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

But I wasn’t hungry. The appetite that had appeared after my brush with death
on the Fold was gone and food had lost all its savour. I slept poorly, despite my
luxurious bed, and felt as if I was stumbling through my days. The work Genya
had done on me had worn off, and my cheeks were once again sallow, my eyes
shadowed, my hair dull and limp.
Baghra believed that my lack of appetite and inability to sleep were connected
to my failure to call my power. “How much harder is it to walk with your feet
bound? Or to talk with a hand over your mouth?” she lectured. “Why do you
waste all of your strength fighting your true nature?”
I wasn’t. Or I didn’t think I was. I wasn’t sure of anything any more. All my
life I’d been frail and weak. Every day had felt like a struggle. If Baghra was
right, all that would change when I finally mastered my Grisha talent. Assuming
I ever did. Until then, I was stuck.
I knew that the other Grisha were whispering about me. The Etherealki liked
to practise by the lakeside together, experimenting with new ways to use wind
and water and fire. I couldn’t risk them discovering that I couldn’t even call my
own power, so I made excuses not to join them, and eventually they stopped
inviting me.
In the evenings, they sat around the domed hall, sipping tea or kvas, planning
weekend excursions into Balakirev or one of the other villages near Os Alta. But
because the Darkling was still concerned about assassination attempts, I had to
remain behind. I was glad for the excuse. The more time I spent with the
Summoners, the greater the chance that I would be found out.
I rarely saw the Darkling, and when I did it was from a distance, coming or
going, deep in conversation with Ivan or the King’s military advisers. I learned
from the other Grisha that he wasn’t often at the Little Palace, but spent most of
his time travelling between the Fold and the northern border, or south to where
Shu Han raiding parties were attacking settlements before winter set in.
Hundreds of Grisha were stationed throughout Ravka, and he was responsible
for all of them.
He never said a word to me, rarely even glanced my way. I was sure it was
because he knew that I was showing no improvement, that his Sun Summoner
might turn out to be a complete failure after all.
When I wasn’t suffering at the hands of Baghra or Botkin, I was sitting in the
library, wading through books on Grisha theory. I thought I understood the
basics of what Grisha did. (Of what we did, I amended.) Everything in the world
could be broken down into the same small parts. What looked like magic was
really the Grisha manipulating matter at its most fundamental levels.
Marie didn’t make fire. She summoned combustible elements in the air around