Chapters (60)
There was no penance for him to make. Everything he’d done was for the Grisha, for Ravka.
And the blight? Could he add that to the list of his supposed crimes? He had to admit that it was partially his fault. Though if the boy king had been good enough to lie down and die as he was meant to, the obisbaya would have been completed and the Fold never would have ruptured. But how terrible could it be? Ravka had been through worse and so had he.
Aleksander looked down at the broken toy in his hands. He shouldn’t have come here. He smelled the turned earth, the incense from the church above. This place was nothing but another grave.
He wanted to be out of the darkness, back beneath the watery winter sun. He closed the trapdoor behind him and swept up the stairs from the basement, but he paused at the door to the church. He could hear the priest speaking, the shuffle and murmur of a crowd. They must have entered while he’d been sunk in his thoughts.
What day was it? Had they all assembled for morning services?
The priest was telling the tale of Sankt Nikolai—the little boy nearly eaten by cannibal sailors, who had gone on to minister to the poor and hungry. It was as bloody and odd as all the Saints’ lives.
Perhaps it was time for a new story, a single Saint, greater than all those who had come before him, who didn’t dole out his power like some kind of banker keeping a ledger of prayers and good deeds. Perhaps it was time for a new kind of miracle.
From his hiding place behind the door, he raised his hands and focused on the painted icon behind the priest. Slowly, shadows curled from Sankt Ilya’s open hands; they began to bleed from his mouth.
A gasp went up from the congregation. The priest turned and fell to his knees. Aleksander drank their fear and wonder. Heady as that cheap cherry wine he’d had in … he could not quite recall.
You see, Yuri. Your age of miracles has begun.
He gusted through the church, disguising himself in a whirling cloud of shadow, and the congregants screamed.
Aleksander couldn’t simply appear again, resurrected. There were too many old grudges and there would be too many questions. No, there was a better story here. He would become Yuri, let the boy do the talking for him, and when the time came, the monk would be his chosen one—a boy who came from nothing, endowed with great power. They’d loved Alina’s little fairy tale. They’d love this one too.
He would go to the Fold. He would find those who followed the Starless Saint.
He would teach the world awe.