Page 12 of Rule of Wolves

“Same as near Balakirev,” said Tolya. “A blot of shadow rolling over the countryside, like night coming on too quickly. Everything the shadow touches succumbs to blight—livestock, property, even people dissolve into smoke, leaving behind nothing but barren earth.”

“Pilgrims came through only a day ago,” said Zoya. “Followers of the Starless One. They claim this is punishment for the reign of a faithless king.”

“How unfair. I have plenty of faith,” Nikolai objected.

Tolya raised a brow. “In what?”

“Good engineering and better whiskey. Did Mirov and his friends break bread with the pilgrims and give them a fair hearing for their treason?”

“No,” Zoya said with some satisfaction. “Enough of them remember the war and the Darkling’s destruction of Novokribirsk. They chased those black-clad fanatics out of town.”

“They do love a mob in Yaryenosh. What did that woman say to you?”

“No idea,” said Zoya. “I don’t speak Suli.”

Tamar peered at her. “You looked like you understood her. You looked like you couldn’t wait to be out of her sight.”

So Nikolai hadn’t been the only one to notice.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Zoya said. “There was work to be done.”

Tolya bobbed his head at Nikolai. “The Suli aren’t fond of you, are they?”

“I’m not sure they have reason to be,” said Nikolai. “They shouldn’t have to live in fear within our borders. I haven’t worked hard enough to secure their safety.” Another item to add to his list of failures. Since taking the throne, he’d contended with too many enemies on the field—the Darkling, the Fjerdans, the Shu, jurda parem, the damned demon living inside him.

“We all live in fear.” Zoya nudged her horse into a gallop.

“I guess that’s one way to change the subject,” said Tolya.

They followed in her wake, and as they crested the hill, Tamar looked back at the wound the blight had left on the fields. “The Starless are right about one thing. There’s a connection to the Darkling.”

“I’m afraid so,” said Nikolai. “We’ve all seen the sands of the Fold. Dead and gray. Just like the areas struck by this blight. I thought that when the Shadow Fold collapsed and the darkness was dispelled, the land it covered might heal itself.”

“But nothing has ever grown there,” said Tolya. “It’s cursed land.”

For once, Nikolai couldn’t brush away that word as mere superstition. The Tula Valley had been the site of some of the holiest land in Ravka, where Sankt Feliks had supposedly cultivated his orchard—or the thorn wood, depending on which story you believed. It was also the location of the first obisbaya, a ritual meant to separate beast from man. But the Darkling had tainted all that. His attempt to create his own amplifiers and his use of merzost to do it had made a mockery of his power, twisting it into a dark territory crowded with monsters. Sometimes Nikolai wondered if they’d ever be free of that legacy.

Not if you don’t face your part in it. It was time they acknowledged the ugly truth of what this blight meant.

“There’s no other explanation,” he said. “The Fold is expanding. And we caused it.”

“You don’t know that—” Tamar began.

“We do,” said Zoya. Her voice was cold.

Nikolai remembered the earthquakes that had been felt throughout Ravka and beyond when the boundaries of the Fold had ruptured. Elizaveta had been defeated. Three Saints, Grisha of infinite power, had died violently. Nikolai’s attempt to endure the obisbaya and rid himself of his demon had failed. The Darkling’s power lived on inside him, and now the man himself walked the earth once more. Of course there were bound to be consequences.

“We’ll take soil samples,” he continued. “But we know what’s happening here.”

“Fine. You’re to blame,” said Tamar. “How do we stop it?”

“Kill the Darkling,” said Zoya.

Tolya rolled his eyes. “That’s your answer to everything.”

Zoya shrugged. “How do we know if we don’t try?”

“And what about the demon trapped inside the king?” asked Tamar.