Yuri had gotten his wish. He’d helped his Saint return. Had the young monk given himself up willingly? Joyously? Or in those final moments of fire and terror, had he begged to keep his life? Zoya knew there would be no mercy from the Starless Saint. The Darkling was not in the business of answering prayers.
Nikolai had made the discovery in the shed where they’d taken shelter, in the hours when Zoya had been trekking to Kribirsk.
“Let me kill him,” she’d told Nikolai when he’d shown her. “We can bury his body here. No one ever has to know he …” She had stumbled over the words. He has returned. She could not say it. She refused to.
“If we kill him, I may never be free of the demon inside me,” Nikolai had said. “And we are about to be at war. I intend to use every resource we have.”
They’d kept him gagged throughout their journey back to Os Alta, but just the amusement in those familiar gray eyes had made her want to snap his neck.
Nikolai insisted there was a way to use his power. Zoya wanted to watch him burn all over again.
So she would wait. She could be patient. The beast inside her knew eternity.
Now Zoya looked at Genya with her scarred hands pressed to her mouth, at Tolya’s fury, at Tamar with her axes drawn. She looked at her king and the woman who would soon be his wife.
We are the dragon and we will bide our time.
“So many of my old friends, gathered in one place,” said the Darkling from the mouth of a loyal, gullible boy, another fool who had loved him. “It’s good to be home.”