“I had no choice,” Nina said, the ache of tears pressing at her throat. “You don’t know—”
“Just tell me one thing,” he said. There was anger in his voice, but she could hear something else, too, a kind of pleading. “If you could go back, if you could undo what you did to me, would you?”
Nina made herself face them. She had her reasons, but did they matter? And who were they to judge her? She straightened her spine, lifted her chin. She was a member of the Dregs, an employee of the White Rose, and occasionally a foolish girl, but before anything else she was a Grisha and a soldier. “No,” she said clearly, her voice echoing off the endless ice. “I’d do it all over again.”
A sudden rumble shook the ground. Nina nearly lost her footing, and she saw Kaz brace himself
with his walking stick. They exchanged puzzled glances.
“Are there fault lines this far north?” Wylan asked.
Matthias frowned. “Not that I know of, but—”
A slab of earth shot up from beneath Matthias’ feet, knocking him to the ground. Another erupted to Nina’s right, sending her sprawling. All around them, crooked monoliths of earth and ice burst upwards, as if the ground was coming to life. A harsh wind whipped at their faces, snow spinning in flurries.
“What the hell is this?” cried Jesper.
“Some of kind of earthquake!” shouted Inej.
“No,” said Nina, pointing to a dark spot that seemed to be floating in the sky, unaffected by the howling wind. “We’re under attack.”
Nina crawled on hands and knees, seeking some kind of shelter. She thought she might well have lost her mind. There was someone in the air, hovering in the sky high above her. She was watching someone fly.
Grisha Squallers could control current. She’d even seen them play at tossing each other into the air at the Little Palace, but the level of finesse and power it took to maintain controlled flight was unthinkable – at least it had been, until now. Jurda parem. She hadn’t quite believed Kaz. Maybe she’d even suspected him of outright lying to her about what he’d seen just to get her to do the job. But unless she’d taken a blow to the head she didn’t remember, this was real.
The Squaller turned in the air, stirring the storm into a frenzy, sending ice flying until it stung her cheeks. She could barely see. She fell backwards as another slab of rock and ice shot from the ground. They were being corralled, pushed closer together to make a single target.
“I need a distraction!” shouted Jesper from somewhere in the storm.
She heard a tinny plink.
“Get down,” cried Wylan. Nina flattened her body to the snow. A boom sounded overhead, and an explosion lit the sky just to the right of the Squaller. The winds around them dropped as the Squaller was thrown off course and forced to focus on righting himself. It took the briefest second, but it was enough time for Jesper to aim his rifle and fire.
A shot rang out, and the Squaller was hurtling towards the earth. Another slab of ice slid into place.
They were being trapped like animals in a pen, ready for the slaughter. Jesper aimed between the slabs at a distant stand of trees, and Nina realised there was another Grisha there, a boy with dark hair.
Before Jesper could get off a shot, the Grisha rammed a fist upwards, and Jesper was thrown off his feet by a shaft of earth. He rolled as he fell and fired from the ground.
The boy in the distance cried out and dropped to one knee, but his arms were still raised, and the ground still rumbled and rocked beneath them. Jesper fired again and missed. Nina lifted her hands and tried to focus on the Grisha’s heart, but he was well out of her range.
She saw Inej signal to Kaz. Without a word, he positioned himself against the nearest slab and cupped his hands at his knee. The ground buckled and swayed, but he held steady as she launched herself from the cradle of his fingers in a graceful arc. She vanished over the slab without a sound. A moment later, the ground went still.
“Trust the Wraith,” said Jesper.
They stood, dazed, the air strangely hushed after the chaos that had come before.
“Wylan,” Jesper panted, pushing to his feet. “Get us out of here.”
Wylan nodded, pulled a putty-coloured lump from his pack, and gently placed it against the nearest rock. “Everybody down,” he instructed.
They crouched together in a cluster as far away as the enclosure would permit. Wylan slapped his hand against the explosive and dove away, careening into Matthias and Jesper as they all covered their ears.
Nothing happened.
“Are you kidding me?” said Jesper.
Boom. The slab exploded. Ice and bits of rock rained down over their heads.
Wylan was covered in dust and wearing a slightly dazed, deliriously happy expression. Nina started to laugh. “Try to look like you knew it would work.”
They stumbled out of the corral of slabs.