Kaïs’s fingers wrapped around the piece of paper. “I will, until you return.”
Their eyes met. “In the case that I do not return,” Ana said steadily, “I want you to hand this to a Redcloak named Liliya Kostov.”
She had no wish to see the shift in his eyes, the pity that was sure to come. But Kaïs only nodded, his expression solemn. A soldier, through and through. “Understood.”
“Take a non-Affinite battalion, Ana,” Daya said. “Morganya has a siphon, but surely non-Affinites can still be effective in a fight against her.”
“I will.” Ana lifted her left arm, pulling back her sleeve slightly. Light lanced off the siphon, which had grown darker and cloudier over the course of the past moons. “She can’t siphon anything from me, which is why I must be the one to stop her from getting that Heart.”
Linn stepped forward, taking her hand. “We will be with you, Ana,” she said. “All the way.”
At an earlier time in her life Ana would have hated the thought of putting a friend in danger; now, wearied and fatigued, she only felt a rush of gratitude. Ana smiled softly. “I would be glad to have a friend with me.”
“Perhaps you will have use for an alchemist in navigating the most treacherous, magical lands of our world,” came a quiet voice. Ana noticed Tetsyev for the first time, standing a little behind her friends. His robes were torn and bloodied, his face pale anddrawn. There was fear in his eyes, but there was also resolve. “I have studied the ancient myths, the theories behind the forces that drive our world. Allow me to help.”
Ana nodded. With Tetsyev’s knowledge of alchemy and his research, he would be useful. She turned back to her friends. Daya’s expression was graver than she’d ever seen it; Kaïs’s face was locked, thoughts swirling behind the ice in his gaze.
“We leave now,” Ana said. She took a last look around them. “Where is Ramson?”
“He’s leading a sweep of the grounds with his soldiers,” Daya answered. “I can go and get him—”
Ana held up a hand. “No. My troops must not be alerted that I am gone, or there may be panic.” There was a wall in her mind, unyielding and unfeeling. So long as she focused on the tasks at hand, she need not think of all she was leaving behind.
Of the forever she had dared to imagine, standing on the bridge just a little while ago.
She turned to address Kaïs. “Please give those we have lost a proper burial. There is a prayer temple at the back of the Palace; I would like for each and every fallen soldier to be given the honors. And…” She met Kaïs’s gaze. “Would you ask the commanders of my forces to send word to those in our camp we left behind? Tell them to bring Shamaïra here.”
Kaïs’s expression shifted, like ice melting to spring waters.
Ana managed a smile. “Give her my love when she wakes, won’t you?”
“I will. And I await your return, Ana.” Kaïs inclined his head, a lock of oil-black hair falling into his face. “It has been an honor fighting by your side.”
—
Outside, the courtyard was packed with soldiers, some resting, some tending to the wounded, others standing guard. Standing in the shadows beneath the great double doors, Ana watched the movement outside, the entire battalions of soldiers and civilians that had fought for her cause. How she had dreamt of this day as a little girl: of donning Papa’s crown and cape and standing before her very own army.
Now, she lifted the hood of her cloak, shrouding her face in darkness. “Linn, Daya,” Ana said. “Would you both take Pyetr to gather my battalion and meet me outside the Palace gates? I’d like to have a moment.”
She watched them go, finally letting exhaustion wash over her. The sounds of jubilation from the courtyard and beyond seemed strangely distant, the fires from torchlight haloing and fading as though she were already detached from them, already gone from this world.
Ana turned and walked into the shadows. The hubbub of conversation and song fell quiet as she drew farther away until there was only her, the Palace, and the silently falling snow.
Ana touched a hand to the Palace walls and inhaled deeply. She felt hollowed out, as though she had reached inside herself and dug out her heart and carved it into different pieces, scattered across her people, her army, and her land. A part of her wished to simply lie down and curl up on the snow beneath the walls of her home, closing her eyes right there and right then.
She’d given this revolution her all, and she was so, so tired.
Footsteps behind her, the crunch of boots through snow.
Ana spun round. The world fell away from her.
Ramson stepped out from behind a copse of conifers. He was gazing at her with such sharp intensity that she felt it crack her soul like glass, and as he strode toward her, she only beheld him with helpless resignation and unbridled joy. Her heart opened to him like a flower to sunlight.
“Ana,” he said, and in that moment, there might have just existed this: the snow, the stone, the pines, and the two of them gazing at each other beneath a winter’s night.
Looking at him, she saw in her memories a tender morning, their breaths fogged against the glass, the light of an early dawn serene against their skin. She remembered the moment on the Kateryanna Bridge, how she had imagined an entire life of possibilities unfolding between them—before the door had so quickly swung shut again.
Ramson held out a hand. “We could be together,” he said softly. “If…if you’d still have me.”
