Sergei glared. “It’s a marvel your student has such impeccable manners, given his teacher’s complete lack thereof.”

Galina shrugged.

They hadn’t noticed the momentary falter in the shadow boy’s facade. Or in Vika’s composure.

In the distance, the rumble of hooves and carriage wheels announced the tsar’s arrival. The ground shook as he approached. He was preceded, flanked, and trailed by dozens of his Guard.

No more time to dwell on the boy, Vika thought. At least not on how he looks. She did not acknowledge how he’d made her feel, all tremble and ache inside, for she couldn’t. It’s about the Game now.

The golden carriage came to a stop in front of them in a cloud of dust. Vika had thought Galina’s coach was pretty, but this one was utterly magnificent. A painting of the Summer Palace adorned the door, with the handle the graceful stretch of a swan’s neck. The tsar’s coat of arms—a double-headed black eagle wearing imperial crowns and clutching a scepter and an orb and cross, the globus cruciger—ornamented the panels beside the door. Even the roof was trimmed in gold spirals and smaller versions of the double eagle. The coach’s beauty was so extraordinary, Vika wondered if the last Imperial Enchanter had conjured it.

The Tsar’s Guard fell in around the carriage, poised to defend their tsar should it be necessary. He doesn’t trust us, Vika thought. And it was the first time it truly sank in that the things she could do were not only fascinating, but also possibly deadly. She shivered at her own potential; if she were honest, a small part of her thrilled at it, too.

At the captain’s signal, the coachman of the carriage leaped down from his seat, set down polished wooden steps, and opened the door.

Sergei and the shadow boy bowed low to the ground. Galina and Vika curtsied, as deeply as their skirts allowed. The four of them stayed genuflected as the tsar’s heavy footsteps thumped on the stairs.

He paced slowly, pausing before each of them, as if memorizing the details of the bowed backs of their necks for future accounting, or as if contemplating slicing off all their heads right now. Vika shivered again, although this time, it was in reaction to the tsar’s power, not her own.

The tsar lingered in front of Vika the longest. Was he confused by her shroud? She didn’t know. But finally, after what seemed like several hours, he moved on, his boots crunching on the loose stones beneath him.

“Please rise,” the tsar said. Sergei and Galina stood first, followed by Vika and the shadow boy. “Welcome, enchanters,” the tsar said, the rich baritone of his voice echoing against the mountainside. “I am pleased to commence the first Crown’s Game of the nineteenth century. I look forward to witnessing what you can do.”

And with that, he walked straight into the wall of Tikho Mountain and disappeared.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Nikolai gasped as the tsar vanished into the rock. It was pure granite, as far as Nikolai could tell. How had the tsar done that? Did he have his own magic as well?

Galina smacked the back of Nikolai’s head, and he had to lunge to catch his shadow top hat before it tumbled onto the dusty ground. “Close your mouth. You’ll swallow an entire swarm of gnats if you keep gawking like that,” she said. “What part of bolshebnoie do you not understand? It’s the mountain that’s enchanted, not the tsar. Now let’s get on with it before the sun sets completely.” She rolled her eyes and marched into the rock. She vanished, too.

The other enchanter—the girl—shrugged and plunged into the mountain, her father mere steps behind her.

Nikolai was left alone outside with the Tsar’s Guard. Weren’t they going to follow? But Nikolai looked from soldier to soldier, and every last one of them stood staring into the ether, their backs straight but their limbs loose, their expressions entirely blank. Their eyes didn’t even blink.

The magic of Tikho Mountain had suspended them.

“I suppose it’s just me, then,” Nikolai mumbled. It made sense. The Guard was not privy to magic; they were ordinary folk, and Bolshebnoie Duplo needed to be hidden from them, just as everything Nikolai did (and the girl and Galina and her brother) needed to be, as well. Nikolai gave the inanimate army one last glance, then dived headlong into the granite.

He emerged on the other side in a cave, with not a scratch or speck of dirt on his shadow frame. His mouth fell open again, and this time, he didn’t shut it. This was worth swallowing gnats for.

So this is why it’s called the Enchanted Hollow. The inside of the mountain was not made of rock. It was carved entirely of wood. Smooth, polished, ancient wood, like the inside of a colossal, magical tree. “Incroyable,” he whispered as he hurried down a long tunnel to catch up with the others.

The cave walls might have been made of wood, but they gleamed as brightly as if they’d been composed of amber and agate. Wooden stalactites hung from the ceiling, dripping almost imperceptibly with mineral water, and stalagmites rose from the ground, like honey-colored warriors from a time long ago.

The heart of Russia’s magic.

In fact, the air was so thick with it, Nikolai could hardly move. Although his own power was buoyed by being in Bolshebnoie Duplo—the magic that was always at his fingertips swelled as soon as he entered the Hollow—he was, paradoxically, also slowed by it. The others walked through the archaic magic undeterred, but Nikolai’s shadow form struggled to push through matter as dense as himself. And his shadow top hat kept falling off.

The tsar led the way, descending into the caverns with nothing but a small oaken chest in his arms. The magic here must protect him, Nikolai thought. He’d never seen the tsar without his Guard.

Galina floated after the tsar, followed by her brother, and then Enchanter Two. Nikolai propelled himself through the fog of magic, trailing closely, but not too closely, behind the girl. She had a deception shroud around her, but its effect was lost on him, for he already knew who she was. Nikolai could see her clearly: her red hair, with its single black stripe, tumbling down her back in loose waves like a veil of smoke and flames; her slight shoulders, hunched forward as she ducked beneath a low ceiling in the cave; and her green satin dress, out of fashion by at least a decade but somehow endearing on her, not awkward in the slightest. It could have been improved, however, with a ribbon around its waist. Preferably in yellow.

If Nikolai hadn’t been on Ovchinin Island and seen what this girl could do, he might have been deceived by her appearance. But like the poisonous lorises Galina had planted in his room three days ago, it was the smallest and most innocent-looking of creatures who were the most deadly.