Well, perhaps a tiny bit of caution would be smart, given that she didn’t have use of magic right now. She rang the bell again.

The footman opened the door and didn’t even bother to speak this time. He simply arched a brow.

“Could I borrow a quill and ink?” Vika asked.

“If you have a response for His Imperial Highness, I can simply relay it to him.”

“No, I’d rather write it down.”

The footman sighed, closed the door in her face (again), and returned a minute later with a quill and an ink pot. Vika flipped over the note card Nikolai had sent her and, holding it on her lap, composed a quick message on its blank side:

Pasha,

I’ve gone to Letniy Isle to meet Nikolai. It’s possible it’s a trap, although I hope not.

However, if you do not hear from me by sunset, please reinstate my ability to use magic so that I can free myself.

—V

The footman tapped his boot. Vika rose and pushed the quill and ink pot back into his hands. “Thank you.” She turned and descended the front steps.

“What about the note for His Imperial Highness?” the footman asked.

Vika turned back and winked. “Oh, it’s for a different Imperial Highness.”

The footman puffed out his chest and grumbled.

Vika smirked as she hurried off, stopping at the Winter Palace to leave the note for Pasha with a guard (the palace was on the way to the ferry), then made her way toward the singular place that existed only because of her and Nikolai.

She closed her eyes when she arrived; she didn’t need to see what they’d created. Vika knew the layout of the island because she’d invented every tree and rock, every path and every dead end. She knew the lanterns Nikolai had charmed to drift above the leaves and branches, and she knew his Dream Benches. But what she didn’t know was where their magic truly intersected, and how.

The tugging in her chest guided her. It was still faint, so she lost the pull as she wandered through the maple grove, overwhelmed by the remnants of her own magic and the sugar-sweet scent of syrup in the air. Vika almost opened her eyes, but she stopped herself. She concentrated harder instead.

Remember Nikolai, she thought. Remember his warmth and elegance, not the cruel magic from the dolls’ fete and the carriage of swords, but when his magic was like silk dancing in the wind.

The breeze quickened around Vika—her breath did, too—and with it came what felt like a wisp of silk that curled around her body before it spun away again.

But it was enough. She chased its wake, and, although she lost the feel of the silk, she heard something. The wistful melody of an oboe. She followed it and found the thread again. The music accompanied Nikolai’s magic! Not like the orchestra at his party on the Neva. This was as quiet as the lullaby a bird murmurs to its unhatched eggs.

Had music always been there?

Vika knew that the answer had to be yes. Only she hadn’t noticed, because she’d been too busy trying to kill Nikolai during the Game, or at least not be killed herself, and she’d only seen what his power could do on the surface. She’d never listened, never delved deeper.

What else is there, Nikolai?

With her eyes still firmly shut, Vika walked past the pink and red flowers she’d planted along the gravel path and turned onto the main promenade. The oaks rustled above, and the birds warbled a folk tune, but these were all Vika’s creations, so she ignored them. She held fast to that single wisp of silk, though, with its melancholy oboe, and as soon as she moved near the first Dream Bench, she was hit by the fragrance of sun-drenched grass mixed with mandarin and . . . was that thyme?

“Nikolai.” It was not as if he smelled of all those things, or any of them, for that matter. Not when Vika had been in his physical presence. And yet, the combination was the steppe and Saint Petersburg, French and Russian, all at once. It was the perfumed footprint of his magic, another dimension Vika had never noticed before. How had she missed so much of him? And was it lost completely now, to the darkness that consumed him? Vika worried her bottom lip.

The fragrance and the music led her past the Moscow bench, past the ones for Kostroma, Kizhi Island, and Yekaterinburg, until she arrived at the bench for Lake Baikal in Siberia.

She lowered herself onto the bench, slowly enveloped by the pale purple mist that surrounded it. She inhaled, and then she dozed off.

Vika woke on the other side of the bench in the dreamworld of Lake Baikal. Before her spread a sapphire pool of fathomless blue, pure glacial water in a crater created by a volcano. Violet-gray mountains surrounded the lake on all sides, and a cool breeze blew across the water, even though it was summer here.

Vika gasped as she stood and looked around.

But she’d hiked these mountains before, in the dream, and they had been just as beautiful. What was it that was drawing her here now? What was special about this place?

“Nikolai,” she said aloud, “I’m here. I’m looking for you. Where are you?”

A trail appeared before her, as if the mountains had opened and created a new ridge for her to follow, although when she inspected it more closely, the mountains hadn’t moved at all. But wasn’t that the beauty of Nikolai? He could be so contradictory. He could appear to be one thing and be something else entirely, brooding and ambitious yet joyful and self-sacrificing. Of course his magic could be opposites at once as well.

Vika hiked along the path that was and wasn’t there, leading her between two of the violet mountains. The sky here was so blue, it seemed counterfeit. But of course it is, Vika thought. This is Nikolai’s creation. He can make the sky any color he pleases.

On distant peaks, animals moved, perhaps deer hopping from ledge to ledge, or wolves out for a hunt. Vika’s trail was quiet save for her boots crunching on the rock, the path behind her disappearing as she walked, the way before her unfurling with each step forward.

As she pushed onward, the music grew louder, almost audible to a normal ear now. What a strange sensation to be hiking alone though the mountains of Siberia with an oboe accompanying her. At one point, she looked back over her shoulder, and Lake Baikal was nowhere to be seen. It was impossible to judge the distance she’d traversed. For all she knew, Nikolai could be leading her to the Arctic Circle now. But she continued walking, not only because there was no trail back, but also because the tugging in her chest grew stronger. This was a path solely for her, and no one else. She had to follow it to its end.