Page 68 of The Crown's Game
Pasha smiled down at her. She was chilly, to be sure, but it was impossible for him not to respect her. His sister knew what she wanted, and she knew how to get it. That certainly couldn’t be said of himself.
“So do you think she likes me, even though I’m destined to be a disaster of a tsar with no friends and sadly un-horrible bones?”
Yuliana sighed, but there was a light in her eyes. “Pasha, if you want her to like you, she’ll like you. You’re the tsesarevich. It’s time you got that into your pretty little head.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Nikolai landed on the Stygian-black shore of the new island at half past ten. He had “borrowed” a rowboat from the dock and charmed it to sail across the bay. The waters were savage at this late hour, a combination of the wind and the tide, and if it weren’t for the enchantment to smooth the way, the boat would have ended up capsized or smashed against the rocks.
Once on solid ground, Nikolai unpacked a bundle of balsa wood and sandpaper from his satchel. He was quite sure now that the island wasn’t a trap, as it hadn’t tried to swallow him whole or otherwise kill him the last time he was here; perhaps the ball had changed something after all. What he wasn’t sure of was what that meant for the Game.
But the scar beneath his collarbone still burned, insisting that Nikolai play. If he didn’t, he would burn slowly, painfully, to his death. And so self-preservation plunged him forward with his turn, even though he no longer knew how he wanted the Game to end.
First, he intended to build the island a proper dock. This place—this magic—was something the people of Saint Petersburg should have the chance to see, even if they couldn’t understand it.
Nikolai slashed his index finger through the air, slicing the wood boards into sticks. He charmed notches in the wood where the pieces could fit snugly together. He enchanted the sandpaper and set it about evening out the rough edges, before he commanded the pieces to fit themselves together. Just like being a child again. A simple project, like the ones Nikolai had mastered when he was only a boy, when Galina had taught him the physics of construction and architecture by drilling him with kit after kit of model bridges and towers and masted ships.
When the miniature dock was finished, Nikolai leaned over the rocky edge of the island and dropped the model pier into the water. Now was where the effort came in. He gritted his teeth and focused all his energy on the dock, and it began to expand, growing larger and larger until it was wide enough and long enough for a ferry to anchor itself at the end.
Sweat trickled down the back of Nikolai’s neck. His jaw cramped as he pressed onward, fighting the hostility of the waves and extending the dock’s posts into the floor of the bay. Finally, he embedded them deep in the sandy bottom.
Then he collapsed on the shore and lay on his back, panting.
But there was no time to rest. There was so much more to do before daybreak. Nikolai gave himself another moment to catch his breath and then climbed back to his feet, picked up his bag, and dragged himself to the center of the island.
Now for another enchantment.
Wire. Nikolai snapped his fingers.
And paper. He snapped again. And there, in the midst of all the trees, a spool of wire and a large sheet of crepe paper appeared in the air.
Nikolai began to hum a snake-charming song, an eerie, hollow tune. The wire unfurled and twisted up in wide spirals, as if it were a cobra at Nikolai’s command. When it was round and full, like the circular ribs inside a globe, Nikolai halted his melody.
The crepe paper came next. With a flick of his wrist, the white paper wrapped itself around the wire and instantly, the metal frame turned into a paper lantern. Nikolai tapped the top of the lantern, and it lit up, despite having no candle inside.
“Now I need about a thousand more.”
The lantern leaped to action and flew straight up into the sky. There, it began to multiply. Two, four, eight, sixteen, on and on until they had doubled ten times and reached a thousand and twenty-four. Nikolai pointed in every direction, and that sent each of them zipping to a different part of the garden, the island now lit up by a seemingly endless string of glowing paper orbs.
“Voilà,” he whispered. He hardly had enough energy to speak.
And yet, he produced a tiny bench from the satchel, purchased as part of a dollhouse set, and put it on the ground. Then he blew on the bench, and where there had been one, there were suddenly ten. Nikolai flung his arm outward, and the benches shot off and planted themselves along the main promenade, each bench equidistant from the next. There, they began to enlarge, like the model dock and the jack-in-the-box and ballerina had done before.
When the benches had grown to full size, Nikolai fell to his knees, all his muscles shaking. His shirt was drenched with sweat, his hair damp against his forehead. He wanted to lie down right there, melt into the gravel, and sleep for days. He could use his overcoat as a blanket. The waves slamming against the shore would be a fitting, violent lullaby.
But it was already past midnight, and there was still so much, too much, to be done before the sun rose in seven hours. At least the next part of his turn could be accomplished in his sleep. It would be a fitful sleep, but Nikolai would be able to recover a little while he worked. In theory.
He scraped himself off the ground and staggered to the nearest bench. There, he shrugged off his overcoat and laid it on top of the seat, then lay down and stretched out his legs, thankful he’d decided to make the benches extra long. He pulled his satchel under his head, like a pillow, and closed his eyes to sleep. But before he drifted off, he reached over and drummed his fingers several times on the armrest, and he whispered to the bench, “Moscow. This one is Moscow.”
And then his entire body relaxed, and he fell into a dream.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
At dawn, Vika’s scar flared, and she knew that Nikolai’s move had been made. She was also certain it was on the island, as sure as she knew that her hair was red. What Vika didn’t know was how Nikolai had interpreted her island. She didn’t even know herself whether she’d intended it as a means to cooperate or merely the next step in one-upmanship. Had she ruined their connection by fleeing the masquerade? Was Nikolai still merely an opponent? Or was he something more? Vika both feared and hoped for the latter option.
She climbed out of bed and peeked out of her curtains. It was barely light outside. And yet, she couldn’t wait several more hours until the ferries began to run and someone could be convinced to take her to the island. She could, of course, go down to the dock and commandeer a boat for herself. But even that seemed too slow. If only she could evanesce.
But why not try? Ever since the Game began—ever since she’d moved to Saint Petersburg—Vika had felt stronger. Maybe it was being close to Nikolai, their magic magnifying against each other. Or maybe the challenge of the Game simply pushed her to be better. But whatever it was, it allowed her to perform enchantments greater than she’d ever created before and to get by on almost no sleep, even after conjuring an entire island.
