her father. “By whom?” she asked.

There was a twist in Vika’s chest, like the plunging of a phantom dagger. Was she betraying Nikolai by revealing this? But she could not be sure whether he’d been complicit. Besides, Yuliana already hated Nikolai. One more thing would not make much difference.