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next to me. I saw the volcra diving, and I knew it was coming for us. I said something and—”
    “What did you say?” The Darkling’s cool voice cut through the room.
    “I don’t remember,” Mal said. I recognized the stubborn set of his jaw and knew he was lying. He did remember. “I smelled the volcra, saw it swooping down on us. Alina screamed and then I couldn’t see anything. The world was just … shining.”
    “So you didn’t see where the light was coming from?” Raevsky asked.
    “Alina isn’t … She couldn’t …” Mal shook his head. “We’re from the same … village.” I noticed that tiny pause, the orphan’s pause. “If she could do anything like that, I would know.”
    The Darkling looked at Mal for a long moment and then glanced back at me.
    “We all have our secrets,” he said.
    Mal opened his mouth as if to say more, but the Darkling put up a hand to silence him. Anger flashed across Mal’s features but he shut his mouth, his lips pressed into a grim line.
    The Darkling rose from his chair. He gestured and the soldiers stepped back, leaving me alone to face him. The tent seemed eerily silent. Slowly, he descended the steps.
    I had to fight the urge to back away from him as he came to a halt in front of me.
    “Now, what do you say, Alina Starkov?” he asked pleasantly.
    I swallowed. My throat was dry and my heart was careening from beat to beat, but I knew I had to speak. I had to make him understand that I’d had no part in any of this. “There’s been some kind of mistake,” I said hoarsely. “I didn’t do anything. I don’t know how we survived.”
    The Darkling appeared to consider this. Then he crossed his arms, cocked his head to one side. “Well,” he said, his voice bemused. “I like to think that I know everything that happens in Ravka, and that if I had a Sun Summoner living in my own country, I’d be aware of it.” Soft murmurs of assent rose from the crowd, but he ignored them, watching me closely. “But something powerful stopped the volcra and saved the King’s skiffs.”
    He paused and waited as if he expected me to solve this conundrum for him.
    My chin rose stubbornly. “I didn’t do anything,” I said. “Not one thing.”
    The side of the Darkling’s mouth twitched, as if he were repressing a smile. His eyes slid over me from head to toe and back again. I felt like something strange and shiny, a curiosity that had washed up on a lake shore, that he might kick aside with his boot.
    “Is your memory as faulty as your friend’s?” he asked and bobbed his head toward Mal.
    “I don’t …” I faltered. What did I remember? Terror. Darkness. Pain. Mal’s blood. His life flowing out of him beneath my hands. The rage that filled me at the thought of my own helplessness.
    “Hold out your arm,” said the Darkling.
    “What?”
    “We’ve wasted enough time. Hold out your arm.”
    A cold spike of fear went through me. I looked around in panic, but there was no help to be had. The soldiers stared forward, stone-faced. The survivors from the skiff looked frightened and tired. The Grisha regarded me curiously. The girl in blue was smirking. Mal’s pale face seemed to have gone even whiter, but there was no answer in his worried eyes.
    Shaking, I held out my left arm.
    “Push up your sleeve.”
    “I didn’t do anything.” I’d meant to say it loudly, to proclaim it, but my voice sounded frightened and small.
    The Darkling looked at me, waiting. I pushed up my sleeve.
    He spread his arms and terror washed through me as I saw his palms filling with something black that pooled and curled through the air like ink in water.
    “Now,” he said in that same soft, conversational voice, as if we were sitting together drinking tea, as if I did not stand before him shaking, “let’s see what you can do.”
    He brought his hands together and there was a sound like a thunderclap. I gasped as undulating darkness spread from his clasped hands, spilling in a