“I won’t try to find her,” Nina lied. “I just need some air.”
“Very well. But stay out of their way, Mila. After a loss like this … soldiers look for someone to punish.”
Nina nodded. As soon as Ylva turned her back, she started cutting a path through the flurry of soldiers and sailors on deck, trying to find her way to the base of the tower where she’d seen Prince Rasmus take Hanne. She readied her bone darts and reached out with her power, sensing the corpses in the water, some in boats retreating back to Leviathan’s Mouth. She would get to Hanne. If she had to go through Joran to do it, even better. And then? She wasn’t sure. She’d steal a boat, get them to safety, get them far from here.
She pulled open the door to the base of the tower and wrinkled her nose. There was a strange smell—incense and the scent of turned soil. She felt a prick against her neck and then she was falling forward, into the dark.
36
ZOYA
ZOYA DESCENDED FROM THE ROCKS on a gust of wind. She could see where her lightning had struck the beach, leaving the sheen of glass where sand had been. She didn’t turn her eyes to the waters and the bodies there, but marched up the gentle hills of seagrass and joined the rest of her troops. Up close, the painted flats they’d erected above the beach looked less like tanks than what they really were—a bit of theater meant to deceive the enemy. But they’d only needed them to be believable from a distance, some sleight of hand inspired by their associates at the Crow Club. If the Fjerdans had seen the bay almost entirely unprotected, they might have sensed the trap and the storm that awaited them. Ravka’s soldiers had been outfitted in rubber-soled boots instead of leather, just in case.
“So many dead,” Genya murmured as Zoya approached the Triumvirate command tent and called for fresh water.
“It had to be done.” She couldn’t stop to grieve for soldiers she’d never known, not when her own people were mobilizing on the northern front. She had warned Nikolai that she’d been made to be a weapon. This was what she was good at, what she understood.
She strode toward the flyer they’d readied. She needed to get in the air.
“You’re all right?” Genya asked, pulling on her flying goggles. She’d posed that question a lot since they’d lost David, as if the words could somehow protect them from harm.
“Just covered in salt. Word from the northern front?”
“They’ve engaged.”
“Then let’s get moving.” Zoya tried to ignore the fear that seized her. They would travel low and inland to avoid being intercepted by any Fjerdans in the air. A regiment of Grisha and First Army soldiers would remain behind in case Fjerda decided to make another attempt at the beach, but Zoya thought they’d send their naval base to the northern front to bolster the invasion there.
“We do have some news,” said Genya, drawing Zoya from her thoughts. “The Starless have been spotted on the field.”
Zoya smacked her fist against the flyer’s metal hull. “Fighting for Ravka or Fjerda?”
“Hard to tell. They’ve hung back from the fray.” Genya paused. “He’s with them.”
Of course the Darkling had found his way to the field, surrounded by his followers. But what did he intend? Nikolai had said the Darkling had a gift for spectacle.
“The battle is just the backdrop for him,” she realized. “He’s going to stage his return with some kind of miracle.” She remembered what Alina had said to him. Why do you have to be the savior? The Darkling would wait for his moment, maybe even for Nikolai’s death, and then the Saint would appear to lead them all to—what? Freedom? He’d never had to face Fjerda’s new war machines. He couldn’t beat them on his own, no matter what he believed. And Zoya would dose herself with parem before she followed him again.
“General!” A soldier was running toward her with a note in his hand. “I was asked to deliver this to you.”
Genya plucked it from his fingers.
“By whom?” said Zoya.
“A man in monk’s robes. He came ashore a little ways up the coast.”
“Were his robes brown or black?”
“Brown and bearing the Sun Summoner’s symbol.”
Genya’s eyes moved over the paper. “Oh, Saints.”
“Give it to me.”
“Zoya, you must keep your head.”
“What the hell does it say?” She snatched it from Genya’s hand.
The note was brief and in Ravkan: I have Mila Jandersdat. Come to the eastern observation tower aboard Leviathan’s Mouth. She will await you in the cells.
Zoya crushed the note in her hand. The Apparat had Nina.
“This is a trap,” said Genya. “Not a negotiation tactic. He wants you to do something rash. Zoya? Zoya, what are you doing?”
Zoya stalked back to the tent. “Something rash.”
“We have a strategy,” Genya argued, hurrying to follow. “It’s working. We need to stick to it. And Nikolai needs you to help guide our rockets.”
Zoya hesitated. She didn’t want to leave her king without the resources he needed. And damn it, she wanted to be beside him in this fight. Every time she thought of him lying on the floor of the Cormorant, his arm cushioning his head as he spoke those words, those absurd, beautiful words … No prince and no power could make me stop wanting you. The memory was like drinking something sweet and poisonous. Even knowing the misery it would cause her, she couldn’t stop craving the taste.
You should have said yes, she thought for the hundredth time. You should have told him you loved him. But what good was that word to people like her? Nikolai deserved more. Ravka required more. But for an hour, for a day, he might have been hers. And if something happened to him on that battlefield? She’d been too afraid to say yes to him, to show him the truth of her longing, to admit that from the first time she’d seen him, she’d known he was the hero of all her aunt’s stories, the boy with the golden spirit full of light and hope. All Saints, Zoya wanted to be near that light, she wanted to feel the warmth of it for as long as she could.
She shook her head and plunged into the tent, stripping off the First Army uniform she’d worn to disguise her identity. “There are other Squallers,” she said as she dug through her trunk for something less recognizable. “Adrik can guide the missiles. And I’ll be back in plenty of time. With Nina Zenik in tow.”
“She may not even be alive.”
Zoya nearly tore the roughspun shirt she’d drawn from her trunk. “She is not dead. I forbid it.”
Genya planted her hands on her hips. “Don’t flash those dragon eyes at me, Zoya. Nina isn’t a child. She’s a soldier and a spy and she wouldn’t want you to sacrifice yourself for her.”
“She’s alive.”
“And if she isn’t?”
“I’ll kill every living thing Fjerda can throw at me.”
“Zoya, stop this. Please. I don’t want to lose you too!”
At the break in Genya’s voice, Zoya froze. The sound scraped against her heart, the pain sudden and overwhelming. There were tears in Genya’s single amber eye.