Sergei crossed the muddy patch of forest between them and wrapped his arms around her. “I do not envy you. It is a burdensome calling, to be the tsar’s enchanter. Promise me you’ll remain my mischievous Vikochka, no matter what the future may bring.”
“I swear it.” Vika touched a finger to the basalt pendant around her neck. It was something she did for the most unbreakable of promises, because swearing on her dead mother’s necklace seemed to lend solemnity to any commitment. It was also a tad theatrical, and Vika was fond of self-aware melodrama. Still, Sergei knew that the few promises she’d ever made on the necklace were sworn in complete earnestness.
“But you know,” Vika said as she pulled away from his embrace, “I wouldn’t mind leaving the island once in a while. Or ever.”
“I don’t like Saint Petersburg,” he said.
“What about Finland? It’s not far.”
“The Grand Duchy of Finland does not interest me at all.”
“It might interest me.”
“I am sure you will do plenty of traveling once you’re Imperial Enchanter. But my time with you is limited. Humor an old man and stay on the island with me a bit longer. It’s only seven more seasons until you turn eighteen.”
Vika chewed on her lip. Sergei braced himself. He knew that glint in her eyes; when you had an enchantress as a daughter, disagreements often became more demonstrative than mere words.
Suddenly, the red and orange leaves around them fluttered to the forest floor, and autumn rushed away. Then a blast of snow set in on the bare branches. A moment later, the icicles melted, and flower buds shot out of the damp ground and blossomed in full perfume. They were quickly replaced by the lush greenery of summer. Then autumn again. And winter. And spring. All in less than a minute.
“Looks like seven seasons have passed,” Vika said.
Sergei crossed his arms over his chest. “Vikochka.”
“Oh, fine.” She changed the season back to autumn, as it should be. The leaves on the birch trees were golden once again.
“Is it truly so unbearable to be here with me?”
“No, of course not, Father. I just—”
“I’ll challenge you even more in your lessons.”
Vika perked up. “Really?”
“As much as you’d like.”
“I’d like to be a menace to anyone who dares to trouble Russia.”
“You already are a menace.”
Vika pecked Sergei on the cheek. “Then make me a bigger one.”
CHAPTER THREE
Nikolai’s pocket watch clicked as the hour struck two in the morning. He ought to have gone to bed long ago, but here he still was, standing in front of a tri-fold mirror in his bedroom as a measuring tape and several pins flew around him, designing a new frock coat. For a once pudgy orphan from the Kazakh steppe, Nikolai had grown up to be rather striking. His eyes were dark and fierce, his face and body all sharp planes, and yet there was an impossible fluidity to the way he moved—in fact, even in the way he stood—that was both incongruous with his trenchant edges and an inseparable part of his being. It was a brooding sort of elegance not often seen on a boy of eighteen.
The clothing he tailored was, of course, necessary for life in the heart of the capital. There was always an invitation to lunch or to play cards or to go to the countryside to hunt. But Nikolai had had to fend for himself in every one of these realms, for his mentor and benefactor, Countess Galina Zakrevskaya, was not about to spend a kopek on him for new boots or a proper rifle for shooting grouse, and certainly not for dance lessons, even though Galina’s friends deemed it fashionable to invite her charity case to their balls.
And so Nikolai had learned to barter. He delivered packages for the tailors at Bissette & Sons in exchange for bolts of cloth. He sharpened swords for an army lieutenant in return for lessons. He served as an unpaid assistant to Madame Allard, the ballroom instructor to all the debutantes, and as a result, learned to dance in the company of the prettiest girls in the city. Nikolai knew he was worth at least the same as the noble-born boys in the capital, and he refused to give anyone an excuse to prove otherwise.
So while Nikolai might not have belonged to Saint Petersburg society, he was in it, in his own ill-fitting way. And all the while, Galina’s daft admirers praised her for her caritas and her ability to polish a rough