Page 4 of The Crown's Fate
“Quiet out tonight,” Pasha said. “Looks like it’s just youand me, tsar and ... future tsar.” He’d hesitated because he’d almost called himself a tsar, too. But Pasha was technically still only the tsesarevich, the heir to the throne, until the official coronation in Moscow next month.
This felt right, though.Tsar and future tsar.Pasha laughed and lowered himself down to the snowy ground. He rested his head against the Thunder Stone.
“Do you ever wish you could go back in time and do things over?” Pasha asked the statue. He tilted his head farther back until he was looking up at the underbelly of the horse, as well as in the general direction of the bronze tsar. Snow fell into Pasha’s eyes. The horse snorted.
Pasha startled. “Did your horse just—?”
But after a few moments of definite silence (he must’ve imagined the horse making a noise—damn it, how much had he drunk again?), Pasha returned to leaning against the stone. “No, I suppose you never felt that way. You’re Peter the Great. You’re great by definition. Whereas I will be, what? Pasha the Unshaven.” He waved his arms dramatically in the air. “Pasha the Unprepared. Pasha the Dreadful, who never apologized to his best friend before sending him to his death.” He exhaled loudly. “I just wish I could have a second chance. I would ... I don’t know what I would do. But I know I wouldn’t demand the end of the Game. There must have been some other way.”
“Be careful what you wish for, Your Imperial Highness,” a voice said.
Pasha jumped to his feet and whirled. He looked at Peter the Great, eyes wide. “Did you say something? O-or ... was it you again?” He shifted his focus to the horse.
A girl came from around the other side of the ThunderStone. Her red hair flamed beneath the dull brown of her fur hat. “Are you talking to the statue?”
Pasha blinked at her. It took a few seconds for his addled head to process what had happened. Of course. The voice had belonged to a girl. And not just any girl. To Vika, his Imperial Enchanter.
“I’m not talking to the statue,” Pasha lied. How long had Vika been there, on the other side of the Thunder Stone? Might as well add “Pasha the Insane” to his list of illustrious monikers.
Vika came closer but stopped several yards away from him. Ever since the end of the Game, she’d maintained her distance. Pasha winced at the memory that the girl he’d once almost kissed now despised him.
“I mean it when I say you ought to be careful what you wish for,” Vika said.
“Why? What could happen?”
“Anything. Or nothing. I don’t know. But I’ve told you before, magic comes tied with many strings. Wishes, I’d imagine, are a bit like magic. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
But Pasha smiled at her admonition. She could have left him here, babbling to Peter the Great and possibly making a grave magical mistake.But she took the time to intervene. She actually talked to me, voluntarily.That was progress. He thought back to the last time they’d spoken, a week after the end of the Game. She’d been in the steppe dream, and Pasha had come to find her, to apologize. She’d dismissed him.
And then another week had passed and he hadn’t seen or heard from her at all. Now here she was, in the middle of the night, watching over him like an Imperial Enchanter would. Or perhaps even like a friend.
Pasha looked at the expanse of snow between them. Maybe the distance could be shortened, both figuratively and literally. He took a step toward her and tripped in the snow.
Damn alcohol. It was probably closer tosamogon—homemade moonshine—than real vodka.That’s what I get for drinking in an unfamiliar tavern,he thought. But he couldn’t go back to the Magpie and the Fox. Too many memories of him and Nikolai there.
When Pasha got up, he held on to the Thunder Stone for balance. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”
“I was out for a stroll, Your Imperial Highness.”
That was also a post-Game development. Vika refused to call Pasha by name. He tried not to wince again—at least, not too visibly. “Out for a stroll, at this hour?”
Vika furrowed her brow. “Since when do you have the right to judge my comings and goings?”
“I was only curious—”
Vika held up her hand. A cold wind, colder than the one that already bedeviled Saint Petersburg, swirled around her. “You’ve had too much to drink, Your Imperial Highness. I hope you pull yourself together before the coronation. The people will only tolerate the grand princess running the empire for so long.”
Pasha’s insides flared. Perhaps it was indignation. Or perhaps it was thesamogonin his stomach. Either way, it was enough to fuel him to stand up straight, without the Thunder Stone’s help.
But it’s true what Vika said, isn’t it?Pasha’s sister, Yuliana, was keeping the country going, attending Imperial Council meetings and receiving ambassadors, while he, thetsesarevich, was sneaking out of the Winter Palace in shoddy disguises and drowning himself in self-pity.
I can act like a ruler, too.The thought sloshed through his head, splashing against the inside of his skull.
“Vika,” he said.
“What?” Her fiery hair whipped in the wind, like a solitary flame in the middle of the snow of Peter’s Square.
She washisflame, though, wasn’t she? She washisImperial Enchanter.
