“The most easily controlled?”
“You see? You were made for this. Rally the Grisha. Try to save our people.”
Zoya gazed into the fire, her expression troubled. “Why is it so easy for you to contemplate your death?”
“I’d rather look at a thing squarely than let it catch me by surprise.” He grinned. “Don’t tell me you’d miss me.”
Zoya looked away again. “I suppose the world would be less interesting without you in it. I wouldn’t let myself be drowned in amber for just anyone, you know.”
“I’m touched,” he said. And he was. It was the closest thing to a compliment she’d ever given him.
She drew a slender chain from the neck of her kefta and pulled it over her head. The key she had used for his shackles. She dangled it from her finger. “We won’t ever need this again after tomorrow.”
He took it from her, feeling the weight of it in his palm. The metal was warm from her skin. He hadn’t missed their nightly ceremony, but he’d missed having an excuse to talk to her each evening and each morning. He supposed that would be at an end now too.
Nikolai hesitated. He wasn’t anxious to spoil her goodwill. “Your amplifier …” Zoya’s hand twitched, and he knew she was resisting the urge to touch her bare wrist. “Will you tell me how you got it?”
“Why does it matter?”
“I don’t know that it does.” But he wanted to know. He wanted to sit here and listen to her talk. For all the time they’d spent together, Zoya was still a mystery to him. This might be his last chance to unravel her.
She smoothed the silk of her kefta over her knees. He thought she might not speak, just sit there, silent as a stone until he gave up waiting. Zoya was perfectly capable of it. But at last she said, “I was thirteen. I had been at the Little Palace for almost five years. The Darkling took a group of Grisha to Tsibeya. There were rumors the white tigers of Ilmisk had returned, and he suspected at least one of them was an amplifier.”
“Near the permafrost?”
“A little farther south. I was the youngest of the group and so proud to be chosen to go. I was half in love with him already. I lived for the rare moments he appeared at the school.” She shook her head. “I was the best, and I wanted him to see that … The older Grisha were all in contention for the amplifier. It was up to them to track the tigers and see who would earn the right to the kill. They followed a female for nearly a week and cornered her in the woods near Chernast, but she somehow escaped their grasp.”
Zoya wrapped her arms around her legs. “She left her cubs. Abandoned the three of them. The Darkling’s men penned them in a cage so the Grisha could squabble over who deserved their teeth the most. All night we could hear the mother prowling the perimeter of the camp, snarling and yowling. My friends talked about going into the dark to pursue her. I knew they were all bluster, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the cubs. So when the camp was asleep, I created a distraction for the guards by knocking over one of the tents with a gust of wind, and I chased the cubs out of the cage. They were so little,” she said with the smallest smile. “They couldn’t really run, only roll a bit, stumble, right themselves. I just kept them moving away from the camp. Saints, I was scared.” Her eyes were far away now, as if looking into that long-ago night. “We were still in sight of the torches when I realized I wasn’t alone.”
“The mother?”
She shook her head. “A male. I don’t know why, but he went straight for the cubs. I panicked. I should have fought, used my power, but all I could think to do was cover their bodies with mine. When the male attacked, his claws tore clean through my coat and my kefta all the way to the skin of my back.” Zoya’s fists clenched. “But I protected those cubs. I remember … I remember I had my eyes squeezed shut, and when I opened them the snow looked black in the moonlight.” She turned her face to the fire. “It was stained with my blood. I could feel the cubs wriggling against me, yowling their terror, their little claws sharp as needles. That was what brought me back to sense—those tiny, vicious little pinpricks. I gathered the last of my strength and summoned the most powerful gust I could. I threw open my arms and sent the male flying. That was when the Darkling and his guards came running. I guess I’d been screaming.”
“Did they kill the tiger?”
“He was already dead. He’d struck a tree when I threw him. It snapped his neck. The cubs escaped.”
Zoya rose. She turned her back to him and, to his astonishment, shrugged the silk of her kefta from her shoulders, letting it pool at her hips. An unwelcome bolt of desire shot through him, and then he saw—along the smooth skin of her back lay eight long, furrowed scars.
“The other Grisha were furious,” she said, “but I had killed the white tiger. The amplifier could only belong to me. So they bandaged my wounds, and I claimed the tiger’s teeth for my wrist. He left me with these.”
The firelight caught the pearly surface of the scars. It was a miracle that she’d survived.
“You never had them healed? Tailored?”
She drew the kefta back up to her shoulders and fastened the clasps. “He left his mark on me and I on him. We did each other damage. It deserves to be remembered.”
“And the Darkling didn’t deny you the amplifier, despite what you’d done?”
“It would have been a fair punishment, but no. An amplifier that powerful was too rare to waste. They put the fetter on me, bound the old cat’s teeth in silver so that I could never remove it. That’s how all of the most powerful amplifiers are fashioned.”
She gazed out the open frame of the window to the flat gray expanse of the sky. “When it was all over, the Darkling had me brought to his tent and said, ‘So, Zoya, you freed the tiger cubs. You did the selfless thing. And yet somehow you are the one who has finished the day with greater power. More than any of your betters who have patiently waited their turn. What do you say to that?’
“His disapproval was more painful than any wound from a tiger’s claws. Some part of me always feared that he would send me away, banish me forever from the Little Palace. I told him I was sorry.
“But the Darkling saw me clearly even then. ‘Is that really what you wish to say?’ he asked.”
Zoya pushed a dark strand of her hair behind her ear. “So I told him the truth. I put my chin up and said, ‘They can all hang. It was my blood in the snow.’”
Nikolai stifled a laugh and a smile played over Zoya’s lips. It dwindled almost instantly, replaced by a troubled frown. “That pleased him. He told me it was a job well done. And then he said … ‘Beware of power, Zoya. There is no amount of it that can make them love you.’”
The weight of the words settled over Nikolai. Is that what we’re all searching for? Was that what he’d hunted in all those library books? In his restless travels? In his endless pursuit to seize and then keep the throne? “Was it love you wanted, Zoya?”
She shook her head slowly. “I don’t think so. I wanted … strength. Safety. I never wanted to feel helpless again.”
“Again?” It was impossible to conceive of Zoya as anything less than mighty.