Page 99 of Rule of Wolves

“Please,” Genya whispered.

Zoya racked her brain for a message of hope, of strength. But all she had was the truth.

“I used to…” Her voice was husky with unshed tears. She hated that sound. “I used to believe there was one kind of soldier. The kind of soldier I aspired to be. Ruthless and unrelenting. I worshipped at the altar of strength—the storm, the Heartrender’s blow, the Cut. When I was chosen to lead the Triumvirate, I…” Shame washed over her, but she made herself keep speaking. “I resented the people selected to lead alongside me. I was the most powerful and the most dangerous, and I thought I knew how to lead.” Zoya felt memories crowd in on her, long nights arguing with Genya and David. When had they begun scheming together instead of squabbling?

“I knew nothing. David didn’t set out to teach me the power of silence, but he did. Genya didn’t try to convince me to be kinder, she showed me what kindness could do every day. David wasn’t … He wasn’t an easy person. He didn’t tell jokes or crack smiles or try to make you comfortable. He hated small talk and he could fall so deeply into his work, he forgot to eat or sleep. The only distraction he ever had was Genya. When he looked at her, you could see that he had found his perfect equation.” She shrugged, unable to make her own figures tally. “David was a different kind of soldier. His strength came from his brilliance but also from his silence, his willingness to listen, his belief that every problem had a solution. All over Os Alta today, there are funerals. People are grieving. We are facing a new and terrible challenge, a different kind of enemy and a different kind of war, but just as we grieve together, we’ll face this new enemy together. We will fight just as we grieve, side by side. We’ll march forward as soldiers—and aspire to be the kind of soldier that David was—not driven by revenge or rage but by a desire to know more and do better. David Kostyk returns to the making at the heart of the world. He will always be with us.”

Most of the soldiers didn’t know the traditional reply, but the Grisha did. “As he returns, so will we all.”

There was some small comfort in those words, in that murmured reply. Could she be a soldier like David? Zoya didn’t know. She was afraid of what might happen when this moment of quiet was over, when David’s ashes had been gathered and interned in the white walls that circled the palace grounds. A space beside him would be left for Genya. Thousands of bodies, thousands of bricks, thousands of ghosts standing watch over generations of Grisha. For what?

The Fjerdans had shoved them all into uncharted territory. Zoya knew her rage was waiting on the other side of this sorrow, and when it was unleashed, she wasn’t certain what she would do.

“I need to go to him,” Genya whispered. “One last time.”

She had pulled a notebook from her pocket, the pages held open. It took Zoya a moment to understand what it was. She glimpsed a few words in David’s scrawl: Ideas for compliments—hair (color, texture), smile (causes and effects), talents (tailoring, tonics, sense of style—inquire on “style”), teeth? size of feet?

“His journal,” Zoya said. Where David had written down all his little reminders for how to make Genya happy.

Genya looked out at the lake. “I need to get across.”

Zoya could signal a Tidemaker, but the dragon was near and she wanted to be the one who held Genya in this moment. She lifted her arms, moving her palms slowly together. Are we not all things? If the science is small enough. There’d been no time to hone her gifts or shape the power Juris had granted Zoya with his life. But her Squaller talents were not so far from the abilities of a Tidemaker. I need to give her this. The dragon demanded it. Zoya’s grieving heart required it.

Ice formed on the surface of the lake, a shimmering white path that spread with each step Genya took, leading her from the shore to David’s pyre. She stood before the flames, her red hair gleaming like the feathers of a firebird. She pressed a kiss to the cover of the notebook.

“So you’ll remember when I meet you in the next world,” she said softly. She tossed the notebook onto the fire.

Zoya shouldn’t have been able to hear the words, not at this distance. She didn’t want to know this private thing, this painful thing. But she saw with the dragon’s eyes, heard with its ears. For every life Zoya had grieved, the dragon had grieved a thousand.

How? How do you survive a world that keeps taking?

There was no answer from the dragon, only the crackle of flames and the cold silence of the stars, lovely, bright, and uncaring.

After the ceremony ended, Zoya intended to escort Genya back to her rooms, but Genya refused.

“I can’t be alone. Are you meeting with the king?”

“I am, but—”

“I can’t be alone,” Genya repeated.

“Leoni and Nadia will be there.”

“I know. The Fjerdans won’t wait for us to mourn our dead. We’ll need to select someone to represent the Materialki on the Triumvirate.”

“We have time.”

Genya’s eyes were haunted. “Do we? I keep seeing the way he looked when they pulled him from the rubble. He was still dressed in his wedding clothes and … he had a pen in his hand. His fingertips…” Genya held up her own hand, touched her fingers to her lips. Fresh tears filled her eyes. “They were stained with ink.”

Zoya hadn’t been there. She had returned to Os Alta too late to help, too late to fight. “If you don’t feel ready to—”

Genya wiped away her tears. “I’m a member of the Triumvirate, not just a grieving widow. I need to be there. And I can’t sit alone with my thoughts.”

That much Zoya understood.

Everyone gathered in her sitting room, at the table where the Darkling’s oprichniki and then Alina’s guards had once sat. The king’s chambers were still intact, but the halls around them weren’t yet cleared of rubble.

Tolya wrapped a shawl around Genya’s shoulders and settled her by the fire while Zoya paced, unsure of what came next. Nadia and Leoni had brought a stack of files with them, most likely the work they’d been doing on the missiles. Adrik was there too. Zoya wondered if Nikolai intended to demote her and give Nadia’s little brother her command. He had every right to.