but blood and sacrifice, and Ravka would not go quietly.
“We are lost,” Ylva whispered. “So many dead in an instant.”
“Shut your mouth,” Redvin snarled. “This is why women don’t belong near the battlefield.”
A woman just shoved your “taste of victory” right down your throat, Nina thought with satisfaction.
“This is nothing,” Redvin continued, slicing his hand through the air, addressing the officers now. “This offensive was insurance. The Ravkans have a nightmare waiting for them on the northern front that they’ll never recover from.”
“More tanks?” Nina said, putting a hopeful tremor in her voice.
Redvin laughed, and the sound raised the hair on Nina’s arms. “Oh no, little girl. A weapon like nothing this world has ever seen. And the royal whelp helped create it.”
“Prince Rasmus?” Her surprise was real.
“Yes, he’s more bloodthirsty than any of us could have hoped. Got the idea at the opera, if you please.”
Hajefetla. Songbird. Was Redvin speaking of the plans she’d seen on Brum’s desk, the weapon the prince had spoken of at the ball? Rasmus had invented this new weapon. Rasmus, who they had hoped might be steered toward peace, who Nina had encouraged King Nikolai to believe might be an ally. They had known he was cruel, but they’d hoped it was a petty cruelty, personal, childish, a habit born of frustration. They’d wanted to believe he could be purged of Fjerda’s poison. But he was a warmonger, just like Brum. She remembered what Joran had said that night on the ice moat: He was testing his new strength. Rasmus didn’t want to forge a new world that valued life and mercy more than strength or military might. He wanted to prove to the world he was Fjerdan to the core. She had to figure out how to warn Nikolai that the prince couldn’t be counted on. But first she had to get out of this tower and find a way to Hanne.
“I cannot bear this,” Nina said. “It is too terrible to see our soldiers suffer.”
Ylva placed her arm around Nina’s shoulder and shepherded her toward the elevator. “We’ll leave the men to it.” Once the doors closed, she said, “It will be all right, Mila. If Redvin says Fjerda has the advantage, we do.”
That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.
When they reached the deck, Nina was glad of the salt sting of the sea air. It was easy to say, “Ylva, can you go on without me? I’m not ready to be back in our cabin yet. I need to clear my head.”
Ylva removed her shawl and tucked it around Nina’s shoulders. “You cannot go to her, Mila. His guards will not allow it. I wish you could. I wish I’d sent you both to live with the Hedjut.”
“I won’t try to find her,” Nina lied. “I just need some air.”
“Very well. But stay out of their way, Mila. After a loss like this … soldiers look for someone to punish.”
Nina nodded. As soon as Ylva turned her back, she started cutting a path through the flurry of soldiers and sailors on deck, trying to find her way to the base of the tower where she’d seen Prince Rasmus take Hanne. She readied her bone darts and reached out with her power, sensing the corpses in the water, some in boats retreating back to Leviathan’s Mouth. She would get to Hanne. If she had to go through Joran to do it, even better. And then? She wasn’t sure. She’d steal a boat, get them to safety, get them far from here.
She pulled open the door to the base of the tower and wrinkled her nose. There was a strange smell—incense and the scent of turned soil. She felt a prick against her neck and then she was falling forward, into the dark.
36
ZOYA
ZOYA DESCENDED FROM THE ROCKS on a gust of wind. She could see where her lightning had struck the beach, leaving the sheen of glass where sand had been. She didn’t turn her eyes to the waters and the bodies there, but marched up the gentle hills of seagrass and joined the rest of her troops. Up close, the painted flats they’d erected above the beach looked less like tanks than what they really were—a bit of theater meant to deceive the enemy. But they’d only needed them to be believable from a distance, some sleight of hand inspired by their associates at the Crow Club. If the Fjerdans had seen the bay almost entirely unprotected, they might have sensed the trap