The soldiers who remained around the king roared their response. “For all of us!”
The shadow creature that hovered above him shrieked and leapt into the sky. He’s commanding it, Mayu realized. It was the king’s demon.
Harbinger and Nightmoth launched themselves into the air. Maybe they were still human after all, or maybe they were just hungry for a fight.
“Mayu?” said Reyem.
He would run if she told him to. They could escape this place, go back home, back to their parents. Or they could try to save these people.
This is penance, she realized. Penance for Isaak, for the innocent boy who might have loved her and who would never return.
“Take their hearts,” she said to him.
“I will.”
He was gone, arcing upward on hinged wings, Harbinger and Nightmoth beside him. They joined the demon in the sky, locking into formation, an arrow aimed at the Fjerdan bombers. The king’s mortal body knelt on the tank, as if in prayer, all his attention focused on the attack.
“Form up!” shouted Tamar. “Protect the king.”
They surrounded the tank, watching as the demon and the khergud sped toward impact.
“We’re going to watch them die,” said Tolya.
“Everyone mourns the first blossom,” Mayu said softly. “Who will weep for the rest that fall?”
“I will remain to sing for you,” Tamar continued the poem.
Tolya placed a hand to his heart. “Long after the spring has gone.”
Only they knew what this moment, this loss would mean.
There were tears in Tolya’s eyes. “May the Saints watch over you, Nikolai,” he said. “You die a king.”
Mayu watched the distance to impact narrow—two hundred yards, one hundred yards. She would not let herself look away. “Goodbye, brother,” she whispered.
A roar split the air. A massive shape tore across the field, between the khergud and the Fjerdan bombers, sending them scattering. Silver lightning crackled through the sky.
“What the—” Tamar began. But the words died on her tongue.
They all stared at the sky and Mayu opened her mouth to scream.
She was looking at a dragon.
41
NINA
“PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE DON’T DROP ME!”
If Zoya had the power of speech, she wasn’t using it.
Because she was a dragon.
A dragon.
One minute Nina had the scent of parem in her nostrils, and the next she was knocked backward with Zoya’s arms around her, smashing through the tower wall as if it were straw. They were falling, the air rushing past them. Nina squeezed her eyes shut, knowing her body would break when they struck the water, as surely as if they’d struck stone. And then—the fall became flight.
She’d heard a voice in her head say … something. Open the door.
Zoya’s body seemed to shift around her and Nina screamed, certain that at any moment she’d be plummeting toward the sea again. Her hands scrabbled for anything to cling to—and grabbed hold of gleaming black scales.
What had happened to the Apparat and his monks? How was she going to get back to Hanne? She couldn’t hold a thought in her head for more than a moment. All logic and sense dissolved in a fizzing mix of fear and elation. She was flying. She was flying on a dragon’s back.
They sped over the waves, and Nina saw the dragon’s shape reflected in glimpses on the water. It was huge, its wings wide and graceful. Salt spray stung her cheeks.
“Where are you going?” Nina managed to gasp. “Where are you taking me?”
But the answer quickly became clear—inland to the front.
Nina smelled the battle before she saw it. Smoke from bombs and artillery lay over the field in a thick haze. She heard the buzz of flyers, the rumble of engines.
A squadron of what looked like Fjerdan bombers circled the field, then came together in a V formation, a sky-borne spear of gray metal and destruction. She saw something moving through the air toward the enemy craft—small, winged shapes. One of them looked different, like shredded shadow. Khergud. Shu soldiers engineered to hunt and capture Grisha. So why were they throwing themselves into the path of Fjerdan flyers?
And why was the dragon speeding directly toward them?
“Zoya?” she said. “Zoya, what are you—”
Nina flattened herself against Zoya’s back as they hurtled into the fray. She saw the khergud scatter, breaking their ranks. She heard the rattle of the Fjerdan guns. A bullet skimmed her thigh and she cried out, but the gunfire seemed to have no effect on Zoya—or whatever Zoya had become.
The dragon shot skyward, whirled in the air, and dove back toward the bombers. Nina felt her stomach lurch. Zoya was going to kill her if she vomited.
The dragon opened her jaws, and it was as if the storm had been brewing in her belly. Silver lightning spewed from somewhere deep inside her. It crackled through the air, snaring the flyers in current. They burst into flame, dropping from the sky like crumpled insects. Nina smelled something sweet, almost chemical—ozone.
She clung to the dragon’s back, the scales pricking her skin, the ground impossibly far below. She could see their shadow on the battlefield, soaring over the ranks of Ravkans and Fjerdans, who looked up in terror.
Nina had the sudden thought that none of this was real, that when that poor, drugged Heartrender had begun torturing her, she’d simply passed out from the pain, her mind splintering and creating this wild scenario to hide in. It seemed more plausible than that her friend and mentor had become a creature from a storybook.
The dragon laid down a trail of silver lightning, creating a wall of fire, and as they banked east, Nina understood why. She’d cut off the Fjerdan retreat. Their forces were wedged between a wall of silver flame and Ravka’s soldiers.
The Fjerdan tanks turned their mighty guns on the dragon and Nina gasped as Zoya banked hard to the right, dodging their shells. Again she unleashed her lightning, the current sparking on Fjerda’s war machines, melting their gun barrels and sending men diving for safety.
The dragon’s vast wings beat the air. A roar thundered through her scaled body, and Nina felt it shudder through her too. She could see the corpses of fallen soldiers, Grisha with their gas masks on. She saw the Cult of the Starless Saint in their tunics emblazoned with the sun in eclipse. And there, not far from the king’s forces, a line of black uniforms, a mass of drüskelle with their whips and guns raised, moving toward King Nikolai.
She didn’t see Brum among them. Had he known Fjerda planned to bomb the battlefield with their own soldiers still in play? Maybe he’d given the order himself.
Nina kept her body pressed against Zoya’s neck. She didn’t know if she could be recognized from this distance, but she was taking no chances.
“Open fire!” the drüskelle commander shouted. But they stood dazed, petrified, heads tilted to the sky, mouths wide open.
Nina felt a rush of power. She had spent so many months frightened and unsure, wondering what would become of her country, scraping by on hope, not knowing if she and Hanne would find a way to survive. All Saints, it felt good to be the strong one, to be unafraid at last. With a mighty breath, a single exhalation of lightning, Zoya could destroy them—hundreds of Fjerdan troops and the witchhunter monsters Brum had trained. It would be done. What soldier would dare to march against Ravka, against the Grisha, again?