“You’re both right,” Nikolai said. “We need the Zemeni and we need the Kerch. But we can’t choose two partners in this dance.”
“All right,” said Zoya. “Who do we want to go home with when the music stops?”
Tamar tapped her heel against the wall. “It has to be the Kerch.”
“Let’s not make any rash decisions,” said Nikolai. “Pick the wrong partner and we could be in for a disappointing night.”
He removed a vial of cloudy green liquid from his pocket and set it on the table.
Zoya drew in a sharp breath and Genya leaned forward.
“Is that what I think it is?” asked Zoya.
Nikolai nodded. “Because of the information we gleaned from Kuwei Yul-Bo, our Alkemi are close to perfecting an antidote to parem.”
Genya pressed her hands together. There were tears in her single amber eye. “Then—”
Nikolai hated to quell her hope, but they all needed to understand the reality of the situation. “Unfortunately, the formula for the antidote requires huge amounts of jurda stalks. Ten times the number of plants it would take to create an ounce of jurda parem.”
Zoya picked up the vial, turned it over in her hands. “Jurda only grows in Novyi Zem. No other climate will sustain it.”
“We need an antidote,” said Tamar. “All of our intelligence points to the Shu and the Fjerdans being closer to developing a usable strain of parem.”
“More Grisha enslaved,” said Zoya. “More Grisha used as weapons against Ravka. More Grisha dead.” She set the vial back on the table. “If we give the Kerch the plans to the izmars’ya, we’ll lose Novyi Zem as an ally and our chance to protect our Grisha—maybe the world’s Grisha—from parem.” With a tap of her finger, she set the vial spinning in a slow circle. “If we say no to the Kerch, then we won’t have the money to adequately arm and equip the First Army. Either way we lose.”
Genya turned to Nikolai. “You’ll make a diplomatic trip, then. Visit the Kerch, visit the Zemeni. Do that thing you do where you use too many words to say something simple and confuse the issue.”
“I’d like nothing better than another opportunity to talk,” said Nikolai. “But I’m afraid I have more bad news.”
Genya slumped in her chair. “There’s more?”
“This is Ravka,” said Zoya. “There’s always more.”
Nikolai had known this moment was coming, and yet he still wished he could make some kind of excuse and bring the meeting to a halt. So sorry, friends. I’m needed in the greenhouses on a matter of national security. No one else can prune the peonies. Though everyone here knew what had been happening to him, it still felt like a dirty secret. He did not want to let the demon into the room. But this had to be said.
“While Zoya and I were away, the monster took hold of me again. I broke free at the duke’s estate and made a delightful sojourn to a local goose farm.”
“But the sleeping tonic—” Genya began.
“The monster is getting stronger.” There, now. He’d said it. Not a bit of waver to his voice, not even the barest note of worry, though he wanted to choke on the words.
Genya shuddered. Better than anyone, she understood the darkness living inside Nikolai. It was tied to the nichevo’ya, to the very monsters that had terrorized her. The Darkling had set his shadow soldiers upon her when she betrayed him. She had lost an eye to his creatures, and their bites had left her body covered in scars that could not be tailored away. Nikolai still marveled at the particular cruelty of it. The Darkling had known that Genya valued beauty as her shield, so he had taken it from her. He had known that Nikolai relied on his mind, his talent for thinking his way out of any situation, so he’d let the demon steal Nikolai’s ability to speak and think rationally. The Darkling could have killed either of them, but he had wanted to punish them instead. He might have been an ancient power, but he certainly had a petty streak.
“David,” Genya said, her skin pale beneath her scars. “Is that possible? Could it be getting stronger?”
David brushed his shaggy brown hair back from his eyes. “It shouldn’t be,” he said. “Not after it was dormant for so long. But the power that created the presence inside the king wasn’t ordinary Grisha power. It was merzost.”
“Abomination,” murmured Tolya.
“Are we calling it a presence now?” asked Nikolai. “I preferred ‘monster.’ Or ‘demon.’ Even ‘fiend’ has a nice ring.” The monster is me and I am the monster. And if Nikolai didn’t laugh at it, he was fairly sure he’d go mad.
“We can name it Maribel if it suits you,” Zoya said, pushing away her empty cup. “It doesn’t matter what we call it, only what it can do.”
“It matters if we’re misunderstanding its nature,” said David. “You’ve read Grisha theory, Morozova’s journals. Grisha power cannot create life or animate matter, only manipulate it. Every time those limits are breached, there are repercussions.”
“The Shadow Fold,” said Nikolai. The swath of darkness crawling with monsters had split Ravka in two, until Alina Starkov had destroyed it during the civil war. But the wound remained—a wasteland of dead sand where nothing green took hold, as if the Darkling’s power had leached the very life from the land. Merzost had created the Fold, the creatures inside it, as well as the Darkling’s shadow soldiers—and it was the same power that the Darkling had used to infect Nikolai.
David shrugged. “That power is unpredictable.”
“We don’t know what may happen next,” said Nikolai. “Usually a thrilling proposition, less so when a demon may take over my consciousness and try to rule Ravka by gnawing on my subjects.” How did the words come so easily—even as he contemplated losing his mind and his will? Because they always had. And he needed them. He needed to build a wall of words and wit and reason to keep the beast at bay, to remember who he was.
To rid himself of the monster, Nikolai had allowed himself to be subjected to extreme heat and cold. He had brought in bewildered Sun Summoners to use their power on him with no discernible result except the sensation that he was being gently roasted from the inside. His agents had scoured libraries the world over and retrieved the journals of the legendary Fabrikator Ilya Morozova after months of excavation in the rubble of the Spinning Wheel—all with nothing to show for it but frustration. That frustration had led him to Ivets, to the bone bridge, in some futile attempt to draw a connection between the darkness within him and the strange happenings around Ravka. Maybe he’d been hoping the Saints would present him with a miracle. But thus far, divine intervention had been in short supply.
“So you see the problem,” he said now. “I cannot travel without risking exposure, but I cannot stay in hiding at the capital without drawing suspicion and risking Ravka’s future with the Zemeni and the Kerch. Did I not promise particularly delicious trouble?”
“I’m sorry,” said Genya. “Exactly what is delicious about this?”
“The way we’re going to get out of it.” Nikolai slouched back in his chair and stretched his legs, crossing them at the ankle. “We’re going to throw a party.”