glowed like topaz. Slowly she nodded. “Since the moment we met. Since you charged into that clearing like a girl I had dreamed into being.”
It had been too much tonight—learning what Joran had done, watching Hanne with the prince, knowing she’d set them on this path. Maybe this is my fate, she thought, to find love and lose it. But Nina made herself say the words. She wouldn’t rob Hanne of the chance to stay with her parents, to live among her people, not if it was what she truly wanted. “If you can love him, I’ll find a way to let you go.”
Hanne leaned forward and brushed a damp strand of hair from Nina’s cheek. Nina felt the strong curve of Hanne’s fingers against the nape of her neck, Hanne’s breath on her lips.
“Never let me go,” Hanne whispered.
“Never,” Nina said, and closed the distance between them, feeling the soft press of Hanne’s mouth, the thin silk of her dress, this moment like light on water, brief and startling, blinding in its beauty.
31
NIKOLAI
NIKOLAI WATCHED UNTIL ZOYA had clipped herself to the harness and been lifted into the Cormorant. He knew she would be fine. Of all of them, she was the least fragile, the least vulnerable. He wasn’t being logical, but she’d seemed shaken by their encounter with the Suli and her confession that shouldn’t have had to be a confession. When war came, he wouldn’t be able to protect her any more than he’d protected David. So, for a brief moment, he watched over her, logic be damned.
When the mists closed around the airship, he jogged down the tunnel in the cliffside to catch up to Kaz. The damp walls gleamed shiny and black in the light from Brekker’s lantern.
Their entry into the base was smooth, just a question of keeping quiet and waiting for the guards to pass through the rooms above the basement, then move on to the rest of their rounds. Nikolai and Kaz followed on silent feet, Kaz limping more heavily after their long journey down the tunnel. He wouldn’t have to repeat the trip. They would leave by air along with the stolen titanium.
Two picked locks later, they were waiting in a darkened doorway, peering through a small circular window. The base was built around a central yard full of building materials, which had once been open to the air. But now, most of the cargo was protected by the metal shell connected to the base walls, its roof humped like the back of a whale. There didn’t seem to be too many guards, and Nikolai was eager to move.
“The yard doesn’t look well protected.”
“It isn’t,” said Kaz. “They’re relying on their external defenses. They’ve gotten comfortable.”
Nikolai wondered if the same thing might be true at Ravka’s more valuable targets. Maybe he should rethink the security at his own military bases and at the palace. Brekker would probably make an excellent security consultant—if Nikolai didn’t think he would steal the golden domes right off the Little Palace roof.
“You’re twitchy for a monarch,” said Kaz, eyes on the yard.
“Have you met many?”
“Plenty of men who call themselves kings.”
Nikolai glanced through the window again. “The fate of a nation resting on one’s shoulders does make a fellow restless. Shouldn’t we get going?”
“You get one chance to make a move like this. Assuming we open that shell without the guards hearing us or some alarm going off, we’ll have about thirty minutes to exchange the aluminum for the titanium.”
“Tight. But I think we can manage it.”
“Not if our timing is off. About thirty minutes is meaningless. So we watch the guards do their rounds until we know what their pace really is.”
Thunder rumbled over the yard. Zoya’s signal. That meant the airship was in place above the steel hull protecting the cargo.
Finally Kaz said, “Stay alert.”
He pushed the door open and they were creeping across the yard.
The storm was raging now, Zoya and Adrik conducting it from above like maestros. Nikolai could hear thunder, the rough patter of rain against the metal roof. They needed those sounds. Locating the operating box was easy enough, but the awful shriek that went up from the metal hull as it creaked open was far louder than Nikolai had expected.
“Kerch engineering,” muttered Kaz.
But at last the shell split to reveal the roiling clouds of the night sky and the Cormorant hovering above. Though thunder and lightning crashed around them, thanks to the Squallers above, not a single drop of rain