Ruin and Rising (The Grisha Trilogy)(64)

Tolya threw a pebble at her and said, “Nikolai’s men should have watched him more closely.”

Or I should never have let him go. Maybe my guilt over Marie had clouded my judgment. Maybe sorrow was clouding it now and there were more betrayals to come.

“Did the nichevo’ya really just … tear him apart?” asked Nadia.

I glanced over at Misha. At some point, he’d climbed down from the Bittern. Now he was fast asleep beside Mal, still clutching that wooden sword.

“It was horrible,” I said softly.

“What about Nikolai?” Zoya asked. “What did the Darkling do to him?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“Can it be undone?”

“I don’t know that either.” I looked to David.

“Maybe,” he offered. “I’d need to study him. It’s merzost. New territory. I wish I had Morozova’s journals.”

I almost laughed at that. All the time David had been lugging those journals around, I would have gladly thrown them onto a garbage heap. But now that there was a good reason to want them, they were out of my reach, left behind at the Spinning Wheel.

Capture Nikolai. Put him in a cage. See if we could pull him from the shadow’s grasp. The too-clever fox, finally caught. I blinked and looked away. I didn’t want to cry again.

Abruptly, Adrik snarled, “I’m glad Sergei’s dead. I’m just sorry I didn’t get to wring his neck myself.”

“You’d need two hands for that,” said Zoya.

There was a brief, terrible silence, then Adrik scowled and said, “Okay, stab him.”

Zoya grinned and passed him the flask. Nadia just shook her head. Sometimes I forgot they were really soldiers. I didn’t doubt that Adrik would mourn the loss of his arm. I wasn’t even sure how it might impact his ability to summon. But I remembered him standing in front of me at the Little Palace, demanding the right to stay and fight. He was tougher than I’d ever be.

I thought of Botkin, my old teacher, pushing me to run another mile, to take another punch. I remembered the words he’d spoken to me so long ago: Steel is earned. Adrik had that steel, and so did Nadia. She’d proven it again in our flight from the Elbjen. A part of me had wondered what Tamar saw in her. But Nadia had been in some of the worst fighting at the Little Palace. She’d lost her best friend and the life she’d always known. Yet she hadn’t fallen apart like Sergei or chosen life underground like Maxim. Through all of it, she’d stayed steady.

When Adrik handed the flask back, Zoya took a deep drink and said, “Do you know what Baghra told me at my first lesson with her?” She lowered her voice to imitate Baghra’s throaty rasp. “Pretty face. Too bad you have porridge for brains.”

Harshaw snorted. “I set fire to her hut in class.”

“Of course you did,” said Zoya.

“Accidentally! She refused to ever teach me again. Wouldn’t even speak to me. I saw her on the grounds once, and she walked right by. Didn’t say a word, just whacked me on the knee with her stick. I still have a lump.” He yanked up his trouser leg, and sure enough, there was a knob of bone visible beneath the skin.

“That’s nothing,” Nadia said, her cheeks pinking as we all turned our attention to her. “I had some kind of block where I couldn’t summon for a while. She put me in a room and released a hive of bees in it.”

“What?” I squeaked. It wasn’t just the bees that had shocked me. I’d struggled to summon for months at the Little Palace, and Baghra had never mentioned that other Grisha got blocks.

“What did you do?” Tamar asked incredulously.

“I managed to summon a current to send them up the chimney, but I got stung so many times, I looked like I had firepox.”

“I have never been more glad I’m not Grisha,” Mal said with a shake of his head.

Zoya lifted her flask. “Let’s hear it for the lone otkazat’sya.”

“Baghra hated me,” David said quietly.

Zoya waved dismissively. “We all felt that way.”

“No, she really hated me. She taught me once with the rest of the Fabrikators my age, then she refused to ever meet with me again. I used to just stay in the workshops when everyone else had her classes.”

“Why?” Harshaw asked, scratching Oncat under the chin.

David shrugged. “No idea.”

“I know why,” said Genya. I waited, wondering if she really did. “Animal magnetism,” she continued. “One more minute in that hut with you, and she would have torn off all your clothes.”

David considered this. “That seems improbable.”

“Impossible,” Mal and I said at the same time.

“Well, not impossible,” David said, looking vaguely insulted.

Genya laughed and planted a firm kiss on his mouth.

I picked up a stick and gave the fire a poke, sending sparks shooting upward. I knew why Baghra had refused to teach David. He’d reminded her too much of Morozova, so obsessed with knowledge that he’d been blind to his child’s suffering, to his wife’s neglect. And sure enough, David had created lumiya just “for fun,” essentially handing the Darkling the means to enter the Fold. But David wasn’t like Morozova. He’d been there for Genya when she’d needed him. He was no warrior, but he’d still found a way to fight for her.