Leigh Bardugo - Shadow and Bone

Light exploded from me, pure and unwavering, flooding over the dark place where Mal had stood only moments before. The volcra that had hold of him shrieked and released its grip. Mal fell to his knees, blood streaming from his wounds as my light enveloped him and drove the volcra back into the darkness.

The Darkling looked momentarily confused. He narrowed his eyes, and I felt his will descend on me again, felt that invisible hand grasping. I shrugged it off. It was nothing. He was nothing.

“What is this?” he hissed. He raised his hands and skeins of darkness spooled toward me, but with a flick of my hand, they burned away like mist.

The Darkling advanced on me, his handsome features contorted with fury. My mind was working frantically. I knew he would have liked to kill me where I stood, but he couldn’t, not with the volcra circling outside the light that only I could provide.

“Seize her!” he shouted to the guards surrounding us. Ivan reached out.

I felt the weight of the collar around my neck, the steady rhythm of the stag’s ancient heart beating in time with mine. My power rose up in me, solid and without hesitation, a sword in my hand.

I lifted my arm and slashed. With an ear-splitting crack, one of the skiff ’s masts split in two. People bleated in panic and scattered as the broken mast fell to the deck, the thick wood gleaming with burning light. Shock registered on the Darkling’s face.

“The Cut!” Ivan gasped, taking a step backward.

“Stay back,” I warned.

“You aren’t a murderer, Alina,” said the Darkling.

“I think the Ravkans I just helped you slaughter would disagree.”

Panic was spreading through the skiff. The oprichniki looked wary, but they were fanning out to surround me just the same.

“You saw what he did to those people!” I cried to the guards and Grisha around me. “Is that the future you want? A world of darkness? A world remade in his image?” I saw their confusion, their anger and fear. “It’s not too late to stop him! Help me,” I begged. “Please, help me.”

But no one moved. Soldier and Grisha alike stood frozen on the deck. They were all too afraid, afraid of him and afraid of a world without his protection.

The oprichniki inched closer. I had to make a choice. Mal and I wouldn’t have another chance.

So be it , I thought.

I glanced over my shoulder, hoping Mal understood, and then I dove for the side of the skiff.

“Don’t let her reach the railing!” the Darkling shouted.

The guards surged toward me. And I let the light go out.

We were plunged into darkness. People wailed and, above us, I heard the volcra screeching. My outstretched hands struck the railing. I ducked under it and hurled myself onto the sand, rolling to my feet and running blindly toward Mal as I threw the light ahead of me in an arc.

Behind me, I heard the sounds of slaughter on the skiff as the volcra attacked and clouds of Grisha flame exploded in the darkness. But I couldn’t stop to think of the people I’d left behind.

My arc of light flashed over Mal, crouched in the sand. The volcra looming over him screeched and whirled away into the dark. I sprinted toward him and pulled him to his feet.

A bullet pinged against the sand beside us and I plunged us into darkness again.

“Hold your fire!” I heard the Darkling shouting over the chaos on the skiff. “We need her alive!”

I threw out another arc of light, scattering the volcra that were hovering around us.

“You can’t run from me, Alina!” the Darkling shouted.

I couldn’t let him come after us. I couldn’t take the chance that he might survive. But I hated what I had to do. The others on the skiff had failed to come to my aid, but did they deserve to be abandoned to the volcra?

“You can’t leave us all here to die, Alina!” the Darkling shouted. “If you take this step, you know where it will lead.”

I felt a hysterical laugh burble up inside me. I knew. I knew it would make me more like him.

“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?”

Another bullet hit the sand, only inches from us. Yes , I thought as the power rose up inside me, the mercy you taught me.

I raised my hand and brought it down in a blazing arc, slashing through the air. An earth-shaking crack echoed through the Fold as the sandskiff split in half. Raw screams filled the air and the volcra shrieked in their frenzy.

I grabbed Mal’s arm and threw a dome of light around us. We ran, stumbling into the darkness, and soon the sounds of battle faded as we left the monsters behind.

WE EMERGED FROM THE FOLD somewhere south of Novokribirsk and took our first steps in West Ravka. The afternoon sun was bright, the meadow grass green and sweet, but we didn’t stop to savor any of it. We were tired, hungry, and wounded, but our enemies wouldn’t rest, and neither could we.

We walked until we found cover in an orchard and hid there until dark, afraid of being spotted and remembered. The air was thick with the smell of apple blossoms, but the fruit was far too small and green to eat.

There was a bucket full of fetid rainwater sitting beneath our tree, and we used it to wash the worst stains from Mal’s bloodied shirt. He tried not to wince as he pulled the torn fabric over his head, but there was no disguising the deep wounds the volcra’s claws had left across the smooth skin of his shoulder and back.

When night came, we began our trek to the coast. Briefly, I’d worried that we might be lost. But even in a strange country, Mal found the way.

Shortly before dawn, we crested a hill and saw the broad sweep of Alkhem Bay and the glittering lights of Os Kervo below us. We knew we should get off the road. It would soon be bustling with tradesmen and travelers who were sure to notice a cut-up tracker and a girl in a black kefta . But we couldn’t resist our first glimpse of the True Sea.

The sun rose at our backs, pink light gleaming off the city’s slender towers then splintering gold on the waters of the bay. I saw the sprawl of the port, the great ships bobbing in the harbor, and beyond that blue, and blue, and blue again. The sea seemed to go on forever, stretching into an impossibly distant horizon. I had seen plenty of maps. I knew there was land out there somewhere, beyond long weeks of travel and miles of ocean. But I still had the dizzying sense that we were standing at the edge of the world. A breeze came in off the water, carrying the smell of salt and damp, the faint cries of gulls.

“There’s just so much of it,” I said at last.

Mal nodded. Then he turned to me and smiled. “A good place to hide.”

He reached out and slid his hand into my hair. He pulled one of the gold pins from the tangled waves. I felt a curl slide free and slither down my neck.

“For clothes,” he said as he dropped the pin into his pocket.

A day ago, Genya had placed those golden pins in my hair. I would never see her again, never see any of them. My heart twisted. I didn’t know if Genya had ever really been my friend, but I would miss her just the same.

Mal left me waiting a little way off the road, hidden in a stand of trees. We’d agreed it would be safer for him to enter Os Kervo by himself, but it was hard to watch him go. He’d told me to rest, but once he was gone, I couldn’t seem to find sleep. I could still feel power thrumming through my body, the echo of what I’d done on the Fold. My hand strayed to the collar at my neck. I’d never felt anything like it, and some part of me wanted to feel it again.

And what about the people you left there? said a voice in my head that I desperately wanted to ignore. Ambassadors, soldiers, Grisha. I had as good as doomed them all, and I couldn’t even be sure that the Darkling was dead. Had he been torn apart by volcra? Had the lost men and women of the Tula Valley finally had their revenge on the Black Heretic? 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?