Ruin and Rising (The Grisha Trilogy)(75)
Behind me, I heard Zoya grumble, “Oh, Saints, now I have to listen to Tolya snore all night?”
“You snore too,” said Harshaw. “And it isn’t ladylike.”
“I do not…”
Their voices faded as we bent to enter the dim confines of the tent. Firelight filtered through the canvas walls and sent shadows swaying. Without a word, we lay down in the furs. Mal curled around me, his chest pressed to my back, his arms a tight circle, his breath soft against the crook of my neck. It was the way we’d slept with the insects buzzing around us by the shores of Trivka’s Pond, in the belly of a ship bound for Novyi Zem, on a narrow cot in the run-down boardinghouse in Cofton.
His hand slid down my forearm. Gently, he clasped the bare skin of my wrist, letting his fingers touch, testing. When they met, that jolting force moved through both of us, even that brief taste of power nearly unbearable in its force.
My throat constricted—with misery, with confusion, and with shameful, undeniable longing. To want this from him was too much, too cruel. It’s not fair. Stupid words, childish. Senseless.
“We’ll find another way,” I whispered.
Mal’s fingers separated, but he kept my wrist in a loose hold as he drew me closer. I felt as I always had in his arms—complete, like I was home. But now I had to question even that. Was what I felt real or some product of a destiny Morozova had set into motion hundreds of years ago?
Mal brushed the hair from my neck. He pressed a single brief kiss to the skin above the collar.
“No, Alina,” he said softly. “We won’t.”
* * *
THE RETURN JOURNEY to Dva Stolba seemed shorter. We kept to the high country, to the narrow spines of the hills, as distance and days faded beneath our feet. We moved more quickly because the terrain was familiar and Mal wasn’t seeking signs of the firebird, but I also just felt as if time were contracting. I dreaded the reality that awaited us back in the valley, the decisions we would have to make, the explanations I would have to give.
We traveled in near silence, Harshaw humming occasionally or murmuring to Oncat, the rest of us locked in our own thoughts. After that first night, Mal kept his distance. I hadn’t approached him. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to say. His mood had changed—that calm was still there, but now I had the eerie sense that he was drinking in the world, memorizing it. He would turn his face up to the sun and let his eyes close, or break a stalk of bur marigold and press it to his nose. He hunted for us every night that we had enough cover for a fire. He pointed out larks’ nests and wild geranium, and caught a field mouse for Oncat, who seemed too spoiled to do any hunting of her own.
“For a doomed man,” said Zoya, “you’re remarkably chipper.”
“He isn’t doomed,” I snapped.
Mal nocked an arrow, drew back, and released. It twanged into what looked like a cloudless and empty sky, but a second later, we heard a distant caw and a shape plummeted to the earth nearly a mile ahead of us. He shouldered his bow. “We all die,” he said as he jogged off to retrieve his kill. “Not everyone dies for a reason.”
“Are we philosophizing?” asked Harshaw. “Or were those song lyrics?”
As Harshaw started humming, I ran to catch up with Mal.
“Don’t say that,” I said as I came level with him. “Don’t talk that way.”
“All right.”
“And don’t think that way either.”
He actually grinned.
“Mal, please,” I said desperately, not even sure what I was asking for. I grabbed his hand. He turned to me, and I didn’t stop to think. I went up on my toes and kissed him. It took him the barest second to react, then he dropped his bow and kissed me back, arms winding tight around me, the hard planes of his body pressed against mine.
“Alina—” he began.
I grabbed the lapels of his coat, tears filling my eyes. “Don’t tell me this is all happening for a reason,” I said fiercely. “Or that it’s going to be okay. Don’t tell me you’re ready to die.”
We stood in the tall grass, wind singing through the reeds. He met my gaze, his blue eyes steady. “It’s not going to be okay.” He brushed the hair back from my cheeks and cupped my face in his rough hands. “None of this is happening for a reason.” He skimmed his lips over mine. “And Saints help me, Alina, I want to live forever.”
He kissed me again, and this time, he didn’t stop—not until my cheeks were flushed and my heart was racing, not until I could barely remember my own name, let alone anyone else’s, not until we heard Harshaw singing, and Tolya grumbling, and Zoya cheerfully promising to murder us all.
* * *
THAT NIGHT, I slept in Mal’s arms, wrapped in furs beneath the stars. We whispered in the dark, stealing kisses, conscious of the others lying only a few feet away. Some part of me wished that a Shu raiding party would come and put a bullet through both of our hearts, leave us there forever, two bodies that would turn to dust and be forgotten. I thought about just leaving, abandoning the others, abandoning Ravka as we’d once intended, striking out through the mountains and making our way to the coast.
I thought of all these things. But I rose the next morning, and the morning after that. I ate dry biscuits, drank bitter tea. Too soon, the mountains faded, and we began our final descent into Dva Stolba. We’d arrived back sooner than expected, in time to retrieve the Bittern and still meet any forces the Apparat might send to Caryeva. When I saw the two stone spindles of the ruins, I wanted to level them, let the Cut do what time and weather had failed to, and turn them to rubble.