Elizaveta laughed. “We will not be rulers. We will be gods. If it’s a crown you want, take it. Sit the Ravkan throne. We will hold dominion over the world.”
“I saw his body on the pyre. I watched him burn.”
“I stole him from the sands of the Fold and left a facsimile in his place. It was well within my power.” Just as Zoya had suspected. And she didn’t care about the particulars. But she wanted to keep Elizaveta talking.
“You preserved his body?”
“In the hopes that he might be resurrected. I stored him in my hives. Yes, I know you were ready to believe my little story about my wound, my weariness. But you didn’t dare walk down that dark corridor, did you? No one wants to look too closely at another person’s pain. Did you really believe I would sacrifice an age of knowledge and power to become a mortal? Would you, Zoya?”
No. Never. But the power she was tied to now did not need to be seized or stolen. “And what will you do with the world once you possess it?”
“Is this where I present my grand vision for peace? For a unified empire without border or flag?” Elizaveta shrugged. “I could make that speech. Perhaps the Starless One will make that our endeavor. I know only that I want to be free and that I want to feel my power once more.”
It was a need Zoya understood, and she knew the questions to ask, the same questions she had posed to herself when the dark crept in.
“You don’t have enough of it?” Zoya asked, moving slowly around the circle of the wood. The shadow creature’s chest no longer glowed—so someone had managed to remove the thorn. Its shape was leeching slowly into the Darkling’s supine body. Nikolai lay dying, impaled on the thicket as his blood drained into the soil.
“What is power without someone to wield it over? I have lived in isolated splendor for too many lifetimes. What is it to be a god without worship? A queen without subjects? I was the witch in the wood, the queen on her throne, the goddess in her temple. I will be once more. I will savor fear and desire and awe again.”
“You’ll get none from me,” said Zoya. She raised her hands and her sleeves fell back. Black scales glittered in the twilight.
Elizaveta gave a beleaguered sigh. “I should have known Juris would hold on long enough to do something noble and misguided. Well, old friend,” she said, “it will not matter.” With a sweep of her arm, two iron-colored stalks shot toward Zoya, their thorns gleaming like the barbed tail of a sea creature.
Zoya drove her hands upward, and a ferocious whirlwind caught the stalks, twisting them around each other and yanking them from the thorn wood by the root. Zoya flung them back at Elizaveta.
“How fierce you are,” said the Saint. “Juris was right to make you his student. I’m sorry his knowledge will die with you.”
This time half the wood seemed to rise up, a snarling mass of fat, thorny stalks. Zoya pulled moisture from the air in a cold wave, coating the stalks in frost, freezing their sap from the inside out. With a rumbling gust of air, she shattered them on the wind.
“Such power. But you cannot defeat me, Zoya. I have the advantage of eternity.”
“I’ll settle for the advantage of surprise.”
Zoya raised the sands for cover and let herself plummet in a flash to the thorn wood. As Elizaveta had talked, Zoya had drifted to the far side of the circle, to the bier on which the Darkling’s perfectly preserved body rested. She had the briefest moment to take in the beautiful face, those elegant hands. Zoya had loved him with all the greedy, worshipful need in her girlish heart. She had believed he prized her, that he cared for her. She would have done anything for him, fought and died for him. And he had known that. He had cultivated it as he had cultivated his own mystery, as he had nurtured Alina Starkov’s loneliness and Genya’s desire to belong. He used us all, just as he is using Elizaveta now. And I let it happen.
She would not let it happen again. She lifted her arms.
“No!” cried Elizaveta.
“Burn as you were meant to,” Zoya whispered. She thrust her arm down, and, as easily as if she were summoning a soft breeze, lightning flowed in a precise, earsplitting crack. It struck the bier in a blaze of sparks and blooming flame. Zoya saw a shadow emerge from the fire, as if trying to flee the heat.
“What have you done?” Elizaveta screamed. She hurtled at the Darkling as the thorn wood tried to lift him to safety, away from the blaze.
But Zoya focused the heat of her flames until they burned blue as Juris’ dragon fire. The thorn wood began to collapse in on itself.
Stalks twisted around Zoya’s ankles, but she gathered her sparks and burned them away, singeing herself in the process. Fire was going to take some practice.
Elizaveta had thrown herself on the pyre to try to retrieve what was left of the Darkling’s body. Zoya knew that though the flames might cause Elizaveta pain, they would not stop her. Only Elizaveta’s own power turned against her would be enough to end a Grisha that ancient. Zoya had just a few minutes to act.
She found Yuri running from the flames and snatched the glowing thorn from his hand. “I’ll deal with you later,” she snarled, swiping two dunes to surround him in a strong gust. They buried him to the neck.
The remnants of the shadow creature hovered between Nikolai and the blaze of the Darkling’s bier as if unsure. It was barely visible now, its wings shredded, its clawed hands hanging limply by its sides. She drove the glowing thorn back into the place where its heart should be.
Nikolai came to consciousness with a gasp. “Take it out of me,” he rasped, ducking his head toward his chest where the real thorn was lodged. “End him.”
And what if I end you too? There was no time to hesitate. Zoya yanked free the thorn. Nikolai howled as black blood poured from his chest. Zoya was slammed backward by the lashing trunk of a tree.
All around her, the thorn wood burst into bloom as Elizaveta rose shrieking from the Darkling’s final funeral pyre. She was a swarm of bees. She was a meadow in blossom. She was a woman mad with grief. The thorn wood twisted around Zoya’s wrists, binding her tight as Elizaveta hurtled toward her, locusts streaming from her mouth, her hands extended, reaching for Zoya’s throat.
It’s all right, Zoya thought. I saved Nikolai. I kept Elizaveta confined to the Fold. She had stopped the Darkling at last. Let Elizaveta take her heart. But Juris’ voice roared within her, and she could almost see his sneer: I gave up my scales for this? We are the dragon. We do not lie down to die.
Zoya felt the branches squeeze tighter. The thorn wood was Elizaveta’s creation. But the sap within it flowed like blood, like a river moved by tides.
Elizaveta screamed her rage, and the buzz of insects filled Zoya’s ears.
Zoya focused on the sap running through the branches of the thorn wood, the sap that had drowned her again and again, and she pulled.
The stalks turned, the vicious spikes of their thorns jutting toward Elizaveta too quickly for her to change course or shift form. Her body struck the lances of the thorns with a dull, wet thud. She hung, bare inches from Zoya, impaled on the claws of her own creation.
Zoya twisted the thorns and watched the light vanish from Elizaveta’s eyes. She could have sworn she heard the dragon snarl his approval.
Ravka might fall. The Grisha and the Second Army might scatter. But the world would be safe from Elizaveta and the Starless One.