Page 84 of Rule of Wolves

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.

“Thank you for bringing me here, Zoya,” the Darkling said as his winged soldiers took shape and lifted him from the ground. “My resurrection is complete.”

It had all been a ruse. His apology. His desire to see Alina. Even his wish to reenact the obisbaya. Were the monks and their thorn-wood seeds a lie too? Just another fairy tale he’d concocted to feed to them like bedtime stories? He was right. They were children, grasping for understanding, stumbling along, learning to walk as the Darkling sprinted ahead of them. They had been fools to think they could predict or control him. He had never intended to drive Yuri out. He needed Alina and Mal: the Sun Summoner who had slain him, and the amplifier who carried the blood of his ancestors. He’d felt no guilt, no shame. She’d been so wrong about what he wanted here.

“Signal the flyers!” she shouted to the Sun Soldiers, then turned her wrath on him. If only she’d had time to master the gifts Juris had granted her. “You have nowhere to go. The king’s soldiers will hunt you to the ends of the earth and so will I.”

Gunshots shattered the air as the flyers overhead opened fire on the Darkling from above. One found its target, and the Darkling gave a yelp of rage and pain. He can still bleed.

But the nichevo’ya swarmed around him in a mass of wings and writhing bodies, absorbing bullets as if they were nothing at all.

Two of the shadow soldiers surged skyward, and a moment later the flyers were plummeting toward the earth.

Zoya screamed, hurling her power in a wave of wind to break their fall.

Not one more, she vowed. She would not lose a single soldier more to this man.

“I have bested many kings and survived many foes greater than you,” said the Darkling. The shadows leapt and dove around him as he rose into the sky. “And now I will become what the people most desire. A savior. When I am done, they will know what a Saint can do.”

Darkness swirled around him, as if the shadows were glad in their dancing, returned to their beloved keeper. The Sun Soldiers pushed against the darkness with their light. But Zoya saw his hands in motion—the Darkling was going to use the Cut. He would kill them all.

We are the dragon. Juris’ consciousness tugged at hers, pulling her toward something more, even as her own heart refused it. No. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

She threw her arms out in a circle of wind that flattened the trees and threw the Sun Soldiers off their feet but away from harm. Not one more. She drew a bolt of pure crackling lightning from the sky, a spear of fire to end the Darkling as they should have ended him years ago.