Ruin and Rising (The Grisha Trilogy)(94)

“I’m grateful to be alive,” I said. “The Fold is gone. You’re safe. It just … hurts.” I felt petty. Harshaw was dead, and so were half of the Soldat Sol, including Ruby. Then there were the others: Sergei, Marie, Paja, Fedyor, Botkin. Baghra. So many lost to this war. The list stretched on and on.

“Loss is loss,” Mal said. “You have the right to grieve.”

I stared up at the barn’s wooden beams. Even the shred of darkness I’d commanded had abandoned me. That power had belonged to the Darkling, and it had left this world with him.

“I feel empty.”

Mal was quiet for a long moment, then said, “I feel it too.” I pushed up on my elbow. His gaze was faraway. “I won’t know until I try to track, but I feel different. I used to just know things. Even lying here, I could have sensed deer in the field, a bird resting on a branch, maybe a mouse burrowing in the wall. I never thought about it, but now there’s this kind of … silence.”

Loss. I’d wondered how Tolya and Tamar had brought Mal back. I’d been willing to simply call it a miracle. Now I thought I understood. Mal had possessed two lives, but only one was rightfully his. The other was stolen, an inheritance wrought from merzost, snatched from the making at the heart of the world. It was the force that had animated Morozova’s daughter when her human life had gone, the power that had reverberated through Mal’s bones. His blood had been thick with it, and that purloined bit of creation was what had made him such a remarkable tracker. It had bound him to every living thing. Like calls to like.

And now it was gone. The life stolen by Morozova and given to his daughter had reached its end. The life Mal had been born with—fragile, mortal, temporary—was his alone. Loss. This was the price the world had demanded for balance. But Morozova couldn’t have known that the person to unlock the secrets of his amplifiers wouldn’t be some ancient Grisha who had lived a thousand years and grown weary of his power. He couldn’t have known that it would all come down to two orphans from Keramzin.

Mal took my hand, curling his fingers in mine, and pressed it to his chest. “Do you think you could be happy?” he asked. “With a used-up tracker?”

I smiled at that. Cocky Mal, charming, brave, and dangerous. Was that doubt in his voice? I kissed him once, gently. “If you can be happy with someone who stuck a knife in your chest.”

“I helped. And I told you I can handle a bad mood.”

I didn’t know what came next or who I was supposed to be. I owned nothing, not even the borrowed clothes on my back. And yet, lying there, I realized I wasn’t afraid. After all I’d been through, there was no fear left in me—sadness, gratitude, maybe even hope, but the fear had been eaten up by pain and challenge. The Saint was gone. The Summoner too. I was just a girl again, but this girl didn’t owe her strength to fate or chance or a grand destiny. I’d been born with my power; the rest I’d earned.

“Mal, you’ll have to be careful. The story of the amplifiers could leak out. People might still think you have power.”

He shook his head. “Malyen Oretsev died with you,” he said, his words echoing my thoughts closely enough to raise the hair on my arms. “That life is over. Maybe I’ll be smarter in the next one.”

I snorted. “We’ll see. We’re going to have to choose new names, you know.”

“Misha is already making a list of suggestions.”

“Oh, Saints.”

“You have nothing to complain about. Apparently I am to be Dmitri Dumkin.”

“Suits you.”

“I should warn you that I’m keeping a tab of all of your insults so that I can reward you when I’m healed.”

“Easy with the threats, Dumkin. Maybe I’ll tell the Apparat all about your miraculous recovery, and he’ll turn you into a Saint too.”

“He can try,” said Mal. “I don’t intend to waste my days in holy pursuits.”

“No?”

“No,” he said as he drew me closer. “I have to spend the rest of my life finding ways to deserve a certain white-haired girl. She’s very prickly, occasionally puts goose droppings in my shoes or tries to kill me.”

“Sounds fatiguing,” I managed as his lips met mine.

“She’s worth it. And one day maybe she’ll let me chase her into a chapel.”

I shuddered. “I don’t like chapels.”

“I did tell Ana Kuya I would marry you.”

I laughed. “You remember that?”

“Alina,” he said and kissed the scar on my palm, “I remember everything.”

* * *

IT WAS TIME to leave Tomikyana behind. We’d had only one night to recover, but news of the destruction of the Fold was spreading fast, and soon the farm’s owners might return. And even if I was no longer the Sun Summoner, there were still things I needed to do before I could bury Sankta Alina forever.

Genya brought us clean clothes. Mal limped behind the cider presses to change while she helped me put on a simple blouse and the sarafan that went over it. They were peasant clothes, not even military.

She’d once woven gold through my hair at the Little Palace, but now a more radical change was necessary. She used a pot of hematite and a clutch of shiny rooster feathers to temporarily alter its distinctive white color, then tied a kerchief around my head for good measure.