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He’d once asked his mother if that was the truth, if his father was really dead. He will be, she’d said. Before you can blink your eye. You’ll outlive him by a hundred years, maybe a thousand, maybe more. He’s only dust to you.
When she’d gone, she had taken their only lantern. He hadn’t had the courage to ask her to leave it with him. He was too old to be afraid of the dark. So he’d lain awake for two nights, curled beneath his furs, listening to the wolves howl, counting the minutes until morning.
He was thirteen, but he’d had a hundred names, a new one for every town, camp, and city—
said. Fear is a powerful ally, but feed it too often, make it too strong, and it will turn on you.
“You read the flow of power the way others chart tides,” she marveled. “It will make you a great leader.”
“Your true name is written here,” she said tapping his chest. “Tattooed on your heart. You don’t let just anyone read it.”
Deep blue like the True Sea. Red like the roofs of the Shu temples. The pure, buttery color of sunlight—not really yellow or gold, what would you call it? All the colors you couldn’t see in the dark.
Annika was there, floating on her back in the water, her white-blond hair spread around her head like a halo.
He was aware of the way men looked at his mother. It was one more weapon in her arsenal.
“I need an amplifier.”
worked. Never let them touch you. Because one touch was enough to reveal it, this gift lurking inside him. It was enough to make him less a boy than a prize.
With the last bit of his strength, he tore
his arm free and lashed out blindly, furiously, with all his terror and rage, with all the hope that had been born and died this day. Let me make a mark on this world before I leave it.
Unless he could give them someone else to hate.
“They would not give up the riders who attacked you, so we killed them all.” “All?” “Every man, woman, and child. Then we burned their houses to the ground.”
“I’m not. Do you understand me? I would burn a thousand villages, sacrifice a thousand lives to keep you safe.
He understood then. The Grisha lived as shadows did, passing over the surface of the world, touching nothing, forced to change their shapes and hide in corners, driven by fear as shadows were driven by the sun. No safe place. No haven. There will be, he promised in the darkness, new words written upon his heart. I will make one.
