Vika stuck her hands on her hips. “Funny, I thought you would be able to tell me. You didn’t create this?”

Nikolai shook his head as he took in the porous black rock that constituted the walls of the cylindrical room around him, and sulfur nipped at his nose. He had no connection with volcanoes. Vika was the one whose mother was a volcano nymph. “I just reconnected myself to the magic that created the Dream Bench,” he said, “but I didn’t dare enter it fully. I thought I might get stuck again.”

“So you’re not sitting on the bench with me right now?”

“No. I’m nearby, though.”

“This is neutral ground for us to meet, then.” Vika gestured to the dark room, which was incredibly detailed—being, uniquely, a cell carved in the depths of a seething volcano—and at the same time, blandly black and nondescript.

“I still don’t quite know how we created it,” Nikolai said. “It’s as if you’ve tapped into my magic to combine something of yours with mine.”

“Except I’m not casting any enchantments right now.”

Nikolai frowned. He’d forgotten for a second that she couldn’t use magic. But if not, then how was it that his thoughts were blending with something of Vika’s? Was it because he’d taken apart her egg and touched her energy then? Or did it go farther back, to the end of the Game, when he’d given her nearly all of his?

“I’m not allowed to use magic,” Vika said, as if Nikolai didn’t know about Pasha’s edict. “I’ve been declared illegal by the tsardom.”

“I—I’m sorry about that,” he said, which was not at all a sufficient answer, but it was the only one Nikolai could come up with, as he was still wading through his own questions.

“Not as sorry as I am.” Vika frowned.

This brought him away from his thoughts, and he smiled. She was so pretty, even when she was piqued—even more so, actually, because it made her wildness glint in her eyes.

Nikolai wanted to kiss her.

The old version of him would have held back. But this one, with ambition and audacity in his veins, didn’t. He took one long stride and wrapped his arm around Vika’s waist.

She froze.

Nikolai bent his head and crushed his mouth against hers. His shadow had substance enough that although he blurred slightly into her, he could still feel the warmth and softness of her lips.

Vika gasped and pulled back. She gaped at him.

But then she reached her hand to the back of his head and drew him down and smashed her mouth against his. She kissed ferociously, just like her enchantments. Her lips parted, and their tongues found each other and danced like their mazurka at the masquerade, frenzied and hot. Their bodies pressed closer. Nikolai’s edges blurred into hers.

Kissing Vika was like consuming fire and being consumed by fire, all at once. It heated away some of the chill that coursed through him. And this was a kiss that wasn’t even real; it was happening between figments of themselves in a dream. How would it feel to kiss Vika on the other side of the bench?

She ripped her mouth away.

Nikolai let out a small breath. Still wanting.

“I don’t know what to do with you,” Vika said, her face only inches from his. She seemed torn between wanting to lean in again and wanting to run away.

Nikolai looked at her but didn’t say anything. He couldn’t.

“We’re tied together, you and I,” she said. “But I don’t know if I’m drawn to you because I’m supposed to love you, or if it’s because we’re destined always to fight.”

“Perhaps it’s both,” he managed to say.

“I don’t want it to be both.”

He cast his facade so he would look like the boy she’d once trusted. He held out his hand to her. “Then reconsider my offer. Join me.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

He looked precisely how Vika remembered him before he’d become a shadow—like a poisonous autumn crocus, deadly beautiful with no antidote. Her breath caught and her entire body went weak for a moment, just like at the masquerade ball during the Game. It took a great deal of restraint not to take his hand or to reach up and caress the elegantly sharp lines of his face.

But, hard as it was, Vika resisted.

Nikolai held her gaze, though, and she couldn’t look away.

“Why did you come to my house?” he finally asked.

She blinked and broke from the trance induced by his eyes. Had he done that to her on purpose? Or was it merely a side effect of being near Nikolai?

Both, most likely.

“I wanted to see you,” she managed to say.

“Is that the only reason?”

There were many reasons, but right now, wanting to see him seemed to overshadow them all.

“It’s the only reason that matters,” she said.

The walls in the black room suddenly glowed with specks of orange, as if lava had been resting deep inside and now came closer to the surface through the basalt’s pores. Vika’s heart slammed against the bodice of her dress.

Nikolai’s new brand of magic, cold and smooth, wrapped like black silk around them. Vika shivered as he looked down at her, and she, up at him.

“I’m sorry about your mother,” she said.

“I’m not.” His eyes, despite his shroud, were still shadow, but they shaded even darker after he said that.

The lava behind Vika began to seep out of the walls, viscous and too slow to be a threat yet, but definitely hotter.

Nikolai grasped her arms, whether to keep her with him or out of instinct, to protect her from the lava, she didn’t know. She also didn’t know if she wanted to break free from his hold. A different sort of heat ran through her at his touch. Fire through her core.

And to think, they weren’t actually even touching each other. This was a fantasy. Their real selves were elsewhere.

“May I have the honor of dancing with you?” Nikolai asked.

Vika looked all around. The lava had flowed down the walls and to the floor now, pooling and flaring in a circle around them. “Here?”

“Why not?”

She didn’t move. “Why now?”

“Because you didn’t take my hand earlier when I offered it. You came to my house, but you haven’t decided yet what to do with me. So I must convince you. Perhaps a dance will do it. And if not, well, it’s possible you or I may die soon—truly die—with you on Pasha’s side and me on mine, and if that’s the case, then I would like to have danced with you once more.”