Page 202 of Rule of Wolves

“Friends from the country,” said Nikolai briskly. “Now let me introduce you to my sister Linnea. She’ll want to hear of these new cannons you’re using.”

Zoya would have liked to follow along and listen to them talk ships and sailing and whatever else privateers and pirates liked to discuss, but Tolya was already whisking her off to meet with a group of Kaelish aristocrats. The Zemeni followed, then powerful merchants from West Ravka, Fjerdan nobility, and Count Kirigin, who had dressed in vibrant tangerine, his tiepin a gold dragon with a lump of turquoise in its claws.

Zoya wasn’t sure how much time had passed or how many people she’d met when at last she glimpsed Genya across the room.

She excused herself and hurried through one of the palace’s many passages to Nikolai’s chambers—her chambers, damn it. Genya and Alina were waiting in the sitting room, both of them seated by an open window, the cool air a blessing after the heat of the ballroom.

“Well,” said Alina, setting down her glass of kvas as Zoya closed the door. “It does look good on you.”

“Was there ever any doubt?”

Genya laughed. “I told you she’s the same Zoya.”

“You looked so serene up there,” Alina protested.

“All an act,” said Zoya. “Mostly I was hoping I wouldn’t faint. This dress weighs more than I do.”

“Beauty isn’t supposed to be easy,” Genya said with little sympathy.

Alina nodded. “The real question is how you’re going to outdo this gown for the royal wedding.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Zoya said. “Nikolai hasn’t asked.”

“Can you blame him?” Genya said. “He hasn’t had much luck with proposals.”

Alina snorted. “Maybe he should have offered me a dynasty and not a piddly little emerald.”

“Poor boy,” said Zoya. “But I do intend to dangle the possibility of my hand in marriage in front of every eligible politician, merchant, and minor aristocrat while we forge our new trade agreements and treaties.”

Genya rolled her eye. “Very romantic.”

“I can’t just stop being a general,” said Zoya. “It’s good strategy.” Her romance with Nikolai would never be bouquets of flowers and pretty declarations of love. It lived in the quiet they’d found in each other, in the hours of peace they were stringing together one by one.

“But you will get married,” Genya insisted.

“I can’t help but notice,” Alina said. “The too-clever fox gave up his throne, but still managed to stay a king.”

“A prince,” Genya corrected. “Prince consort. Or is he your general?”

Zoya didn’t really care what title he took. He was hers, and that was all that mattered. Her eye caught on the blueprints she’d found waiting for her on her desk that morning, designs for an extraordinary structure Nikolai had designed to protect her garden. The plans had been bound with her blue velvet ribbon and accompanied by a note that read, I will always seek to make it summer for you. Zoya had been courted by men of wealth and power, offered jewels, palaces, the deed to a diamond mine. This was a different kind of treasure, one she could not believe she’d been lucky enough to find.

She turned back to Genya and Alina, and leaned against her desk. She wanted to sit and rest her feet, but she was too nervous about what she had to say. “You know what we did in the mountains.”

“Yes,” said Alina. “You saved the world and doomed Ravka’s most deadly enemy to an eternity of torture.”

“Very efficient questing,” said Genya.

Zoya tapped her fingers against the desk. “I’ve … I’ve been having nightmares, about the monastery, the thorn wood.” When she had touched the ancient tree, she had felt the Darkling’s pain. The dragon hadn’t let her forget it.

“What happens in the dreams?” Alina asked.

“I become him.”

Genya worried her lip. “You’re being tortured?”

“Worse than that … I have everything he wanted. The crown. The power. I’m a conqueror of cities, an empress, a killer.” In her dreams, she stood on the prow of a ship with a beautiful city before her. She raised her hands and the Fold rushed forward in a black tide, drowning Novokribirsk. She woke each night bathed in sweat, hearing her aunt’s screams. “I’m not certain we can just leave him there.”

Genya crossed her arms. “No?”