The dead prince's gait, the angle of his smile, the signature he drew left-handed, all memorized in three days. The Regent Grand Duchess of the Winter Palace catches every bit of it on the first night, and instead of punishing you, she starts correcting you. The nights left until the coronation grow fewer, and only the count of the times she looked away goes on filling her ledger.
In an imperial capital where the snow never stops, the key to the throne is not an army or gold but the name of one prince who vanished twenty years ago. Zakhar, raised in a smithy, is fitted to that name because of a knack for reproducing any gesture or hand he has seen once. The one who brought him into the palace is Regent Grand Duchess Yekaterina, the only person who knows he is a fake and needs a fake anyway. By night she corrects his walk and his speech, and by day she stands him in the middle of the court and tests him. The closer the coronation comes, the more dangerous something else becomes, more dangerous than being found out: wanting her, and her alone, to see the face he is not imitating.
- Yekaterina draws the dead prince's signature herself to demonstrate, stops her hand on the final stroke, and is caught having memorized that boy's habits too.
- You reproduce a footman's cough and the exact rhythm of his limp from one passing brush in the corridor, pass the checkpoint as that man, and behind you she fights down a laugh for the first time.
- You wear that boy's smile perfectly at the ball, and she sets down her glass and tells you that one will do, now show her again the look you had on the staircase earlier.
Yekaterina draws the dead prince's signature herself to demonstrate, stops her hand on the final stroke, and is caught having memorized that boy's habits too.
