Shadow and Bone

“What happened?”
“Nine of us crossed the border, six soldiers and three
trackers. Two of us came back.”
His words hung in the air, cold and final. Seven men dead in
pursuit of the stag. And how many others that I didn’t know
about? But even as I thought it, a disturbing idea entered my
mind: How many lives could the stag’s power save? Mal and I
were refugees, born to the wars that had raged at Ravka’s
borders for so long. What if the Darkling and the terrible
power of the Shadow Fold could stop all that? Could silence
Ravka’s enemies and make us safe forever?
Not just Ravka’s enemies, I reminded myself. Anyone who
stands against the Darkling, anyone who dares oppose him.
The Darkling would make the world a wasteland before he
ceded one bit of power.
Mal rubbed a hand over his tired face. “It was all for
nothing anyway. The herd crossed back into Ravka when the
weather turned. We could have just waited for the stag to come
to us.”
I looked at Mal, at his distant eyes and the hard set of his
scarred jaw. He looked nothing like the boy I’d known. He’d
been trying to help me when he went after the stag. That meant
that I was partially responsible for the change in him, and it
broke my heart to think of it.
“I’m sorry, Mal. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault, Alina. I made my own choices. But
those choices got my friends killed.”
I wanted to throw my arms around him and hug him close.
But I couldn’t, not with this new Mal. Maybe not with the old
one either, I admitted to myself. We weren’t children anymore.
The ease of our closeness was a thing of the past. I reached out
and laid a hand on his arm.
“If it’s not my fault, then it’s not yours either, Mal. Mikhael
and Dubrov made their own choices, too. Mikhael wanted to
be a good friend to you. And for all you know, he had his own