He glanced back at Zoya trudging along, her silver fur hat pulled down low over her ears, her nose red from the cold. Why think of the next world when she was in this one? Over the past weeks he’d watched her navigate meetings, diplomatic dinners, the tricky early negotiations of the Fjerdan treaty. He was there to charm and to offer guidance when she needed it, but Zoya’s role as general of the Second Army had forced her to learn the ins and outs of Ravka’s foreign policy and internal workings. She might never have a real passion for agricultural reform or industrial development, but her ministers would be there to help. And so would Nikolai, if she let him.

They weren’t married. They weren’t even engaged. He wanted to ask, but he wanted to court her first. Maybe build her something. A new invention, something lovely and useless and ill-suited to war. A music box or a mechanical fox, a folly for her garden. Part of him was certain that she would simply change her mind about him and that would be the end of it. He had wanted her for so long that it seemed impossible he should actually have her beside him every day, that he might lay down beside her every night. Not impossible, he supposed. Just improbable.

He turned, sending pebbles scattering off the mountainside.

“Kiss me, Zoya,” he said.

“Why?”

“I need reassurance that you are real and that we survived.”

Zoya went up on her toes and pressed her warm mouth to his. “I’m right here and I’m freezing, so move before I toss you into a gully.”

He sighed happily. There she was. Bitter and bracing as strong drink. She was real, and at least for now, she was his.

They came upon the monastery without warning. One moment they were squeezing between two sheer rock walls and the next they were staring at an elaborate stone facade of arches and columns carved into gray stone. Between them, in a series of friezes, Nikolai saw the story of the first Priestguard, the monks who had transformed into beasts to fight for the first Ravkan king but who had been unable to return to human form. Yuri had believed that Sankt Feliks had been among those monks, and that over the years, the details of his Sainthood and martyrdom had been altered by time and retelling. Feliks had endured the obisbaya, the Ritual of the Burning Thorn, to purge himself of a beast. And if Nikolai didn’t particularly want to be freed of his monster any longer? He would still do what his country’s future required. That much hadn’t changed.

There was no door to knock on, only a long tunnel that led into the dark. One of the Sun Soldiers lit the way.

“The air smells sweet,” Genya said, and moments later, they understood why.