“I knew nothing. David didn’t set out to teach me the power of silence, but he did. Genya didn’t try to convince me to be kinder, she showed me what kindness could do every day. David wasn’t … He wasn’t an easy person. He didn’t tell jokes or crack smiles or try to make you comfortable. He hated small talk and he could fall so deeply into his work, he forgot to eat or sleep. The only distraction he ever had was Genya. When he looked at her, you could see that he had found his perfect equation.” She shrugged, unable to make her own figures tally. “David was a different kind of soldier. His strength came from his brilliance but also from his silence, his willingness to listen, his belief that every problem had a solution. All over Os Alta today, there are funerals. People are grieving. We are facing a new and terrible challenge, a different kind of enemy and a different kind of war, but just as we grieve together, we’ll face this new enemy together. We will fight just as we grieve, side by side. We’ll march forward as soldiers—and aspire to be the kind of soldier that David was—not driven by revenge or rage but by a desire to know more and do better. David Kostyk returns to the making at the heart of the world. He will always be with us.”

Most of the soldiers didn’t know the traditional reply, but the Grisha did. “As he returns, so will we all.”

There was some small comfort in those words, in that murmured reply. Could she be a soldier like David? Zoya didn’t know. She was afraid of what might happen when this moment of quiet was over, when David’s ashes had been gathered and interned in the white walls that circled the palace grounds. A space beside him would be left for Genya. Thousands of bodies, thousands of bricks, thousands of ghosts standing watch over generations of Grisha. For what?

The Fjerdans had shoved them all into uncharted territory. Zoya knew her rage was waiting on the other side of this sorrow, and when it was unleashed, she wasn’t certain what she would do.

“I need to go to him,” Genya whispered. “One last time.”

She had pulled a notebook from her pocket, the pages held open. It took Zoya a moment to understand what it was. She glimpsed a few words in David’s scrawl: Ideas for compliments—hair (color, texture), smile (causes and effects), talents (tailoring, tonics, sense of style—inquire on “style”), teeth? size of feet?

“His journal,” Zoya said. Where David had written down all his little reminders for how to make Genya happy.

Genya looked out at the lake. “I need to get across.”