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.