Page 109 of The Crown's Fate
But at the thought of killing Vika, Nikolai’s silhouette flickered. It was already faint after the fatigue of battle, and now when he looked at Vika, his anger sputtered.
He had stopped his soldiers’ attack for a reason. For Vika. The battle had taken a toll on his strength, as well as on the cold darkness that fueled his obsession with vengeance, and in the moment she fell from the sky, a flash of warmth had flared inside him, a sliver of his past.
She was dying, and if she was gone, his hope of one day being tsar with Vika as his tsarina could never exist. Nikolai sagged in the snow.
What was left of Aizhana’s energy rumbled inside him.Don’t give up. You’re so close to the throne,it seemed to say.
Nikolai hadn’t been able to fight the chill before, but the stark reality of a future without Vika sparked the truth of what he wanted. He had spent his entire life feeling alone, and she was his chance of finally having someone else who understood him. Someone else who was different. Someone with whom to explore and push the bounds of what they could do.
I don’t want what Aizhana wanted for me.I don’t want to be tsar at the cost of those I love.He had known this before his mother infected him with her energy. Now he had enough clarity to know it again.
He pushed back on the chill that tried to spread inside him. It was all he had left of his mother, but Nikolai could remember her love while still understanding that it was deeply flawed.
Au revoir, Aizhana.
Yuliana ran up to where he and Pasha sat with Vika in the snow. “Save her!” Yuliana said to Nikolai. “Do whatever it is you did at the end of the Game. Give Vika your energy.”
Nikolai shook his head. “I ... I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?” Pasha said.
“My energy is tainted. It came from my mother; there’s too much death and darkness in it.” Even as he said it, he fought internally with the cold that still lived in his veins. But he looked around him to strengthen his resolve. He looked at the soldiers—those who were still alive—standing tense, staring at their two princes and princess on the bloodied snow. At the dead men who littered thecobblestones. And at the ones beyond his line of sight, who had drowned in the icy river. “Devil take me, look at what that energy has done to me, whatI’vedone with it. I won’t transfer that to Vika.”
“You’d rather have her die?” Pasha asked, head shaking, the space between his brows creased.
Nikolai closed his eyes for a brief moment. When he opened them again, he said, “If it means choosing between that and making her live as I have, then yes, she’d be better off dead.”
Yuliana lowered herself to the small space of ground between the boys. “Can you transfer someone else’s energy to her instead?” she said quietly. She slipped off her glove and offered her hand.
Pasha blinked at his sister. Nikolai was surprised, too. Yuliana had never shown this sort of tenderness to anyone outside their family before.
Yuliana smiled sadly at Pasha. “You love her. So I love her, too.”
Her unexpected warmth thawed some more of Nikolai’s chill.
“If it’s going to be anyone’s energy,” Pasha said to Nikolai, “give her mine.” He released Yuliana’s hand and pulled back his jacket cuff to offer his wrist.
Nikolai grimaced at Pasha’s bared skin, the blue of his blood visible at his wrist. “I’m not a vampire. Besides, I can’t do that. If I try to transfer your energy, mine will get commingled with it as well.”
Pasha glared at him for the vampire comment. But he withdrew his arm and wrapped it around Vika instead.
Nikolai looked down at her in Pasha’s lap. Their clothesand the makeshift tourniquet were soaked with melted snow and blood.
“We need to stanch the bleeding,” Nikolai said. “But I can’t heal wounds like she can. Even if I had her hand ...”
His eyes shifted to the statue of Peter the Great.
“What about her hand?” Yuliana said.
“I wouldn’t be able to mend flesh,” Nikolai said, gaze still on the statue. “But perhaps I could manage metal.”
“What in blazes are you talking about?” Pasha said.
“Peter the Great,” Nikolai said. “It’s not made of just any metal. It’s full of old magic.”
Yuliana turned to Nikolai. “Can you use it?”
He took a deep breath. “I hope so.”
