Bogdan stooped to pick up the bulging pouch of goldleaves, his mouth hanging open. Coins continued to spill like water from the overflowing bag.
“Well,mesyr,” Bogdan exclaimed, a slight breathlessness to his tone. “You have certainly shown your dedication to entertainment!”
Behind him, May had finally lifted her head and was watching with sharp intent. The Ice Queen’s beam looked frozen, forced. In the shadows of the wings, the pale-eyed broker observed with unimpassioned interest.
A feeling of foreboding descended upon Ana. She searched the crowd for the owner of the voice, panic low but rising within her. This was wrong. The amount of goldleaves offered up was enough to feed fifty families for an entire year. It was enough to buy a small dacha.
No one in their right mind would offer up this much money for a few moments of entertainment.
Onstage, Bogdan’s eyes sparkled in delight. “And how else,” the Penmaster continued, his voice growing louder as he held up the pouch of coins, “are affairs conducted here at the Playpen but through gold and coin? Mesyrs, meya damas, and everyone—I say we hear out this civilian who seems set to give us the show of the night!”
As the crowd burst into thunderous applause and roared their approvals, something moved amid them. A flash of gold, a hooded figure.
As the man took a light leap onto the stage, Ana found herself gazing into a familiar golden mask.
There was no mistaking it. It was the nobleman she had bumped into on her first night at the Playpen. He wore the same mask he’d worn then, with a derisive crying face, yet it was the burning in his eyes that she remembered. That first night, she had only glimpsed him, but he had looked irate.
Something wasn’t right.
“Ramson,” Ana whispered, but the man had begun speaking.
“I’ve been to many,manyAffinite shows,” the gold-masked nobleman cried, his voice lofty, his hands raised in elegant, sweeping motions. “And I have waited for this moment forso long.”
Ana began to move forward. She wasn’t sure why, but she found herself pushing past people with a growing urgency to reach the stage. To reach May. She heard Ramson hiss her name behind her; sensed the thrum of his blood as he began to follow her.
“We’re glad to have you here, noble mesyr!” Bogdan chortled, patting his bag of goldleaves. His smile stretched from ear to ear. “Let me know any and all requests you’d like to make of this Affinite, and I can—”
“I wish for everyone gathered here to remember this glorious moment with me!” the gold-masked man crowed. With a flourish, he slipped off his hood. His hair shone red as he stepped forward, closer to the edge of the stage. He ripped his mask off, tossing it onto the ground in front of the glass.
Ana stopped in place. The face onstage was alight with triumph and the orange-red glow of the torchlight. And it was utterly familiar.
Someone’s hands closed around her wrist. Dimly, she heard Ramson speaking to her. “Ana,listento me—”
But she couldn’t. She was staring at the man’s face; it drew her back to her childhood in the Palace, when he’d brought her steaming tea and fresh pirozhky pies—but it was his words and the brightness in his eyes that had warmed her to the core.
“I know him,” she said hollowly.
“You—what?”
Onstage, the red-haired man had availed himself of a torch. “My fellownobleguests, I want you all to remember one thing.” He held the torch up, and the triumphant expression on his face twisted in hatred.
“I know him,” Ana gasped. “Ramson, he’s an—”
“Long live the Revolution.” With all his strength, the red-haired man smashed the burning torch onto the stage.
Flames roared to life along the thread of oil that poured from the torch, winding along the marble floor like a shimmering, transparent serpent. For a moment, the man was hidden from view behind the wall of fire. And then he stepped through, his hands outstretched, and two pillars of flames shot from his palms into the air.
The screaming started.
Ana ran for the stage.
The crowd jostled against her as the nobles fled like frightened children, the leers on their faces replaced by unadulterated fear. But Ana’s eyes were fixed on the fire Affinite.
Yuri.
She remembered the sparks in his coal-gray eyes back then, when he would slip ptychy’molokos onto her dinner trays. That warmth had grown to a raging fire—wild and untamed.
He’d planned something—she didn’t know what—but the show, the gold, had all been a ruse to get him to the stage. And now May’s life was in danger.
