She hesitated. But perhaps, if he still loves me as he did during the Game, a dance will remind him of what he used to be like. Perhaps I can still help him.

“What shall we dance?” she asked. “I must warn you I don’t know the waltz or the polonaise or anything fancy.”

He laughed, and in that laugh, she heard a small measure of the former Nikolai. Her breath hitched with hope.

“You know the mazurka,” he said. Music began to play in the volcano, a very lively tune.

But she didn’t, not anymore. Nikolai had changed too much, and her heart had forgotten their rhythm.

Yet when he offered his hand again, there was no possibility of her saying no, even if he’d wanted her to dance with him off the edge of the earth.

Because the mazurka was the essence of their beings.

Nikolai held one of Vika’s hands in his and placed her other hand on his shoulder before wrapping his free arm around the middle of her back.

Suddenly, she remembered how it had felt to dance with him at Pasha’s masquerade.

“Will you trust me?” he had asked.

“To do what?”

“To dance for you?”

“No,” Vika had said.

Nikolai had shrugged. “No matter. I’m not giving you a choice.”

Then magic had rushed around her and levitated her off the floor. Without needing to think, Vika and Nikolai had glided and spun, swiveled and sidestepped, a blur of movement together, as if lifted by the music and the wind.

Vika wanted to feel that again. Here. Now. In this volcano dream.

“Charm my feet,” she breathed into Nikolai’s ear. “Like at the masquerade.”

He squeezed her hand and pulled her closer.

Smooth black silk unfurled around Vika, chilling and beguiling her at the same time. But she would not let go of Nikolai. The lava swirled ever closer around them.

The music flared. Their feet glided over the black rock, their bodies turning and stepping and twirling in perfect unison. It turned out that her heart had not forgotten the mazurka after all, merely locked its memory deep inside to protect her. But now the lava glowed brighter, and everywhere there was black silk and orange flame, and Vika was a wild girl with fiery hair, dancing with the Prince of Darkness and not caring that they spun together through this imagined hell.

They danced at a furious pace, blowing up all the dust from the volcano floor and surrounding themselves in a whirlwind of it. Vika’s boots lifted off the ground, and Nikolai levitated, too, and soon enough they were dancing above the lava, weaving in and out of the plumes of smoke. Vika let out an insouciant laugh.

Eventually, though, the song ended, and Vika and Nikolai floated back down to the ground. Their breath still came and went with the rhythm, inhales and exhales in triple time.

They held on to each other longer than they needed to.

“I love you, Vika,” he said softly. “Nothing about that has changed.”

“But everything else has.”

He tightened his grip on her arms, and a surge of his magic, a black part of it that he’d kept cleverly hidden from her until now, swept through her, skittering like a thousand centipedes that nipped at her with their venomous beaks.

She gasped at their touch.

Vika shivered, despite the lava creeping nearly to where they stood in the center of the room. Nikolai’s magic couldn’t keep her warm. It could only take from her, and from everyone else.

She tried to break away. But she couldn’t. This was his Dream Bench, his creation, and she was just an ordinary girl.

“If you joined me against Pasha, we could dance like this together forever,” he said. “Tsar and tsarina. Magic on the throne.”

She shuddered at the ambitious lust in his tone. What would a Nikolai like this do once he had power? There would be no one to counter him.

No one, unless Vika stood her ground against him. The sense of duty—and of what was right—that Sergei had instilled in her burned in her core.

“I don’t want to rule Russia with you,” she said.

“We would be magnificent.”

“No. We would be terrible.”

Nikolai exhaled slowly, in that haunting, painful way only a shadow could. It was impossible to know whether he was angry or disappointed, or if he could see at all the truth of that particular future.

“But . . .” Vika looked up him. She remembered his laugh from not too long ago, the glimmer of the old Nikolai still buried inside this one. “I do love you.”

He pulled back a little in surprise. “You don’t act like it.”

“I do. The Nikolai I once knew would see it.”

He shook his head, as if doing so would obliterate the truth that there was a difference between him and whom he’d once been.

“Please, stop whatever you’re planning. Your mother’s energy taints you. But together, I’m sure we could still make things right.”

He furrowed his brow. “I doubt that.” He turned as if to go.

“Nikolai, wait.”

He didn’t look at her again, but he hesitated, his hand still in hers.

It was something. More than something. She would hold on to it as long as she could.

“No matter what happens,” Vika said, “don’t forget.”

“Forget what?”

“That I love you.”

His fingers tightened around hers for a brief moment. “I love you, too,” he whispered.

He shook himself and disappeared from the dream.

Vika stayed, looking at the spot where Nikolai had stood. Only minutes later, however, the walls of the volcano began to tremble. No, not just tremble, but quake. Chunks of basalt rained down on her, and lava began to roar into the room. Vika shrieked and backed into a corner.

“Don’t be afraid, my dear,” a voice that sounded eerily similar to Vika’s said, echoing throughout the cylindrical chamber. “You were born of this. It won’t hurt you.”

Vika pressed herself against the wall anyway. She stretched and yawned and shook herself awake, just as the lava began to lick at the soles of her boots.

She gasped as she jolted upright on the Dream Bench. She gulped in the fresh air, no fire and ash here.

Then she hurried back to the dock for a ferry. I’m really beginning to hate dreams.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

A guard knocked on Yuliana’s antechamber door and announced Pasha. She looked up from where she’d been working at her desk.