Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo
“It’s a diary,” Mal said. “Statistics on the spring crop, the progress of hybrid trees.”
“Her glasses,” I said, picking up the gold wire frames. “I wonder if she’s missing them.”
Mal leaned against the stone rim of the pool. “Do you ever wonder what it might have been like if the Grisha Examiners had discovered your power back at Keramzin?”
“Sometimes.”
“Ravka would be different.”
“Maybe not. My power was useless before we found the stag. Without you, we might never have located any of Morozova’s amplifiers.”
“You’d be different,” he said.
I put the delicate frames aside and flipped through the columns of numbers and tidy handwriting. What kind of person might I have been? Would I have become friends with Genya or simply seen her as a servant? Would I have had Zoya’s confidence? Her easy arrogance? What would the Darkling have been to me?
“I can tell you what would have happened,” I said.
“Go on.”
I closed the diary and turned back to Mal, perching on the edge of the desk. “I would have gone to the Little Palace and been spoiled and pampered. I would have dined off of golden plates, and I never would have struggled to use my power. It would have been like breathing, the way it always should have been. And in time, I would have forgotten Keramzin.”
“And me.”
“Never you.”
He raised a brow.
“Possibly you,” I admitted. He laughed. “The Darkling would have sought Morozova’s amplifiers, fruitlessly, hopelessly, until one day a tracker, a no one, an otkazat’sya orphan, traveled into the ice of Tsibeya.”
“You’re assuming I didn’t die on the Fold.”
“In my version, you were never sent into the Fold. When you tell the story, you can die tragically.”
“In that case, carry on.”
“This nobody, this nothing, this pathetic orphan—”
“I get it.”
“He would be the first to spot the stag after centuries of searching. So of course the Darkling and I would have to travel to Tsibeya in his great black coach.”
“In the snow?”
“His great black sleigh,” I amended. “And when we arrived at Chernast, your unit would be led into our exalted presence—”
“Are we allowed to walk, or do we wriggle in on our bellies like the lowly worms we are?”
“You walk, but you do it with a lot of deference. I would be seated on a raised dais, and I would wear jewels in my hair and a golden kefta.”
“Not black?”
I paused. “Maybe black.”
“It wouldn’t matter,” Mal said. “I still wouldn’t be able to stop looking at you.”
I laughed. “No, you would be making eyes at Zoya.”
“Zoya’s there?”
“Isn’t she always?”
He smiled. “I would have noticed you.”
“Of course you would. I’m the Sun Summoner, after all.”
“You know what I mean.”
I looked down, brushing petals off of the desk. “Did you ever notice me at Keramzin?”
He was silent for a long moment, and when I glanced at him, he was looking up at the glass ceiling. He’d gone red as a beet.
“Mal?”
He cleared his throat, crossed his arms. “As a matter of fact, I did. I had some very … distracting thoughts about you.”
“You did?” I sputtered.
“And I felt guilty for every one of them. You were supposed to be my best friend, not…” He shrugged and turned even redder.
“Idiot.”
“That fact is well established and adds nothing to the plot.”
“Well,” I said, taking another swipe at the petals, “it wouldn’t matter if you noticed me, because I would have noticed you.”
“A lowly otkazat’sya?”
“That’s right,” I said quietly. I didn’t feel like teasing him anymore.
“And what would you have seen?”
“A soldier—cocky, scarred, extraordinary. And that would have been our beginning.”
He rose and closed the distance between us. “And this still would have been our end.” He was right. Even in dreams, we had no future. If we somehow both survived tomorrow, I would have to seek an alliance and a crown. Mal would have to find a way to keep his heritage a secret.
Gently, he took my face in his hands. “I would have been different too, without you. Weaker, reckless.” He smiled slightly. “Afraid of the dark.” He brushed the tears from my cheeks. I wasn’t sure when they’d started. “But no matter who or what I was, I would have been yours.”
I kissed him then—with grief and need and years of longing, with the desperate hope that I could keep him here in my arms, with the damning knowledge that I could not. I leaned into him, the press of his chest, the breadth of his shoulders.
“Going to miss this,” he said as he kissed my cheeks, my jaw, my eyelids. “The way you taste.” He set his lips to the hollow beneath my ear. “The way you smell.” His hands slid up my back. “The way you feel.” My breath hitched as his hips settled against mine.
Then he drew back, searching my eyes. “I wanted more for you,” he said. “A white veil in your hair. Vows we could keep.”
“A proper wedding night? Just tell me this isn’t goodbye. That’s the only vow I need.”
“I love you, Alina.”
He kissed me again. He hadn’t answered, but I didn’t care, because his mouth was on mine, and in this moment, I could pretend I wasn’t a savior or a Saint, that I could simply choose him, have a life, be in love. That we wouldn’t have one night, we would have thousands. I pulled him down with me, easing his body over mine, feeling the cold floor at my back. He had a soldier’s hands, rough and calloused, heating my skin, sending hungry sparks through my body that made me lift my hips to try and bring him closer.
I pulled his shirt over his head, letting my fingers trail over the smooth ridges of his muscled back, feeling the lightly raised lines of the words that marked him. But when he slid the fabric of my blouse from my arms, I stiffened, feeling suddenly, painfully aware of every wrong thing about me. Jutting bones, too-small breasts, skin pale and dry as an onion. Then he cupped my cheek, his thumb tracing my lip.
“You are all I’ve ever wanted,” he said. “You are the whole of my heart.”
I saw myself then—sour, silly, difficult, lovely in his eyes. I drew him to me, felt him shudder as our bodies came together, skin against skin, felt the heat of his lips, his tongue, hands moving until the need between us drew taut and anxious as a bowstring waiting for release.
He clasped his hand to my wrist and my mind filled with light. All I saw was Mal’s face, all I felt was his body—above me, around me, an awkward rhythm at first, then slow and steady as the beat of the rain. It was all we needed. It was all we would ever have.
CHAPTER
17
THE NEXT MORNING, I woke to find that Mal had already risen. He’d left me a pot of hot tea on a tray surrounded by apple blossoms. The rain had stopped, but the walls of the conservatory were covered in mist. I rubbed my sleeve against a pane of glass and looked out into the deep blue of early dawn. A deer was moving between the trees, head bent to the sweet grass.
I dressed slowly, drank my tea, lingered by the reflecting pool where the lanterns had long since gone out. In a few hours’ time, this place might be buried in darkness. I wanted to remember every detail. On a whim, I picked up a pen and flipped to the last page of the diary and wrote our names.
Alina Starkov
Malyen Oretsev
I wasn’t sure why I did it. I just needed to say we had been there.
I found the others packing up in the main hall. Genya waylaid me by the door with my coat in her hands. The olive wool was freshly pressed.
“You should look your best when you put the Darkling in the ground.”
“Thanks,” I said w
She kissed both of my cheeks. “Good luck. We’ll be waiting when you get back.”
I took her hand and placed Nikolai’s ring in her palm. “If something goes wrong, if we don’t make it—take David and Misha and get to Os Kervo. This should buy you all the help you need.”
She swallowed, then hugged me hard.
Outside, the Soldat Sol waited in rigid formation, rifles on their backs, canisters of inactive lumiya slung over their shoulders. The tattoos on their faces looked fierce in the dawn light. The Grisha wore roughspun. They might have been ordinary soldiers.
Harshaw had left Oncat curled up with Misha, but now she sat in the parlor window, lazily grooming herself and watching us assemble. Tolya and Tamar had their golden sunbursts pinned to their chests. Mal’s was still with Misha. He smiled when he saw me, and tapped the space where the pin would have gone, right over his heart.
The deer had scattered. The orchard was empty as we moved through it, boots leaving deep marks on the soft earth. A half hour later, we were standing at the shores of the Fold.
I joined the other Etherealki: Zoya, Nadia, Adrik, and Harshaw. It felt somehow right that we should be the first to enter and that we would do it together. The Squallers raised their arms, summoning current and dropping the pressure as Zoya had done back in the caves. My ears crackled as they layered the acoustic blanket. If it didn’t hold, Harshaw and I were ready to summon light and fire to drive the volcra back. We spread out in a line, and with measured steps, we entered the darkness of the Fold.
The Unsea always felt like the end of everything. It wasn’t only the dark, it was the terrible sense of isolation, as if the world had disappeared, leaving only you, the rattle of your breath, the stuttering beat of your heart.
As we stepped onto the dead gray sands and the darkness thickened around us, it took everything in me not to raise my hands and wrap all of us in safe, protective light. I listened closely, expecting to hear the beating of wings, one of those horrible, inhuman shrieks, but I heard nothing, not even our footsteps on the sand. Whatever the Squallers were doing was working. The silence was deep and impenetrable.
“Hello?” I whispered.
“We hear you.” I whirled. I knew Zoya was farther down the line, but it sounded like she was speaking right in my ear.
We moved at a steady pace. I heard a click, then almost ten minutes later, a double click. We’d gone a mile. At one point, I heard the distant flap of wings above us, and I felt fear move through our ranks like a living thing. The volcra might not hear us but they could scent prey from miles away. Were they circling above us even now, sensing that something was wrong, that someone was near? I doubted Zoya’s trick would keep us safe for long. The absolute madness of what we were doing struck me in that moment. We had dared what no one else ever had: We’d entered the Fold without light.
We kept moving. Two clicks later, we stopped and took up our positions to wait. As soon as we sighted the Darkling’s skiff, we’d have to move quickly.
My thoughts turned to him. Cautiously, I tested the tether that bound us. Hunger quaked through me with palpable force. He was eager, ready to unleash the power of the Fold, ready for a fight. I felt it too. I let it echo back to him, that rush of anticipation, that need: I am coming for you.
Mal and Tolya—maybe all of the others—believed that the amplifiers had to be brought together, but they had never felt the thrill of using merzost. It was something no other Grisha understood, and in the end, it was what bound the Darkling and me most closely—not our powers, not the strangeness of them, not that we were both aberrations, if not abominations. It was our knowledge of the forbidden, our desire for more.
The minutes ticked by, and my nerves began to jangle. The Squallers could maintain the acoustic blanket for only so long. What if the Darkling waited until night to attack? Where are you?
The answer came in a pale violet glow, moving toward us from the east.
Two clicks. We fanned out in the formation we had practiced.
Three clicks. That was my signal. I raised my hands and set the Fold ablaze. In the same moment, I bent the light, letting it flow around each of our soldiers like a stream.
What did the Darkling see? Dead sands, the flat sheen of a gray sky, the ruined hulks of skiffs falling to dust. And that was all. We were invisible. We were air.
The skiff slowed. As it drew closer, I saw its black sails marked with the sun in eclipse, the strange, smoked-glass quality of its hull. The violet flame of the lumiya shimmered over its sides, vague and flickering in the bright glare of my power.
Squallers stood at the masts in their blue kefta. A few Inferni lined the railings, flanked by Heartrenders in red, heavily armed oprichniki in gray. It was a spare force. The students must be belowdecks. The Darkling stood at the prow, surrounded by his shadow horde. As always, the first sight of him was practically a physical blow. It was like going to him in a vision: He was simply more real, more vibrant than everything else around him.
It happened so fast, I barely had time to register it. The first shot struck one of the Darkling’s oprichniki. He toppled over the skiff’s railing. Then the shots came in a rapid patter, like raindrops on a rooftop at the start of a storm. Grisha and oprichniki slumped and fell against one another as confusion broke out aboard the glass skiff. I saw more bodies fall.
Someone shouted, “Return fire!” and the air erupted with the jarring thunder of gunshots, but we were safely out of range. The nichevo’ya beat their wings, turning in wide arcs, searching for targets. Flints were struck, and the Inferni who remained on the skiff sent gouts of flame flaring through the air. Cloaked from sight, Harshaw turned the fire back on them. I heard screams.
Then silence, broken only by moaning and shouted orders from the glass skiff. Our sharpshooters had done their job well. The area around the railing was littered with bodies. The Darkling, unharmed, was pointing to a Heartrender and issuing some kind of command. I couldn’t make out his words, but I knew this was when he would use the students.
I looked around me, tracking the shooters, the Grisha, feeling their presence in the light.
A single click. The Squallers sent a wave of sand crashing through the air. More shouts rose from the deck as the Darkling’s Squallers tried to respond.
That was our cue. The twins and I bolted for the skiff, approaching from the stern. We didn’t have much time.
“Where are they?” Tolya whispered as we boarded. It was strange to hear his voice but not to see him.
“Maybe below,” I replied. The skiff was shallow, but there was room enough.
We picked our way across the deck, searching for a hatch, careful not to brush against the Darkling’s Grisha and guards.
The remaining oprichniki had their guns trained on the empty sands beyond the skiff. We were close enough that I could see the sweat on their brows, their wide eyes. They twitched, jumping at every real or imagined sound. “Maleni,” they whispered. Ghosts. Only the Darkling seemed unfazed. His face was serene as he surveyed the destruction I’d loosed. I was close enough to strike, but he was still protected by his shadow soldiers. I had the uneasy sensation that he was waiting for something.
Suddenly, an oprichnik yelled, “Get down!”
The people around us dove to the deck and the air exploded with gunfire.
Two other glass skiffs plowed into view, loaded with oprichniki. As soon as they came into contact with the light, the skiffs ignited with the glowing violet flame of lumiya.
“Did you think I would come to meet you unprepared, Alina?” the Darkling called over the chaos. “Did you think I would not sacrifice an entire fleet of skiffs to this cause?”
However many he had sent, only two had made it through. But that would be enough to turn the tide. I heard screams, shouting, our soldiers returning fire. A red stain appeared in the sand and with a lurch I realized that one of our people was bleeding. It could be Vladim.
I crept around the masts, searching for some sign of a trapdoor or hatch.
Then a searing pain cut through my shoulder. I fell backward, crying out. I’d been shot.
I sprawled on the deck, feeling my hold on the light falter. Tolya’s shape flickered into view beside me. I tried to regain control. He disappeared, but through the railing I could see soldiers and Grisha appearing on the sands. Oprichniki leapt from the other skiffs, moving in for the attack, and the nichevo’ya surged into the battle.
Panic clamored through me as I scrambled for focus. I couldn’t feel my right arm. I made myself breathe. Stop huffing like a wild boar. If Adrik could summon with one arm, then I could too.
Tamar appeared near the prow, vanished, stuttered back into view. A nichevo’ya slammed into her. She screamed as it sunk its claws deep into her back.
No. I gathered my fractured concentration and reached for the Cut, though I had only one good arm to wield it. I wasn’t sure that I could hit the shadow soldier without wounding Tamar, but I couldn’t just watch her die.
Then another shape dove into the fray from above. It took me a long second to understand what I was seeing: Nikolai—fangs bared, wings spread.
With his talons, he seized the nichevo’ya that held Tamar and wrenched its head back, forcing it to release her. It skittered and writhed, but Nikolai flew upward and hurled it into the blackness beyond. I heard frenzied shrieks from somewhere in the distance—volcra. The shadow soldier did not reappear.
Nikolai swooped back down, barreling into another of the Darkling’s nichevo’ya. I could almost imagine his laugh. Well, if I’m going to be a monster, I might as well be king of the monsters.