“What if the winter is just too long and hard? What if it can’t bloom again?”
He was afraid to reach for her, but he did it anyway. He took her gloved hand in his. She didn’t pull away but folded into him like a flower closing its petals at nightfall. He wrapped his arm around her. Zoya seemed to hesitate, and then with a soft breath, she let herself lean against him. Zoya the deadly. Zoya the ferocious. The weight of her against him felt like a benediction. He had been strong for his country, his soldiers, his friends. It meant something different to be strong for her.
“Then you’ll be branches without blossoms,” he whispered against her hair. “And you let the rest of us be strong until the summer comes.”
“It wasn’t a metaphor.”
“Of course it wasn’t.”
He wished they could stand there forever in the silence of the snow, that the peace of this place could protect them.
She wiped her eyes and he realized she was crying.
“If you had told me three years ago that I would shed tears over David Kostyk, I would have laughed at you.”
Nikolai smiled. “You would have hit me with your shoe.”
“He and I … we had nothing in common. Our decision to side with Alina was what bound us—the choice to fight beside her when we knew the odds were in the Darkling’s favor. He had the more experienced fighters, years of understanding and planning.”
“But we won.”
“We did,” she said. “For a while.”
“So how did you do it? How did we do it?”
“Honestly? I don’t know. Maybe it was a miracle. Maybe Alina really is a Saint.”
“Grief has made you delirious. But if we got lucky with one miracle, maybe we’ll get lucky again.”
They left the garden and walked back through the woods. On the path, they parted as they always did—she to the Grisha, and he to the Grand Palace. He wanted to call her back. He wanted to follow her through the snow. But his country didn’t need a heartsick boy chasing after a lonely girl. It needed a king.
“And a king they will have,” he said to no one at all, and strode back to the dark rooms of the palace.
24
MAYU
AFTER QUEEN MAKHI HAD CLAIMED she would think on revealing the laboratories—the laboratories she still wouldn’t admit existed—Tamar and Mayu had escorted Ehri to her chambers in the wing of the palace known as the Nest. They were the rooms that Ehri had grown up in, where all Taban children were raised. The boys were educated and trained alongside the girls before they were old enough to choose a professional path—medicine, religion, the military. The girls were all considered possible heirs, though the eldest daughters were often favored.
Tamar and Mayu alternated shifts watching over Ehri. They didn’t think Makhi would act against the princess, not with so much suspicion hanging over her, but they weren’t taking any chances. Tamar had warned Ministers Nagh and Zihun to strengthen their household security as well.
Three days after they arrived, two of Ehri’s sisters came to visit in a cloud of silk and perfume. Kheru with her coffee-colored eyes, always with a piece of needlework in her hands, and Yenye with the white streak in her hair and her sharp gaze. Jhem was missing, in mourning for her daughter Akeni, lost to the blight. Tamar had slipped into the neighboring room to eavesdrop but remained at the ready in case of trouble.
Mayu didn’t know the princesses well. She’d been assigned to Ehri’s household, and the sisters had their own Tavgharad to guard them. They were bright and loud, each striking in her own way. They looked like jewels in their dark winter silks—emerald, amethyst, sapphire. Ehri looked like a flower from a different garden, short and pale-petaled in a mint gown and a necklace of green agate, silver combs tucked into her hair.
The sisters asked Ehri for stories of Ravka, brought gifts of flowers and fruit to welcome her home, talked of their own marriage prospects and Makhi’s consorts. Both Kheru and Yenye were soon to marry, and once they did, they would no longer be possible heirs for the Taban throne.
“Kheru has delayed her wedding date,” said Yenye, working her needle through a pattern of violets.
“Only because I’m trying to find the right peach silk for my gown.”
Yenye lifted a brow and ran her hand through the white streak in her hair. “It’s because Makhi’s presumed heir died in that horrible blight.”
Princess Ehri gasped. “She was only eight years old.”
Yenye touched her hand to her hair again. “I … I didn’t mean to be callous. I only meant…”