Rule of Wolves (King of Scars #2) - Leigh Bardugo Page 0,122

pain or sickness. They bear their suffering without ever playing the games that Rasmus does. The flaw is not in his body. It’s in his soul.”

“He’s been nothing but good to Hanne.” Flimsy words after what she’d seen Rasmus do to Joran. “At the hunt, he was humiliated—”

“That wasn’t the first time he lashed out. I saw him knock a boy from his horse and claim it was a joke. The child split his skull on the cobblestones, but no one said a word, because Rasmus is a prince.”

Could it have been an accident? A bit of fun gone wrong? Nina couldn’t quite make herself believe it.

“He’s changing,” she said with more hope than she felt. “The stronger he feels, the less he’ll need to prove his strength.”

“He was testing his new strength,” said Joran, “waiting to see who will stop him. And you know no one will.”

Nina set her foot on the invisible path, feeling the cold of the water through her boots. She made herself go slowly, carefully, when all she wanted was to run from the drüskelle sector and the truth in Joran’s words.

She clutched her coat tight against the chill in the air. There was nothing else to do but keep moving forward. You chose your path. You walked it. You hoped to find a way home again.

26

THE MONK

ALEKSANDER STOLE CLOTHES and shoes from the back of a wagon on his way into Polvost. Finding the Starless had been more difficult than he’d anticipated, and he was growing weary of the march. He bent beside a stream to drink, but he didn’t need to waste time hunting. He wasn’t hungry. He remembered how Elizaveta had craved sensation—the taste of wine, the touch of skin, the feel of soft earth beneath her feet. Aleksander cared for none of this. He only wished that it wasn’t winter. He wanted to turn his face to the sun and feel it warm him. The cold frightened him now. It felt like death, like the long silence of not being, without sense of time or place, only the understanding that he must hold on, that someday, there would be an end to the terrible stillness. He’d been a long time in the dark.

But eventually he realized that he was growing weak. Yuri’s body needed sustenance, and so he made his way to a beer hall in Shura. Aleksander had no money, but he offered to chop wood and fix the roof in exchange for a meal. The young men of the town were already gone, back in uniform, readying to face the Fjerdans.

“And what do you think of the king’s war?” he asked a group of old men gathered on the porch.

The gray grandfather who answered was so wizened he looked more walnut than man. “Our Nikolai didn’t ask for a war, but if it’s what them cold northern bastards want, he’ll give it to them.”

His wrinkled companion spat onto the wooden slats. “You’ll be kissing the icy asses of those northern bastards when they march through. We don’t have the tanks and guns the Fjerdans have, and sending our children to die won’t change that.”

“You saying we should just let them drop bombs on our cities?”

On and on it went, the same old story. But they did love their king.

“You’ll see, he’ll find a way out of this trap, same as the last. The too-clever fox always does.”

Aleksander wondered if they’d actually read that particular story. He seemed to recall it had a very bloody end. The fox had lost his hide to the hunter’s knife. Or maybe he’d been rescued? Aleksander couldn’t recall.

He sat at the end of a table in the beer hall, ate tough rye bread and strips of lamb stewed so long they tasted like they’d already been chewed. This was what it meant to be alive. Elizaveta should count herself lucky. To think Zoya had been the one to kill her. He supposed it saved him the trouble of doing it himself. And if Zoya ever learned to harness the power she’d been given? She was still vulnerable, still malleable. Her anger made her easy to control. When this war was done and the casualties counted, she might once more be in need of a shepherd. She had been one of his best students and soldiers, her envy and her rage driving her to train and fight harder than any of her peers. And then she’d turned on him. Like Genya. Like Alina. Like his