“I’m sorry,” Isaak said. He hated to think he was failing his country and his king as well as the talented girl before him.
Genya threw up her hands. “That’s what I mean. Nikolai would never lower his head that way or apologize with such sincerity.”
“I’m sorry,” Isaak said again without thinking, and then winced.
“We’re out of options,” said Tamar. “We cancel the party and risk Nikolai’s absence being discovered, or we take this risk.”
“And if we’re found out?” Tolya asked.
“I’m not even sure what we’d be guilty of,” considered David. “Is impersonating a king treasonous if you’re doing it for the king’s benefit?”
Isaak swallowed. Treason. He hadn’t even thought of that.
“We could be handing the Apparat an easy way to eliminate all of the Grisha leadership in a single move,” said Tamar.
Genya released a sigh. “Isaak, I know you’re doing your best, but we’ve asked too much of you. This was madness from the start.”
Isaak hated to see these brave people lose hope. He remembered Nikolai Lantsov perched beside his infirmary bed, thought of his mother’s smile and his sisters’ plump cheeks the last time he’d returned home.
He leaned back, draped an arm over the top of his chair, and said with all the easy, drawling arrogance he could summon, “Genya, my love, ring for brandy. I can’t be expected to tolerate certain doom when I’m this sober.”
They stared at him.
David tapped an ink-stained finger to his lips. “Better.”
“Better?” cried Genya, clapping her hands with glee. “It was perfect! Do it again.”
Isaak felt a moment’s panic, then arched a brow. “Are you giving the orders now? I hope this means I can indulge in a kingly nap.”
Tamar grinned. Tolya whooped. Genya leaned down and pressed a huge kiss to Isaak’s cheek—and Isaak did what Nikolai Lantsov never would have done.
He blushed.
THE SKIFF WAS ABANDONED, and the sands carried Nikolai, Zoya, and Yuri to the giant palace, the dunes sliding beneath their feet in a way that made Nikolai’s stomach lurch. He prided himself on adapting easily, but it was one thing to implement a new technology, adopt a new fuel, or dare to wear shirtsleeves at dinner without a waistcoat. It was quite another to see your understanding of the natural world smashed to bits in an afternoon.
“You look unwell, boy king,” rumbled Juris, who had resumed his dragon form.
“A novel means of transport. I don’t suppose you’d consider carrying us on your back.”
The dragon huffed. “Only if you’d like to return the favor.”
Nikolai had to crane his neck to take in the palace as they approached. He’d never seen a structure so vast. It would have taken a regiment of engineers working for a thousand years to imagine such a creation, let alone see it built. The palaces and towers were clustered around three major spires: one of black stone, one of what looked like glowing amber, and one of what could only be bone. But there was something wrong about the place. He saw no signs of life, no birds circling, no movement at the many windows, no figures crossing the countless bridges. It had the shape of a city, but it felt like a tomb.
“Is there no one else here?” he asked.
“No one,” said the shifting grotesque in a chorus of baritone voices punctuated by the growl of a bear. “Not for almost four hundred years.”
Four hundred years? Nikolai looked to Zoya, but her gaze was distant, her hand clasped around her bare left wrist.
The sand rose, lifting them higher, and Nikolai saw that the three spires surrounded a domed structure, a mass of terraces and palaces and waterfalls of cascading sand that shimmered in the gray twilight.
They passed beneath a large arch and into a wide, circular chamber, its walls glinting with mica. The sand beneath their feet became stone, and a round table swelled up from the floor, its center a milky geode. Elizaveta gestured for them to sit in the stone chairs that emerged beside it.
“I fear we can offer you no food or drink,” she said.
“We’ll settle for answers,” said Nikolai.
Yuri knelt on the stone floor, his head bowed, nattering in what Nikolai thought was liturgical Ravkan, since he could only pick out an occasional word—promised, foretold, darkness.
“Please stop that,” Elizaveta said, her bees humming in distress. “And please, sit.”
“Leave him be. He’s abasing himself and enjoying it,” said Juris. He folded his wings and settled onto the floor a good distance from Yuri. “Where to begin?”
“Custom dictates we start with who the hell are you?”
“I thought we’d already covered that, boy king.”
“Yes. But Sainthood requires martyrdom. You all look very much alive. Unless this is the afterlife, in which case I am sorely underdressed. Or overdressed. I suppose it depends on your idea of heaven.”
“Does he always talk this much?” Juris asked Zoya, but she said nothing, just gazed up at the flat expanse of colorless sky above them.
“We all died at one time or another and were reborn,” said Elizaveta. “Sometimes not quite as we were. You can call us what you like, Grisha, Saints—”
“Relics,” said Juris.
Elizaveta pursed her lips. “I don’t care for that term at all.”
Yuri released a small, ecstatic sob. “All is as was promised,” he babbled. “All I was told to hope for—”
Elizaveta sent a vine curling over his shoulder like a comforting arm. “That’s enough,” she said gently. “You’re here now and must calm yourself.”
Yuri grasped the vine, pressing his face into the leaves, weeping. So much for the great scholar.
“Where are we exactly?” Nikolai asked.
“In the Shadow Fold,” said one of the mouths of the grotesque who had introduced himself as Grigori. Sankt Grigori. If Nikolai recalled correctly, he’d been torn apart by bears, though that hardly explained his current condition. “A version of it. One we cannot escape.”
“Does any of this matter?” Zoya said dully. “Why bring us here? What do you want?”
Juris turned his slitted eyes on her, his tail moving in a long sinuous rasp over the floor. “Look how the little witch mourns. As if she knew what she had lost or what she stands to gain.”
Nikolai expected to see Zoya’s eyes light with anger, but she just continued to stare listlessly at the sky. Seeing her this way, devoid of the spiky, dangerous energy that always animated her, was more disturbing than any of the bizarre sights they’d encountered. What was wrong with her? Had the amplifier meant so much? She was still strong without it. She’d be strong with both arms tied behind her back and a satchel of lead ball bearings weighing her down.
“I wish we could have brought you elsewhere, young Zoya,” said Elizaveta. “We had power before the word Grisha was ever whispered, when the extraordinary was still called miracle and magic. We have lived lives so long they would dwarf the history of Ravka. But this place, this particular spot on the Fold, has always been holy, a sacred site where our power was at its greatest and where we were most deeply connected to the making at the heart of the world. Here, anything was possible. And here we were bound when the Darkling created the Fold.”