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one thing that Yuliana had never been able to pick open, and now she understood why: it was governed by magic that would unlock only at the tsar’s touch.
    The lid eased itself open, as if lifted by an invisible hand. A long, majesticblack feather—plucked from the wing of a sea eagle centuries ago—and a yellowed parchment scroll floated into the air.
    Yuliana gasped, for even though she knew of magic, she’d never actually witnessed it. “So does this mean you’ll commence the Game?”
    The tsar nodded.
    She stared at the Russe Quill and Scroll. They spun lazily above the desk, the records of all past Games and so much of Russia’shistory, just hovering. “But we probably shouldn’t tell Pasha,” she said.
    The tsar nodded again. “It’s why I’ve never told you about the existence of enchanters and magic. I knew this generation would require a Game. And I didn’t know if the two of you—Pasha, really—would be able to stomach its viciousness.”
    But Yuliana could. Her mouth curved up at the corners. Her smile was both a fierce andwistful thing.

CHAPTER SIX
    T wo days later, Nikolai sat on a palomino mare on Ovchinin Island. He had never been there before, even though it was only an hour’s ferry ride from Saint Petersburg, but when Pasha had asked where they ought to hunt, “Ovchinin Island” had sprung from Nikolai’s tongue before his mind could catch up with the idea. He had no inkling where it had come from.
    But it turned out to be agrand decision. The sky was clear, the forest was dappled in red and gold, as it was wont to do in these early days of October, and the hounds were salivating for a chase. Nikolai watched as Pasha, smiling atop a white stallion, surveyed the land in front of him. The tsar had wanted Pasha to stay at the Winter Palace to listen to the mundane demands of farmers whose crops had been damaged by blight.But Pasha had escaped, and here, in the countryside, the tsesarevich rode wild and free from royal expectations.
    “What are we hunting for today?” Pasha asked.
    “I believe grouse, pheasants, and mink are all plentiful in this part of the country,” Nikolai said. “Whatever Your Imperial Highness desires.”
    “‘Your Imperial Highness’? Why are you being so formal?” Pasha glanced over his shoulder atthe rest of the hunting party, the sons of barons and counts and other lesser nobility, all social-climbing buffoons, in Nikolai’s opinion. “Don’t do it on their account,” Pasha said. “In fact, I rather wish you wouldn’t.”
    Nikolai bowed his head. “As you wish, my heavenly sovereign, crown prince of all Russia.”
    Pasha laughed.
    Nikolai couldn’t maintain a straight face any longer, and he smiled.This was why they were friends, because Nikolai was the only one who didn’t kowtow at the tsesarevich’s feet.
    They had met when Pasha was twelve and Nikolai thirteen. Nikolai had been crouched in the dirt in Sennaya Square, a sordid part of town, playing cards with a handful of other boys of questionable origin. He’d been betting money he didn’t have, but he hadn’t cared, for he’d long sincemastered the ability to change the face of each card to whatever he wanted before the dealer flipped it from the deck. Nikolai lost often enough that the others didn’t know better. It was just that when Nikolai won, he always made sure to win more than he’d given up before.
    After a particularly horrendous hand of cards, in which Nikolai sacrificed a painful sum of rubles, an unfamiliar voicepiped up from behind a nearby building. “Can I play?”
    “Who are you?” Stanislav, the leader of the gang, said.
    “Uh, my name is Pasha.” There was a tremble as heanswered, but that wasn’t uncommon around Stanislav, who at thirteen was already as stout as a dockworker.
    The other boys turned to survey the new arrival. They looked him up and down, from the mess of his blond hair to the torn kneesof his trousers. “It’s pay to play,” Stanislav