Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dearest Alina:

                 I hope this letter finds you both well. I wish I could give any good news but work keeps me busy, and I send letters when I reach my destination. It has been two years and when I saw your letter I couldn’t believe my eyes that you had forgiven me for keeping those letters from you.

Answering your questions, I find myself in good health. I had my revenge Alina. He died in pain and misery, his sons little after when the war broke out and the General and the very people of the Grand Palace disposed of them. I was not sorry, maybe for the youngest, but they all chose to stand and let Ravka suffer.

I can’t say much in a letter given the state of the country. I wish I could say we are well, Alina, but there is a war, nobody is well. I even ask Ivan to put the General King to sleep. We are all tired of this war, but staying on the side has never been an option. What happened with Marie was the strike that broke the camel’s back. It wasn’t your fault, soon or later, something would happen.

Please be well and be happy. We all make our choices. In another life, I might have chosen the same path as you.

Yours,

Genya Safina.

PS: I’m afraid that I don’t know much about Baghra, my friend. I was nursing a bullet wound when she left the Little Palace. According to Feydor, she and the General engaged in a shooting match after we arrived from West Ravka. Next day she was sent away to the North and he had a big bruise that I doubt it was from the battle. I haven’t seen her since; I can only tell she is alive.

Alina stares at the letter, Genya’s handwriting as lovely as she is. There are some spots of ink in the paper, no location for her. Is the letter even real or did he force her to write it to guilt Alina into coming back? And what had he done to poor Baghra?

They have been here for three months, it was when she and Mal arrived at Cofton that she learned that the King had died and that the Darkling sits on the throne of Ravka. A country that now is at war with every front: Shu Han, Fjerda and West Ravka.

“I would have made Odarennye safer but you never gave me a choice,” she had said in the face of his lies. But his expression had gone cold all sudden.

“How?”

“What?”

“How would you have done that, Alina? Mmm? Asking Shu Han and Fjerda to stop killing our kind? Smiling a Zlatan so he will stop selling them off?”

“If we destroy the Fold—” Alina had pressed.

“The Fold is the least of our problems! Odarennye are still hunted all over the continent even in our country. You haven’t lived long enough to see how it ends, but I have: it ends with death; it ends with our people hiding away like rats or destroyed The Fold was a mistake, one that I paid after seeing that, after the pokinutye you love so much butchered the woman I loved,” his voice broke for a moment, and he stepped close in all his height, pure rage burning from his eyes. “Don’t think for even a second that only with the Fold gone things will get better.”

Alina had stepped back at his words, her hands over her chest trying to calm the sudden emotions that came with his words. Pity, rage, regret, all of them at the same time. But he had still lied to her, still put that collar on her with the hope of stealing her power. She would never forgive him, but then, surprising her, he sighed, running a hand through his hair and looking old for the first time she had seen him.

“Go.” The word came cold and it felt like a slap, but he wasn’t looking at her, his face a blank mask.

“What?” Alina’s heart arched as it would go through her ribs. What game was that?

“Leave Ravka with your tracker, go and have that pokinutyj life you long so much for,” he spat out turning to her. “Don’t cross me ever again, don’t try anything, and I’ll leave you both be.”

“Aleksandr—“

“You’re now officially a deserter of the Second Army, Alina Starkova,” he said, “just like you were one of us when you put on that kefta, you abandoned us the moment you left the Little Palace.”

Alina opened her mouth to protest, but he stepped to her again, black eyes wearing her down from his height.

“Go now,” he hissed, “live with the consequences of abandoning your people to this war. If you set foot on Ravka again, I’ll have you in front of a fire squad.”

Alina had stared at him in disbelief, for his words, for the threat, for the way how it had quickly changed from plead to rage. And yet, she couldn’t stay, she wouldn’t be used to expand the Fold, wars or not, she wouldn’t be the cause of more orphans like her.

And yet, she still stopped before leaving the tent. Still turned around to the dark, tired monster she thought she could love. “What are you going to do?”

The Darkling had looked at her over his shoulder, fists unclenched and exhausted face turning slowly into the General’s iron mask.

“I have been waiting for a Sun Summoner for four hundred years,” he said, “I’m a man of patience, something you will have to learn in your long life, Alina Starkova. I can wait more.”

He thought I would come back, Alina folds the letter, shaking the memory of his words and the implication in Genya’s words. That I would go back, a stupid little girl begging for his favour again. I won’t. I have Mal, I have a home. I was never made to be the Sun Summoner. To be a murderer like him.

Alina sits down to write the reply, thanks Genya for her letter, asks about the Little Palace, and tells her to take care. Pleads for anything she can find on Baghra if she sees her again.

She does not ask about the Darkling.

Dearest Alina:

                    I wish it could be a happier letter for you to receive on your birthday and I am sorry I haven’t written in so long.

I have just crossed the Fold, the King sent me on a mission to spy the leader of the First Army. I wish I could have killed him, but the King said we would only create a martyr. Zlatan has to die in the battlefield for us to be safe from any successor, he said.

But Saints, Alina, I wanted so much to do, I shouldn’t be here now. I should be there, spying. And yet I am here, writing to you, shaken and scared like a little girl.

They nearly took me, Alina. Someone blew up my cover and the Fjerdans all over this Saints’ forsaken place. David saved me. David, of all people, took a rifle and shoot them. We found others: two Tidemakers, a Fabrikator, and a Heartrender. Feydor made them talk. Zlatan has given them free reign to take any Odarennyj they can in exchange of their bloody weapons.

He is selling his own people, Alina, Odarennye that have been born in that place; they are carried away in irons like beasts to the slaughter.

I have rarely felt this amount of hate in my life with anyone else that wasn’t the Old King. But there I was, watching those Fjerdan cringe and die at our Heartrenders hands and imagining Zlatan’s face on theirs.

I wonder if we’d survive this sometimes or if hopelessness will be what takes us down.

I’m just exhausted. I am sorry.

Yours,

Genya Safina.

Alina:

        I have been thinking how to reply to your last letter for months. Part me actually wanted to toss it to the fire. To forget that I even poured my heart to you just to treat me like a child that has no decision over her own head.

I was offered a way out, Alina, I was offered the same route you choose: a safe place to grow old., away from the court and the Old King and the Second Army. I made my choice. And just as I respect yours, you will respect mine. Otherwise, don’t ever write to me again.

Evgenia Vasilievna Safina, Lieutenant of the Second Army.

Dearest Alina:

                    I forgive you. I wish I could be there for your wedding. One day, David and I will go to visit you. I’ll promise.

Genya Safina.

Alina summons a small sunbeam in the night, covering it with her hand so the light doesn’t stir Mal. Her husband snores softly beside her; quiet wedding night for the quiet couple of the farm at the borders of Cofton.

She is happy, for the farm, even if years ago she would have hated it. They have a house of their own now. Maybe she can even plant a garden one day. They can have their own meadow, prettier than the one in the orphanage.

“Hmm, Alina?” Mal turns in the bed. “The candle.”

The sunbeam snuffles in her hand and she lies back in the bed. She doesn’t summon as much as she did. She hasn’t stopped, but both she and Mal knew that anyone that saw her could sell her to the best bidder searching for a Sun Summoner, the disappeared saint. Why did they even call her a saint in the first place?

She covers her face with her hands, shaking her head. She should be happy, it’s her wedding night. And yet she can’t stop thinking about Ravka, about Genya and the people in the Little Palace.

Genya’s last letter was seven months ago.

Dearest Alina:

                     It’s over, my friend, is finally over.

I can’t really tell how I feel now. I write from the front, both our forces and West Ravka have started to retreat. Zlatan is very much dead, the King killed him in person. But we have lost so many, Alina. Nadia, Zoya, Sergei. Feydor is with Ivan and the Healers right now, he got a bullet so close to his head that he just lives because the Saints decided to be kind.

I thank them for David, that’s sure, for the Fabrikators’ inventions saving our lives. Even with Zlatan and all his cursed Fjerdan weapons. Nobody can say that we didn’t give a fight.

But we’ll never be a whole country again, Alina; West Ravka doesn’t want us and at the end of the battle, the King had a choice: either he gave up the claim to the West or they would keep killing every single Grisha. I don’t know how he made that choice, many have disagreed, but it’s true that West Ravka would never accept a Odarennyj King.

So, they gave him a choice, to lose West Ravka or they would cross and rain hell in the Little Palace, they would probably kill every Odarennyj that is left there. He chose us, with all the risk that implies now. He still chose us.

I don’t know what the future has on the Odarennye now, Alina. We might fight the longest war, or we might die in ten years. East Ravka has become our only safe haven in this continent.

And for now, we can't do anything but fight for it.

I’ll wait for your letters, my dear girl. I hope one of these days I can ask for leave so we’ll see each other again.

Yours,

Genya Safina.

Chapter Text

Dearest Alina:

                     How are you doing? How is your Mal? You rarely tell me about your handsome tracker anymore. Have you been hiding him?

David and I married about a week ago. The wedding was small; we don’t have a lot of money to spend with the country still recuperating. But we did it in a palace, which is more than many can say. He sends you his regards and I have to ask you: have you forgiven him Alina, for putting the collar on your neck? You know he never wanted to hurt you.

I have two weeks of leave before leaving court for the field again, but in part, I think I’m luckier than many when leaving. I can take David with me and sadly, even when the King is different, a lot of nobles had to stay.

I’m sending you a picture that was kindly made for your friend in her wedding dress. Though of course the painter couldn’t capture my beauty in all its glory, I still think you should see the dress. In exchange, I want a sketch from your farm, Miss Sunshine.

All my love,

Genya.

“Your friend from the Little Palace again?” Mal asks as he enters their bedroom and kisses her cheek, eyeing the portrait that had come with the letter. “Has she finally married?”

Alina nods and smiles. “I’m glad she is happy, I still remember when she just tried to compliment him awkwardly. They deserve this after everything.”

“Hmm,” Mal pecks her cheek and turns to the bed. “Are you coming?”

“I’ll finish my answer first.”

“All right.”

Dearest Alina:

                   I’m sorry I haven’t written to you in such a long time, but my time in Fjerda didn’t allow me the luxury of letters that weren’t mission reports. I saw the Ice Court, Alina, it was one of the most terrifying places I have ever been. Odarennye are kept in cages, submitted to their so-called trials and burned. Not even the threat of a Odarennyj King in the throne has stopped them. It only seems to encourage them to do worse, now they are saying that they ‘liberate’ Ravka from its Witch King.

I can’t say much, even now that I am home. I’m afraid that a bigger war will break out. I’m glad you’re away, safe. I have lost too many friends.

Take care and thank you for your sketch.

Yours,

Genya.

They don’t have children. Alina was never the maternal type and Mal never insisted, saying that it was all good if they are together as they have always been.

She works in the farm, using her power to bathe the crops with sun when no one is looking. And yet she doesn’t use it as much as she did back in Ravka. Even when little people must remember her, the disappeared Sun Summoner, she is still weary. Very small lines form in the corners of her eyes and on the ten anniversary of their arrival to Novyi Zem, she looks at the mirror, barely recognizing the girl who once had performed in the Little Palace. A girl wearing a black kefta, with a confident smile and sunlight in her hands.

“What if we visit Ketterdam one of these days?” She asks Mal one day, she stares at her like she had grown another head. “Darling, I doubt anybody remembers me anymore.”

“Alina, they would steal the animals and the crops if we leave,” Mal says, half a laugh in his voice as he stabs his piece of pork. “Who would we be leaving it with? And why would we want to go to Ketterdam? We are not short on money or anything and it is dangerous for Odarennye there.”

To just get out, to see something else than the farm where we have been for ten years, the words stay on the tip of her tongue. No, she can’t say that to Mal, he is not at fault for her cabin fever.

“Yes, yes, you’re right,” she smiles slightly. “It just came to me that memory of you wanting to visit it, remember? Back with our regiment?”

“Well, that was years ago,” Mal shrugs and takes her hand across the table. “And between us: it wasn’t Ketterdam that I wanted to visit, I just wanted to leave Ravka. With you. I got that and there is nothing that makes me happier than our home together.”

Alina manages to smile as the tears prick her eyes, her stomach twists in shame for every sweet word and every caress of his thumb against the back of her hand.

She never asks him about leaving the farm again.

Dearest Alina:

                    I have to inform you, my dear friend, that I’ll be visiting you in a month. I have work to do in Novyi Zem, so David and I will be dropping by the end of summer. And I also have some news that I also want to tell you in person.

See you soon,

Genya.

Alina has never felt more like a stick than when Genya’s arms squish her into a tight hug. Her hair is brown, probably from tailoring, but she seems to have taken whatever she had done in her face on her way to their house. She is the same, not a single feature of her perfect face seems different from the day they met except for her eyes. They have grown harder and yet they still irradiate the same kindness.

“Are you all right, Alina?” Genya says, looking at her up and down. “You look tired, have you been summoning?”

What reason is to summon? Alina bites her tongue. “Not all of us can look perfect from dawn to dusk. I can’t believe you’re pregnant!”

“Well, it’s the perfect disguise for someone in my line of work,” Genya says, winning a glare from her husband and laughing as she takes both his and Alina’s arms. “I want to see that farm of yours, we have a lot to tell each other and little time before we go back home.”

Mal receives them with cordiality, a lot more than she would have expected when he knows Genya’s is the Darkling’s Shadow and he and David sit talking about the repairs around the farm and how both and Novyi Zem have progressed in their technology.

“What of the First Army?” she hears him ask with a tight voice. “Does it still exist?”

Alina takes a deep breath for the long moment that David takes to reply.

“Of course,” the Durast says. “We work closely with them, my division works closely with the General of the First Army. We spend as much time with them as with our own peers.”

Mal just nods, taking a sip of kvas and Alina looks to her side at Genya helping her with the dinner, her white hands chopping the vegetable with a little too much force.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, “Mal... It was different for us in the First Army back then. The Second Army—”

“It’s nothing, Alina,” Genya’s voice betrays her comment and yet she still forces a smile on her face. “Let’s finish this before the boys start going outside and repairing the roof.”

When they eat it’s Alina who leads the talk while Mal sulks stays quiet except for an occasional comment when she brings up things in the farm. Both David and Genya avoid saying anything about the Ravka that could lead to mentioning him, which turns out to be quite difficult. Her friend talks about the state of the conflict with Fjerda, how she has her own pupils on tailoring and David progress in the technological advance of the Little Palace.

“How did he let you come after all this time?” Alina asks later that night when they are finally alone sitting by the fire.

“He never forbade me to come, Alina,” Genya says, looking at her cup of tears with a tired expression. “It was always something that made me postpone, if it wasn’t the war or the border conflicts, it was just that... You write about being so happy, I didn’t want to ruin that, it was enough that I talked about such dreary things in my letters.”

Alina wants to cry, wants to laugh. Yes, of course she wrote that she was happy. What else could she do?

“I got another long leave for an outstanding performance in Shu Han, to be honest, it’s not like I am killing myself with work,” Genya’s voice takes her out of her thoughts, the Tailor shrugs. “It was before I knew about the baby; otherwise they would have sent another to do this job, though.”

“What did you do in Shu Han?” Alina asks, frowning when her friend bites her lip and lowers her eyes for a moment. “Another war? More Odarennye captured by Fjerdans?”

“No, Fjerda is the biggest pain on that right now,” Genya sighs and shakes her head. “I was... escorting the second daughter of the Shu Queen to Os Alta. Well, not only me, Ivan and Feydor too. A lovely little thing, a little pale, though. Though, I don’t think the King cares if that brings the Odarennye they have been experimenting on back home.”

“Is she a ward of some kind?” Alina says, stupidly, maybe even playfully. A smile in her lips at the sound of her own words.

Genya shakes her head. “A bride.”

Alina turns her head to the fire, her chest fluttering with something... What? What can she even dare to feel now? She shouldn’t even think about him with anything but hate, even when it has been years since the antlers finally fuzzed with her skin, since she started thinking about less what had happened with Morozov's Stag and more about how she had run after Baghra’s words. She can’t regret anything now, she won’t. It would just hurt Mal.

“Oh,” she murmurs finally, taking a sip of her coup. “I guess he is a real King now.”

Dearest Alina:

                    I am exhausted but happy to announce the birth of my daughter, Varvara Davidova Kostyka. Little Varya is of course gorgeous like me, but she got David’s dark hair. I will send you a sketch he did. I’m sure we’ll be able to visit soon.

How are things going on with you two?

Yours,

Genya.

Alina lets out a bitter laugh at the shortness of the letter, at the question. What else can she tell about the farm and her life? She is an ordinary woman, with an ordinary life in the middle of nowhere, receiving letters from the King of Ravka’s most trusted spy.

And yet she still writes everything she has done the last six months since Genya left. About last week, when she tried and spectacularly failed to make Mal a cake for his birthday. About the weather and the new horse they got. She writes and laughs until tears go down her face.

And that’s how Mal finds her.

“You’re all right?” Alina nods when he puts a reassuring hand over her shoulder.

“Yes, yes, it’s just that Genya had her baby.” Mal nods and smiles a little and thankfully he doesn’t push the matter further.

The day goes on and Alina walks to Cofton to send her letter. It will take months but at least Genya will be in one place for the next few months. It’s already dark when she arrives back to their arm, hair out of her braided bun and mud in her dress. Mal is in the kitchen, head down over the dinner, she sits down in her chair and cups her hands, summoning a small sunbeam.

“Alina.”

“Mmm?”

“Do you want to have children?”

“What?” Alina snaps her head at him, the sunbeam gone from her hands. “Why are you asking me that? Do you want to?”

“I was wondering if you thought about it, I—I mean, you reacted that way when you got that about your friend—”

“It wasn't like that! I saw her a year ago, I just—” I am tired of being here, of this farm, of just exchanging Ravka for Novyi Zem and never leaving. “I was just being nostalgic, Mal. You know she is the first girl friend I ever had.”

“You could make friends here, Alina.”

“It’s just... not the same.”

“Do you miss it?” Mal turns around from the kitchen. “The Little Palace? The Second Army?”

Him? Alina doesn’t need to be asked to know that’s the question that lingers in his voice.

“What are you trying to say Mal?” He has nothing to deny her love, they have been married for more than a decade for Saint’s sake; she has loved him since she was a child. “You know I chose to leave the Little Palace...”

Did you? A treacherous voice echoes in her head. Did you choose? Or did you just hear Baghra’s words without thinking twice?

“Would you have left with me if he hadn’t declared you a deserter?” Mal asks and suddenly he seems older than he looks, tired. “Or would you have stayed and... and...”

“I would have gone with you no matter what,” Alina replies, instantly truthfully, because yes, she would have gone with Mal even if the Darkling hadn’t thrown her away, she would have tried to make an escape.

To run away, the truth is a cold bite even in the heat of the Zemeni summer. They had always been good at running, from Ana Kuya, from the bullies in the orphanage, from the life she could have had as a Odarennaja.

She steps closer and hugs him, burying her face in his chest like she always does. Her hand strokes his face. He has aged, his hair has gotten longer with the years but he keeps his face clean shaven as always.

Alina on the other hand, well, she doesn’t look thirty-seven, but she is sure that little people would recognise the radiant Sun Saint that had once stood, beautiful and smiling in the Winter Fete. Someday she even forgets to summon and that can be seen in her dull hair and the bags under her eyes.

They have changed a lot and nothing. He is still the same boy who would follow her to the end of the world and she is still the sickly girl who would love him even if that meant cutting some part of her.

The realisation is so bitter that it nearly makes her cry.

“I’ll go to bed.” Untangling her arms from him, she turns to the stairs that lead to their room.

Dearest Alina:

                   We are quite well here, Varya was tested two days ago and there is no one who can live with her. She got in the habit of changing her father’s hair now and David had to go to a meeting with a violet head for over two days. I think she will be a better Tailor than I’ll ever be, I was this young when I started but unlike me, she will have two loving parents to encourage her passion.

How did the years pass so quickly, my friend? To think that once I was just the Queen’s Broken Doll, now I am married and happy, the King’s Shadow and the Tailor to another Queen, a kinder one.

Thank you for the necklace, Varya hasn’t taken it out since it arrived. She babbles a lot about her Aunt Alina, who lives far away in Novyi Zem. If it is safe to cross this year, we’ll visit you soon. I don’t know if you hear anything about the Queen where you leave but you might have heard that she is Odarennaja too. Alina, I think she is like you and I think they are planning to do something more for travelling from here to cross the Fold. But of course, it will depend if West Ravka cooperates. Is kind of impossible to go around even with a Shu Queen, Fjerda also seems to want to take war again.

Write soon, I’m sure that we’ll be able to visit you both by summer.

Yours,

Genya.

She buys a passage a few weeks after the letter arrives, hides it inside her stays. It isn’t a deliberate thing, something that she thinks for weeks. No, she is just sitting there in the post that she and Mal have to sell the stuff they produce in the farm, mind half away, half listening to the tattering of the people around. One word catches her ears immediately.

Sun Summoner.

For a second, Alina turns her head as she is the one addressed, but the man and the lady talking are not looking at her. She catches the rest of the conversation as her ears ring with every sentence.

“... Wasn’t it a Saint that could also summon the sun?” The woman with a distinct Ravkan accent asks and Alina cringes.

“Well, this one is not a Saint for sure; she is the Shu Princess that married the Shadow King four years ago. They say she is Odarennaja and she kept it a secret to not be experimented on in her motherland. A month ago, they said she lit up the court in the Little Palace.”

“Wonders never cease! And to think that for years we thought that a Sun Summoner would be some kind of a miracle. Now it turns out she is just a rare kind of Odarennye. I always wonder what happened to the other one.”

“I remember hearing she was assassinated by West Ravkan agents back when she was a student, never really knowing who the girl was. I suppose the King must be hell bent on protecting his Sol Koroleva so that doesn’t happen again,” the man says and Alina let’s out such a barking laugh that they both turn around. She shakes her head, laughing until her sides hurt.

The passage seems to burn through her chemise when she and Mal make their way back to the farm. And Alina keeps silence as she goes and feeds the animals, as she cooks and has dinner with Mal. At night, she turns around in the bed, the passage to Os Kervo inside the pocket of her dress.

He had said he would wait.

Sun Summoner. Sol Koroleva.

That’s who Alina had been; a long time ago and she hadn’t wanted either title. Does the Queen of Ravka feel the same? She can’t help but think of the similarities of their situations: both of them Shu, both of them repressing their powers, both of them pushed to the Darkling’s arms against their wills.

What will he do to her? All those years, all the war that Genya talked about in her letters, she doubts he has given the idea of using his abomination as a weapon. Is the Queen being used as she was? A dancing monkey performing in court with his colours? Has he stolen her power just like he tried to steal Alina’s?

She is like me, Alina thinks later, and she sees Mal leave for a hunt. Like calls to like.

She takes only a shawl, a dress and a handful of money. She is not doing anything wrong, she will come back when she solves this, when she saves the only person in the world that might be like her.

Is she? Her own voice scolds her. Or are you just eager to leave this place?

She stops midway to the docks and falls on her knees. What is she doing? Is she really so selfish, so horrible that she would leave Mal without even a note? Would risk being killed without thinking about what would happen to him? How can she do this, after everything that they have been through together?

A wrenched sob comes out of her. No, she won’t do this, she won’t run away. She has a good life, a good husband. More than any orphan girl could have dreamt.

The passage is shredded to pieces on the floor as she walks back to the farm. She decides to make a cake for Mal, even if he is a better cook than she is. The smile ever present in her face as she works numbs her face until it doesn’t matter anymore. Then a knock sounds and she frowns, palming the flour from her skirt. She recognises one of Mal’s friends from town when she opens the door.

“Hello, is Mal going to be late?”

He stares at her and takes a deep breath, and it is when he takes off his hat that she sees his bloodied hands and the sorrow in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Anninka.”

Dearest Alina:

                     Words can’t express how sorry I am for your loss. The world is such an unfair place; you still had so many years to live together. But you can’t stay alone in that farm forever, my friend. I fear what you might do there, in such grief and with little friends of your own.

And you might not want to talk to me or throw this letter to the fire for even suggesting it... But I have gotten you a royal pardon. The King... He has been in a good mood lately, despite the conflict with Fjerda, so I asked him and he gave it to me. I know you have your life in Cofton, and that you might not want to leave with Mal’s presence still lingering but you will always have a place with us here. And the Little Palace was your home, Alina. East Ravka was your home.

Just give it a thought, all right? And even if you disagree, at least write to me.

Yours,

Genya.

Chapter Text

Dearest Alina:

                    Alina, it has been months since your last letter, this can’t continue anymore. I can’t bear the thought of you all alone in that house. I even asked Fedyor to visit you when he went on a mission and he said you didn’t answer the door! How can I know you’re alive while I am here, in another continent, just writing in paper waiting for you to answer? Is this how you feel when I am on a mission? Because it is the most dreadful of feelings.

I will part for Novyi Zem tomorrow and bring you home. I won’t take discussion if we have to get a Heartrender to get you, we will.

See you soon,

Genya.

Alina sighs as she lets down the letter. Truly, there won’t be an argument with Genya, will it? She hadn’t heard Fedyor... No, she did hear Fedyor, but she saw no reason to open the door to him. What could he do? Tell her his condolences? Tell her that her Pokinutyj husband that he had never met had been a nice man? Fedyor, who still had a happy marriage and had survived the Fold, a mortal wound and war with his husband, probably still youthful and cheerful as Alina’s face is now framed by two long grey locks.

It has been months since she buried Mal, four months to be exact. Her husband had been crushed by an out of control carriage in Cofton, on his way to the shop where he used to sell his fur. It was an accident, it could have happened to anyone.

And it had been Alina’s fault.

Why didn’t you call him? She had told herself as his body was laid in the ground and buried under his fake name. Why didn’t you show him the passage and tell him you could go together?

Because I wanted to go alone, she thought of one of those nights, sleeping alone in the darkness of her room. I wanted to leave and...

Alina scoffs, years ago, she had rejected the role of the heroine, the saint, the one who could have saved hundreds of lives because of the fear that her power would be used against her will. And now another woman in her position is there, in the clutches of the same man. Who else would step to stop him? Genya? Ivan? She had told Genya what General Kirigan was, who he was, when she got enough courage. Her reply had been that she already knew.

Her friend won’t let her stay here, no when she is probably guessing right now that Alina has no intention to make any friends in the town, or marry again, or even travel to clear her head. She tends the farm almost automatically, cleans, eats, and sleeps. Summoning has barely gone over her head in the past months. What’s the point? What is the point of her having this legendary power if she couldn’t even save the love of her life?

I should never have burned those maps, she thinks with every passing day. I should have never gone in the skiff that day. It was my fault that the crossing went wrong. Mal would have crossed safe. I would have never woken this accursed power, we could have grown old together. Now I am stuck in this long life.

Once or twice her thoughts travel to the Queen of Ravka, the woman for whom she had sacrificed her last moments with Mal. She thinks about Genya’s letter announcing her pardon and the Darkling being in good humour, of the people in the market saying how the Queen had lit up the Little Palace. Then her mind flashes to the last time she had seen the Darkling happy, when his hand had been pressed in her collarbone as he stole her power from her.

Is that what he is doing to her now? Alina wraps her shawl around her body as the shiver takes her. Is that why he doesn’t care that I come back even when I have enough power to stop him? I still have Morozov’s Stag inside me.

She could, maybe not face the Second Army, maybe not even the Darkling himself... But the Queen is just a young woman, probably has recently discovered that she is Grisha. And that man was forced on her, just like he had forced himself into Alina’s life.

What else can I do anyway? She stares at her hand, closing her eyes and summoning a small sunbeam. The Saints or whatever is out there must be testing me. Staying here doing nothing is what I have done all these years and he dared to call me selfish for it. I’m going to show him I am not that same girl he thought he could control. I am going to save that girl.

The sailing to Ravka is slow and tedious, more than the other way around. Alina spends most of the journey sea sick, lying in her room while Genya and the Heartrender that accompanied them as an escort were up in the deck. But at night, her friend comes back and Alina makes her talk about East Ravka, about the Little Palace, about everything the Tailor has probably avoided to tell her in all these years.

“Why did he pardon me?” She asks the second night in the ship, as she and Genya lay in their cots after a light dinner. Genya frowns and shifts in her bed. “You said he was in a good mood. What could possibly be so good that he would forget he told me I would be put in front of a firing squad if I came back?”

Genya sits with her face at the ceiling and sighs. “The Queen had a child, all the Palace was celebrating. I figured out I could persuade him, now that the name of Sankta Alina has but been forgotten and you’re dead to the world. Besides, people would look at the Queen when they mention the Sun Summoner.”

Alina turns around to hide the stink of the tears forming in her eyes. Isn’t that what you wanted, life in obscurity? Isn’t that your life?

“So, she will be the one that helps him with the Fold, then?” she says, the hatred in her voice clear and free; another dumb little Sun Summoner thinking that she will do well for Ravka only to get her power used as a weapon.

“The Fold... is not exactly a problem anymore, Alina,” Genya’s voice comes in the dark of the cabin and Alina can feel her stomach twisting as if she were to throw up again.

“What?”

“I mean, of course the Fold is still there but... It’s no longer that dangerous to cross.”

“No longer... dangerous,” Alina repeats the words as if Genya just said them in Fjerdan. “So the Queen has just destroyed the volcra?”

Genya shakes her head. “The Queen didn’t do anything; it was years ago, just when you left. He entered the Fold and... Well, I have no idea of what he did but next time I crossed, there wasn’t any volcra. Not alive ones, at least.”

Alina summons light to see the Tailors’ face, studying the fake features that she had crafted for herself. Her voice comes out choked, raw. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Genya sits up, frowning. “Why would I? You were always under so much pressure because of the Fold, Alina. Why would I ruin your happiness—“

“Well, nothing stopped you from talking about the blood wars!” Alina snaps. “The Fold—“

“The Fold was the least of our problems, Alina!”

She stares at the Tailor and suddenly they are back in that tent years ago, again, Genya transforms into a woman she can’t recognise. But this time it is Alina, who gets up and leaves, throwing her shawl over her shoulders and walking to the deck.

The Fold is the least of our problems! He had said that too, to justify his hunger for her power, to justify what he had done to her.

They are gone; half of the reason why her life was turned upside down is gone. Had he been mocking her all the time? Telling her that he couldn’t enter the Fold because his powers were useless when he clearly could? No, it has to be a trick; the volcra can’t just disappear in thin air. He can’t have just ended them alone or either he would have done it ages ago.

It has to be a trick, Alina glares back at the cabin where she left Genya. They are both playing some trick. He would never let go of the greatest weapon he had.

The first time Alina had crossed the Fold, it had been a terrifying experience, her heart had pounded so hard that she barely heard their commander giving instructions, both Grisha and Pokinutyj soldiers had been ready for the sea of monsters that would come for them. It was the blight that killed her parents, every Ravkan’s worst nightmare.

But now, she and Genya arrive to take a skiff with only a couple of Squallers to conduct it. There are no Inferni, no riflemen to defend them from the monsters and despite that should give her comfort, that less people are just dying for so few to be able to cross the Fold, she still feels the heat of the sun in the tip of her fingers when they finally enter it.

Silence, only dead silence follows. No screeches, no sound of the monster who had almost killed her that time.

“Anninka,” Genya calls her fake name and Alina’s head snaps at her, she is holding a lantern.

“Blow that!” Alina hisses but she doesn’t move. You are to remain at your station.

“It’s all right,” Genya touches her shoulder, “I told you, they aren’t here anymore.”

“What is with her?” One of the passengers asks and Genya shakes her head.

“She has been abroad a long time.”

The Little Palace is probably the only thing that comforts her to see in the whole trip, passing through Kirbisk had been so different, she remembered it as an army camp, the city seems lively now, even if the army is still around in tents.

They arrive at night and just like the first time, she is led to a room to rest, except that is a smaller, comfortable room, instead of the suite that she had occupied as the Sun Sunmmoner.

Of course, they don’t need her anymore. Alina takes a deep breath as she lowers her bag down and sits in the vanity. The face in the mirror is nothing like the girl that had entered the palace that time, but also the same... That girl had also looked terrible.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Genya says, helping her to take the pins out of her bun. “You don’t have to feel pressured, nobody knows who you are.”

“I don’t want to be a burden,” Alina says, sighing. Nor do I want to fight, or cause suspicion. I’ll just do what I have to and go back home. “Did you get me her address?”

Genya sighs deeply and takes a piece of paper from her kefta, Alina takes it, nodding as a sign for wanting to be left alone. But once her friend is away, she doesn’t go to bed, nor does she change her clothes. Taking pen and ink, she begins to write.

Baghra:

          As I wrote in the envelope, please don’t burn this before you read it. I have returned to Ravka and I need to know if you are alive, I need your help and also answers.

Seventeen years ago you told what he was, Baghra, what he planned to do with me. You were right; I had antlers stinking out from my collarbones for years. But I escaped, I hid. I did what you wanted me to do. That’s why I want to know... Why didn’t you stop him this time too? Why is there another Sun Summoner in his clutches? They say he destroyed the volcra, but the Fold is still there. Still a weapon he can use with her help.

I already ran once, I will not run again. I will gain the Queen’s trust until I can tell her the truth.

Please, write to me, I have taken your place here, and I need your experience.

Alina Starkova.

Chapter Text

When she had been a girl nearly killed twice after discovering she had an ancient and precious power, Alina had been dragged from her bed and presented to a fat King and to a Queen that looked like a too overdone fashion figurine. Her first day in the palace as Anninka Victorovna Glazkova is quite different.

Genya doesn’t come to help her in the morning – not that she needs her, she has been managing quite well for herself the last seventeen years –, instead of that, a maid enters, bowing slightly and leaving a fresh chemise, undergarments, trousers and shoes. With no kefta in sight, Alina gets another memory: You will get a kefta once he has witnessed your power.

Who does she have to prove herself now? Him? He knows what she is.

She doesn’t wait for Genya then, she steps out of the room, walking the unfamiliar corridors to maybe find the library. Maybe I should go to Baghra’s hut, the thought comes bitter, after all I am supposed to be teaching the children now.

The thought of being lost comes clear when she hears a high pitched scream that startles her, the kind of scream a child would do the kind that she had listened to from the younger children in the orphanage.

“Wait, Shura, wait!” A little voice says and a small child, barely a toddler, comes running, behind her there is an older girl with long brown curls. And Alina has barely time to react before the toddler collides against her legs and falls in her backside.

For a second, neither she nor the older child move, almost expecting a wail from the toddler. But instead she sat on the floor, dark eyes staring at Alina. Her features... So familiar with her own in a waya, but this is the Little Palace, she would never be the only Shu Grisha. As she blinks and shakes her head, leaning down to put her hands under the girl’s armpits and help her up.

But then the child puts a hand on her cheek and it takes every ounce of strength on her to not drop her. Her power calls forward against her will, her skin glows, and Alina feels a shiver as she lowers the girl on the floor, her hands in fists trying to call the light back in.

That girl...

“Varya, Princess!” Genya’s voice comes as salvation and relief washes over Alina when she sees her friend joggling over in her red kefta. “Alina, thank you for stopping them, I just turned for a second—”

“Shura ran into the lady, Mama!” Varya says as her mother picks up the child in her arms.

“Shura is too quick for a child of her age,” Genya says and turns to Alina. “Aren’t you going to give your Aunt Anninka a kiss, Varya?”

“Aunt Anninka?” The girl repeats and looks at Alina, who still stands there with the feeling of the light coming from her hands. Her eyes don’t leave Genya even as the little girl runs and hugs her legs.

“This is Princess Aleksandra Aleksandrovna Morozova, who I have to get back to her mother so we can take advantage and present her to you. Come.”

Aleksandra, Alina thinks with a humourless chuckle, not even his child was spared from his ego.

They stop in front of the Queen’s chambers and Genya announces herself, holding the girl with one arm and her daughter’s hand with another.

“Open,” Genya says to one of the footmen and the first thing Alina hears is women’s voices, talking animatedly in Shu. She had cared to learn her mother’s tongue back in Novyi Zem, once she was away from Ravka’s poison about her heritage. But the words go numb when she sees the Queen for the first time and Genya’s hand in her arm it’s the only thing that reminds her to bow her head.

“Your Majesty,” the Tailor says and she lowers the Princess on the ground, who starts walking in balancing but quick steps crying Mama.

“Well,” the Queen says in Ravkan, “I see you decided to return my daughter, Evgenia Safina. Planning to steal her again anytime soon?”

Alina nearly lifts her head at the worlds, though instead of the normally disdainful and high pitched tone that Tatiana Lanstov had always used with her friend, the new Queen spoke softly and almost playfully, as if it was often that the princess ran stayed that close to one of her husband’s spies.

Maybe it is better with her than with the servants, Alina muses sympathetically, remembering the awful maids on her first day in the Little Palace.

“And who is her?” The Queen asks and then is when Alina can’t resist looking at her.

In her mind during all these weeks, the Sun Summoner that the Darkling had taken in his clutches had been a dreary picture: a pale, scared girl with sad eyes, younger than she had been when she entered the Little Palace. And yes, Gerel Kir-Taban was certainly younger when her mother sent her as a bride for the Darkling, only nineteen, but the woman that towers over Alina now is no girl.

“Anninka Victorovna Glazkova, Your Majesty,” Genya says softly, “she is the Sun Summoner I told you that would take Baghra’s place teaching the children.”

A tight half smile appears in the Queen’s face, she passes her child to the arms of one of the ladies that surround her. Ladies who, Alina notices, are also Shu, but there are also two Grisha with silk purple and red keftas. The Queen, however, is in a black and white court dress with golden embroidery.

Of course she is.

“My, Baghra’s place?” the Queen asks as she steps closer. “That’s certainly one big pair of shoes that you have to fill,” Alina resists the urge to frown at her tone, is not admiring, nor pitying. It’s something she can’t quite place. “But do show me what you can do; I have never seen any Etherealki like me before. My Shura, I am afraid, will probably have her father’s power.”

Like calls to like, Alina echoes in her mind, a genuine smile finally appearing in her face. Suddenly the weariness disappears and she truly sees the equal she had come seeking, the other Sun Summnoner that marked the end of her loneliness. The small sunbeam that she conjures is enough to fit in her palm, the light shines in the Queen’s black eyes and she smiles, touching her hands and summoning. Her way of doing is different from Alina’s, instead of creating a round sunbeam, the light pours from her hands, from outside the windows of the room. The gesture is so much like the Darkling that it makes Alina drop her sunbeam and take a step back.

The Queen calls her light back and the Princess lets out a giggle, her mother turns around and touches her chubby then turns to Alina, though her smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Welcome to the Little Palace, Anninka Glazkova.”

Little Saint:

             I see that you are back in this wretched country, putting your nose in my son’s affairs. In reply to your letter: his new little Sun Summoner was already there when I returned to the Little Palace. But you are wasting your time. He has won, little saint, he already has his weapon to use against the world and she is loyal to him, too loyal even for my words to get her. His games have twisted her judgement past the reasoning point. The best you can do is leave that place and go back to wherever you have been living.

My son is lost, that girl’s blocks of power and inexperience have been what delayed the storm he plans to unleash on the continent. And I am no longer fit to do anything but wait for my own death.

Don’t reply to this; a blind woman has no need of letters.

Baghra.

Alina’s hand trembles as she falls on her knees, her stomach turning with nausea. He had blinded her, his own mother. She had been right, all those years ago, when she had guessed he wouldn’t show Baghra mercy. The old woman had been cruel, snappy and miserable, but she had also warned Alina, she had saved her from living as the willing slave that the Queen is now.

She clutches the letter, thinking about that night again, she had saved herself, but does it matter now? That she escaped? The Darkling got a Sun Summoner anyway and Baghra hadn’t been able to get her out.

One part of her screams to go back to Novyi Zem. That the Queen brought this to herself when she ignored Baghra’s warning; but she immediately shakes her head. No, she can’t blame the Queen for the Darkling’s manipulations.

And she has a child now, a child that he would probably take away if she tried to escape and ruin his plans, Alina grits her teeth. He is king, he already has everything he wants and yet he still wants more. It’s a compulsion.

She pictures the little princess, an amplifier just like her father, probably the reason why the Queen is still in Ravka. Picturing the Darkling as a father is a truly impossible task, why would an eternal monster have children? Unless he had been hoping for the child to be an amplifier like him so he could use her to gain more power...

Alina doesn’t leave, she goes to Baghra’s hut and practices her summoning, making an effort of the lack of sunrise like the old Grisha teacher had taught her years ago. The children start arriving after two days, brought by Fedyor, who she had ignored back in Novyi Zem. Now she receives him warmly while fixing the hut to make it her own classroom. It feels appropriate, to use Baghra’s old lair, Alina doesn’t feel comfortable enough to be in the Little Palace for anything other than sleep, not with the possibility of finding him at any time.

She wears a blue kefta once more, the smile on her face impossibly bright when Genya comes with it to her room. But everything else is different from those happy days years ago, even the bun that the Tailor does with her hair shows her another person in the mirror. So different from the girl that had put on that kefta and felt that she would never wear something so beautiful.

“I can’t believe you are using that old hut as your classroom,” Genya says as she tucks her hair with pins. “You don’t have too, you know? Just because you are here to teach the same as her, it doesn’t mean you have to become some children's nightmare teacher.”

“Do you think I would be a nightmare teacher?” Alina frowns and turns around to her friend. She has never been the closest to children, but she would never beat them like Baghra did with them.

Genya chuckles, rolling Alina’s dark curls in her fingers, “I think you will be the teacher that looks scary and then it turns out to be a softie that everybody loves.”

Alina is not sure about her friend’s statement when she has her first students, small children, of around five to seven years old. An Inferni and a Fabrikator, she remembers her theory, the one she studied as a student and the one she looked up again when she returned. She sits the Inferni girl with her in front of a small candle and tells her to concentrate, to feel the pressure of it in the air because everything is connected in the Small Science.

“We don’t conjure from nothing,” she finds herself saying to the young Fabrikator, as the boy tries to move a coin in front of him. Her mouth closes as soon as they come out and Alina shakes her head. No, she won’t let him after her.

As her work goes on that week, so do her plans. From the hut, she sees the Queen walking through the gardens at least once a day. She wants to save the Queen, but nothing can be done if she just approaches her as a stranger with a warning, she needs to give an incentive. And as she trains one the younger Squallers outside the six day since her arrival, Alina sees clearly what that will be.

“Mama!” the Princess shouts, running in front of her mother as the Queen walks around in the palace’s gardens. This time Alina walks to the girl, giving her a smile.

“How are you today, little one?” she says with the sweetest voice, the little girl cocks her head, looking at Alina as if she were something that just popped in front of her out of thin air.

“Anninka Glazkova,” the Queen says placidly, taking her daughter’s hand. “I see you already have your pupils.”

Alina smiles, her gaze back to Natalia trying to blow the dummy she had put in front of her. “They are progressing. Good pupils, the ones that have blocks are tougher ones, but I know how that feels so I don’t pressure them that much.”

“I am sure you don’t.”

“What about the Princess?” Alina says, forcing herself to keep her eyes on the Queen’s, liars are most likely to avoid eyes, she remembers Feydor telling her. “Has she shown any sign of power?”

“Well, she—”

“Papa!” the Princess says and let’s go of her mother’s hand, making both Alina and the Queen turn around. A chill goes all over her body, as she finds herself face to face with the Darkling once again.

Baghra:

         I know you said that I shouldn’t reply, but you don’t have to write, just listen to whoever is reading this to you. If you don’t want to help me, at least tell me what happened all these years I was away. Tell me, you knew your granddaughter is an amplifier? Does he plan to do something with her too?

I have no one else to talk to, I have Genya but... I know she will never be entirely honest with me. Even without the geographic gap between us, she is first the King’s Shadow and my friend second.

He came back to the Little Palace today and... I don’t know why I still react to him like he was anything but a monster. He is really a good liar, as you said; I couldn’t stand watching them there, his pretended care for them.

Tell me what happened to you, how did he get to blind you? Was it after you warned the Queen about him or after I left?

Alina Starkova.

Chapter Text

Alina turns in her bed, the letter to Baghra resting over her bed table and the encounter that happened in the morning playing on her mind again and again. The little princess ran to the Darkling’s arms, which, even after all those years looks exactly the same age as that day in the tent, the day Alina nearly became his weapon. Though now his face is crossed across by three large scars, a gift from the volcra for sure. And even with the Queen close enough to see her expression; Alina couldn’t repress a smile creeping on her lips at seeing the claw marks on his beautiful face.

And yet the smile had died when he had gathered his daughter in his arms, smiling, probably not even seeing Alina at first, and the little girl threw her arms around his neck. If the picture hadn’t been so bizarre, Alina would have laughed at the sheer absurdity of it.

The Queen had paid no mind to Alina taking her steps back, she had walked to the Darkling, who lifted her hand with his free arm and kissed it.

“We have a new teacher, Your Majesty,” she said, turning around to Alina. “This is Anninka Glazkova, Evgenia Safina brought her for our Odarennye.”

“Yes, Genya told me about it,” the Darkling said but Alina kept her head down, every muscle of her body screaming that she mustn’t look at him. If she did, she would scream, charging him as a deadly living star. But the other Sun Summoner and the child were there and winning the Queen’s trust would be impossible if she attacked her husband, even if he was a monster.

“I am sorry, Your Majesties, but I have to go back to my student,” she had said, still not lifting her head and then jogged back to the hut, where Natalia waited for her, a toothy grin in her face as she summoned a blast of wind on her face.

He keeps them very tight to his side, Alina sighs and turns in the bed again, remembering the way he had behaved with the woman and the child. Of course, he does that, isn’t that his game, to keep them happy and biding? They must be easy to control like that, all what he plans to do Saints know what with their powers. But if Fjerda is threatening war again...

I need to act quickly, she grips the fabric of her pillow, and she needs to know the truth before something happens.

Baghra doesn’t reply to her letter, but Alina can barely think about it, her students keep blissfully busy. And it’s strangely comforting to see them arrive every day to the hut, waiting to unlock their summoning. It's something she had never had the luck to have: living as an Odarennyj, living with the sun of her palms shining from a short age. Even with the reason why she came back to the Little Palace and the fact she has lost Mal, she can’t help but feel a small twinge of happiness every time a new student unlocks their powers.

She has changed too though, that something she notices one day as she prepares herself for her day. Her features are older, there is no doubt it even with the Darkling’s words about her supposed long life. Even now, using her powers to show her students, she still doesn’t use them as much as when she was training, and there is paleness and some circles under her eyes that seem to never go no matter how powerful she has become. Even her clothes, her dark blue kefta, are longer and simpler than the one she had worn as a student.

“Anninka Glazkeva,” a voice calls her from the door and she turns around to see a servant, “the Queen has sent an invitation for you to come to tea today.”

Alina blinks at her, she has done everything to avoid the Darkling these past week, but she has greeted the Queen often enough, asking her how the Princess fares every now and then and trying to be as friendly as she can be without bursting every single truth she knows and risking to be called mad or worse, charged of treason. Have efforts worked that fast? Has the Queen actually decided to engage with her as more than a mere teacher?

“Of course,” she says with a quick smile, “I’ll be delighted.”

Once her last student for the afternoon goes, Genya comes to pick her up and escort her to the Queen’s quarters. It’s quite the irony that despite the near month here, Alina has seen little of her friend, except for the two times that the Tailor invited her to dinner with her family. Lately, Genya seems to be busier than ever, often going around packing and travelling. The King’s Shadow, the children whisper about her and Alina feels a jolt of disgust. Why is Genya still tied to him? Why can’t she be free from a King after being a slave to another for so long?

“Anninka Victorovna,” the Queen greets her after Genya announces her and gives her a small wink, bowing and closing the doors behind her. The Queen is alone, though she knows there are two Heartrenders waiting outside as well as a Shu warrior woman. Unlike the first time they met, Gerel Kir-Taban looks every bit of a Shu Princess today, even though her beautiful dress is still black.

“Your Majesty,” she makes a small courtesy, the Queen gestures a sit in front of her.

“I wanted to get the time to talk to you one of these days,” she says, taking the porcelain kettle, “Evgenia Safina has told me that you are going well with the students, but I also caught a hearsay around when I went to see them myself. So, if you can tell me...” A delicate teacup is placed in front of Alina. “Do you have any problems summoning, Anninka Victorovna?”

“What?” Alina mumbles like an idiot but the Queen just arches a thin eyebrow.

“Some of the students told me that they didn’t know what your power was and I found that strange, since you are required to teach them how to use their powers. One would believe you would show it.”

Something actually lights inside Alina with those words... Rage? Embarrassment? Probably both at the same time. Had this been his idea? Using the Queen to reprimand her on the lack of use of her powers? Will he come from that door right now, telling her that she was destined for more and now she is wasting her gifts? Will he gloat that now he has a powerful summoner in his hands and there is nothing that Alina can do to save her? What is this horrible game?

“I’m merely worried, you see,” the Queen says, snapping her out of raging thoughts. “Before I arrived here I had denied my power my entire life and that nearly killed me. Since you are too a Sun Summoner, I have just been thinking... that this might be something that happens to the likes of us and I wanted to help you.”

Shame washes over her, along with warmth when she lifts her eyes from the teacup to the Queen’s face. Alina can’t decipher her expression – it is neither warm nor cold – but her mind can’t neither think how she would seek ill on her. After all, the Queen is the one in the top of the world and Alina is just one teacher.

Unless the Darkling has poisoned her against me, she tries to not grimace in front of the young woman. But what would he win with that? I am the only other Sun Summoner in the world as far as they know and she is probably better happy, battling me would mean that I could tell her what I know.

“You are very kind,” Alina says truthfully, “but I am just... I have been used to a quiet life these years. I just don’t use my summoning regularly because I was always doing other things occupying my mind.”

The Queen tilts her head, her eyes narrowing for a moment until a small smile appears. “If you say so, then, but I want us to be friends anyway. Evgenia told me that you are half-Shu but you have never been in the country itself and you are the only other Sun Summoner I know. Must be some cosmic irony that we come from a place that despises Odarennye .”

There is a sudden chill in her tone, but Alina shakes her head but it’s grateful for the change of topic. “My mother was Shu, but I grew up in an orphanage, so I had little memories of her.”

“Oh,” the Queen says, taking a sip of her tea. “That’s curious; there was another Sun Summoner that grew up in Ravka some years ago. I am sure you must have heard of her, the little saint that was killed by a West Ravkan agent.

Is that what he told everybody? That I died that way? Alina clenches her teeth, holding her tea with both hands, warming them. “I’m sure she wasn't half as charming as the Queen.”

The young woman scoffs at her with a self-despicable laugh, then she starts talking about Shu Han, about the red temples and Ahmrat Jen, about how there is never winter and how the Ravkan climate hit her when she first arrived.

“I miss the summers,” she says with a small smile, “I don’t miss being scared of being cut open if I ever used my light, though. Odarennye are not lucky in Shu Han, few survive. Even now that we have taken so many to sanctuary here... It is not a life I wish for anyone. And I was luckier than many.”

Did you choose this life, though? Alina thinks, pity running through her. Maybe leaving a dangerous place is why you are content with living with a monster now.

She had thought the Queen to be a lot more unreachable than she seems, she had imagined her to be deceived by the Darkling, but also sure of her place, proud, even if the power she thinks she wills is still in the hands of Black Heretic. But no, the Queen wants to know Alina, she knows they are alike, even if she still doesn’t know to what extent.

I’ll save her, Alina vows yet again, with more warmth in her heart than desperation. I’ll get her to know the truth and we’ll see what kind of life she will choose when she is able to.

Dear Baghra;

                 I am starting to wonder if you just didn’t bother to have this read to you, or you just don’t care, but the truth is that I care if you’re dead or alive, so please reply to this letter, even if it is with an insult. I don’t want to think that it might have been intercepted by the Darkling.

I think I have made progress on the Queen, soon she will know the truth. I don’t think that we have a lot of time to waste like the six months when I first arrived at the Little Palace. Fjerda, they say, will attack at any moment, their King says it’s an affront to their god that a witch sits on the throne. I can’t believe I agree with a Fjerdan for the first time in my life, the fact is this monster... This eternal monster that will never die rules Ravka... The fact that he will probably rule it forever and now that he has someone like me, he might extend it to the world... The thought is terrifying, Baghra.

Please reply, at least to know you are with me in this, just like you were to save me all those years ago.

Alina Starkova.

PS: I never asked you but... Where were you going to take me when you told me to wait in that food storage that day?

That letter also goes unanswered and the wait turns into uneasiness. Suddenly, the memories of her letters to Mal being held by the Darkling come to her mind and she chastises herself for her own naivety. Her last letters might not even have gotten to Baghra at all; maybe the Darkling just let the first pass to see his mother’s reply...

But if it is like that, what is he waiting for? Alina paces in the hut, holding a shawl over her shoulders. Lately she has been feeling the cold more than usual, too used to Novyi Zem and its warmth. He is waiting for me to fail or for Baghra to come back? Is she even alive?

Walking out of the hood, Alina takes a deep breath, she has to pull herself together and plan something. That night when she escaped, Baghra had used a tunnel to the war room, hadn’t she?

Her feet take her to the stables as she tries to remember the path to that food storage that she had foolishly ignored and then she turns to the right.

... And finds nothing but an empty room, all the things Baghra had once shown here are gone: the old painting, the furniture, the books. Had the Darkling made everything disappear so he didn’t commit the same mistake with the Princess? Had he realised that Baghra convinced Alina with all the evidence of that room?

She sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose, so it will be more difficult to prove what he is, who is, now. How can she now prove to the Queen that the man she married is a monster? A creature that has violated every law the Small Science has to take power for his own gains, to take their power for his own gains.

Baghra took me from the war room, her feet moving on her own through the stairs and hallways until she gets to a door, if there is any passage close to the Queen’s quarters...

The end of her way makes her nearly trip against a door, she leans down close to the small light that comes from the borders of the door; her eye catches the light and the table of the war room; the Darkling stands in front of it, serious face, out of his characteristic black kefta and strangely on a white shirt.

... And Alina’s treacherous heart jumps, her mind going to the only time she had seen him like that, to that night when she battled between her powers and her need for Mal in her life. He had seemed so vulnerable back then, so wounded by the war that had kept their country trapped for so long.

It had been a lie, his tears, his pain, all that had been a lie.

“Overseen the plans or brooding?” A voice says, and both Alina and the Darkling jump, she sees the Queen through the door span, already dressed in nightclothes and with her hair half down, the Darkling turns to her and then to the maps.

“I was just verifying we sent all the necessary letters,” he says as the Queen lays her face on his arm and smiles. “Are you sure about this? We can leave it for another month.”

“I don’t think Fjerda would wait another month,” she says and Alina squints her eyes to see her face, but the Darkling turning around blocks her view. “I have trained well enough and there are no volcra. Moving it won’t be an issue if that scares them enough to stop their attack.”

“I can try do this alone, you know,” the Darkling steps away from his wife, walking around the table, “if I could get rid of the volcra maybe I can move the Fold from the outside—”

“Absolutely not,” the Queen cuts him harshly and Alina has never loved her more, a chill going down her spine at the thought of the Darkling discovering new ways of using the Fold. How far can his lust of power—? “I won’t let you put yourself at risk.”

What? Alina covers her own mouth to stop the exclamation from leaving her lips.

“Gerel...” the Darkling starts and she wants to scream her name too. Does the Queen not see the real danger here? How can she agree with using the Fold, the very thing that killed so many people?

“No, Aleksandr,” the Queen snaps. “That you were able to use merzorts to destroy the volcra doesn’t mean it won’t kill you this time.”

The Darkling sighs, walking towards her and placing his hands on her shoulders, she doesn’t push him away, but neither changes her firm expression. Alina frowns, maybe she is appealing to him like that because she knows about lust for power. Maybe the Darkling, so used to lying and manipulating naive girls, is finding himself played by one. It would make sense; the Queen was forced to marry him because of a political arrangement.

This must be her way to survive, Alina’s heart troubles with more pity for the poor girl as she leans to the keyhole again. The image makes her stomach twist: the Darkling holds the Queen in his arms, her face buried in his chest and both their hands gripping the other’s clothes tightly.

“... telling me we got in all that trouble to make me powerful just for me to come back home alone and put our daughter in a throne? Sasha, for the Pokinutye I am still the Princess of Shu Han more than the Queen of Ravka.”

“You are exaggerating,” he says and sighs “and I didn’t help you to get powerful because of the Fold, you know that. I just don’t want to paint a target on your back by taking you so close to the Fjerdans. ”

“Well, their oh so noble King wants to bring down the Witch King’s rule that would include me and our daughter and if something happens to you, they will just take Shura from me and send me back to Shu Han before he even strikes. I am no miracle for them, Sasha, just another Odarennyj, you know that.”

The Darkling doesn’t say anything but Alina feels a jolt of shameful envy at the Queen’s words. She is a Sun Summoner, but unlike Alina, she doesn’t have people claiming that she will be a saint. What a relief must that be, what a fortune.

No, she bites her lips, closing her eyes tightly, don’t be like that. She is married to him; she has her own curse here.

“Promise me you won’t use it unless I completely fail,” the Queen’s hands grip the fabric of his shirt. “Promise me, Sasha.”

Alina doesn’t stay to hear his reply, whatever he says, it will be a lie. She storms out the tunnels, her mind raging more than ever. The Fold, they will expand the Fold to Fjerda, how come Genya hadn’t told her anything? How can the Queen be so stupid to believe she can control that abomination, that the Darkling will let her move her?

He either has her completely trapped inside his lies or she believes herself too good for her own, Alina shakes her head as she closes the door of her room, resting her back on it. It’s a trick, it is all a trick and she is falling for it like an idiot.

Was this how she had looked in Baghra’s eyes all those years ago? Stupid, naive girl, dreaming about a future with the Darkling, thinking that she was helping him with his long life mission of destroying the Shadow Fold; now a different tune but a lie all the same.

She asks for an audience with the Queen at first light.

Chapter Text

Alina closes sighs as Genya tailors the dark circles under her eyes, the Queen had answered her request after a day, with her friend coming to tell her that she would have tea with her again. Today she will tell her, she has to try, before it is too late.

“Have you been well?” she stares at her friend and Genya raises an eyebrow and she promptly asks. “You haven’t been here lately.”

“I wasn’t sent for long this time,” Genya says, quick fingers moving from her kit to Alina’s face. “I might be done with travelling for a time; one of my Tailors is fit enough to work now. I told the King he will be fine.”

“He shouldn’t be asking this of you,” Alina clenches her teeth, the words coming out against her will. “After everything you have been through—”

“I’m sure you would understand that when there are few of your kind, your precedence is indispensable, Alina,” Genya’s words bite her as she finishes her work and closes her kit. “During one of my missions to Fjerda, we were allowed to smuggle two Tailors from there, one of them is my most talented apprentice, but I have yet not the heart to ask her to take a job like this, not after what she went through,” her hand lift Alina’s chin. “I told you before that I am doing this for our people. Nobody is forcing me, Alina.”

But they order you, Alina bites the inside of her cheek to keep quiet, where they order you go, even if it can cost your life.

All of them, in this palace, in the Second Army, they are all pawns of the Darkling’s ambition, to his need to crave more power and more war. And all of them seem to cope with his lies the same way: adding a righteous cause. Genya became the spy that won him the Lanstov’s fall; the Queen will paint herself as the saviour that tamed the Witch King to her will. David with his inventions, Ivan following his master like a good killer dog.

Alina pities them, all of them, her heart arches for any of her former friends and that poor girl. Will they ever see what real freedom is?

“You have made quite the accountancy with the Queen, I didn’t know you had that in you,” Genya comments as she fixes the mess Alina did with her own braids. “Do you have a lot in common besides your power or—?”

“Will you be there when they expand the Fold, Genya?” The Tailor’s hands stop in her hair but Alina tries to keep her tone neutral.

“I suppose I will, David is still the Second Army’s best Fabrikator and my position in this court requires me to be there.”

“I see,” Alina fists the folds of her kefta, she has one more reason to stop the Darkling using that abomination again.

The Queen waits for her in gardens close to the lake, she is again dressed in Shu traditional clothes but her hair is up in a simpler way. The Queen welcomes them with her usual pleasant tone as they do their bows.

“You can stay with us for the tea, Evgenia Vasilievna,” she says and turns to Alina, “unless what your friend is about to tell me is private? I didn’t bring all my ladies for that.”

Alina turns to Genya, she had said she already knows about the Darkling’s secret, so maybe she will be better to confirm whether the Queen were to deny it. She won’t deny the girl the truth if she orders her, not if she truly cares about her.

“Yes,” she says, forcing a smile, “yes, you should stay, Genya.”

Alina takes a deep breath before sitting down, Genya beside her, smiling softly to the Queen.

“Your Majesty,” she starts, slowly, softly, “you know I am Ravkan and that I escaped to Novyi Zem before the D-- ... Before the King took the throne.”

Genya turns her face to her, frowning, but Alina continues, her hands twisting on each other and her collarbone itching as if the collar were sticking out from it again.

“I grew up close to the border with Shu Han and I lost my parents to the Fold, I lost friends while crossing it, I know there are no volcra now, but you can’t imagine how horrible it was to be inside it,” her voice breaks. “That’s why I am asking you, begging you, to not expand the Fold. I have heard—I have heard from my students that you intent to use it on Fjerda and—”

“Anninka!” Genya hisses her fake name and looks at the Queen. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty, she has been away too long, she doesn’t understand—”

“I understand that the Darkling wants your help to use the Fold as a weapon,” Alina snaps, ignoring her friend and standing up, her eyes on the Queen. “You can’t do it; you don’t know what he really plans to do with it.”

“I have a good idea what it will be, it was my idea,” the Queen crooks an eyebrow, but she could have slapped Alina and her placid words would have struck less. “We have evacuated the towns around the border with Fjerda and the expansion will begin in Ulensk, not Kribirsk. There is nothing to fear—”

“You can’t be so naive!” Alina snaps. “Nothing about this comes from you, that is just what he wants you to believe! You’re a pawn in his game of power, a source of sunlight he can use to move his abomination around. He—”

“Alina!” Genya shouts, apparently forgetting about her fake identity.

“He is the Black Heretic,” Alina hisses, stepping closer to the Queen, her blood boiling with rage, with pain, with frustration. “He might have shown himself like a kind, even loving man to you and your child, but that’s not who is. He is a monster and he cares about nothing but power.”

There is a short silence that seems only broken by the beating of her own heart, she can almost hear it battling against the cage of her ribs. The Queen’s face has gone from soft pleasantness to stony coldness, her eyes drilling Alina as she rises from her chair.

“Please,” Alina says, “I know this must be difficult for you, that you might think you love him, but he will not stop until he has everything. He doesn’t want a Queen of you, he wants a weapon, he will put an amplifier on you and—”

“An amplifier,” the Queen cuts her softly, taking her hand to her chest, “Like this one?”

She pulls the fold of her dress down, a trail of scales marks her collarbone, Alina opens her mouth but no words come.

“Evgenia Vasilievna, you brought this woman here,” the Queen looks at Genya. “Did you know she would plan to meet me to talk of treason? Or has she been playing a charade with you too?”

“Your Majesty, I swear I thought—”

“She has nothing to do with this and the Darkling is the only one lying,” Alina puts herself in front of her friend. “You have to see this, only you can—”

“Can what, Alina Starkova?” Gerel Kir-Taban’s voice comes sharp and her breath catches in her throat. “Oh, yes, I know who you are. We are on the eve of an even longer war with Fjerda, maybe a civil war, if their attacks on the borders continue. And you are asking me to leave a plan we’ve been planning for months because of a personal beef you have with my husband?”

“This is not about me!” Alina cries, desperate. “I’m trying to save you; I am trying to save Ravka—”

“How?” The Queen asks, her hands on her hips. “Will we go to the borders and ask the Fjerdans nicely to stop riding pokinutye villages and blame our kind? Will you ask them to stop hanging children’s burnt bodies in the churches asking them to take their witch king down if they want to keep living? Will you tell the Fjerdan King to stop his cause against my family and the Odarennye?”

A chill goes down Alina’s spine; the Fjerdans are killing their own kind just to get back to the Odarennye? She didn’t know that, she didn’t...

“You keep talking about the Fold about how it affected you, you cast me as a victim in your little play of power with Aleksandr as your villain,” the Queen continues and scoffs. “Forgive me but this is quite very much about you, Sankta Alina.”

“I never wanted that title,” Alina hisses, “I never asked to be the Sun Summoner or anything that happened since the cursed moment I met the Darkling. I came here because I wanted to help you, because I wanted to save you from being his slave, but it seems that you are happy with being a pawn!”

She regrets the words in the moment they come out, too dangerous, like she has forgotten for a moment that she is in front of the Queen of Ravka and in front of her was just that younger, stupider Alina, cladded in a black kefta all happy to be in the Darkling’s arm.

The Queen remains stone-faced, but Alina can see her fists closed and the faint light shining through her skin, then she arches an eyebrow and tilts her head. “Are you done?”

“Your Majesty, I swear I didn’t—”

“Quiet,” the Queen snaps at Genya. “I’ll deal with you later. And you,” her eyes pierce into Alina, “whatever past or present quarrel do you have with the King, I don’t care. You know nothing about the situation in this country. And if you ever talk to me like that again, I will make sure the sentence for your treason carries out myself. Ask your beloved mentor, Baghra Morozova, what happened to her the last time she crossed me.”

“I won’t let you expand the Fold,” Alina hisses, pulling her arm away when Genya starts to force her to walk. “I don’t care if you think this will win you the war, I won’t let you.”

The Queen’s dark eyes go on and down her and her lips rise in a crooked smile. “Oh, won’t you? Who would have thought that a Sun Summoner would be so scared of the dark?”

The first thing that makes her react after Genya drags her away is the wall crashing against her back.

“What in all Saints was that?” Genya’s face is inches of hers, her blue eyes burning. “What were you trying to do there?”

“I was trying to make her see reason!”

“By doing what, calling her a slave?” The Tailor’s face is flushing and tears gather in the corner of her eyes. “Do you know Odarennye are sold as slaves in Kerch, Alina? What’s next, do you think having a bloody amplifier is the same as what the King did to me?!”

“You’re talking as if what the King did to you wasn’t the Darkling’s fault!” Alina shouts, snapping her hands away. “You’re still his pawn after all of that—

The slap she doesn’t expect, not from Genya, she would never expect something like that from her. Not the burning hate in her eyes and she corners her again.

“Shut up,” she hisses, the tears falling down her face. “Shut up. I stayed because I wanted my revenge and I had it. Would you have given me that, Alina? Doing what, asking the King nicely to not rape me? Do you think that destroying the bloody Fold would have done anything for our kind except making you a bloody saint?”

“The Fold is one of the reasons why they despise our kind,” Alina cries, tears falling down her own face. “Don’t you understand? He is painting himself as a hero for something he did; they hate us because of him, because of his abomination—”

“Grow up!” Genya snaps. “This has been like this since before the Fold was created, since before he was even born. We have a place now, we can hold property, and we have peace with at least one of the bloody counties that has been murdering our kind for centuries. We would have never gotten that if one of Lanstov’s brats would have taken the throne.”

“So you changed the Lanstov’s tyranny for the Darkling’s?” Nausea creeps on her stomach, she should have known, she should have known in the moment that she discovered that her letters had never been sent to Mal. “All these years, all your letters, was I ever your friend, Genya?”

The Tailor’s beautiful face goes as stony as the Queen’s was and Alina knows she has lost her.

“He is no more tyrant than any other King, certainly not the fucking monster that was here before,” Genya whispers and every word is stab into her heart. “He is not the one burning children in the borders and hanging them off the churches’ walls so the people might come and burn us, Alina. Do you think the Fold was awful? Go to the bloody Ice Court; go to one of the bloody Shu labs, the Queen herself lost her father to them. Try to look at the faces of the Odarennye children that are abandoned because they have no means of controlling their powers and their parents just stupidly think that their powers can go like flu and claim they are dangerous. You have been an Odarennaja all your life, but I can see you’ll never know what it is to live like one. That you’ve never wanted to.”

A sob escapes from Alina‘s mouth as she opens her mouth, choking the words. She doesn’t even know why she is crying anymore. Maybe is pain for every word that Genya says, because some of them might be true, but also she knows that it’s just the Darkling talking through her, making her believe they are doing a righteous cause, scaring her with tales of terror even if the Grisha still live safe in the Little Palace.

“I should have never brought you back here,” Genya whispers and leaves her alone as she slides down to the floor, sobbing, watching her friend scarlet disappear from her life one last time.

Baghra:

          I don’t even know why I am writing to you, since you never cared for a reply after that last one. But this is probably the last letter I will ever write and I have no one that would read it. Mal is dead. Genya has chosen the Darkling over me. I have nothing to lose; I am completely and utterly alone.

So, that’s why, even if this letter doesn’t reach you, I have to write it, because tomorrow I will try to take my last stand against the Darkling. I will do what I should have done years ago: I will make sure the Fold is not used again, whatever it takes.

I don’t hope anyone remembers me; I just want you to know there was one person that, like you, was able to see through the Darkling’s lies. And that person thanks you for the years she got with her husband in peace, for her freedom.

Farewell,

Alina Starkova.

The fire cracks inside the hearth of the hut as Alina folds the letter. For a moment, the urge of tossing it overwhelms her, but then she just shakes her head and puts it in her pocket. She will find someone that can take it to Tsibeya when she is out of the palace.

She ties her cloak and her bag but doesn’t get up off the chair, looking at the provisions she stole from the food store. They would only last a few days, but she needs only enough to get Kribisk and enter the Fold and maybe... Maybe if everything goes well, she will go to West R— to Novoravka, the Prince doesn’t like the Darkling, she might have refuge there.

Or I might die trying to bring down the Fold, or I might fail to even do a single hole on it. What will she do if even with the amplifier it doesn’t go down?

You know what to do, her mind’s voice echoes deep as Baghra’s voice. The Darkling and the Queen are the only ones who can expand it.

Alina covers her face with her hands, how could she even get close to them? Even if she gets to Ulensk before they do, even if she gets someone that can use a skiff, even if she were to sneak in to surprise them... Would she even be able to do it, to leave that little girl without her parents?

He left me without my parents first; she swallows back the knot in her throat. I would be saving generations from tyranny. And Genya... Genya surely would take care of that girl.

“No,” the words come out loud, “no, it won’t get to that.”

She stands up and grabs her bag, but just when she starts taking the first step outside the hut someone else’s makes her stop and summon a sphere of light out of instinct.

The Darkling, General Kirigan, the King of Ravka. The bloody, damned Black Heretic steps into the hut and impassive expression on his scarred face. Alina takes a step back.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice comes out as it has always had with him, snappy loud enough to echo inside the place.

“I thought it was time that we talked,” he says, slowly stepping into the hut and making her step back in. Why is she stepping back in? “And I should ask you the same thing: Why are you here, Alina Starkova?”

Alina bites the inside of her cheek, she could kill him now, try to use the Cut, but surely Ivan and Fedyor are close, she wouldn’t even be able to go even one mile without the Heartrenders making finding their lives’ mission. And even if she can, there is Queen and the Fold wouldn’t disappear without Alina now.

“Genya wanted me to come,” she says finally and the Darkling scoffs.

“Yes, she is regretting that as I can see.”

“I am sure you are too,” Alina spits, lifting her chin and taking a step forward. “I was right about your lies, you found a new puppet and fed her with better lies so she wouldn't leave you, didn’t you? Are you enjoying it? Having the power of a Sun Summoner in your hands? Did you get her pregnant just so you could have a spare in case she died?” She takes another step forward enough look directly into his black eyes.

The Darkling’s cold expression doesn’t change, even though she can see his jaw tensing at his words. He doesn’t move, doesn’t try to attack her, persuade her, or touch her, but Alina still has to retract her step when he takes one forward.

“You accepted to leave our people and live in obscurity with your pokinutyj, you could have made a war against me, Sankta Alina, you could have made yourself a queen if you wanted,” he arches an eyebrow. “But you never had the conviction to do anything except save yourself and that boy. I accepted that of you and left you alone. And yet you come here and threaten my family—”

“Your mother was your family!” Alina shouts, her voice breaking, she doesn’t want to hear about his fake love for them. “And yet you blinded her or let your Puppet Queen do it! She was right in trying to stop you and I was right when I said you won’t show her any mercy.”

The Darkling steps closer, towering over her, but unlike years ago when Alina had smiled, and taken his hand and kissed him, now she feels genuine fear.

“You never cared about me, didn’t you?” The question is stupid, at this point, when the answer is obvious. But she wants to bury this; she needs it, at least to calm that small voice in the back of her mind that once thought about a future with him. “I was a pawn and you got another, that was all.”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, staring at her up and down; as if trying to find some part of her that still carried that young girl he had told they would change the world together. Then, when he speaks, his voice is as silky as it is cold.

“I did have feelings for you,” he says and Alina nearly opens her mouth to scream liar, “and that was my mistake, to imagine a fake version of you. My own fake sense of belonging, I suppose, to think you could be anything but the person you trapped yourself into. But make no mistake, Alina, you were never a pawn. Pawns are soldiers and you never fought for Odarennye. Nor are you doing that now with your little crusade to tear the Fold down.”

Steps resound inside the hut and she sees two unmistakable red keftas, Alina tries to call the light instinctively, but her body hunches over itself as every muscle of it is torn by their very own blood.

“And make no mistake,” the Darkling says as Ivan and Fedyor enter the hut and place irons in her hands, “what happened to Baghra was mercy and so is this, I have killed people for less than you two have done.”

“Let— Let go of me!” Alina shrieks as the Heartrenders take her out of the hut, a trail of darkness following them outside.

“Send my regards to her,” he says as they drag her away, “I’m sure she’ll be happy of not having to write any letters.”

Alina screams, trashes until she feels her pulse lowering by Ivan’s mere stare, and she is unconscious before they even get to the carriage.

After that, everything is blurry, roads and roads, stopping on short occasions where she is allowed to eat unbound but any suspicious movement means being knocked out and spending nearly a day without food or her mood changing to complaisant out of the very beat of her heart. Ivan doesn’t speak, as expected, but Fedyor neither offers a single word of his characterised cheerfulness, indeed, his stare is even colder than his partner’s.

I should have killed him; the thought comes in after two days of travelling. I should have killed her on the third day. I should have never left Cofton; in the fourth day.

I shouldn’t have listened to Baghra.

No, she shakes the dizziness on the fifth day. No, that thought can't exist.

She can barely bear the cold when they arrive in Tsibeya, even if she is blissfully wrapped in a fur coat. They arrive at a big, old house, a woman with grey hair wearing a red kefta opens for them, smiling at her fellow Heartrenders but looking down at her when Ivan gives her paper.

“I see,” she says and takes Alina’s arm, “leave her to me then, I guess she will enjoy the company. Or they will kill each other, what comes first.”

The woman says her name is Natalia Borisovna Uvarovna and that her two brothers, Kazimir and Alexei are also Heartrenders, amplified, of the Darkling’s oldest and more favoured soldiers.

“And with that I mean,” she says as they climb the stairs to the first floor of the manor, “that if you try to summon in an offensive way, any of us can hear your heartbeat from the other side of the house. So, don’t try anything funny, you are here on pain of death, just like her.”

They stop in a dark hallway and she opens a door, giving Alina a small push to get inside, the heat that hits her is as comforting as it is suffocating and a shiver runs through her spine when the black figure in front of the hearth turns around. Her eyes don’t look at Alina, they don’t look at anyone, but a chuckle escapes from her thin lips.

“So, you are here, girl,” Baghra’s voice is the same deep, mocking bark. “Close the door, you will let the heat out.”