Leigh Bardugo - Shadow and Bone

He cocked his head to one side, a small, skeptical smile playing about his lips. Then the smile disappeared, replaced by something I didn’t recognize, something that looked almost like longing.

“Mercy.” He said the word as if he were tasting something unfamiliar. “I could be merciful.” He raised his other hand to cup my face and kissed me softly, gently, and though everything in me rebelled, I let him. I hated him. I feared him. But still I felt the strange tug of his power, and I couldn’t stop the hungry response of my own treacherous heart.

He pulled away and looked at me. Then, his eyes still locked on mine, he called for Ivan.

“Take her to the cells,” the Darkling said when Ivan appeared in the doorway of the tent. “Let her see her tracker.”

A sliver of hope entered my heart.

“Yes, Alina,” he said, stroking my cheek. “I can be merciful.” He leaned forward, pulling me close, his lips brushing my ear. “Tomorrow, we enter the Shadow Fold,” he whispered, his voice like a caress. “And when we do, I will feed your friend to the volcra, and you will watch him die.”

“No!” I cried, recoiling in horror. I tried to pull away from him, but his grip was like steel, his fingers digging into my skull. “You said—”

“You may say your goodbyes tonight. That is all the mercy traitors deserve.”

Something broke loose inside me. I lunged at him, clawing at him, screaming my hate. Ivan was on me in moments, holding me tight as I thrashed and strained in his arms.

“Murderer!” I shouted. “Monster!”

“All of those things.”

“I hate you,” I spat.

He shrugged. “You’ll tire of hate soon enough. You’ll tire of everything.” He smiled then, and behind his eyes I saw the same bleak and yawning chasm I had seen in Baghra’s ancient gaze. “You will wear that collar for the rest of your very, very long life, Alina. Fight me as long as you’re able. You will find I have far more practice with eternity.”

He waved his hand dismissively, and Ivan pulled me from the tent and down the path, still struggling. A sob tore loose from my throat. The tears I had fought to hold back during my conversation with the Darkling gave way and streamed unchecked down my cheeks.

“Stop that,” Ivan whispered furiously. “Someone will see you.”

“I don’t care.”

The Darkling was going to kill Mal anyway. What difference did it make who saw my misery now? The reality of Mal’s death and the Darkling’s cruelty were staring me in the face, and I saw the stark and horrible shape of things to come.

Ivan yanked me into my tent and gave me a rough shake. “Do you want to see the tracker or not? I’m not going to march a weeping girl through camp.”

I pressed my hands against my eyes and stifled my sobs.

“Better,” he said. “Put this on.” He tossed me a long brown cloak. I slipped it over my kefta , and he yanked the large hood up. “Keep your head down and stay quiet, or I swear I’ll drag you right back here and you can say your goodbyes on the Fold. Understand?”

I nodded.

We followed an unlit path that skirted the perimeter of the camp. My guards kept their distance, walking far ahead and far behind us, and I quickly realized that Ivan did not want anyone to recognize me or to know I was visiting the jail.

As we walked between the barracks and tents, I could sense a strange tension crackling through the camp. The soldiers we passed seemed jumpy, and a few glared at Ivan with blatant hostility. I wondered how the First Army felt about the Apparat’s sudden rise to power.

The jail was located on the far side of camp. It was an older building, clearly from a time predating the barracks that surrounded it. Bored guards flanked the entrance.

“New prisoner?” one of them asked Ivan.

“A visitor.”

“Since when do you escort visitors to the cells?”

“Since tonight,” Ivan said, a dangerous edge to his voice.

The guards exchanged a nervous glance and stepped aside. “No need to get antsy, bloodletter.”

Ivan led me down a hallway lined with mostly empty cells. I saw a few ragged men, a drunk snoring soundly on the floor of his cell. 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. In the gloom, I could make out the heavy iron bars of the room’s only cell and, sitting slumped by its far wall, its only prisoner.

“Mal?” I whispered.

In seconds, he was on his feet and we were clinging to each other through the iron bars, our hands clasped tightly together. I couldn’t stop the sobs that shook me.

“Shhhh. It’s okay. Alina, it’s okay.”

“You have the night,” said Ivan, and disappeared back up the stairs. When we heard the outer gate clang shut, Mal turned to me.

His eyes roved over my face. “I can’t believe he let you come.”

Fresh tears spilled over my cheeks. “Mal, he let me come because…”

“When?” he asked hoarsely.

“Tomorrow. On the Shadow Fold.”

He swallowed, and I could see him struggle with the knowledge, but all he said was, “All right.”

I let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob. “Only you could contemplate imminent death and just say ‘all right.’”

He smiled at me and pushed the hair back from my tear-stained face. “How about ‘oh no’?”

“Mal, if I’d been stronger…”

“If I’d been stronger, I would have driven a knife through your heart.”

“I wish you had,” I muttered.

“Well, I don’t.”

I looked down at our clasped hands. “Mal, what the Darkling said in the glade about… about him and me. I didn’t… I never…”

“It doesn’t matter.”

I looked up at him. “It doesn’t?”

“No,” he said a little too fiercely.

“I don’t think I believe you.”

“So maybe I don’t believe it yet either, not completely, but it’s the truth.” He clutched my hands more tightly, holding them close to his heart. “I don’t care if you danced naked on the roof of the Little Palace with him. I love you, Alina, even the part of you that loved him.”

I wanted to deny it, to erase it, but I couldn’t. Another sob shook me. “I hate that I ever thought… that I ever—”

“Do you blame me for every mistake I made? For every girl I tumbled? For every dumb thing I’ve said? Because if we start running tallies on stupid, you know who’s going to come out ahead.”

“No, I don’t blame you.” I managed a small smile. “Much.”

He grinned and my heart flip-flopped the way it always had. “We found our way back to each other, Alina. That’s all that matters.”

He kissed me through the bars, the cold iron pressing against my cheek as his lips met mine.

We stayed together that last night. We talked about the orphanage, the angry rasp of Ana Kuya’s voice, the taste of stolen cherry cordial, the smell of the new-mown grass in our meadow, how we’d suffered in the heat of summer and sought out the cool comfort of the music room’s marble floors, the journey we’d made together on the way to do our military service, the Suli violins we’d heard our first night away from the only home either of us could remember.

I told him the story of the day I’d been mending pottery with one of the maids in the kitchen at Keramzin, waiting for him to return from one of the hunting trips that had taken him from home more and more frequently. I’d been fifteen, standing at the counter, vainly trying to glue together the jagged pieces of a blue cup. When I saw him crossing the fields, I ran to the doorway and waved. He caught sight of me and broke into a jog.

I had crossed the yard to him slowly, watching him draw closer, baffled by the way my heart was skittering around in my chest. Then he’d picked me up and spun me in a circle, and I’d clung to him, breathing in his sweet, familiar smell, shocked by how much I’d missed him. Dimly, I’d been aware that I still had a shard of the blue cup in my hand, that it was digging into my palm, but I didn’t want to let go.