But now, nothing happened. Are you reading my mind? remained on the wardrobe.

Huh. She must have to physically touch the door. The question was, was it wise to do so?

But Vika had never been the overly cautious sort, much to her father’s chagrin, and now curiosity got the best of her. She reached for the armoire again, and as soon as she made contact, the doors wiped themselves clean and began to replicate the image she had in her head. It was a perfect copy, down to the way Sergei had gouged the curlicues of smoke deeper into the wood than the rest of the volcano.

Vika traced the lines of smoke, touching the smooth edges of the carving and the natural knots in the wood. If she closed her eyes, she could, for a second, imagine she was home in their cozy cottage, where Sergei tromped outside in the garden and she made buckwheat porridge at the stove.

When she opened her eyes, she saw that the scene on the armoire had changed yet again, this time to an etching of her kitchen, with a pot of steaming kasha on the burner and a bottle of milk and a bowl of raisins set to the side. Vika’s mouth watered.

But then she forced her mind to go blank, and the doors to the Imagination Box followed suit. She tore her hands away from the wood.

As soon as she lost contact, her fingers stretched for the armoire again. Nikolai’s magic. She wanted to be closer to it. Needed to be closer.

“Stop,” she said aloud to herself. “He’s the enemy, remember?” And she conjured a wall of ice in front of the Imagination Box so she couldn’t touch it, no matter how much she yearned to.

The Game was not about friendship. After all, Nikolai had tried to kill her. Twice.

No, this Imagination Box—this “token of appreciation”—was not to be trusted. Nothing was. Vika couldn’t even trust herself.

As soon as Vika walked in the front door, Ludmila pounced on her.

“Veee-kahhh! Where have you been? Oh my word, I have so much to tell you! The armoire, it won’t fit! The prince, he says you must come! The pumpkin, oh, the lines! He was looking for you, on the island, I forgot to mention. . . .”

Vika hung her coat on a hook. “Slow down. I cannot keep up.”

Ludmila waved a spatula, still dripping with whatever she’d been stirring in the kitchen a few seconds ago. “Oh, where to begin?”

“At the beginning?”

“Of time?”

“How about the beginning of today?”

“Oh, yes, today, that’s a good place to start.” Ludmila sniffed at the air. “But do you mind if we talk in the kitchen? I don’t want the caramel to burn.”

Ludmila led the way, weaving around a sofa and dodging the outstretched paw of a stuffed polar bear. The bear was wearing a fur hat and a saddle. But after experiencing the enchantments of the past few days, neither Ludmila nor Vika even registered anymore the peculiarity of the decorations in the apartment.

Once in the kitchen, Ludmila stirred the pot of caramel and recounted how well sales in the pumpkin kiosk had gone, and how word had spread so quickly, the tsesarevich came to call.

“The tsesarevich?”

“Yes! Can you believe it? And he was still searching for you.”

Vika had been picking through a plate of broken shortbread, but now she dropped the cookie she’d been considering. “What do you mean, still searching?”

“You see, this is why I wanted to start my story before today. . . . A week ago, the tsesarevich came to Cinderella—the pumpkin on the island, not the kiosk here, of course—asking about a girl with hair like flame, only he was in disguise, so I didn’t know it was him, and I was going to tell you the next time you came into the bakery, but it was around when you left the island to come here, so I never had a chance. But he seemed rather smitten, the first time around, and then today, he called to inquire about you again—and to buy a cream puff balloon, he liked that the best, probably because he had a feeling you had a hand in its creation—and anyway, his messenger came by the flat this afternoon and delivered—”

“The armoire?”

“Huh?” Ludmila paused in her stirring. “Oh, no, the armoire is a different story altogether. I’ll get to that. No, the tsesarevich sent you an invitation to the ball!”

Vika frowned. “But why would he invite me?”

“Because he’s smitten.”

“I’ve never met him before.”

“He seems to have met you. Or at least seen you from afar.”

“But when would he have . . . Oh.”

“Oh?”

Vika nodded. He had known to look for her on the island, which meant . . . he had been one of the boys. The day she’d succeeded in escaping her father’s firestorm. The tsesarevich must have been one of the two boys she’d frozen before she fled the woods.

Oh, devil take her, she had frozen the tsesarevich.

Ludmila removed the caramel from the heat and wiped her sticky hands on a towel. Then she retrieved a card from her apron pocket and laid it on the counter. It was light blue and deckle-edged, with the gold double eagles of the tsar’s coat of arms embossed on the top.

The pleasure of your presence is requested at

A MASQUERADE BALL

In honor of Pavel Alexandrovich Romanov, Tsesarevich of all Russia

EIGHT O’CLOCK IN THE EVENING

SATURDAY, 22ND OF OCTOBER

WINTER PALACE

Vika blinked at the card. “This is real?”

“Quite real.”

Then the tsesarevich could not have been too offended that Vika had frozen him. Unless he meant to arrest her at the ball. Would he do that? On his birthday?

“He’s a sweet thing, that boy,” Ludmila said as she began working on assembling macarons filled with pistachio curd and fig jam.

All right, so perhaps he wouldn’t arrest her at the ball, if he was as sweet as Ludmila thought.

“And you would make an excellent princess.”

Vika burst out laughing. “Me, a wild girl from the woods, a princess? And can you imagine Father, in his tunics and rough trousers, living in the halls of the Winter Palace? No, I don’t think princess-hood, or whatever it’s called, would suit me at all. Besides, I highly doubt that’s what the tsesarevich is after.”

“I’m willing to wager a hundred chocolate truffles that that is exactly what His Highness is after.”

But Vika wasn’t listening, since it occurred to her that perhaps the tsesarevich wanted to meet her because of the Game. Perhaps his father had informed him of it. And surely the tsar himself would be at the ball. Vika would need to be at her best.