CHAPTER
17
THE NEXT MORNING, I woke to find that Mal had already risen. He’d left me a pot of hot tea on a tray surrounded by apple blossoms. The rain had stopped, but the walls of the conservatory were covered in mist. I rubbed my sleeve against a pane of glass and looked out into the deep blue of early dawn. A deer was moving between the trees, head bent to the sweet grass.
I dressed slowly, drank my tea, lingered by the reflecting pool where the lanterns had long since gone out. In a few hours’ time, this place might be buried in darkness. I wanted to remember every detail. On a whim, I picked up a pen and flipped to the last page of the diary and wrote our names.
Alina Starkov
Malyen Oretsev
I wasn’t sure why I did it. I just needed to say we had been there.
I found the others packing up in the main hall. Genya waylaid me by the door with my coat in her hands. The olive wool was freshly pressed.
“You should look your best when you put the Darkling in the ground.”
“Thanks,” I said with a smile. “I’ll try not to bleed all over it.”
She kissed both of my cheeks. “Good luck. We’ll be waiting when you get back.”
I took her hand and placed Nikolai’s ring in her palm. “If something goes wrong, if we don’t make it—take David and Misha and get to Os Kervo. This should buy you all the help you need.”
She swallowed, then hugged me hard.
Outside, the Soldat Sol waited in rigid formation, rifles on their backs, canisters of inactive lumiya slung over their shoulders. The tattoos on their faces looked fierce in the dawn light. The Grisha wore roughspun. They might have been ordinary soldiers.
Harshaw had left Oncat curled up with Misha, but now she sat in the parlor window, lazily grooming herself and watching us assemble. Tolya and Tamar had their golden sunbursts pinned to their chests. Mal’s was still with Misha. He smiled when he saw me, and tapped the space where the pin would have gone, right over his heart.
The deer had scattered. The orchard was empty as we moved through it, boots leaving deep marks on the soft earth. A half hour later, we were standing at the shores of the Fold.
I joined the other Etherealki: Zoya, Nadia, Adrik, and Harshaw. It felt somehow right that we should be the first to enter and that we would do it together. The Squallers raised their arms, summoning current and dropping the pressure as Zoya had done back in the caves. My ears crackled as they layered the acoustic blanket. If it didn’t hold, Harshaw and I were ready to summon light and fire to drive the volcra back. We spread out in a line, and with measured steps, we entered the darkness of the Fold.
The Unsea always felt like the end of everything. It wasn’t only the dark, it was the terrible sense of isolation, as if the world had disappeared, leaving only you, the rattle of your breath, the stuttering beat of your heart.
As we stepped onto the dead gray sands and the darkness thickened around us, it took everything in me not to raise my hands and wrap all of us in safe, protective light. I listened closely, expecting to hear the beating of wings, one of those horrible, inhuman shrieks, but I heard nothing, not even our footsteps on the sand. Whatever the Squallers were doing was working. The silence was deep and impenetrable.
“Hello?” I whispered.
“We hear you.” I whirled. I knew Zoya was farther down the line, but it sounded like she was speaking right in my ear.
We moved at a steady pace. I heard a click, then almost ten minutes later, a double click. We’d gone a mile. At one point, I heard the distant flap of wings above us, and I felt fear move through our ranks like a living thing. The volcra might not hear us but they could scent prey from miles away. Were they circling above us even now, sensing that something was wrong, that someone was near? I doubted Zoya’s trick would keep us safe for long. The absolute madness of what we were doing struck me in that moment. We had dared what no one else ever had: We’d entered the Fold without light.
We kept moving. Two clicks later, we stopped and took up our positions to wait. As soon as we sighted the Darkling’s skiff, we’d have to move quickly.
My thoughts turned to him. Cautiously, I tested the tether that bound us. Hunger quaked through me with palpable force. He was eager, ready to unleash the power of the Fold, ready for a fight. I felt it too. I let it echo back to him, that rush of anticipation, that need: I am coming for you.
Mal and Tolya—maybe all of the others—believed that the amplifiers had to be brought together, but they had never felt the thrill of using merzost. It was something no other Grisha understood, and in the end, it was what bound the Darkling and me most closely—not our powers, not the strangeness of them, not that we were both aberrations, if not abominations. It was our knowledge of the forbidden, our desire for more.
The minutes ticked by, and my nerves began to jangle. The Squallers could maintain the acoustic blanket for only so long. What if the Darkling waited until night to attack? Where are you?
The answer came in a pale violet glow, moving toward us from the east.
Two clicks. We fanned out in the formation we had practiced.
Three clicks. That was my signal. I raised my hands and set the Fold ablaze. In the same moment, I bent the light, letting it flow around each of our soldiers like a stream.
What did the Darkling see? Dead sands, the flat sheen of a gray sky, the ruined hulks of skiffs falling to dust. And that was all. We were invisible. We were air.
The skiff slowed. As it drew closer, I saw its black sails marked with the sun in eclipse, the strange, smoked-glass quality of its hull. The violet flame of the lumiya shimmered over its sides, vague and flickering in the bright glare of my power.
Squallers stood at the masts in their blue kefta. A few Inferni lined the railings, flanked by Heartrenders in red, heavily armed oprichniki in gray. It was a spare force. The students must be belowdecks. The Darkling stood at the prow, surrounded by his shadow horde. As always, the first sight of him was practically a physical blow. It was like going to him in a vision: He was simply more real, more vibrant than everything else around him.
It happened so fast, I barely had time to register it. The first shot struck one of the Darkling’s oprichniki. He toppled over the skiff’s railing. Then the shots came in a rapid patter, like raindrops on a rooftop at the start of a storm. Grisha and oprichniki slumped and fell against one another as confusion broke out aboard the glass skiff. I saw more bodies fall.
Someone shouted, “Return fire!” and the air erupted with the jarring thunder of gunshots, but we were safely out of range. The nichevo’ya beat their wings, turning in wide arcs, searching for targets. Flints were struck, and the Inferni who remained on the skiff sent gouts of flame flaring through the air. Cloaked from sight, Harshaw turned the fire back on them. I heard screams.
Then silence, broken only by moaning and shouted orders from the glass skiff. Our sharpshooters had done their job well. The area around the railing was littered with bodies. The Darkling, unharmed, was pointing to a Heartrender and issuing some kind of command. I couldn’t make out his words, but I knew this was when he would use the students.
I looked around me, tracking the shooters, the Grisha, feeling their presence in the light.
A single click. The Squallers sent a wave of sand crashing through the air. More shouts rose from the deck as the Darkling’s Squallers tried to respond.
That was our cue. The twins and I bolted for the skiff, approaching from the stern. We didn’t have much time.
“Where are they?” Tolya whispered as we boarded. It was strange to hear his voice but not to see him.
“Maybe below,” I replied. The skiff was shallow, but there was room enough.
We picked our way across the deck, searching for a hatch, careful not to brush against the Darkling’s Grisha and guards.
The remaining oprichniki had their guns trained on the empty sands beyond the skiff. We were close enough that I could see the sweat on their brows, their wide eyes. They twitched, jumping at every real or imagined sound. “Maleni,” they whispered. Ghosts. Only the Darkling seemed unfazed. His face was serene as he surveyed the destruction I’d loosed. I was close enough to strike, but he was still protected by his shadow soldiers. I had the uneasy sensation that he was waiting for something.
Suddenly, an oprichnik yelled, “Get down!”
The people around us dove to the deck and the air exploded with gunfire.
Two other glass skiffs plowed into view, loaded with oprichniki. As soon as they came into contact with the light, the skiffs ignited with the glowing violet flame of lumiya.
“Did you think I would come to meet you unprepared, Alina?” the Darkling called over the chaos. “Did you think I would not sacrifice an entire fleet of skiffs to this cause?”
However many he had sent, only two had made it through. But that would be enough to turn the tide. I heard screams, shouting, our soldiers returning fire. A red stain appeared in the sand and with a lurch I realized that one of our people was bleeding. It could be Vladim. Zoya. Mal. I had to get them out of here. Where were the students? I tried to keep my focus. I couldn’t let the light falter. Our forces had canisters of lumiya. They could retreat into the Fold, but I knew they wouldn’t. Not until I was clear of the Darkling’s skiff.
I crept around the masts, searching for some sign of a trapdoor or hatch.
Then a searing pain cut through my shoulder. I fell backward, crying out. I’d been shot.
I sprawled on the deck, feeling my hold on the light falter. Tolya’s shape flickered into view beside me. I tried to regain control. He disappeared, but through the railing I could see soldiers and Grisha appearing on the sands. Oprichniki leapt from the other skiffs, moving in for the attack, and the nichevo’ya surged into the battle.
Panic clamored through me as I scrambled for focus. I couldn’t feel my right arm. I made myself breathe. Stop huffing like a wild boar. If Adrik could summon with one arm, then I could too.
Tamar appeared near the prow, vanished, stuttered back into view. A nichevo’ya slammed into her. She screamed as it sunk its claws deep into her back.
No. I gathered my fractured concentration and reached for the Cut, though I had only one good arm to wield it. I wasn’t sure that I could hit the shadow soldier without wounding Tamar, but I couldn’t just watch her die.
Then another shape dove into the fray from above. It took me a long second to understand what I was seeing: Nikolai—fangs bared, wings spread.
With his talons, he seized the nichevo’ya that held Tamar and wrenched its head back, forcing it to release her. It skittered and writhed, but Nikolai flew upward and hurled it into the blackness beyond. I heard frenzied shrieks from somewhere in the distance—volcra. The shadow soldier did not reappear.
Nikolai swooped back down, barreling into another of the Darkling’s nichevo’ya. I could almost imagine his laugh. Well, if I’m going to be a monster, I might as well be king of the monsters.
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 universe 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 left.
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.
Tamar sobbed. Tolya swore. And there it was again: the thready, miraculous sound of Mal drawing breath.