Nikolai looked at the brother he had once so adored, whom he had tried to emulate in everything. “You should be ashamed.”
Vasily was still taller than Nikolai, still outweighed him. He jabbed a finger into Nikolai’s chest and said, “You do not tell me what I should or shouldn’t do, Sobachka. I will be a king, and you will always be Nikolai Nothing.”
But while Vasily had been sparring with instructors who never pushed him too hard and who always made sure to let the future king win, Nikolai had been spending his days roughhousing with peasants who didn’t know whose nose they were bloodying.
Nikolai snatched Vasily’s finger and twisted. His brother yelped and fell to the floor. He seemed impossibly small.
“A king never kneels, brother.”
He left Vasily clutching his sprained finger and his wounded pride.
Again, Nikolai vowed he would make things right with Dominik, though this time it would be harder. He began by devising ways to funnel money to his friend’s family. But to do more, he would need influence, something his brother possessed simply by virtue of being born first.
Since Nikolai could not be important, he turned his clever mind to the task of becoming charming. His mother was vain, so he paid her compliments. He dressed impeccably in colors that suited her tastes, and whenever he visited her, he made sure to bring her a small gift—a box of sweets, orchids from the hothouse. He pleased her friends with amusing gossip, recited bits of doggerel, and imitated his father’s ministers with startling accuracy. He became a favorite at the queen’s salons, and when he didn’t make an appearance, her ladies were known to exclaim, “Where is that darling boy?”
With his father, Nikolai spoke of hunting and horseflesh, subjects about which he cared nothing but that he knew his father loved. He praised his father’s witty conversation and astute observations and developed a gift for making the king feel both wise and worldly.
He did not stop with his parents. Nikolai introduced himself to the members of his father’s cabinet and asked them flattering questions about statecraft and finance. He wrote to military commanders to commend them on victories and to inquire about the strategies they’d deployed. He corresponded with gunsmiths and shipwrights and applied himself to learning languages—the one thing at which he did not particularly excel—so that he could address them in their own tongues. When Dominik’s other brother was sent to the front, Nikolai used every bit of sway he had to get him reassigned to a place where the fighting was light. And by then, he had considerable sway.
He did it because he liked learning the puzzle of each person. He did it because it felt good to feel his influence and understanding grow. But above all else, he did it because he knew he needed to rescue his country. Nikolai had to save Ravka from his own family.
As was tradition among noblemen, Vasily accepted his officer’s commission and treated his military service as symbolic. Nikolai joined the infantry. He endured basic training with Dominik at Poliznaya, and they traveled together to their first assignment. Dominik was there when Nikolai took his first bullet, and Nikolai was there when Dominik fell at Halmhend, never to rise again.
On that battlefield, heavy with black smoke and the acrid scent of gunpowder, Nikolai had shouted for a medik, a Grisha healer, anyone to help them. But no one came. He was not a king’s son then, just one more voice crying out in the carnage.
Dominik made Nikolai promise to take care of his family, to make sure his mother knew he’d died well, and then he said, “Do you know the story of Andrei Zhirov?”
“The revolutionary?”
Zhirov had been a radical in Nikolai’s grandfather’s time.
A grin ghosted over Dominik’s blood-flecked lips. “When they tried to hang him for treason, the rope broke and he rolled into the ditch the soldiers had dug for his grave.”
Nikolai tried to smile. “I never heard that story.”
Dominik nodded. “This country, Zhirov shouted. They can’t even hang a man right.”
Nikolai shook his head. “Is that true?”
“I don’t know,” said Dominik. A wet sound came from his chest as he struggled to breathe. “I just know they shot him anyway.”
Soldiers did not cry. Princes did not weep. Nikolai knew this. But the tears fell anyway. “Dominik the Brave. Hold on a little longer.”
Dominik squeezed Nikolai’s hand. “This country gets you in the end, brother. Don’t forget it.”
“Not us,” he said. But Dominik was already gone.
“I’ll do better,” Nikolai promised, just as he had so many years ago in Mitkin’s classroom. “I’ll find a way.”
He had witnessed a thousand deaths since then. His nightmares had been plagued by countless other battlefields. And yet it was that promise to Dominik that haunted his waking hours. But how was he to explain any of this to Zoya, still sitting patiently at the corner of the bed, still keeping her distance?
He looked up at the honeycomb ceiling, blew out a long breath. “I think I can fix it,” he said at last. “I’ve always known Ravka is broken, and I’ve seen the way it breaks people in return. The wars never cease. The trouble never stops. But I can’t help believing that somehow, I’ll find a way to outsmart all of the kings who came before and set this country right.” He shook his head and laughed. “It is the height of arrogance.”
“I’d expect no less of you,” Zoya said, but her voice was not cruel. “Why did you send Nina away?”
“What?” The question took him by surprise—even more the rapid, breathless way Zoya had spoken the words, as if forcing them from her lips.
She did not look at him. “We almost lost her before. We barely had her back, and you sent her into danger again.”
“She’s a soldier,” he said. “You made her one, Zoya. Sitting idle in the palace with nothing but her grief to occupy her mind was no good for her.”
“But she was safe.”
“And all of that safety was killing her.” Nikolai watched Zoya carefully. “Can you forgive me for sending her away?”
“I don’t know.”
“I won’t ask you to forgive me for what happened in the bell tower.”
“You spoke,” she said slowly. “That night in Balakirev. You said my name.”
“But—” Nikolai sat up straighter. The beast had never had language before, not when he’d been infected during the war, and as far as he knew, not now that the monster had returned. When the Darkling had infected him, even in the moments when Nikolai was able to push his awareness to the fore, he hadn’t been able to read, hadn’t been able to communicate. It was one of the most painful elements of his transformation. “Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe my consciousness was trying to find a way through. Today—”
She shook her head. “You didn’t sound like you.”
“Well, in that form—”
“You sounded like him.”