Chapter 10

Even though Nikolai had his "freedom" back to leave his room, Tamar was now the one in danger, so they ended up staying inside locked away where they were "safe." Ironic; they were the ones considered dangerous monsters but it was everyone else calling for their heads.

Zoya let herself into the room where the two banished occupants sat with Tolya in glum silence. "The four of us will be taking a trip," she declared.

Nikolai shared a dubious look with the others. "A trip?" he repeated.

"The Grand Palace isn't a suitable place to deal with the demon," she replied. "So we're leaving."

He tensed at that. "I don't disagree that I should leave, but you're Queen…"

"And can do whatever I want," she cut him off.

Nikolai's jaw tightened. "The demon is too unpredictable to go traveling through the country," he tried.

"We can handle it," Zoya said, gesturing to herself, Tamar, and Tolya. "It'll be good for Tamar to be away from the city for a bit as well."

Nikolai huffed out a sigh but didn't continue arguing. If it was just his safety Zoya was doing this for, he would protest further, but he didn't want to see Tamar hurt, and so he would go along for her sake. He imagined Zoya was using that precisely to her advantage, knowing Tamar would also only consent to running away for Nikolai's sake rather than her own.

"Where will we go?" Tolya asked.

"The Spinning Wheel."

Nikolai had to give Zoya credit for knowing how to plan. His old base had remained abandoned since Kirigan's attack on it, but there were sections left intact enough it could house them for the duration they would be there.

He did not ask Zoya how long she thought that would be. He knew the goal was to help him regain control of the demon, but if he couldn't…then they might be forced to leave him out there, possibly bury him under that rubble so he'd never be able to hurt anyone again.

So a few hours later, they were packed up and walking out of the palace into the courtyard where horses awaited them. Nikolai knew Tamar could put him down in an instant, but he still felt nervous being out in the open.

"I should come with you," Nadia was arguing.

She never did get on well when Tamar was away on dangerous missions.

"I need you and Genya here," Zoya reiterated.

Nadia continued to look unhappy as she bid her wife farewell.

"Good luck," Genya said.

They mounted up and rode off. The entire journey was fraught for Nikolai, as he expected the demon to burst out at any moment, but it didn't. When they arrived at the old observatory, memories of a far simpler time washed over him. They ended up housing themselves in his old workshop.

He idly picked through some of the prototypes of various inventions that'd been left lying around. They were covered in dust and a few were broken. Nikolai's heart gave a pang; he'd thought that after giving up the throne, he could devote himself to this love. But the demon had taken that from him too.

It was late by the time they settled in, leaving just enough of the evening left to have some supper and then retire to bed early after the long journey. Tomorrow they could start…whatever they had come here to do. Nikolai still didn't think anything was going to help.

"Should have brought the chains," he said when they began laying out sleeping arrangements. "If I change in the middle of the night…"

"We'll hear you," Tamar replied. "The demon isn't exactly quiet."

Nikolai worked his jaw worriedly. He didn't like this. "I'll sleep on the other side of the room. So you'll have time to react if something happens."

Zoya looked reluctant at that but didn't argue.

It was isolating, bedding down so far away from the other three. Nikolai lay in the gathering dark, trying to sleep. He could see the vague shapes of some of his early airship models hanging above him. And then Makhi's voice was in his head, repeating that they were so alike, both inventors, both with great minds who could conceive of things no one else could. He rolled over and shut his eyes, trying to push her out.

When he finally drifted into troubled sleep, he saw his workshop splattered in blood. Someone cried out a sob, and he looked down to see Zoya strapped on the table. Nikolai was standing over her holding a scalpel, and Makhi was across from him, mad eyes gleaming as she urged him to help her find the source of the dragon power.

"No, please," Zoya begged.

Blood dripped onto the table, not coming from her. Nikolai shifted his gaze and found his own chest also splayed open, broken ribs protruding. And then the demon leaped out from his chest cavity and began tearing everything to pieces.

He woke with a choking gasp.

"Nikolai?" someone called urgently as all three of them rushed over.

"Stay back!" he yelled. He could feel the demon clawing at his insides, screaming to be released.

Zoya used the smoldering embers of the dying fire to light the candles, illuminating the room but also casting shadows from Nikolai's inventions across the walls and ceiling. They looked like monsters, and he could picture khergud soldiers.

"Fight for control," Zoya urged.

He shook his head frantically. "Tamar, stop it. Stop it now."

She crouched down several feet away to meet his eye level. "You can still master it, Nikolai," she said.

He let out a broken sob as the merzost pulsed under his skin. "No, please," he begged. "I can't. I can't take the memories. Just stop it!"

"Do it," Zoya ordered.

So Tamar extended her hands and hooked her power into Nikolai's body, draining away his strength, and thereby the demon's.

He collapsed on his side, utterly wrecked, but the demon had stopped fighting to claw its way free.

Tolya crossed the room and carefully rolled Nikolai back onto his bedroll into a more comfortable position. Tamar came closer and reached out again, this time to restore, but Nikolai made a distressed sound.

"Not yet," he rasped. "It could come back. Just let me rest."

His friends exchanged worried looks over him. Granted, this state certainly wasn't what any of them would call "restful," but it was better than the alternative. Nikolai wanted to tell them this was useless, but he knew they didn't want to accept yet that he was a lost cause.

He slipped into an exhausted yet dead sleep and didn't wake until morning.

The others were up when Nikolai finally roused. He still felt wretched, and Tamar came over to revitalize him. He couldn't meet her eye as he quietly thanked her. There was a portion of breakfast set aside for him, and he went over to eat it, not speaking to anyone. The surrounding silence was heavily awkward, but no one broke it until he had finished eating.

"What did you mean last night when you said you couldn't take the memories?" Zoya asked.

Nikolai grimaced. "Every time the demon breaks free…I see what it did in the khergud lab. What I did." His gorge rose just thinking about it. "I can smell and taste the blood."

Her expression pinched with both compassion and hardness. "They deserved what they got."

"That's not the point," he bristled. "I don't want to go back there! And every time the demon comes out, that's where I end up."

"It's not just when the demon comes out, though, is it?" Tolya interjected, looking thoughtful. "You're reliving it now."

Nikolai looked away, the specters of his recent nightmare flitting in his peripheral vision as though they were real.

Tolya leaned forward in his seat, expression empathetic. "You're fighting so hard to hold it in that it's become a self-perpetuating cycle. You have to let it out. Not just the demon, but all of it."

Nikolai automatically started shaking his head. That was the absolute last thing he needed to do. He was barely holding onto the last shred of his sanity; if he lost that, he was afraid he would never get it back, that the demon will finally have won.

"I agree," Tamar spoke up. "This thing you're carrying is creating a mental block inhibiting you from controlling the demon again." She paused. "Maybe, subconsciously, neither you nor it want that. Because what it comes down to, no matter how it was achieved, is the demon got you out of there. Not us. It protected you by slaughtering everyone who was torturing you."

Nikolai felt sick at that, but it also made a twisted sort of sense. And the times the demon had come out since then weren't like its original manifestations.

He swallowed hard. "The demon is also…scared," he admitted. Which felt strange to say, when the monster radiated so much rage. But Nikolai was the demon and the demon was him, and it had been subjected to the same horrors in that place.

Zoya scooted closer and took his scarred hands in hers. "We all love you, Nikolai. Please let us in."

A spiky lump started to swell in his throat. "I wouldn't even know how to start," he said hoarsely.

"After I survived the parem withdrawal," Tamar began, "I could tell something was different, though I couldn't conceptualize it. At first it was just being constantly ill and not knowing why. Wondering if I was going to die after all." She hesitated. "Worried I wouldn't get to see Nadia one last time. Then when I realized how my Grisha power had changed, I was even more scared. I didn't understand it and I had no idea how to control it. If the demon hadn't been there to feed off of, I don't know what I would have done. Willingly fed off my friends and loved ones? And then it turned out even that had devastating consequences."

Nikolai's chest tightened at the memory.

"People started calling me cursed and an abomination," Tamar continued. "Not that I wasn't already feeling like that on my own. I was also afraid of myself, and it made me feel vulnerable."

Tolya reached over to take her hand, and she gave him a grateful smile.

"Sometimes it seems like I can use it for good," she went on. "Like stopping the demon and not killing you. Just like how you turned the demon from a curse into a weapon, and you used it to help us win insurmountable battles. You are not weak now for what's happened. You were wounded and you need to heal, but the only way to do that is to flush out the wound. Which will hurt at first, but trust us to help you through it, the way you've all helped me."

Nikolai could barely breathe around the constriction in his throat. It felt physically painful trying to bring the words out, so maybe his friends were right about this block and his need to break it down.

"They kept me drugged on the journey to Shu Han," he finally started. "I woke up on a metal table, strapped down, unable to move…" He swallowed hard. "Half naked. I was just a lab specimen to them. They-" He choked on the remembered sensations. "They cut me open. Makhi had a Grisha Healer on parem who kept me paralyzed and conscious as her scientists dissected me, looking for the demon."

Zoya paled and her hands began trembling around his, which he realized were also shaking as he recounted the horrific vivisection and subsequent drug experimentation. He felt like he was going to start throwing up.

Zoya tightened the grasp of one hand and reached up to run the other through his hair. "You're here with us, not there," she promised, and the tactile grounding was helpful.

He exhaled shakily. "I'm nervous around Healers now," he confessed. "And sometimes, when someone gets too close a certain way…I feel trapped, like I'm back on that table. When I had to wear the chains and was too ill to get out of bed…" He couldn't finish.

Zoya briefly closed her eyes in grief. "I'm sorry, I should have realized it was that bad."

"Why should you have?" he rejoined bitterly. "It's irrational. I know I'm not back there but my body keeps reacting like I am."

"Do you want me to move back?" she asked quietly.

Nikolai shook his head and turned his hand in hers to hold tightly. "I need this," he pleaded, expression twisting with anguish. "I just don't know how to stop being affected by it."

"It will take time," Tolya spoke up. "And small moments like these, so your mind and body can relearn that no one here is going to hurt you."

"I feel like such an idiot," Nikolai lamented. "Not being able to snap out of it."

"You are not an idiot," Zoya said fiercely.

Nikolai arched a brow at her.

"Well, you are in other ways," she amended with a smirk. "But not in this. You went through something no person should have even survived. Tamar is right; this is a wound of the soul, and it needs to heal just like the rest of you."

"I wonder if the demon needs to heal as well," Tolya mused.

Nikolai frowned. "What do you mean?"

"You said it's scared. It coming out is a defense mechanism, yet it's also in a state of panic and trauma. And we haven't exactly given it room to let that out."

Nikolai tensed, not liking where this was going. Even Zoya looked skeptical.

"We can keep it contained out here," Tolya insisted. "But not chained. And Nikolai shouldn't fight it for control, but let it vent all its pent up pain and rage."

"Are you insane?" Nikolai blurted.

Tolya canted his head thoughtfully. "You're having trouble finding compassion for yourself in this; maybe you should try extending it to the demon. Don't fight it or try to take control, just acknowledge and accept its pain and fear. After all, it belongs to you both."

"That sounds crazy," Zoya replied.

Nikolai, however, considered it. Even though the thought of doing this made his stomach turn, he could acknowledge the logic in Tolya's idea, given what he knew of the demon inside him.

"All right," he agreed.

"Are you sure?" Zoya asked in concern.

"No," he admitted. "But nothing else has been working."

So they set off through the ruins of the Spinning Wheel in search of a place that would suit their purpose. They ended up going down to the tunnels beneath the observatory to reduce the chances of the demon escaping. There, they found a decent size alcove that would give the demon enough space to move around.

Nikolai removed his shirt and handed it to Tamar, then stepped inside. Zoya used her Durast abilities to manipulate the surrounding rock and stone into hefty, solid bars to complete the earthen cage. Nikolai shifted uncomfortably under the gazes of his friends. He knew they were there to be supportive—and watchful—but it was prickling his nerves. He tried to ignore them and focus on the task at hand: letting the demon out. But then he was struck with a rush of panic that doubled him over with a jolt. He caught his hands on his knees, his shoulders abruptly shaking.

"Nikolai," Zoya's concerned voice filtered through the bars. "What's wrong?"

"I can't do it," he choked out. His body gave a violent, freezing shiver. "Makhi wanted me to let the demon out. It took everything I had not to give in to her, and I can't do it now."

"You're not giving in to her," Zoya said firmly. "She's dead. She lost. You're still here. The demon has been a part of you longer than she had her sights set on it. Let it out for your sake."

Nikolai felt sick, but he tried, he tried to summon it forth like he used to, but every fiber of his being was screaming to hold it in.

"You told me you can't live your life in chains," Zoya said again. "These are your chains, and they're holding you back. Let them go."

The demon was screaming inside him now, awakened by the distress he'd triggered. As much as he wanted to keep it from Makhi, it wanted to burst free and rip her apart. Tamar was right; it was responding to Nikolai's remembered fear and terror—which was its own as well. The only problem was the object of their trauma was already dead and gone, but the effects remained.

Nikolai screamed as the demon gained a foothold and started pushing its way to the forefront. He dropped to his hands and knees, fighting just as hard not to fight it. He wasn't sure whether he finally succeeded or the demon was just that strong, but it burst forth with a screech, talons erupting from his fingers and wings from his back. It attacked the bars, raking claws at the nearest targets it could find.

Zoya, Tolya, and Tamar scrambled backward out of reach. The demon continued to throw itself against the stone in a frenzy, and when part of the cage began to crumble from the force, Nikolai felt a zing of terror that this had been a horrible idea.

But Zoya moved her hands, reinforcing the prison with every dent the demon made. It would not be breaking free of this.

And so it eventually turned its rage and frustration elsewhere, howling and flinging itself at the walls. Nikolai felt the pain of the impacts as sharply as it did, but the demon didn't stop. There was no predatory malice in its actions now. Nikolai thought back to the obisbaya ritual when he'd battled the demon for control. Then, it had been the antagonist bent on destroying him. But then he'd conquered it, and they'd become one. So the demon in its manifestation now wasn't that original version the Darkling had created; it was an extension of Nikolai. He thought of Tolya's advice and tried to figure out what he needed to do.

"I see you," he finally told the demon. I hear you.

The demon didn't react, just kept throwing itself around the cage in blind fury, but beneath that was the same, bleeding pain that was inside Nikolai.

He talked to it like the wounded creature it was, acknowledging its pain and fear and accepting it, and just…letting it take up space. It hurt to sit in it, to let the waves of grief crash over them, but no more than the pain of trying to hold it in had.

Eventually the demon tired itself out and curled up in the back of the rock prison. Nikolai didn't try to wrest back control. Having their agency stripped away had caused this, and so he just continued to sit with the demon in their shared pain. And in the depths of his own mind, Nikolai the man finally broke down amidst the weight of it all. He felt like it would crush him after all, but after a while of that, when he himself was nearing the point of exhaustion, he felt the demon straighten. In that moment, a tendril of its strength extended out and reconnected with him. Nikolai accepted it, embraced it.

I am the demon and the demon is me.

The demon went to sleep then, relinquishing its grasp, and Nikolai changed back. Zoya opened the cage and slowly approached him. He was exhausted but calmer than he'd been in a while.

She crouched down next to him. "Are you okay?" she asked softly.

"No," he replied hoarsely, voice rough from the demon's brutal screams. "But maybe I can finally start to be."

They went back up to the workshop to rest. Tamar and Tolya ventured out to hunt some game for her, leaving just Nikolai and Zoya.

"This doesn't magically fix things," he told her quietly.

"I know," she said, voice equally soft. "But you can start moving on now."

He gave her a regretful look. "I'm sorry for how harsh I've been with you."

"You were hurting. I do know that." She took his hand. "But I want you to promise to never shut me out again. I don't care what it is, I love you. Nothing will ever change that. Not wrinkles or gray hair—" She reached up with her other hand to trace the scars along his cheek. "And not this."

Nikolai smiled sadly. "I'm more broken than I used to be."

Zoya's mouth ticked up at one corner. "You were always broken; you're just less perfect than you used to pretend to be. And I still love you the same."

He quirked his lips. "I suppose there can only be one perfect person in this relationship."

She smirked. "Maybe I can afford not to be so perfect too." Her expression softened, and she tenderly brushed a strand of his hair back from his forehead. "You are one of the bravest and strongest people I know."

He lowered his gaze. "I no longer feel brave or strong."

"But you didn't give up," Zoya pressed. "Even when you believed there was no hope, you kept going. And that is the bravest thing a man can do."

She leaned in and covered his mouth with hers.

Nikolai returned the kiss, opening himself once again to her love, acceptance, and devotion. And in that moment, his faith that he could overcome anything with Zoya by his side was renewed.