He blinked. “We?”

“Yes, we,” she said. “This has gone on too long. It needs to end. And I am here—not at your service, but by your side as an equal—if you’ll have me.”

Pasha furrowed his brow, but he nodded. Because while everything else was wrong, this was right. Vika was the sun, and she could not be eclipsed. She’d never deserved to be labeled as “lesser.”

Neither had Pasha. All his life, he’d doubted himself, second-guessed his ability to wear the crown. He wasn’t lesser, either. Lesser than his father, than Yuliana, than Vika or Nikolai. The furious eddying in his stomach slowed, then came to a stop.

Pasha was also a sun in his own right.

He strode through the snow to the nearest weapons rack and retrieved a bow and two quivers of arrows. Gavriil and some of the guards began to move back into the yard, but Pasha shook his head, and they halted.

Across the yard, there was a large, blank sheet of canvas. No bull’s-eye, just plain cream. Pasha plucked an arrow from the first quiver, took aim, and let it fly. It hit square in the center of the empty space.

He took three arrows in his hand now and fired them rapidly, one after another, and before the third had landed, he had another three in his hand. Thwack, thwack, thwack, over and over, the first quiver empty and onto the next, arrow after arrow after arrow in the same sharp rhythm until the second quiver, too, was spent.

The entire yard was silent. Vika stared at the canvas with her mouth slightly open.

The arrows formed the shape of the Great Imperial Crown.

“I intend to be tsar,” Pasha said. “I denied it all my life when it seemed inevitable and forced upon me. But now that the throne could be taken away, it’s as clear as the icicles on the trees that I want it. And I am willing to fight, to risk my life, to prove it.”

Vika stared at him, much like she’d stared at the canvas full of arrows. “I might need to start calling you ‘Your Imperial Highness’ again, because that was the most kingly thing you’ve ever said.”

Pasha clutched the bow in his hand. “Is that good?”

“I like this version of you,” Vika said. “And I think the people will, too, even more than they already love you. That is, if we defeat Nikolai and survive. Can I use magic again?”

“Would it be possible to be . . .”

“Discreet?”

Pasha grimaced at the reference to Yuliana’s complaint at how Vika had handled the statue of Peter the Great. “I wouldn’t have put it that way,” he said. “But yes, something like that.”

“I’ll try not to do anything that would further frighten the city. I just need to have magic at my disposal again to help you.”

“I know. Yes, you’re free to use your power again. It seems the damage of Nikolai’s aggressions has already been done anyway, if he’s amassed twenty thousand troops. I will prepare my men for your presence.”

“Do you need to renounce your earlier edict? Or . . . get Yuliana’s approval?”

Pasha barely stifled a wince at the allusion to his past inability to make decisions without his sister. But it was the truth, and it would take a while for him to establish a new presumption that he could, in fact, act like a tsar on his own.

“No. Yuliana has helped me in the past, but your oath as Imperial Enchanter binds you to the tsar. I’m the closest to that at the moment. And the edict was just a declaration for the benefit of the people.”

Vika nodded, her lips pressed together in a way that was neither smile nor frown, but something in between. Which was precisely how Pasha felt, too. What they were about to embark upon would not be easy.

“If this is really going to happen, we should both get some rest,” he told her. “Be careful in the meantime.”

“I don’t believe in careful,” Vika said. The moonlight glinted in her eyes.

As she walked away, Pasha knew one thing for certain: he’d never love another girl quite the same.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

Pasha had briefed Yuliana on everything Vika reported regarding Nikolai and the Decembrists’ planned coup, and by the next afternoon, Yuliana had set her own plans in motion.

“Colonel Trubetskoy, I’m so glad you could join me for tea,” she said, as a guard showed the long-faced nobleman into the room. He wore a dapper gray frock coat and a cream-colored cravat. His dark hair was neatly combed and kept short, other than the sideburns along his entire jaw.

As secretive as the constitutionalists thought they were, the Imperial Council had known for a while that Trubetskoy was one of the original founders of the movement. They also knew his previous groups had disbanded and failed. Internally, Yuliana smirked.

Trubetskoy bowed. “Your Imperial Highness, it is an honor to be asked to join you.”

Yuliana dipped her head. She was already seated, the three-tiered displays of sandwiches and desserts set before her. “Please, do sit.”

Trubetskoy obeyed.

A servant girl brought porcelain cups painted in a cobalt lattice pattern and rimmed in pure gold. It was Catherine the Great’s favorite design, and therefore Yuliana’s favorite tea set. The servant filled both Yuliana’s and Trubetskoy’s cups with fragrant black tea scented with dried orange.

Yuliana picked a vegetable tartine from the savory display of sandwiches and offered it to Trubetskoy.

“No, thank you, Your Imperial Highness.”

“Perhaps you’d prefer sweets?” She swept her hand to the three tiers of jam tarts and chocolate and candied nuts. “The palace kitchen works miracles.”

Trubetskoy gave her a strained smile. “Well, then, I cannot refuse Your Imperial Highness’s generous offer.” He took a chocolate and a handful of candied nuts and placed them on his plate.

“Good. Now that we’re through with the pleasantries, let me get to why I asked you here. You’ve been one of the voices for the constitutionalists for quite some time, have you not?”

“Well, Your Imperial Highness, I wouldn’t say I was a ‘voice,’ per se. I am interested in the philosophical discussions.”

Yuliana rolled her eyes.

Trubetskoy faltered but then pressed on. “I promise, the conversations have been nothing more than private chatter, and I’m not sure who spoke of them to you, but—”