Rule of Wolves (King of Scars #2) - Leigh Bardugo Page 0,104

to save Yuri. But he was glad someone remembered the good he’d done for this country.

He felt along the wall, the soil cold and moist beneath his palm, to the niche where he’d found the journals, bound up in oilcloth. Empty now. No, not entirely. His fingers fastened around something—a piece of wood. Part of a child’s toy. The curving neck of a swan fashioned with exquisite care, broken at the base. Useless.

Why did you go to Alina? Yuri buzzed away. Why seek her out? To reclaim his power, of course. The universe wanted to humble him, to force him to appeal to a pair of pathetic orphans like a beggar on his knees.

Why did you go to her?

Because with her he was human again. She had once been naive, lonely, desperate for approval, all the things that had made it so easy for him to manipulate his soldiers in the past. So how had she bested him? Sheer stubbornness. That pragmatic impulse that had allowed her to survive the orphanage, to endure so many years without using her power. Something more. He’d known the name for it once, a hundred lifetimes ago. It’s not too late for you. Alina might be right, but he hadn’t fought his way back from death for the sake of being saved.

There was no penance for him to make. Everything he’d done was for the Grisha, for Ravka.

And the blight? Could he add that to the list of his supposed crimes? He had to admit that it was partially his fault. Though if the boy king had been good enough to lie down and die as he was meant to, the obisbaya would have been completed and the Fold never would have ruptured. But how terrible could it be? Ravka had been through worse and so had he.

Aleksander looked down at the broken toy in his hands. He shouldn’t have come here. He smelled the turned earth, the incense from the church above. This place was nothing but another grave.

He wanted to be out of the darkness, back beneath the watery winter sun. He closed the trapdoor behind him and swept up the stairs from the basement, but he paused at the door to the church. He could hear the priest speaking, the shuffle and murmur of a crowd. They must have entered while he’d been sunk in his thoughts.

What day was it? Had they all assembled for morning services?

The priest was telling the tale of Sankt Nikolai—the little boy nearly eaten by cannibal sailors, who had gone on to minister to the poor and hungry. It was as bloody and odd as all the Saints’ lives.

Perhaps it was time for a new story, a single Saint, greater than all those who had come before him, who didn’t dole out his power like some kind of banker keeping a ledger of prayers and good deeds. Perhaps it was time for a new kind of miracle.

From his hiding place behind the door, he raised his hands and focused on the painted icon behind the priest. Slowly, shadows curled from Sankt Ilya’s open hands; they began to bleed from his mouth.

A gasp went up from the congregation. The priest turned and fell to his knees. Aleksander drank their fear and wonder. Heady as that cheap cherry wine he’d had in … he could not quite recall.

You see, Yuri. Your age of miracles has begun.

He gusted through the church, disguising himself in a whirling cloud of shadow, and the congregants screamed.

Aleksander couldn’t simply appear again, resurrected. There were too many old grudges and there would be too many questions. No, there was a better story here. He would become Yuri, let the boy do the talking for him, and when the time came, the monk would be his chosen one—a boy who came from nothing, endowed with great power. They’d loved Alina’s little fairy tale. They’d love this one too.

He would go to the Fold. He would find those who followed the Starless Saint.

He would teach the world awe.

22

NINA

NINA DIDN’T WANT TO MOVE from her bed. Hanne had told her parents that she was ill, that the oysters at the previous day’s breakfast hadn’t agreed with her.

“I forget she’s not used to the luxuries of the Ice Court,” Brum had said, his voice carrying through the gap in the door. “But she must join us to celebrate.”

That should make me angry.

The thought came and went. She felt like she was drowning, but she didn’t want to fight