The Crown's Game Part 30

But he didn't.

Nikolai buried his head in his hands. If only he'd told Pasha before. If only he hadn't listened to Galina about keeping his abilities secret. If only he hadn't been so afraid to tell his best friend about the Game.

But now it was done, and there was nothing Nikolai could do.

His tea leaves were right. He was alone. Again. Alone, alone, ad infinitum. Nikolai swilled the rest of the vodka-lukewarm now-directly from the bottle.

Then he slumped onto the table, his face next to the knife. He wanted the tea leaves to stop being right.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE.

Overnight, the leaves fell off all the trees, and the arctic wind blew in. Frost settled on bare branches, and birds made plans to migrate south. The ca.n.a.ls iced over mid-color, and the fountain in the Neva froze in clear arcs of cold crystal. When the sun rose in the morning, its pale yellow rays were so weak, they couldn't even melt an icicle. Although it was only the middle of November, winter had arrived in Saint Petersburg.

But Vika didn't so much as s.h.i.+ver as she stood on the embankment of Ekaterinsky Ca.n.a.l. She was still upset at Sergei for lying to her about being her father. But more than that, she was now furious that he was no longer alive. As she stood outside the Zakrevsky house, Vika seethed, her magic hot and roiling through her veins.

"I hate you," she said, even though she was the only one on the street at this hour. "I hate you, Nikolai. I hate that you exist. If it weren't for you, I'd be the Imperial Enchanter. If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have to play this G.o.dforsaken Game. If it weren't for you, Sergei wouldn't be dead."

Vika lifted her hands. A hum filled the air, and the ground seemed to vibrate. From behind her, what at first appeared to be a snow flurry turned out to be a regiment of winter moths, bursting through the tree branches and beclouding the sky. From the dank crevices of Ekaterinsky Ca.n.a.l, an army of rats, slick with sludge and ice, emerged and scurried to Vika's feet. Poslannik led the charge.

"This is my fourth move," she said as a motley gang of feral cats slunk from the alleyways and crept up the front steps of the Zakrevsky home. Poslannik had spied through the windows for her and told her everything that was inside. She would destroy it all-Nikolai's precious clothes and his neat writing desk and the countess's ancestors' portraits on the walls. Her soldiers would scratch the gleaming banister and tear apart the Persian rugs and chew apart the strings of the piano. And all the while, she'd hold a s.h.i.+eld around the house so Nikolai couldn't escape. So he'd have to watch his belongings and his home torn to pieces, before she caved the building in and killed him. All Vika wanted was an end to this monstrous Game. She would finish it once and for all.

Vika threw her arms wide in front of her, and the wind flung open the doors and windows of the Zakrevsky house. She circled her pinkie over her grimy troops so they would understand her commands, and then they flung themselves headlong inside, rus.h.i.+ng into the dining room and the parlor, the kitchen in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and the bedrooms upstairs belonging to Nikolai and the countess.

"Destroy and infest everything," Vika said. The rats tore into the pantry, gnawing apart too-precious croissants and breaking garish cups and saucers and countless winegla.s.ses. The cats shredded the upholstery and sharpened their claws on baroque table legs.

And the moths flitted and crawled their way into Nikolai's armoire and began to eat holes in all his clothes. He would have nothing but rags left. A surge of wicked delight jolted through Vika. How will you feel, Nikolai, without your dandy armor?

But as soon as she thought it, she realized he wasn't inside. She couldn't feel the invisible string between them.

And then she remembered that tugging between them, that feeling that even though Nikolai was her opponent, he was also her other half. She remembered when she'd touched his sleeve at the masquerade, and how everything terrible between them had fallen away, leaving only the warm silk of his magic.

She remembered how Nikolai had looked at her when she lay vulnerable and faint on his bed. As if he'd wanted to kiss her. And how much she'd wanted him to.

Suddenly, the intoxication of Vika's fury collapsed. She felt the weight of the wrongness in her hands, which were still raised to the sky, and on her shoulders, in her gut, in her bones. It wasn't Nikolai's fault that Sergei was dead. Nikolai was as unwilling a partic.i.p.ant in the Game as Vika was.

What am I doing?

Vika dropped her arms to her sides.

The cras.h.i.+ng in the house suddenly ceased. The frantic energy around the Zakrevsky house stilled. The rats streamed down the front steps, confused, followed by the cats and a billow of moths. They disappeared into the dark interstices from which they'd come, as quickly as they'd arrived.

Vika waved a hand limply, and the windows and doors flapped shut. "I'm sorry," she whispered. Then she ran, as far away as she could, from Ekaterinsky Ca.n.a.l.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX.

Nikolai staggered home, his head throbbing from drinking too much at the tavern last night, and from sleeping in a filthy alley in Sennaya Square afterward. He had also gotten into a fistfight with someone, for some forgotten slight, and he had a black eye and swollen knuckles to show for it. At least he'd refrained from using magic in the brawl.

He climbed the steps to the Zakrevsky house, wanting nothing but a hot bath to wash the last twelve hours away, only to find the front door unlocked.

Nikolai pushed it open and stepped into the foyer.

Galina's Persian rug had been reduced to tufts of red yarn. Chairs were broken and tables were overturned. The chandelier-imported from Venice-hung askew and was missing half its crystals.

And one of Nikolai's top hats lay halfway up the stairwell, trampled and holey, as if it had been nibbled through by vampire moths. Nikolai squeezed his eyes shut. "As if things couldn't get any worse."

And then his scar flared. The dull ache of it had been there since he woke, but he hadn't processed it through the skull-splitting headache and the black eye and the disoriented, clumsy walk back to Ekaterinsky Ca.n.a.l.

But now, Nikolai clutched his collar as he sagged against the gouged wall. If his scar was burning, then it wasn't an ordinary band of burglars who had been here. It was Vika.

Why this? And why now?

It wasn't the torn clothes and smashed vases that distressed him. Not really, anyhow. Nikolai had begun his life with nothing, and he could start afresh with nothing again. But after everything that's pa.s.sed between Vika and me . . .

Nikolai shook his head. It was still a vicious game. And that reality ate away at him from the inside like turpentine.

The grandfather clock chimed, its pendulum swinging behind a cracked pane of gla.s.s. That clock was a Zakrevsky heirloom.

Galina would be hysterical over the damage. And she would likely blame Renata and the rest of the servants for not stopping the vandals.

I cannot let that happen.

Nikolai leaned his aching head against the wall. He allowed himself one more moment of despair. And then he snapped his fingers and began the painstaking process of trying to clean and mend what Vika had destroyed.

He could not fix everything.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN.

The tsar had spent several days on horseback with his generals, inspecting the troops on the Crimean Peninsula. He had left Elizabeth to recover in Taganrog, a quaint town along the Sea of Azov, while he traveled here to get a handle on the fighting with the Ottomans. Now, having had more than enough of the harsh realities of war-the injured soldiers and constant threat of attack here reminded him again of the suffering his country had endured during Napoleon's onslaught-the tsar finally galloped back to camp for one more night's rest in his tent before he returned to Taganrog.

The stable boys led his horse away, and the guards outside his tent saluted. The tsar nodded to them and ducked into his tent, which contained not only a sumptuous mattress piled high with silk pillows and throws, but also an intricately brocaded armchair and footrest, a cherrywood desk, and a dining table inlaid with oyster sh.e.l.ls.

An attendant awaited him. He bowed low to the ground. "Good evening, Your Imperial Majesty. Would you like to read the letters that arrived for you today, or would you prefer to sup first?"

"Supper, please."

"Right away, Your Imperial Majesty." The attendant scurried out of the tent.

The tsar took off his belt and sword and sank into his armchair. He propped his boots on the footrest. The relief was instantaneous. Although he had spent most of the past few days on horseback, he had also spent significant time on foot, surveying the terrain. He looked forward to returning to the seaside with Elizabeth.

The front flap of the tent opened, and the tsar expected the smell of roast meat and stew to fill the air. Instead, the stench of rotting flesh penetrated the tent, and the tsar covered his nose and mouth with his sleeve and jumped up from his chair.

"What kind of supper did you-"

But it was not the cook or the attendant who stood at the tent's entrance. It was a stooped figure in a threadbare cloak, a hood draped over its head.

"Who are you? Guards!"

"Oh, it is no use calling for your guards, Alexander," the woman said. "They are, shall we say, indisposed."

He drew his sword from his belt, thankful it was still nearby. "Who are you? And how dare you address me solely by my first name?"

"I daresay I have quite earned that right." She tossed off her hood.

The tsar gasped. The woman was half mummy, half something else not quite human. "What are you?"

The ghoul clucked her tongue. "I am insulted. You first asked who I was, but now you s.h.i.+ft to what? Poor manners, Alexander, even coming from you."

"Reveal your ident.i.ty." He aimed the sword straight at her chest, but took another step back to inch away from the tentacles of fetor that curled out from her body.

The woman cackled, her voice gurgling at the same time, as if laughing despite choking on a cesspool of blood. "Do you not recognize me, Alexander? The rest of my face may have decayed-it was the cost of being buried underground for nearly two decades-but the eyes you will know."

He didn't want to look. What if this creature were a medusa, something that could turn him to stone or worse should he look upon it?

She slithered close to him. "Look at me!"

He flourished his sword. "Stay back or I will impale you, I swear on my life."

"Go ahead. Skewer me like a zhauburek kabob. See if it slows me down." She lunged at him. He plunged the blade straight through her belly. She laughed again and, unfazed, grabbed his chin, forcing him to meet her eyes.

They were golden, like glittering topaz, and there was something familiar in them that he couldn't quite place. For a moment, she held him in a trance. Then he got ahold of himself and wrenched away from her grip and her stink and, trembling, looked down at the sword protruding from her middle. "How? What?"

She pulled the blade out of her body and took several deep breaths. The blood that soaked her cloak began to fade, as if it seeped out of the cloth and back into her flesh. Then she tossed the b.l.o.o.d.y sword with a clank onto the tent's floor.

"Y-y-you healed yourself."

"Do you remember me now?" Her mouth twisted in what might have been a smile, but appeared more a terrible grimace of rotten teeth.

The tsar took several more steps backward. If he could get close enough to the front of the tent, perhaps he could escape. "I don't believe it."

"Believe it, Alexander. It is I, Aizhana, your once beautiful, golden-eyed lover from the steppe. After you left with your army, I bore you a son. In fact, you have already met him. His name is Nikolai. But you may know him as Enchanter One."

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT.

Aizhana enjoyed watching the tsar wriggle under her revelation. She had been so young when she'd met him and so enthralled by his confidence and charm. Naively, she had believed his sweet words and allowed him to seduce her. She could still feel the sharp sting of betrayal when he left, not more than a month after he first took her to bed.

She had been ruined three times by him then, and another time since. His first offense: he took her virginity and left her spoiled, damaged goods to any boy in her village. His second offense: he left her with child, an unwed mother in the barren land of the steppe. His third offense: bearing his child nearly killed her. And his fourth and most recent offense: he accepted his own son into the Game and all but sentenced him to death.

So yes, Aizhana savored the tsar's current horror and fear. She still meant to kill him, of course, although, like a wildcat, she wanted to play with her food first. If not for the Game, she might have satisfied herself with informing him of the existence of another son. But since the tsar had crossed her one too many times and endangered not only her own life but also Nikolai's, he would have to pay.

The tsar ceased his attempt to escape from the tent. What was he thinking, anyway? There was no way he could run from her. He sagged onto the edge of his bed. "Nikolai Karimov is your son?" he asked.

"Yours, as well."

"Mine . . ."

"He does not yet know. But I shall tell him soon."

"He is the tsesarevich's best friend."

Aizhana clapped derisively and gave the tsar a wry, rotten smile. "Bravo, Alexander. You watched one of your sons grow up but did not even recognize the other when he was right there beside your chosen one. What a remarkable father you are."

"It's not my fault." He buried his head in his hands. "I could not have known."

"No, of course not. You were too busy bedding other women to keep track of the consequences."

"Is that what this is? A lover's revenge?"

Aizhana stalked closer to him. "Oh, no. It is so much more than that." She sat next to him on the bed-it was so similar to the bed on which she had lain with him, once upon a time-and placed her hands on either side of his face. He gagged at her breath.

She laughed and blew more of the rank air in his face, then smashed her lips against his. She forced her black tongue into his mouth, curling it and transferring the disease that flourished inside her into him. The tsar struggled but was no match for her, for she had imbibed the energy of the half-dozen guards she had slaughtered outside his tent. She quivered in joy at forcing the prolonged kiss upon him. What an ironic end to a courts.h.i.+p that had also begun with a lingering kiss.

One of Aizhana's teeth broke off, so violently did she press herself against him. When she pulled back, the tooth tumbled from between their lips down to the floor.

The tsar stared at it in horror.

"Thank you, Alexander. That was the good-bye kiss I never had."