But the letter was not in Sergei’s handwriting. It was something both harsher and more looping. Galina’s.

The bottom dropped out from Vika’s stomach.

Dear Vika,

We are not ordinarily to communicate with the enchanters during the Game, but in this instance, I believe the rules will permit it of me.

I am writing with the sad news that Sergei has passed. He wanted to let you know he was proud of you, and that he loved you as if you were his own.

Which brings me to another difficult point. On his deathbed, Sergei expressed his wish that I tell you the truth of your origins. He was not, in fact, your father. Like me, he was a mentor, and he found you on the face of a volcano, abandoned by a nymph. The identity of your father is unknown. But Sergei considered you his daughter until the end, and he wanted you to know he was sorry he deceived you. He had thought, perhaps wrongly, that it was for the best.

My brother’s death is as much a shock to me as I am certain it will be to you. My apologies that this letter does not bear a happier report.

With condolences,

Galina Zakrevskaya

The letter tumbled to the floor. There was no magic to suspend it. Vika stood paralyzed in the center of the kitchen.

There were no thoughts.

Ludmila picked up the letter and read it, a fat tear rolling down her cheek as she finished. She placed her plump hands on Vika’s shoulders and steered her to her bedroom.

“Sit,” Ludmila commanded.

Vika did as she was told.

Ludmila collapsed on the bed beside her. The mattress heaved with her weight.

“Come here, my sunshine.” She gathered Vika to her bosom. Vika did not resist.

There was nothing, nothing, nothing.

Nothing except Sergei being gone.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Nikolai sat restlessly at a table in the corner of the Imperial Library’s public reading room. It had been a week since Vika evanesced the tsar and tsarina—and nearly two since Nikolai created the Dream Benches—but Vika still had not taken her fourth turn in the Game. So Nikolai tried to pass his time here in the library until his scar alerted him that it was his turn, but he fidgeted so much that another patron complained, and the librarian had to ask Nikolai to relocate.

Now he stared again at the words in a book of French poetry, but he couldn’t make any sense of the verses. Why would a woman be compared to a carriage wheel? Or death to an otter in a creek? He considered going back to perusing the tomes on the occult throughout European history. They were soporific, but at least they seemed based in reality.

However, his thoughts wandered to Vika instead. At first, Nikolai had thought she needed time to recover after fainting by the canal. But then he remembered that she’d walked out of his house the other night almost her old self. She’d been a bit shaky, but nothing a little sleep wouldn’t fix. After all, she was the girl who’d conjured an entire island after a night at Pasha’s ball. She was not easily fazed.

Where was she? Even Ludmila’s pumpkin was closed. Perhaps that was it, something had happened with Ludmila, and Vika had gone to help her. It made sense. (He’d conjured a few new stone birds—harmless ones—but they hadn’t seen any sign of Vika, or Ludmila either.)

Nikolai pressed his fingers into his temples, so hard he actually drew blood from his skin. You have to stop obsessing. Having Vika in his bedroom had scrambled his brain. He needed to reassess his priorities again.

Forget how soft she was when you cradled her in your arms. Forget the way her hair smells like honeysuckle and cinnamon. Focus on the Game.

Nikolai scratched his fingernails down the sides of his face until they found their familiar place behind his neck. He stared blankly at the French poem below him and lowered his forehead to the pages, resting, ostensibly, on the library table.

He was still in that position when someone thrust a heavy book onto the table.

Nikolai started.

Pasha slid into the seat across from him. He wore his best—or worst, depending on opinion—disguise, that of an unkempt fisherman. He was unshaven and dressed in a rough tunic and trousers, so bedraggled he could have emerged straight from the bottom of the bay. It was certainly not the look of a tsesarevich. But it also was not the look of someone who would ordinarily frequent the Imperial Library. A few patrons eyed Pasha with disdain.

“What are you doing here?” Nikolai whispered.

“Searching for you. You’ve been avoiding me again.”

“No. I’ve only been . . . ill.”

“But not too ill to read French poetry?” Pasha tilted his head to better see the slim volume on the table.

Nikolai flipped it closed. “On the contrary, the poetry made me only more ill.”

Pasha smirked. “Regardless, I’ve tracked you down once again.” He tapped the cover of the book he had brought. “This explains everything.”

Nikolai glanced down at the book, and his stomach lurched, as if Pasha had brought the smell of fish past its prime into the library with him. Russian Mystics and the Tsars. “Where did you get that? And what do you mean it explains everything?”

“I’ve had it for a while, but you were so against me pursuing Vika and seemed . . . repulsed, almost, by the idea of magic that I hadn’t shared the book with you. I didn’t want you to think me a fool. But it really does explain everything—the enchantments around the city. The island. Vika.”

Nikolai swallowed but didn’t speak. Had Pasha finally caught up to Nikolai’s deceit?

“I thought the charms around the city were merely amusements well timed with my birthday,” Pasha said. “Oh, how vain I was! They are a game, but an ancient one: the Crown’s Game.”

Nikolai gripped the edge of the table as if the library were a ship heeling beneath him. His knuckles were bone white.

“Don’t you want to know about the Crown’s Game?” Pasha asked.

Nikolai shook his head.

“Well, I’ll tell you anyway.” Pasha began, in a low voice, to relay the details of the contest between enchanters. He started at the beginning, in the age of Rurik, and wound his way through a catalog of past Games, his eyes lightening and darkening as he recounted the history. Nikolai held the table even tighter.

Only when Pasha had finished did the color seep back into Nikolai’s hands. Pasha had not mentioned Nikolai’s involvement in the Game. Yet.