Page 12 of The Crown's Fate
CHAPTER EIGHT
The smell of laundry soap floated across the steppe dream. Nikolai would know that scent anywhere.
Renata.
He scrambled to his feet from where he lay in the brown grass. He wouldn’t hide from her, for he knew Renata was here forhim, unlike Vika, who seemed to have come for Pasha’s benefit.
As soon as Renata saw him, she cried out and ran, alternately tripping in the grass and shoving it away.
“Oh, Nikolai, it’s true, you’re alive!”
She opened her arms as if to embrace him, but Nikolai stepped back.
“Careful,” he said. “I’m alive, but I’m not quite solid. You’ll fall straight through.”
Renata stopped, arms still outstretched. “I don’t understand.”
“Nor do I.” He exhaled loudly. Nikolai was accustomed to knowing the answers, and if he didn’t, to being able toreason them out. But his current predicament didn’t appear to care for logic. “I seem to have some substance, but not much. I’m a bit of a conundrum.”
Renata smiled. “You always have been.”
Nikolai made a small sound under his breath—something akin to laughter, but not quite—and dipped his head to concede the point. Then he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Renata, loosely, so that his shadow would not blur into her.
As soon as he had her against his chest, though, Nikolai relaxed. “Thank goodness you’re alive, too.” He hadn’t realized until that moment how worried he’d been about Yuliana keeping her promise to release Renata and Ludmila after the conclusion of the Game. But here Renata was. Whole, and streaming tears down her cheeks, and very, very much alive. “You’re all right.”
“I’m all right now that I know you’re here.” She looked up and smiled, wiping away her tears with her sleeve.
“My being a shadow doesn’t frighten you?” Nikolai asked.
Renata shook her head, and the ends of her braids whipped against her neck. “You’re still you. I’m so glad Vika told me you were here—”
“Vika told you?” Nikolai’s voice cracked.
He turned slightly away from Renata. How embarrassing to wear his hope so plainly.
She noticed, of course. “Yes, but ...”
“But what?”
Renata reached for one of her braids. Nikolai recognized the movement, a tell for when she was nervous. She’d always been the lousiest of the Zakrevsky house servants when itcame to lying or hiding things.
“Say it,” he said.
Her fingers tightened around the braid. “I ...”
“Renata, please.”
“I think there’s something between Vika and Pasha.” Her words came out in such a rush, Nikolai could hardly understand them. And yet he caught the essence of them.
His silhouette felt suddenly heavier. “I beg your pardon?”
Renata looked everywhere but at Nikolai. “Vika wears a bracelet Pasha gave her, made of rubies and gold.”
“But—”
“She said she belonged to him.”
“As his Imperial Enchanter, perhaps—”
