Ruin and Rising

^CHAPTER 18

THEY TOOK US OUT of the Fold in one of the Darkling’s skiffs. Zoya appropriated the battered glass vessel with effortless command, then kept the curious Soldat Sol distracted as Tolya and Tamar loaded us onto the deck, hidden beneath heavy coats and folded kefta. The Darkling’s body was wrapped in the blue robes of one of his fallen Inferni. I’d made him a promise, and I intended to keep it.

The Squallers—Zoya, Nadia, and Adrik, all of them alive and as whole as they’d been when the battle began—filled the black sails and carried us over the dead sands as fast as their power would allow.

I lay next to Mal. He was still in terrible pain, drifting in and out of consciousness. Tolya continued to work on him, checking his pulse and his breathing.

Somewhere on the skiff, I heard Nikolai talking, his voice husky and damaged by whatever dark thing had used him. I wanted to go to him, see his face, make sure he was all right. He must have broken bones after that fall. But I’d lost a lot of blood, and I found myself slipping away, my weary mind eager for oblivion. As my eyes began to slide shut, I grabbed Tolya’s hand.

“I died here. Do you understand?” He frowned. He thought I was delirious, but I needed to make him hear. “This was my martyrdom, Tolya. I died here today.”

“Sankta Alina,” he said softly, and pressed a kiss to my knuckles, a courtly gesture, like a gentleman at a dance. I prayed to all the real Saints that he understood.

IN THE END, my friends did a good job of my death, and an even better job of Nikolai’s resurrection.

They got us back to Tomikyana and stashed us in the barn, tucked away with the cider presses in case the Soldat Sol returned. They got Nikolai cleaned up, cut his hair, filled him with sugary tea and stale bread. Genya even found him a First Army uniform. Within hours, he was headed to Kribirsk, flanked by the twins, along with Nadia and Zoya, dressed in blue kefta stolen from the dead.

The story they concocted was simple: He’d been the Darkling’s prisoner, slated for execution on the Fold, but he’d escaped and, with the Sun Summoner’s help, managed to vanquish the Darkling. Few people knew the truth of what had happened. The battle had been a confusion of violence waged in near darkness, and I suspected the Darkling’s Grisha and oprichniki would be too busy running or begging for royal pardons to dispute this new version of events. It was a good story with a tragic ending—the Sun Summoner had given her life to save Ravka and its new King.

Most of my hours back at Tomikyana were a blur: The smell of apples. The rustle of pigeons in the eaves. The rise and fall of Mal’s breath beside me. At some point, Genya came to look in on us, and I thought I must be dreaming. The scars on her face were still there, but most of the black ridges were gone.

“Your shoulder too,” she said with a smile. “Scarred, but not nearly so frightening.”

“Your eye?” I asked.

“Gone for good. But I’ve grown rather fond of my patch. I think it lends me a certain rakishness.”

I must have dozed off because the next thing I knew, Misha was standing in front of me with flour on his hands.

“What were you baking?” I asked, my words blurry at the edges.

“Ginger cake.”

“Not apple?”

“I’m sick of apples. Do you want to stir the icing?”

I remembered nodding, then fell back asleep.

IT WASN’T UNTIL late that night that Zoya and Tamar came to check on us, bringing news from Kribirsk. It seemed that the power of the amplifiers had reached all the way to the drydocks. The explosion had knocked Grisha and dockworkers from their feet, and mayhem had erupted as light started to pour from every otkazat’sya within range.

As the Fold began to disintegrate, they’d dared to step past its shores and join in the destruction. Some of them had picked up guns and started hunting volcra, rounding them up in the few remaining scraps of the Fold and putting them to death. It was said some of the monsters had escaped, braving the light to seek deep shadows elsewhere. Now, between the dockworkers, the Soldat Sol, and the oprichniki who had not fled, all that remained of the Unsea were a few dark wisps that hung in the air or trailed over the ground like lost creatures separated from the herd.

When rumors of the Darkling’s death had reached Kribirsk, the military camp had descended into chaos—and in strode Nikolai Lantsov. He installed himself in the royal quarters, began assembling First Army captains and Grisha commanders, and simply started giving orders. He’d mobilized all the remaining units of the army to secure the borders, sent messages to the coast to rally Sturmhond’s fleet, and had apparently managed it all on no sleep and two fractured ribs. No one else would have had the ability, let alone the nerve—certainly not a younger son and rumored bastard. But Nikolai had been training for this his entire life, and I knew he had a gift for the impossible.

“How is he?” I asked Tamar.

She paused, then said, “Haunted. There’s a difference in him, though I’m not sure anyone else would notice.”

“Maybe,” objected Zoya. “But I’ve never seen anything like it. If he gets any more charming, men and women may start lying down in the street for the privilege of being stepped on by the new Ravkan King. However did you resist him?”

“Good question,” Mal murmured from beside me.

“Turns out I don’t care for emeralds,” I said.

Zoya rolled her eyes. “Or royal blood, blinding charisma, tremendous wealth—”

“You can stop now,” said Mal.

I leaned my head against his shoulder. “Those are all nice enough, but my real passion is lost causes.” Or just one really. Beznako. My lost cause, found again.

“I am surrounded by fools,” Zoya said, but she was smiling.

Before Tamar and Zoya returned to the main house, Tamar checked our injuries. Mal was weak, but given what he’d been through, that was to be expected. Tamar had healed the bullet wound in my shoulder, and aside from being a bit shaky and sore, I felt good as new. At least, that was what I told them. I could feel the ache of absence where my power had been like a phantom limb.

I dozed on the mattress they’d dragged into the barn, and when I woke, Mal was lying on his side, watching me. He was pale, and his blue eyes seemed almost too bright. I reached out and traced the scar that ran along his jaw, the one he’d gotten in Fjerda when he’d first been hunting the stag.

“What did you see?” I asked. “When—”

“When I died?”

I gave him a gentle shove, and he winced.

“I saw Ilya Morozova on the back of a unicorn, playing a balalaika.”

“Very funny.”

He eased back and carefully tucked his arm under his head. “I didn’t see anything. All I remember is pain. The knife felt like it was on fire, like it was carving my heart from my chest. Then nothing. Just darkness.”

“You were gone,” I said with a shiver. “And then my power—” My voice broke.

He put out his arm, and I laid my head against his shoulder, careful not to disturb the bandages on his chest. “I’m sorry,” he said. “There were times… there were times I wished your power away. But I never wanted this.”

“I’m grateful to be alive,” I said. “The Fold is gone. You’re safe. It just… hurts.” I felt petty. Harshaw was dead, and so were half of the Soldat Sol, including Ruby. Then there were the others: Sergei, Marie, Paja, Fedyor, Botkin. Baghra. So many lost to this war. The list stretched on and on.

“Loss is loss,” Mal said. “You have the right to grieve.”

I stared up at the barn’s wooden beams. Even the shred of darkness I’d commanded had abandoned me. That power had belonged to the Darkling, and it had left this world with him.

“I feel empty.”

Mal was quiet for a long moment, then said, “I feel it too.” I pushed up on my elbow. His gaze was faraway. “I won’t know until I try to track, but I feel different. I used to just know things. Even lying here, I could have sensed deer in the field, a bird resting on a branch, maybe a mouse burrowing in the wall. I never thought about it, but now there’s this kind of… silence.”

Loss. I’d wondered how Tolya and Tamar had brought Mal back. I’d been willing to simply call it a miracle. Now I thought I understood. Mal had possessed two lives, but only one was rightfully his. The other was stolen, an inheritance wrought from merzost, snatched from the making at the heart of the world. It was the force that had animated Morozova’s daughter when her human life had gone, the power that had reverberated through Mal’s bones. His blood had been thick with it, and that purloined bit of creation was what had made him such a remarkable tracker. It had bound him to every living thing. Like calls to like.

And now it was gone. The life stolen by Morozova and given to his daughter had reached its end. The life Mal had been born with—fragile, mortal, temporary—was his alone. Loss. This was the price the world had demanded for balance. But Morozova couldn’t have known that the person to unlock the secrets of his amplifiers wouldn’t be some ancient Grisha who had lived a thousand years and grown weary of his power. He couldn’t have known that it would all come down to two orphans from Keramzin.

Mal took my hand, curling his fingers in mine, and pressed it to his chest. “Do you think you could be happy?” he asked. “With a used-up tracker?”

I smiled at that. Cocky Mal, charming, brave, and dangerous. Was that doubt in his voice? I kissed him once, gently. “If you can be happy with someone who stuck a knife in your chest.”

“I helped. And I told you I can handle a bad mood.”

I didn’t know what came next or who I was supposed to be. I owned nothing, not even the borrowed clothes on my back. And yet, lying there, I realized I wasn’t afraid. After all I’d been through, there was no fear left in me—sadness, gratitude, maybe even hope, but the fear had been eaten up by pain and challenge. The Saint was gone. The Summoner too. I was just a girl again, but this girl didn’t owe her strength to fate or chance or a grand destiny. I’d been born with my power; the rest I’d earned.

“Mal, you’ll have to be careful. The story of the amplifiers could leak out. People might still think you have power.”

He shook his head. “Malyen Oretsev died with you,” he said, his words echoing my thoughts closely enough to raise the hair on my arms. “That life is over. Maybe I’ll be smarter in the next one.”

I snorted. “We’ll see. We’re going to have to choose new names, you know.”

“Misha is already making a list of suggestions.”

“Oh, Saints.”

“You have nothing to complain about. Apparently I am to be Dmitri Dumkin.”

“Suits you.”

“I should warn you that I’m keeping a tab of all of your insults so that I can reward you when I’m healed.”

“Easy with the threats, Dumkin. Maybe I’ll tell the Apparat all about your miraculous recovery, and he’ll turn you into a Saint too.”

“He can try,” said Mal. “I don’t intend to waste my days in holy pursuits.”

“No?”

“No,” he said as he drew me closer. “I have to spend the rest of my life finding ways to deserve a certain white-haired girl. She’s very prickly, occasionally puts goose droppings in my shoes or tries to kill me.”

“Sounds fatiguing,” I managed as his lips met mine.

“She’s worth it. And one day maybe she’ll let me chase her into a chapel.”

I shuddered. “I don’t like chapels.”

“I did tell Ana Kuya I would marry you.”

I laughed. “You remember that?”

“Alina,” he said and kissed the scar on my palm, “I remember everything.”

IT WAS TIME to leave Tomikyana behind. We’d had only one night to recover, but news of the destruction of the Fold was spreading fast, and soon the farm’s owners might return. And even if I was no longer the Sun Summoner, there were still things I needed to do before I could bury Sankta Alina forever.

Genya brought us clean clothes. Mal limped behind the cider presses to change while she helped me put on a simple blouse and the sarafan that went over it. They were peasant clothes, not even military.

She’d once woven gold through my hair at the Little Palace, but now a more radical change was necessary. She used a pot of hematite and a clutch of shiny rooster feathers to temporarily alter its distinctive white color, then tied a kerchief around my head for good measure.

Mal returned wearing a tunic and trousers and a simple coat. He had on a black wool cap with a narrow brim. Genya wrinkled her nose. “You look like a farmer.”

“I’ve looked worse.” He peered at me. “Is your hair red?”

“Temporarily.”

“And she’s almost pulling it off,” Genya added, and sailed from the barn. The effects would fade in a few days without her assistance.

Genya and David would travel separately to meet with Grisha gathering at the military camp in Kribirsk. They’d offered to bring Misha with them, but he’d elected to go with me and Mal. He claimed we needed looking after. We made sure that his golden sunburst was safely hidden away and that his pockets were stuffed with cheese for Oncat. Then we headed into the gray sands of what had once been the Fold.

It was easy to blend in with the crowds crossing to and from Ravka. There were families, groups of soldiers, nobles, and peasants. Children climbed over the ruins of sandskiffs. People gathered in spontaneous parties. They kissed and hugged, handed around bottles of kvas and fried bread stuffed with raisins. They greeted each other with shouts of “Yunejhost!” Unity.

Amid the celebrations, there were pockets of grief. Silence reigned in the crumbling remains of what had been Novokribirsk. Most of the buildings had slumped into dust. There were only dim suggestions of spaces where the streets had been, and everything had been bleached a nearly colorless gray. The round stone fountain that had stood at the center of the town looked like a crescent moon, eaten away wherever the Fold’s dark power had touched it. Old men poked at the odd ruins and muttered to each other. Even beyond the fallen town’s edges, mourners laid flowers on the wrecks of skiffs, and built little altars in their hulls.

Everywhere, I saw people wearing the double eagle, carrying banners, and waving Ravkan flags. Girls wore pale blue and gold ribbons in their hair, and I heard whispers of the tortures the brave young prince had endured at the Darkling’s hands.

I heard my name too. Pilgrims were already flooding into the Fold to see the miracle that had occurred and to offer up prayers to Sankta Alina. Once again, vendors had begun setting up carts littered with what they claimed were my finger bones, and my face stared back at me from the painted surfaces of wooden icons. It wasn’t quite me, though. This was a prettier girl, with round cheeks and serene brown eyes, the antlers of Morozova’s collar resting on her slender neck. Alina of the Fold.

No one spared us a second glance. We weren’t nobles. We weren’t Second Army. We weren’t this strange new class of Summoner soldier. We were anonymous. We were tourists.

In Kribirsk, the party was in full swing. The drydocks were ablaze with colored lanterns. People sang and drank aboard the sandskiffs. They crowded on the steps of the barracks and raided the mess tent for food. I glimpsed the yellow flag of the Documents Tent, and though some part of me ached to return there, to take in the old familiar smells of ink and paper, I couldn’t risk the possibility that one of the cartographers would recognize me.

The brothels and taverns in town were doing a booming business. An impromptu dance was being held in the central square, though just down the street a crowd had gathered at the old church to read the names written on its walls and light candles for the dead. I paused to light one for Harshaw, then another, and another. He would have liked the flames.

Tamar had found a room for us at one of the more respectable inns. I left Mal and Misha there with promises to return that night. The news coming out of Os Alta was still a tangle, and we hadn’t had word of Misha’s mother yet. I knew he must be hopeful, but he hadn’t said a word about it, just solemnly vowed to watch over Mal in my absence.

“Read him religious parables,” I whispered to Misha. “He loves that.”

I barely dodged the pillow Mal threw across the room.

I DIDN’T GO directly to the royal barracks, but took a route that led me past where the Darkling’s silk pavilion had once stood. I’d assumed that he would rebuild it, but the field was empty, and when I reached the Lantsov quarters, I quickly understood why. The Darkling had taken up residence there. He’d hung black banners from the windows and the carving of the double eagle above the doors had been replaced with a sun in eclipse. Now workmen were pulling down the black silks and replacing them with Ravkan blue and gold. An awning had been set up to catch plaster as a soldier took a massive hammer to the stone symbol above the door, shattering it to dust. A cheer went up from the crowd. I couldn’t share in their excitement. For all his crimes, the Darkling had loved Ravka, and he’d wanted its love in return.

I found a guard near the entry and asked after Tamar Kir-Bataar. He looked down his nose at me, seeing nothing but a scrawny peasant girl, and for a moment, I heard the Darkling say, You’re nothing now. The girl I’d once been would have believed him. The girl I’d become wasn’t in the mood.

“What exactly are you waiting for?” I snapped. The soldier blinked and jumped to attention. A few minutes later, Tamar and Tolya were jogging down the steps to me.

Tolya swept me up in his huge arms.

“Our sister,” he explained to the curious guard.

“Our sister?” hissed Tamar as we entered the royal barracks. “She doesn’t look anything like us. Remind me never to let you work intelligence.”

“I have better things to do than trade in whispers,” he said with dignity. “Besides, she is our sister.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and said, “Did I come at a bad time?”

Tamar shook her head. “Nikolai ended meetings early so people could attend the…” She trailed off.

I nodded.

They led me down a hall decorated with weapons of war and charts of the Fold. Those maps would have to change now. I wondered if anything would ever grow on those deadened sands.

“Will you stay with him?” I asked Tamar. Nikolai had to be desperate for people he could trust around him.

“For a while. Nadia wants to, and there are still some members of the Twenty-Second alive too.”

“Nevsky?”

She shook her head.

“Did Stigg make it out of the Spinning Wheel?”

She shook her head again. There were others to ask after, casualty lists I dreaded reading, but that would have to wait.

“I might stay on,” said Tolya. “Depends on—”

“Tolya,” his sister said sharply.

Tolya flushed and shrugged. “Just depends.”

We reached a set of heavy double doors, their handles the heads of two screaming eagles.

Tamar knocked. The room was dark, lit only by the blaze of a fire in the grate. It took me a moment to pick Nikolai out in the gloom. He was seated in front of the fire, his polished boots propped up on a cushioned stool. A plate of food sat beside him, along with a bottle of kvas, though I knew he preferred brandy.

“We’ll be outside,” Tamar said.

At the sound of the door shutting, Nikolai started. He jumped to his feet and bowed. “Forgive me,” he said. “I was lost in thought.” Then he grinned and added, “Unfamiliar territory.”

I leaned back against the door. A lapse. Covered with charm, but a lapse nonetheless. “You don’t have to do that.”

“But I do.” His smile slipped. He gestured to the chairs by the fire. “Join me?”

I crossed the room. The long table was littered with documents and sheaves of letters emblazoned with the royal seal.

A book lay open on the chair. He moved it aside and we sat.

“What are you reading?”

He glanced at the title. “One of Kamenski’s military histories. Really, I just wanted to look at the words.” He ran his fingers over the cover. His hands were marred with nicks and cuts. Though my scars had faded, the Darkling had marked Nikolai in a different way. Faint black lines still ran along each of his fingers where claws had shoved their way through his skin. He would have to pass them off as signs of the torture he’d endured as the Darkling’s prisoner. In a way, it was true. At least the rest of the markings seemed to have faded. “I couldn’t read,” he continued. “When I was… I would see signs in store windows, writing on crates. I couldn’t understand them, but I remembered enough to know that they were more than scratches on a wall.”

I settled deeper into the chair. “What else do you remember?”

His hazel eyes were distant. “Too much. I… I can still feel that darkness inside me. I keep thinking it will go, but—”

“I know,” I said. “It’s better now, but it’s still there.” Like a shadow next to my heart. I didn’t know what that might imply about the Darkling’s power, and I didn’t want to consider it. “Maybe it will fade in time.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “This isn’t what people want of a king, what they expect from me.”

“Give yourself a chance to heal.”

“Everyone is watching. They need reassurance. It won’t be long before the Fjerdans or the Shu try to move against me.”

“What will you do?”

“My fleet is intact, thank the Saints and Privyet,” he said, referring to the officer he’d left in command when he’d given up the mantle of Sturmhond. “They should be able to neutralize Fjerda for a time, and there are supply ships already waiting in the harbor with deliveries of weapons. I’ve sent word to every operational military outpost. We’ll do our best to secure the borders. I leave for Os Alta tomorrow, and I have emissaries en route to try to bring the militias back under the King’s flag.” He gave a slight laugh. “My flag.”

I smiled. “Just think of all of the bowing and scraping in your future.”

“All hail the Pirate King.”

“Privateer.”

“Why dance around it? ‘Bastard King’ is more likely.”

“Actually,” I said, “they’re already calling you Korol Rezni.” I’d heard it whispered in the streets of Kribirsk: King of Scars.

He looked up sharply. “Do you think they know?”

“I doubt it. But you’re used to rumors, Nikolai. And this might be a good thing.”

He raised a brow.

“I know you love to be loved,” I said, “but a little fear couldn’t hurt, either.”

“Did the Darkling teach you that?”

“And you. I seem to remember a certain story about a Fjerdan captain’s fingers and a hungry hound.”

“Next time warn me when you’re paying attention. I’ll talk less.”

“Now you tell me.”

A faint smile tugged at his lips. Then he frowned. “I should warn you—the Apparat will be there tonight.”

I sat up straighter. “You pardoned the priest?”

“I had to. I need his support.”

“Will you offer him a place at court?”

“We’re in negotiations,” he said bitterly.

I could offer him all the information I had on the Apparat, but I suspected what would help most was the location of the White Cathedral. Unfortunately, Mal was the only one who might have been able to lead us back there, and I wasn’t sure that was a possibility anymore.

Nikolai gave the bottle of kvas an idle turn.

“It’s not too late,” he said. “You could stay. You could come back with me to the Grand Palace.”

“And do what?”

“Teach, help me rebuild the Second Army, rusticate by the lake?”

This was what Tolya had been alluding to. He’d hoped I might return to Os Alta. It hurt to even think about.

I shook my head. “I’m not Grisha, and I’m certainly not a noble. I don’t belong at court.”

“You could stay with me,” he said quietly. He gave the bottle another turn. “I still need a Queen.”

I rose from my chair and nudged his booted feet aside, settling on the little stool to look up at him.

“I’m not the Sun Summoner anymore, Nikolai. I’m not even Alina Starkov. I don’t want to return to court.”

“But you understand this… thing.” He tapped his chest.

I did. Merzost. Darkness. You could hate it and hunger for it at the same time.

“I’d only be a liability. Power is alliance,” I reminded him.

“I do love it when you quote me.” He sighed. “If only I weren’t so damnably wise.”

I reached into my pocket and set the Lantsov emerald on Nikolai’s knee. Genya had given it back to me when we’d left Tomikyana.

He picked it up, turned it over. Its stone flashed green in the firelight. “A Shu princess then? A buxom Fjerdan? A Kerch magnate’s daughter?” He held out the ring. “Keep it.”

I stared at him. “How much of that kvas have you drunk?”

“None. Keep it. Please.”

“Nikolai, I can’t.”

“I owe you, Alina. Ravka owes you. This and more. Do good works or commission an opera house or just take it out and gaze at it longingly when you think of the handsome prince you might have made your own. For the record, I favor the latter option, preferably paired with copious tears and the recitation of bad poetry.”

I laughed.

He took my hand and pressed the ring into it. “Take it and build something new.”

I turned the ring over in my hand. “I’ll think about it.”

He rolled his eyes. “What is your aversion to the word yes?”

I felt tears rising and had to blink them away. “Thank you.”

He leaned back. “We were friends, weren’t we? Not just allies?”

“Don’t be an ass, Nikolai. We are friends.” I gave him a hard tap on the knee. “Now, you and I are going to settle some things about the Second Army. And then we’re going to watch me burn.”

ON OUR WAY to the drydocks, I slipped away and found Genya. She and David were cloistered in a Fabrikator tent on the east side of the camp. When I handed her the sealed letter marked with the Ravkan double eagle, she paused, holding it gingerly, as if the heavy paper were dangerous to the touch.

She ran her thumb over the wax seal, fingers quaking slightly. “Is it…?”

“It’s a pardon.”

She tore it open and then clutched it to her.

David didn’t look up from his worktable when he said, “Are we going to jail?”

“Not just yet,” she said. She brushed away a tear. “Thank you.” Then she frowned as I handed her the second letter. “What is this?”

“A job offer.” It had taken some convincing, but in the end Nikolai had seen the sense in my suggestions. I cleared my throat. “Ravka still needs its Grisha, and Grisha still need a safe haven in the world. I want you to lead the Second Army, along with David. And Zoya.”

“Zoya? Are you punishing me?”

“She’s powerful, and I think she has it in her to be a good leader. Or she’ll make your life a nightmare. Possibly both.”

“Why us? The Darkling—”

“The Darkling is gone, and so is the Sun Summoner. Now the Grisha can lead themselves, and I want all the orders represented: Etherealki, Materialki, and you—Corporalki.”

“I’m not really a Corporalnik, Alina.”

“When you had the chance, you chose red. And I hope that those divisions won’t matter so much if the Grisha are led by their own. All of you are strong. All of you know what it is to be seduced by power or status or knowledge. Besides, you’re all heroes.”

“They’ll follow Zoya, maybe even David—”

“Hmm?” he asked distractedly.

“Nothing. You’re going to have to go to more meetings.”

“I hate meetings,” he grumbled.

“Alina,” she said, “I’m not so sure they’ll follow me.”

“You make them follow you.” I touched her shoulder. “Brave and unbreakable.”

A slow smile spread over her face. Then she winked. “And marvelous.”

I grinned. “So you accept?”

“I accept.”

I hugged her tight. She laughed, then tugged at a lock of hair that had slipped free from my kerchief.

“Already fading,” she said. “Should we freshen you up?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” she agreed.

I embraced her once more, then slipped outside into the last scraps of daylight.

I WENDED MY WAY back through camp, following the crowd past the drydocks and into the sands of what had been the Unsea. The sun had almost set and dusk was falling, but it was impossible to miss the pyre, a massive mound of birches, their branches tangled like white limbs.

A shiver passed through me as I saw the girl laid to rest atop it. Her hair spread around her head in a white halo. She wore a kefta of blue and gold, and Morozova’s collar curled around her throat, the stag’s antlers a silvery gray against her skin. Whatever wire or Fabrikator craft held the pieces together had been hidden from view.

My eyes roved over her face—my face. Genya had done an extraordinary job. The shape was just right, the tilt of the nose, the angle of the jaw. The tattoo on her cheek was gone. There was almost nothing left of Ruby, the Soldat Sol who would have lived to be a Summoner if she hadn’t perished on the Fold. She’d died an ordinary girl.

I’d balked at the idea of using her body this way, troubled that her family would have nothing to bury. It had been Tolya who convinced me. “She believed, Alina. Even if you don’t, let this be her final act of faith.”

Beside Ruby, the Darkling lay in his black kefta.

Who had tended him? I wondered, feeling an ache rise in my throat. Who had combed his dark hair back so neatly from his forehead? Who had folded his graceful hands on his chest?

Some in the crowd were complaining that the Darkling had no business sharing a pyre with a Saint. But this felt right to me, and the people needed to see an end to it.

The remaining Soldat Sol had gathered around the pyre, their bare backs and chests emblazoned with tattoos. Vladim was there too, head bowed, the raised flesh of his brand outlined by firelight. Around them, people wept. Nikolai stood at the periphery, immaculate in his First Army uniform, the Apparat at his side. I pulled my shawl up.

Nikolai’s gaze touched mine briefly from across the circle. He gave the signal. The Apparat raised his hands. The Inferni struck their flints. Flame leapt in bright arcs, circling and diving between the birches like darting birds, licking at the tinder until it smoldered and caught.

The fire grew, flames shimmering, the shaking leaves of a great golden tree. Around me, the moans and weeping of the crowd grew louder.

Sankta, they cried. Sankta Alina.

My eyes burned with the smoke. The smell was sickly sweet.

Sankta Alina.

No one knew his name to curse or extol, so I spoke it softly, beneath my breath.

“Aleksander,” I whispered. A boy’s name, given up. Almost forgotten.