The Crown's Fate
Page 29

There was, however, food. It would be tricky, because food conjured from magic was never, as Father had claimed, as delicious as that cooked by hand.
But what child was ever picky about candy?
Vika snapped her fingers, and deep-violet sugarplums appeared all over the tree, hanging by black licorice stems. The lower boughs of the tree grew heavy with enormous candy pinecones, each a different color and flavor, from strawberry red to marmalade orange to honeysuckle-berry blue. And tufts of white cotton candy, like sweet snow, floated down onto the branches. Wherever a child could reach, a treat could be found.
Vika stepped back to survey her tree. It was impressive and lustrous and above all . . . innocent. She couldn’t use something this pure as a weapon. And she wasn’t going to kill Nikolai anyway.
I’ll give it fire, Vika thought, but not as Yuliana wanted.
Vika conjured a small flame at her fingertips and blew on it. It flew to the base of the tree and wended its way to the center of the trunk. From there, it began to light the tree from within, fiery and hot. The flame burned in the trunk but remained contained inside the thick layers of bark, and it shot up, up, up through the middle. The fire destroyed the tree’s soul and at the same time fueled it, imparting the wood itself with light and life from the inside out.
Finally, the flame reached the very top of the tree and exploded forth, flickering fiercely into the sky.
Lena cried out and clapped her little hands together.
But Vika didn’t celebrate. She looked at her enchantment and saw herself. And Pasha and Nikolai. It’s only a question of whether our bark will hold . . . or whether the fire will eventually consume and kill us all.
The rest of the people on Nevsky Prospect remained quiet and still. They no longer shouted about witches and devils, but they also didn’t clap or cheer. It was as if they understood how precarious everything was, and that darkness could not be deterred by a single fiery Christmas tree.
Or a single fiery girl.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Yuliana’s antechamber was littered with paper. Several boxes of her mother’s correspondence were upended across the floor, the remnants of the late tsarina’s floral perfume haunting the room like a ghost. Yuliana’s own notes cluttered the small desk in the corner, displacing the stack of Imperial Council reports, which stood so tall on the floor that it was nearly impossible to see her sitting cross-legged on the rug behind them. She was combing through her mother’s letters—well, the ones that were sent to the tsarina, since Yuliana obviously didn’t have the ones her mother had sent out—and looking for mentions of Alexis Okhotnikov, as well as anyone else who could have been the tsarina’s lover nearly eighteen years ago. Her mother had often felt isolated in court life, and hence was an incessant letter writer, finding solace in news from her friends.
The problem, however, was that her mother’s friends had also been incessant letter writers, which meant there were thousands of envelopes to go through.
But there must be something in here that either proves the tsar was Pasha’s father, or that he wasn’t. Already, Yuliana had found a few letters from noblewomen reporting to the tsarina on seeing Okhotnikov at this or that ball, in this or that parlor, and what he wore that night, with whom he danced, if he complimented anyone for their piano playing. There were mentions, too, in earlier letters of other men, possible lovers. Yuliana sighed. She didn’t know if she wanted to grow up. Court life for women seemed so terribly predictable and dull.
At least if Pasha became tsar, he’d let Yuliana help. He understood that she was more Catherine the Great than Marie Antoinette. Although Yuliana did have an appreciation for petits fours and beautiful gowns.
She laughed, something she only allowed herself rarely, even when alone. Then she bent over a new pile of letters, even though her neck ached from the hours of reading before.
“I will solve this,” she said, as she opened another envelope. “One way or another.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Can you make room for my mother?” a boy asked that evening, as he pushed his way into the mass of people in the nave, the church’s main room. He neared Pasha, who stood in the center of the crowd, disguised as a dockworker. Behind the boy trailed a woman with a gray shawl wrapped around her head, her posture stooped and her footsteps halting. She was probably no older than thirty, but life was hard on ordinary Russians, the ones who swept streets and labored in factories and raised a half-dozen children before they died of cholera or consumption or simply exhaustion. The rest of the worshippers wore similar expressions, weary and resigned, as they stood in the nave awaiting the liturgy. “Make way,” Pasha said, parting the crowd with his arms. The boy and his mother nodded gratefully.
The church was a simple one on the outside, nothing much to look at compared to the grand cathedrals in other parts of Saint Petersburg, but those were churches for the moneyed. This was a place of worship and shelter for everyone else.
And yet intricate, gilded icons of the Holy Trinity and saints throughout history adorned the iconostasis, a wall-like screen that divided the nave from the altar, and up above, the ceilings were painted with holy scenes. No expense was spared when it came to honoring the Lord.
Pasha settled back into the crowd. He wore a plain tunic and trousers, as well as a false beard to cover most of his face, but it didn’t matter much, for everyone was too busy whispering their own prayers to look at those around them.
“Please save the tsesarevich from the devil’s magic.”
“Have mercy and spare us from the witch.”
“Tell us what to do, O Lord, send a sign, and we will follow.”
The nave seemed to grow smaller; the curdled smell of fear lay like a heavy blanket in the church, and it was harder and harder for Pasha to breathe. He wove through the masses, but everywhere he turned, they whispered the same entreaties. Help us. Rid the city of the witch. Exorcise the demon from the tsesarevich.
It seemed Vika’s tree and Pasha’s entreaties to the city to believe in him had not convinced everybody. Not even close.
He strode out of the nave and burst out through the doors of the church. The frigid air outside rushed into his lungs, and he gulped it down in ragged breaths. Had he made a mistake in endorsing magic? There was a reason the tsars and the church had hidden it in the past—most people could not handle that there were powers larger than they are. Now, however, they knew about magic again, and things were spinning out of control.