“Do you know why we were summoned?” Nikolai asked. He didn’t sit in any of the chairs, and the guard did not command him to.

Vika shook her head. “I haven’t a clue.”

An interior door burst open at that moment—Vika and Nikolai must have been in an antechamber of some sort—and the tsar strode out. Vika’s stomach again leaped to her throat. Nikolai gripped the back of a chair and appeared equally ill. But somehow, they both managed to curtsy and bow to the tsar.

“Rise,” he said. Then he waved his guard out of the room. When the soldier had shut the door firmly behind them, he said, “This is not about the Game, enchanters, so you can stop looking like cattle going to slaughter.”

Oh, thank heavens. Vika exhaled. Although the image of cattle going to slaughter stuck with her. It might not be tonight, but it would be some night (or day) not too far away.

“The tsarina is unwell,” the tsar continued, “and she and I need to go to the South, to the restorative weather of the Sea of Azov. But I fear she will not survive a weeks-long carriage ride. Therefore, I need your help.”

Nikolai bowed his head. “Your Imperial Majesty, I am happy to be of service. I can enchant your coach to carry you there faster.”

The tsar grunted. He turned to Vika. “And you? Can you do any better?”

Vika bristled. Was this part of the competition, or was it not? The tsar had claimed it was not technically part of the Game. So why did it still seem as if she and Nikolai were being pitted against each other?

And yet this was what Vika had always wanted. To use her magic for the tsar. Perhaps she could heal the tsarina.

But, no. From what Pasha had told her on the island, the tsarina’s condition was far more dire than anything Vika had worked on before. Mending the broken bones and stomachaches of animals was nothing compared to healing a sickness that even doctors could not cure. And Vika did not want to make a mistake. What if she made the tsarina worse? What if she killed her?

But the tsar hadn’t asked Vika and Nikolai to cure the tsarina. He’d asked them to get her to the Sea of Azov.

“I can evanesce—magically transfer—you and the tsarina, Your Imperial Majesty,” Vika said. But she didn’t look at Nikolai. She didn’t want to see if she’d upset him by showing him up.

“You can do that?” The tsar raised his brows.

“Yes, Your Imperial Majesty.”

“Will it hurt the tsarina?”

“I . . .” Vika wasn’t sure. She’d only evanesced someone else once. And really, she’d only ever evanesced herself twice, if she didn’t count the two-foot experiment at Preobrazhensky Creek when she was younger. Blazes, what had she just committed herself to?

“No,” Nikolai said, his tone steady. “It will not hurt the tsarina when Vika evanesces her. It’s mildly disorienting, but not painful.” Nikolai glanced over at Vika and gave her a subtle nod.

She felt the tug at her chest again, that connection to him, and she smiled. He wasn’t angry that her solution to the tsar’s problem was better. He supported her. Vika stood taller. Nikolai’s confidence in her shored up her own.

“Very well then,” the tsar said. “I shall make arrangements so the rest of our belongings will follow by coach, but the tsarina and I will leave tonight.”

The tsar marched to the door that led to the hall and flung it open. He gave orders to the guards stationed outside. A minute later, he strode back into the room, straight past Vika and Nikolai, and walked through the other, interior door into a different room.

“I suppose everyone will just think they left in the night for a romantic rendezvous,” Nikolai said quietly.

Vika flushed. Not at the thought of the tsar and tsarina running away together, but at the sudden fantasy of her and Nikolai, escaping the city and the Game for their own secret tryst. She remembered what it felt like even just holding his hand in the steppe dream, how keenly aware she’d been of every single point at which his glove had pressed into hers. How her skin had tingled beneath the satin. How her composure had dissolved to jelly.

Now she looked up to find Nikolai watching her, and the heat rose in her cheeks again. He couldn’t know what she was thinking, could he?

He smiled, then looked away.

Oh, mercy.

Soft coughing came from the room inside. Then, a minute later, the tsar reappeared, his countenance much softened, with the tsarina clutching his arm. They were quite a picture, him in his formal military uniform with his brow knitted tight with worry, and her in her white nightgown, smiling kindly but looking anything but regal. Vika pulled herself together to refocus on the task at hand. Scandalous thoughts about other enchanters would have to wait.

“I am sorry to trouble you at this hour,” the tsarina said to Vika and Nikolai. “But Alexander said you could help me.”

Alexander. How humanizing to hear the tsar referred to by his name. For the first time, Vika saw him as simply another person, not the heaven-appointed ruler of an empire, and not the final arbiter of the Game.

“Yes, Your Imperial Majesty,” Vika said. “I believe I can help.”

“Are you a doctor?”

Vika shook her head at this gentle, frail woman who had thought Vika’s snowy gown at the ball had been a mere illusion of fabric. “No, Your Imperial Majesty. I am not a doctor.”

“My dear,” the tsar said, “these two are enchanters. They work with magic.”

“Magic?”

He squeezed her hand. “Yes. Magic. It’s real.”

The tsarina’s eyes widened, and Vika could see Pasha in her expression. That innocent wonderment at the existence of “otherness” in their previously ordinary world.

“I am going to evanesce you to the Sea of Azov,” Vika said.

“Oh, my. What does that mean? And . . . right now?”

“It means I will magically transport you there, whenever you are ready.”

“What do you need me to do?” the tsarina asked. “How will it feel?”

“You don’t need to do anything,” the tsar said. “Correct?” He directed the question at both Vika and Nikolai.

Nikolai stepped forward. “Your Imperial Majesty, do you like champagne?”

She smiled up at him. “I do.”

“Well, evanescing is a bit like being transformed into champagne. Vika’s magic will turn you into tiny bubbles, and you will fly through the air, a bit giddy and a great deal effervescent, all the way to the sea. And then when you arrive, you’ll morph from bubbles back to yourself again, with the tsar by your side.”