Aloud, Nikolai said, “A rational person would be wary. A rational person would not go seeking to invite someone like that to a ball. Why invite her? To entertain your guests with feats of fire? You can hire the flame-eaters from the circus for that.”

Pasha picked at the label on the vodka bottle. “Or perhaps I will ask her to dance.”

“Pavel Alexandrovich.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Fine, then. Pasha.”

“What?”

“You can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

“Invite her. Dance with her. You’re . . .” Nikolai lowered his voice to a whisper. “You’re the tsesarevich of the Russian Empire.”

“So?” Pasha threw up his arms. “Doesn’t that mean I can do whatever I please?”

“You know it doesn’t. Your mother has rules about whom you can even flirt with, let alone dance with.”

“Guidelines.”

“What?”

“Whom I can flirt with. They’re guidelines, not rules.”

“Pasha.”

The tsesarevich slumped in the booth. He jammed his hands in his hair, and it rumpled to such an extent, it finally looked as if he were a patron of low enough birth and means to frequent this tavern. Someone like me, Nikolai thought. He, too, sank lower in the booth.

After a bit more wrenching, Pasha finally released his abused locks and said, “You know, I’ve been reading a great deal about mystics and enchanters. They’re not evil, contrary to popular belief. They’re misunderstood. And the Church and the people’s irrational fear of their powers have driven them underground, to hide their magic. How dreadful is that? Imagine how taxing it must be to hide your true self every minute of your entire life.”

Nikolai bit his lip.

“I want her to know it’s all right,” Pasha said.

“To what?”

“To live in the open.”

“Married to the heir to the throne?”

Pasha scowled. “That is not what I meant.” He picked up the now-warm shot of vodka Nikolai had poured for him earlier, muttered a toast to the tsar’s health, and gulped it down. His mouth puckered, but he didn’t bother to chase the vodka with beer.

“She’s not the type of girl you can send a glass slipper to and make into a princess,” Nikolai said.

“You never know.”

“She could turn out to be the wicked fairy godmother instead.”

“Now you’re conflating your fairy tales. The wicked fairy godmother is from The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, not Cinderella. And why are you convinced the lightning girl is dangerous?”

So many reasons.

Nikolai rubbed the back of his neck. “We know nothing about her.”

“Her name is Vika.”

Nikolai’s scar burned at the same time that the knot in his chest—that foreboding sense of kismet that had begun when he saw the Canal of Colors—tightened.

“‘Though she be but little, she is fierce.’”

“Quoting Shakespeare won’t sway me, Nikolai.”

“Then what can I do to dissuade you from searching for the girl again or inviting her to the ball?”

Pasha topped off their glasses. “You can’t.” Then he lifted his glass and toasted, “To the lightning girl. And all else that may come.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“Why hasn’t he killed her yet?” Galina’s teeth chattered, even though she was inside the cabin while the Siberian blizzard raged outside.

“Because I taught Vika well,” Sergei said. He cast a look at the fireplace, and the flames expanded, filling the small cabin with more heat.

“Well, I also trained Nikolai well.”

“It’s been only five days since the oath.”

Galina turned up her nose. “He ought to have dispatched her by now.”

Sergei recoiled. But he quickly composed himself, for to show Galina that her comment had ruffled him would only encourage her to mention Vika’s death more than she already did. He had learned this lesson from their youth, when Galina would torture him mercilessly with whatever made him most uncomfortable. Like murdering squirrels in the park with her glare and laughing when they fell out of the trees, their eyes already glassy and unseeing. And then laughing harder as Sergei mourned them through a curtain of snotty tears.

“We don’t know what form the Game has taken,” Sergei said. “You imagine an outright duel, but knowing Vika, I suspect it’s something more subtle. She did not spend her entire life confined to a tiny island only to have her magic—her freedom—constricted to a few short days in the Game. She’s going to savor the experience. Both you and your student would be gravely mistaken to take that as complacency or lack of skill.”

Galina smirked and stalked over to the kitchen table. It had originally been constructed of coarse logs, but Galina had changed it into Italian marble. “You haven’t grown too attached to the girl, I hope? Have you even told her you aren’t her real father?”

Sergei furrowed his brow. “What are you implying?” He’d thought everyone believed she was his daughter. He certainly thought his sister, whom he hadn’t seen in decades, would think so.

Galina conjured up a cup of steaming tea. “Honestly, Sergei, she looks nothing like you. And even though you did not care to check on me in Saint Petersburg all those years, I did check on you—actually, I paid someone to do it from time to time, because that sort of work is beneath me—and I know for a fact that you never married or had even a mistress. But it’s fine if you want to pretend Vika is your daughter. It’s . . . sweet, even.” Galina’s mouth puckered. “All right, cloying is more accurate. But that’s your choice. All I want to know is, where did you find her?”

“I—I didn’t—”

“Sergei.”

“Fine.” He knew if he didn’t answer, she’d keep pestering him, and seeing as they were trapped in this cabin together, it was far less painful to relent now than to continue taking her abuse. Galina already knew the crux of the truth anyway. “I found Vika on the side of a volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula, when I was there on a research mission studying winter herbs. Her mother, a volcano nymph, had abandoned her.”