I swallowed my pride and asked, “Do you know where he went?”

Tamar sighed. “Get your shoes. I’ll take you to him.”

“Where is he?”

“The stables.”

Unsettled, I ducked back into my bedroom and quickly pulled on my shoes. I followed Tamar out of the Little Palace and across the lawns.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” Tamar asked.

I didn’t reply. Whatever she had to show me, I knew I wasn’t going to like it. But I refused to just go back to my room and bury my head under the covers.

We made our way down the gentle slope that led past the banya. Horses whinnied in the paddocks. The stables were dark, but the training rooms were ablaze with light. I heard shouting.

The largest training room was little more than a barn with a dirt floor, its walls covered in every weapon imaginable. Usually, it was where Botkin doled out punishment to Grisha students and put them through their drills. But tonight it was crowded with people, mostly soldiers, some Grisha, even a few servants. They were all shouting and cheering, jostling and jockeying to try to get a better look at whatever was happening at the center of the room.

Unnoticed, Tamar and I worked our way through the crush of bodies. I glimpsed two royal trackers, several members of Nikolai’s regiment, a group of Corporalki, and Zoya, who was screaming and clapping with the rest of them.

I’d almost reached the front of the crowd when I caught sight of a Squaller, fists raised, chest bare, stalking his way around the circle the onlookers had formed. Eskil, I remembered, one of the Grisha who had been traveling with Fedyor. He was Fjerdan and he looked it—blue eyes, white-blond hair, tall and broad enough that he completely blocked my view.

It’s not too late, I thought. You can still turn around and pretend you were never here.

I stayed rooted to the spot. I knew what I would see, but it was still a shock when Eskil moved aside and I got my first glimpse of Mal. Like the Squaller, he was stripped to the waist, his muscled torso streaked with dirt and sweat. There were bruises on his knuckles. A trickle of blood coursed down his cheek from a cut below his eye, though he hardly seemed to notice.

The Squaller lunged. Mal blocked the first punch, but the next caught him beneath the kidneys. He grunted, dropped his elbow, and swung hard at the Squaller’s jaw.

Eskil bobbed out of Mal’s range and scooped his arm through the air in a swooping arc. With a stab of panic, I realized he was summoning. The gust rustled my hair, and in the next second, Mal was blown off his feet by Etherealki wind. Eskil threw out his other arm, and Mal’s body shot upward, slamming into the roof of the barn. He hung there for a moment, pinned to the wooden beams by the Grisha’s power. Then Eskil let him drop. He crashed to the dirt floor with bone-rattling force.