When she saw Zoya, she’d pressed her hands to her heart as if it might leap from her chest. “My girl,” she said. “My brilliant girl.” And then Zoya was hugging her aunt tight.
They’d closed up the shop, and Liliyana had cooked them dinner and introduced Zoya to the child she’d taken in whose parents hadn’t made it back from their last crossing—a scrawny snub-nosed girl named Lada, who demanded Zoya help her draw the Little Palace in extensive detail. They’d shelled hazelnuts by the fire and discussed the personalities of the chickens and all the gossip of the neighborhood. Zoya had told her aunt about her teachers, her friends, her chambers. She’d given Liliyana gifts of calfskin boots, fur-lined gloves, and an expensive gilded mirror.
“What will I do with this? Look at my old face?” said Liliyana. “Send it to your mother as a peace offering.”
“It’s a gift for you,” Zoya replied. “So you can look into it each morning and see the most beautiful person I’ve ever known.”
When the Darkling had used Alina to gain control of the Fold and expand it, he’d destroyed Novokribirsk to show his enemies his power. The darkness had consumed the city, turning its buildings to dust and its people to prey for the unnatural monsters that roamed its depths.
In the wake of the disaster, all crossings had ceased, and it had taken weeks for news of the casualties to reach Kribirsk. The Second Army was in chaos, the Sun Summoner had disappeared or been killed, and the Darkling was said to have emerged somewhere in West Ravka. But Zoya did not care. She could only think of Liliyana. She’ll be sitting in her little shop with Lada and the chickens, she told herself. All will be well. Zoya waited and prayed to every Saint, returning to the Kribirsk drydocks day after day, begging for news. And finally, when no one would help her, she’d commandeered a small skiff on her own and entered the Fold with no one to protect her.
She knew that if the volcra found her, she would die. She had no light or fire with which to fight them. She had no weapons but her power. But she’d taken the tiny craft and entered the dark alone, in silence. She had traveled long miles to the broken remnants of Novokribirsk. Half the town was gone, swallowed by the darkness that reached all the way to the fountain in the main square.
Zoya had run to her aunt’s shop and found no one there. The door was unlocked. The chickens squawked in the yard. A cup of bergamot tea, Liliyana’s favorite, sat on the counter, long since gone cold.
The rest of the town was quiet. A dog barked somewhere, a child cried. She could find no word of Liliyana or her ward until at last she spotted the same customer she’d seen that long ago day in her aunt’s shop.
“Liliyana Garin? Have you seen her? Is she alive?”
The old customer’s face paled. “I … She tried to help me when the darkness came. She pushed me out of the way so that I could run. If not for her—”
Zoya had released a sob, not wanting to hear any more. Brave Liliyana. Of course she had run toward the docks when the screaming began, ready to help. Why couldn’t you be a coward this one time? Zoya could not help imagining the dark stain of the Fold bleeding over the town, the monsters descending from the air with their teeth and claws, shrieking as they tore her aunt apart. All her kindness had meant nothing, her generosity, her loving heart. She’d been nothing but meat to them. She’d meant even less to the Darkling, the man who had unleashed his horrors just to make a point, the man she had as good as worshipped.
“She should have let you die,” Zoya spat at the old customer, and turned her back on him. She found a quiet street, curled up against a low stone wall, and wept as she had not done since she was a child.
“Smile, beautiful girl,” said a stranger passing. “We are still alive! There is still hope!”
She snatched the air from his lungs and drove him to his knees. “Smile,” she commanded as his eyes watered and his face turned red. “Smile for me. Tell me again about hope.”
Zoya left him on the ground, gasping.
She’d made the crossing once more, silent and unnoticed in her craft, back to Kribirsk and the remnants of the Grisha camp. There she’d learned that the Darkling had raised his banner and called his loyal Grisha to him. Members of the Second Army were deserting, flocking to the Darkling’s side or returning to Os Alta to try to mount a campaign against him.
Zoya had stolen a horse and ridden through the night to the capital. She would find the Darkling. She would destroy him. She would take away his dream of ruling Ravka even if she had to lead the Second Army herself.
Zoya never told Alina the details of why she had chosen to fight beside her, why she’d turned against the man she’d once revered. It didn’t matter. She’d stood shoulder to shoulder with the Sun Saint. They’d fought and they’d won. They’d watched the Darkling burn.
“And still the wound bleeds,” said the dragon. “You will never be truly strong until it closes.”
“I don’t want it to heal,” Zoya said angrily, her cheeks wet with tears. Below, she saw the version of Novokribirsk that existed in this twilight world, a black scar across the sands. “I need it.”
The wound was a reminder of her stupidity, of how readily she’d been willing to put her faith in the Darkling’s promise of strength and safety, of how easily she’d given up her power to him—and no one had needed to force her down the aisle to make her do it. She’d done it gladly. You and I are going to change the world, he’d told her. And she’d been fool enough to believe him.
“Zoya of the lost city. Zoya of the broken heart. You could be so much more.”
“Why didn’t you come?” she sobbed, surprised at the fresh tears that rose in her. She’d believed them long since shed. “Why didn’t you save her? All of them?”
“We didn’t know what he intended.”
“You should have tried!”
She would always be that girl weeping into her pillow, whispering prayers no one would answer. She would always be that child dressed in gold being led like an animal to slaughter. It was power that had saved her that day in the church, and that was what she had learned to rely on, to cultivate. But it had not been enough to save Liliyana. After the war, she’d gone in search of Lada, hoping the child might have survived. She found no trace. Zoya would never know what had become of that bright-eyed, pug-faced girl.
“Can you forgive us?” Juris asked. “For being foolish? For being frail? For being fallible despite our great powers? Can you forgive yourself?”
For loving the Darkling. For following him. For failing to save Liliyana. For failing to protect the Second Army. The list of her crimes was too long.