If that was the case, Zoya had yet to see the evidence. Even death hadn’t beaten the Darkling. “Maybe.”

“We have to make a move. Last night I had word that the blight struck near Shura. It covered ten square miles.”

“Ten?” So it was getting worse.

“We’re out of time,” said Tamar.

Zoya rubbed a hand over her face. Just how many wars could they fight at once?

“You won’t be here for the wedding,” Tamar said, her lips curved in a sad half smile. “Everything will be different when you return.”

Zoya didn’t want to think about that. “Promise me you’ll be careful,” she said briskly. “There’s no way to predict what Makhi might do. Or Princess Ehri, for that matter.”

“It’s a gamble,” Tamar said, then grinned and flicked her thumbs over her axe handles. “But I’m ready for a good fight.”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Tamar shrugged. “I can keep hope in my heart and a blade in my hand.”

There was more Zoya wanted to say, but it all amounted to the same impossible thing: Be safe.

Zoya sent scouts to patrol the area around the sanatorium and make sure they’d have a clear place for their airship to land. The other preparations would have to wait. She needed to talk to Genya and David.

She found them in the Materialki workshops. When the Triumvirate had rebuilt the Little Palace after the Darkling’s attack, they’d expanded these chambers to reflect the Fabrikators’ greater role in the war effort. David had his own workroom and three assistants to help interpret and execute his plans. He split his time between here and the secret laboratory at Kirigin’s estate, and Genya often shared this space, tailoring spies, helping people to remove scars, and concocting poisons and tonics when called for.

Now Zoya found her curled up on a settee beside David’s desk, the light from his lamp making a circle around them. Her boots were off and she had tied her bright auburn hair into a knot. She had a half-eaten apple in one hand and a book on her lap, the sun emblazoned on her eye patch glinting. She looked like a beautiful, rakish pirate who had wandered off the pages of a storybook, a bit of sparkling chaos in David’s carefully ordered world.

“What are you reading?” Zoya asked as she sat down by Genya’s stockinged feet.

“It’s a Kerch book on the detection of poisons. I had to send away for a Ravkan translation.”

“Useful?”

“We’ll see. The case studies are wonderfully gory. The rest is mostly moralizing about the perfidy of women and the dangers of the modern age, but it’s giving me some ideas.”

“For poisons?”

“And medicines. They’re one and the same. The only difference is the dose.” Genya frowned. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”