“Tell me I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing,” he said, meager hope in his heart.

“What do you think you’re seeing?” asked Tamar.

“Mass destruction. Certain doom.”

“Not entirely certain,” said Zoya.

Nikolai cut her a glance. She’d tied back her black hair with a dark blue ribbon. It was eminently practical, but it had the unfortunate effect of making him want to untie it. “Do I detect optimism in my most pessimistic general?”

“Likely doom,” Zoya corrected, pulling gently on her white mare’s reins. All the horses were nervous.

Dawn crept over Yaryenosh, bathing the town’s rooftops and streets in rosy light. In the pastures beyond, Nikolai could see a herd of ponies, their winter coats shaggy, stamping their hooves in the cold. It would have been a quaint scene, a dreamy landscape for some hack painter to sell off to a rich merchant with a surfeit of cash and a dearth of taste—if it hadn’t been for the dead, ashy soil that stained the countryside like a blot of spilled ink. The blight stretched from the paddocks of the horse farm in the distance all the way to the edges of the town below.

“Two miles?” Nikolai speculated, trying to determine the extent of the damage.

“At least,” said Tolya, peering through a folding long glass. “Maybe three.”

“Twice the size of the incident near Balakirev.”

“It’s getting worse,” said Tamar.

“We can’t say that yet,” protested Tolya. Like his sister, he wore an olive drab uniform, his huge bronze arms exposed to display his sun tattoos, despite the winter chill. “It’s not necessarily a pattern.”

Tamar snorted. “This is Ravka. It’s always getting worse.”

“It’s a pattern.” Zoya’s blue eyes scanned the horizon. “But is it his pattern?”

“Is it even possible?” Tolya asked. “We’ve had him locked in the sun cell since he … returned.”

Returned. There was something quaint about the word. As if the Darkling had simply been vacationing on the Wandering Isle, sketching ruined castles, sampling the local stews. Not brought back to life by an ancient ritual orchestrated by a bloodthirsty Saint with a penchant for bees.

“I try not to underestimate our illustrious prisoner,” said Nikolai. “And as for what’s possible…” Well, the word had lost its meaning. He had met Saints, witnessed their destruction, nearly died himself, and become host to a demon. He’d seen a man long dead resurrected, and he was fairly sure the spirit of an ancient dragon was lurking inside the woman next to him. If possible was a river, it had long since leapt its banks and become a flood.

“Look,” said Tolya. “Smoke.”

“And riders,” added Tamar. “Seems like trouble.”

At the fringes of town near where the blight had struck, Nikolai could see a gathering of men on horseback. Angry voices carried on the wind.