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

by Leigh Bardugo

We might be happy in time. People fell in love every day. Genya and David. Tamar and Nadia. But were they happy? Would they stay that way?

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.

“So,” said the Darkling, “the decision is mine. And I’m afraid that I choose justice.” In one movement, the nichevo’ya ripped Sergei’s limbs from his body and severed his head from his neck. I had the briefest glimpse of the shock on his face, his mouth open in a silent scream, then the pieces disappeared beneath the cloud bank.

He coughed, shuddered. Then his fingers flew to his chest, tearing open the remains of his shirt. We both looked down, and I saw shadow spreading beneath his skin in fragile black lines, splintering like veins in marble. “No,” I groaned. “No. No.” The cracks traveled across his stomach, down his arms. “Alina?” he said helplessly. The darkness fractured beneath his skin, climbing his throat. He threw his head back and screamed, the tendons flexing in his neck as his whole body contorted, his back bowing. He shoved up to his knees, chest heaving. I reached for him as he convulsed. He released another raw scream, and two black shards burst from his back. They unfurled. Like wings. His head shot up. He looked at me, face beaded in sweat, gaze panicked and desperate. “Alina—” Then his eyes—his clever, hazel eyes—went black. “Nikolai?” I whispered. His lips curled back, revealing teeth of black onyx. They had formed fangs.

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.

“Guide me,” Baghra told Misha. What courage it must have taken for him to lead her out onto the terrace, past the nichevo’ya, who shifted and bumped up against each other, following her passage like a field of glistening black reeds. Only those closest to the Darkling remained moving, clinging to their master, their wings beating in unison.

“What is it you want?” asked the Darkling. “And do not hope to plead for mercy for these fools.” “Only to meet your monsters,” she said. Baghra leaned her stick against the wall and held out her arms. The nichevo’ya moved forward, rustling and nudging against each other. One nuzzled its head against her palm, as if it were sniffing her. Was it curiosity I sensed in them? Or hunger? “They know me, these children. Like calls to like.”

“Know that I loved you,” she said to the Darkling. “Know that it was not enough.”

In a single movement, she shoved herself up on the wall, and before I could draw breath to scream, she tipped forward and vanished over the ledge, trailing the nichevo’ya behind her in tangled skeins of darkness. They tumbled past us in a rush, a shrieking black wave that rolled over the terrace and plummeted down, drawn by the power she exuded. “No!” the Darkling roared. He dove after her, the wings of his soldiers beating with his fury.

People were swarming over the Pelican and the Ibis. The Pelican already hovered above the hangar floor, borne aloft by Squaller current. Soldiers were pulling on its cables, trying to drag it back down and climb aboard, unwilling to wait for the other barge. Someone gave the order, and the Pelican surged free, plowing through the crowd as it took flight. It rose into the air, trailing screaming men like strange anchors, and disappeared from view.

Tamar was on the deck, and I was relieved to see Nevsky at her side, along with a few other soldiers from the Twenty-Second. But behind them, Adrik lay in a pool of blood. His arm hung from his body at a bizarre angle. His face was white with shock. Genya knelt over him, tears streaming down her face as David stood above her with a rifle,

“Where are we?” Harshaw asked. His crest of red hair lay flat on his head, soaked through with snow. I’d thought of him as unpredictable, maybe a little dangerous, but here he was—bloody, tired, and working the lines for hours without complaint.

I shrieked and threw my hands in the air. The boot reappeared. I curled my fingers, and it was gone. “David, have I ever told you you’re a genius?” “Yes.” “I’m telling you again.”

“If this stains my teeth orange—” said Zoya. “It will,” interrupted Genya, “but I promise to put your teeth back whiter than they were before. I may even fix those weird incisors of yours.” “There is nothing wrong with my teeth.” “Not at all,” said Genya soothingly. “You’re the prettiest walrus I know. I’m just amazed you haven’t sawed through your lower lip.” “Keep your hands off me, Tailor,” Zoya grumbled, “or I’ll poke your other eye out.”

I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want words of comfort. I wanted the firebird. I wanted to turn my pain into anger and bring it to the Darkling’s door.

Nikolai was perched in the branches of a tree, his dark gaze fastened on me. His chest was bare and lined in black as if darkness had shattered beneath his skin. He’d lost his boots somewhere, and his bare feet gripped the bark. His toes had become black talons. He had dried blood on his hands. And near his mouth.

I felt it then, the vibration along that invisible tether. I pushed away from it. I would not go to the Darkling now. I wouldn’t go to him ever again. But still, I knew wherever he was, he was grieving.

Abruptly, Adrik snarled, “I’m glad Sergei’s dead. I’m just sorry I didn’t get to wring his neck myself.” “You’d need two hands for that,” said Zoya. There was a brief, terrible silence, then Adrik scowled and said, “Okay, stab him.”

“That’s nothing,” Nadia said, her cheeks pinking as we all turned our attention to her. “I had some kind of block where I couldn’t summon for a while. She put me in a room and released a hive of bees in it.” “What?” I squeaked. It wasn’t just the bees that had shocked me. I’d struggled to summon for months at the Little Palace, and Baghra had never mentioned that other Grisha got blocks. “What did you do?” Tamar asked incredulously. “I managed to summon a current to send them up the chimney, but I got stung so many times, I looked like I had firepox.”

I picked up a stick and gave the fire a poke, sending sparks shooting upward. I knew why Baghra had refused to teach David. He’d reminded her too much of Morozova, so obsessed with knowledge that he’d been blind to his child’s suffering, to his wife’s neglect. And sure enough, David had created lumiya just “for fun,” essentially handing the Darkling the means to enter the Fold. But David wasn’t like Morozova. He’d been there for Genya when she’d needed him. He was no warrior, but he’d still found a way to fight for her.

“Same way Ana Kuya got me to stop begging her to keep a lantern lit at night.” “Really?” “Yes,” he said starting the climb. “Told me I had to be brave for you, that if I was scared, you’d be scared.” “Well, she told me I had to eat my parsnips to set a good example for you, but I still refused to do it.” “And you wonder why you were always getting the switch.” “I have principles.” “That means, ‘If I can be difficult, I will.’” “Unfair.”

“Mal,” I sighed. “If I murder her in the Sikurzoi, will you hold me accountable?” “Yes,” he said. Then added, “That means, ‘Let’s make it look like an accident.’”

The beauty of the Sikurzoi came on me suddenly. The only mountains I’d known were the icy peaks of the far north and the Petrazoi—jagged, gray, and forbidding. But these mountains were gentle, rolling, their soft slopes covered in tall grasses, the valleys between them crossed with slow-moving rivers that flashed blue and then gold in the sun. Even the sky felt welcoming, a prairie of infinite blue, thick white clouds stacked heavy on the horizon, the snowcapped peaks of the southern range visible in the distance.

Zoya shivered. “They aren’t any better in Fjerda. There are witchhunters who don’t eat animals, won’t wear leather shoes or kill a spider in their homes, but they’ll burn Grisha alive on the pyre.”

“Shu doctors might not be so bad,” said Harshaw. He was still playing with the flames, sending them shooting up in loops and snaking tendrils. “At least they clean their instruments. On the Wandering Isle, they think Grisha blood is a cure-all—for impotence, wasting plague, you name it. When my brother’s power showed itself, they cut his throat and hung him upside down to drain like a pig in a slaughterhouse.” “Saints, Harshaw,” Zoya gasped. “I burned that village and everyone in it to the ground. Then I got on a boat and never looked back.”

I thought of the dream the Darkling had once had, that we might be Ravkans and not just Grisha. He’d tried to make a safe place for our kind, maybe the only one in the ...

“When the time comes,” Mal asked, “can you bring the firebird down?” Yes. I was done with hesitation. It wasn’t just that we’d run out of options, or that so much was riding on the firebird’s power. I’d simply grown ruthless enough or selfish enough to take another creature’s life. But I missed the girl who had shown the stag mercy, who had been strong enough to turn away from the lure of power, who had believed in something more. Another casualty of this war.

“It’s funny,” Zoya said contemplatively. “I understand why the Darkling and Nikolai want your power. But Mal looks at you like you’re … well, like you’re me.” “No he doesn’t,” said Tolya. “He watches her the way Harshaw watches fire. Like he’ll never have enough of her. Like he’s trying to capture what he can before she’s gone.” Zoya and I gaped at him. Then she scowled. “You know, if you turned a bit of that poetry on me, I might consider giving you a chance.” “Who says I want one?” “I want one!” called Harshaw. Zoya blew a damp curl from her forehead. “Oncat has a better chance than you.” Harshaw held the little tabby above him. “Why, Oncat,” he said. “You rogue.”

“This is the ashwood. The gateway to the Cera Huo.” Mal took out his map. “I don’t see it.” “It’s a story. There was a massacre here.” “A battle?” I asked. “No. A Shu battalion was brought here by their enemies. They were prisoners of war.” “Which enemies?” asked Harshaw. Tolya shrugged. “Ravkan, Fjerdan, maybe other Shu. This was old days.” “What happened to them?” “They starved, and when the hunger became too great, they turned on each other. It’s said the last man standing planted a tree for each of his fallen brethren. And now they wait for travelers to pass too close to their branches, so they can claim a final meal.”

I threw up my arms to ward off whatever horrible thing Zoya had brought down on us. The cloud exploded. It burst into harmless flakes that drifted to the ground around us. “Ash?” I reached out to catch some of it on my fingers. It was fine and white, the color of chalk. “It’s just some kind of weather phenomenon,” Zoya said, sending the ashes rising again in lazy spirals. We looked back up the hill. The white clouds continued to move in shifts and gusts, but now that we knew what they were, they seemed slightly less sinister. “You didn’t really think they were ghosts, did you?” I blushed and Tolya cleared his throat. Zoya rolled her eyes and strode toward the hill. “I am surrounded by fools.” “They looked spooky,” Mal said to me with a shrug. “They still do,” I muttered.

I looked back over my shoulder to the valley below. In the light of the setting sun, the falls had gone molten gold. It must have been a trick of the mist or the angle, but it was as if the very water had caught fire. The sun sank lower, setting every pool alight, turning the valley into a crucible. “Incredible,” Harshaw groaned. Mal and I exchanged a glance. We’d be lucky if he didn’t try to throw himself in.

“You must have known,” said Zoya, sitting down on the other side of the fire. Her gaze was accusatory. Had I? The jolt that night by the banya, I’d assumed it was something in me. And yet, when I looked back, the pattern seemed clear. The first time I’d used my power had been when Mal lay dying in my arms. We’d searched for the stag for weeks, but we’d found it after our first kiss. When the sea whip had revealed itself, I’d been standing in the circle of his arms, close to him for the first time since we’d been forced aboard the Darkling’s ship. The amplifiers wanted to be brought together. And hadn’t our lives been bound from the first? By war. By abandonment. Maybe by something more. It couldn’t be chance that we’d been born into neighboring villages, that we’d survived the war that had taken both of our families, that we’d both ended up at Keramzin. Was this the truth behind Mal’s gift for tracking, that he was somehow tied to everything, to the making at the heart of the world? Not a Grisha, and no ordinary amplifier, but something else entirely? I am become a blade. A weapon to be used. How right he’d been.

Morozova had achieved his grand design, but not the way he had expected. To dabble in merzost, well, the results are never quite what one would hope. When the Darkling had tampered with the making at the heart of the world, the punishment for his arrogance was the Fold, a place where his power was meaningless. Morozova had created three amplifiers that could never be brought together without his daughter forfeiting her life, without his descendants paying in flesh and blood.

“She survived the plunge into the river,” I said. “And Morozova brought her south to the settlements.” To live and die in the shadow of the arch that would someday give Dva Stolba its name. I looked at Mal. “She must have passed her power on to her descendants, built into their bones.” A bitter laugh escaped me. “I thought it was me,” I said. “I was so desperate to believe there was some great purpose to all this, that I didn’t just … happen. I thought I was the other branch of Morozova’s line. But it was you, Mal. It was always you.”

After that first night, Mal kept his distance. I hadn’t approached him. I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to say. His mood had changed—that calm was still there, but now I had the eerie sense that he was drinking in the world, memorizing it. He would turn his face up to the sun and let his eyes close, or break a stalk of bur marigold and press it to his nose. He hunted for us every night that we had enough cover for a fire. He pointed out larks’ nests and wild geranium, and caught a field mouse for Oncat, who seemed too spoiled to do any hunting of her own.

I grabbed the lapels of his coat, tears filling my eyes. “Don’t tell me this is all happening for a reason,” I said fiercely. “Or that it’s going to be okay. Don’t tell me you’re ready to die.” We stood in the tall grass, wind singing through the reeds. He met my gaze, his blue eyes steady. “It’s not going to be okay.” He brushed the hair back from my cheeks and cupped my face in his rough hands. “None of this is happening for a reason.” He skimmed his lips over mine. “And Saints help me, Alina, I want to live forever.”

We were in what had been the sitting room at Keramzin. The shabby sofas were stained black with soot. Ana Kuya’s treasured samovar lay on its side, a tarnished hulk. Nothing remained of the walls but a charred and jagged skeleton, the ghosts of doorways. The curving metal staircase that had once led to the music room had buckled from the heat, its steps fusing together. The ceiling was gone. I could see straight through the wreck of the second story. Where the attic should have been, there was only gray sky.

The oak I’d once climbed on a dare still stood, untouched by the fire that had taken Keramzin. Now its branches were full of bodies. The three Grisha instructors hung from the same thick limb, their kefta fluttering slightly in the wind—purple, red, and blue. Beside them, Botkin’s face was nearly black above the rope that had dug into his neck. He was covered in wounds. He’d died fighting before they’d strung him up. Next to him, Ana Kuya swayed in her black dress, her heavy key ring at her waist, the toes of her button boots nearly scraping the ground.

In five days, I will return to the Unsea, and you will come to me—you and the tracker—or I will drive the Fold all the way to West Ravka’s coast, and I will march those children, one by one, to the mercy of the volcra.” “This place … these people, they were innocent.” “I have waited hundreds of years for this moment, for your power, for this chance. I have earned it with loss and with struggle. I will have it, Alina. Whatever the cost.”

Without the third amplifier, my power was no match for the Darkling’s in a head-on confrontation. He’d proved that in no uncertain terms. But what if I came at him unseen, using light for cover the way others used darkness? It was sneaky, even cowardly, but the Darkling and I had left honor behind long ago. He’d been in my head, waged war on my heart. I wasn’t interested in a fair fight, not if there was a chance I could save Mal’s life.

It was stupid. It was dangerous. But Ana Kuya used to tell me that hope was tricky like water. Somehow it always found a way in.

Adrik seemed to relish Zoya’s taunts over Nadia’s constant fussing. I’d been relieved to learn that he could still summon, though it would take some time for him to be able to control strong currents with just one arm. Baghra could teach him. The thought came at me before I remembered that was no longer possible. I could almost hear her voice in my head: Should I cut off your other arm? Then you’d have something to whine about. Do it again and do it better.

It was a different kind of work, but Baghra’s lessons still applied. If I concentrated too hard on projecting my power, variables overwhelmed me. But if I thought about the light being everywhere, if I didn’t try to prod it and just let it bend, it got much easier. I thought of the times I’d seen the Darkling use his power to blind soldiers in a battle, taking on multiple enemies at once. It was easy for him, natural. I know things about power that you can barely guess at.

Whether it was coincidence or providence that had made Tolya and Tamar my friends, I was grateful for them. And if I was honest with myself, I envied their faith. If I could believe I had been blessed by some divine purpose, it might make the hard choices easier.

No army. No allies. We had only three more days until we were to face the Darkling. We would take our chances, and if we failed, there would be no more options. I would murder the only person I’d ever loved and who had ever loved me. I’d dive back into battle wearing his bones.

The monument was an eerie sight, a giant stone woman rising out of the earth, arms spread wide, her benevolent gaze fixed on the nothingness of the Fold. Anastasia was rumored to have rid countless towns of sickness. Had she worked miracles, or was she simply a talented Healer? Was there any difference?

To the Soldat Sol, this new display of power was one more miracle, further proof that I was a living Saint. I remembered the Apparat’s claim: There is no greater power than faith, and there will be no greater army than one driven by it.

“He’s a warrior,” she’d said. “If you make him believe he’s less now, he’ll never know he can be more.”

“I can tell you what would have happened,” I said. “Go on.” I closed the diary and turned back to Mal, perching on the edge of the desk. “I would have gone to the Little Palace and been spoiled and pampered. I would have dined off of golden plates, and I never would have struggled to use my power. It would have been like breathing, the way it always should have been. And in time, I would have forgotten Keramzin.”

The Unsea always felt like the end of everything. It wasn’t only the dark, it was the terrible sense of isolation, as if the world had disappeared, leaving only you, the rattle of your breath, the stuttering beat of your heart.