“The Darkling wants to see Alina.”

Genya set aside her apple. “Are we meeting his demands now?”

“He claims he knows how to stop the Fold from expanding further.”

“Do we believe him?”

“I don’t know. He says we need to restage the obisbaya.”

Genya’s look of worry made perfect sense to Zoya. “The ritual that almost killed Nikolai.”

“The very one. But to do it, we need to bring back the ancient thorn wood. Or so he says. What do you think, David?”

“Hmm?”

Genya shut her book with a snap. “Zoya would like to know if our greatest enemy should be allowed to try to kill the king again in order to possibly return stability to the Fold. Will it work?”

David put down his pen, picked it up again. His fingers were ink-stained. “Possibly.” He thought for a moment. “The Fold was created through failed experiments in resurrection, attempts to raise animals from the dead as Morozova did and make them into amplifiers. He managed it with the stag and the sea whip.”

And then with his own child. Alina had told them all the story, the truth behind the ancient legend. Ilya Morozova, the Bonesmith, had intended that the third amplifier would be the firebird. Instead it had been his daughter, a girl he had raised from the dead and imbued with power. That power had passed down through her descendants to a tracker—Alina’s tracker, Malyen Oretsev—who had himself died and been brought back to life on the sands of the Fold.

“You remember Yuri?” she asked. “The Darkling wants to use the ritual to drive whatever remains of the little monk out of his body and absorb the king’s demon. He thinks it will allow him to reclaim his power.” A kind of shadow shell game. Zoya hated even thinking about it.

Genya’s fists bunched, crushing the fabric of her kefta. “And we’re going to let him?”

Zoya hesitated. She wanted to reach out to Genya, rest a comforting arm around her. Instead she said, “You know I would never let that happen. Nikolai believes he can prevent it.”

“It’s too great a risk to take. And will any of this really stop the Fold from spreading?”

David had been staring into space, tapping his fingers against his lips. His mouth was smudged with blue ink. “It would be a kind of return to the order of things, but…”

“But?” pressed Genya.

“It’s hard to know. I’ve been reading through the research that Tolya and Yuri did. It’s mostly religion, fanciful Saints’ tales and very little science. But there’s a pattern there, something I can’t quite make out.”

“What kind of pattern?” Zoya asked.