Ruin and Rising (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #3)

by Leigh Bardugo

“Because you would be the strong one?” “Because they’re better men than you.” “You might make me a better man.” “And you might make me a monster.”

“Aleksander,” I whispered. His grin faded, and his gray eyes seemed to flicker. “Again,” he said. “Aleksander.” He leaned in. I felt his breath against my neck, then the press of his mouth against my skin just above the collar, almost a sigh.

I felt that rush of hunger, the steady, longing beat of desire that neither of us wanted, but that gripped us anyway. We were alone in the world, unique. We were bound together and always would be.

Maybe love was superstition, a prayer we said to keep the truth of loneliness at bay. I tilted my head back. The stars looked like they were close together, when really they were millions of miles apart. In the end, maybe love just meant longing for something impossibly bright and forever out of reach.

I’d warned Nikolai of the Darkling’s vengeance, but even I couldn’t have foreseen the elegance of this, the perfect cruelty. Nikolai had made a fool of the Darkling, and now the Darkling had taken my polished, brilliant, noble prince and made him into a monster. Death would have been too kind.

“I’m the Sun Summoner. It gets dark when I say it does.”

THAT NIGHT, I slept in Mal’s arms, wrapped in furs beneath the stars. We whispered in the dark, stealing kisses, conscious of the others lying only a few feet away. Some part of me wished that a Shu raiding party would come and put a bullet through both of our hearts, leave us there forever, two bodies that would turn to dust and be forgotten. I thought about just leaving, abandoning the others, abandoning Ravka as we’d once intended, striking out through the mountains and making our way to the coast.

I kissed him then—with grief and need and years of longing, with the desperate hope that I could keep him here in my arms, with the damning knowledge that I could not. I leaned into him, the press of his chest, the breadth of his shoulders.

No light stirred within me to answer his call. His gray eyes searched mine—confused, nearly frightened. “You were meant to be like me. You were meant … You’re nothing now.” He dropped his hands. I saw the realization strike him. He was truly alone. And he always would be.

He shuddered. His eyelids drooped. “Once more,” he said. “Speak my name once more.” He was ancient, I knew that. But in this moment he was just a boy—brilliant, blessed with too much power, burdened by eternity. “Aleksander.”

“Actually,” I said, “they’re already calling you Korol Rezni.” I’d heard it whispered in the streets of Kribirsk: King of Scars.

Once a man arrived with a fleet of toy boats that the children launched on the creek in a miniature regatta. The teachers noted that the stranger was young and handsome, with golden hair and hazel eyes, but most definitely odd. He stayed late to dinner and never once removed his gloves.

The boy and the girl had both known loss, and their grief did not leave them. Sometimes he would find her standing by a window, fingers playing in the beams of sunlight that streamed through the glass, or sitting on the front steps of the orphanage, staring at the stump of the oak next to the drive.

They had an ordinary life, full of ordinary things—if love can ever be called that.