Nikolai wondered what might be waiting for them if they ever managed to find this monastery—assuming it even existed. He was perfectly prepared for this daft excursion to be yet another of the Darkling’s deceptions, but that didn’t mean he was prepared for the deception itself. Perhaps the Darkling would bring down a landslide and bury them all beneath a pile of rock or abandon them in a labyrinth of caves. The options were endless. The man had a limitless supply of unpleasant surprises.

They emerged around a bend and the valley sprawled out before them, blanketed in silver mist and ringed by the snow-capped peaks of the Sikurzoi. He could see mountain lakes gleaming like frozen coins, and far in the distance, a herd of shaggy bison moving slowly across a meadow, searching for signs of spring.

Nikolai would have preferred to wait for the thaw to make this trip, but reports of the blight had only grown more frequent, miles-wide patches of dead earth and ashen soil, men, women, and children struck down in the space of moments, scars that might never heal.

After the battle for Os Kervo, his trackers hadn’t been able to locate the Darkling. The followers of the Starless One still held their services, and a few had camped outside the palace walls to petition the new queen for the Darkling’s Sainthood. But the man himself had gone missing. Until one night they’d entered the war room in the Little Palace to find him slouched in his old chair, as if he’d never left.

Nikolai had reached for his guns, Tolya and Zoya had moved into combat stance. But the Darkling had merely rested his chin in his hand and said, “It seems that, once again, Ravka has a problem only I can solve.”

It was fair to say that problem was of the Darkling’s creation, but if he could be of assistance, Nikolai wasn’t going to argue. At the very least, he’d set them on the path to the Monastery of Sankt Feliks, where he believed they would find answers. And if not? Even the Darkling, the eternal know-it-all, wasn’t sure what they would do. He seemed unfazed by the prospect.

“Are you really so ready to watch the world die?” Nikolai had asked him.

He’d merely shrugged. “Imagine, if you’re able, how long I’ve spent in this world. Do you never wonder what waits in the next?”

Nikolai supposed he had. He’d written some very bleak poetry about death and the unknown while he was at university in Ketterdam, some of it in rhymed couplets, all of it remarkably bad.