A sudden sound made her go still. She waited.
It came again—a low moan. Oh Saints, what now? Was a drüskelle dozing in the room next door? Or was something worse waiting? Had Brum brought Grisha here to torture and interrogate?
She yanked out the tube and returned the whole contraption to her pocket. Time to get out of here.
She should run down the stairs, back to the courtyard, back to Hanne. But hadn’t Hanne said it was her job to get carried away?
Nina drew a bone dart into her hand, feeling it vibrate there, waiting only for her command to find a target. Slowly, she opened the door.
It was a cell. Not one of the new modern enclosures built to contain and control Grisha, but a cell for an ordinary man. Except the man gripping the iron bars didn’t look ordinary. He looked like King Nikolai.
His hair was golden, though streaked with gray, his beard unkempt. His fine clothes were rumpled and stained. He’d been gagged and chained to the cell bars to give him a limited range of movement. There was nothing in the tiny cell but a cot and a chamber pot.
Nina stared at him, and the man looked back at her with frantic eyes. She knew who this was.
“Magnus Opjer?” she whispered.
He gave a single nod. Magnus Opjer. The Fjerdan shipping magnate who was supposedly Nikolai’s true father. Jarl Brum had him locked away in a cell. Did Prince Rasmus know? Did anyone but the drüskelle know?
She pulled the gag from the prisoner’s mouth.
“Please,” Opjer said, his voice ragged. “Please help me.”
Nina’s mind was whirring. “Why are they keeping you here?”
“They kidnapped me from my home. I’m their insurance. They need me to authenticate the letters.”
The letters from Queen Tatiana throwing King Nikolai’s parentage into doubt.
“But why would they keep you prisoner?”
“Because I wouldn’t speak publicly against my son or Tatiana. I wouldn’t vouch for the letters. Please, whoever you are, you must free me!”
My son. So Nikolai Lantsov really was a bastard. Nina Zenik realized she didn’t care.
The Elderclock chimed the half hour. She had to get out of here. But how was she supposed to take Magnus Opjer with her? She had nowhere to hide him, no plan to get a fugitive out of the Ice Court.
You could kill him. The thought came to her with cold clarity. There was no mistaking Opjer’s resemblance to Nikolai. This was the true father of the Ravkan king. And that meant he was a threat to her country’s future. She needed to think.
“I have no way to get you out.”
Opjer clenched the bars. “Who are you? Why have you come here if not to rescue me?”
Yet another reason to kill him. He had seen her. He could tell the drüskelle, could easily describe her. He grabbed her sleeve with his bony fingers. They hadn’t been feeding him well.
“Please,” he begged. “I never meant to hurt my son. I would never speak against him.”
Nina knew he was desperate, but his words had the ring of truth. “I believe you. And I’m going to help you get out of here. But you need to give me time to plan.”
“There isn’t time, they—”
“I’ll return as soon as I can. I promise.”
“No,” he said, and it was not the refusal of a weakened prisoner. It was a word of command. In it she heard the echo of a king. “You don’t understand. I must get a message to—”
Nina yanked his gag back into place. She needed to get to the courtyard. “I’ll return,” she vowed.
Opjer seized the bars, grunting as he attempted to shout around his gag.
She closed the door and hurried down the hall, trying not to think of the terror in his eyes.
17
ZOYA
“SOLDIERS!” ZOYA SHOUTED into the darkness.
“Where is he?” Misha cried.
Zoya heard footsteps, the door opening. She whirled and saw the Darkling silhouetted in the day’s sunlight, the snowy hill behind him, the Sun Soldiers running toward him.
She threw her hands forward, unleashing a gust of wind that knocked him down the stairs. The Sun Soldiers blasted him with light, but he was already on his feet, darkness surging from his body like water overflowing a dam.
Zoya summoned the storm, the clouds rolling in on a crash of thunder. Lightning spiked through the sky, bright daggers in her hands. But the bolts never reached the Darkling.
In a shower of sparks, the lightning broke against two writhing heaps of shadow—the nichevo’ya, shadow soldiers summoned from nothing in violation of all the rules of Grisha power. Merzost. Abomination.