Nikolai Nothing, said the voice. Liar. Fraud. Heir to no one. Pretender to the throne. I see who you are.
But Nikolai knew those cruelties. He’d borne them his whole life. It takes more than blood to make a king.
Tell me what it takes to rule, the thing said in that taunting voice. Courage? Valor? Love for the people?
All of that. Nikolai strengthened his grip. He could feel the weight of the thorn in his palm. And a solid sense of style.
But the people don’t love you, bastard. Despite your constant striving. The voice sounded different now. Cool, familiar, smooth as glass. How long have you been begging for their love? Little Nikolai Lantsov playing the clown for his mother, the sycophant for his father, the handsome courtier for Alina? She was an orphan, a peasant, and even she didn’t want you. And yet you continue, pleading for scraps like the commoner you are.
Nikolai managed a laugh, but it did not come easy. I’ve met enough commoners and enough kings to not take that as an insult.
What do you think they saw in you to make you so unworthy? All of those medals earned, your fleet of ships, your heroic deeds, your earnest reforms. You know it will never be enough. Some children are born unlovable. Their mothers will not suckle them. They are left to die in the forest. And here you are, come to weep your last, alone in the thorn wood.
I’m not alone. He had Zoya, even Yuri for that matter, and Grigori and Elizaveta watching over them. I have your delightful company.
Now the dark voice laughed, low and long, mirth overflowing in a black tide. Go ahead and do it, then. Drive the thorn into your chest. Do you really think it will matter? Do you really think anything can make you the man you were before?
Before the war. Before the Darkling had set this curse upon him. Before Vasily’s murder, the revelation of his father’s crimes, the ambush at the Spinning Wheel, the countless battles that had cost so many lives.
How do you think I was able to take hold of your heart and burrow so deeply? You gave me fertile soil and so I took root. You will never be what you were. The rot has spread too far.
That’s a lie. Elizaveta had warned Nikolai that the demon would try to trick him. So why did the words ring true?
Oh, you make a good show of it. Compromise, patience, an endless performance of good works to prove you are still the confident prince, the brazen privateer, whole and happy and unafraid. All that work to hide the demon. Why?
The people … The people clung to superstition. They feared the strange. Ravka could not afford another disruption, another weak king.
Another weak king. The voice was knowing, almost pitying. You said it yourself.
I am not my father.
Of course not. You have no father. I’ll tell you why you hide the demon, why you cloak yourself in compromise and diplomacy and dribbling, desperate charm. It is because you know that if they saw you truly, they would turn away. They would see the nightmares that wake you, the doubts that plague you. They would know how very weak you are and they would turn their backs. Use the thorn, drive me out. You will still be a broken man—demon or not.
Was this the real fear that had chased him all these long months? That he would find no cure because the disease was not the demon? That the darkness inside him did not belong to something else but to him alone? He had been a fool. What he’d endured in the war, the choices he’d made, the lives he had ended with bullets and blades and bombs—there was no magic that could burn that away. He’d been human then. He had no demon to blame. He might purge the monster from his body, but the mess of shame and regret would remain. And what would happen when the fighting started up again? The thought made him impossibly weary.
The war was supposed to be over.
The demon’s laughter rolled over him. Not for you, said the voice. Not for Ravka. Not ever.
Nikolai knew he had come here with a purpose. Drive the monster out. Save his country. Save himself. But those were not necessarily the same thing. He could not go back. He could not heal himself. He could not take back the part of him that had been lost. So how was he to lead?
Lay down the thorn.
The thorn? Nikolai could no longer feel it in his hand.
Lay down the thorn. Not every day can end in victory. Not every soldier can be saved. This country won’t survive a broken king.
Nikolai had always understood that he and Ravka were the same. He just hadn’t understood how: He was not the crying child or even the drowning man. He was the forever soldier, eternally at war, unable to ever lay down his arms and heal.
Lay down the thorn, boy king. Haven’t you earned a bit of rest? Aren’t you tired?
He was. Saints, he was. He thought he had grown used to his scars, but he had never grasped how much of his will it would take to hide them. He had fought and sacrificed and bled. He had gone long days without rest and long nights without comfort. All for Ravka, all for an ideal he would never attain and a country that would never care.
A bit of peace, whispered the demon. You have the right.
The right to wash his hands of this endless struggle and stop pretending he was somehow better than his father, more worthy than his brother. He was owed that much, wasn’t he?
Yes, crooned the demon. I will see Ravka safe to shore.
Zoya would never forgive him, but Zoya would keep marching on. With losses and wounds of her own. Zoya would not rest.
Steel is earned, Your Highness, she had said, his ruthless general.
What had he earned? What was he owed? What was his by right?
He knew what Zoya would say: You are owed nothing.
Steel is earned. Remember who you are.
Bastard, hissed the demon.
I am Nikolai Lantsov. I have no right to my name.
Pretender, howled the dark voice.
I am Nikolai Lantsov. I have no right to my crown.
But each day he might endeavor to earn it. If he dared continue on with this wound in his heart. If he dared to be the man he was instead of praying to return to the man he’d once been.
Maybe everything the monster said was true. All Nikolai had done or would do for his people might never be enough. A part of him might always remain beyond repair. He might never be a truly noble man or a truly worthy king. In the end, he might be nothing more than a good head of hair and a gift for delusion.
But he knew this much: He would not rest until his country could too.
And he would never, ever turn his back on a wounded man—even if that man was him.
Nikolai Nothing, snarled the demon. Ravka will never be yours.
Perhaps not. But if you loved a thing, the work was never done. Remember who you are.
Nikolai knew. He was a king who had only begun to make mistakes. He was a soldier for whom the war would never be over. He was a bastard left alone in the woods. And he was not afraid to die this day.
He seized the thorn and drove it into his heart.
The monster shrieked. But Nikolai felt no pain at all—just heat as if a blaze had ignited in his chest. For a second he thought he might be dead, but when he opened his eyes, the world remained—the thorn wood, the twilight sky, the golden sphere. He had a brief moment to wonder why Elizaveta hadn’t freed Zoya yet. And then he saw the monster.
It was a shape of pure shadow that hovered in front of him as if suspended in a mirror. Its wings beat gently at the air. In the place where the creature’s heart would be, a slender shard of light glowed. The thorn. So this was the demon. The dark thing that had driven him, played with him, stolen his will. I am the monster and the monster is me. They were not as separate as he would have liked to pretend, but he remembered Elizaveta’s words: Only one of you will survive.