Rule of Wolves (King of Scars #2) - Leigh Bardugo Page 0,111

knew Nikolai wouldn’t have made a difference in that particular fight. If Zoya and the Sun Soldiers couldn’t stop the Darkling, it was possible he couldn’t be stopped. One more enemy we don’t know how to fight.

She bobbed her chin toward the walls. “Do you see what grows around this place?”

Nikolai peered at the twisting gray branches that ran along the perimeter of the garden. “A thorn wood.” An ordinary one, he assumed, not the ancient trees they needed for the obisbaya.

“I took the cuttings from the tunnel that leads to the Little Palace. It’s all prickles and spines and anger, covered in pretty, useless blossoms and fruit too bitter to eat. There is nothing in it worth loving.”

“How wrong you are.”

Zoya’s gaze snapped to his, her eyes flashing silver—dragon’s eyes. “Am I?”

“Look at the way it grows, protecting everything within these walls, stronger than anything else in the garden, weathering every season. No matter the winter it endures, it blooms again and again.”

“What if the winter is just too long and hard? What if it can’t bloom again?”

He was afraid to reach for her, but he did it anyway. He took her gloved hand in his. She didn’t pull away but folded into him like a flower closing its petals at nightfall. He wrapped his arm around her. Zoya seemed to hesitate, and then with a soft breath, she let herself lean against him. Zoya the deadly. Zoya the ferocious. The weight of her against him felt like a benediction. He had been strong for his country, his soldiers, his friends. It meant something different to be strong for her.

“Then you’ll be branches without blossoms,” he whispered against her hair. “And you let the rest of us be strong until the summer comes.”

“It wasn’t a metaphor.”

“Of course it wasn’t.”

He wished they could stand there forever in the silence of the snow, that the peace of this place could protect them.

She wiped her eyes and he realized she was crying.

“If you had told me three years ago that I would shed tears over David Kostyk, I would have laughed at you.”

Nikolai smiled. “You would have hit me with your shoe.”

“He and I … we had nothing in common. Our decision to side with Alina was what bound us—the choice to fight beside her when we knew the odds were in the Darkling’s favor. He had the more experienced fighters, years of understanding and planning.”

“But we won.”

“We did,” she said. “For a while.”

“So how did you do it? How did we do it?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. Maybe it was a miracle. Maybe Alina really is a Saint.”

“Grief has made you delirious. But if we got lucky with one miracle, maybe we’ll get lucky again.”

They left the garden and walked back through the woods. On the path, they parted as they always did—she to the Grisha, and he to the Grand Palace. He wanted to call her back. He wanted to follow her through the snow. But his country didn’t need a heartsick boy chasing after a lonely girl. It needed a king.

“And a king they will have,” he said to no one at all, and strode back to the dark rooms of the palace.

24

MAYU

AFTER QUEEN MAKHI HAD CLAIMED she would think on revealing the laboratories—the laboratories she still wouldn’t admit existed—Tamar and Mayu had escorted Ehri to her chambers in the wing of the palace known as the Nest. They were the rooms that Ehri had grown up in, where all Taban children were raised. The boys were educated and trained alongside the girls before they were old enough to choose a professional path—medicine, religion, the military. The girls were all considered possible heirs, though the eldest daughters were often favored.

Tamar and Mayu alternated shifts watching over Ehri. They didn’t think Makhi would act against the princess, not with so much suspicion hanging over her, but they weren’t taking any chances. Tamar had warned Ministers Nagh and Zihun to strengthen their household security as well.

Three days after they arrived, two of Ehri’s sisters came to visit in a cloud of silk and perfume. Kheru with her coffee-colored eyes, always with a piece of needlework in her hands, and Yenye with the white streak in her hair and her sharp gaze. Jhem was missing, in mourning for her daughter Akeni, lost to the blight. Tamar had slipped into the neighboring room to eavesdrop but remained at the ready in case of trouble.

Mayu didn’t know the princesses well. She’d been assigned to Ehri’s