Ruin and Rising (The Grisha Trilogy)(39)

Tamar started forward at the same moment that I said, “Genya—”

She held up her hands, warding us off. “I don’t want your pity,” she said ferociously. Her voice was raw, wild. We stood there helplessly. “You don’t understand.” She covered her face with her hands. “None of you do.”

“Genya—” David tried.

“Don’t you dare,” she said roughly, tears welling up again. “You never looked at me twice before I was like this, before I was broken. Now I’m just something for you to fix.”

I was desperate for words to soothe her, but before I could find any, David bunched up his shoulders and said, “I know metal.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Genya cried.

David furrowed his brow. “I … I don’t understand half of what goes on around me. I don’t get jokes or sunsets or poetry, but I know metal.” His fingers flexed unconsciously as if he were physically grasping for words. “Beauty was your armor. Fragile stuff, all show. But what’s inside you? That’s steel. It’s brave and unbreakable. And it doesn’t need fixing.” He drew in a deep breath then awkwardly stepped forward. He took her face in his hands and kissed her.

Genya went rigid. I thought she’d push him away. But then she threw her arms around him and kissed him back. Emphatically.

Mal cleared his throat, and Tamar gave a low whistle. I had to bite my lip to stifle a nervous laugh.

They broke apart. David was blushing furiously. Genya’s grin was so dazzling it made my heart twist in my chest. “We should get you out of the workshop more often,” she said.

This time I did laugh. I stopped short when Nikolai said, “Do not think to rest easy, Genya Safin.” His voice was cold and deeply weary. “When this war is over, you will face charges, and I will decide whether or not you are to be pardoned.”

Genya bowed gracefully. “I don’t fear your justice, moi tsar.”

“I’m not the King yet.”

“Moi tsarevich,” she amended.

“Go,” he said, waving us away. When I hesitated, he simply said, “All of you.”

As the doors closed, I saw him slump at his drafting table, his head in his hands.

I trailed the others back down the hall. David was murmuring to Genya about the properties of vegetable alkaloids and beryllium dust. I wasn’t sure how wise it was for them to be colluding over poisons, but I supposed this was their version of a romantic moment.

My feet dragged at the prospect of returning to the Spinning Wheel. It had been one of the longest days of my life, and though I’d held exhaustion at bay, now it settled over my shoulders like a sodden coat. I decided that Genya or Tamar could update the rest of the Grisha on what had happened, and I would deal with Sergei tomorrow. But before I could find my bed and sink into it, there was something I needed to know.

At the stairs, I grabbed Genya’s hand. “What did you whisper?” I asked quietly. “To the King.”

She watched the others move up the steps, then said, “Na razrusha’ya. E’ya razrushost.” I am not ruined. I am ruination.

My brows rose. “Remind me to stay on your good side.”

“Darling,” she said, turning one scarred cheek to me, then the other, “I don’t have a good side anymore.” Her tone was merry, but I heard sadness there too. She winked at me with her remaining eye and disappeared up the stairs.

* * *

MAL HAD WORKED with Nevsky to see to our sleeping arrangements, so he was left to show me to my quarters, a set of rooms on the eastern side of the mountain. The door frame was formed by the clasped hands of two bronze maidens I thought might be meant to embody the Morning and Evening Stars. Inside, the far wall was entirely taken up by a round window, ringed in riveted brass like a sidescuttle on a ship. The lanterns were lit, and though the view would most likely be spectacular in the daytime, right now, there was nothing to see but darkness and my own tired face looking back at me.

“The twins and I will be right next door,” Mal said. “And one of us will be posted while you sleep.”

A pitcher of hot water was waiting for me by the basin, and I rinsed my face as Mal reported on the accommodations he’d secured for the rest of the Grisha, how long it would take to outfit our expedition into the Sikurzoi, and how he wanted to divide the group. I tried to listen, but at some point, my mind shut down.

I sat on the stone bench of the window seat. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I just can’t.”

He stood there, and I could almost see him wrestling with whether or not to sit down beside me. In the end, he stayed where he was.

“You saved my life today,” he said.

I shrugged. “And you saved mine. It’s kind of what we do.”

“I know it isn’t easy, making your first kill.”

“I’ve been responsible for a lot of deaths. This shouldn’t be any different.”

“But it is.”

“He was a soldier like us. He probably has a family somewhere, a girl he loves, maybe even a child. He was there and then he was just … gone.” I knew I should leave it at that, but I needed to let the words out. “And you know the really scary part? It was easy.”

Mal was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “I’m not sure who my first kill was. We were hunting the stag when we ran into a Fjerdan patrol on the northern border. I don’t think the fight lasted more than a few minutes, but I killed three men. They were doing a job, same as I was, trying to get through one day to the next, then they were bleeding in the snow. No way to tell who was the first to fall, and I’m not sure it matters. You keep them at a distance. The faces start to blur.”