The great tree’s bark began to move and shift. They’re Fabrikators, Nikolai realized, watching the monks concentrate. All of them.
“I do not repent!” said the Darkling.
One of the branches of the thorn wood began to twist, writhing like a snake, a single spike protruding from its tip. Zoya took Nikolai’s hand. Now they were all joined together: Nikolai, Zoya, and Genya.
The thorn-wood bough moved back and forth, back and forth, a serpent staring down its prey.
“All I did, I did for Ravka,” shouted the Darkling. “And now, I do this too. For Ravka!”
The bough struck in a sudden, sinuous lunge.
The thorn pierced the Darkling’s chest and he screamed, his head thrown back, the sound pure, human, and terrible. Nikolai gripped Zoya’s hand as the demon inside him screamed too, the pain like a brand, a fire in his heart.
The thorn-wood tree drew the Darkling closer, its branches wrapping around him, lifting his helpless body, a mother cradling her son, calling him home. The massive trunk parted, and the thorn wood pulled him into the dark.
The tree closed around him, silencing his scream. Its branches stilled. The monks stood silent. Nikolai pressed his hand to his heart. The pain was gone; the demon lay quiet.
Faintly, in the pattern of the bark, Nikolai could see the shape of a hand—the Darkling’s hand, pressing at the bars of his prison for eternity.
One by one the Sun Soldiers knelt.
Zoya walked slowly to the tree, her footsteps quiet in the snow. She rested her hand against the mark the Darkling had made and bowed her head.
“I didn’t really think he’d do it.”
“He stands at the doorway between worlds,” said the monk. “Look with your dragon’s eye. What do you see?”
Zoya shut her eyes, lifted her face to the sky. “The Fold … the Fold is blooming.”
“Tell us,” said Genya.
“Green grasses. An orchard in blossom. Quince trees. Their boughs are full of white flowers. They look like sea-foam.”
“The blight is over,” said the monk. “Do you see him too?”
Zoya hissed in a breath. “His pain…” She shuddered and withdrew her hand, touching it to her chest as if she felt the thorn in her own heart.
The monk nodded slowly. “You will have to decide what you can and can’t forgive, eld ren.”
Zoya looked at her. “And if I could?”
“Some hearts beat stronger than others,” said the monk, and Zoya seemed to startle at the words. “Only a heart as strong as his could free him from his suffering and give him the release of death.”
* * *
They thanked the monks, but there was no offer of hospitality, and Nikolai had no desire to stay in this place any longer. Whatever the Darkling had been, this clearing had become a place of mourning.
Without a word, they made their way beneath the arched entry and through the crack in the rock. Spring would come soon. The world would be made green and new. But for now, all was ice and wind and gray stone, as if the land wore a veil and spoke only words of loss. Nikolai couldn’t feel sorrow for the man the Darkling had become, but he could regret the loss of someone who had begun with so much promise, so much belief in what might be accomplished if only he was clever enough, strong enough, brave enough to risk it all. Who might he have been if the world had been kinder? If Ravka had been better to its people all along?
The past lay shattered and bleak, torn by trenches, thick with mines. But the future was rolling hills and untouched forest, an open sea, a fair-weather sky.
Nikolai followed his queen through the mountains and knew hope would lead them home.
49
ZOYA
THE MORNING OF ZOYA’S CORONATION, Genya sent the servants away and insisted on doing Zoya’s hair herself. Zoya felt strange letting her friend wait on her, but she was grateful for her presence and for her skills.
“You haven’t been sleeping,” Genya said, tailoring away the dark circles beneath Zoya’s eyes.
“Nothing new.”
But that wasn’t entirely true. Her responsibilities weighed heavy on her, but in the weeks since their journey to the mountains, she’d been troubled by new nightmares.
She and Genya took their time over breakfast, looking out at the palace gardens, watching the mist burn away in the morning sun. They’d propped their feet on the windowsill, their plates in their laps.
“I don’t mind the view,” Zoya said, reaching for another blini.
Genya wriggled her toes. “The Little Palace is short on windows. Secrecy over scenery.”
Nikolai had insisted that Zoya take his chambers.
“They belong to Ravka’s ruler,” he’d told her. “Go on, it’s an opportunity to complain about my horrible taste.”
Zoya did hate the rooms, but not because of the way they were decorated. She simply missed her chambers in the Little Palace. Everything was so new, she couldn’t help but long for the familiar. But on the day she’d moved in, she’d found a little wire ship on her desk, small enough to fit in the palm of her hand. From its mast flew a tiny flag emblazoned with two stars. She was glad to have a reminder of Nikolai and of Liliyana with her always.
Genya helped her dress in a gown of darkest blue velvet, the skirt and bodice embroidered with silver thread in a pattern of dragon scales. It was reminiscent of a kefta, but no kefta like this had ever been seen.
“It’s perfection,” Zoya said. She’d entrusted Genya with its design. “Thank you.”
“Oh, we’re not done yet.”
Genya vanished into the dressing room and emerged with what looked like a mile of spangled silver lace.
Zoya lifted it in her hands. It was nearly weightless and glinted like captured lightning. “Did you actually skin a dragon?”
“Didn’t have to,” said Genya, attaching the cape to the shoulders of Zoya’s gown. “I told him it was for the queen of Ravka and he shrugged right out of it.”
“You’re absurd.”
“I’m delightful.”
“The train is too long.”
“Someone once told me the chapel demands spectacle.” Her tone was all mirth, but Zoya could see Genya’s sad smile in the mirror.
She snagged her friend’s hand. “I wish he could be here with us.”
Genya brushed a tear from her cheek and they stood together, as they had in the mountains. “David would have hated every minute of this. But I wish it too.”
* * *
The chapel would never be a place of celebration for Zoya. She had seen Nikolai crowned in this room, but she had also stood beside Alina here, behind this very altar on the night the Darkling had laid waste to the Little Palace and murdered half the people Zoya had ever known. They had gone underground that night, but it had been years before Zoya had really let herself emerge into the light. The wounds had been too deep, the fear too profound. She hadn’t believed she could ever feel safe again.
And now? She let Vadik Demidov, the last of the Lantsovs, who had been granted a glorious estate and a considerable amount of treasure—most of it courtesy of Count Kirigin—settle Sankt Grigori’s bear skin around her shoulders. She listened to Vladim Ozwal, the priest who would serve as her Apparat, preach the words of the old Saints and the new. Work had begun on a small chapel in the lush quince grove that had once been the Fold, and it was said that little altars to the Starless One had already begun to spring up in the places where the blight had struck, but that were now blooming. Zoya wasn’t sure that she could make peace with the Darkling as a Saint, but she had tried to fulfill her vow.