what had she whispered to the ballerina in Palace Square when the Jack had offered his hand? Don’t trust him.
Vika touched the basalt necklace at her throat. “No. I still don’t trust you.”
Nikolai shrugged. “No matter. I’m not giving you a choice.”
Magic rushed around her like the floodgates of a dam had been released, and Vika levitated several inches off the floor on its flow. “Oh!” He must have released the shield he’d used earlier to contain his power. It nearly swept her away.
Nikolai smiled, and this time it was different from the first. There was no mischief. It was purely a blush in smile form. “I’m sorry. But I really want to dance with you.”
A part of Vika—the nonrational part of her—melted.
And the rational side of her was too shocked to fight back. She’d never encountered magic that surged and glowed like this before. It wrapped around her like silk, and she found herself reveling in its warm elegance. Nikolai charmed her feet and her arms, and immediately, they joined in on the lively mazurka. Without needing to think, Vika glided and spun with him, as perfectly synchronized as if they had been dancing together forever. He twirled her out, and like the other men, he knelt, and Vika and the other ladies pranced around them. Then he rose and drew her back in, and they were a couple again, stamping and whirling together.
There was, of course, another irony: Vika was now Nikolai’s puppet, his ballerina in a music box. But Vika also knew that if she wanted him to release her strings, she could force him to. She had magic, too. Only, she didn’t want him to stop.
They didn’t speak, but, rather, let the music carry them. They swiveled and sidestepped, came apart and back together again, each time united with Nikolai’s hand resting gently on Vika’s waist and the snow on her skirt flurrying fiercely. To counter the chill, she threw her arm out toward the fireplace behind the orchestra, and the flames blazed and warmed the room. He smiled at her small enchantment.
Then he spun Vika quickly, and she was a blur, blur, blur, and they danced as if lifted by the wind. He commanded the instruments and their musicians to match their blistering tempo, and the mazurka accelerated faster and faster and faster.
All around them, couples attempted to keep up. They stepped and twirled. They tripped and stumbled. When the song finally ended, one dancer fainted, and her chaperone and a gaggle of others hurried to her side. The orchestra declared a break. And despite the fire in the fireplace, the servants rushed to serve hot tea and warm cakes to their shivering guests.
Only Vika and Nikolai stood in the center of the floor. Their chests rose and fell in rapid, synchronized rhythm. He released the mazurka charm he had cast.
“Let’s dance again,” he whispered.
“It would be poor form,” she quipped.
He smiled his blush of a smile. If only she could capture it and keep it in a bottle.
“Then probably for the best that we don’t,” he said. “I believe we’ll have an uprising if I do not relinquish you soon.” Nikolai gestured behind her, and Vika shifted to see a line of knights and devils and gentlemen tigers waiting their turn to ask her to dance. They were apparently unfazed by the speed of her last performance.
“My two left feet will be revealed.”
“Not while I am here.” Nikolai waved his hand over her heeled boots, and she floated imperceptibly off the ground. “Do you trust me?”
The question seemed altogether different now than before the mazurka. Nikolai no longer seemed like the enemy. He was that tugging. That tenuous thread. He was her other half on the end of the string.
And yet she would be a fool to trust him.
But they could have a détente, at least for tonight. Vika looked up at him and tapped her mask. It went transparent, although only for him, and only for a few seconds.
He nodded, as if he understood exactly what she meant, and he mirrored her movement. His mask went invisible for a moment as well.
Oh. Heaven help her. Nikolai was more striking than she remembered, and the darkness in his eyes was more dangerous than she recalled. He was a poisonous autumn crocus: deadly beautiful with no antidote.
She wanted the flower anyway.
And Vika remembered the dreams of him she’d had, when she’d wondered what it would feel like to run her hand along the sharp line