“Were you in love with Alina?”

Tolya finished pouring before he said, “Were you?”

“I cared about her. I still do. I think I could have loved her, in time.”

Tolya took a sip of his tea. “I know she was only a girl to you, but to me she is a Saint. That’s a different kind of love.”

A loud bell began to ring from somewhere in the distance.

“What is that?” asked Tolya, his brow creasing.

Nikolai was already on his feet. “The alarm bells in the lower town.” He hadn’t heard them since his doomed birthday party, when most of the Lantsov line had been slaughtered. “Get—”

He heard a distant drone—engines in the sky. All the Saints, it can’t be …

Then a whoosh, like the loud, excited roar of a crowd.

Boom. The first bomb struck. The room shook, and Nikolai and Tolya were nearly thrown from their feet. Then another boom and another.

Nikolai threw the door open. Half the hallway had caved in, leaving it blocked by a slump of rubble. The air was full of plaster dust. Nikolai could only pray that no guards or servants had been trapped already.

He sprinted down the hall, Tolya beside him, and grabbed the first guard he could find, a young captain named Yarik. He was covered in dust and bleeding from where he’d been struck by something, but he had his rifle in hand and his eyes were clear.

“Your Highness,” he shouted. “We have to get you to the tunnels.”

“Gather everyone you can. Clear the palace and get them underground.”

“But—”

Boom.

“The roof may come down,” said Nikolai. “Move!”

The very earth was shaking. It felt as if the world was coming apart.

“Mobilize the Grisha to the town,” Nikolai said as he and Tolya ran toward the Little Palace. “They’ll need Healers and Squallers to help move the debris. Signal Lazlayon and get our flyers in the air.”

“Where are you going?” said Tolya.

Nikolai was already racing toward the lake. “Up.”

His boots pounded the dock. He leapt into the cockpit of the Peregrine. It wasn’t quite as agile as the Sparrowhawk but carried heavier guns. It was fast and lethal and it felt like an animal coming to life around him.

The flyer surged forward on the water, and then Nikolai was rising into the moonlight, searching the sky. The demon inside him shrieked in anticipation.

Fjerdan bombers were built of heavy steel. They carried major firepower but were slow to maneuver. They shouldn’t have been able to haul their payloads so far from home; they were too heavy, too fuel-hungry. A game of range. And Fjerda had just made a move that would change that game forever. David’s missiles could not remain a hypothetical any longer.