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

Alina.
I’ve been staring at your name for almost an hour. I hate trying to chase my
thoughts down this way, hunting for words. The pen feels wrong in my hand.
Makes my fingers itch for a bowstring or a trigger.
But I better get to it. It’s late now, long past curfew, no sounds but snoring,
Dubrov muttering in his sleep, and the wind, wrapping itself around the thin
walls of the tent, clawing to get in. Supplies are tight, and I’ve wasted most of
the oil in the lamp sitting here, staring at your name.
We’re two, maybe three miles south of the Fjerdan border, deep in the
permafrost. I thought I knew winter, but the cold up here is something else
entirely. It gets in your head.
It doesn’t help that we’re tracking a creature no one is sure exists, that no one
has ever managed to get a look at. You should have seen our captain when he
told us we had new orders, that we were joining up with another unit to track
Morozova’s stag. None of us could keep a straight face, and when we finally got
back to the barracks, Mikhael laughed so hard I thought he might sprain
something. “Are we tracking fairies next ? Khitkii? Elves?” No one’s laughing
now, not since winter set in.
The first couple of months weren’t bad. We met up with the other trackers
south of Ulensk and followed them east, then back south, skirting the Petrazoi.
Some of them took the hunt seriously. Some didn’t. But we saw cropped grass in
otherwise untouched fields, tracks that came from nowhere, even trace. (That’s
right—we’ve seen magical deer scat. Mikhael thinks we should collect it and sell
it as a cure-all. I’m not entirely sure it’s a bad idea. Or maybe the cold really is
making me crazy.) But no one has actually seen the stag. Not yet. Apparently
there have been units assigned to track the herd for years, depending on how
cracked the current King or Darkling is. Now this Darkling wants the efforts
stepped up. Rumors are he wants the stag for you. The orders came down and,
mad as they seemed, we were happy to march, to get away from Kribirsk and put
some distance between ourselves and the Fold.
No one’s been the same since the attack on the sandskiff. The memory is too
clear in my head, too sharp—lying on my back on the deck, my body going
numb, realizing the dampness pooling beneath me was my own blood, then your
face lit by those last gasps of Grisha fire before everything went white. We don’t
talk about it much, but that’s why no one’s moaning at me to douse the lantern.
Most of us can’t sleep without one burning. Even in the day, I see people
walking around hunched up, cricking their necks like they’re afraid something’s
going to come at them from above. Everyone thinks that’s why I keep to myself