As Vladim moved to turn the locks, I heard Genya whisper. "You definitely owe me a kiss after all this, Don't think I won't hold you to it."
I laughed lightly. "We'll see."
"There is no seeing, you will, if I have to be the one to do it then so be...
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ALINA AND I WOKE EVERY DAY TO THE SOUND of our names being chanted, and each day our army grew, ranks swollen with the hungry and hopeless, with wounded soldiers and children barely large enough to carry rifles. The priest told the faithful that we would rule one day, and they believed him.
But they wondered at our bruised and mysterious court: Zoya with her sharp tongue, Genya the one they called the ruined, with her black shawl and hideous scars, David the strange, the pale schooler who huddled away with his books. These were the sorry remnants of the Second Army— unfit company for Saints.
Few knew that I was broken. Whatever power had once blessed me, divine or otherwise, was gone— or at least out of reach. Our followers were kept at a distance so they could not see that my eyes were dark and hollow, that my breath came in frightened gasps. I walked slowly, tentatively, my driftwood bones fragile in my body, sickly and unable to grant wishes.
On the surface, the Darkling ruled with his shadow army, and he demanded that the Sun Summoner and the Tidemaker be returned. He offered threats and rewards, but the answer he received came in the form of a challenge— from an outlaw, the people had dubbed the Prince of the Air. He stuck along the northern border, bombing supply lines, forcing the Darkling to renew trade and travel across the Fold with nothing but luck and Inferni fire to keep the volcra at bay.
Some said this challenger was Nikolai Lantsov. Some said he was a Fjerdan rebel who refused to fight alongside witches. But all agreed he must have power of his own.
Alina and I rattled the bars to our underground cages. This was our war, and we demanded freedom to fight it. The priest refused.
But he'd forgotten before either of us became Grisha and Saints, we'd been ghosts of the world. Ghosts of each other's existence. Both of us knew how to be thieves and phantoms, how to hide strength as well as mischief. We may have come from two different countries, but all the while, we'd lived the same, ghosts of the world we'd lived in... all up until now.
The priest thought he knew what we were capable of. He was wrong. He did not hear our hidden language, did not understand Mal and Genya's resolve. He did not see the moment we'd ceased to bear our weakness as a burden and began to wear it as a guise.
❂♕
Alina stood on a carved stone balcony, arms spread, as I shivered from below the platform, and tried to put on a good show of emotion for the performance. Alina and I's kefta's were a patchwork, sewn together from scraps of the gowns we had worn the night we'd fled the palace and garnish curtains that I'd been told came from a defunct theater somewhere near Sala. Beads from the lobby chandeliers made up the trims. The embroidery at the cuffs was already coming undone.
