Chapter 3

The next morning, they cleaned up their campsite and then set off on foot into the forested mountains, Mal taking the lead as he tracked the frequency of merzost none of the rest of them could sense. As far as they knew, Nikolai hadn't come to the camp that night, despite knowing they were there. Alina prayed he hadn't decided to leave the mountains, as they would lose too much time having to return to the Kingfisher and set off again. But Mal didn't say anything about losing the trail, and every time he paused to focus his senses, he adjusted course with purpose. Alina could only assume he knew where he was going.

"I've been thinking about what happened," David said, breaking the silence.

"Which part?" Tolya asked.

"Why the…monster…was dormant for so many weeks after the wound was inflicted."

Alina frowned over her shoulder in question.

"The merzost was acting like a poison," he elaborated. "Spreading through the body, taking root. Growing more, erm, powerful."

Alina shook her head in renewed frustration. "Nikolai should have told me sooner."

"He might not have been able to," David piped in again.

"Of course he could have," she rejoined. "We're friends. We're supposed to be partners trying to keep Ravka together. That's supposed to involve trust."

"No, I mean I think the merzost might have had something to do with it."

"What do you mean?" Tamar asked.

"Kirigan's, ah, nichevo'ya would appear whenever he was in distress. A defense mechanism. This new creature…it was probably protecting itself. That's why it didn't fully emerge and take control until Nikolai finally did reveal its presence. But it could have been protecting itself before that."

Alina pulled up short. "Are you saying the Shadow was forcing Nikolai to keep silent? Or that it was in control already? But he was acting normal."

"Not control," David quickly amended. "I don't know the mechanism exactly, but you and Mal say you both saw Nikolai fighting against the demon's form, yes?"

Alina shared a look with Mal, and they both nodded.

"The demon could have had any number of manifestations, from a direct override of will, to something more subtle…" He trailed off, then added in a softer voice, "General Kirigan had a…penchant, for quiet manipulations. And this demon was spawned from one of his creations."

Alina's jaw tightened at that. She knew such emotional manipulation all too well. She wondered what had been going through Nikolai's mind all this time, what exactly had compelled him to keep this from her. And if David was right, if Nikolai had come to her almost immediately, would the demon have forced its way out sooner rather than later to protect itself? Would it have made a difference?

There was no way of knowing, and no use in speculating about roads not taken. They had to focus on the one they were on.

They kept trudging deeper into the forest, until Mal abruptly stopped and raised a fist. They all came to a halt and tensed in anticipation. Alina stood stock still, eyes and ears peeled at the surrounding trees. Everything was quiet. Too quiet. The animals had been frightened into silence.

Mal cocked his head up and to the left, and Alina followed his line of sight. Her breath caught in her throat. There, in the trees, was Nikolai. He was half hidden in the branches, talons dug into the bark for purchase, webbed wings folded down his back. His trousers were the only piece of clothing that remained of his previous form. He was staring back at them.

Tamar muttered something in Shu. Hers and Tolya's hands twitched toward their weapons, but they didn't draw them. This was Nikolai, their friend. Alina took a step toward him.

"Alina," Mal said in warning.

She held a hand up to stay them. "Nikolai?"

The leaves rustled as he shifted. Alina read hesitance in his posture rather than a readiness to attack. She moved another step closer. He dropped from the branches to the ground, and everyone stiffened. Nadia reflexively moved her hands into summoning position.

"Don't," Alina urged. Her heart was hammering as she inched closer to Nikolai. His blue eyes were gone, drowned in a sea of black, but she could see him. This wasn't the snarling, vicious monster from before. He stood erect, like a man, though his shoulders were hunched and he looked frightened. Of himself? Of them?

He flicked his gaze up to meet Alina's, and behind the demonic visage was a heart-wrenching plea.

A spiky lump constricted her throat. "We're here, Nikolai," she said. "We will figure this out."

He moved toward her cautiously, then rotated his hands strangely. Alina realized he was mimicking her sun summoning. He then tentatively closed the distance and reached for her wrist. Her breath hitched, but she didn't move as he gently curled those talons around her arm and lifted it, pressing her hand to his bare chest. Her brows rose sharply.

"Are you sure?"

Nikolai nodded fervently, his grip tightening convulsively and making her wince in pain. He quickly released her and recoiled.

"It's all right," she said, directing the statement to everyone. "I'll try."

Taking a breath, she summoned her sun power, forming the swirling light between her palms. She stepped up to Nikolai, who held himself rigidly. Alina shifted her gaze down to his chest covered in shadowy veins, and pressed her hands forward. The light bent and flowed around him, and so she focused on pushing it into his body. Not with the destructive force she had wielded against the nichevo'ya and Kirigan to cut and kill, but with a blazing intensity that would just be…absorbed.

Nikolai jerked with a gasp that was half breath, half hiss, yet he held his ground. And as Alina watched her power suffuse through his chest, making his skin glow like pale gold, those shadow veins began to recede. She almost laughed in astounded relief; it was actually working.

Nikolai grunted and bowed over. Alina balked at causing him pain, but the inky branches were fading to gray and slithering back up toward the shoulder wound.

"It's working, Nikolai," she told him. "Just hold on."

He flinched with a strangled sound and shot his taloned hands up to seize her arms. Not to tear her away, but to cling for dear life. She summoned more light to make the process go faster.

But then she felt something other that reared up out of nowhere. The Shadow lunged forward, smashing through the rivers of light and slamming into her. The force flung her backward to the ground and extinguished her sun summoning. Nikolai screamed, and the black veins surged back over his skin, practically pulsing with power. The shift in the onyx eyes was instantaneous.

"Alina!" Mal yelled and bolted toward her.

"Nikolai!" she shouted, instinctively reaching for him, but he turned and flapped his wings, launching himself into the air and through the tree tops with a crash that showered leaves and broken twigs down on their heads.

Mal skidded to his knees next to Alina and gripped her shoulder, followed by Nadia. "Are you all right?" he asked urgently.

She nodded shakily as she sat up.

"What happened?" Nadia asked.

Alina gave herself a small shake. "It was working. You saw, right? My power was forcing the Shadow back. But then it- it fought back." She grimaced at the echo of Nikolai's agonized scream.

"Sounds like David was right about the demon protecting itself," Mal said.

Alina pushed herself to her feet. "Then we'll find another way," she said doggedly.

David made some indecipherable muffled noises, which drew everyone's gazes. He started when he realized they were all staring. "Oh, ah, I think Alina burning out the merzost is the way to do it."

"The demon stopped me," she argued.

David swallowed hard and winced. "Yes. Next time, you will have to…fight back."

Alina blanched at the thought of making Nikolai that kind of battleground. "What if that kills him in the process?"

David's mouth moved soundlessly a few times before he ended up shrugging, not having an answer.

"There has to be another way," Alina insisted.

Mal ducked his head toward her and spoke softly, "Sometimes there is no other way."

"No," she said staunchly. "We found another way with that. We were just interrupted before we could see it through. We have time here."

"Do we?" Tolya interjected.

She quirked her brows at him in confusion.

"Nikolai is my friend and I would do anything for him," Tolya went on. "But I also know that given the choice between death and remaining this monster, he would choose the former over being a threat to innocent lives."

"He's not," Alina insisted. "He's stopped himself from attacking people."

"For how much longer?" Nadia put in. "As we've seen, the demon can exert control. And it can hurt him. The longer we wait, the firmer hold it could gain. And by then…" She gave Alina a regretful look. "Your sun summoning may not be enough. And what of Ravka? A false double cannot rule the country."

Alina swallowed hard. She knew those things were true, but it didn't make the task ahead of her any easier to stomach. The Darkling had been unbeatable for four hundred years, his shadow monsters indestructible even to her sun summoning. It had taken a mythical blade and a legendary sacrifice to stop them then. Alina did not want to think about what more it would take now.

She nodded in resignation. "So what do we do?"

The twins shared a look, and then Tamar said grimly,

"Capture Nikolai."

He twisted and torqued a haphazard path through the air, wings flapping wildly as pain seared his body. The demon was reckless with unbridled umbrage, lashing out at Nikolai's resistance with fiery talons that cut through his mind as easily as flesh.

He had hoped so badly that Alina's sun summoning could banish the Shadow inside him, could restore him to himself. And it had seemed like it was working. Until the demon had exploded with rage in response. The clash of light and shadow inside their shared body had scorched them both. Nikolai was still radiating with the agony of it as he ungracefully crash landed on a ledge on the side of the mountain. He lay on the ground, twitching and writhing. The shadowy veins throbbed like acid under his skin, and he felt it creeping down into his lungs and up his throat, choking him.

Please, he begged for it to stop.

The Shadow demon's stance suddenly shifted, and Nikolai realized with dawning horror his mistake. It smelled weakness. He struggled to pull himself together and brace for the attack, but it was swift and brutal. The demon launched itself at Nikolai's mind, tearing into it. Trapped inside this monster, he screamed with no voice. He tried to shield himself, tried to fight it off, but it was relentless.

When the demon later rose in its physical form and spread its wings, Nikolai the man lay bleeding and broken in a miasma of growing shadows.