But now Vika froze. Because she hadn’t been able to find him in over a week.

Perhaps the problem is me, she thought. Perhaps he’d appear for Renata, though. After all, he had kissed Renata right before the last duel of the Game.

Something fluttered inside Vika, something not entirely pretty. It was not butterflies but more like bats, jealous that Nikolai might be more amenable to seeing Renata than her. After all, Vika had been in his life mere months. Renata had been in Nikolai’s life for years.

But Vika pressed her palm to her chest and quelled the bats inside. I may have known Nikolai only a matter of months, but our relationship was far from shallow. Besides, this was not the time for something as petty as jealousy.

“No, it should be you who goes to the steppe bench,” Vika said, her voice tight. “Nikolai won’t show himself for me, but perhaps he will for you.”

Renata’s eyes lit up at the suggestion. “It’s worth a try. Ludmila would tell us to be optimistic, right? She’d say the glass is always half-full.”

But Vika didn’t respond. She merely bit her lip and hoped, but not too much. For when it came to her and Nikolai, optimism was made of warped glass.

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 for him, 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 to reason 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 it came 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—”

“Nikolai.” Renata ran her hand gently down his arm. “We thought you were dead. She had no reason to wait for you.”

“But I haven’t been gone very long.” He shook her off and started scratching at the back of his neck. “Damn Pasha.”

Renata pressed her lips together.

“If it weren’t for Pasha demanding the end of the Game, none of this would have happened.”

Renata shifted away from Nikolai. “The Game was going to have to end no matter what.”

“But he didn’t have to callously send us off to kill each other, as if our lives meant nothing to him at all.”

“Would you not have made your fifth move if he hadn’t?”

“Perhaps I would have let the wands burn.” Nikolai touched his frock coat where his collarbone was. “Perhaps I would have chosen to be incinerated, and then I really would have died.”

What little energy Nikolai had seemed to drain away, and he lowered himself onto the ground, resting his head on top of his knees. The grass was so tall, it thrashed in the wind against his face.

Renata crouched at his side. “You’re upset. You have every right to be.”

All the muscles in Nikolai’s shadow body tensed, and when he spoke, every word was equally tensed. “Pasha and I were like brothers. Do you know what it’s like to have someone you love—someone for whom you would lay down your life—betray you? It’s like having my heart scraped out of my chest with one of Galina’s caviar spoons, bit by excruciating bit. I wander alone in this steppe dream day after day, replaying my friendship with Pasha, and whenever I think of the first time he foolishly stepped into Sennaya Square to play cards with us, or of how it felt when he and I would abandon a hunt to spend hours climbing trees and fishing in streams and laughing about nonsense together, it gouges my heart to pieces all over again.”

And yet I still miss him, Nikolai thought.

Renata inched closer. “I’m sorry. But the tsesarevich is, too. If you could see it for yourself—”