What do you believe? Zoya didn’t know. She believed in Ravka, in her king, in the chance that she could be a part of something better than herself. But maybe she didn’t deserve that.
All eyes had turned to Genya now. She was David’s wife, his friend, his compatriot. She was expected to speak.
Genya stood straighter, lifted her chin. “I loved him,” she said, her body still trembling as if it had been torn apart and hastily stitched back together. “I loved him and he loved me. When I was … when no one could reach me … he saw me. He…” Genya turned her head to Zoya’s shoulder and sobbed. “I loved him and he loved me.”
Was there any greater gift than that? Any more unlikely discovery in this world?
“I know,” said Zoya. “He loved you more than anything.”
The dragon’s eye had opened and Zoya felt that love, the enormity of what Genya had lost. It was too much to endure knowing she could do nothing to erase that pain.
“Tell them, Zoya. I can’t … I can’t.”
Genya looked frail, curled in on herself, the frond of some delicate flower hiding from winter.
What could Zoya say to her? To any of them? How could she give them hope she didn’t have?
This is what love does. That had been one of her mother’s favorite sayings. When the larder was bare, when her husband couldn’t find work, when her hands cracked from taking in the neighbors’ washing. This is what love does.
Zoya could see Sabina, her hands red from lye, her beautiful face carved with lines, as if the sculptor who had wrought her loveliness had lost control, dug too deep beneath the eyes, the corners of the mouth. You cannot imagine how handsome he was, Sabina would say, looking at Zoya’s father, her voice bitter. My own mother warned me I would have no life with a Suli, that she and my father would turn their backs on us. But I didn’t care. I was in love. We met by moonlight. We danced to the music his brothers played. I thought love would be our armor, wings to fly with, a shield against the world. She’d laughed, the sound like bones rattling in a fortune-teller’s cup, ready to spill and show only disaster. Sabina spread her cracked hands, gesturing to their meager home, the cold stove, the piles of laundry, the earthen floor. Here is our shield. This is what love does. Her father had said nothing.
Zoya had seen her Suli uncles only once. They’d arrived after dark by her mother’s order. Sabina had already retired to bed and told Zoya to stay with her, but as soon as her mother had nodded off to sleep, Zoya had snuck out to see the strangers with their black hair and their black eyes, their brows thick and dark like hers. They looked like her father, but they didn’t. Their brown skin seemed lit from within. Their shoulders were straight and they held their heads high. Beside them, her father looked like an old man, though she knew he was the youngest brother.
“Come away with us,” Uncle Dhej had said. “Now. Tonight. Before that shrew wakes.”
“Don’t speak of my wife that way.”
“Then before your loving wife wakes to claim you. You will die here, Suhm. You’re nearly dead already.”
“I’m fine.”
“We’re not meant to live among them, locked up in their houses, wilting beneath their roofs. You were meant for the stars and open skies. You were meant for freedom.”
“I have a child. I cannot just—”
“The mother is spoiled fruit and the daughter will grow up sour. I can see the sorrow hanging around her already.”
“Be silent, Dhej. Zoya has a good heart and will grow up strong and beautiful. As her mother might have. In a different life. With a different husband.”
“Then bring her with us. Save her from this place.”
Yes. Take me away from here. Zoya had clapped her hands over her mouth as if she’d spoken the words aloud, released some kind of curse into the world. Guilt flooded her, choking her, bringing tears to her eyes. She loved her mother. She did, she did. She didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. She didn’t want to leave her alone to fend for herself. She’d crept back into Sabina’s bed and hugged her close and cried herself to sleep. But she’d dreamed she was riding in a Suli wagon and she’d woken the next morning, confused and disoriented, still sure she could smell hay and horses, still certain she could hear the happy chatter of sisters she didn’t have.
She’d never seen her uncles again.
This is what love does.
Love was the destroyer. It made mourners, widows, left misery in its wake. Grief and love were one and the same. Grief was the shadow love left when it was gone.