Page 56 of Winterveil

He missed on one of her pieces. Shit. The audience murmured in disapproval.

Julian’s pulse raced as he chose his next move. He could still play out of it; there were multiple win conditions. He just had to get his pieces into position . . . but the stage lights suddenly felt searingly hot.

It was a bad idea to look at Klaudia. Yet he couldn’t help it. Julian lifted his gaze, and what he saw unnerved him more than anything before. Her hands were shaking. Her gray eyes were darting back and forth on her screen in a subdued sort of panic.

And then something happened that he had never imagined possible: Klaudia made a mistake.

She attacked one of his pieces, but only did a sliver of damage. It was an obvious blunder. She had sacrificed her positioning to gain nothing in return. Julian went for another Endless Void, and this time it connected on both of her pieces.

Julian’s heart roared in his ears. The game was far from over, but he’d just gained an immense advantage. What was she doing? Had she misplayed on purpose, so that she could come back and beat him in the most theatrical way possible?

But Klaudia was not faking her reaction. There was no way to fabricate the true panic that flared in her eyes.

Her next move was obvious. She brought out Psycha and Marionette. Psycha’s black gown fluttered in an invisible breeze, partially obscuring Klaudia’s face. Marionette’s smile would give a child nightmares. The warbling, discordant notes of the Ghostly Chorus rang out.

His pieces were trapped and on a timer now. He had three turns before both would faint, and no way to escape.

Except . . .

Tradecrafter, the useless joke of a piece, had a unique ability: Clean Getaway. It was terrible under almost every other circumstance, but right now, it was exactly what Julian needed. When Tradecrafter’s health bar fell below 50 percent, it was automatically switched out.

It was the only ability that could break Ghostly Trap.

Before Julian clicked his move, he looked up again at Klaudia. She knew. Even this obscure piece with its obscure ability had not passed beneath her attention. Her complexion had gone even paler than usual. Her lower lip was quivering.

Julian attacked Tradecrafter with his own piece, automatically switching it out. It allowed him to bring back the piece waiting in the back, his sweeper. Cervelet, with its enormous damage potential, could knock out both her pieces in a single turn.

And Klaudia had no way to stop it.

Julian felt the adrenaline of victory race through his veins. A heat, a tightness in his belly. It was like the moment on election night when he had walked onstage for his victory speech. The audience was his audience now. The crowd chanted his name.

And then he made a mistake: He looked back at Klaudia.

Her eyes were wide. Nothing of the icy remoteness he had come to know so well remained in her expression. A strand of hair had slipped from its pin and fallen against her cheek, a single dark curl that Julian had the odd urge to stroke back into place. A swallow pulsed in her throat.

She looked afraid. As afraid as she had looked that day in the reading room with Carter. As afraid as she had been on her knees. Only this time she was frightened of him. Julian had done this to her, cowed her as she should never be cowed. Not Klaudia.

Moments ago the crowd had been shouting his name; now they were whispering. Klaudia trembled visibly. Even the back rows could see it. What’s her problem? Has she finally lost it?

Suddenly, her shoulders began to rise and fall erratically, as if she were run through with an electric current. Only she wasn’t; it was worse. Klaudia Shimonova was laughing.

The audience fell completely silent. Jane, who had taken a seat beside Mikhail in the first row, looked as white as a ghost. Mikhail’s expression was both bewildered and alarmed. And then there was Carter, watching from the sidelines and smiling in unrestrained glee.

Something akin to horror rose in Julian’s throat. He almost choked on it.

Klaudia’s laughter was quiet, but it had a gasping, almost manic quality to it, as if she couldn’t quite catch her breath. It seemed to Julian that she was trying to keep herself from hyperventilating. She had lost control entirely.

Either way, Klaudia had cracked. But Julian could not bear to be the one who shattered her.

So he made the only mistake he could have made. He used a weak move against Psycha, leaving it with enough health to survive. The counter ticked down, and at last the Ghostly Chorus claimed its victims.

The lecture hall was silent as Professor Narendra presented Klaudia with her trophy: a small, cut-glass object that he carefully removed from a Tiffany-blue box. Julian watched as her fingers clenched and unclenched around the trophy, knuckles white.

Professor Narendra’s voice was stilted when he said, “Thank you all for your participation, and congratulations to our winner and finalists.” He, too, was watching Klaudia, clearly concerned.

His favorite student—Valeran’s top student—had fallen from grace. Technically, she still retained her number-one ranking, but they had all seen Julian throw the game. And by tonight, when the reports were published, everyone at Valeran would know.

Julian tried to make an unobtrusive exit. He shoved his way through the gathering crowd of students as they pressed in on him, questions on their lips.