“What do you mean?”

Renata drank until there was only a quarter of the tea left. “Let me show you.”

She stared at her cup. Nothing happened at first. But then ripples fanned out from the center of the liquid, and the leaves inside it began to quiver, subtly floating toward the edges, as if there were a current in the tea.

“Heavens,” Vika whispered.

Renata blinked. The tea stopped moving.

“I interrupted your concentration,” Vika said. “Forgive me. Continue, please.”

Renata gritted her teeth and stared again at her cup. The leaves quivered, then continued to drift. They stopped close to their original place, but in an entirely different pattern.

“You can control the leaves.” Vika shook her head, still astonished by what she’d just witnessed. “But how?”

Renata smoothed a wrinkle in the table runner. It was one Ludmila had knit for Vika and Sergei ages ago. She kept going over the same spot, even though it was already smoothed down.

“Renata?”

“Aizhana gave me some energy,” she blurted out. “But it wasn’t for me. It was for Nikolai. Some must still be inside me, though, and now I can do this.” She waved her hands at the cup.

Aizhana had given Renata energy? But why, then, isn’t Renata doing horrible things like Nikolai? Vika thought back to the conversation she’d overheard between Nikolai and his mother, right before her death.

Aizhana had explained her love for him, her desire to help him at all costs, which explained why she’d stooped to passing her energy to him through trickery. And . . . oh.

Aizhana had also confessed to killing Galina. Which meant it was Galina’s energy, not her own, that had been passed on to Renata. Could that explain the difference? Could it be that the mentor’s magical energy heightened Renata’s talent for fortune-telling?

But how would Aizhana have managed to transfer only Galina’s energy, without tainting it with any of her own? Vika frowned. She didn’t know the mechanics of energy transfer. That was a Karimov specialty.

“Please say something,” Renata said. “Am I a monster now, too, because of Nikolai’s mother?”

Vika shook her head. “I don’t know what exactly Aizhana did, but I doubt you could ever be a monster. You’re too good and pure.”

Perhaps that was it. When Aizhana gave Nikolai energy, he was already weak, a shadow in the Dream Bench, driven by anguish. But Renata had been strong, and driven by love.

“Think of the cup half full, right?” Vika said. “You can now change fate.”

“I . . . I don’t know.”

“Well, on the chance that it’s true . . . I have an idea.” Vika rotated her hand so her palm opened upward. She smiled as a small woven pouch appeared in it. Even the simplest feats of magic provided such joy now.

Renata craned her neck to get a better look. “What’s inside?”

Vika loosened the drawstring and poured several threads of bright red saffron into her hand.

“It looks like your hair,” Renata said.

“Exactly.” Vika plucked the thread on top and dropped it into her tea. “That will represent me. Should I drink until there’s only a little bit left?”

Renata nodded slowly, beginning to catch on.

Vika did so and set the cup back on its saucer. Black leaves settled on the bottom in a V. The thread of saffron hovered over the point at the base of it, where the leaves diverged into two lines. “What does that mean?” she asked.

Renata fingered her braids. “It means there are two people whose paths have split. And you—the saffron—are doomed to be caught between them.”

“That’s painfully accurate,” Vika said. “Now let’s change it. How would it look if I helped bring them back together, rather than simply standing where they pull apart?”

Renata chewed her lip as she thought. “I suppose if the saffron is not at the split but at the top of the V, arching like a bridge reconnecting the paths.”

“Can you do that?”

Renata took a deep breath. “I’ll try.” She gripped a braid in each hand and focused on the cup.

The tea inside quivered. Then, slowly, it began to ripple, but only near the red thread. The black leaves remained in their V shape, but the saffron floated away.

Five minutes of intense concentration later, the saffron bridged the top of the black paths.

“You did it!” Vika said.

Renata slouched in her chair. “Not quite. There’s still tea left in the cup. It’s not a prophecy until the liquid is gone. But I don’t know how you’re going to manage to drink it without moving the leaves some more.”

Vika smirked. “You forget I’m an enchantress.” She eyed the cup, and a second later, the last of the tea rose up as if through an invisible straw, only there was no straw at all, only air. Vika winked as she slurped the final drops of tea.

The leaves stayed exactly where Renata had placed them.

Both girls simply looked at the prophecy for a while.

“Do you think it will work?” Renata finally asked.

Vika sighed. “Nikolai thinks our fates are already determined. I refuse to believe that. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be trying to change them. It would be even better if you could shift not only my leaves, but also Nikolai’s. It would be more direct that way. Do you think you can?”

“I don’t know. I promised him I’d never read his leaves unless he wanted me to.”

“I think this, if any, is an acceptable time to break a promise.”

Renata nodded, although she also frowned. “But how would I get him to drink the tea only partially like I asked you to do?”

Vika looked at her own leaves, then pushed the cup away. “You’ll have to manipulate the leaves when his cup is dry.”

“I’m not sure I can.”

Vika reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “It’s worth a try.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

That night, Evgeny Obolensky bowed as he entered the armory to greet Nikolai. “Your Imperial Highness, it is a great honor to finally meet you.” Obolensky had a soft, round face that made him appear younger than his twenty-nine years, but Nikolai knew better than to judge by appearances. Obolensky was aide-de-camp to the most elite of the Imperial Army’s regiments, and his family could trace their noble roots all the way back to the age of Rurik, the dynasty that ruled Russia centuries ago.