Rule of Wolves (King of Scars #2) - Leigh Bardugo Page 0,197
Darkling would bring down a landslide and bury them all beneath a pile of rock or abandon them in a labyrinth of caves. The options were endless. The man had a limitless supply of unpleasant surprises.
They emerged around a bend and the valley sprawled out before them, blanketed in silver mist and ringed by the snow-capped peaks of the Sikurzoi. He could see mountain lakes gleaming like frozen coins, and far in the distance, a herd of shaggy bison moving slowly across a meadow, searching for signs of spring.
Nikolai would have preferred to wait for the thaw to make this trip, but reports of the blight had only grown more frequent, miles-wide patches of dead earth and ashen soil, men, women, and children struck down in the space of moments, scars that might never heal.
After the battle for Os Kervo, his trackers hadn’t been able to locate the Darkling. The followers of the Starless One still held their services, and a few had camped outside the palace walls to petition the new queen for the Darkling’s Sainthood. But the man himself had gone missing. Until one night they’d entered the war room in the Little Palace to find him slouched in his old chair, as if he’d never left.
Nikolai had reached for his guns, Tolya and Zoya had moved into combat stance. But the Darkling had merely rested his chin in his hand and said, “It seems that, once again, Ravka has a problem only I can solve.”
It was fair to say that problem was of the Darkling’s creation, but if he could be of assistance, Nikolai wasn’t going to argue. At the very least, he’d set them on the path to the Monastery of Sankt Feliks, where he believed they would find answers. And if not? Even the Darkling, the eternal know-it-all, wasn’t sure what they would do. He seemed unfazed by the prospect.
“Are you really so ready to watch the world die?” Nikolai had asked him.
He’d merely shrugged. “Imagine, if you’re able, how long I’ve spent in this world. Do you never wonder what waits in the next?”
Nikolai supposed he had. He’d written some very bleak poetry about death and the unknown while he was at university in Ketterdam, some of it in rhymed couplets, all of it remarkably bad.
He glanced back at Zoya trudging along, her silver fur hat pulled down low over her ears, her nose red from the cold. Why think of the next world when she was in this one? Over the past weeks he’d watched her navigate meetings, diplomatic dinners, the tricky early negotiations of the Fjerdan treaty. He was there to charm and to offer guidance when she needed it, but Zoya’s role as general of the Second Army had forced her to learn the ins and outs of Ravka’s foreign policy and internal workings. She might never have a real passion for agricultural reform or industrial development, but her ministers would be there to help. And so would Nikolai, if she let him.
They weren’t married. They weren’t even engaged. He wanted to ask, but he wanted to court her first. Maybe build her something. A new invention, something lovely and useless and ill-suited to war. A music box or a mechanical fox, a folly for her garden. Part of him was certain that she would simply change her mind about him and that would be the end of it. He had wanted her for so long that it seemed impossible he should actually have her beside him every day, that he might lay down beside her every night. Not impossible, he supposed. Just improbable.
He turned, sending pebbles scattering off the mountainside.
“Kiss me, Zoya,” he said.
“Why?”
“I need reassurance that you are real and that we survived.”
Zoya went up on her toes and pressed her warm mouth to his. “I’m right here and I’m freezing, so move before I toss you into a gully.”
He sighed happily. There she was. Bitter and bracing as strong drink. She was real, and at least for now, she was his.
* * *
They came upon the monastery without warning. One moment they were squeezing between two sheer rock walls and the next they were staring at an elaborate stone facade of arches and columns carved into gray stone. Between them, in a series of friezes, Nikolai saw the story of the first Priestguard, the monks who had transformed into beasts to fight for the first Ravkan king but who had been unable to return to human form. Yuri