The Crown's Fate
Page 11

Nikolai sighed. “Yes, well, I need to get out of this bench first.”
“You need to rest.”
“No, I need to gather more strength.” Nikolai rose to his feet. It was better, anyway, to shove away the discomfort of his myriad feelings about Pasha, to bury them deep inside himself to be dealt with at another time. There was plenty of other suffering from his lifetime crammed in the depths of his heart.
“Where are you going?” Renata asked.
“To the yurt village.”
“May I come?”
Nikolai looked down at where she still crouched in the grass. “You really want to?”
She nodded. “I’d go anywhere with you.”
I’m a fool for not loving her, Nikolai thought. Renata had always been there for him, even when he was terrible. It’s just that Vika—
But Nikolai shook himself out of it. There were more important things to think of right now.
“Thank you,” he said to Renata. “I have a new idea for getting out of this bench. Come with me to see if it works.”
Back in the village portion of the dream, Nikolai explained, “I’m repossessing some of the magic I used to create this scene. I can’t seem to get enough energy from the people who visit, so I need to find another source. I thought I might be able to erase some of this dream and absorb the magic I originally used to create it.”
“You’re going to take all this away?” Renata looked at the villagers, who were gathering around the fire for dinner. She smiled sadly.
“They’re illusions,” Nikolai said. “Don’t lament their demise.”
He focused on the horizon, where the sheep were led each day to graze. That part of the dream began to shimmer, as when heat hazes the skyline, and then the scene seemed to dissolve slowly. Nikolai gasped as the fields vanished for good and the magic that had once created it found its way back into his body, like liquid sunshine trickling into his veins.
Only a blur of nondescript summer color—yellow and green and blue—marked the new border of the steppe dream where the fields had once been.
The children watering the sheep were the next to go. One, two, three of them vanished midstep. The men relaxing by the fire went next, disappearing as if evaporating. With each subtraction from the scene, a tiny burst of energy flared within Nikolai.
He erased the women preparing dinner. For a few seconds, a knife continued slicing onions. Then Nikolai absorbed that image, and the rice pilaf, too.
Renata blinked at where they’d all been a moment ago, mouth slightly open.
He watched her. He’d forgotten the glow that shone about Renata whenever she saw him conjure—or in this case, vanish—something new. Her awe was its own kind of magic.
After watching her a second more, Nikolai began to wash away the yurts. They faded slowly away, like watercolors diluted too much. All the while, his body temperature rose.
Oh! He hadn’t realized it before, but he hadn’t been hot or cold or anything in between since the end of the Game. In ante-death, it seemed, certain sensations were suspended.
But now I can feel warmth again.
All that remained of the steppe dream was where Nikolai and Renata stood, the grassland, and the mountains in the distance.
“I feel more alive than I have in . . . wait. How long has it been?”
“A fortnight since the end of the Game.”
Nikolai frowned. It seemed both much longer and shorter than that. The passage of time must also be something that got lost in ante-death. Especially when paired with an endless dream.
Still, he felt more himself now than in the past two weeks. Nikolai reached up out of habit to adjust his top hat. His arm passed in front of his face.
His arm—no, all of him—remained entirely shadow.
“No.”
“What is it?” Renata asked.
“It can’t be!” Nikolai checked his other arm, and his legs and his torso. Black and gray, here but not here, real but entirely imaginary. “It was supposed to work! Why aren’t I solid again?”
Renata sighed. She cut it short, but not before Nikolai heard.
“Maybe you’ll be visible when you’re no longer in the dream,” she said hastily, as if to make up for letting her disappointment slip. “You just need to leave this place first. Come with me. Let’s try.”
Nikolai clawed at his sleeve. It didn’t even feel like wool, not really. Just . . . air. Slightly soft, black air. His pulse raced inside his shadow heart. And who even knew if that pulse existed or not?
“Nikolai.” Renata pried his fingers off his sleeve and squeezed them with her own, although she did so lightly and did not close her hand all the way. It worked, and her fingers didn’t pass straight through his, but rather rested around where his shadow was, like she was holding on to nothing.
I am nothing.
Nikolai couldn’t move.
“Wake up with me,” she said with more force in her voice than usual, as if she knew where his thoughts were taking him. But of course she knew. Renata knew him almost as well as he knew himself. “Breathe,” she said, “and let’s pull ourselves away from here.”
All right. Breathe. I can do that. Nikolai inhaled.
“Again,” Renata said.
He took another, deeper breath. Then he squeezed Renata’s hand gently, and she must’ve felt at least some pressure from his touch, because she smiled. It was a small measure of comfort, knowing that he did, in fact, exist.
Renata shook her head to jostle the dream out of her mind. Within moments, she began to fade.
But Nikolai remained rooted in the steppe.
Renata frowned. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she said, her voice already distant, halfway back to reality. “I’ll wake, then fall back asleep to return.”
“Don’t,” Nikolai said. He dropped her nearly transparent hand from his.
“But—”
“No! Leave me. I want to be alone.”
Renata’s mouth opened as if to say something, but no words came out. Possibly because her ability to speak had already returned to the other side of the bench.
But more likely because she didn’t actually say a thing. For when she had disappeared completely, she did not return.
Nikolai looked at the empty space where she’d been. “Thank you,” he said. He had truly meant it when he said he wanted to be alone. And Renata had understood that.