Shadow and Bone: Chapter 18–After

We also didn’t want to waste time hunting or trapping food every day, so we relied on our supplies and nervously watched them dwindle.

He wasn’t at all shocked to hear of the contempt with which most Grisha regarded the King. Apparently, the trackers had been grumbling more and more loudly amongst themselves about the King’s incompetence.

As we were walking through a band of desiccated willows, the frost crunching beneath our boots, Mal pointed out a sparrowhawk nest, and I found myself wishing that we could just keep walking forever.

Tsibeya was an inhospitable place, a wild and empty world of bitter winters and grueling summers.

I wanted to just lie there in the dark, listening to the rustle of the wind in the grass, warm in this feeling of safety, however illusory.

“Hmmph,” he grumbled noncommittally, his breath already returning to the deep, even rhythm of sleep.

We spent the next few days in the areas surrounding Chernast, scouring miles of terrain for signs of Morozova’s herd, drawing as close to the outpost as we dared.

“What about breakfast?”
He tossed me a piece of hardtack.

The western trails took us through groves of squat larches and past meadows clustered with fireweed and red lichen.

At last, he led us to the leeward side of a large cluster of boulders, slid his pack off his shoulders, and said, “Here.”

The Darkling would make the world a wasteland before he ceded one bit of power.

Mal took one look at the pristine expanse of the meadow and gave a disgusted shake of his head. I didn’t have to ask what he was thinking. If the herd had been close by, any sign they had left would have been covered by the snow. But we would leave plenty of tracks for anyone else to follow.

The oprichnik stepped forward and bent over the stag’s body, a serrated blade in his hand.

Then the Darkling closed his fingers over my shoulder and a silent command reverberated inside me: Light.

Light exploded from me in wave after shimmering wave, obliterating the night sky in a torrent of brilliance.

I drew a ragged breath, trying to get my bearings, to piece myself back together.

One of the Etherealki lifted his arm to a torch, and the flame shot forward in a sweeping arc, surrounding the stag’s lifeless body.

We were met at the crossroads by a huge contingent of armed men, most of them in oprichniki gray.

I did my best to smile convincingly and reassure them. I tried to feign enthusiasm as they marveled at Morozova’s collar and reached out to touch it.

“They’re saying you’ve been in seclusion, preparing for your ordeal,” she said.

“Alina,” Genya interrupted, “the King has taken ill. The Apparat is ruling in his stead.”

Her fingers pleated and unpleated the folds of her kefta.

She looked like a painted icon of a Saint, her hair a burnished copper halo.

Genya had spent nearly her entire life cloistered away in Os Alta, existing uneasily between the world of the Grisha and the intrigues of the court.

Genya had spent nearly her entire life cloistered away in Os Alta, existing uneasily between the world of the Grisha and the intrigues of the court.

I felt a jolt of revulsion, but I also felt the sure, intoxicating force of him.

I felt a jolt of revulsion, but I also felt the sure, intoxicating force of him. I hated that it still had an effect on me.

The soldiers we passed seemed jumpy, and a few glared at Ivan with blatant hostility.

At the end of the hall, Ivan unlocked a gate, and we descended a set of rickety stairs to a dark, windowless room lit by a single guttering lamp.

“Only you could contemplate imminent death and just say ‘all right.’”

An envoy of the King stood with them in full military dress, his pale blue sash bearing a golden double eagle, a stern expression on his weathered countenance.

A feeling of foreboding stirred inside me, disturbing the lovely numbness that had held me in its grip all morning.

I felt fear spread through the passengers on the skiff and heard the Fjerdans begin to pray in their lilting tongue.

I saw a long reach of blanched sand, hulks of what looked like shipwrecks dotting the dead landscape, and above it all, a teeming flock of volcra.

The Darkling turned to look at the ambassadors and the King’s envoy.

“It will not stand,” blustered a Fjerdan.

The memory of the stag reared up before me, so vivid that for a moment the snowy glade swam in my vision, the image of it transposed over the barren landscape of the Fold.

The stag had been showing me my strength—not just the price of mercy but the power it bestowed.

“You begged me for clemency once,” he called over the dead reaches of the Fold, over the hungry shrieks of the horrors he had made. “Is this your idea of mercy?”

Or was he, at this very moment, hurtling toward me over the dead reaches of the Unsea, ready to bring down his own kind of reckoning?