She excused herself and hurried through one of the palace’s many passages to Nikolai’s chambers—her chambers, damn it. Genya and Alina were waiting in the sitting room, both of them seated by an open window, the cool air a blessing after the heat of the ballroom.
“Well,” said Alina, setting down her glass of kvas as Zoya closed the door. “It does look good on you.”
“Was there ever any doubt?”
Genya laughed. “I told you she’s the same Zoya.”
“You looked so serene up there,” Alina protested.
“All an act,” said Zoya. “Mostly I was hoping I wouldn’t faint. This dress weighs more than I do.”
“Beauty isn’t supposed to be easy,” Genya said with little sympathy.
Alina nodded. “The real question is how you’re going to outdo this gown for the royal wedding.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Zoya said. “Nikolai hasn’t asked.”
“Can you blame him?” Genya said. “He hasn’t had much luck with proposals.”
Alina snorted. “Maybe he should have offered me a dynasty and not a piddly little emerald.”
“Poor boy,” said Zoya. “But I do intend to dangle the possibility of my hand in marriage in front of every eligible politician, merchant, and minor aristocrat while we forge our new trade agreements and treaties.”
Genya rolled her eye. “Very romantic.”
“I can’t just stop being a general,” said Zoya. “It’s good strategy.” Her romance with Nikolai would never be bouquets of flowers and pretty declarations of love. It lived in the quiet they’d found in each other, in the hours of peace they were stringing together one by one.
“But you will get married,” Genya insisted.
“I can’t help but notice,” Alina said. “The too-clever fox gave up his throne, but still managed to stay a king.”
“A prince,” Genya corrected. “Prince consort. Or is he your general?”
Zoya didn’t really care what title he took. He was hers, and that was all that mattered. Her eye caught on the blueprints she’d found waiting for her on her desk that morning, designs for an extraordinary structure Nikolai had designed to protect her garden. The plans had been bound with her blue velvet ribbon and accompanied by a note that read, I will always seek to make it summer for you. Zoya had been courted by men of wealth and power, offered jewels, palaces, the deed to a diamond mine. This was a different kind of treasure, one she could not believe she’d been lucky enough to find.
She turned back to Genya and Alina, and leaned against her desk. She wanted to sit and rest her feet, but she was too nervous about what she had to say. “You know what we did in the mountains.”
“Yes,” said Alina. “You saved the world and doomed Ravka’s most deadly enemy to an eternity of torture.”
“Very efficient questing,” said Genya.
Zoya tapped her fingers against the desk. “I’ve … I’ve been having nightmares, about the monastery, the thorn wood.” When she had touched the ancient tree, she had felt the Darkling’s pain. The dragon hadn’t let her forget it.
“What happens in the dreams?” Alina asked.
“I become him.”
Genya worried her lip. “You’re being tortured?”
“Worse than that … I have everything he wanted. The crown. The power. I’m a conqueror of cities, an empress, a killer.” In her dreams, she stood on the prow of a ship with a beautiful city before her. She raised her hands and the Fold rushed forward in a black tide, drowning Novokribirsk. She woke each night bathed in sweat, hearing her aunt’s screams. “I’m not certain we can just leave him there.”
Genya crossed her arms. “No?”
“Not if we want to rule justly. Not if the future is meant to be better than the past.”
“Do you have a fever?” Genya asked.
But Alina’s expression was knowing. “You’re afraid you’ll become him. You’re afraid you’ll be the avalanche.”
Immortal and unstoppable, another tragedy to befall Ravka.
“What are we meant to do?” Genya said. “Free him? Forgive him?”
“Grant him death,” said Zoya.
Genya stood and walked to the mantel. “Does he deserve it?”
“That’s not my choice to make,” said Zoya. “Not on my own.”
Alina rested her head on the back of the couch. “Why are we even discussing this? From what I understand, the Darkling knew the bargain he made. He stands at the doorway between worlds. If he dies, the Fold ruptures again and the void comes pouring through.”
“Yes,” said Zoya. “But the monk told me that a heart as strong as his could free him.” She’d spoken Liliyana’s words. She’d wanted Zoya to listen.
Genya looked aghast. “Someone to take his place? Unless you’re volunteering Jarl Brum—”
“No, I think it was a riddle. Not someone, something. The first heart to be pierced by the thorn wood. The heart of Sankt Feliks.”
“You’re talking about a relic.” Alina sounded skeptical. “As someone whose finger bones are on sale in villages right now, let me tell you, they’re all fake.”
“She’s right,” said Genya. “If Sankt Feliks really existed and his heart was somehow preserved, no one knows where it is.”
“True,” said Zoya. “And whoever has it won’t be eager to part with an object of so much power.”
Genya made a kind of humming noise. “So, if we decide he deserves the mercy of death, where does that leave us?”
Zoya touched her fingers to the little wire ship on her desk. “A priceless object, impossible to find, no doubt under lock and key, and most certainly in need of stealing? I know a thief who might be up to the task.”
Genya groaned. “You can’t be serious. You can’t stand the man!”
“Because he’s insufferably rude and utterly without morals. But he has his uses.”
“You think he’ll do it?” asked Genya.
“For the right reward.”
There was a long silence in the room. At last Genya reached for Alina’s glass and took a long sip. “I don’t believe the Darkling has earned forgiveness. I don’t know how many years of pain buys that, or when we become the monsters and he becomes the victim. But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life doing that math. If there’s really a way to accomplish it, let’s be rid of this burden once and for all.”
“All right,” said Alina.
Before she could talk herself out of it, Zoya rang for a servant to fetch Nikolai.
“Has a decision been reached?” he asked. “I can’t decide if you all look ruthless or beneficent. Maybe just hungry.”
“Is Captain Ghafa still here?”
“I believe she left an hour ago in the company of Prince Rasmus and his betrothed.”
“Perhaps that’s a sign,” Zoya ventured.
“Zoya,” Alina said warningly. “We did agree.”
“Oh, all right,” Zoya said. “I need Sturmhond to take a message to Ketterdam for me.”