ina wasn’t even finished eating when Meredith got to her feet and began clearing the table. The second her sister was up, Mom followed suit.

“I guess dinner is over,” Nina said, reaching for the butter and jam before Meredith snatched it away.

Mom said, “Thank you for dinner,” and left the kitchen. Her footsteps on the stairs were quick for a woman of her age. She must have been practically running.

Nina couldn’t really blame Meredith. As soon as their little conversational jumper cables had been used—the so-called new tradition—they had fallen into their familiar silence. Only Nina had even tried to make small talk, and her amusing stories about Africa had been met with a lukewarm response from Meredith and nothing at all from Mom.

Nina left the table just long enough to get the decanter of vodka. Thumping it down on the table, she said, “Let’s get drunk.”

Meredith, elbow-deep in soapy water, said, “Okay.”

Nina must have misheard. “Did you say—”

“Don’t make a lunar mission out of it.” Meredith walked over to the table, plucked up Nina’s plate and silverware, and went back to the sink.

“Wow,” Nina said. “We haven’t gotten drunk together since... Have we ever gotten drunk together?”

Meredith dried her hands on the pink towel that hung from the oven door. “You’ve gotten drunk while I was in the room, does that count?”

Nina grinned. “Hell, no, that doesn’t count. Pull up a chair.”

“I’m not drinking vodka, though.”

“Tequila it is.” Nina got up before Meredith could change her mind; she ran into the living room, grabbed a bottle of tequila from the wet bar, and then snagged salt, limes, and a knife on her way back through the kitchen.

“Aren’t you going to mix it with something?”

“No offense, Mere, but I’ve seen you drink. If I mix it with anything, you’ll just sip it all night and I’ll end up drunk and you’ll be your usual cool, competent self.” She poured two shots, sliced a lime, and pushed the glass toward her sister.

Meredith wrinkled her nose.

“It’s not heroin, Mere. Just a shot of tequila. Take a walk on the wild side.”

Meredith seemed to decide all at once. She reached out, grabbed the shot, and downed it.

When her eyes bulged, Nina handed her the lime. “Here. Bite down on this.”

Meredith made a whooshing sound and shook her head. “One more.”

Nina drank her own shot and poured them each another, which they drank together.

Afterward, Meredith sat back in her chair, pushing a hand through her perfectly smooth hair. “I don’t feel anything.”

“You will. Hey, how do you manage to keep looking so... neat all the time? You’ve been packing boxes all day, but you still look ready for lunch at the club. How does that happen?”

“Only you can make looking nice sound like an insult.”

“It wasn’t an insult. Honestly. I just wonder how you stay so... I don’t know. Forget it.”

“There’s a wall around me,” Meredith said, reaching for the tequila, pouring herself another shot.

“Yeah. Like a force field. Nothing reaches your hair.” Nina laughed at that. She was still laughing when Meredith drank her third shot, but when her sister gulped it down and glanced sideways, Nina saw something that made her stop laughing. She didn’t know what it was, a look in Meredith’s eyes, maybe, or the way her mouth kind of flitted downward.

“Is something wrong?” Nina asked.

Meredith blinked slowly. “You mean besides the fact that my father died at Christmas, my mom is going crazy, my sister is pretending to help me, and my husband... is gone tonight?”

Nina knew it wasn’t funny, but she couldn’t help laughing. “Yeah, besides that. And anyway, you know your life rocks. You’re one of those wonder women who do everything right. That’s why Dad always counted on you.”

“Yeah. I guess,” Meredith said.

“It’s true,” Nina said with a sigh, thinking suddenly about her dad again, and how she’d let him down. She wondered how long it would last, this sudden bobbing up of her grief. Would it ever just submerge?

“You can do everything right,” Meredith said quietly, “and still end up in the wrong. And alone.”

“I should have called Dad more from Africa,” Nina said. “I knew how much my phone calls meant to him. I always thought there was time....”

“Sometimes the door just slams shut, you know? And you’re all by yourself.”

“There is something we can do now to help him,” she said.

Meredith looked startled. “Help who?”

“Dad,” Nina said impatiently. “Isn’t that who we’re talking about?”

“Oh. Is it?”

“He wanted us to get to know Mom. He said she—”

“Not the fairy tales again,” Meredith said. “Now I know why you’re so successful. You’re obsessive.”

“And you aren’t?” Nina laughed at that. “Come on. We can make her tell us the story. You heard her tonight: she said there was no point arguing with me. That means she’s going to give up fighting.”

Meredith stood up. She was a little unsteady on her feet, so she clutched the back of the chair for support. “I knew better than to try to talk to you.”

Nina frowned. “You were talking to me?”

“How many times can I say it: I am not listening to her stories. I don’t care about the Black Knight or people who turn into smoke or the handsome prince. That was your promise to Dad. Mine was to take care of her, which I’m going to do right now. If you need me, I’ll be in the bathroom, packing up her things.”

Nina watched Meredith leave the kitchen. She couldn’t say she was surprised—her sister was nothing if not consistent—but she was disappointed. She was certain that this task was something Dad had wanted them to do together. That was the point, wasn’t it? Being together. What else but the fairy tales had ever accomplished that?

“I tried, Dad,” she said. “Even getting her drunk didn’t help.”

She got to her feet, not unsteady at all. Tucking the decanter of vodka under one arm, and grabbing Mom’s shot glass, she went upstairs. At the bathroom’s half-open door, she paused, listening to the clink and rattle that meant Meredith was back at work.

“I’ll leave Mom’s door open,” she said, “in case you want to listen in.”

No answer came from the bathroom, not even a pause in crinkling of newspaper.

Nina walked across the hallway to her mother’s room. She knocked on the door but didn’t wait for an invitation. She just walked in.

Mom sat up in bed, propped up on a mound of white pillows, with the white comforter drawn up to her waist. All that white—her hair, her nightgown, her bedding, her skin—contrasted sharply with the black walnut headboard and bed. Against it, she looked ethereal, otherworldly; an aged Galadriel with intense blue eyes.

“I did not invite you in,” she said.

“Nope. But here I am. It’s magic.”

“And you thought I would want vodka?”

“I know you will.”

“Why is that?”

Nina moved to the side of the bed. “I made a promise to my dying father.” She saw the effect of her words. Her mother flinched as if she’d been struck. “You loved him. I know you did. And he wanted me to hear your fairy tale about the peasant girl and the prince. All of it. On his deathbed, he asked me. He must have asked you, too.”

Her mother broke eye contact. She stared down at her blue-veined hands, coiled together atop the blankets. “You will give me no peace.”

“None.”

“It is a child’s story. Why do you care so much?”

“Why did he?”

Mom didn’t answer.

Nina stood there, waiting.

Finally Mom said, “Pour me a drink.”

Very calmly, Nina poured her mother a shot and handed it to her.

Mom drank the vodka. “I will do it my way,” she said, setting the empty glass aside. “If you interrupt me, I will stop. I will tell it in pieces and only at night. We will not speak of it during the day. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“In the dark.”

“Why always—”

The look Mom gave her was so sharp Nina stopped abruptly. “Sorry.” She went to the light switch and turned it off.

It was a moonless night, so no silver-blue glow came through the glass. The only light was from the crack of the open door.

Nina sat on the floor, waiting.

A rustling sound filled the room: her mother getting comfortable in the bed. “Where should I begin?”

“In December, you ended when Vera was going to sneak out to meet the prince.”

A sigh.

And then came her mother’s story voice, sweet and mellifluous: “After she comes home from the park, Vera spends the rest of that day in the kitchen with her mother, but her mind is not on the task at hand. She knows her mama knows this, that she is watching her carefully, but how can a girl concentrate on straining goose fat into jars when her heart is full of love?

“Veronika, pay attention,” her mama says.

Vera sees that she has spilled a big blob of fat on the table. She wipes it up with her hand and throws it into the sink. She hates goose fat anyway. She prefers rich, homemade butter any day.

“And you throw it away? What is wrong with you?”

Her sister giggles. “Maybe she is thinking of boys. Of a boy.”

“Of course she is thinking of boys,” Mama says, wiping the moisture from her brow as she stands at the stove, stirring the simmering lingonberries. “She is fifteen.”

“Almost sixteen.”

Her mama pauses in her stirring and turns around.

They are in the kitchen, in the last days of summer, preserving food for winter. The tables are full of berries to be turned into jam; onions, mushrooms, potatoes, and garlic to be put in the cellar; cucumbers to be pickled; and beans to be canned in brine. Later, Mama has promised to teach them how to make blini with a sweet cherry filling.

“You are almost sixteen,” Mama says, as if it had not occurred to her before. “Two years younger than I was when I met Petyr.”

Vera puts down the slippery pot of goose fat. “What did you feel when you first saw him?”

Mama smiles. “I have told this story many times.”

“You always say he swept you away. But how?”

Mama wipes her brow again and reaches out for the wooden chair in front of her. Pulling it back a little, she sits down.

Vera almost makes a sound; that’s how shocked she is by this. Her mother is not a woman who stops working to talk. Vera and Olga have grown up on stories of responsibility and duty. As peasants beholden to the imprisoned king, they have been taught their place. They must keep their heads down and their hands working, for the shadow of the Black Knight falls with the swiftness of a steel blade. It is best never to draw attention to oneself.

Still, her mother is sitting down now. “He was a tutor then, and so good-looking he took my breath away. When I told your baba this, she tsked and said, ‘Zoya, be careful. You will need your breath.’ ”

“Was it love at first sight?” Vera asks.

“I knew when he looked at me that I would take his hand, that I would follow him. I say it was the mead we drank, but it wasn’t. It was just... Petyr. My Petya. His passion for knowledge and life swept me away and before I knew it, we were married. My parents were horrified, for the kingdom was in turmoil. The king was in exile then, and we were afraid. Your father’s ambition scared them. He was a poor country tutor, but he dreamed of being a poet.”

Vera sighs at the romance of it. Now she knows she must sneak out tonight to meet the prince. She even knows that her mother will understand if she finds out.

“All right,” her mother says, sounding tired again. “Let’s get back to work, and Veronika, be careful with that goose fat. It is precious.”

As the hours pass, Vera finds her mind more and more distracted. While she prepares the beans and cucumbers, she imagines an entire love story for her and Sasha. They will walk along the edge of the magic river, where images of the future can sometimes be seen in the blue waves, and they will pause under one of the streetlamps, as she has often seen lovers do. It will not matter that he is a prince and she a poor tutor’s daughter.

“Vera.”

She hears her name being called out and the sound of it is impatient. She can tell that it is not the first time she had been spoken to. Her father is standing in the room, frowning at her.

“Papa,” she says. He looks tired, and a little nervous. His black hair, usually so neatly combed, stands out in all directions, as if he has been rubbing his head repeatedly, and his leather jerkin is buttoned crookedly. His fingers, stained blue with ink, move anxiously.

“Where is Zoya?” he asks, looking around.

“She and Olga went for more vinegar.”

“By themselves?” Her father nods distractedly and chews on his lower lip.

“Papa? Is something wrong?”

“No. No. Nothing.” Taking her in his arms, he pulls her into an embrace so tight that she has to wiggle out of it or gasp for breath.

In the years to come, Vera will replay that embrace a thousand times in her mind. She will see the jewel-tone jars in the candlelight, smell the dusty, sun-baked leather of her father’s jerkin, and feel the scratch of his stubbly jaw against her cheek. She’ll imagine herself saying, I love you, Papa.

But the truth is that she has romance and sneaking out on her mind, so she says nothing to her father and goes back to work.

That night, Vera cannot lie still.

Every nerve ending in her body seems to be dancing. Sounds float in through her open window: people talking, the distant patter of hooves on cobblestoned streets, music from the park. Someone is playing a violin on this warm, light night, probably to woo a lover, and upstairs, someone is moving around—maybe dancing. The floorboards creak with every step.

“Are you scared?” Olga asks for at least the fifth time.

Vera rolls over onto her side. Olga does the same. In their narrow bed, they are face-to-face. “When you are older, you’ll see, Olga. There is a feeling in your heart when you meet the boy you’ll love. It’s like... drowning and then coming up for air.”

Vera hugs her sister and plants a kiss on her plump cheek. Then she throws back the covers and springs out of bed. With a small hand mirror, she tries to check her appearance, but she can see herself only in pieces—long black hair held away from her face with leather strings, ivory skin, pink lips. She is wearing a plain blue gown with a lace collar—a girl’s costume, but it is the best she has. If only she had a beret or a pin or, best of all, some perfume.

“Oh, well,” she says, and turns to her sister. “How do I look?”

“Perfect.”

Vera smiles broadly. She knows it is true. She is a pretty girl, some even say beautiful.

She goes to her bedroom door and listens. No sound reaches her ear. “They are in bed,” she says. Moving cautiously, she tiptoes over to her window, which is always left open in the summer. She blows her sister a kiss and climbs out onto the tiny ironwork grate. With every careful step, she is sure that someone from the street below will look her way and point and shout out that a girl is sneaking out to meet a boy.

But the people on the street are drunk on light and mead and they barely notice her climbing down from the building’s second floor. When she jumps the last few feet and lands on the small patch of grass, she cannot contain her excitement. It spills over in a giggle, which she stifles with her hand as she runs across the cobblestoned street.

There he is. Standing by the streetlamp at this end of the Fontanka Bridge. From here, everything about him is golden: his hair, his jerkin, his skin.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” he says.

She cannot seem to talk. The words, like her breath, are trapped in her chest. She looks at his handsome lips and it is a mistake. In a flash, she is closing her eyes, leaning toward him, and still it is a surprise when he kisses her. She gasps a little, feels herself start to cry, and though her tears turn into tiny stars and embarrass her, there is nothing she can do to stop them from falling.

Now he will know that she is a silly peasant girl who has fallen in love over nothing and cried at her first kiss.

She starts to make an excuse—she is not even sure what it will be, but before she can speak, Sasha pulls her down into a crouch and says, “Be quiet,” in a voice so sharp she feels stung by it. “Look.”

A shiny black carriage, drawn by six black dragons, is moving slowly down the street. Silence falls all at once. People freeze in their tracks, retreat into shadows. It is the Black Knight....

The carriage moves like a hunting animal, the dragons breathing fire. When it stops, Vera feels a chill move through her. “That is where I live,” she says.

Three hulking green trolls in black capes get out of the carriage and come together on the sidewalk, talking for a moment before they go to the front door. “What are they doing?” she whispers as they go inside the building. “What do they want?”

The minutes tick by slowly until the door opens again.

Vera sees it all in some kind of slow motion. The trolls have her father. He is not fighting, not arguing, not even talking.

Her mama stumbles down the steps behind them, sobbing, pleading. Windows in the building above her are slamming shut.

“Papa!” Vera cries out.

Across the street, her father looks up and sees her. It is as if he alone heard her cry out.

He shakes his head and holds out his hand as if to say, Stay there, and then he is shoved into the carriage and he is gone.

She elbows Sasha one last time and he lets her go. Without a backward glance, she runs across the street. “Mama, where have they taken him?”

Her mother looks up slowly. For a second, she seems not to recognize her own daughter. “You should be in bed, Vera.”

“The trolls. Where are they taking Papa?”

When her mother doesn’t answer, she hears Sasha’s voice behind her. “It’s the Black Knight, Vera. They do what they want.”

“I do not understand,” Vera cries. “You are a prince—”

“My family has no power anymore. The Black Knight has imprisoned my father and my uncles. You must know that. It is dangerous to be a royal in the Snow Kingdom these days. No one can help you,” he says. “I am sorry.”

She starts to cry, and this time her tears are not starlight; they are tiny black stones that hurt when they form.

“Veronika,” her mother says. “We need to get inside. Now.” She grabs Vera’s hand and pulls her away from Sasha, who just stands there watching her. “She is fifteen years old,” Mama says to him, putting an arm around Vera, holding her close as they climb the steps to the door.

When Vera looks back out to the street, her prince is gone.

From then on, Vera’s family is changed. No one smiles anymore, no one laughs. She and her mother and her sister try to pretend that it will get better, but none believes it.

The kingdom is still beautiful, still a white, walled city filled with bridges and spires and magical rivers, but Vera sees it differently now. She sees shadows where there had been light, fear where there had been love. Before, the sound of students laughing on a warm white night could make her cry with longing. Now she knows what is worth crying over.

Days melt into weeks and Vera begins to lose all hope that her father will return. She turns sixteen without a celebration.

“I hear they are looking for workers at the castle,” her mother says one day while they are eating supper. “In the library and in the bakery.”

“Yes,” Vera says.

“I know you wanted to go to university,” her mother says.

Already that dream is losing substance. It is something her father had dreamed for her, that one day she, too, would be a poet. Finally, she is the grown-up she’d longed to be, and she has no choices now. Not a peasant girl like her. She understands this at last.

Her future has been changed by this arrest; fixed. There will be no schooling for her, no handsome boys carrying her school-books or kissing her under streetlamps. No Sasha. “I do not want to smell like bread all day.”

She feels her mother’s nod. They are connected like that now, the three of them. When one moves, they all feel it. Ripples in a pond.

“I will go to the royal library tomorrow,” Vera says.

She is sixteen. How can she possibly understand the mistake she has just made? Who could have known that people she loved would die because of it?