Rule of Wolves (King of Scars #2) - Leigh Bardugo Page 0,98

I didn’t care. I was in love. We met by moonlight. We danced to the music his brothers played. I thought love would be our armor, wings to fly with, a shield against the world. She’d laughed, the sound like bones rattling in a fortune-teller’s cup, ready to spill and show only disaster. Sabina spread her cracked hands, gesturing to their meager home, the cold stove, the piles of laundry, the earthen floor. Here is our shield. This is what love does. Her father had said nothing.

Zoya had seen her Suli uncles only once. They’d arrived after dark by her mother’s order. Sabina had already retired to bed and told Zoya to stay with her, but as soon as her mother had nodded off to sleep, Zoya had snuck out to see the strangers with their black hair and their black eyes, their brows thick and dark like hers. They looked like her father, but they didn’t. Their brown skin seemed lit from within. Their shoulders were straight and they held their heads high. Beside them, her father looked like an old man, though she knew he was the youngest brother.

“Come away with us,” Uncle Dhej had said. “Now. Tonight. Before that shrew wakes.”

“Don’t speak of my wife that way.”

“Then before your loving wife wakes to claim you. You will die here, Suhm. You’re nearly dead already.”

“I’m fine.”

“We’re not meant to live among them, locked up in their houses, wilting beneath their roofs. You were meant for the stars and open skies. You were meant for freedom.”

“I have a child. I cannot just—”

“The mother is spoiled fruit and the daughter will grow up sour. I can see the sorrow hanging around her already.”

“Be silent, Dhej. Zoya has a good heart and will grow up strong and beautiful. As her mother might have. In a different life. With a different husband.”

“Then bring her with us. Save her from this place.”

Yes. Take me away from here. Zoya had clapped her hands over her mouth as if she’d spoken the words aloud, released some kind of curse into the world. Guilt flooded her, choking her, bringing tears to her eyes. She loved her mother. She did, she did. She didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. She didn’t want to leave her alone to fend for herself. She’d crept back into Sabina’s bed and hugged her close and cried herself to sleep. But she’d dreamed she was riding in a Suli wagon and she’d woken the next morning, confused and disoriented, still sure she could smell hay and horses, still certain she could hear the happy chatter of sisters she didn’t have.

She’d never seen her uncles again.

This is what love does.

Love was the destroyer. It made mourners, widows, left misery in its wake. Grief and love were one and the same. Grief was the shadow love left when it was gone.

I’ve lived too long in that shadow, Zoya thought, gazing out at the lakeshore, at the soldiers huddled against the cold, waiting for someone to say something.

“Please,” Genya whispered.

Zoya racked her brain for a message of hope, of strength. But all she had was the truth.

“I used to…” Her voice was husky with unshed tears. She hated that sound. “I used to believe there was one kind of soldier. The kind of soldier I aspired to be. Ruthless and unrelenting. I worshipped at the altar of strength—the storm, the Heartrender’s blow, the Cut. When I was chosen to lead the Triumvirate, I…” Shame washed over her, but she made herself keep speaking. “I resented the people selected to lead alongside me. I was the most powerful and the most dangerous, and I thought I knew how to lead.” Zoya felt memories crowd in on her, long nights arguing with Genya and David. When had they begun scheming together instead of squabbling?

“I knew nothing. David didn’t set out to teach me the power of silence, but he did. Genya didn’t try to convince me to be kinder, she showed me what kindness could do every day. David wasn’t … He wasn’t an easy person. He didn’t tell jokes or crack smiles or try to make you comfortable. He hated small talk and he could fall so deeply into his work, he forgot to eat or sleep. The only distraction he ever had was Genya. When he looked at her, you could see that he had found his perfect equation.” She shrugged, unable to make her own figures tally. “David was a different kind