He uncast the charm on the ropes, and the alligators’ mouths snapped at their freedom. He clapped his hands, and the platform on which Aizhana lay disappeared, hurling her onto the stone floor. He exited the cell and shut the door, reengaging all the locks behind him.

It was gentlemanly mercy to spare her from the gallows, but the darkness from her energy, now raging inside Nikolai, qualified how that mercy was delivered. A measure of mercy, he’d said.

Aizhana’s shrieks echoed out of the room above the snapping of alligators’ jaws. Or perhaps it was the snapping of her brittle bones.

Vika whirled from the sconce, eyes wide.

He averted his gaze. “I’m finished. I’ve said my final good-bye.”

“Nikolai . . .”

He shook his head. He stalked away.

Vika just gaped and let him.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Vika sat immobile against the wall, staring at the door at the end of the hall from which Nikolai had departed. She hugged her knees to her chest as she replayed what had just happened, against the backdrop of silence in the fortress, for there were no more moans issuing from Aizhana’s cell.

Vika could understand how Nikolai had felt when he’d left the cell. Aizhana might have been a monster, but she was still his mother. Sergei’s death was recent enough that Vika curled into herself at the memory of the painful emptiness she’d felt at his loss.

The tsar and tsarina were gone, too. So much death, and Vika, Nikolai, and Pasha had all been forced to plow forward without mourning or grieving properly. The Game had demanded it of them. The empire had required it.

Look how well that had turned out.

But Vika could try, at least, to give Nikolai a chance to grieve. That was part of why she’d let him go. And she could also show him in another way that she cared. Perhaps she could reach the old Nikolai that was buried deep beneath his blinding anger. Perhaps that Nikolai could still understand that he was not alone.

Because she’d overheard, through the walls, his conversation with Aizhana. Now Vika understood what was wrong with Nikolai, why he was different. He had been absorbing energy from his mother, who was made of darkness.

But the way he had looked when he’d left, the regret mixed in his misery . . . there must still be some good inside him. Even if only a wisp. Vika wanted to believe it was not lost yet.

She closed her eyes and thought of the morning sky outside. She could feel the weight of the clouds, full of droplets of water, ready to blanket the city with more snow.

But not today.

Within the clouds, the droplets evaporated. In their place, yellow petals appeared in all shapes and sizes—long and thin, round and short, heart-shaped and oval and ruffled and more. The clouds grew even heavier.

Now.

At Vika’s command, the clouds burst open. Yellow petals tumbled out, swirling around one another in the wind and coming together in a flurry of flowers, each as unique as the snowflakes they had replaced. There were dahlias that looked spun of honey, and roses with daisy centers, and marigolds on twin stems like yellow cherries. The sky over Saint Petersburg was an endless cascade of floating flowers, a memorial to all those who had been lost but not forgotten.

“This is for Sergei,” Vika said quietly from where she still sat inside the fortress walls. “And for the tsar and the tsarina, and even for Aizhana.”

She hoped Nikolai would see the flowers and understand they were for him, too.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Nikolai stood on the side of the road that led from the Winter Palace to the Peter and Paul Fortress. The sky snowed yellow funeral flowers about him, but he was too numb to be moved.

Instead, he’d cast an invisibility shroud around himself, so that no one would see him while he waited here. But he was full of Aizhana’s energy now, and once he pounced, there would be no doubt who had attacked.

Soon enough, the sound of wheels spinning over icy snow filled the air, and a golden carriage approached. There was a painting of the Summer Palace on its door, and the handle was a graceful stretch of a swan’s neck. The double-headed Romanov eagle ornamented the side of the carriage, and more eagles decorated the gold-trimmed roof.

“Bonjour, mon frère,” Nikolai said under his breath.

He waited for the Guard leading the way to pass. Then, as the carriage neared Nikolai, he jabbed at the air with his finger.

The bolts securing the wheels came undone. The carriage rocked violently, for it was going too fast for the momentum not to carry it. The wheels teetered and flew off the coach.

Shouts came from within—a boy and a girl, Pasha and Yuliana—as the carriage careened off the road. Nikolai slashed his hands in front of him, and in that second, the beautiful components of the coach morphed into sharp pieces. The painted panels became knife blades, and their edges pivoted inward like a life-size grater, but one made to shred a tsesarevich rather than carrots. The swan’s neck that had served as a door handle turned into a beaked spear. The Romanov eagles melted, threatening to drop molten metal onto the occupants within.

The carriage began to topple onto its side. In moments, Pasha and Yuliana would be impaled against the blades. The guards in front and behind the coach yelled in alarm, but there was nothing they could do.

Nikolai laughed, and the energy he’d taken from his mother seemed to laugh with him.

The coach crashed.

Everything went eerily silent.

Gavriil, the captain of the Guard, leaped off his horse and rushed to the carriage. The rest of his men quickly followed, some on foot and some surrounding the fallen coach with their horses.

“Your Imperial Highnesses!” Gavriil called. “Quickly, help me pull apart the carriage,” he ordered the nearest guards.

They tried to pry away the walls, but it was like gripping sword blades, and they cried out as they came away with bloodied hands. Gavriil attempted the door, but the swan spear stabbed at him. Nikolai smirked by the side of the road.

But then, from within the carriage, Pasha said, “Stand back.”

Gavriil and the others startled.

What in the devil’s name? Nikolai craned his neck to get a better look.

“You heard His Imperial Highness,” Gavriil said as he gestured for his men to step away from the carriage.

The door burst up and open, kicked out from within. “Take the Grand Princess,” Pasha said, still from inside the coach.