Tolya wrapped a shawl around Genya’s shoulders and settled her by the fire while Zoya paced, unsure of what came next. Nadia and Leoni had brought a stack of files with them, most likely the work they’d been doing on the missiles. Adrik was there too. Zoya wondered if Nikolai intended to demote her and give Nadia’s little brother her command. He had every right to.

“Forgive the delay,” Nikolai said when he entered at last. “It’s hard to keep up with correspondence since … Well.” He poured a cup of tea and brought it to Genya, placing it on a saucer in her hands. “Are you hungry?”

She shook her head.

He moved a chair so that he could sit beside her. No one said anything for a long time.

At last, the king sighed. “I don’t know where to begin.”

There had been funerals held all over Os Alta in recent days, once the danger had passed and the bodies could be found, some burned, some buried. The king had attended as many as he could, slipping into churches where prayers were spoken to the Saints, helping to move families out of areas of the city that had become unsafe. Zoya had seen little of him since she’d returned to the capital, and she was glad of that. Facing him would mean facing her failure. Instead she’d tried to help make sense of the chaos that had followed the bombings, setting up new protocols for blackouts across Ravka, lodging formal diplomatic protests with Fjerda, joining the Grisha in the lower town to help with cleanup and rescue efforts, grateful to be busy.

She hadn’t been ready for the terrible quiet of the funeral, or this moment that required an accounting of what they’d suffered. No one wanted to add it up.

“Where else was hit?” asked Tolya. Better to speak of war than of love lost.

“Poliznaya took the brunt of it,” said Nikolai. “We lost over half our flyers, most of our airships. Our stores of titanium are gone.”

He delivered the news with little emotion, a man reporting on the weather. But Zoya knew him too well. The look in his eyes was as unmistakable as it was unfamiliar: He looked defeated.

“All of it?” asked Nadia. “We haven’t begun construction on the missile shells.”

“We’ll have to use another metal.”

But even Zoya knew what that meant. The missiles would be too heavy to attack from a safe range, and far harder for Squallers to aim at a distance.

“Os Kervo will be Fjerda’s next target,” Zoya said, because someone had to.