There could be no better leader.
You may be prickly, but that’s what Ravka needs.
So many easy replies.
Instead he said, “As my queen.”
He couldn’t read her expression. Was she pleased? Embarrassed? Angry? Every cell in his body screamed for him to crack a joke, to free both of them from the peril of this moment. But he wouldn’t. He was still a privateer, and he’d come too far.
“Because I’m a dependable soldier,” she said, but she didn’t sound sure. It was that same cautious, tentative voice, the voice of someone waiting for a punch line, or maybe a blow. “Because I know all your secrets.”
“I do trust you more than myself sometimes—and I think very highly of myself.”
Hadn’t she said there was no one else she’d choose to have her back in a fight?
But that isn’t the whole truth, is it, you great cowardly lump. To hell with it. They might all die soon enough. They were safe here in the dark, surrounded by the hum of the engines.
“I would make you my queen because I want you. I want you all the time.”
She rolled onto her side, resting her head on her folded arm. A small movement, but he could feel her breath now. His heart was racing. “As your general, I should tell you that would be a terrible decision.”
He turned onto his side. They were facing each other now. “As your king, I should tell you that no one could dissuade me. No prince and no power could make me stop wanting you.”
Nikolai felt drunk. Maybe unleashing the demon had loosed something in his brain. She was going to laugh at him. She would knock him senseless and tell him he had no right. But he couldn’t seem to stop.
“I would give you a crown if I could,” he said. “I would show you the world from the prow of a ship. I would choose you, Zoya. As my general, as my friend, as my bride. I would give you a sapphire the size of an acorn.” He reached into his pocket. “And all I would ask in return is that you wear this damnable ribbon in your hair on our wedding day.”
She reached out, her fingers hovering over the coil of blue velvet ribbon resting in his palm.
Then she pulled back her hand, cradling her fingers as if they’d been singed.
“You will wed a Taban sister who craves a crown,” she said. “Or a wealthy Kerch girl, or maybe a Fjerdan royal. You will have heirs and a future. I’m not the queen Ravka needs.”
“And if you’re the queen I want?”
She shut her eyes. “There’s a story my aunt told me a very long time ago. I can’t remember all of it, but I remember the way she described the hero: ‘He had a golden spirit.’ I loved those words. I made her read them again and again. When I was a little girl, I thought I had a golden spirit too, that it would light everything it touched, that it would make me beloved like a hero in a story.” She sat up, drew her knees in, wrapped her arms around them as if she could make a shelter of her own body. He wanted to pull her back down beside him and press his mouth to hers. He wanted her to look at him again with possibility in her eyes. “But that’s not who I am. Whatever is inside me is sharp and gray as the thorn wood.” She rose and dusted off her kefta. “I wasn’t born to be a bride. I was made to be a weapon.”
Nikolai forced himself to smile. It wasn’t as if he’d offered her a real proposal. They both knew such a thing was impossible. And yet her refusal smarted just as badly as if he’d gotten on his knee and offered her his hand like some kind of besotted fool. It stung. All Saints, it stung.
“Well,” he said cheerfully, pushing up onto his elbows and looking up at her with all the wry humor he could muster. “Weapons are good to have around too. Far more useful than brides and less likely to mope about the palace. But if you won’t rule Ravka by my side, what does the future hold, General?”
Zoya opened the door to the cargo hold. Light flooded in, gilding her features when she looked back at him. “I’ll fight on beside you. As your general. As your friend. Because whatever my failings, I know this: You are the king Ravka needs.”
32
MAYU
THEY COULDN’T RETURN TO the palace. Not without creating upheaval that no one wanted.
Well, that almost no one wanted.
“Bring us all to Ahmrat Jen,” Bergin demanded, gesturing to the other sickly Grisha prisoners. They had been treated with antidote, but they were weak and there was no telling what permanent damage had been done to their bodies.
Mayu leaned against the wall by the control panel Reyem had smashed. Her brother stood at attention, perfectly still. Too still. It was as if he were as mechanical as the wings on his back, a clockwork soldier who needed no rest. What did he need? Who was he now?
Outside, Ehri and her grandmother conversed beneath the night sky. Makhi had been taken to Leyti’s coach, where she was being guarded by the Tavgharad, who no longer served her, because she was no longer queen.
Bergin took a sip of water. The tremors had left his body, and though he still looked frail, his gaze was bright with anger. “Take us to the capital and let them see what Queen Makhi calls science.”
Mayu thought Tamar would speak up to agree with Bergin, but she only shook her head.
“Look around you,” she said, her hands resting on the Grisha captive’s bony wrist, monitoring his pulse. “This is one laboratory. Our intelligence suggests there are more. I know there’s one near Kobu, but we need the other locations.”
“The doctor can give them to us,” said Bergin.
“That isn’t the only issue.”
“Then what is? I’ve spent nearly three months here in a state of delirium, being dosed with parem and forced to do the unspeakable. The only thing that kept me human was Reyem.”
Their eyes met, and Mayu sensed the strength of the bond between them.
But Reyem looked down. “I don’t know if I’m human anymore.”
Mayu wasn’t sure either. It wasn’t just the wings and the monstrous pincers, but some spark in him had been extinguished. Or maybe replaced with a different kind of fire. Who are you now, Reyem? What are you?
“You spoke Fjerdan and he came back to himself,” Mayu said to Bergin. “How did you do it?”
“I didn’t know I could,” he admitted. “The work of conversion is grueling. It was painful for both of us.”
Reyem’s big shoulders shrugged. “I hated you, just as I hated the doctors and the guards. Until I saw that you were suffering too.”
Bergin rested his head against the metal frame of the bunk. “Most times, there was just the pain and the work. They made me…” He hung his head. “I’m sorry, Reyem.”
A silence fell, weighted with the horrors Bergin and her brother had seen.
Mayu touched her good hand to her twin’s, and he took it gently in his. Tamar and Bergin had done what they could for her other hand, and the pain had receded to a low throb.
Quietly, she said, “You told the queen you died a thousand times.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “To have your heart stopped in your chest, your flesh torn from your bones, to fall into oblivion, then wake to nightmare again and again and again. All for the sake of being reborn as a weapon.”