THE NIGHT BEFORE THE RITUAL, Nikolai sat with Zoya in front of the fire in his chambers. Yuri had retired early to pray.
The fire in the grate was wholly unnecessary. The Fold was neither hot nor cold—weather would have required some kind of change in the punishing monotony of this place. But the flames were all they had for entertainment, and Nikolai was in desperate need of distraction.
He had insisted he was ready for the ritual. Elizaveta had wanted to delay for a few more days so he could solidify his control, but Nikolai was unwilling to risk it. He needed to get back to the capital. But it was more than that. He could sense the monster getting stronger with every day, and he suspected that it had become easier to make his demon rise because it wanted to stretch its wings. It could taste the possibility of freedom.
“Just a little longer,” Elizaveta had said.
But Nikolai had held firm. “Tomorrow,” he’d told her. Or whatever passed for tomorrow in this cursed place.
He had never wished for sleep more, for some relief from thoughts of the challenge to come. He could sense the monster waiting. Somehow it knew that tomorrow they would face each other, and it was ready. Its anticipation was more frightening than the fact that he would have to drive a thorn through his chest in a matter of hours. Nikolai craved a glass of wine desperately. No, skip the glass. He’d go straight to the bottle.
But there was no wine to be had. No food to fill a plate. He was hungry and yet his stomach never growled. He was thirsty and yet his mouth was never dry.
Nikolai watched Zoya watching the flames. She flexed her fingers,
and the sparks leapt. He still could not quite fathom what Juris had taught her in this short time. She wore the same clothes she’d worn the morning they’d disappeared, though the roughspun cloak had long since been discarded. He was grateful for the familiarity of the deep blue silk of her kefta.
She sat with a knee tucked up, one cheek resting against it. Nikolai realized he’d never seen her look so at ease. At court, Zoya always moved with grace, her steps smooth, her gaze sharp and unforgiving as the blade of a knife. But he realized now it was the grace of an actress on the stage. She was always performing, always on guard. Even with him.
Nikolai released a startled laugh, and she glanced over at him. “What is it?”
He shook his head. “I think I’m jealous.” “Of what?”
“A dragon.”
“Don’t let Juris hear that. He thinks enough of himself as it is.”
“He should. He can fly and breathe fire, and he’s probably got piles of gold stashed somewhere.”
“That’s an unfair cliché. It could very well be jewels.” “And he made you look like that.”
Zoya raised a brow. “Like what precisely?” “Comfortable.”
Zoya’s back straightened, and he felt tremendous regret at seeing her armor lock back into place.
After a minute she asked, “What do you think will happen when we leave this place?”
“Hopefully not too many things will be on fire.”
Zoya sighed. “David and Kuwei have been left unattended too long.
For all we know they’ve blown up half the capital.”
“That is worryingly plausible,” admitted Nikolai. He scrubbed a hand over his head. Red wine. White wine. That drink made with fermented cherries he’d tried at the Crow Club. Anything for a little respite, a night of real rest. Not even Genya’s sleeping concoction worked here. It just made his mind sluggish. “I don’t know what we’ll find. I don’t even know who I’ll be tomorrow.”
“You will be who you were always meant to be. Ravka’s king.”
Maybe, he thought. Or maybe it will be left to you to set Ravka to rights.
He removed a folded document from his pocket and placed it beside her hand.
She picked it up and turned it over, frowning at the wax seal he’d impressed with his signet ring. “What is this?”
“Don’t worry, I haven’t written you a love letter.” She turned her face to the fire. Was even the mention of love too much for Zoya’s ruthless sensibilities? “This is a royal order declaring you Ravka’s protector and making you commander of both the First and Second Armies.”
She stared at him. “Have you lost your wits entirely?”
“I’m trying to do the responsible thing. I think it’s giving me indigestion.”
Zoya tossed the letter to the floor as if the paper had singed her fingers. “You don’t think you’re going to survive tomorrow.”
“Ravka’s hopes shouldn’t live and die with me.” “So you’re pinning them on me instead?”
“You are one of the most powerful Grisha the world has ever known, Zoya. If anyone can protect Ravka, it’s you.”
“And if I tell you I don’t want the job?”
“We both know better. And did I mention the position comes with some truly spectacular sapphires?” Nikolai rested his hands on his knees. “If the twins and the Triumvirate weren’t able to hide our disappearance, Ravka may already be in turmoil. We both know it’s possible I won’t survive the ritual and someone will have to restore order. Every man and woman who claims to have a drop of Lantsov blood will make a bid for the throne, and our enemies will seize the chance to tear the country apart. Pick one of the pretenders to back, the smartest or the most charming or—”
“The most easily controlled?”
“You see? You were made for this. Rally the Grisha. Try to save our people.”
Zoya gazed into the fire, her expression troubled. “Why is it so easy for you to contemplate your death?”
“I’d rather look at a thing squarely than let it catch me by surprise.” He grinned. “Don’t tell me you’d miss me.”
Zoya looked away again. “I suppose the world would be less interesting without you in it. I wouldn’t let myself be drowned in amber for just anyone, you know.”
“I’m touched,” he said. And he was. It was the closest thing to a
compliment she’d ever given him.
She drew a slender chain from the neck of her kefta and pulled it over her head. The key she had used for his shackles. She dangled it from her finger. “We won’t ever need this again after tomorrow.”
He took it from her, feeling the weight of it in his palm. The metal was warm from her skin. He hadn’t missed their nightly ceremony, but he’d missed having an excuse to talk to her each evening and each morning. He supposed that would be at an end now too.
Nikolai hesitated. He wasn’t anxious to spoil her goodwill. “Your amplifier …” Zoya’s hand twitched, and he knew she was resisting the urge to touch her bare wrist. “Will you tell me how you got it?”
“Why does it matter?”
“I don’t know that it does.” But he wanted to know. He wanted to sit here and listen to her talk. For all the time they’d spent together, Zoya was still a mystery to him. This might be his last chance to unravel her.
She smoothed the silk of her kefta over her knees. He thought she might not speak, just sit there, silent as a stone until he gave up waiting. Zoya was perfectly capable of it. But at last she said, “I was thirteen. I had been at the Little Palace for almost five years. The Darkling took a group of Grisha to Tsibeya. There were rumors the white tigers of Ilmisk had returned, and he suspected at least one of them was an amplifier.”
“Near the permafrost?”
“A little farther south. I was the youngest of the group and so proud to be chosen to go. I was half in love with him already. I lived for the rare moments he appeared at the school.” She shook her head. “I was the best, and I wanted him to see that … The older Grisha were all in contention for the amplifier. It was up to them to track the tigers and see who would earn the right to the kill. They followed a female for nearly a week and cornered her in the woods near Chernast, but she somehow escaped their grasp.”
Zoya wrapped her arms around her legs. “She left her cubs. Abandoned the three of them. The Darkling’s men penned them in a cage so the Grisha could squabble over who deserved their teeth the most. All night we could hear the mother prowling the perimeter of the camp, snarling and yowling. My friends talked about going into the dark to pursue her. I knew they were all bluster, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the cubs. So when the camp was asleep, I created a distraction for the guards by knocking over one of the tents with a gust of wind, and I
chased the cubs out of the cage. They were so little,” she said with the smallest smile. “They couldn’t really run, only roll a bit, stumble, right themselves. I just kept them moving away from the camp. Saints, I was scared.” Her eyes were far away now, as if looking into that long-ago night. “We were still in sight of the torches when I realized I wasn’t alone.”
“The mother?”
She shook her head. “A male. I don’t know why, but he went straight for the cubs. I panicked. I should have fought, used my power, but all I could think to do was cover their bodies with mine. When the male attacked, his claws tore clean through my coat and my kefta all the way to the skin of my back.” Zoya’s fists clenched. “But I protected those cubs. I remember … I remember I had my eyes squeezed shut, and when I opened them the snow looked black in the moonlight.” She turned her face to the fire. “It was stained with my blood. I could feel the cubs wriggling against me, yowling their terror, their little claws sharp as needles. That was what brought me back to sense—those tiny, vicious little pinpricks. I gathered the last of my strength and summoned the most powerful gust I could. I threw open my arms and sent the male flying. That was when the Darkling and his guards came running. I guess I’d been screaming.”
“Did they kill the tiger?”
“He was already dead. He’d struck a tree when I threw him. It snapped his neck. The cubs escaped.”
Zoya rose. She turned her back to him and, to his astonishment, shrugged the silk of her kefta from her shoulders, letting it pool at her hips. An unwelcome bolt of desire shot through him, and then he saw— along the smooth skin of her back lay eight long, furrowed scars.
“The other Grisha were furious,” she said, “but I had killed the white tiger. The amplifier could only belong to me. So they bandaged my wounds, and I claimed the tiger’s teeth for my wrist. He left me with these.”
The firelight caught the pearly surface of the scars. It was a miracle that she’d survived.
“You never had them healed? Tailored?”
She drew the kefta back up to her shoulders and fastened the clasps. “He left his mark on me and I on him. We did each other damage. It deserves to be remembered.”
“And the Darkling didn’t deny you the amplifier, despite what you’d done?”
“It would have been a fair punishment, but no. An amplifier that powerful was too rare to waste. They put the fetter on me, bound the old cat’s teeth in silver so that I could never remove it. That’s how all of the most powerful amplifiers are fashioned.”
She gazed out the open frame of the window to the flat gray expanse of the sky. “When it was all over, the Darkling had me brought to his tent and said, ‘So, Zoya, you freed the tiger cubs. You did the selfless thing. And yet somehow you are the one who has finished the day with greater power. More than any of your betters who have patiently waited their turn. What do you say to that?’
“His disapproval was more painful than any wound from a tiger’s claws. Some part of me always feared that he would send me away, banish me forever from the Little Palace. I told him I was sorry.
“But the Darkling saw me clearly even then. ‘Is that really what you wish to say?’ he asked.”
Zoya pushed a dark strand of her hair behind her ear. “So I told him the truth. I put my chin up and said, ‘They can all hang. It was my blood in the snow.’”
Nikolai stifled a laugh and a smile played over Zoya’s lips. It dwindled almost instantly, replaced by a troubled frown. “That pleased him. He told me it was a job well done. And then he said … ‘Beware of power, Zoya. There is no amount of it that can make them love you.’”
The weight of the words settled over Nikolai. Is that what we’re all searching for? Was that what he’d hunted in all those library books? In his restless travels? In his endless pursuit to seize and then keep the throne? “Was it love you wanted, Zoya?”
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t think so. I wanted … strength.
Safety. I never wanted to feel helpless again.”
“Again?” It was impossible to conceive of Zoya as anything less than mighty.
But all she said was, “When Juris broke that fetter, it was like he’d torn a limb from my body. You cannot imagine it.”
He couldn’t. And he couldn’t imagine what words might bring her comfort. “What became of the cubs?”
Zoya ran her finger over the window ledge, sand trailing from it in a glittering fall. “He told me … The Darkling said that because they had
my scent on them, their mother wouldn’t raise them.” Her voice wobbled slightly. “He said that I’d doomed them as surely as if I’d taken a knife to their throats myself. That she’d leave them to die in the snow. But I don’t believe that, do you?”
Her face was composed, but her eyes were imploring. Nikolai felt as if he were looking at the young girl she’d been on that cold and bloody night.
“No,” he said. “I don’t believe that at all.”
“Good,” she said. “Good …” She gave her cuffs a firm tug, seeming to return to herself. “Every lover I’ve taken has asked about those scars. I make up a new story for each of them.”
He found he did not want to think of Zoya’s lovers. “And what did I do to earn the truth?”
“Offered me a country and faced imminent death?” “It’s important to have standards, Nazyalensky.”
Zoya bobbed her chin toward the sealed order that still lay on the floor. “It’s not too late to burn that.”
Nikolai thought of the smooth planes of her back striped by those furrowed scars. He thought of the stubborn tilt of her chin. He imagined her huddled in the snow, risking her position with the mentor she worshipped, risking her very life to save those cubs.
“The more I know of you,” he said, “the more I am sure you are exactly what Ravka needs.”
In that moment, he wished things might have been different. That he might not die tomorrow. That he could be led by his heart instead of duty.
Because Zoya was not kind and she was not easy. But she was already a queen.
