I hated myself for leaving. Why couldn't I be the kind of person who stays?
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
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DEEP END — there's no stopping now, this weight on my chest...
LEFT ON THE DOORSTEP of the Amaluna Traveling Troupe as a child with nothing but a piece of jade in her hand, Katya Sokolov is not some princess, not a girl from royal blood, not a girl who the world owes anything. She's a wild child who grows up among misfits who speak in many different tongues, their troupe on the road more often than not, stopping every few weeks to show off their collection of circus freaks to whatever Ravkan city they've stopped at: Suli acrobats, Zemeni contortionists, Kaelish animal-trainers with tigers and bears, Kerch magicians. An Inferni, a Squaller, and her, the little Shu girl who can make water dance around her, shape it into flowing arcs and fountains. The troupe is dusty and scrappy but they're home, the people who raised her and took care of her and taught her how to make the water listen to her every command.
Then the Grisha examiners attend their performance one day in Balakirev, and the very same night Katya's taken away by the men and women in coloured keftas who bring her to the capital to train in service to the King. The Little Palace is nothing like she's ever seen, but she's surrounded by children who have gifts just like her, and she settles into routine soon enough, makes friends with other Etherealki: Zoya, Nadia, Marie, Lukas. A new family of Summoners, their power humming below their skin, the very world at their fingertips. She gets older, gets stronger, gets more disgusted with the way they have to bow and scrape and serve the nobility when the Grisha could stop their hearts inside their chests.
But the constant servitude turns grating, the blatant distrust from the First Army makes rage flare inside her chest, and the fate that awaits her is not an appealing one: enlist in the Second Army when she turns of age and be sent to fight the border wars between Ravka and Fjerda and Shu Han, and die there on the front for a King and Queen who don't give a damn how many Grisha lives are lost. And the Darkling makes her unsettled: if there's one thing the troupe taught her, it's how to tell lie from truth. There's something he's hiding, this man with darkness at his beck and call, and most of the Second Army is blind to it. It's a rock or a hard place; the quivering King or the charming, ruthless Darkling. It's a rock or a hard place and Katya's never been good at servitude.
