Nikolai was on his feet, stumbling toward her, certain he was about to see her consumed by flame. But the dragon withdrew its fire. It hovered in the air, watching.
“Zoya,” Nikolai said as he went to his knees beside her, catching her in his arms before she could topple. Her skin was aglow with the light of Grisha power, but her nose was bleeding and she was shaking.
The dragon landed before them, folding its vast wings. Perhaps it wanted to play with its food.
“Stay back,” Nikolai said, though he had no way of preventing the beast’s advance. His weapons were as good as toys. Yuri was still on his knees, swaying like a drunk who couldn’t decide whether it was worth the effort to try to stand.
“The boy king,” said the dragon, prowling forward, tail lashing the air. Its voice was a low rumble, like thunder on a distant peak. “The war hero. The prince with a demon curled inside his heart.” Nikolai wasn’t sure if he was more startled that the creature could speak or that it knew what had brought them on this cursed journey.
The dragon leaned forward. Its eyes were large and silver, its pupils black slits.
“If I wanted to harm her, she would be ashes, boy. So would you all.”
“It sure looked like you wanted to harm her,” Nikolai said. “Or is that how your kind says a friendly hello?”
The dragon rumbled what might have been a laugh. “I wanted to see what she could do.”
Zoya released a howl of pure anguish. It was a sound so desperate, so raw, Nikolai could hardly believe it was coming from his general’s mouth.
“What is it?” he pleaded, his arm tightening around her as he scanned her body for wounds, for blood.
But she cast him off, scrabbling in the sand, another wail of rage and pain tearing from her chest.
“For Saints’ sake, Zoya, what’s wrong?”
She snatched up something that glinted in her hand and clutched it to her chest, her sobs like nothing he had heard before. It took him a moment to force her fingers open. Cradled in her palm, he saw the broken halves of her silver cuff. Her amplifier had shattered.
“No,” she sobbed. “No.”
“Yes,” hissed the dragon.
“Juris, stop this,” said a woman, emerging from between the rows of soldiers. She wore a dress of blooming roses that blossomed and died in curling vines around her body. Her golden hair was a buzzing mass of bees that swarmed and clustered around her radiant face. “You got your battle. They know what they are facing.”
“The first bit of excitement we’ve had in years, Elizaveta, and you seem determined to deny me my fun. Very well.”
The dragon heaved its shoulders in a shrug, and then, before Nikolai’s bewildered eyes, it seemed to shift and shrink, becoming a towering man in finely wrought chain mail that glittered like black scales. The sand soldiers parted to reveal the grotesque, his body still shifting and changing, now covered in eyes as if to better take in every inch of them.
“What is this?” Nikolai demanded. “Who are you?”
“Do the people not pray for Saints?” asked the man called Juris.
“At last,” wept Yuri, still kneeling. “At last.”
“Come,” said Elizaveta, extending a hand, the bees buzzing gently around her in a hum that was almost soothing. “We will explain all.”
But Nikolai’s mind had already leapt a chasm into preposterous territory. Sankta Lizabeta, who had been martyred in a field of roses. Sankt Juris, who …
“You slew the dragon,” said Nikolai. “It’s … it’s in all of the stories.”
“Sometimes the stories are rough on the details,” said Juris with a gleaming smile. “Come, boy king. It’s time we talked.”
ISAAK WAS TRYING VERY HARD not to sweat through his uniform, and the effort was only making him sweat more. It was not so much the pain of transformation that bothered him but the proximity of Genya Safin as she moved her fingers over the lines of his nose and brow. He’d been sequestered with her for nearly two days in a practice room usually occupied by the Corporalki. It had no windows, and its single door was always guarded by one of the Bataar twins. The light for Genya’s careful work came from the vast skylight above, the glass so clear it could only be Grisha made.
Isaak had little to do but stay as still as possible, stare at Genya, and let his mind wander down the path that had brought him to this incomprehensible situation. Had it begun with his father’s passing? With the draft? Had it begun during the northern campaign, when he’d served under Nikolai Lantsov? His prince had been just past eighteen, only a few months older than Isaak himself. Isaak had come to admire his commander, not just for his bravery but for the way he could think himself out of a tight situation. He never forgot a name, never failed to ask after an ailing relative or the progress of a healing wound.
After the battle of Halmhend, the prince had visited the infirmary to speak to the wounded. He had spent hours there, chatting by each soldier’s bedside, charming every nurse, raising spirits. When he’d sat down beside Isaak’s cot, filled Isaak’s water glass, and gone so far as to lift the glass to Isaak’s lips so he could drink, Isaak had been so overwhelmed he’d had to remind himself how exactly one swallowed water.
They’d talked about Isaak’s childhood, his sisters, and Isaak found himself telling the prince all about his father, who had been a tutor in the house of Baron Velchik. Isaak hadn’t spoken of his father’s death in years and had never told anyone about how his life had changed in the wake of that tragedy, how his family had been forced to leave the baron’s estate and take up residence in a tiny rented room above a dressmaker’s shop, where his mother had done her best to feed and clothe Isaak and his sisters by taking in piecework.
The prince had praised Isaak’s gift for languages and suggested he cultivate the talent now that it was time for Isaak to leave the front.
“I’m not sure that’s something my family can afford,” Isaak had admitted with some shame. “But I will certainly consider it, Your Highness.”
He’d returned home and begun looking for work as soon as he was able. Months passed as Isaak took on odd jobs and waited for his body to heal so that he could return to active duty and the pay his family so desperately needed. Then, one evening, he arrived home to find his mother waiting for him with a letter. He’d spent a long day shoveling manure, for which he’d earned all of six eggs, which he’d carried home gently cradled in the folds of his shirt. He nearly dropped them all when he saw that the letter in his mother’s hand was stamped with the pale blue wax of the prince’s double-eagle seal.