“So Commander Brum did not leave town?” asked Adrik, letting his arm fall to his side. Nina’s ears crackled and sound bled back into the ward.
“I guess he wanted to say goodbye,” she muttered as they dragged him into the back of the wagon. The girls looked at him with vague interest. The sedative had definitely set in.
“What about your sister?” said Hanne.
“She’s not here,” Nina said. “She must have been moved.”
“How can you be sure?”
“We need to go,” insisted Nina. She hopped down and ran back to the ward to set the fuses.
She lit the last of them and was about to join the others at the loading dock when a voice shouted, “Stop!”
Nina turned. The Wellmother was racing down the ward, flanked by soldiers armed with rifles. Of course Brum hadn’t been alone.
“You!” said the Wellmother, her face red with rage. “How dare you wear the attire of a Springmaiden? Where are the prisoners? Where is Commander Brum?”
“Gone,” Nina lied. “Beyond your reach.”
“Seize her!” said the Wellmother, but Nina was already raising her hands.
“I wouldn’t,” Nina said, and the soldiers hesitated, confused.
Around her, she felt the cold tide of the river, eddying in deep pools—the graves of the unnamed and abandoned, buried without ceremony, women and girls brought here in secret, who had suffered and died and been left to the dark with no one to mourn them.
Come to me, Nina commanded.
“She’s just one girl,” snapped the Wellmother. “What kind of cowards are you?”
“Not just one girl,” said Nina. The whispering rose in her. Fjerdan women. Fjerdan girls, crying for justice, screaming in the silence of the earth. She opened her mouth and let them speak.
“I am Petra Toft.” The words came from Nina’s lips, but she did not recognize her own voice. “You cut me open and took the child from my womb. You let me bleed to death as I pleaded for help.”
“I am Siv Engman. I told you I had miscarried, that I could not carry a child to term, but you made me conceive again and again. I held each stillborn in my arms. I gave each one of them a name.”
“I am Ellinor Berglund. I was your student, placed in your care. I trusted you. I called you Wellmother. I begged for your mercy when you discovered my powers. I died begging for another dose.”
“What is this?” said the Wellmother, her hands clasped against her heart. She was shaking, her eyes wide as moons.
Woman after woman, girl after girl, they spoke their names, and Nina called them on. Come to me. Up through the earth, clawing through the soil, they came, a mass of rotting limbs and broken bones. And some of them crawled.
The doors to the ward slammed open, and the dead poured through. They moved with impossible speed, silent horrors, snatching the rifles from the Fjerdan soldiers even as they tried to open fire. Some were nearly whole. Others were nothing but bones and rags.
The Wellmother backed away, her face a mask of terror. She stumbled on her pinafore and fell to the stone floor. An infant pulled itself toward her on all fours. Its chubby limbs were still intact despite its blue lips and vacant eyes.
The dead had made quick work of the guards, who lay bleeding in silent heaps. Now they advanced on the Wellmother. Nina turned to go.
“Don’t leave me,” the Wellmother begged as the baby seized hold of her skirts.
“I told you I would pray for you,” said Nina as she closed the door and issued her final command to her soldiers: Give her the mercy she deserves.
Nina turned her back on the Wellmother’s screams.
“Go!” commanded Nina as she clambered into the back of the wagon. The time for subtlety had passed. They burst through the eastern entrance and onto the road. When Nina turned to look, she expected to see the guards raising their rifles to fire at them. Instead, she saw two bloodied bodies in the snow and a trail of pawprints leading into the trees.
Trassel. Her mind said she was a fool to think so, but her heart knew better. Now she understood why he’d never taken the food she’d left out. Matthias’ wolf liked to hunt his prey. From somewhere up the mountain, she heard a long, mournful howl, and then a chorus of replies echoing over the valley. The gray wolves he had saved? Maybe Trassel would have to stay alone no longer. Maybe he’d finally said his goodbyes too.
Leoni was staring at Nina as they sped away from the factory. She had a baby clutched in her arms.
“Remind me to never make you mad, Zenik,” she said over the rattling of the cart wheels.
Nina shrugged. “Just don’t do it by a graveyard.”
“What’s happening?” asked one of the girls drowsily.
“Nothing,” said Nina. “Close your eyes. Rest. You’ll get another dose soon.”
A moment later, the air filled with the clamor of bells. Someone at the factory had sounded the alarm. There was no way they were going to make it through the checkpoint, but they couldn’t stop now.
They careened down the hill. Brum lay beneath a blanket, his body rolling this way and that as the cart jounced over a ditch.
Nina leaned forward and pulled on Hanne’s jacket to get her attention.
“Slow down!” she shouted. “We can’t look like we’re running.”
Hanne pulled back on the reins and glanced over her shoulder at Nina. “What are you?” She didn’t sound scared, just angry.
“Nothing good,” said Nina, and sank back to her seat in the wagon. Explanations and apologies would have to wait.
The wagon slowed and she peered through the slats. They were coming up on the checkpoint. She had known the timing had to be right, and now—
“Halt!”
The wagon rolled to a stop. Through the slats, Nina saw a group of Fjerdan soldiers, rifles at the ready. Behind them, a little farther down the hill, a long line of men and boys were headed to the fishery to work. They carried their lunch pails and chatted in easy conversation, barely sparing a glance for the guards or the wagon.
“We are operating under orders from Commander Brum,” said Hanne gruffly. “Let us through!”
“You will stand down or you will be shot.”
“We’re transporting—”
“Commander Brum came through here nearly an hour ago. He said no one was to pass without his direct say-so.” He turned to another guard and said, “Send someone up to the factory to find out what’s going on.”
Then he disappeared from view. A moment later, the doors to the cart swung open.
“Djel in all his glory,” the soldier said as the early-morning light fell on the women packed into the wagon. “Seize the drivers! And get these prisoners back up the mountain.”
The baby in Leoni’s arms began to wail.
ZOYA DID NOT SCREAM. She stifled her panic as the sap rose over her rib cage and ceased her pounding on the golden sphere. She could not comprehend what she was seeing. Three years ago, she had watched the Darkling’s body burn to ash. She had whispered her aunt’s name as he had vanished in the heat of Inferni flames beside the body of Sankta Alina.
But it had not been Alina Starkov who lay on that pyre, only a girl tailored to look like her. Had the Darkling’s supporters used the same trick?
She did not understand the extent of what Elizaveta intended, only that Nikolai would not live through it. And that Yuri had betrayed them, the pious little wart. You always knew what he was, she scolded herself. You knew at which altar he chose to worship. But she had ignored him, dismissed him, because she had never truly seen him as a threat. And maybe because she hadn’t wanted to see her own foolish idealism reflected in his fervent eyes.
She watched Yuri approach the shadow creature that hovered like a strange ghost in front of Nikolai. She had sensed the Darkling’s presence that night in the bell tower, but she hadn’t wanted to believe he could return.
Blind. Naive. Selfish. Zoya held her breath as Yuri reached for the glowing thorn—but suddenly the monster was attacking the monk. She looked at Nikolai’s body splayed against the thorn wood like an insect pinned to a page. His eyes were closed. Could he be controlling the creature?
There was no time to think on it. Zoya had tried to batter the sphere with the power of the storm to no avail. Now she focused on the sap that made up its walls, sensing the small parts that comprised it, the way its matter was formed. She was no Tidemaker. Before Juris this would have been beyond her. But now … Are we not all things? She concentrated on forcing those tiny particles to vibrate faster, raising the temperature of the sap, disrupting the structure of the sphere. Sweat poured from her brow as the heat rose and she feared she’d cook in her own skin.
In a single moment, the sphere’s structure gave way. Zoya cast the scalding liquid away on a gust of air before it could burn her skin, and then she was running, letting the wind carry her over the sands to the palace.
What are you running to, little witch? To Juris. To help. But what if the dragon already knew what Elizaveta intended? What if he was watching her from his black spire even now and laughing at her naiveté?
The wind faltered. Zoya’s steps slowed. She gazed up at the black rock. How long could Nikolai use the monster’s form to keep Yuri and the Saint at bay? Was Zoya racing toward an ally or walking into a trap, squandering valuable time? Another betrayal. She wasn’t sure she could bear it. But she would have to. She wasn’t powerful enough to face Elizaveta on her own. She needed the dragon’s wrath.
There was no time to trouble with the palace’s winding passages, and she doubted she could find her way. Instead she let the storm lob her up, high into the sky and the mouth of Juris’ cavern.
The room was empty. The fire in the grate had gone out.
That was when she saw the body. Juris lay on the floor in his human form, his broadsword discarded next to him. The gleam of his black scale armor seemed dull in the flat twilight.
“Juris!” she cried. She slid to her knees beside him.