Copyright

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2016

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

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Text copyright © Stacy Gregg, 2016

Cover images (girl, face) © Stephen Smith/Getty Images; all other images © Shutterstock.com; decorative illustration © Shutterstock

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

Stacy Gregg asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780008124397

Ebook Edition © 2016 ISBN: 9780008124410

Version: 2016-08-22

For Celeste

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1: The Snow Palace of Count Orlov

Chapter 2: The Moscow Spectacular

Chapter 3: Black Diamond

Chapter 4: Boris and Igor

Chapter 5: Dark Water

Chapter 6: The Academy

Chapter 7: Son of Smetanka

Chapter 8: Hidden Nature

Chapter 9: The Madness of Ivan

Chapter 10: Flying Changes

Chapter 11: The Grand Ball

Chapter 12: The Race

Chapter 13: Winter’s Howl

Chapter 14: Reach for the Stars

Chapter 15: Frozen

Epilogue

Keep Reading

Other books by Stacy Gregg

About the Publisher

Prologue

As the blizzard closed in, Anna Orlov struggled to make out the lights of the palace on the horizon. Their starry shimmer had been the beacon guiding her home, but as their glow became obscured by the snowstorm Anna felt as if she was fading too. Submerged deep beneath the snowdrifts, her feet had long ago turned numb, and her heavy skirts, soaked through and stiff with ice, threatened to drag her down with every step.

Yet it was not her own failing strength that worried her most. It was Drakon. The race across the taiga had left her horse ragged with exhaustion, and the wound on his shoulder had opened into a raw slash of crimson that seeped into his silver dapples. As he stumbled alongside her in the deep snow, Anna’s heart was breaking. With every step she could hear the dark rasp of his mighty lungs, his wide fluted nostrils misting hot plumes into the frozen air.

Dragon’s breath. That was how it looked. And hadn’t Drakon always reminded her of a dragon? Something about the shape of his head, that great, solid slab of his mighty jawbone, the way it narrowed to the slender taper of his fine muzzle.With enormous Asiatic eyes, dark and intense, trimmed with long lashes, his features would have been better suited to a dragon. That was how he had been given his name.

The rest of Drakon was no less peculiar. His body was out of all proportion for he had been born with an extra rib, which elongated his physique, making him as lean and sleek as a racing hound. He was all muscle and sinew, with a dapple-grey coat strung over a bony frame. His legs, buried deep in the snowdrifts, were so long they looked like they belonged to another creature entirely. They gave him his power, made him swift and sure-footed across the treacherous black ice of the frozen rivers.

Drakon’s strides had pounded out a relentless drumbeat across the Russian taiga, but their cadence had weakened until now it had become a desperate struggle to place one hoof in front of the other.

“Come on! It is not much further,” Anna promised her horse. But in reality, she had no idea how far away the palace was, or even if it was ahead of them at all. There was nothing to guide her any more. Just the snow and the darkness, her numb feet and ice-bitten cheeks, singing with the pain of air so cold it pierced her brain.

“We must keep moving, Drakon …”

With his head hanging low, the horse managed to take another step, then suddenly he lurched sideways, his legs buckling beneath him.

“Drakon!”

Anna flung herself at him, clinging to his neck. Her fur-gloved fingers twisted into the rope of the stallion’s silvery mane. “Drakon, please! Please …”

Drakon was a dead weight plummeting, his magnificent swan neck twisting and jerking as he went down. Anna gasped as she felt the sting of the snow flung up in his wake like an ocean wave striking a ship’s bow.

Shocked by the fall, the horse instinctively tried to get back to his feet, forelegs twitching as he struggled, swinging his neck to raise his head. Then, with a pitiful groan, he gave in to exhaustion and collapsed back into the icy drifts.

“Niet!” Anna’s hands grabbed at him, tearing his mane as she tried to drag him to his feet once more. “Niet! Drakon! Get up!”

It was no good. How could she possibly lift the horse when she had barely enough strength to hold herself upright?

Anna straightened up, panting from the effort of trying to raise Drakon, and looked around. The blizzard swirled about her and she couldn’t see a thing. She had no idea what direction the palace might be in. Even if she could make it home and raise a search party, how would they ever find Drakon out here in the snow? Already his silver dapples were barely visible against the drifts, and the white powder kept steadily falling, so that soon it would blanket and disguise him completely.

Niet. It was hopeless.

Anna’s gloved hands fumbled to loosen the belt on her thick sable fur coat. She already felt frozen to the bone, but as the fur fell away from her bare shoulders and the last remnants of body heat were stolen she realised there were greater pains to endure. Beneath the fur she had worn her grey satin gown, corseted so tight at the waist it made her slight twelve-year-old physique appear even more fragile and birdlike. Her skin was the palest alabaster and she looked almost translucent against the snow as she dropped to her knees next to Drakon. With trembling hands, she draped her coat so that it covered the chest and shoulders of her horse.

“It’s just like the old days, Drakon. Riding in the woods …” Anna murmured as she arranged the fur and then manoeuvred herself beneath it so that she was nestled into the crook of her horse’s forelimbs, tucked up against his ribcage.

“Remember how we slept underneath the stars? With the rugs laid beneath us and Vasily tending the fire pit to heat his urn of spiced honey tea, and Igor whimpering as he dreamt of chasing timber wolves …”

She whispered on to her horse and tugged the fur coat up to her chest. As she did this, her gloved fingertips brushed against the chain round her neck. The necklace was still there. After all they had been through, it was a miracle that it had not been lost.

With frozen hands she clasped the stone and repeated the ritual that had comforted her ever since she had been ten years old. Ever since the fateful day that her mother had placed the precious gift round her daughter’s neck.

Anna raised the black gem up to her face, holding it close so that she could gaze upon its dark beauty as her mother’s words came back to her:

“Never seek to understand its power. And do not try to control it. Past and present and future all lie within this necklace, but it is the stone that decides what you will see.”

Anna gazed deep into the diamond. The brilliant cut refracted and reflected her vision, splintering the world into a million tiny pieces, as infinite as the snowflakes that flurried around her. Then the stars turned dark and she saw the amber glint of a tiger’s eye, the flash of his stripes and the low rumble of his growl.

Instinctively, Anna clutched her hands to her throat and the diamond slipped from her fingers. Then, with her skin as pale and cold as the snow that surrounded her, she fell back at last against her beloved horse.

CHAPTER 1
The Snow Palace of Count Orlov

Three years earlier …

Anna ran through the palace corridors, her breath coming in quick, painful gasps, her heart pounding. Behind her, the rumbling growl of the wolfhound became more menacing as he grew nearer, closing in on her with every stride.

“Niet! Please! Stop!”

The marble floors were slippery beneath her feet and as she rounded the corner by the grand ballroom, Anna found herself sliding out of control. Her shoulder glanced hard into the corner of a gigantic oil painting of her father, Count Orlov, mounted on horseback and brandishing a sabre, and tilted it dangerously to one side.

The hound lost his balance on the corner too. As she pelted away, Anna heard the thin screech of his claws as he scrambled frantically to get a foothold, paws skidding across the glassy surface. Then he was up and running again, gaining on her once more. Anna threw a look back over her shoulder and the choking pain in her chest made it impossible to run any more.

She was simply laughing too hard.

She collapsed forward, her hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath and giggling madly. “Wait, Igor …”

The puppy did not stop. Delighted to have bested her, he made a dramatic leap into the air and came crashing down on top of his mistress.

“Igor!” Anna shrieked as she went down in a heap on the floor, the skirts of her silk gown entangling them both. She rolled on to her back with the borzoi on top of her. Igor was still play-growling and refusing to give up the game, making darting lunges at her face as she fended him off.

“Igor, niet!” Anna grappled the snarling bundle of fluff out from the folds of her gown and held him aloft in both hands so that he was dangling above her. Suspended in mid-air, Igor wriggled and squirmed, his little legs waving about wildly, his mouth wide open in a toothy grin. “You are so fearsome!” Anna teased him. “Oh, but I am terrified of you, such a big powerful wolfhound you are, Igor!”

Igor swooped down and his pink, wet tongue slushed over Anna’s cheek. “Ick! Doggy breath!” She screwed up her face in revulsion. “Come on, Igor! Be a good borzoi now!”

Borzoi – the word meant “swift”. Anna’s father, Count Orlov, had given this name to his hounds because, as he often boasted, “they are the fastest in all of Russia”.

In the royal court of Empress Catherine they praised Count Orlov as an “alchemist of nature”. He was a magician, the master of the dark art of manipulating bloodlines to create strange and fantastical new beasts.

To Anna, who had grown up at Khrenovsky, their palace estate, surrounded by her father’s “living experiments”, it seemed commonplace to share her home with a menagerie of rare and exotic animals.

It felt perfectly natural that a pair of Amur leopards in black velvet collars roamed the palace halls, although Katia, the head of housekeeping, was less than impressed when they clambered all over the velvet chaise longues in the drawing room. The cooks too, were not so happy that a family of cheeky long-tailed squirrels had taken up residence in the kitchen and would leave half-gnawed loaves of bread and nibbled apples in their wake.

Count Orlov gave the animals free rein and no room in the palace was sacred. The chandeliers in the grand ballroom were alive with the beating wings of the butterflies who clustered around the crystals. Pythons lazed in the bathtubs and refused to budge. When Anna entered the drawing room for breakfast the air would be filled with green-throated parakeets, thrashing the air with vermilion wings.

There were a few creatures that the Count considered too large or too wild to dwell inside the palace walls, and these were housed outdoors. Leading away from the grand western entrance of the palace there was a winding maze of topiary that led across the lawns to a series of elaborate gilt cages. Row upon row of these golden prisons housed animals gathered from all over Russia and the lands beyond. Two enormous Siberian bears, captured to be a mating pair, occupied one of the largest cages. Anna thought them a sadly ill-suited couple. The male was much older and more careworn than his mate, with a tattered coat and chunks ripped from his ears. He had a permanent scowl on his face and lumbered about his cage as if he was always spoiling for a fight. The female was much smaller and younger, and had glorious rich, dark brown fur. Her muzzle wrinkled when she growled, giving her a sweet expression, and her dark cherry eyes stared wistfully out through the bars, as if she were desperate to escape both captivity and her arranged marriage.

In the golden cage beside the bears, silver foxes made themselves invisible during the day. Lurking underground in their burrow, they would emerge at nightfall to snap and snarl at each other over chopped-up chunks of meat that Anna had tossed into their cage, crunching the bones with their pointed canines.

The beautiful musk deer who lived in the cage next door would shrink back as the foxes growled over their supper. Wide-eyed, with soft taupe fur, they seemed the most gentle of all the creatures in the menagerie, but they had needle teeth that protruded like vampires’ fangs from their velvet muzzles.

The deer did not bite, but the little minks who scurried about in their long, low cage were savage. Their teeth, tiny and white, were as sharp as knives. “You will lose your fingers if you are not careful,” Vasily the groom would warn Anna when he found her stroking the baby minks through the grille of their cage.

Vasily came up from the stables once a day to fill the cages with straw. He was different from the rest of the serfs in Count Orlov’s service. A head taller than any other man at the stables, he was broad-shouldered and strong. And while the other serfs had the appearance of boiled potatoes, Anna thought Vasily handsome, with his thick russet hair, high cheekbones and deep, brooding eyes.

Sullen and serious, Vasily did not smile easily, and Anna liked to set herself the challenge of making him laugh.

“I have taught the mink a new trick!” she would exclaim whenever he arrived with the straw for the cages. “Come and see!”

The mink were untameable and their “tricks” mostly involved standing on their hind legs and nipping food from Anna’s fingers, which only made Vasily beg her to stop.

“They will not hurt me,” Anna would laugh at him. She had no fear of any of the animals. Any … except the timber wolves. There was something in the way they glowered at her, shoulders hunched in menace as they paced the perimeter of their gilt cage, jaws hanging open, white teeth glistening. It was as if they were just waiting for the bars to part, biding their time until they could devour her.

Once, her brother Ivan had dared her to go inside their cage. She had refused at first, but Ivan was good at bullying her into doing things she shouldn’t. He was three years older than Anna and in their lonely palace in the wilderness he was her only playmate.

“This is the game,” he told her. “You walk in, and I will lock the gate behind you and then I count to ten and let you out again.”

Anna looked at the wolves. They were pacing the bars, their hackles raised.

“I don’t want to,” she said.

“I knew you were a coward,” Ivan said.

“I’m not a coward,” Anna insisted.

“Then do it!”

Anna pushed the fear down into her belly and stepped closer to the cage.

Ivan kept goading her. “Pathetic baby sister!” he gloated. “You need to show them you are not afraid.”

The wolf pack were waiting, pacing and watching her, glassy-eyed and panting, jaws open in anticipation. Anna didn’t want to get any closer, but Ivan kept taunting her.

“Come on, open the door and get in the cage. What are you scared of? They will not bite …”

Anna stepped forward and shut her eyes tight as she stretched out her hand to grasp the cage door. She began to swing the door back and as she did so the largest wolf lunged for her. He threw himself at the bars of the gate, shoulder-barging it with his full weight, trying to force his way through. He would have succeeded, if it were not for the giant of a man who stepped between the girl and the wolf. He thrust the gate shut and yanked Anna fiercely by the shoulder so that she was thrown back out of danger.

Anna found herself sprawled on the ground, panting and looking up at her father, who towered over her like a monster. His face was crimson with rage, except for the thin white line of the scar that ran from his temple to his chin. Le Balafre – it was his nickname in the royal court, where they whispered it in French – Scarface.

“Idiot child! What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t … Ivan dared me to do it!” Anna blurted out the words and instantly regretted them. Her brother had ways of making her pay if she told on him.

Count Orlov turned to his son.

“It was a game,” Ivan said airily. “We were only playing.”

Many years later, Anna would look back on this moment and remember the sickening smile that had played on Ivan’s lips when he spoke.

*

“He hates me,” Anna complained to her mother, later that day.

Anna was sitting cross-legged on a velvet cushion, watching with total absorption as her mother, the Countess, arranged her potions in front of the mirror to begin her toilette.

“He doesn’t hate you, Anna,” the Countess replied, staring into the mirror and picking up a powder puff, buffing the powder into the alabaster skin of her décolletage. “He is envious, that is all. You have a way with animals, and a natural charm. Your brother on the other hand …” the Countess hesitated. “… Ivan is not so blessed as you.”

Countess Orlov tapped her fingertip into a tiny pot of rouge and sucked in her cheeks to dab it on, then used the same crimson stain to paint in the cupid’s bow of her lips. With a kohl pencil, she defined the arch of her brows. Finally, with the very tip of the pencil, she added a black dot like a punctuation mark above her top lip.

“Why are you doing that?” Anna asked.

“It is the fashion in Versailles to have a beauty spot,” the Countess replied. Her gaze fixed on Anna’s eyes reflected in the mirror. “And the Empress likes anything that is French.”

“Why does she want us to copy the French? We are Russians.”

The Countess put down the kohl pencil and turned to her daughter. “But Empress Catherine is not true Russian, is she? Our Empress was born German. Yet she speaks French at court because that is the language of sophistication and culture.”

Anna frowned. “Why don’t we speak our own language?”

“Only serfs speak Russian,” the Countess said. “This is why you must pay attention to your studies with Clarise.”

Anna rolled her eyes at the mention of her tutor and the Countess cast her a stern look. “One day you will be old enough to join us for a dinner party like the one we are having tonight and then you will need your very best French, oui?”

“Oui!” Anna giggled. It was so nice to see her mother like this, dressed up so beautifully, her eyes shining at the prospect of glamorous company. Often at the Khrenovsky estate it felt as if they were in total isolation, so far away from the bustle of the city of Moscow and even further still from St Petersburg, where her father devoted himself to life at court in the service of the Empress.

Tonight’s dinner was a farewell to her father who was about to depart once more for St Petersburg. The meal would be served in the grand dining room and all the nobles from the neighbouring estates had been invited. Anna had watched with fascination as endless bouquets of lily of the valley and white tulips were carried upstairs by the housemaids. Their sweet and sickly aroma now filled the bedchambers of the palace while downstairs tea roses in delicate shades of peach and cream tumbled out of ivy-clad urns.

In the grand marble hallways, young serving boys with rags tied to the soles of their feet swept through the halls as if they were ice-skating, using their gliding movements to buff the floors until they gleamed.

A hunting party had been sent out the day before and had returned with wild boar and deer. In the kitchens the cooks set about preparing the meat, pots and pans banging and fires roaring as they busily chopped beetroots and scoured potatoes for the banquet.

The peacocks, who often roamed the corridors, had been banished outdoors by Katia, the head maid, because they made too much mess. But the Amur leopards still had the run of the place and presently they were lounging on the Countess’s bed as Anna stroked their velvety fur.

The Countess lifted up a silver powdered wig and swept back her luxurious blonde hair under the elaborately stacked hairpiece.

“What do you think, milochka?” She poked at the wig, repositioning it on top of her beautiful blonde tresses. “Do I look pretty?”

“It’s grey, Mama,” Anna replied. “It makes you look old.”

The Countess’s smile disappeared for a moment but then she regained her composure. “Powdered wigs are very Parisian. You do not understand fashion yet, my little one,” she said sweetly.

From a dark blue box on the dressing table the Countess picked out a pair of black diamond earrings, their tiered crystals glistening like miniature chandeliers. She put aside the earrings and then picked up the box that had been stacked beneath.

Anna’s heart leapt. She rose from her velvet cushion and came over to stand at her mother’s shoulder.

“Can I open it for you?”

The Countess smiled. “Of course.”

Inside, nestled against silver silk, was a priceless necklace. The black diamond, attached to a silver filigree chain, draped across the cloth like a glittering teardrop, the size of a walnut. Round the brilliant-cut gemstone a setting of smaller, white diamonds created a halo that contrasted its rare dark beauty.

“It is so beautiful,” Anna breathed. “Where did it come from?”

She had heard this story a million times, but she still wanted to hear it once more.

“It was given to me by my mother,” the Countess said. “And to her by my grandmother. It is a family heirloom, passed down from generation to generation. One day, milochka, I will give it to you.”

The Countess fixed the clasp on her earrings and looked at herself admiringly in the mirror. Then she reached out her milk-white fingers to grasp the silver chain and lift the necklace from its case. She was about to lift it up when there was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” called Anna’s mother.

“Excuse me, Countess?” Katia, the head maid, quietly entered the bedchamber.

“Yes, Katia? What is it?”

“There is a problem in the dining room. We have Count Tolstoy seated next to Count Bobrinsky …”

The Countess stood up. “That will not do at all! They cannot stand each other!” She made her way briskly to the door. “You had better show me what can be done. Quickly now, Katia!”

And with that, the two women left the room.

Anna waited until their footsteps had receded down the corridor and then she sat herself down at the Countess’s dressing table.

She twisted up her dark blonde hair and secured it in a loose bun on top of her head, revealing the pale ivory skin beneath, just like her mother’s.

As the diamond teardrop fell against her breastbone, Anna admired its darkness. It contrasted against the whiteness of her skin, the light glowing from inside the stone as if it were on fire. For a moment she was lost in its beauty, and then she raised her eyes to see her reflection. But the eyes that returned Anna’s gaze were not her own. There was a girl looking back at her from the mirror who Anna had never seen before.

The girl in the mirror was blonde too, her ice-white hair twisted in a braid on top of her head, her alabaster skin glimmering as if it had been dusted with stars. She wore a glittering costume that shone like a star, covered with silver spangles. She was leaning into the mirror and painting on make-up, lining her lips with a brilliant scarlet.

Anna stared at the girl. And, holding Anna’s gaze, the girl in the mirror smiled right back at her! Then she smacked her red lips together and adjusted her glittering costume, wriggling the straps so that her silver spangles shimmied. Then the ice-white blonde reached out to the dresser in front of her and lifted a black diamond necklace to her throat. It was identical to Anna’s. They were both wearing the same necklace!

Anna reached out her hand to the mirror glass. The girl smiled again and then she stood up. There were voices in the distance calling out her name:

Valentina, Valentina, it is time …

CHAPTER 2
The Moscow Spectacular

In the wings behind the velvet curtains, Valentina Romanov was dashing up the rungs of the rope ladder. Through the curtains she could see the spotlights beginning to circle, seeking her out. The drums were rolling.

When she reached the platform at the very peak of the big top, Valentina rose to her feet and stood curling her toes over the edge before looking down. She was twenty metres above the ground with nothing to hold on to and no safety net. Below her she could see the tigers prowling out of the ring, their shoulders hunched as if in a sulk, their performance over for the evening. Now, it was her turn.

The music swelled and the spotlights swooped up to expose her to the audience at last. Valentina struck a pose: one hand raised in a flourish above her head, the other grasping the wooden bar of the trapeze. And then, without hesitation, she leapt.

She flew out into mid-air and then felt the jerk of the trapeze snatching her back again. The spotlight followed Valentina as she swung back and forth like a pendulum. When she reached the highest point of her arc she suddenly let go of the wooden bar. She twisted her whole body high in the air so that her hands now gripped the bar facing the other way. Then, with her elbows locked into position, she executed a half-pike, turning and flipping her knees over the bar to dangle upside down.

As she felt the blood rush to her head the music changed to a familiar tune that signalled the arrival of the clowns.

Valentina could never figure out why people liked clowns. She found their white greasepaint faces and gigantic red lipstick smiles disturbing. What was funny about the way they charged around like idiots, pushing each other and falling over their own feet?

Yet their antics instantly brought on gales of laughter from the audience. The clowns ran into the ring below her, leaping up on top of each other’s shoulders to make a human pyramid, juggling batons and knocking each other off stilts, and all the while Valentina swung high above them, waiting for her moment.

The spotlights suddenly flew skywards and Valentina grasped the bar and performed a double-flip, pushing up so that she was almost doing a handstand. She twisted round and round, somersaulting in mid-air, and on the third twist her hands suddenly slipped loose from the bar.

There was a horrified gasp from the crowd. Valentina looked down as the ground came hurtling up to meet her and automatically braced, going into a tumble roll. In the ring below, the clowns sprang into position, forming a circle and pulling the firemen’s net taut between them.

She landed smack in the centre, curling like a ball on impact and rebounding up into the air. As she flew upwards she did a knee tuck like a diver on a high board, and then, with an easy grace, she reached up to grasp the red silk sash dangling from the rooftop.

The crowd, now realising the fall had been a part of the act, began to clap enthusiastically. Valentina wrapped herself in the sash and started to twirl, rotating one way and then the other, unwinding like a spinning top. She did the splits, throwing her head back and arching her spine, as if being held by an invisible tango partner. The silver spangles on her costume sparkled like a mirror ball in the spotlight and then, in a flash, there were three more spotlights, their beams illuminating the ring below. The clowns had disappeared and the lights traced patterns on the empty space. The drumroll quickened, the lights circled faster and then the velvet curtains were flung to one side as Sasha made his grand entrance.

So far tonight the audience had witnessed a snarling ambush of golden tigers, a bear on a unicycle, and monkeys in waistcoats and top hats riding dogs in tutus. All the same, when a pink horse came cantering into the ring, they truly thought their eyes were deceiving them. Surely the strange colour must have been a trick of the light? But as the spotlights cast their beam on the horse it became clear that he really was pink – the softest, most delicate shade of rose, with a silvery mane and tail.

Despite his pretty colour, Sasha was clearly a stallion, with a heavy crested neck, broad chest and powerful shoulders. Standing at almost seventeen hands, he seemed even taller due to the silver plume he wore that stood straight up in a stiff crown between his ears. On his back he wore a matching silver saddle blanket, surcingled round his belly with two vaulting handles attached on either side of his withers.

The extraordinary horse cantered straight into the ring and immediately settled into a big loping stride, circling the perimeter. Above him, Valentina began to swing from the red silk sash in circles matching the circuits of the horse below, manoeuvring herself into position. Then she let go once more and plummeted down.

She landed on Sasha’s back with feline grace, gripped the handles on the vaulting pad and pushed herself into a handstand. She held the pose for an entire lap of the ring as the crowd applauded loudly. Then she dropped back down, put her feet on Sasha’s rump and straightened up, so that she was standing on the hindquarters of the horse as he continued his steady canter.

With a backward flip Valentina dismounted and did two brisk cartwheels, bounding across the sand to meet Sasha on the other side of the ring and vault back up again. This time she swung herself up into the saddle so that she was sitting back to front, facing his tail. She stood up with her hands above her head and leapt into the air, doing sideways splits before landing with her feet on the horse’s broad rump and sliding down his tail to hit the ground running.

The crowd were cheering her on, and with every backflip and somersault Valentina and Sasha won them over.

As the pink horse reared up on his hind legs and pirouetted in a circle as if he were dancing in time with the music the big top audience went wild with applause. Valentina leapt down to take a bow and the audience roared with delighted laughter as Sasha nodded and then bowed beside her, dropping down to his knees, one foreleg outstretched, head lowered in reverence. Then the horse and the girl were on their feet again, Valentina smiling and waving goodbye as they ran from the ring and into the wings.

“Valentina!” Sergei the ringmaster was waiting for her. It had been a pitch-perfect performance tonight – their act had been utterly faultless.

She smiled at the ringmaster. “Yes, Sergei?”

“There is elephant dung by the caravans,” Sergei said. “Clean it up before you feed the tigers.”

Valentina felt her cheeks flush pink with shame. Had she really been stupid enough to think he was going to praise her? The ringmaster never had a kind word for anyone, least of all his star trapeze artist and her pink horse.

Sergei was a tiny man, short and squat, not much bigger than the circus dwarves, with a downturned grouper mouth and pale rheumy eyes. He had been Valentina’s guardian ever since her mother died.

“I could have left you on the orphanage steps,” he liked to remind her. “A snot-nosed gypsy girl like you should be grateful I gave her such a home.”

Three performances a day including matinees: that was the price of Valentina’s “home” at the Moscow Spectacular. For this she received no pay, but she had bed and board in a dilapidated caravan that she shared with the contortionist, Irina. She had nothing in the world of her own. No clothes apart from her leotards and a dirty old tracksuit that she wore while she cleaned out the animal trailers. No toys and no dolls and no books. She had never been taught to read or add or subtract. Valentina was not allowed to go to school.

“A circus is never in one place long enough,” Sergei had dismissed her pleas. “Besides, a girl like you has no need for education.”

Valentina knew nothing about art, history or the countries of the world. She wouldn’t even have been able to locate Moscow on a map. She was thirteen and she could barely scrawl her own name.

And yet her talent and abilities shone as bright as the spangled costumes she wore for her performances. She had a photographic memory and would only need to run through a routine once before it was imprinted in her mind so that she would never forget it. Compared to the other circus kids – Irina the contortionist, or Magda the fortune-teller’s brood of sallow-skinned, dark-eyed children, the lantern-jawed offspring of the strong man and his fierce red-faced wife – Valentina stood out as clever, brave and resilient, able to tumble from the trapeze to the nets and bounce back up again with a smile on her face. But it was her way with the animals that truly marked Valentina out as unique. She would sit for hours and watch the circus beasts in their cages. She could read their moods so well that before she was even ten years old she was being trusted to care for the tigers by herself. While the other performers shrank back in fear of their snarling jaws and razor-sharp talons, Valentina thought nothing of taking hefty, meaty bones and thrusting them through the cage bars. Her favourite tiger, Mischa, would even take meat straight from her hand, though she rarely fed him like this when Sergei was watching.

“You are no good to me without hands!” he would admonish without any humour. It was never too late to be dropped off at the orphanage, according to Sergei.

The tigers padded up to the bars of their cages and smooched and preened like pussycats whenever she came near, and it was clear to Valentina that they would never harm her. All the animals in the circus adored her, but it was Sasha alone that she truly loved. She had known the horse all her life.

He had been an ungainly-looking colt, with a huge head attached to a long neck, and an even longer body, legs like a giraffe and great slabs of knees and dinner-plate hooves. But when he began to move, there was something completely mesmerising about him. He was trainable too. Valentina had taught him to bow by taking a carrot and passing it down between his forelegs until Sasha dropped to his knees and lowered his head to reach the tasty treat. It had taken him one day to master this.

By the time he was three, Valentina’s stallion had been able to rear and pirouette on cue. Soon, it was Sasha and Valentina whose faces appeared on the circus posters. Sergei understood the allure of the tiny blonde girl and her gigantic pink horse, and he made them his headline act.

“The stars of the circus,” Valentina murmured as she led Sasha back to his tiny yard. “How lucky we are.” The pink horse shook out his mane and blew through his wide nostrils as if in agreement.

Valentina had a long night ahead of her feeding the other animals and cleaning out the trailers, but first she took care of Sasha. She mucked out his yard, gave him fresh hay and refilled his water. Then she mixed his feed, oats and chaff and barley, giving the horse twice as much as Sergei permitted. The ringmaster kept all the animals on starvation rations to save money. “Your horse eats my profits!” he would often tell Valentina. “And still its ribs stick out.”

Valentina hated the way Sergei spoke of the animals as if they were nothing more than props for his circus performances. She did the best she could to protect Sasha and the others, to make their miserable lives better than they were. Sometimes, when she saw the shackles on the elephant’s ankles, or the frustration on the faces of the poor monkeys cooped up in their tiny cages all day, she found herself weeping.

“You are too soft. They are just animals,” Irina would say when she found Valentina in their caravan, her cheeks wet with tears.

A scrawny waif with hollow eyes and grey skin, Irina had the rare ability to be double-jointed in both her elbows and knees, which made her a brilliant contortionist. She had been ten years old when she ran away from the orphanage to join the Moscow Spectacular.

“I have fallen on my feet here,” Irina would often say. It was an ironic turn of phrase because in fact Irina never fell on her feet – she usually fell on her backside. This was why Sergei would not let her even be Valentina’s understudy on the high wire. The girl had no poise or balance, so that even the clowns held their breath with concern every time she went up the trapeze.

Sergei had put Irina in Valentina’s caravan and they soon became best friends. Irina, however, was not an easy room-mate. Valentina would often find her practising her contortionist’s tricks, curled up like a pretzel on the floor, or walking on her hands and using her feet to make a cup of gypsy tea. At night they slept in twin beds side by side and Valentina would often be woken by Irina whimpering in her sleep. The whimpers would grow more intense until their caravan echoed with Irina’s sobs, growing louder and more panic-stricken until suddenly the girl would sit bolt upright and start screaming. Then Valentina would hurry over to her friend’s bedside and hug her, rocking her from side to side until her night terrors subsided.

Once, after a particularly bad episode, Valentina had asked her friend what it was that she dreamt about that was so frightening.

“Oh, but it is not a dream!” Irina said. “That is the problem, don’t you see? I am not dreaming. I am remembering. In my mind I am back at the orphanage. I can smell the stench of the babies in their dirty nappies. I hear the hungry cries of the other children and I see the sickly ones lying in their cots alongside me. That is when I wake up and thank God that I escaped and found my way here.”

Irina thought the circus was the best place in the world and never understood Valentina’s urge to run away from it.

One night, Valentina had shown Irina the sheet of paper that she kept hidden beneath the loose floorboard in their caravan. On it there was a picture of a horse, a very beautiful creature being ridden in a grand arena. The rider wore a top hat and tails, and the horse had its mane braided. Beneath the image there was writing.

“What does it say?” Irina asked.

Valentina could not read the words but she knew what the sheet of paper said – she had memorised it long ago. “It is the application form for the Federation Dressage Academy,” she said. “This is the greatest dressage school in the whole of Russia. The Olympic team train here. This is where Sasha and I are going to go.”

Irina looked at her, totally baffled. “But you do not ride dressage! You are circus!”

Valentina shrugged. “I taught Sasha how to stand on his hind legs and dance; how much harder can these dressage tricks be?”

“Sergei would never let you go,” Irina looked worried. “Oh, Valentina, please do not have such dreams! They will only disappoint you.”

Valentina loved Irina and felt terribly sad that the fear of ending up back in the orphanage was enough to keep the girl at the circus. Sergei’s clever manipulations meant Irina had lost all hope of any other kind of life. And Valentina could not persuade her friend to think otherwise. When the time to leave came, it would be only her and Sasha, and she dared not tell anyone else.

That night when Valentina got back from cleaning up the tigers’ cages Irina was already asleep. She snored loudly, snuffling and wheezing like an old man. Valentina worked quietly, so that her room-mate would not waken, as she jimmied up the floorboard beside her bed and pulled out the treasured piece of paper. She traced her fingers over the words, remembering how her mother had read them out to her, with Valentina on her knee.

“This is your destiny, milochka,” she had told her daughter. “You will have a big life, a grand life! You will go to places and see things that will astound you. You cannot even imagine the world that is out there waiting for you, Valentina. You are going to be a superstar far greater than this circus has ever seen.”

Valentina put her hand beneath the floorboards once more and this time she lifted out a velvet bag with a tasselled drawstring. Inside was the only other memento she had of her mother, the gift she had given her before she died. Apart from Sasha, the contents of this bag meant more to her than anything else in the world.

In the dim light of her bedside lamp, Valentina sat down on her bed, clasping the velvet bag to her chest. On the wall by her pillow she had hung a small mirror, slightly cracked in one corner. She looked at her reflection and saw a dirty, unloved circus girl. Then, from the velvet bag she withdrew the necklace. She raised her hands behind her neck and fastened the silver filigree clasp so that the black teardrop-shaped stone fell at her throat. In the cracked mirror, the magnificent necklace sparkled brightly, and Valentina was suddenly in a giant stadium. There were thousands of people rising to their feet, applauding, and Sasha danced beneath her, glorious and perfect as he trotted to the music.

Valentina knew in that moment that this was no a dream. It was real and true, and all she had to do was make a leap of faith. Throw herself into the air and forget the safety net. Somehow, she would make it happen.

CHAPTER 3
Black Diamond

The arrival of two Siberian tigers at the Khrenovsky estate was the talk of the palace and the entire staff gathered on the lawn to greet the new additions to Count Orlov’s menagerie.

Anna stood beside Katia as the tigers arrived in a steel-barred crate on a carriage towed by eight horses. Three times the size of the Amur leopards, the striped beasts swiped their paws menacingly at the assembled crowd and let loose growls that sent the younger maids running and shrieking across the lawn. The servant boys fell back from the cage in terror too. Only Vasily kept calm, walking right past the snarling beasts to unharness the carriage horses.

The horses had been rendered rake-thin and exhausted by their long journey. “Poor things.” Vasily shook his head in dismay. “How gruelling it must have been to hear the constant, inescapable growl of tigers at their heels no matter how fast they ran … It must have driven them mad.”

“They will be all right, won’t they?” Anna asked.

Vasily looked even more serious than usual. “I will do my best for them, Lady Anna,” was all he said. While Vasily led the weakened carriage horses away to the stables the serfs pondered the problem of how to unload the tigers without getting near them. Eventually they decided to use wooden poles, passed through the steel-barred crate so that ten men on either side could lift it in unison. They would then carry the steel crate and the tigers inside it to the gilt cage that would be their new home. Tempting slabs of meat had been placed in their golden prison to lure the tigers from one cage to another.

If Count Orlov had been at Khrenovsky he might have ordered that the tigers live in the palace, despite the terror that the man-eaters inspired. Fortunately the Empress had sent her Lord Admiral of the Black Seas to destroy the Turkish navy, and until the Count returned, the tigers were confined in their gilt cage on the lawn.

Even after the beasts were behind golden bars the serfs were afraid of them. At mealtimes they refused to get close and instead would throw the bones from a distance at the tigers. Soon there was a scattering of meat bones that had bounced off the bars, littered around the grass surrounding the cage.

Only one person in the palace was brave enough to approach them. Each day, Anna would quietly creep closer and closer to the tiger cage. She calmly faced the snarling beasts, letting them get slowly accustomed to her presence. And then one day she summoned up the courage to pick up one of the wasted bones and gently push it between the bars.

If her pulse quickened at this act, it was purely from excitement at being so close to such glorious creatures. Anna began to feed the tigers daily, and afterwards she would sit cross-legged right outside their cage as if they were the sun and she was basking in their light. She loved the feline grace of their movements, the way they padded about their enclosure, so enormous and yet so silent, their hips swaying gently, long stripy tails trailing out behind them. Her heart was so full of joy at their beauty there was no room left in it for fear.

The tigers seemed to sense Anna’s kindred nature. Veronika and Valery, named so by Anna, lay down on the floor of their golden prison, barely twitching their tails while she lay on her belly on the other side of the bars. They were utterly content in each other’s company. Unlike the bears, the tigers also seemed to be well matched. Anna could see from the way they rubbed against one another and gave each other playful cuffs with their enormous paws that they had a happy relationship.

It was easy to tell them apart. The male tiger was far larger and his face was broader. The female was smooth and sleek with a distinctly regal beauty. The black stripes of her arched eyebrows reminded Anna of the kohl brows her mother drew on as part of her make-up for dinner parties.

She had never told her mother about what had happened the night she tried on the necklace. She had put the black diamond hastily back in its case, and since then the stone had remained there. The next time it was brought out, her mother would place it round Anna’s neck herself. However, that moment would not bring Anna the joy that she expected. Instead, it was the worst moment of her life.

Winter had set in at the Khrenovsky estate. Snow covered the topiary on the palace lawn and the gilt cages were draped in heavy tarpaulins to provide some shelter for the animals within. The bears and the foxes were in hibernation. The tigers, who lived snowbound for most of the year in the wild, took it in their stride. Inside the palace, the exotic creatures were kept warm by the roaring stoves, the fires stoked constantly.

“We must bundle you up,” the Countess would tell Anna as she wrapped her in woollens and furs before she was allowed outside, “otherwise you shall fall ill.”

However, it was not Anna but the Countess who succumbed to sickness. In the week before Anna’s tenth birthday her mother developed a raging fever that drove her to bed. By the third day, when the Countess was still bedridden, Anna began to worry.

“We should send for the doctors,” she told Ivan. “Mama is getting worse. It might be pneumonia.”

“So you have diagnosed her yourself?” her older brother sneered. “Well, we don’t need the doctors now, do we?”

“Ivan!” Anna said. “This is serious.”

Ivan rolled his eyes. “The snowfall is too heavy – the doctors will never come in this weather. Let the housemaids do some work for once and care for her.”

Anna couldn’t help but think that her brother secretly delighted in their mother’s illness. With their father away at sea fighting the Turks, Ivan considered himself in charge. With the Countess confined to her room and Katia in constant attendance on her, Ivan demanded the kitchen should throw away the dinner they had made and produce his favourite meatballs instead. When the food came he pushed aside his cutlery and ate greedily with his hands, smearing grease on his shirt front.

“Come on, Anna,” he taunted her. “Let’s have some fun for once. How about a swordfight?”

“No, thanks.” Anna tried to leave the table.

“Where do you think you are going?” Ivan’s mood shifted suddenly from playful to threatening. “If you won’t play, you can at least stay and keep me company.”

And so she was forced to sit in her chair while he grabbed his sabre and leapt around on the dining-room table, skidding in his jackboots on the polished wood, kicking plates and glasses aside so that they crashed to the floor, laughing like a madman.

Anna watched her brother anxiously and felt gnawing panic rise in her. While Ivan played master, their mother’s health was growing worse by the hour.

“We need to send for doctors,” Anna tried insisting again.

“All right!” Ivan groaned. “Only will you stop complaining? You are giving me a sore head.”

By the time the physicians arrived the situation was grave.

“Send a messenger to your father, Count Orlov,” Anna overheard the head physician telling Ivan. “He must return immediately if he wants to see his wife alive.”

As the Countess’s condition deteriorated Katia was a constant presence at her mistress’s side, mopping the Countess’s brow and holding her hand to ease the pain.

It was Katia who came to Anna, her face ashen, and told her that her mother was asking for her. Anna found herself walking as if in a dream, towards her mother’s chambers. The Countess looked so thin and frail from her illness, but still beautiful.

“Is that you, milochka?” Anna’s mother raised her head from the pillow and put out her hand to clasp her daughter’s fingers.

“It’s me, Mama,” Anna said, her voice trembling.

The Countess smiled. “Dearest one. Come here and take my hand.”

Anna was surprised by the coldness of her mother’s fingers, like icicles against her skin.

“Milochka,” her mother instructed. “I need you to do something for me.”

“Anything, Mama.”

“My black diamond necklace. You will find it in the top drawer of my dresser. Bring it to me?”

Anna did as her mother instructed, carrying over the necklace in its velvet case and placing it on the bedside.

“Open the box,” the Countess instructed.

Anna carefully prised it open and the Countess reached in and took out the priceless jewel. “The Orlov Diamond,” she said, “has been in our family for many centuries. My mother gave it to me and her mother before her …” She turned to Anna.

“And now milochka, it will be yours.”

Anna’s eyes filled with tears. “No, Mama, I do not want it any more.”

“Anna.” Her mother’s voice was gentle. “Please, let me see how it looks on you.”

Not knowing what else to do, Anna bowed her head in obedience as the Countess weakly raised herself up off the pillows to clasp the necklace round her daughter’s pale neck.

“So beautiful!” the Countess breathed. And then she added, “But it is not the first time you have worn it, is it? That night in my room. You tried it on.”

Anna nodded. “I did.”

“So you already know that this is no ordinary necklace.” The Countess nodded wisely. “Well, know this too, dear one. You must never seek to understand its power, and do not try to control it. Past and present and future all lie within this necklace, but it is the stone that decides what you will see.”

The Countess looked very sad, and then gripped her daughter’s hand even more tightly. “Anna,” the Countess said. “Your father …”

“He is coming, Mama,” Anna tried to reassure her. “We have sent for him, he is on his way!”

The Countess shook her head. “No, my dear one, I know he is not. He will not come for me.” The Countess’s expression was dark. “I know your brother too. He is so different from you, Anna. I wonder how it is that I could have raised two children, one so lovely and one so …” the Countess drew a sharp breath and began to cough. Anna had to help her sit up, adjusting the pillows so that she could breathe again.

“Look to Katia,” the Countess whispered the words. “Katia will care for you. If you are ever in any doubt about what to do, go to her. You can trust her with your life …”

“Mama …” The tears rolled down Anna’s cheeks. “Please do not talk like this. You are going to be fine, you will get well again …”

It was Katia who found them.

Anna was slumped and sobbing, still clutching her mother’s cool hand. Katia raised the white sheet of death over the Countess’s face and hugged and comforted Anna. Ivan was nowhere to be found.

“I went hunting,” he told Anna when she asked where he had been. “It would have made no difference if I had been here, would it? It was always you that she loved.”

Anna was shocked. “Do you really think Mama didn’t love you?”

Ivan laughed harshly. “What do I care? Anyway it was a good hunt. I bagged a deer. So don’t try and make me feel guilty about it.”

“You do not care that she died without you or father beside her?” Anna said.

“Our father is Admiral Lord Commander of the Black Sea,” Ivan sniffed. “He does not run to his wife’s bedside like a weakling when there is a war to be won.”

With no mother and no sign of their father’s return, Ivan took it upon himself to rule the Khrenovsky estate. He started wearing the Count’s greatcoat inside the house, even though he must have been baking hot. The huge garment swamped his lean thirteen-year-old frame. He would stalk the corridors, laughing to himself and barking ridiculous orders at the serfs. And the servants began to call him “Ivan the Terrible” behind his back. As for Anna, she avoided her brother as best she could, spending most of her time down at the stables with the horses and Vasily. It was there that she heard the news that her father was finally coming home.

The war, in fact, had been over for some time. Count Orlov could have sailed home several months ago, but instead had delayed his return by deciding to travel overland. The reason for his change of plans was a horse.

“His name is Smetanka,” Vasily told Anna. “It has taken his men almost a year to walk him through the mountains from Turkey into Russia. The Count joined them on the coast of the Black Sea and he is personally escorting the horse on the final leg of the journey home.”

“My father didn’t come home to my mother because he was walking a horse?”

Vasily tried to soften the blow. “Smetanka is not ordinary horse. He is purebred Arabian stallion. They say he cost Count Orlov 60,000 roubles!”

The price of Count Orlov’s Arabian was the talk of the palace. At the stables the grooms spoke of nothing else. “What kind of horse could be worth such money?” Yuri, the head groom, could not disguise his scorn. “I could buy a hundred of the best stallions in Russia for that!”

“If he is truly great stallion he will be worth it,” Vasily replied.

“Did I ask your opinion?” Yuri had snapped back.

Yuri resented the junior groom’s gift with horses and yet he could not get rid of him. Vasily was the most talented horseman in the Count’s stables. So Yuri made him work twice as hard as the rest. It was Vasily alone whom the head groom charged with the task of preparing the stable for the Arabian’s arrival. And Vasily who was sent out to meet Count Orlov’s party at the gates of the estate.

Anna went with him, desperate to see this “very special” horse that had kept her father away during their darkest days. For hours she stood at Vasily’s side as the snow fell, and then finally when the night was drawing in, she saw riders in the distance. There were about a dozen men on horseback. Count Orlov rode at the head of the party and when Anna saw the horse that her father sat astride she was bitterly disappointed.

Smetanka looked so plain! A chestnut with a narrow chest, Roman nose and stocky limbs “He does not look like he is worth a hundred roubles even!” Anna muttered.

“Oh no, Lady Anna.” Vasily shook his head. “That horse, he is not Smetanka! Look! The grey stallion, in the middle with no rider, that is him …”

The Count was not foolish enough to ride his valuable new acquisition on treacherous roads. Instead, he had reined Smetanka in the midst of his riders, surrounded by a cluster of mounted soldiers. The ruse was pointless, however, because alongside the soldiers’ ordinary, thickset carthorses, Smetanka’s singular, exquisite beauty stood out like a shining star, so bright it eclipsed them all.

He was the colour of highly polished silver and his coat looked as if it had been buffed to the sheen of precious metal. His neck arched like a fountain, and his limbs were so fine and delicate it seemed impossible that those slender legs had journeyed over the mountainous terrain of Turkey. And yet even though he had been travelling for the better part of a year, Smetanka strutted out with the flamboyance of a dancer, as if he were sashaying to some unheard music, sinew and muscle rippling under his glistening coat.

Just as she had been instantly intoxicated by the sight of the Siberian tigers, Anna now found herself falling in love all over again. It was not just the physical beauty of the stallion that drew her, but something deeper. His dark eyes spoke to her deeply and she was reminded of the way she had felt gazing into the black teardrop diamond for the first time.

Instinctively she felt for the necklace at her throat, grasping the stone tight in her fingers. It was a reflex, a habit she had developed to soothe herself ever since her mother passed away. Had it really been a whole month since her death? Anna had been so desperately lonely without her. She had not seen her father in almost a year.

The horses shook their manes, bits clanking in their mouths. They were snorting and blowing from their long journey. Count Orlov, his cape dusted with snow, fur hat pulled down low across his brow, dismounted from the narrow-chested chestnut and walked towards his daughter. For a long while, he said nothing at all, and Anna did not dare to speak. Any words she might have wanted to say were knotted tight in her throat.

“You have grown,” Count Orlov said, without any emotion in his voice. “And yet, with my blood I would have expected you to be taller still.”

A look of annoyance crossed his face. “Why are you here, child? And where is my son?”

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