Ruin and Rising

by Leigh Bardugo

  Then I gasped as my good arm was slammed down to the deck. The Darkling loomed over me, his boot pressing down painfully on my wrist.

  “There you are,” he said in his cool, cut-glass voice. “Hello, Alina.”

  The light collapsed. Darkness crowded in, lit only by the eerie flicker of violet flame.

  I grunted as the Darkling’s boot ground down on the bones of my arm.

  “Where are the students?” I gritted out.

  “They aren’t here.”

  “What did you do to them?”

  “They’re safe and sound back in Kribirsk. Probably having their lunch.” His nichevo’ya circled around us, forming a perfect, protective dome that shifted and writhed—wings, talons, hands. “I knew the threat would be enough. Did you really believe I would endanger Grisha children when we’ve lost so many?”

  “I thought…” I’d thought he was capable of anything. He wanted me to believe, I realized. When he’d shown me Botkin’s and Ana Kuya’s corpses. He’d wanted me to believe in his ruthlessness.

  Then I remembered his words from so long ago: Make me your villain.

  “I know what you thought, what you’ve always thought of me. It’s so much easier that way, isn’t it? To puff yourself up with your own righteousness.”

  “I didn’t invent your crimes.” This wasn’t over yet. All I needed was to reach the flint in my sleeve. All I needed was a spark. It might not kill either of us, but it would hurt like hell, and it might buy the others time.

  “Where is the boy? I have my Summoner. I want my tracker too.”

  Mal was still just a tracker to him, thank the Saints. My good hand curled into my sleeve, brushed the edge of the flint. “I won’t let him be used,” I said. “Not as leverage. Not as anything.”

  “On your back, the faithful dying around you, and yet you remain defiant.”

  He yanked me to my feet. Two nichevo’ya slid into place to restrain me as the flint slipped out of my grasp. The Darkling shoved the fabric of my coat aside, his hands sliding down my body. My heart sank as his fingers closed over the first pack of blasting powder. He pulled it from my pocket, then quickly located the second. He sighed.

  “I can feel your intent as you feel mine, Alina. Your hopeless resolve, your martyr’s determination. I recognize it now.”

  The tether. An idea came to me then. It was the smallest chance, but I would take it.

  The Darkling tossed the packs of blasting powder to a nichevo’ya who arced away with them into the darkness. He watched me with cool gray eyes as we waited, the sounds of the battle muffled by the whirring of the shadow soldiers around us. A moment later, a shattering boom sounded from somewhere in the distance.

  The Darkling shook his head. “It may well take me another lifetime to break you, Alina, but I will put my mind to the task.”

  He turned and I acted. Restrained by the nichevo’ya, I couldn’t use the Cut, but I wasn’t powerless. I twisted my wrists. The violet light of the lumiya bent around me. At the same time, I reached across the tether between us.

  The Darkling’s head jerked up and for a moment, though I still stood invisible in the grip of the nichevo’ya, I was staring at him from beside the mast. The vision of the girl before him was whole and unwounded. She raised her arms to deliver the Cut. The Darkling didn’t stop to think—he reacted. It was the barest second, the brief space between instinct and understanding, but it was enough. His shadow soldiers released me and sprang forward to protect him. I lunged toward the railing and threw myself over the side of the skiff.

  I landed on my wounded arm, and pain slammed through my body. The Darkling’s howl of rage sounded behind me. I knew I’d lost control of the light, and that meant I was visible. I made myself keep moving, dragging myself across the sand, away from the violet glow of the lumiya. I saw sun soldiers and Grisha fighting by the illuminated skiffs. Harshaw down. Ruby bleeding.

  I forced myself to my feet. My head spun. I clutched my wounded arm and lurched into the darkness. I had no sight, no sense of direction. I plunged farther into the black, trying to make my mind work, to form some kind of plan. I knew the volcra could come for me at any moment, but I couldn’t risk the light. Think, I berated myself. I was out of ideas. The blasting powders were gone. I couldn’t raise the Cut. My sleeve was wet with blood, and my footsteps slowed. I had to find someone to heal my arm. I had to regroup. I couldn’t just run from the Darkling again the way I’d done that first time on the Fold. I’d been running ever since.

  “Alina.”

  I spun. Mal’s voice in the dark. Let it be a trick of sound, I thought. But I knew the Squallers’ blanket had long since been lifted. How had he found me? Stupid question. Mal would always find me.

  I gasped as he grabbed my wounded arm. Despite the pain and the risk, I summoned a weak wash of light, saw his beautiful face streaked with dirt and blood. And the knife in his hand. I recognized the blade. It was Tamar’s, Grisha-made. Had she offered it to him for this moment? Had he sought her out to ask for it?

  “Mal, don’t. This isn’t over yet—”

  “It is, Alina.”

  I tried to pull away, but he wrapped his hand hard around my wrist, fingers pinching together, the sharp jolt of power moving through both of us, calling me, demanding that I step through that door. With his other hand, he forced my fingers around the knife’s grip. The light wavered.

  “No!”

  “Don’t let it all be for nothing, Alina.”

  “Please—”

  An agonized scream rose over the clamor of the battle. It sounded like Zoya.

  “Save them, Alina. Don’t let me live knowing I might have stopped this.”

  “Mal—”

  “Save them. This once, let me carry you.” His gaze locked on mine. “End this,” he said.

  His grip tightened. There is no end to our story.

  I would never know if it was greed or selflessness that moved my hand. With Mal’s fingers guiding mine, I shoved the knife up and into his chest.

  The momentum jerked me forward, and I stumbled. I pulled back, the knife falling from both of our hands, blood spilling from the wound, but he kept his hold on my wrist.

  “Mal,” I sobbed.

  He coughed and blood burbled from his lips. He swayed forward. I nearly toppled as I clutched him to me, his hold on my wrist so tight I thought the bones might snap. He gasped, a wet rattle. His full weight slumped against me, dragging me down, fingers still clenched, pressed against my skin as if he were taking my pulse.

  I knew when he was gone.

  For a moment, all was silent, a held breath—and then everything exploded into white fire. A roar filled my ears, an avalanche of sound that shook the sands and made the very air vibrate.

  I screamed as power flooded through me, as I burned, consumed from the inside. I was a living star. I was combustion. I was a new sun born to shatter air and eat the earth.

  I am ruination.

  The world trembled, dissolved, crashed in on itself.

  And then the power was gone.

  My eyes flew open. Thick darkness surrounded me. My ears were ringing.

  I was on my knees. My hands found Mal’s body, the damp crumple of his blood-soaked shirt.

  I threw up my hands, calling the light. Nothing happened. I tried again, reaching for the power and finding only absence. I heard a shriek from above. The volcra were circling. I could see bursts of Inferni flame, the dim shapes of soldiers fighting in the violet glow of the skiffs. Somewhere, Tolya and Tamar were calling my name.

  “Mal…” My throat was raw. I didn’t know my own voice.

  I sought the light, as I had once done deep in the belly of the White Cathedral, searching for any faint tendril. But this was different. I could feel the wound inside me, the gap where something whole and right had been. I wasn’t broken. I was empty.

  My fists bunched in Mal’s shirt.

  “Help me,” I gasped.

  What is infinite? The u
niverse and the greed of men.

  What lesson was this? What sick joke? When the Darkling had toyed with the power at the heart of creation, the Fold had been his reward, a place where his power was meaningless, an abomination that would keep him and his country in servitude for hundreds of years. Was this my punishment, then? Was Morozova truly mad, or was he just a failure?

  “Someone help!” I screamed.

  Tolya and Tamar were racing toward me, Zoya trailing behind, their bodies lit by glass canisters of lumiya. Tolya was limping. Zoya had a burn along one side of her face. Tamar was practically covered in blood from the wounds the nichevo’ya had given her. They all stopped short when they saw Mal.

  “Bring him back,” I cried.

  Tolya and Tamar went to their knees beside him, but I saw the look they exchanged.

  “Alina—” said Tamar.

  “Please,” I sobbed. “Bring him back to me.”

  Tamar opened Mal’s mouth, attempting to force air into his lungs. Tolya placed one hand on Mal’s chest, applying pressure to the wound and trying to restore the beat of his heart.

  “We need more light,” he said.

  A choked laugh escaped me. I held up my hands, pleading with the light and with any Saint who had ever lived. It was no good. The gesture felt false. It was a pantomime. There was nothing there.

  “I don’t understand,” I cried as I pressed my wet cheek to Mal’s. His skin was already cooling.

  Baghra had warned me: You may not be able to survive the sacrifice that merzost requires. But what was the point of this sacrifice? Had we lived only to be a lesson in the price of greed? Was that the truth of Morozova’s madness, some kind of cruel equation that took all our love and loss and added them up to nothing?

  It was too much. The hate and pain and grief overwhelmed me. If I’d had my power back for even a second, I would have burned the world to a cinder.

  Then I saw it—a light in the distance, a gleaming blade that pierced the dark.

  Before I could make sense of it, another appeared—a bright point that became two broad beams, sweeping high and wild above me.

  A torrent of light burst from the darkness just a few feet from me. As my eyes adjusted I saw Vladim, his mouth open in shock and confusion as light poured from his palms.

  I turned my head and saw them sparking to life, one by one across the Fold, like stars appearing in a twilight sky, Soldat Sol and oprichniki, their weapons forgotten, their faces baffled, awed, terrified, and bathed in light.

  The Darkling’s words came back to me, spoken on a ship that sailed the icy waters of the Bone Road. Morozova was a strange man. He was a bit like you, drawn to the ordinary and the weak.

  He’d had an otkazat’sya wife.

  He’d nearly lost an otkazat’sya child.

  He’d thought himself alone in the world, alone in his power.

  Now I understood. I saw what he had done. This was the gift of the three amplifiers: power multiplied a thousand times, but not in one person. How many new Summoners had just been created? How far had Morozova’s power reached?

  The arcs and cascades of light blossomed around me, a bright garden growing in this unnatural night. The beams met, and where they crossed, the darkness burned away.

  The shrieks of the volcra erupted around me as the Fold began to unravel. It was a miracle.

  And I didn’t care. The Saints could keep their miracles. The Grisha could keep their long lives and their lessons. Mal was dead.

  “How?”

  I looked up. The Darkling stood behind us, stunned, taking in the impossible sight of the Fold coming apart around us. “This can’t be. Not without the firebird. The third—” He stopped short as his eyes settled on Mal’s body, the blood on my hands. “It can’t be,” he repeated.

  Even now, as the world we knew was remade in bursts and flashes of light, he couldn’t comprehend what Mal truly was. He wouldn’t.

  “What power is this?” he demanded. The Darkling stalked toward us, shadows pooling in his palms, his creatures swirling around him.

  The twins drew their weapons. Without thinking, I lifted my hands, reaching for the light. Nothing happened.

  The Darkling stared. He dropped his arms. The skeins of darkness faded.

  “No,” he said, bewildered, shaking his head. “No. This isn’t— What have you done?”

  “Keep working,” I ordered the twins.

  “Alina—”

  “Bring him back to me,” I repeated. I wasn’t making sense. I knew that. They didn’t have Morozova’s power. But Mal could make rabbits out of rocks. He could find true north standing on his head. He would find his way back to me again.

  I lurched to my feet, and the Darkling strode toward me.

  His hands went to my throat. “No,” he whispered.

  Only then did I realize the collar had fallen away. I looked down. It lay in pieces beside Mal’s body. My wrist was bare; the fetter had broken too.

  “This isn’t right,” he said, and in his voice I heard desperation, a new and unfamiliar anguish. His fingers skimmed my neck, cupped my face. I felt no surge of surety. No light stirred within me to answer his call. His gray eyes searched mine—confused, nearly frightened. “You were meant to be like me. You were meant … You’re nothing now.”

  He dropped his hands. I saw the realization strike him. He was truly alone. And he always would be.

  I saw the emptiness enter his eyes, felt the yawning void inside him stretch wider, an infinite wasteland. The calm left him, all that cool certainty. He cried out in his rage.

  He spread his arms wide, calling the darkness. The nichevo’ya scattered like a flock of birds flushed from a hedge and turned on Soldat Sol and oprichniki alike, cutting them down, snuffing out the beams of light that blazed from their bodies. I knew there was no bottom to the Darkling’s pain. He would just keep falling and falling.

  Mercy. Had I ever really understood it? Had I actually believed I knew what it was to suffer? To forgive? Mercy, I thought. For the stag, for the Darkling, for us all.

  If we’d still been bound by that tether, he might have sensed what I was about to do. My fingers twitched in the sleeve of my coat, curling a scrap of shadow around the blade of my knife—the knife I had plucked from the sands, wet with Mal’s blood. This was the only power that was left to me, one that had never really been mine. An echo, a joke, a carnival trick. It’s something you took from him.

  “I don’t need to be Grisha,” I whispered, “to wield Grisha steel.”

  With one swift movement, I drove the shadow-wrapped blade deep into the Darkling’s heart.

  He made a soft sound, little more than an exhalation. He looked down at the hilt protruding from his chest, then back up at me. He frowned, took a step, tottered slightly. He righted himself.

  A single laugh burst from his lips, and a fine spray of blood settled over his chin. “Like this?”

  His legs faltered. He tried to stop his descent, but his arm gave way and he crumpled, rolling to his back. It’s simple enough. Like calls to like. The Darkling’s own power. Morozova’s own blood.

  “Blue sky,” he said. I looked. In the distance I saw it, a pale glimmer, almost completely obscured by the black mist of the Fold. The volcra were swooping away from it, looking for someplace to hide. “Alina,” he breathed.

  I knelt beside him. The nichevo’ya had left off their attacks. They circled and clattered above us, unsure of what to do. I thought I glimpsed Nikolai among them, arcing toward that patch of blue.

  “Alina,” the Darkling repeated, his fingers seeking mine. I was surprised to find fresh tears filling my eyes.

  He reached up and brushed his knuckles over the wetness on my cheek. The smallest smile touched his bloodstained lips. “Someone to mourn me.” He dropped his hand, as if the weight were too much. “No grave,” he gasped, his hand tightening on mine, “for them to desecrate.”

  “All right,” I said. The tears came harder. There will be nothing lef
t.

  He shuddered. His eyelids drooped.

  “Once more,” he said. “Speak my name once more.”

  He was ancient, I knew that. But in this moment he was just a boy—brilliant, blessed with too much power, burdened by eternity.

  “Aleksander.”

  His eyes fluttered shut. “Don’t let me be alone,” he murmured. And then he was gone.

  A sound like a great sigh rushed over us, lifting my hair.

  The nichevo’ya blew apart, scattering like ashes in wind, leaving startled soldiers and Grisha staring at the places where they’d been. I heard a wrenching cry and looked up in time to see Nikolai’s wings dissolve, darkness spilling from him in black wisps as he plummeted to the gray sand. Zoya ran to him, trying to slow his fall with an updraft.

  I knew I should move. I should do something. But I couldn’t seem to make my legs work. I slumped between Mal and the Darkling, the last of Morozova’s line. I was bleeding from my bullet wound. I touched the bare skin at my neck. It felt naked.

  Dimly, I was aware of the Darkling’s Grisha retreating. Some of the oprichniki went too, the light still flowing from them in uncontrollable fits and starts. I didn’t know where they were going. Maybe back to Kribirsk to warn their compatriots that their master had fallen. Maybe they were just running. I didn’t care.

  I heard Tolya and Tamar whispering back and forth. I couldn’t make out the words, but the resignation in their voices was clear enough.

  “Nothing left,” I said softly, feeling the emptiness inside me, the emptiness everywhere.

  The Soldat Sol were cheering, letting light blaze around them in glorious arcs as they burned the Fold away. Some of them had climbed up on the Darkling’s glass skiffs. Others had formed a line, bringing the beams of light together, sending a cascade of sunlight speeding through the thinning scraps of darkness, unraveling the Fold in a rippling wave.

  They were crying, laughing, joyous in their triumph, so loud that I almost didn’t hear it—a soft rasp, fragile, impossible. I tried to keep it out, but hope came at me hard, a longing so acute I knew its end would break me.