THE NEXT FEW DAYS passed in a blur of discomfort and exhaustion. We stayed off of the Vy and kept to side roads and narrow hunting trails, moving as quickly as the hilly and sometimes treacherous terrain would allow. I lost all sense of where we were or how far we had gone.
After the first day, the Darkling and I had ridden separately, but I found that I was always aware of where he was in the column of riders. He didn’t say a word to me, and as the hours and days wore on, I started to worry that I’d somehow offended him. (Though, given how little we’d spoken, I wasn’t sure how I could have managed it.) Occasionally, I caught him looking at me, his eyes cool and unreadable.
I’d never been a particularly good rider, and the pace the Darkling set was taking its toll. No matter which way I shifted in my saddle, some part of my body ached. I stared listlessly at my horse’s twitching ears and tried not to think of my burning legs or the throbbing in my lower back. On the fifth night, when we stopped to make camp at an abandoned farm, I wanted to leap from my horse in joy. But I was so stiff that I settled for sliding awkwardly to the ground. I thanked the soldier who saw to my mount and waddled slowly down a small hill to where I could hear the soft gurgle of a stream.
I knelt by the bank on shaky legs and washed my face and hands in the cold water. The air had changed over the last couple of days, and the bright blue skies of autumn were giving way to sullen gray. The soldiers seemed to think that we would reach Os Alta before any real weather came on. And then what? What would happen to me when we reached the Little Palace? What would happen when I couldn’t do what they wanted me to do? It wasn’t wise to disappoint kings. Or Darklings. I doubted they’d just send me back to the regiment with a pat on the back. I wondered if Mal was still in Kribirsk. If his wounds had healed, he might already have been sent back across the Fold or on to some other assignment. I thought of his face disappearing into the crowd in the Grisha tent. I hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye.
In the gathering dusk, I stretched my arms and back and tried to shake the feeling of gloom that had settled over me. It’s probably for the best, I told myself. How would I have said goodbye to Mal anyway? Thanks for being my best friend and making my life bearable. Oh, and sorry I fell in love with you for a while there. Make sure to write!
“What are you smiling at?”
I whirled, peering into the gloom. The Darkling’s voice seemed to float out of the shadows. He walked down to the stream, crouching on the bank to
splash water on his face and through his dark hair. “Well?” he asked, looking up at me.
“Myself,” I admitted. “Are you that funny?” “I’m hilarious.”
The Darkling regarded me in what remained of the twilight. I had the disquieting sensation that I was being studied. Other than a bit of dust on his kefta, our trek seemed to have taken little toll on him. My skin prickled with embarrassment as I became keenly aware of my torn, too-large kefta, my dirty hair, and the bruise the Fjerdan assassin had left on my cheek. Was he looking at me and regretting his decision to drag me all this way? Was he thinking that he’d made another of his infrequent mistakes?
“I’m not Grisha,” I blurted.
“The evidence suggests otherwise,” he said with little concern. “What makes you so certain?”
“Look at me!” “I’m looking.”
“Do I look like a Grisha to you?” Grisha were beautiful. They didn’t have spotty skin and dull brown hair and scrawny arms.
He shook his head and rose. “You don’t understand at all,” he said, and began walking back up the hill.
“Are you going to explain it to me?” “Not right now, no.”
I was so furious I wanted to smack him on the back of his head. And if I hadn’t seen him cut a man in half, I might have done just that. I settled for glaring at the space between his shoulder blades as I followed him up the hill. Inside the farm’s broken-down barn, the Darkling’s men had cleared a space on the earthen floor and built a fire. One of them had caught and killed a grouse and was roasting it over the flames. It made a poor meal shared among all of us, but the Darkling did not want to send his men ranging into
the woods for game.
I took a place by the fire and ate my small portion in silence. When I’d finished, I hesitated for only a moment before wiping my fingers on my already filthy kefta. It was probably the nicest thing I’d ever worn or would wear, and something about seeing the fabric stained and torn made me feel particularly low.
In the light from the fire, I watched the oprichniki sitting side by side with the Grisha. Some of them had already drifted away from the fire to bed down for the night. Others had been posted to the first watch. The rest sat talking as the flames ebbed, passing a flask back and forth. The Darkling sat with them. I’d noticed that he had taken no more than his share of the grouse. And now he sat beside his soldiers on the cold ground, a man second in power only to
the King.
He must have felt my gaze, because he turned to look at me, his granite eyes glimmering in the firelight. I flushed. To my dismay, he rose and came to sit beside me, offering me the flask. I hesitated and then took a sip, grimacing at the taste. I’d never liked kvas, but the teachers at Keramzin had drunk it like water. Mal and I had stolen a bottle once. The beating we’d taken when we were caught had been nothing compared to how miserably sick we’d been.
Still, it burned going down, and the warmth was welcome. I took another sip and handed the flask back to him. “Thank you,” I said with a little cough.
He drank, staring into the fire, and then said, “All right. Ask me.”
I blinked at him, taken aback. I wasn’t sure where to begin. My tired mind had been brimming with questions, whirring in a state between panic and exhaustion and disbelief since we’d left Kribirsk. I wasn’t sure that I had the energy to form a thought, and when I opened my mouth, the question that came out surprised me.
“How old are you?”
He glanced at me, bemused. “I don’t know exactly.” “How can you not know?”
The Darkling shrugged. “How old are you exactly?”
I flashed him a sour look. I didn’t know the date of my birth. All the orphans at Keramzin were given the Duke’s birthday in honor of our benefactor. “Well, then, roughly how old are you?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because I’ve heard stories about you since I was a child, but you don’t look much older than I am,” I said honestly.
“What kind of stories?”
“The usual kind,” I said with some annoyance. “If you don’t want to answer me, just say so.”
“I don’t want to answer you.” “Oh.”
Then he sighed and said, “One hundred and twenty. Give or take.”
“What?” I squeaked. The soldiers sitting across from me glanced over. “That’s impossible,” I said more quietly.
He looked into the flames. “When a fire burns, it uses up the wood. It devours it, leaving only ash. Grisha power doesn’t work that way.”
“How does it work?”
“Using our power makes us stronger. It feeds us instead of consuming us.
Most Grisha live long lives.”
“But not one hundred and twenty years.”
“No,” he admitted. “The length of a Grisha’s life is proportional to his or her power. The greater the power, the longer the life. And when that power is
amplified …” He trailed off with a shrug.
“And you’re a living amplifier. Like Ivan’s bear.”
The hint of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Like Ivan’s bear.” An unpleasant thought occurred to me. “But that means—”
“That my bones or a few of my teeth would make another Grisha very powerful.”
“Well, that’s completely creepy. Doesn’t that worry you a little bit?”
“No,” he said simply. “Now you answer my question. What kind of stories were you told about me?”
I shifted uncomfortably. “Well … our teachers told us that you strengthened the Second Army by gathering Grisha from outside of Ravka.”
“I didn’t have to gather them. They came to me. Other countries don’t treat their Grisha so well as Ravka,” he said grimly. “The Fjerdans burn us as witches, and the Kerch sell us as slaves. The Shu Han carve us up seeking the source of our power. What else?”
“They said you were the strongest Darkling in generations.” “I didn’t ask you for flattery.”
I fingered a loose thread on the cuff of my kefta. He watched me, waiting. “Well,” I said, “there was an old serf who worked on the estate …”
“Go on,” he said. “Tell me.”
“He … he said that Darklings are born without souls. That only something truly evil could have created the Shadow Fold.” I glanced at his cold face and added hastily, “But Ana Kuya sent him packing and told us it was all peasant superstition.”
The Darkling sighed. “I doubt that serf is the only one who believes that.”
I said nothing. Not everyone thought like Eva or the old serf, but I’d been in the First Army long enough to know that most ordinary soldiers didn’t trust Grisha and felt no allegiance to the Darkling.
After a moment, the Darkling said, “My great-great-great-grandfather was the Black Heretic, the Darkling who created the Shadow Fold. It was a mistake, an experiment born of his greed, maybe his evil. I don’t know. But every Darkling since then has tried to undo the damage he did to our country, and I’m no different.” He turned to me then, his expression serious, the firelight playing over the perfect planes of his features. “I’ve spent my life searching for a way to make things right. You’re the first glimmer of hope I’ve had in a long time.”
“Me?”
“The world is changing, Alina. Muskets and rifles are just the beginning. I’ve seen the weapons they’re developing in Kerch and Fjerda. The age of Grisha power is coming to an end.”
It was a terrifying thought. “But … but what about the First Army? They have rifles. They have weapons.”
“Where do you think their rifles come from? Their ammunition? Every time we cross the Fold, we lose lives. A divided Ravka won’t survive the new age. We need our ports. We need our harbors. And only you can give them back to us.”
“How?” I pleaded. “How am I supposed to do that?” “By helping me destroy the Shadow Fold.”
I shook my head. “You’re crazy. This is all crazy.”
I looked up through the broken beams of the barn’s roof to the night sky. It was full of stars, but I could only see the endless reaches of darkness between them. I imagined myself standing in the dead silence of the Shadow Fold, blind, frightened, with nothing to protect me but my supposed power. I thought of the Black Heretic. He had created the Fold, a Darkling, just like the one who sat watching me so closely in the firelight.
“What about that thing you did?” I asked before I could lose my nerve. “To the Fjerdan?”
He looked back into the fire. “It’s called the Cut. It requires great power and great focus; it’s something few Grisha can do.”
I rubbed my arms, trying to stave off the chill that had taken hold of me.
He glanced at me and then back to the fire. “If I had cut him down with a sword, would that make it any better?”
Would it? I had seen countless horrors in the last few days. But even after the nightmares of the Fold, the image that stayed with me, that reared up in my dreams and chased me into waking, was of the bearded man’s severed body, swaying in the dappled sunlight before it toppled onto me.
“I don’t know,” I said quietly.
Something flashed across his face, something that looked like anger or maybe even pain. Without another word, he rose and walked away from me.
I watched him disappear into the darkness and felt suddenly guilty. Don’t be a fool, I chastised myself. He’s the Darkling. He’s the second most powerful man in Ravka. He’s one hundred and twenty years old! You didn’t hurt his feelings. But I thought of the look that had flickered over his features, the shame in his voice when he’d talked about the Black Heretic, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had failed some kind of test.
TWO DAYS LATER, just after dawn, we passed through a massive gate and the famous double walls of Os Alta.
Mal and I had taken our training not far from here, in the military stronghold at Poliznaya, but we had never been inside the city itself. Os Alta was reserved for the very wealthy, for the homes of military and government officials, their families, their mistresses, and all the businesses that catered to
them.
I felt a twinge of disappointment as we passed shuttered shops, a wide marketplace where a few vendors were already setting up their stalls, and crowded rows of narrow houses. Os Alta was called the dream city. It was the capital of Ravka, home to the Grisha and the King’s Grand Palace. But if anything, it just looked like a bigger, dirtier version of the market town at Keramzin.
All that changed when we reached the bridge. It spanned a wide canal where little boats bobbed in the water beneath it. And on the other side, rising from the mist, white and gleaming, lay the other Os Alta. As we crossed the bridge, I saw that it could be raised to turn the canal into a giant moat that would separate the dream city before us from the common mess of the market town that lay behind.
When we reached the other side of the canal, it was as if we had passed into another world. Everywhere I looked, I saw fountains and plazas, verdant parks, and broad boulevards lined with perfect rows of trees. Here and there, I saw lights on in the lower stories of the grand houses, where kitchen fires were being lit and the day’s work was starting.
The streets began to slope upward, and as we climbed higher, the houses became larger and more imposing, until finally we arrived at another wall and another set of gates, these wrought in gleaming gold and emblazoned with the King’s double eagle. Along the wall, I could see heavily armed men at their posts, a grim reminder that for all its beauty, Os Alta was still the capital of a country that had long been at war.
The gate swung open.
We rode up a broad path paved in glittering gravel and bordered by rows of elegant trees. To the left and right, stretching into the distance, I saw manicured gardens, rich with green and hazy in the mist of early morning. Above it all, atop a series of marble terraces and golden fountains, loomed the Grand Palace, the Ravkan King’s winter home.
When we finally reached the huge double-eagle fountain at its base, the Darkling brought his horse up beside mine.
“So what do you think of it?” he asked.
I glanced at him, then back at the elaborate facade. It was larger than any building I had ever seen, its terraces crowded with statues, its three stories gleaming with row after row of shining windows, each ornamented extensively in what I suspected was real gold.
“It’s very … grand?” I said carefully.
He looked at me, a little smile playing on his lips. “I think it’s the ugliest building I’ve ever seen,” he said, and nudged his horse forward.
We followed a path that curved behind the palace and deeper into the grounds, passing a hedge maze, a rolling lawn with a columned temple at its
center, and a vast greenhouse, its windows clouded with condensation. Then we entered a thick stand of trees, large enough that it felt like a small wood, and passed through a long, dark corridor where the branches made a dense, braided roof above us.
The hair rose on my arms. I had the same feeling that I’d had as we were crossing the canal, that sense of crossing the boundary between two worlds.
When we emerged from the tunnel into weak sunshine, I looked down a gentle slope and saw a building like nothing I’d ever seen.
“Welcome to the Little Palace,” said the Darkling.
It was a strange name, because though it was smaller than the Grand Palace, the “Little” Palace was still huge. It rose from the trees surrounding it like something carved from an enchanted forest, a cluster of dark wood walls and golden domes. As we drew closer, I saw that every inch of it was covered in intricate carvings of birds and flowers, twisting vines, and magical beasts.
A charcoal-clad group of servants waited on the steps. I dismounted, and one of them rushed forward to take my horse, while others pushed open a large set of double doors. As we passed through them, I couldn’t resist the urge to reach out and touch the exquisite carvings. They had been inlaid with mother-of-pearl so that they sparkled in the early-morning light. How many hands, how many years had it taken to create such a place?
We passed through an entry chamber and then into a vast hexagonal room with four long tables arranged in a square at its center. Our footsteps echoed off the stone floor, and a massive gold dome seemed to float above us at an impossible height.
The Darkling took aside one of the servants, an older woman in a charcoal dress, and spoke to her in hushed tones. Then he gave me a small bow and strode off across the hall, followed by his men.
I felt a surge of annoyance. The Darkling had said little to me since that night in the barn, and he’d given me no idea what I might expect once we arrived. But I didn’t have the nerve or the energy to run after him, so I meekly followed the woman in gray through another pair of double doors and into one of the smaller towers.
When I saw all the stairs, I almost broke down and wept. Maybe I’ll just ask if I can stay down here in the middle of the hall, I thought miserably. Instead, I put my hand on the carved banister and dragged myself upward, my stiff body protesting every step. When we reached the top, I felt like celebrating by lying down and taking a nap, but the servant was already moving down the hallway. We passed door after door, until finally we reached a chamber where another uniformed maid stood waiting by an open doorway.
Dimly, I registered a large room, heavy golden curtains, a fire burning in a beautifully tiled grate, but all I really cared about was the huge canopied bed.
“Can I get you anything? Something to eat?” asked the woman. I shook my
head. I just wanted sleep.
“Very good,” she said, and nodded to the maid, who curtsied and disappeared down the hall. “Then I’ll let you rest. Make sure to lock your door.”
I blinked.
“As a precaution,” said the woman and left, closing the door gently behind her.
A precaution against what? I wondered. But I was too tired to think about it. I locked the door, peeled off the kefta and my boots, and fell into bed.
