She stood with her perfect profile turned to the glittering night sky, her hood sliding back. Snow was beginning to fall, and it caught in the dark waves of her hair. “I plant something new for every Grisha lost. Heartleaf for Marie. Yew for Sergei. Red Sentinel for Fedyor. Even Ivan has a place.” She touched her fingers to a frozen stalk. “This will blossom bright orange in the summer. I planted it for Harshaw. These dahlias were for Nina when I thought she’d been captured and killed by Fjerdans. They bloom with the most ridiculous red flowers in the summer. They’re the size of dinner plates.” Now she turned and he could see tears on her cheeks. She lifted her hands, the gesture half-pleading, half-lost. “I’m running out of room.”

This was where Zoya had been seen sneaking off to all those nights—not to a lover, but to this monument to grief. This was where she had shed her tears, away from curious eyes, where no one could see her armor fall. And here, the Grisha might live forever, every friend lost, every soldier gone.

“I know what I did is unforgivable,” she said.

Nikolai blinked, confused. “No doubt you deserve to be punished for your crimes … but for what precisely?”

She cast him a baleful look. “I lost our most valuable prisoner. I’ve allowed our most deadly enemy to regain his powers and … run amok.”

“‘Amok’ seems an overstatement. Wild, perhaps.”

“Don’t pretend to shrug this off. You’ve barely looked at me since I returned.”

Because I am greedy for the sight of you. Because the prospect of facing this war, this loss, without you fills me with fear. Because I find I don’t want to fight for a future if I can’t find a way to make a future with you.

But he was a king and she was his general and he could say none of those things.

“I’m looking at you now, Zoya.” Her eyes met his in the stillness of the garden, vibrant blue, deep as a well. “You need never ask forgiveness of me.” He hesitated. He didn’t want to tie himself more closely to the man she hated, but he also didn’t want there to be secrets between them. If they survived this war, if they somehow found a way to keep the Fjerdans from invading Ravka, he would need to forge a real marriage, a real alliance, with someone else. He would have to secure his peace with Fjerda by marrying from their nation, or soothe Kerch’s ruffled pride by binding himself forever to Hiram Schenck’s daughter. But that was a future that might never come. “I sensed it when the Darkling broke free. The demon … the demon knew somehow. And for a moment I was there in the room with you.”