Genya laid her hand over mine. “You did what you had to, Alina.”

I let out a harsh bark of laughter and yanked my hand away. “Is that what the Darkling tells you, Genya? Does that make it easier?”

“Not really, no.” She looked down at her lap, pleating and unpleating the folds of her kefta. “He freed me, Alina,” she said. “What am I supposed to do? Run back to the palace? Back to the King?” She gave a fierce shake of her head. “No. I made my choice.”

“What about the other Grisha?” I asked. “They can’t all have sided with the Darkling. How many of them stayed in Ravka?”

Genya stiffened. “I don’t think I’m supposed to talk about that with you.”

“Genya—”

“Eat, Alina. Try to get some rest. We’ll be in the ice soon.”

The ice. Then we weren’t headed back to Ravka. We must be traveling north.

She stood up and brushed the dust off her kefta. She might joke about the color, but I knew how much it meant to her. It proved she was really a Grisha—protected, favored, a servant no more. I remembered the mysterious illness that had weakened the King just before the Darkling’s coup. Genya had been one of the few Grisha with access to the royal family. She’d used that access to earn the right to wear red.

“Genya,” I said as she reached the door. “One more question.”

She paused, her hand on the latch.

It seemed so unimportant, so silly to mention it after all this time. But it was something that had bothered me for a long while. “The letters I wrote to Mal back at the Little Palace. He said he never got them.”

She didn’t turn back to me, but I saw her shoulders sag.

“They were never sent,” she whispered. “The Darkling said you needed to leave your old life behind.”

She closed the door, and I heard the bolt click home.

All those hours spent talking and laughing with Genya, drinking tea and trying on dresses. She’d been lying to me the whole time. The worst part about it was that the Darkling had been right. If I’d kept clinging to Mal and the memory of the love I had for him, I might never have mastered my power. But Genya didn’t know that. She had just followed orders and let my heart break. I didn’t know what that was, but it wasn’t friendship.

I turned onto my side, feeling the gentle roll of the ship beneath me. Was this what it was like to be rocked to sleep in a mother’s arms? I couldn’t remember. Ana Kuya used to hum sometimes, under her breath, as she went about turning down the lamps and closing up the dormitories at Keramzin for the night. That was the closest Mal and I had ever come to a lullaby.

Somewhere above, I heard a sailor shout something over the wind. The bell rang to signal the change of the watch. We’re alive, I reminded myself. We escaped from him before. We can do it again. But it was no good, and finally, I gave in and let the tears come. Sturmhond was bought and paid for. Genya had chosen the Darkling. Mal and I were alone as we’d always been, without friends or allies, surrounded by nothing but pitiless sea. This time, even if we escaped, there was nowhere to run.