Ruin and Rising (The Grisha Trilogy)(91)

“I don’t understand,” I cried as I pressed my wet cheek to Mal’s. His skin was already cooling.

Baghra had warned me: You may not be able to survive the sacrifice that merzost requires. But what was the point of this sacrifice? Had we lived only to be a lesson in the price of greed? Was that the truth of Morozova’s madness, some kind of cruel equation that took all our love and loss and added them up to nothing?

It was too much. The hate and pain and grief overwhelmed me. If I’d had my power back for even a second, I would have burned the world to a cinder.

Then I saw it—a light in the distance, a gleaming blade that pierced the dark.

Before I could make sense of it, another appeared—a bright point that became two broad beams, sweeping high and wild above me.

A torrent of light burst from the darkness just a few feet from me. As my eyes adjusted I saw Vladim, his mouth open in shock and confusion as light poured from his palms.

I turned my head and saw them sparking to life, one by one across the Fold, like stars appearing in a twilight sky, Soldat Sol and oprichniki, their weapons forgotten, their faces baffled, awed, terrified, and bathed in light.

The Darkling’s words came back to me, spoken on a ship that sailed the icy waters of the Bone Road. Morozova was a strange man. He was a bit like you, drawn to the ordinary and the weak.

He’d had an otkazat’sya wife.

He’d nearly lost an otkazat’sya child.

He’d thought himself alone in the world, alone in his power.

Now I understood. I saw what he had done. This was the gift of the three amplifiers: power multiplied a thousand times, but not in one person. How many new Summoners had just been created? How far had Morozova’s power reached?

The arcs and cascades of light blossomed around me, a bright garden growing in this unnatural night. The beams met, and where they crossed, the darkness burned away.

The shrieks of the volcra erupted around me as the Fold began to unravel. It was a miracle.

And I didn’t care. The Saints could keep their miracles. The Grisha could keep their long lives and their lessons. Mal was dead.

“How?”

I looked up. The Darkling stood behind us, stunned, taking in the impossible sight of the Fold coming apart around us. “This can’t be. Not without the firebird. The third—” He stopped short as his eyes settled on Mal’s body, the blood on my hands. “It can’t be,” he repeated.

Even now, as the world we knew was remade in bursts and flashes of light, he couldn’t comprehend what Mal truly was. He wouldn’t.

“What power is this?” he demanded. The Darkling stalked toward us, shadows pooling in his palms, his creatures swirling around him.

The twins drew their weapons. Without thinking, I lifted my hands, reaching for the light. Nothing happened.

The Darkling stared. He dropped his arms. The skeins of darkness faded.

“No,” he said, bewildered, shaking his head. “No. This isn’t— What have you done?”

“Keep working,” I ordered the twins.

“Alina—”

“Bring him back to me,” I repeated. I wasn’t making sense. I knew that. They didn’t have Morozova’s power. But Mal could make rabbits out of rocks. He could find true north standing on his head. He would find his way back to me again.

I lurched to my feet, and the Darkling strode toward me.

His hands went to my throat. “No,” he whispered.

Only then did I realize the collar had fallen away. I looked down. It lay in pieces beside Mal’s body. My wrist was bare; the fetter had broken too.

“This isn’t right,” he said, and in his voice I heard desperation, a new and unfamiliar anguish. His fingers skimmed my neck, cupped my face. I felt no surge of surety. No light stirred within me to answer his call. His gray eyes searched mine—confused, nearly frightened. “You were meant to be like me. You were meant … You’re nothing now.”

He dropped his hands. I saw the realization strike him. He was truly alone. And he always would be.

I saw the emptiness enter his eyes, felt the yawning void inside him stretch wider, an infinite wasteland. The calm left him, all that cool certainty. He cried out in his rage.

He spread his arms wide, calling the darkness. The nichevo’ya scattered like a flock of birds flushed from a hedge and turned on Soldat Sol and oprichniki alike, cutting them down, snuffing out the beams of light that blazed from their bodies. I knew there was no bottom to the Darkling’s pain. He would just keep falling and falling.

Mercy. Had I ever really understood it? Had I actually believed I knew what it was to suffer? To forgive? Mercy, I thought. For the stag, for the Darkling, for us all.

If we’d still been bound by that tether, he might have sensed what I was about to do. My fingers twitched in the sleeve of my coat, curling a scrap of shadow around the blade of my knife—the knife I had plucked from the sands, wet with Mal’s blood. This was the only power that was left to me, one that had never really been mine. An echo, a joke, a carnival trick. It’s something you took from him.

“I don’t need to be Grisha,” I whispered, “to wield Grisha steel.”

With one swift movement, I drove the shadow-wrapped blade deep into the Darkling’s heart.

He made a soft sound, little more than an exhalation. He looked down at the hilt protruding from his chest, then back up at me. He frowned, took a step, tottered slightly. He righted himself.