But their luck had quickly turned.

“This is it?” Aleksander asked, looking at the crates of decrepit weapons. He picked up one of the old, single-shot rifles. “We might as well try to slap them to death.”

“The Starless One will protect us.”

Aleksander studied Brother Azarov in the dark room. “You’re a soldier—”

“I was a soldier.”

“Very well. You were once a soldier and you would walk onto a battlefield with nothing but your faith to protect you?”

“If that is what our Saint requires.”

Aleksander should be glad of that faith, that all it had taken was a bit of shadow play to get these people to march into a war with him. So why was he left uneasy?

Will you protect them?

He could. He would if need be. His powers had returned to him. He could form nichevo’ya to fight on his behalf. His pilgrims could enter the field with picks and shovels and they would still emerge victorious.

And yet, his mind was troubled.

They packed up the few weapons that looked like they might be of use and rode back toward Adena in silence. Since they had the cart, they would meet with Brother Chernov and some of the others outside the village to help them transport supplies from the market.

Aleksander couldn’t help but think of the first army he’d built. Yevgeni Lantsov had been king then, and he’d been at war with the Shu for the entirety of his reign. He couldn’t hold the southern border and his forces were stretched to their very limit. Aleksander had gone by a different name then. Leonid. The first Darkling to offer his gifts in service to the king.

His mother had warned him not to go. They’d been living near an old tannery, the stink of the chemicals and the offal always thick in the air.

“Once you are known, you cannot be unknown,” she’d warned him.

But he’d been waiting for a ruler like Yevgeni—practical, forward-thinking, and desperate. Aleksander traveled to the capital and sought an audience with the king, and there he’d let his shadows unfurl. The Grand Palace hadn’t even been built then, only a ramshackle castle of rickety wood and ragged stone.

The king and his court had been frightened. Some had called him a demon, others had claimed he was a trickster and a fraud. But the king was too pragmatic to let such an opportunity pass him by.

“You will take your talents to the border,” he’d told Aleksander. “Be they true sorcery or mere illusion, you will use them against our enemies. And if our army finds victory, you will be rewarded.”

Aleksander had marched south with the king’s soldiers, and when they’d faced the Shu in the field, he’d unleashed darkness upon their opponents, blinding them where they stood. Ravka’s forces had won the day.