This is the crossroads. This day would decide if Ravka had a chance or if Fjerda would blow through the border like a cold northern wind. If they failed this test, their enemy would know just how precarious Ravka’s position was, just how strapped for cash, just how weakened. A victory, even a wobbly one, would buy his country some desperately needed time. But that would require reinforcements.

“They’re not coming,” said Tolya.

“They’ll come,” said Nikolai. They have to.

“We gave them everything they needed. Why would they?”

“Because an agreement must mean something, otherwise what are we all doing here?”

A high metal shriek sounded as the transport drew to a halt and its gigantic metal doors opened like the jaws of an ancient monster.

The dust cleared and a line of soldiers advanced from inside the transport. But they wore no uniforms, only ragged clothes, some of them barefoot. Nikolai knew instantly what they were—Grisha, addicted to parem. Their bodies were emaciated and their heads hung like wilted flowers on narrow stalks. But none of that would matter once they were dosed with the drug. He saw the cloud of orange gas puff toward them from spigots somewhere inside the transport. Instantly, they snapped to attention.

This was the moment Nikolai had been dreading, one he had hoped he could prevent.

Three of the dosed Grisha charged forward.

“Get down!” Nikolai yelled. The land before the enemy Grisha rose up in a rippling wave, mines exploded, tanks overturned. Ravkan soldiers were thrown over and buried beneath mountains of mud and rock.

“Squallers!” Nadia called to her troops, and she and Adrik were back on their feet, combining their strength to push rubble and earth aside, freeing their compatriots.

Then Nadia stumbled.

“Amelia!” she cried. The wind she’d summoned faltered. She was staring at one of the dosed Grisha, a slender girl with chestnut hair, dressed in little more than a faded smock, her sticklike legs jammed into heavy boots.

“Saints,” Tamar said on a breath. “She’s a Fabrikator. She vanished from a mission near Chernast.”

Nikolai remembered. Nadia had worked side by side with her in the labs before her capture.

Tamar seized Nadia by the shoulder, pulling her back. “You can’t help her now.”

“I have to try!”

But Tamar didn’t let go. “She’s as good as dead. I’ll put an axe in her heart before I let you fall into this trap.”

Amelia and the other dosed Fabrikators raised their hands, about to cause another earthquake.

“I have a clear shot,” said Tolya, his rifle raised.

“Hold,” said Nikolai. Again he looked to the west, hoping—because hope was all they had left.

“Take the damned shot!” Adrik said.

Nadia struck him with a gust of air. “They can’t make us kill our friends, our own kind! We’re doing the Fjerdans’ work for them.”