From general of the Grisha army to bait for a monster. It was not a position she enjoyed, and only the progress she’d made in Juris’ lair kept her temper from getting the best of her.
Today, she’d arrived at Elizaveta’s spire early. Yuri and Nikolai hadn’t yet shown up, and the Saint herself was nowhere to be found. Or was she? The great golden chamber hummed with the sound of insects. If Juris was to be believed, they were all her.
Six sides to the chamber. Six sides to each amber panel that comprised its soaring walls. Was this why the Little Palace had been built on a hexagonal plan? Zoya had seen the shape repeated in Grisha buildings, their tombs, their training places. Had it all begun with Elizaveta’s hive? There were tunnels leading from each of the six walls. Zoya wondered where they led.
“You were one of his students, weren’t you?”
Zoya jumped at the sound of Elizaveta’s voice. The Saint stood by the table where the thorn tree she’d grown still sprawled over the surface.
Zoya knew Elizaveta meant the Darkling, though student was not the right word. Worshipper or acolyte would have been more accurate. “I was a soldier in the Second Army and under his command.”
Elizaveta slanted her a glance. “You needn’t play coy with me, Zoya. I knew him too.” Zoya’s surprise must have shown, because Elizaveta said, “Oh yes, all of us crossed paths with him at one time or another. I met him when he had only just begun his service to the Ravkan kings. When I was still in my youth.”
Zoya felt a shiver at the thought of just how ancient Elizaveta must be. Her connection to the making at the heart of the world had granted her eternity. Was she really ready to reject it?
“Did he know what you were?” Zoya asked instead. “What you could do?”
“No,” said Elizaveta. “I barely did. But he knew I had great power, and he was drawn to that.”
He always was. The Darkling prized power above every other trait. Zoya sometimes worried if she might be very much the same.
“Count yourself lucky,” she said. “If he had known the extent of your gifts, he would have pursued you until he could use them for himself.”
Elizaveta laughed. “You underestimate me, young Zoya.”
“Or you underestimated him.”
The Saint gave a skeptical bob of her head. “Perhaps.”
“What was he like then?” Zoya could not resist asking.
“Arrogant. Idealistic. Beautiful.” Elizaveta smiled ruefully, her fingers trailing the spine of the thorn tree. It curled to meet her like a cat arching its back. “I met him many times throughout the years, and he adopted many guises to hide his true self. But the faces he chose were always lovely. He was vain.”
“Or smart. People value beauty. They can’t help but respond to it.”
“You would know,” said Elizaveta. “The fairy stories really aren’t true, are they? They promise that goodness or kindness will make you lovely, but you are neither good nor kind.”
Zoya shrugged. “Should I aspire to be?”
“Your king values such things.”
And should Zoya seek his approval? Pretend to be something other than she was? “My king values my loyalty and my ability to lead an army. He will have his wife to smile and simper and cuddle orphans.”
“You’d give him up so readily?”
Now Zoya’s brows rose in surprise. “He isn’t mine to keep.”
“There is a reason I use you and not the monk to provoke his demon.”
“The king would fight to save anyone—princess or peasant in the field.”
“And that’s all there is to it? I see the way his eyes follow you.”
Was something in Zoya pleased at that? Something foolish and proud? “Men have been watching me my whole life. It’s not worth taking note of.”
“Careful, young Zoya. It is one thing to be looked at by a mere man, quite another thing to garner the attention of a king.”
Attention was easy to come by. Men looked at her and wanted to believe they saw goodness beneath her armor, a kind girl, a gentle girl who would emerge if only given the chance. But the world was cruel to kind girls, and she’d always appreciated that Nikolai didn’t ask that of her. Why would he? Nikolai spoke of partnerships and allies, but he was a romantic. He wanted love of a kind Zoya could not give and would never receive. Maybe the thought stung, but that prick of pain, the uneasy sense that something had been lost, belonged to a girl, not a soldier.
Zoya glanced down one of the tunnels. It seemed darker than the others. The smell of honey and sap that emanated from it was not quite right, sweetness punctured by the taint of rot. It might have been her imagination, but the bees even sounded different here, less the buzz of busy insects than the lazy, glutted hum of battlefield flies sated on the dead.
“What’s down there?” Zoya asked. “What’s wrong with them?”
“The bees are every part of me,” said Elizaveta. “Every triumph, every sadness. This part of the hive is weary. It is tired of life. That bitterness will spread to the rest of the hive until all existence will lose its savor. That is why I must leave the Fold, why I will take on a mortal life.”
“Are you really ready to give up your power?” Zoya asked. She couldn’t quite fathom it.
Elizaveta nodded at the dark chamber. “Most of us can hide our greatest hurts and longings. It’s how we survive each day. We pretend the pain isn’t there, that we are made of scars instead of wounds. The hive does not grant me the luxury of that lie. I cannot go on this way. None of us can.”
The thorny vine curling beneath Elizaveta’s hand suddenly sprouted with white blossoms that turned pink and then blood red before Zoya’s eyes.
“Quince?” she asked, thinking of the tales of beasts and maidens she had heard as a child, of Sankt Feliks and his apple boughs. What had Juris said? Sometimes the stories are rough on the details.
Elizaveta nodded. “Most women suffer thorns for the sake of the flowers. But we who would wield power adorn ourselves in flowers to hide the sting of our thorns.”
Be sweeter. Be gentler. Smile when you are suffering. Zoya had ignored these lessons, often to her detriment. She was all thorns.
“Your king is late,” said Elizaveta.
Zoya found she wasn’t sorry. She did not want to drown today.
Juris sensed Zoya’s mood when she entered the cavern.
“You’ve been to see Elizaveta,” he said, setting aside the tiny obsidian horse he had been carving to add to his herd. “I can smell it on you.”
Zoya nodded, reaching for the axes she had come to favor. She liked the weight and balance of them, and they reminded her of Tamar. Was she homesick? She’d lost track of time here. No food. No rest. Hours bled into days. “Everyone is so concerned with the naming of their wounds and the tending of them,” she said. “It’s tiresome.”
Juris gave a noncommittal grunt. “No weapons today.”
Zoya scowled. She’d been looking forward to working through her melancholy with a little combat. “Then what?”
“I had hoped by now you would be further along.”
Zoya planted her fists on her hips. “I’m doing brilliantly.”