Page 19 of The Crown's Game
Vika scowled. “I know that. I simply meant it doesn’t matter to me if I go first or not.”
Galina frowned at Vika as if the girl were a pebble in her shoe. An inconsequential pebble, given that Galina’s feet didn’t even touch the ground. “A bit of ego on your student, eh, brother?”
No wonder Father doesn’t like her. If I think highly of myself, it’s because it’s well deserved. Vika took a step toward Galina to say as much but stubbed the toe of her boot on a rock and tumbled forward.
The shadow boy caught her by the arm, his grip on her sleeve gentle but firm.
The instant he touched her, his shadow flickered, and his real self flashed through. Vika sucked in a breath.
Oh, mercy, he was handsome, all ebony hair and ink-black eyes and a face so precisely chiseled, Vika could almost picture the blade that had created him. And the sparks that danced through his magic! Goose bumps rose where his hand held her, even though there was a glove and a sleeve between them. Everything inside Vika quivered.
Half a second later, he released her arm, and he was shadow once again.
Vika blinked. Did I imagine him? she wondered, even as she still buzzed from his touch.
But no, he’d been too beautiful. Even Vika’s vivid imagination wouldn’t have been able to come up with that.
“Are you all right?” the boy asked her.
She couldn’t find the correct words—which was, in itself, a miracle, for Vika was rarely without something to say—so she merely nodded.
The boy bowed and stepped back to his original place near Galina. It was as if he didn’t realize what had happened when he and Vika touched. In fact, his retreat was so proper, it appeared to be more about decorum—not keeping his hand on Vika any longer than appropriate, ensuring she was uninjured—than about fear or competition.
Galina sniffed in Sergei’s direction. “I don’t see how you expect her to win if she can’t even keep herself upright.”
Sergei glared. “It’s a marvel your student has such impeccable manners, given his teacher’s complete lack thereof.”
Galina shrugged.
They hadn’t noticed the momentary falter in the shadow boy’s facade. Or in Vika’s composure.
In the distance, the rumble of hooves and carriage wheels announced the tsar’s arrival. The ground shook as he approached. He was preceded, flanked, and trailed by dozens of his Guard.
No more time to dwell on the boy, Vika thought. At least not on how he looks. She did not acknowledge how he’d made her feel, all tremble and ache inside, for she couldn’t. It’s about the Game now.
The golden carriage came to a stop in front of them in a cloud of dust. Vika had thought Galina’s coach was pretty, but this one was utterly magnificent. A painting of the Summer Palace adorned the door, with the handle the graceful stretch of a swan’s neck. The tsar’s coat of arms—a double-headed black eagle wearing imperial crowns and clutching a scepter and an orb and cross, the globus cruciger—ornamented the panels beside the door. Even the roof was trimmed in gold spirals and smaller versions of the double eagle. The coach’s beauty was so extraordinary, Vika wondered if the last Imperial Enchanter had conjured it.
The Tsar’s Guard fell in around the carriage, poised to defend their tsar should it be necessary. He doesn’t trust us, Vika thought. And it was the first time it truly sank in that the things she could do were not only fascinating, but also possibly deadly. She shivered at her own potential; if she were honest, a small part of her thrilled at it, too.
At the captain’s signal, the coachman of the carriage leaped down from his seat, set down polished wooden steps, and opened the door.
Sergei and the shadow boy bowed low to the ground. Galina and Vika curtsied, as deeply as their skirts allowed. The four of them stayed genuflected as the tsar’s heavy footsteps thumped on the stairs.
He paced slowly, pausing before each of them, as if memorizing the details of the bowed backs of their necks for future accounting, or as if contemplating slicing off all their heads right now. Vika shivered again, although this time, it was in reaction to the tsar’s power, not her own.
The tsar lingered in front of Vika the longest. Was he confused by her shroud? She didn’t know. But finally, after what seemed like several hours, he moved on, his boots crunching on the loose stones beneath him.
“Please rise,” the tsar said. Sergei and Galina stood first, followed by Vika and the shadow boy. “Welcome, enchanters,” the tsar said, the rich baritone of his voice echoing against the mountainside. “I am pleased to commence the first Crown’s Game of the nineteenth century. I look forward to witnessing what you can do.”
And with that, he walked straight into the wall of Tikho Mountain and disappeared.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Nikolai gasped as the tsar vanished into the rock. It was pure granite, as far as Nikolai could tell. How had the tsar done that? Did he have his own magic as well?
Galina smacked the back of Nikolai’s head, and he had to lunge to catch his shadow top hat before it tumbled onto the dusty ground. “Close your mouth. You’ll swallow an entire swarm of gnats if you keep gawking like that,” she said. “What part of bolshebnoie do you not understand? It’s the mountain that’s enchanted, not the tsar. Now let’s get on with it before the sun sets completely.” She rolled her eyes and marched into the rock. She vanished, too.
The other enchanter—the girl—shrugged and plunged into the mountain, her father mere steps behind her.
