Did she want to forget? What a gift that would be. To never feel as humans did, to never grieve again. Then it wouldn’t be so hard to leave this room. To shut the door on what might have been.
To say goodbye.
* * *
Early the next morning, Zoya sat down with Tamar to plan which Sun Soldiers would travel with her and to find the right location for this misbegotten meeting. They considered a decommissioned military base and a vineyard that had been struck by the blight. But the base was next to a town, and Zoya was wary of putting the Darkling near anything resembling the Fold. It might be an unreasonable fear, but she didn’t want to risk the possibility that those dead sands might somehow trigger his powers. Eventually they decided on an abandoned sanatorium between Kribirsk and Balakirev. It was only a day’s travel from Keramzin—assuming Alina was willing to help them.
As Zoya rolled up the map, Tamar placed a hand on her shoulder. “This is the right thing.”
“It feels like a mistake.”
“He can be bested, Zoya.”
If that was the case, Zoya had yet to see the evidence. Even death hadn’t beaten the Darkling. “Maybe.”
“We have to make a move. Last night I had word that the blight struck near Shura. It covered ten square miles.”
“Ten?” So it was getting worse.
“We’re out of time,” said Tamar.
Zoya rubbed a hand over her face. Just how many wars could they fight at once?
“You won’t be here for the wedding,” Tamar said, her lips curved in a sad half smile. “Everything will be different when you return.”
Zoya didn’t want to think about that. “Promise me you’ll be careful,” she said briskly. “There’s no way to predict what Makhi might do. Or Princess Ehri, for that matter.”
“It’s a gamble,” Tamar said, then grinned and flicked her thumbs over her axe handles. “But I’m ready for a good fight.”
“I hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Tamar shrugged. “I can keep hope in my heart and a blade in my hand.”
There was more Zoya wanted to say, but it all amounted to the same impossible thing: Be safe.
Zoya sent scouts to patrol the area around the sanatorium and make sure they’d have a clear place for their airship to land. The other preparations would have to wait. She needed to talk to Genya and David.
She found them in the Materialki workshops. When the Triumvirate had rebuilt the Little Palace after the Darkling’s attack, they’d expanded these chambers to reflect the Fabrikators’ greater role in the war effort. David had his own workroom and three assistants to help interpret and execute his plans. He split his time between here and the secret laboratory at Kirigin’s estate, and Genya often shared this space, tailoring spies, helping people to remove scars, and concocting poisons and tonics when called for.
Now Zoya found her curled up on a settee beside David’s desk, the light from his lamp making a circle around them. Her boots were off and she had tied her bright auburn hair into a knot. She had a half-eaten apple in one hand and a book on her lap, the sun emblazoned on her eye patch glinting. She looked like a beautiful, rakish pirate who had wandered off the pages of a storybook, a bit of sparkling chaos in David’s carefully ordered world.
“What are you reading?” Zoya asked as she sat down by Genya’s stockinged feet.
“It’s a Kerch book on the detection of poisons. I had to send away for a Ravkan translation.”
“Useful?”
“We’ll see. The case studies are wonderfully gory. The rest is mostly moralizing about the perfidy of women and the dangers of the modern age, but it’s giving me some ideas.”
“For poisons?”
“And medicines. They’re one and the same. The only difference is the dose.” Genya frowned. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”
“The Darkling wants to see Alina.”
Genya set aside her apple. “Are we meeting his demands now?”
“He claims he knows how to stop the Fold from expanding further.”
“Do we believe him?”
“I don’t know. He says we need to restage the obisbaya.”
Genya’s look of worry made perfect sense to Zoya. “The ritual that almost killed Nikolai.”
“The very one. But to do it, we need to bring back the ancient thorn wood. Or so he says. What do you think, David?”
“Hmm?”
Genya shut her book with a snap. “Zoya would like to know if our greatest enemy should be allowed to try to kill the king again in order to possibly return stability to the Fold. Will it work?”
David put down his pen, picked it up again. His fingers were ink-stained. “Possibly.” He thought for a moment. “The Fold was created through failed experiments in resurrection, attempts to raise animals from the dead as Morozova did and make them into amplifiers. He managed it with the stag and the sea whip.”
And then with his own child. Alina had told them all the story, the truth behind the ancient legend. Ilya Morozova, the Bonesmith, had intended that the third amplifier would be the firebird. Instead it had been his daughter, a girl he had raised from the dead and imbued with power. That power had passed down through her descendants to a tracker—Alina’s tracker, Malyen Oretsev—who had himself died and been brought back to life on the sands of the Fold.
“You remember Yuri?” she asked. “The Darkling wants to use the ritual to drive whatever remains of the little monk out of his body and absorb the king’s demon. He thinks it will allow him to reclaim his power.” A kind of shadow shell game. Zoya hated even thinking about it.
Genya’s fists bunched, crushing the fabric of her kefta. “And we’re going to let him?”
Zoya hesitated. She wanted to reach out to Genya, rest a comforting arm around her. Instead she said, “You know I would never let that happen. Nikolai believes he can prevent it.”
“It’s too great a risk to take. And will any of this really stop the Fold from spreading?”
David had been staring into space, tapping his fingers against his lips. His mouth was smudged with blue ink. “It would be a kind of return to the order of things, but…”
“But?” pressed Genya.
“It’s hard to know. I’ve been reading through the research that Tolya and Yuri did. It’s mostly religion, fanciful Saints’ tales and very little science. But there’s a pattern there, something I can’t quite make out.”
“What kind of pattern?” Zoya asked.
“The Small Science has always been about keeping power in check and maintaining the Grisha bond to the making at the heart of the world. The Fold was a violation of that, a tear in the fabric of the universe. That rupture has never actually been healed, and I don’t know if the obisbaya will be enough. But those old stories of the Saints and the origins of Grisha power are all bound up together.”
Zoya folded her arms. “So what I’m hearing from the greatest mind in the Second Army is, ‘I guess it’s worth a try’?”
David considered. “Yes.”
Zoya didn’t know why she bothered searching for certainty anymore. “If the Darkling’s information is good, we’ll need a powerful Fabrikator to help us raise the thorn wood once we have the seeds.”
“I can attempt it,” he said. “But it’s not my particular talent. We should consider Leoni Hilli.”
Zoya knew David didn’t traffic in false humility. If he said Leoni was the better choice, he meant it. It was strange to realize that, excluding the king, she trusted no one in the world as much as the people in this room. It was Alina who had thrust them together, chosen each of them to represent their Grisha Orders—Materialki, Etherealki, and Corporalki. She had charged them to rebuild the Second Army, to gather the wreckage the Darkling had left in his wake and forge something strong and enduring from the scraps. And somehow, together, they had done it.
At the time, she had cursed Alina’s name. She hadn’t wanted to work with Genya or David. But her ambition—and her c
ertainty that she was the best person for the job—hadn’t allowed her to reject the opportunity. She’d believed she deserved the position and that over time she would bend Genya and David to her will or force them to relinquish their influence. Instead she’d come to value their opinions and rely on their judgment. Again and again, she’d found herself grateful that she wasn’t alone in this.
“What are you scowling at, Zoya?” Genya asked, a smile quirking her mouth.
“Was I?” She supposed she was scowling at herself. It was embarrassing to realize how wrong she’d been.
Genya drew a handkerchief from her pocket, leaned over the back of the settee, and dabbed at David’s lips. “My love, there’s ink all over your face.”
“Does it matter?”
“The correct response is, ‘Beautiful wife, won’t you kiss it away?’”
“Spontaneity.” David nodded thoughtfully and drew out a journal to make note of this latest instruction. “I’ll be ready next time.”
“It’s technically later. Let’s try again.”
How comfortable they were together. How easy. Zoya ignored the pang of jealousy she felt. Some people were built for love and some were built for war. One did not lend itself to the other.
“I’ll write to Alina,” Genya said. “The news should come from me. But … does that mean you won’t be here for the wedding?”
“I’m sorry,” Zoya said, though that was not entirely true. She wanted to be there for Genya, but she had spent her life standing on the outside of moments, unsure of where she belonged. She was at her best with a mission to accomplish, not in a chapel festooned with roses and echoing with declarations of love.
“I forgive you,” said Genya. “Mostly. And people should be staring at the bride, not the gorgeous General Nazyalensky. Just take care of our girl. I hate the thought of the Darkling being near Alina again.”
“I don’t like it either.”
“I hoped we wouldn’t have to tell her he’s returned.”
“That we could put him in the ground and she’d never have to find out?”
Genya scoffed. “I would never bury that man. Who knows what might spring up from the soil?”
“He doesn’t have to survive this trip,” Zoya mused. “Accidents happen.”
“Would you be killing him for you or for me?”
“I don’t honestly know anymore.”
Genya gave a little shiver. “I’m glad he’ll be gone from this place. Even for a short while. I hate having him in our home.”
Our home. Was that what this place was? Was that what they had made it?
“He should have a trial,” said David.
Genya wrinkled her nose. “Or maybe he should be burned on the pyre as the Fjerdans do and scattered at sea. Am I a monster for saying so?”
“No,” said Zoya. “As the king likes to remind me, we’re human. Do you … I look back and I hate knowing how easy I was to manipulate.”
“Hungry for love and full of pride?”
Zoya squirmed. “Was I that obvious?”
Genya looped her arm through Zoya’s and leaned her head against her shoulder. Zoya tried not to stiffen. She wasn’t good at this kind of closeness, but some childish part of her craved it, remembered how easy it had felt to laugh with her aunt, how glad she’d been when Lada had climbed into her lap to demand a story. She’d pretended to resent it, but she’d felt like she belonged with them.
“We were all that way. He took us from our families when we were so young.”
“I don’t regret that,” Zoya said. “I hate him for many things, but not for teaching me to fight.”
Genya looked up at her. “Just remember, Zoya, he wasn’t teaching you to fight for yourself but in his service. He had only punishment for those who dared to speak against him.”
He was the reason for Genya’s scars, for all the pain she’d endured.
No, that wasn’t true. Zoya had known what Genya was forced to suffer when they were just girls. Everyone had. But the other Grisha hadn’t comforted her or cared for her. They’d mocked her, sneered at her, excluded her from their meals and the circle of their friendship. They’d left her unforgivably alone. Zoya had been the worst of them. The Darkling wasn’t the only one who owed penance.
But I can change that now, Zoya vowed. I can make sure he never returns here.
She let herself rest her cheek against the silky top of Genya’s head and made them both a promise: Wherever this adventure led, the Darkling wasn’t coming back from it.
12
NIKOLAI
ZOYA HADN’T WAITED TO SAY goodbye. Alina had been contacted and—thanks to her generosity or an unhealthy taste for martyrdom—had agreed to the meeting. Zoya had arranged the mission with predictably ruthless efficiency, and a week later, she was gone. Before dawn, without fanfare or parting words. Nikolai was both stung and grateful. She was right. The gossip around them had become a liability, and they had enough of those already. Zoya was his general and he her king. Best for everyone to remember it. And now he could visit the Little Palace without having to worry about bumping into her and enduring her acid tongue.
Excellent, he told himself as he made the walk from the Grand Palace. So why do I feel like I’ve had my guts gently gnawed on by a volcra?
He passed through the wooded tunnel that he now recognized as quince and headed down past the lake, where he could see two of his new flyers bobbing gently in the water, gray morning light glinting off their hulls. They were extraordinary machines, but Ravka simply didn’t have the money to produce them in any real quantity. Yet. Perhaps an infusion of Shu gold would do the trick.
Tamar’s spies had brought them news of the Fjerdan prince’s public collapse, and it didn’t bode well for Ravka. They’d renewed diplomatic talks, but Nikolai knew Fjerda was holding separate conversations with West Ravka and trying to encourage them to secede. Jarl Brum had been steering his country’s strategic choices for years, and a weakened Prince Rasmus would only embolden him.
The infirmary was located in the Corporalki wing of the Little Palace, behind the imposing red-lacquered doors. There were private rooms for patients who needed extensive care and quiet, and one of them had been set aside for Princess Ehri Kir-Taban. The hallway was heavily protected by both Grisha and palace guards.
Ehri lay in a narrow bed. She wore a green silk dressing gown embroidered with pale yellow flowers. Her skin was a raw pink, shiny and taut. The fire had scorched the hair from her head, which was wrapped in soft white linen. She had no eyebrows or lashes. Genya had explained that it would still take several days to bring Ehri’s flesh and hair back to full health, but they had reversed the worst of the damage. It was a miracle she had survived—a miracle wrought by Grisha Healers, who had restored her body and kept her pain in check as they did it.
Nikolai sat down beside the bed. Ehri said nothing. She rolled her head to the side, turning her gaze to the gardens and away from him. A single tear slipped down her pink cheek. Nikolai drew a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed it away.
“I would prefer that you left,” she said.
That was what she’d said every time he’d summoned the will to speak to her since her true identity had been discovered. But he couldn’t put this off any longer.
“We should talk,” he said. “I’ve brought novels and summer cherries by way of a bribe.”
“Summer cherries. In the dead of winter.”
“It is never winter in the Grisha greenhouses.”
She closed her eyes. “I’m grotesque.”
“You are pink and rather hairless. Like a baby, and people love babies.” Actually, she looked more like the hairless cat his aunt Ludmilla had favored more than any of her children, but that seemed an impolitic thing to say to a lady.
Ehri did not wish to be charmed. “Must you make a joke of everything?”
“I must. By royal mandate and the curse of my own disposition. I find life quite unbearable without laughter.”
She returned to studying the gardens.
“Do you like the view?” he asked.
“This palace is nothing compared to the grandeur of Ahmrat Jen.”
“I imagine not. Ravka has never been able to match Shu Han for monuments or scenery. I’m told the architect Toh Yul-Gham took one look at the Grand Palace and declared it an affront to the eyes of god.”
The corner of Ehri’s lips tugged up in the barest smile. “Are you a student of architecture?”
“No. I just like to build things. Contraptions, gadgets, flying machines.”
“Weapons of war.”
“That has been a necessity, not a calling.”
Ehri shook her head and another tear escaped. Nikolai offered her the handkerchief. “Keep it,” he said. “It’s got the Lantsov crest embroidered on it. You can blow your nose into it and take revenge upon your captors.”
Ehri pressed it to her eyes. “Why? Why would the Tavgharad do such a thing? Shenye guarded my cradle while I slept as an infant. Tahyen taught me to climb trees. I don’t understand it.”
“What happened before we arrived that afternoon?”
“Nothing! Your guards brought me a letter from my sister. A reply to the wedding invitation you insisted on sending. She asked that I inform the Tavgharad of the wedding, and I brought it to them. They … they told me the message was a code. That it was time to escape.”
“But there was another command in your sister’s letter.”
“I read it myself!” Ehri cried. “There was no such thing!”
“What else could make the Tavgharad take such an action?”
Ehri turned her head away again.
Nikolai hadn’t really expected her to believe him. The princess had never been willing to accept that she was not meant to survive her trip to Os Alta, that her older sister had been planning her death all along. Even after what she had suffered, maybe because of what she had suffered, she couldn’t stand the thought. The physical pain was bad enough, but another betrayal from her sister was too much to accept.
The proper thing was to give her space, a chance to heal. But he’d squandered the time required to be a sensitive suitor. And now he needed someone else to make his argument for him.
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