Nikolai saw lights moving along the western side of the building. The guards were coming.

“How long do I have?”

“Two minutes. Maybe three. Take your medicine, Sturmhond. They won’t be able to prove the cable is Ravkan. Not right away.”

“I can’t let that happen.” Nikolai glanced up at the airship, at the faces of the soldiers and Grisha looking down. He wished he could order them to avert their eyes. There was no way to disguise what he was about to do. “Tell me, Brekker, do you believe in monsters?”

“Of all kinds.”

“Prepare to meet another.”

He closed his eyes and let the demon uncoil. It wasn’t hard. The monster was always waiting for its chance.

Kaz raised his cane as the shadow emerged, taking shape in the air before them. “All the Saints and their ugly mothers.”

The demon spread its black wings and hurtled toward the opening in the hull doors. Nikolai’s hands still clung to the cable, but he couldn’t do much more than that. He was seeing through the demon’s eyes. He felt its arms—his arms—extend, muscles flexing, claws reaching. A moment later the monster wrenched the anchor free. The cable recoiled with sudden force and slammed against one of the carefully stacked pallets of aluminum with a reverberating clang, sending bars of metal sliding.

“So much for leaving no trace,” said Kaz, though his eyes were big as moons as he watched the demon soar upward back to them.

“They might not notice,” Nikolai said hopefully.

The anchor cleared the crack in the hull a bare breath before the shell clamped shut. But the demon was trapped inside.

“Now what?” said Kaz.

Nikolai could feel the demon speeding toward the shell. No. He tried to command it, slow its progress, force it back into shadow, but it was too wild with its own freedom. It slammed through the metal shell, leaving a gaping hole in its wake.

“Think they won’t notice that?” Kaz asked.

Nikolai glanced up and saw Zoya bring her hand down in a swift arc. “Hold tight!”

A bolt of lightning sizzled through the air beside them, its heat searing the sky.

It struck the shell at the edge of the hole the demon had made, scorching the metal, making it look as if the storm had savaged the metal rooftop.

Rain spattered Nikolai and Kaz in a gust as Zoya let it pour through to the yard below. Adrik swathed the airship in clouds to hide the sight of it from any guards peering up through the damaged shell.

Moments later, they were inside the airship bay, soaked to the bone.

For a moment the demon hung on the wind, feeling the swell of the storm, fearless in the lush black night and still hungry for blood and damage. Nikolai didn’t want to draw it back—and not because he dreaded its presence inside him. Some part of him hated to cage it once more.

But the demon didn’t fight. Maybe the divisions between them were eroding. And maybe that was a problem. He couldn’t deny the remorse he felt as he tugged the darkness back.

You’ll fly again, he promised.

The airship doors banged shut. The crew stared at him. Nikolai had known what unleashing the monster’s power meant, what he was revealing. But for a moment he’d lost himself in the demon’s exultation. Zoya was shaking her head, though Kaz seemed only intrigued now that his initial fear had passed.

What happens now? he wondered, as these Ravkan soldiers faced him. He could see the terror in their faces, their bewilderment. Adrik stood several steps back, arm raised as if ready to summon a storm to fight with. For once he looked shocked instead of morose.

Show them weakness when they need to see it, never when you feel it. Words of advice he’d given to Alina years ago. This seemed like an excellent time to take it. For once in his life, he was going to embrace understatement.

He clapped his hands together, rubbing his palms like a lord of the manor returned from the hunt, in need of a good meal and a warm fire. “That went about as well as could be expected,” he said in the most ordinary, jovial tone he could manage. “Who needs a drink?”

* * *

It didn’t work. Not entirely. Some of the crew sat and drank with him, downing his brandy a little more quickly than they might have otherwise, eager to fall back into the trust he’d built with them before this dark revelation.

When one of them dared to hazard, “What was … what was that thing?” Nikolai simply said, “Another weapon in our arsenal.”

“Looked like a gargoyle.”

Nikolai refilled his glass. “Hush now. It’ll hear you.”

The crewman blanched. “I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

But Nikolai only laughed and the others followed suit, nervous but obliging. These were friends, compatriots who knew him well and who wanted to find a way to accept or at least ignore what they’d seen.

That wasn’t enough for some of them. Nikolai knew exactly how many soldiers and Grisha were aboard, and he knew that more than half the crew hadn’t chosen to drink with a monster. Zoya would speak to the Grisha. She would do her best to answer their questions and soothe their nerves. But there was a very good chance that they would desert. And that they would talk.

Maybe this was the end then. It had been foolhardy to believe he could keep a secret like this forever.

But I could have kept it, he realized as he filled the glasses for another round. He could have let them detach the cable and leave the anchor behind for the Kerch guards to find. Yes, they would have guessed that Ravka was involved. They might have realized the titanium was missing. They might have taken action to exact revenge. None of it good. But his secret would still have been his.

Another weapon in our arsenal. It might be truer than he’d realized. David had known that once technology existed, it was impossible to control. Tanks got bigger. Guns fired more rounds. Bombs did more damage. On the night of the sneak attack against Os Alta, the demon had become a weapon in Nikolai’s hand. Maybe it was no surprise that he’d chosen to use that weapon again. But it was one thing to have sent an enemy pilot home with a tale to frighten the Fjerdans, another to try to command soldiers who’d lost trust in their king. Nikolai could only hope that the soldiers who did try to spread the story of this night wouldn’t be believed and that those who stayed in his service would find a way to have faith in him again.

Jesper and Wylan were waiting for the Cormorant on the cliffs, looking dirty but otherwise unscathed. The Suli were nowhere to be seen, but Nikolai suspected they were nearby, watching.