Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo (z-lib.org).mobi

hurtling towards me over the dead reaches of the Unsea, ready to bring down his
own kind of reckoning?
I shuddered and paced, flinching at every sound.
By late afternoon, I was convinced that Mal had been identified and captured.
When I heard footsteps and saw his familiar form emerge through the trees, I
nearly sobbed with relief.
“Any trouble?” I asked shakily, trying to hide my nerves.
“None,” he said. “I’ve never seen a city so crowded with people. No one even
gave me a second glance.”
He wore a new shirt and an ill-fitting coat, and his arms were laden with
clothes for me: a sack-like dress in a red so faded it looked almost orange and a
nubbly mustard-coloured coat. He handed them to me and then tactfully turned
his back so that I could change.
I fumbled with the tiny black buttons of the kefta. There seemed to be a
thousand of them. When the silk finally slid over my shoulders and pooled at my
feet, I felt a great burden lift from me. The cool spring air pricked my bare skin
and, for the first time, I dared to hope that we might really be free. I quashed that
thought. Until I knew the Darkling was dead, I would never draw an easy breath.
I pulled on the rough wool dress and the yellow coat. “Did you deliberately
buy the ugliest clothes you could find?”
Mal turned to look at me and couldn’t restrain a smile. “I bought the first
clothes I could find,” he said. Then his grin faded. He touched my cheek lightly,
and when he spoke again, his voice was low and raw. “I never want to see you in
black again.”
I held his gaze. “Never,” I whispered.
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a long red scarf. Gently, he
wrapped it around my neck, hiding Morozova’s collar. “There,” he said, smiling
again. “Perfect.”
“What am I going to do when summer comes?” I laughed.
“By then we’ll have found a way to get rid of it.”
“No!” I said sharply, surprised by how much the idea upset me. Mal recoiled,
taken aback. “We can’t get rid of it,” I explained. “It’s Ravka’s only chance to
be free of the Shadow Fold.”
It was the truth – just not all of it. We did need the collar. It was insurance
against the Darkling’s strength and a promise that someday we’d return to Ravka
and find a way to set things right. But what I couldn’t tell Mal was that the collar
belonged to me, that the stag’s power felt like a part of me now, and I wasn’t
sure I wanted to let it g°.
Mal studied me, his brow furrowed. I thought of the Darkling’s warnings, of