“Open fire!” he shouted. “Take out the drugged Grisha! Take out the bells!”
But it was too late. The Fjerdan soldiers lifted huge mallets and struck the dishes. A strange thrum filled the air. The drugged Squallers arced their arms and people began to scream.
The sound was overwhelming. Nikolai clapped his hands to his ears and all over the field he saw soldiers doing the same, dropping their weapons, collapsing to their knees. It was like nothing he’d ever heard before, rattling his mind, his bones, filling his skull. It was impossible to think.
The Fjerdan troops, protected by those strange helmets, surged forward, opening fire, picking off helpless Ravkan soldiers and Grisha. The helmets had been created to protect them from this horrifying, paralyzing sound.
Blood leaked from Tolya’s ears. Nikolai felt wetness on his neck and realized the same thing must be happening to him. The vibration felt like it was pulling him apart. Ravka’s missiles seemed like toys.
He’d thought he could give his country a fighting chance. He’d thought that despite their numbers and their resources, he could think his way out of this for his people. Hopeless, foolish pride. This was how it would all end. With Ravka brought to its knees.
At least he’d fought to the end as their king.
But maybe Ravka didn’t need a king. Or even an adventurer.
Maybe his country needed a monster.
He had one last gambit left, a final trick for the fox to play, a bit of hope dressed in shadow—his demon. But once the troops saw what he was, once his enemies knew the truth, the crown would be forever out of his grasp. So be it.
Go, he commanded. Stop them. Help keep my country free.
The demon hesitated. The thing inside him was him, and it knew what freedom meant this time. There would be no secrets anymore.
Good. Let Vadik Demidov have the throne. Ravka would survive.
With a roar, the demon launched itself from his body.
He was soaring over the battlefield, straight toward those horrible bells. He saw soldiers look up, faces cast in horror at the sight of the demon. They pointed and screamed, eyes wide with terror.
But the sound from the bells was too much. The vibration moved through his shadow body, fracturing it, dragging it apart. He fought to pull himself back together, but the closer he got to the Fjerdans, the harder it became. His wings, his body, unspooled around him.
Another mistake. It would be his last. The demon was going to shatter and Nikolai knew he would die with it.
Ravka would fall. After thousands of years of Lantsov kings. His people, his country, the Grisha. All lost.
Pain tore through Nikolai. The demon was breaking, flying apart. On his knees in the dirt, his mortal body screamed at the sky overhead. This was all that was left. His last chance to fight for his country before he fell into darkness forever.
He gritted his teeth, felt fangs in his mouth.
We die together.
The demon shrieked its response, full of pain, and anger, and iron will. They hurtled toward the bells.
38
THE MONK
SO THE BOY WAS GOING TO DIE. Maybe they were all going to die.
If his skull hadn’t been ringing like a church bell, Aleksander might have laughed. Instead he knelt on the ground with the rest of the Starless, hands clamped to his ears, trying to find a way out of this. The spectacles he’d used as a prop had fallen from his face and lay broken in the dirt. Wait for a sign, he’d told them. The Starless One will show us the way.
He’d intended to conjure a great blot of shadow, block out the sun, fill them with awe.
There would be no sign. He hadn’t anticipated a weapon like this one.
Again, he tried to summon his nichevo’ya, but they couldn’t take shape. Fjerda’s drugged Squallers were amplifying the vibrations from those bells in some way, preventing his shadows from finding their form.
He couldn’t hear the screams of the Starless around him, but he could see their mouths open and wailing, their eyes wide with misery and confusion. On the Fjerdan line, he saw the emaciated Squallers forced into Fjerda’s service, their bodies frail and trembling, their faces hollow and haunted. This was parem. He’d never seen its effects before, hadn’t understood what it could do to his people. Grisha weaponized against Grisha. Fjerda had at last realized their dream of domination. And they just might realize their dream of conquest too.
He had to get out of this place and away from that sound.
Aleksander lurched to his feet, stumbling through the ranks of the Starless, all of them too lost to pain to pay him any mind.
Then he felt it, like a hook in his gut. He turned and saw the young king’s demon racing through the skies, that embodiment of his own power Aleksander had last glimpsed during the obisbaya, when he’d sought to claim the demon for himself.
The boy had set it free. It would cost him the throne. It would cost him everything. Why? So he could die heroically for a country that would turn its back on him? Would the boy never learn?
Sacrifice. The whisper of Yuri’s voice, full of reverence.
He is a fool. Your reverence belongs to me.
What good would this grand gesture do the king? Aleksander could feel the demon breaking apart just as his nichevo’ya had. It was stronger than they were, maybe because it had emerged whole from Nikolai instead of being pieced together from the shadows around them, maybe because it was linked to the king’s consciousness. Even so, it would be no match for the bells.
But it might be. With your help.
Of course, Yuri would like nothing better than for Aleksander to sacrifice himself to this cause. They followed you. They believed in you.
Aleksander needed to run. He would save himself as he always had, regroup and make another plan. The Fjerdans were plowing their way through the Ravkan ranks, and once they reached the Starless, Aleksander would be as good as helpless. He had to get out of here. He had eternity to launch a new strategy, to retake Ravka from the Fjerdans, to build his following and forge a new path to victory. He’d fought too hard to return to this life to endanger it now.
Yet he couldn’t deny what would happen to the Grisha if the Fjerdans won the day. And there would be no miracle, no grand resurrection for him, if there was no one there to see it.
Perhaps it wasn’t too late to salvage this moment. Aleksander planted his feet and opened his hands, calling out to the shadows. This time he didn’t attempt to form them into soldiers. Instead he sent them skittering over the field, fragile tendrils of darkness, blindly seeking the power they recognized. Like calls to like.
He released a shout as the shadows met the demon. They clung to its form.
More. Aleksander’s body shook as he fought to keep his sanity, that deafening, maddening vibration traveling through his skull. His threads of shadow wrapped around the demon’s body, giving strength to its limbs, banding together and binding its form.
The creature shrieked. Aleksander felt the demon’s mind, Nikolai’s mind.
The monster is me …
The ghost of a thought.
The demon’s wings beat against the winter sky and it hurtled toward the bells. It slammed into one, then another, sending them crashing to the ground in a heap of metal and glass. A soldier tried to fire on the creature, but it tore the helmet from his head and slashed its claws across the soldier’s face, silencing him, hot blood like a balm.