Siege and Storm

CHAPTER 23

THE SUN SOLDIERS plunged into the shadow horde, cutting and thrusting, pushing the nichevo’ya back as the riflemen fired again and again. But despite their ferocity, they were only human, flesh and steel pitted against living shadow. One by one, the nichevo’ya began to pick them off.

“Make for the chapel!” Tamar shouted.

The chapel? Did she plan to throw hymnals at the Darkling?

“We’ll be trapped!” cried Sergei, running toward me.

“We’re already trapped,” Mal replied, slinging his rifle onto his back and grabbing my arm. “Let’s go!”

I didn’t know what to think, but we were out of options.

“David!” I yelled. “The second bomb!”

He flung it toward the nichevo’ya. His aim was wild, but Zoya was there to help it along.

We dove into the woods, the sun soldiers bringing up the rear. The blast tore through the trees in a gust of white light.

Lamps had been lit in the chapel and the door stood open. We burst inside, the echoes from our footfalls bouncing up over the pews and off the glazed blue dome.

“Where do we go?” Sergei cried in panic.

Already we could hear the whirring, clicking hum from outside. Tolya slammed the chapel door shut, dropping a heavy wooden bolt into place. The sun soldiers took up positions by the windows, rifles in hand.

Tamar hurdled over a pew and shot past me up the aisle. “Come on!”

I watched her in confusion. Just where were we supposed to go?

She tore past the altar and grasped one gilded wood corner of the triptych. I gaped as the water-damaged panel swung open, revealing the dark mouth of a passageway. This was how the sun soldiers had gotten onto the grounds. And how the Apparat had escaped from the Grand Palace.

“Where does it go?” asked David.

“Does it matter?” Zoya shot back.

The building shook as a loud crack of thunder split the air. The chapel door blew to pieces. Tolya was thrown backward, and darkness flooded through.

The Darkling came borne on a tide of shadow, held aloft by monsters who set his feet upon the chapel floor with infinite care.

“Fire!” Tamar shouted.

Shots rang out. The nichevo’ya writhed and whirled around the Darkling, shifting and re-forming as the bullets struck their bodies, one taking the place of another in a seamless tide of shadow. He didn’t even break stride.

Nichevo’ya were streaming through the chapel door. Tolya was already on his feet and rushing to my side with pistols drawn. Tamar and Mal flanked me, the Grisha arrayed behind us. I raised my hands, summoning the light, bracing for the onslaught.

“Stand down, Alina,” said the Darkling. His cool voice echoed through the chapel, cutting through the noise and chaos. “Stand down, and I will spare them.”

In answer, Tamar scraped one axe blade over the other, raising a horrible shriek of metal on metal. The sun soldiers lifted their rifles, and I heard the sound of Inferni flint being struck.

“Look around, Alina,” the Darkling said. “You cannot win. You can only watch them die. Come to me now, and I will do them no harm—not your zealot soldiers, not even the Grisha traitors.”

I took in the nightmare of the chapel. The nichevo’ya swarmed above us, crowding up against the inside of the dome. They clustered around the Darkling in a dense cloud of bodies and wings. Through the windows I could see more, hovering in the twilight sky.

The sun soldiers’ faces were determined, but their ranks had been badly thinned. One of them had pimples on his chin. Beneath his tattoo, he didn’t look much older than twelve. They needed a miracle from their Saint, one I couldn’t perform.

Tolya cocked the triggers on his pistols.

“Hold,” I said.

“Alina,” Tamar whispered, “we can still get you out.”

“Hold,” I repeated.

The sun soldiers lowered their rifles. Tamar brought her axes to her hips but kept her grip tight.

“What are your terms?” I asked.

Mal frowned. Tolya shook his head. I didn’t care. I knew it might be a ploy, but if there was even a chance of saving their lives, I had to take it.

“Give yourself up,” said the Darkling. “And they all go free. They can climb down that rabbit hole and disappear forever.”

“Free?” Sergei whispered.

“He’s lying,” said Mal. “It’s what he does.”

“I don’t need to lie,” said the Darkling. “Alina wants to come with me.”

“She doesn’t want any part of you,” Mal spat.

“No?” the Darkling asked. His dark hair gleamed in the lamplight of the chapel. Summoning his shadow army had taken its toll. He was thinner, paler, but somehow the sharp angles of his face had only become more beautiful. “I warned you that your otkazat’sya could never understand you, Alina. I told you that he would only come to fear you and resent your power. Tell me I was wrong.”

“You were wrong.” My voice was steady, but doubt rustled in my heart.

The Darkling shook his head. “You cannot lie to me. Do you think I could have come to you again and again, if you had been less alone? You called to me, and I answered.”

I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. “You… you were there?”

“On the Fold. In the palace. Last night.”

I flushed as I remembered his body on top of mine. Shame washed through me, but with it came overwhelming relief. I hadn’t imagined it all.

“That isn’t possible,” Mal bit out.

“You have no idea what I can make possible, tracker.”

I shut my eyes.

“Alina—”

“I’ve seen what you truly are,” said the Darkling, “and I’ve never turned away. I never will. Can he say the same?”

“You don’t know anything about her,” Mal said fiercely.

“Come with me now, and it all stops—the fear, the uncertainty, the bloodshed. Let him go, Alina. Let them all go.”

“No,” I said. But even as I shook my head, something in me cried out, Yes.

The Darkling sighed and glanced back over his shoulder. “Bring her,” he said.

A figure shuffled forward, draped in a heavy shawl, hunched and slow-moving, as if every step brought pain. Baghra.

My stomach twisted sickly. Why did she have to be so stubborn? Why couldn’t she have gone with Nikolai? Unless Nikolai had never made it out.

The Darkling laid a hand on Baghra’s shoulder. She flinched.

“Leave her alone,” I said angrily.

“Show them,” he said.

She unwound her shawl. I drew in a sharp breath. I heard someone behind me moan.

It was not Baghra. I didn’t know what it was. The bites were everywhere, raised black ridges of flesh, twisting lumps of tissue that could never be healed, not by Grisha hand or by any other, the unmistakable marks of the nichevo’ya. Then I saw the faded flame of her hair, the lovely amber hue of her one remaining eye.

“Genya,” I gasped.

We stood in terrible silence. I took a step toward her. Then David pushed past me down the altar steps. Genya cringed away from him, pulling up her shawl, and turned to hide her face.

David slowed. He hesitated. Gently, he reached out to touch her shoulder. I saw the rise and fall of her back, and knew she was crying.

I covered my mouth as a sob tore free from my throat.

I’d seen a thousand horrors on this long day, but this was the one that broke me, Genya cringing away from David like a frightened animal. Luminous Genya, with her alabaster skin and graceful hands. Resilient Genya, who had endured countless indignities and insults, but who had always held her lovely chin high. Foolish Genya, who had tried to be my friend, who had dared to show me mercy.

David drew his arm around Genya’s shoulders and slowly led her back up the aisle. The Darkling didn’t stop them.

“I’ve waged the war you forced me to, Alina,” said the Darkling. “If you hadn’t run from me, the Second Army would still be intact. All those Grisha would still be alive. Your tracker would be safe and happy with his regiment. When will it be enough? When will you let me stop?”

You cannot be helped. Your only hope was to run. Baghra was right. I’d been a fool to think I could fight him. I’d tried, and countless people had lost their lives for it.

“You mourn the people killed in Novokribirsk,” the Darkling continued, “the people lost to the Fold. But what of the thousands that came before them, given over to endless wars? What of the others dying now on distant shores? Together, we can put an end to all of it.”

Reasonable. Logical. For once, I let the words in. An end to all of it.

It’s over.

I should have felt beaten down by the thought, defeated, but instead it filled me with a curious lightness. Hadn’t some part of me known it would end this way all along?

The moment the Darkling had slipped his hand over my arm in the Grisha pavilion so long ago, he’d taken possession of me. I just hadn’t realized it.

“All right,” I whispered.

“Alina, no!” Mal said furiously.

“You’ll let them go?” I asked. “All of them?”

“We need the tracker,” said the Darkling. “For the firebird.”

“He goes free. You can’t have both of us.”

The Darkling paused, then nodded once. I knew he thought he would find a way to claim Mal. Let him believe it. I would never let it happen.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Mal said through clenched teeth.

I turned to Tolya and Tamar. “Take him from here. Even if you have to carry him.”

“Alina—”

“We won’t go,” said Tamar. “We are sworn.”

“You will.”

Tolya shook his huge head. “We pledged our lives to you. All of us.”

I turned to face them. “Then do as I command,” I said. “Tolya Yul-Baatar, Tamar Kir-Baatar, you will take these people from here to safety.” I summoned the light, letting it blaze in a glorious halo around me. A cheap trick, but a good one. Nikolai would have been proud. “Do not fail me.”

Tamar had tears in her eyes, but she and her brother bowed their heads.

Mal hooked my arm and turned me around roughly. “What are you doing?”

“I want this.” I need it. Sacrifice or selfishness, it didn’t matter anymore.

“I don’t believe you.”

“I can’t run from what I am, Mal, from what I’m becoming. I can’t bring the Alina you knew back, but I can set you free.”

“You can’t… you can’t choose him.”

“There isn’t any choice to make. This is what was meant to be.” It was true. I felt it in the collar, in the weight of the fetter. For the first time in weeks, I felt strong.

He shook his head. “This is all wrong.” The look on his face almost undid me. It was lost, startled, like a little boy standing alone in the ruin of a burning village. “Please, Alina,” he said softly. “Please. This can’t be how it ends.”

I rested my hand on his cheek, hoping that there was still enough between us that he would understand. I stood on my toes and kissed the scar on his jaw.

“I have loved you all my life, Mal,” I whispered through my tears. “There is no end to our story.”

I stepped back, memorizing every line of his beloved face. Then I turned and walked up the aisle. My steps were sure. Mal would have a life. He’d find his purpose. I had to seek mine. Nikolai had promised me a chance to save Ravka, to make amends for all I’d done. He’d tried, but it was the Darkling’s gift to give.

“Alina!” Mal shouted. I heard scuffling behind me and knew Tolya had taken hold of him. “Alina!” His voice was raw white wood, torn from the heart of a tree. I did not turn.

The Darkling stood waiting, his shadow guard hovering and shifting around him.

I was afraid, but beneath the fear, I was eager.

“We are alike,” he said, “as no one else is, as no one else will ever be.”

The truth of it rang through me. Like calls to like.

He held out his hand, and I stepped into his arms.

I cupped the back of his neck, feeling the silken brush of his hair on my fingertips. I knew Mal was watching. I needed him to turn away. I needed him to go. I tilted my face up to the Darkling’s.

“My power is yours,” I whispered.

I saw the elation and triumph in his eyes as he lowered his mouth to mine. Our lips met, and the connection between us opened. This was not the way he’d touched me in my visions, when he’d come to me as shadow. This was real, and I could drown in it.

Power flowed through me—the power of the stag, its strong heart beating in both our bodies, the life he’d taken, the life I’d tried to save. But I also felt the Darkling’s power, the power of the Black Heretic, the power of the Fold.

Like calls to like. I’d sensed it when the Hummingbird entered the Unsea, but I’d been too afraid to embrace it. This time, I didn’t fight. I let go of my fear, my guilt, my shame. There was darkness inside me. He had put it there, and I would no longer deny it. The volcra, the nichevo’ya, they were my monsters, all of them. And he was my monster, too.

“My power is yours,” I repeated. His arms tightened around me. “And yours is mine,” I whispered against his lips.

Mine. The word reverberated through me, through both of us.

The shadow soldiers shifted and whirred.

I remembered the way it had felt in that snowy glade, when the Darkling had placed the collar around my neck and seized control of my power. I reached across the connection between us.

He reared back. “What are you doing?”

I knew why he had never intended to kill the sea whip himself, why he hadn’t wanted to form that second connection. He was afraid.

Mine.

I forced my way across the bond forged by Morozova’s collar and grabbed hold of the Darkling’s power.

Darkness spilled from him, black ink from his palms, billowing and skittering, blooming into the shape of a nichevo’ya, forming hands, head, claws, wings. The first of my abominations.

The Darkling tried to pull away from me, but I clutched him tighter, calling his power, calling the darkness as he had once used the collar to summon my light.

Another creature burst forth, and then another. The Darkling cried out as it was wrenched from him. I felt it too, felt my heart constrict as each shadow soldier tore a little bit of me away, exacting the price of its creation.

“Stop,” the Darkling rasped.

The nichevo’ya whirred nervously around us, clicking and humming, faster and faster. One after another, I pulled my dark soldiers into being, and my army rose up around us.

The Darkling moaned, and so did I. We fell against each other, but still I did not relent.

“You’ll kill us both!” he cried.

“Yes,” I said.

The Darkling’s legs buckled, and we collapsed to our knees.

This was not the Small Science. This was magic, something ancient, the making at the heart of the world. It was terrifying, limitless. No wonder the Darkling hungered for more.

The darkness buzzed and clattered, a thousand locusts, beetles, hungry flies, clicking their legs, beating their wings. The nichevo’ya wavered and re-formed, whirring in a frenzy, driven on by his rage and my exultation.

Another monster. Another. Blood was pouring from the Darkling’s nose. The room seemed to rock, and I realized I was convulsing. I was dying, bit by bit, with every monster that wrenched itself free.

Just a little longer, I thought. Just a few more. Just enough so I know that I’ve sent him to the next world before I follow.

“Alina!” I heard Mal calling as if from a great distance. He was tugging at me, pulling me away.

“No!” I shouted. “Let me end this.”

“Alina!”

Mal seized my wrist, and a shock passed through me. Through the haze of blood and shadow, I glimpsed something beautiful, as if through a golden door.

He wrenched me away from the Darkling, but not before I called out to my children in one final exhortation: Bring it down.

The Darkling slumped to the ground. The monsters rose in a whirling black column around him, then crashed against the walls of the chapel, shaking the little building to its very foundations.

Mal had me in his arms and was running up the aisle. The nichevo’ya were hurling themselves against the chapel walls. Slabs of plaster crashed to the floor. The blue dome swayed as its supports began to give way.

Mal leapt past the altar and plunged into the passage. The smell of wet earth and mold filled my nostrils, mingling with the sweet incense scent of the chapel. He ran, racing against the disaster I’d unleashed.

A boom sounded from somewhere far behind us as the chapel collapsed. The impact roared through the passageway. A cloud of dirt and debris struck us with the force of an oncoming wave. Mal flew forward. I tumbled from his arms, and the world came down around us.

THE FIRST THING I HEARD was the low rumble of Tolya’s voice. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t scream. All I knew was pain and the relentless weight of the earth. Later I would find out that they’d labored over me for hours, breathing air back into my lungs, staunching the flow of blood, trying to mend the worst breaks in my bones.

I drifted in and out of consciousness. My mouth felt dry and swollen shut. I was pretty sure I’d bitten my tongue. I heard Tamar giving orders.

“Bring the rest of the tunnel down. We need to get as far from here as we possibly can.”

Mal.

Was he here? Buried beneath the rubble? I could not let them leave him. I forced my lips to form his name.

“Mal.” Could they even hear me? My voice sounded muffled and wrong to my ears.

“She’s hurting. Should we put her under?” Tamar asked.

“I don’t want to risk her heart stopping again,” replied Tolya.

“Mal,” I repeated.

“Leave the passage to the convent open,” Tamar said to someone. “Hopefully, he’ll think we went out there.”

The convent. Sankta Lizabeta. The gardens next to the Gritzki mansion. I couldn’t order my thoughts. I tried to speak Mal’s name again, but I couldn’t make my mouth work. The pain was crowding in on me. What if I’d lost him? If I’d had the strength, I would have screamed. I would have railed. Instead, I sank into darkness.

WHEN I CAME TO, the world was swaying beneath me. I remembered waking aboard the whaler, and for a terrifying moment, I thought I might be on a ship. I opened my eyes, saw earth and rock high above me. We were moving through a massive cavern. I was on my back on some kind of litter, borne between the shoulders of two men.

It was a struggle to stay conscious. I’d spent most of my life feeling sick and weak, but I’d never known fatigue like this. I was a husk, hollowed out, scraped clean. If any breeze could have reached us so far below the earth, I would have blown away to nothing.

Though every bone and muscle in my body shrieked in protest, I managed to turn my head.

Mal was there, lying on another litter, carried along just a few feet beside me. He was watching me, as if he’d been waiting for me to wake. He reached out.

I found some reservoir of strength and stretched my hand over the litter’s edge. When our fingers met, I heard a sob and realized I was crying. I wept with relief that I would not have to live with the burden of his death. But lodged in my gratitude, I felt a bright thorn of resentment. I wept with rage that I would have to live at all.

WE TRAVELED FOR MILES, through passages so tight that they had to lower my litter to the ground and slide me along the rock, through tunnels high and wide enough for ten haycarts. I don’t know how long we went on that way. There were no nights and days belowground.

Mal recovered before I did and limped along beside the litter. He’d been injured when the tunnel collapsed, but the Grisha had restored him. What I had endured, what I had embraced, they had no power to heal.

At some point, we stopped at a cave dripping with rows of stalactites. I’d heard one of my carriers call it the Worm’s Mouth. When they set me down, Mal was there, and with his help, I managed to get into a sitting position, propped against the cave wall. Even that effort left me dizzy, and when he dabbed his sleeve to my nose, I saw that I was bleeding.

“How bad is it?” I asked.

“You’ve looked better,” he admitted. “The pilgrims mentioned something called the White Cathedral. I think that’s where we’re headed.”

“They’re taking me to the Apparat.”

He glanced around the cavern. “This is how he escaped the Grand Palace after the coup. How he managed to evade capture for so long.”

“It’s also how he appeared and disappeared at the fortune-telling party. The mansion was next to the Convent of Sankta Lizabeta, remember? Tamar led me straight to him, and then she let him get away.” I heard the bitterness in my weak voice.

Slowly, my addled mind had pieced it all together. Only Tolya and Tamar had known about the party, and they’d arranged for the Apparat to meet me. They’d already been among the pilgrims that morning when I’d nearly started the riot, there to watch the sunrise with the faithful. That was how they’d gotten to me so quickly. And Tamar had vanished from the Eagle’s Nest as soon as she’d begun to suspect danger. I knew that the twins and their sun soldiers were the only reason any of the Grisha had survived, but their lies still stung.

“How are the others?”

Mal looked over to where the ragged group of Grisha huddled in the shadows.

“They know about the fetter,” he said. “They’re frightened.”

“And the firebird?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“I’ll tell them soon enough.”

“Sergei isn’t doing well,” Mal continued. “I think he’s still in shock. The rest seem to be holding up.”

“Genya?”

“She and David stay behind the group. She can’t move very quickly.” He paused. “The pilgrims call her Razrusha’ya.”

The Ruined.

“I need to see Tolya and Tamar.”

“You need to rest.”

“Now,” I said. “Please.”

He stood, but hesitated. When he spoke again, his voice was raw. “You should have told me what you intended to do.”

I looked away. The distance between us felt even deeper than it had before. I tried to free you, Mal. From the Darkling. From me.

“You should have let me finish him,” I said. “You should have let me die.”

When I heard his footsteps fade, I let my chin droop. I could hear my breath coming in shallow pants. When I worked up the strength to lift my eyes, Tolya and Tamar were kneeling before me, their heads bowed.

“Look at me,” I said.

They obeyed. Tolya’s sleeves were rolled up, and I saw that his massive forearms were emblazoned with suns.

“Why not just tell me?”

“You never would have let us stay so close,” replied Tamar.

That was true. Even now I wasn’t sure what to make of them.

“If you believe I’m a Saint, why not let me die in the chapel? What if that was meant to be my martyrdom?”

“Then you would have died,” said Tolya without hesitation. “We wouldn’t have found you in the rubble in time or been able to revive you.”

“You let Mal come back for me. After you gave me your vow.”

“He broke away,” said Tamar.

I lifted a brow. The day Mal could break Tolya’s hold was indeed a day of miracles.

Tolya hung his head and heaved his huge shoulders. “Forgive me,” he said. “I couldn’t be the one to keep him from you.”

I sighed. Some holy warrior.

“Do you serve me?”

“Yes,” they said in unison.

“Not the priest?”

“We serve you,” said Tolya, his voice a fierce rumble.

“We’ll see,” I murmured, and waved them away. They rose to go, but I called them back. “Some of the pilgrims have taken to calling Genya Razrusha’ya. Warn them once. If they speak that word again, cut out their tongues.”

They didn’t blink, didn’t flinch. They made their bows and were gone.

THE WHITE CATHEDRAL was a cavern of alabaster quartz, so vast it might have held a city in its glowing ivory depths. Its walls were damp and bloomed with mushrooms, salt lilies, toadstools shaped like stars. It was buried deep beneath Ravka, somewhere north of the capital.

I wanted to meet the priest standing, so I held tight to Mal’s arm as we were brought before him, trying to hide the effort it took just to stay upright and the way my body shook.

“Sankta Alina,” the Apparat said, “you are come to us at last.”

Then he fell to his knees in his tattered brown robes. He kissed my hand, my hem. He called out to the faithful, thousands of them gathered in the belly of the cavern. When he spoke, the very air seemed to tremble. “We will rise to make a new Ravka,” he roared. “A country free from tyrants and kings! We will spill from the earth and drive the shadows back in a tide of righteousness!”

Below us, the pilgrims chanted. Sankta Alina.

There were rooms carved into the rock, chambers that glowed ivory and glittered with thin veins of silver. Mal helped me to my quarters, made me eat a few bites of sweet pea porridge, and brought me a pitcher of fresh water to fill the basin. A mirror had been set directly into the stone, and when I glimpsed myself, I let out a little cry. The heavy pitcher shattered on the floor. My skin was pale, stretched tight over jutting bones. My eyes were bruised hollows. My hair had gone completely white, a fall of brittle snow.

I touched my fingertips to the glass. Mal’s gaze met mine in the reflection.

“I should have warned you,” he said.

“I look like a monster.”

“More like a khitka.”

“Woodsprites eat children.”

“Only when they’re hungry,” he said.

I tried to smile, to hold tight to this glimmer of warmth between us. But I noticed how far from me he stood, arms at his back, like a guard at attention. He mistook the sheen of tears in my eyes.

“It will get better,” he said. “Once you use your power.”

“Of course,” I replied, turning away from the mirror, feeling exhaustion and pain settle into my bones.

I hesitated, then cast a meaningful glance at the men the Apparat had stationed at the door to the chamber. Mal stepped closer. I wanted to press my cheek to his chest, feel his arms around me, listen to the steady, human beat of his heart. I didn’t.

Instead, I spoke low, barely moving my lips. “I’ve tried,” I whispered. “Something’s wrong.”

He frowned. “You can’t summon?” he asked hesitantly. Was there fear in his voice? Hope? Concern? I couldn’t tell. All I could sense in him was caution.

“I’m too weak. We’re too far belowground. I don’t know.”

I watched his face, remembering the argument we’d had in the birchwood grove, when he’d asked if I would give up being Grisha. Never, I’d said. Never.

Hopelessness crowded in on me, dense and black, heavy like the press of soil. I didn’t want to say the words, didn’t want to give voice to the fear I’d carried with me through the long, dark miles beneath the earth, but I forced myself to speak it. “The light won’t come, Mal. My power is gone.”