The Heartrender, eyes focused on the drug he so desired, twisted his fingers in the air. Nina screamed, blood leaking from her eyes, her nose.
“Stop!” shouted Zoya.
The Apparat signaled the Heartrender, who whimpered softly but went still. The priest dabbed a bit of orange powder onto the Grisha’s tongue as reward.
Zoya watched the Heartrender’s eyes roll back into his head, watched the blood trickle from Nina’s nose.
“She’s like a sister to you, no? Maybe like a daughter?” The Apparat smiled gently, serenely. “Will you be the mother she deserves? The mother they all deserve?”
Zoya remembered her own mother marching her down the aisle of the cathedral to hand her to the rich old man who would be her groom. She remembered the priest standing behind him, ready to consecrate a sham marriage for the sake of a little coin. She remembered the Suli circling her on the cliff top. Daughter, they’d whispered. Daughter.
Zoya looked at the Heartrender, looked at the cells. How many of them were full? How many cells were there in military bases and secret laboratories? Whether she chose her king or her people, she would never be able to save them all. She could hear Genya’s voice, ringing in her ears: You push us away, keep us at arm’s distance so that you won’t mourn us. But you’ll mourn us anyway. That’s the way love works.
Understanding burned through her like fire from a dragon’s mouth, leaving her weightless as ash. She would never be able to save them all. But that didn’t mean she was Sabina leading her child to the slaughter.
Daughter. Why had that word frightened her so? She remembered Genya looping her arm through hers, Alina embracing her on the steps of the sanatorium. Nikolai drawing her close in the garden, the peace he’d granted her in that moment.
This is what love does. In the stories, love healed your wounds, fixed what was broken, allowed you to go on. But love wasn’t a spell, some kind of benediction to be whispered, a balm or a cure-all. It was a single, fragile thread, which grew stronger through connection, through shared hardship and honored trust. Zoya’s mother had been wrong. It wasn’t love that had ruined her, it was the death of it. She’d believed that love would do the work of living. She’d let the thread fray and snap.
This is what love does. An old echo, but it wasn’t Sabina she heard now. It was Liliyana’s voice as she stood fearless in the church, as she risked everything to fight for a child who wasn’t her own. This is what love does.
How long had Zoya feared being bound to others? How little had she trusted that thread of connection? That was why she’d shied away from the gifts the dragon offered. They demanded she open her heart to the world, and she’d turned away, afraid of what she might lose.
Daughter. We see you.
She had failed to keep David safe, but Genya hadn’t turned away from her. She’d failed to keep the Darkling from returning, but Alina hadn’t damned her for it. And Nikolai had offered her a kingdom, he’d offered her the love she’d been seeking the whole of her life, even if she’d been afraid to take it, even if she’d been too much of a coward to look him in the eye and admit that it wasn’t Ravka’s future she sought to preserve, but her own fragile, frightened heart.
Juris had known. Juris had seen it all. Open the door.
Love was on the other side and it was terrifying.
Open the door. The dragon had seen this very moment, this very room.
She turned her gaze on the Apparat. “How is it, through wars and kings and revolutions, you always manage to survive?”
The priest smiled. “That is a gift I can share with you. I understand men better than they understand themselves. I give the people what they need. Comfort, protection, wonder. You may live a thousand years, Zoya Nazyalensky, but my faith means I will live for eternity.”
Zoya’s eyes met Nina’s. “Eternity may be shorter than you think.”
She didn’t have to lift her hands to summon the current that suddenly crackled through the air. It ignited around the Apparat’s guards in sparks of blue fire. They shuddered and shook, burning from the inside, and collapsed.
“Nina!” Zoya shouted. In a flash the corpses of the guards were on their feet, commanded by Nina’s power. They seized the Apparat.
I’m sorry, she said to the nameless, faceless prisoners in their cells. I’m sorry I can’t save you. But I can avenge you. I can love you and let you go.
“Gas!” shouted the Apparat, his eyes wild.
Zoya heard the vents open, the whoosh of parem shooting toward them. She leapt, seizing Nina, feeling the strength of Juris and the dragon. The power of the lives they’d lived and the battles they’d fought flooded her muscles. She slammed through the wall with Nina in her arms, through stone and metal, and into the waiting sky.