The Darkling placed his hands on my shoulders and turned me slightly.

My legs gave way. I fell to my knees, my hands clasped over my mouth. A sound tore from me, too broken to be called a scream.

The oak I’d once climbed on a dare still stood, untouched by the fire that had taken Keramzin. Now its branches were full of bodies. The three Grisha instructors hung from the same thick limb, their kefta fluttering slightly in the wind—purple, red, and blue. Beside them, Botkin’s face was nearly black above the rope that had dug into his neck. He was covered in wounds. He’d died fighting before they’d strung him up. Next to him, Ana Kuya swayed in her black dress, her heavy key ring at her waist, the toes of her button boots nearly scraping the ground.

“She was, I think, the closest thing you had to a mother,” murmured the Darkling.

The sobs that shook me were like the lashes of a whip. I flinched with each one, bent double, collapsing into myself. The Darkling knelt before me. He took me by the wrists, pulling my hands free from my face, as if he wanted to watch me weep.

“Alina,” he said. I kept my eyes on the steps, my tears clouding my vision. I would not look at him. “Alina,” he repeated.

“Why?” The word was a wail, a child’s cry. “Why would you do this? How can you do this? Don’t you feel any of it?”

“I have lived a long life, rich in grief. My tears are long since spent. If I still felt as you do, if I ached as you do, I could not have borne this eternity.”

“I hope Botkin killed twenty of your Grisha,” I spat at him, “a hundred.”

“He was an extraordinary man.”

“Where are the students?” I made myself ask, though I wasn’t sure I could bear the answer. “What have you done?”

“Where are you, Alina? I felt sure you would come to me when I moved against West Ravka. I thought your conscience would demand it. I could only hope that this would draw you out.”

“Where are they?” I screamed.

“They are safe. For now. They will be on my skiff when I enter the Fold again.”

“As hostages,” I said dully.

He nodded. “In case you get any thoughts of attack rather than surrender. In five days, I will return to the Unsea, and you will come to me—you and the tracker—or I will drive the Fold all the way to West Ravka’s coast, and I will march those children, one by one, to the mercy of the volcra.”

“This place … these people, they were innocent.”

“I have waited hundreds of years for this moment, for your power, for this chance. I have earned it with loss and with struggle. I will have it, Alina. Whatever the cost.”

I wanted to claw at him, to tell him I’d see him torn apart by his own monsters. I wanted to tell him I would bring all the power of Morozova’s amplifiers down on him, an army of light, born of merzost, perfect in its vengeance. I might be able to do it, too. If Mal gave up his life.