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i.
The very first lesson she instills in her son is simple: Heed her words. Listen and obey. His life depends on it.
In the comfort of the little cabin, they begin another. He sits across from her, swathed in furs, keeping close to the fire. She studies him: the slump of his shoulders, the frown on his face—actions far too easy to read. He is tired. And annoyed. He looks every bit an eight-year-old boy if not for the silver fire shining in his eyes.
Expectant. Curious. Hungry.
But all too easy to read. She ought to smack him for wearing every little bit of emotion so brazenly on his face. Wearing his heart on his sleeve will get him nowhere fast.
She cups a hand to his cheek, brushes her thumb over the corners of his mouth, as if she can merely smooth away the frown that lingers there.
He looks more annoyed now, brows furrowing. “Madraya, what are you—?”
“Your face is an open book,” she says, giving a painful pinch of his cheeks. He yelps in pain, batting her hands away, but she continues, “You must never let your emotions show. To the world that spurns us, seeks to take from us, you must never show them your fear.” Or worse, she doesn’t add. Your love.
Not yet. She allows him this one last piece of a mother’s mercy. He is still a young boy, still enamored with the world, despite all it will take from him.
But I will be here. It’s the thought she carries with her as she tells her boy a familiar story, the story that started her on this path—a father who obsessed over knowledge, over the power it brought him, and a mother who feared the unknown, even when it appeared as her own child.
Especially when it appeared as her own child, thinks Baghra, tasting bitterness on her tongue. That is worse, isn’t it? To have the monstrous thing you fear wear human skin?
Such is her fate. Such is the fate of her son.
As her son nods off to sleep, she gently sweeps the hair from his face, tucks the furs around him a bit more tightly. He sleeps on, none the wiser.
She will teach him the way of the world. She will teach him the lesson her parents had so mercilessly taught her. And despite it all, she will be enough.
ii.
“Kill me.”
Try as he might to hide his flinch, his surprise gets the better of him, and he blinks back in stunned alarm. “Madraya?” he asks, sounding unsure.
“Are your ears too full of wax, boy?” Baghra spreads her arms, becoming a wider target. “I told you to kill me.”
He frowns. “I heard you,” he says sourly. “I thought you might be joking.”
“The joke here is me, for having raised a little fool,” chides Baghra. “You must not hesitate to strike. More than that, you must not hesitate to listen to me.”
“I know,” he says. “I know that, madraya, I just—”
When he starts folding in on himself, all it takes is a look from her and he snaps upright. “Speak clearly, boy,” she tells him. “I don’t remember teaching you to stutter.”
His eyes harden with conviction, and he squares his shoulders before he speaks. “You’re my mother,” he starts, trembling slightly, “why would I ever hurt you?”
“It doesn’t have to be me. You have years ahead of you. In those years, you’ll be forced to face worse, do worse.” She closes the distance between them, crouching in front of him and taking his chin in her hand. “The sooner you learn this lesson, the better: The heart has no place in the eternity we’ve been given. The heart aches, the heart grieves. It stands in the way of what must be done.”
“And what do I need to do?”
If she is a lesser woman, her heart might have broken at the terror in his words, but the years have hardened her. She has earned the lessons she teaches her son; if she has to shake his innocence, then so be it.
“You have no equal,” she tells him, voice firm. Her thumb rubs across the apple of his cheek. “You are destined to bow before nothing and no one. You will come to realize what I have: Love is a fickle thing, fragile and raw, and nothing compared to power. A day will come when you will cease relying on me, Aleksander.”
“I hope that day never comes,” he tells her, chin held high with conviction.
It will, she thinks, the words buried in the depths of her mind. It will.
Aloud, she says, “Now, do as I tell you.”
iii.
It’s too soon, she thinks, and it is an effort to hide the way she bristles at his tone, at the way her heart clenches when he speaks. Motherhood, it seems, has turned her into a fine hypocrite. It’s too soon for him to leave me.
“I think I’m old enough to travel alone,” he says, and he isn’t wrong. He is a young man now, looking less like her son and closer to a relative—a brother. It will not do.
Still, she presses, “You think? Or you know?”
A bare twitch of emotion, of annoyance, lights silver fire in those eyes. “I know,” he says coolly. “The distance will do us some good.”
She harrumphs. “Very well,” she amends. “Don’t come crying to me when your heart gets broken, boy.”
He barks out a laugh of cold amusement. “You taught me well,” he says. “I have no heart to break.”
She does not believe him. He hasn’t yet tasted the fullness of immortality—has barely tasted two decade’s worth of life, let alone a century. A part of him is desperate to win the people’s hearts, never mind her warnings of their treachery.
In the end, you will only have yourself. What will you do then, Aleksander?
Still, her parting words are: “Go ahead.” When she shrugs on her pack, she is no longer his mother but Yadra, a lone traveler who found her place in a Suli caravan, making coin by reading fortunes. “You know where to find me.”
iv.
He does not set out to find her. Even when she feels his heartbreak, hears whispers of its consequences in passing: shadows stretching farther than they should, plagues of darkness seizing daylight for hours at a time.
And yet, he still does not visit. Not for a long while, and not until well over a century has passed.
“I came at an opportune time,” he says when he comes to meet her at a northern town in Fjerda. “You need my help.”
“I need nothing from you.” She doesn’t bother masking her scowl as she rounds the dining table, pouring herself a glass of water. “I am pregnant, not helpless.”
“You need someone to look after you.”
“And who looked after me when I was pregnant with you?” She takes a seat then, puts a hand atop the swell of her belly, feeling the flow of power ebb and flow at her touch. “I have been through this before. I would have sent for you should I need your help,” she says, and narrows her eyes when she adds, “Perhaps it is you who needs my help.”
“Not help, but…” He smiles then, a familiar expression, cruel and beautiful—my smile, she realizes. “I am curious.”
Baghra snorts. “Of course you are.”
“And the father?”
“Does it matter?”
“I suppose it never does, when it comes to you.”
Is that a snipe? She doesn’t quite have it in her to chide him about it now. There are more important things.
Her silence lingers a beat longer before she decides to say, “We’ll see tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“It’s a full moon,” she replies, moving her hand to the bottom of her stomach, cradling its weight in her arm. Her gaze is fixed on the window of her little village home, to the deep blue of the True Sea, the waves that crash on the rocky shores of the seaside town. “I have a feeling.”
v.
Her back is to him, but she senses his approach anyway. She doesn’t bother turning around when she says, “And where have you been?” Try as she might to keep the snap from her voice, she is too irate from the toil of labor. The price to pay, she supposes, for the power she seeks.
“I have some arrangements I needed to see to,” he says, making his way to her place by the shore. “And besides”—he smiles again, a cruel cut of ice—“I thought you didn’t need my help.”
“Now is not the time to get smart with me, boy,” she chides, turning to point at the satchel behind her. “Fetch the bell in my bag—and don’t let it ring.”
He bristles at her tone but obeys nonetheless, eyes widening when he catches sight of the bundle in her arms. “A sildroher,” he says, gaze fixed on the tail flicking out of the swaddle of blankets. “Is that even—”
“She will be powerful,” says Baghra, before he can finish. “A sildroher who drew her first breath on land will be destined for great things.” She draws her child closer, whispering her next words so only she can hear. “Just not with me.”
Her son watches as she walks into the ocean and kneels into its waters, ringing the bell once, twice, and releasing its toll beneath the waves. Not a second later, her child’s father swims forth, his tail shining like a sickle moon, so unlike the full, freckled silver circle hanging overhead, pulling the tides of the sea. The sildroher she chose is handsome enough, powerful enough, but his seagreen eyes shine with resentment, perhaps a little disgust.
“The child will be spurned,” he tells her, his voice heavy with the drawl of the sea. “It is clear she is neither sildroher nor mortal.” He nearly chokes on the word, and at once, Baghra wonders how she finds herself in this predicament, siring a child for someone who spurned humans so.
Then again, she thinks, I am not just any human.
Instead, she gives the sildroher a bitter smile. “I am not entirely mortal,” she tells him, “but I don’t possess the power to give her legs.” She shows him her tail, which shines with the same silver glow of his own, and hands him the swaddle of cloth. And even if she did have legs, she adds silently, she will still be hated as I have.
His eyes flicker behind her. “And the boy?”
“My son,” she says. “Not quite mortal either.” She doesn’t glance back at him, only looks on at the sildroher before her. “Take her.”
She cannot bother to remember the sildroher’s name, nor does she care to. He spares her one last glance—mixed awe and remorse—before turning swiftly to the sea.
A beat of silence passes, filled only with the sound of crashing waves, before her son speaks:
“What exactly do you hope to accomplish with a daughter born of the sea?”
She shrugs. “Power is power,” she says. “In time, she will know this, too. Such is our nature.” At last, Baghra turns to him and adds, “She will return to the shore one day. When the time comes, tell her the truth. Let her decide, then.”
He raises a brow. “Is that an order?”
“Do as you wish,” she says brusquely. It’s what he always does, anyway.
vi.
He does not visit again until another century passes, until she hears rumors of such a deep and monstrous darkness running rampant across Ravka, cleaving the nation in two.
When he arrives, his face is sallow—not the vain man he has grown to be, but a boy who has exhausted himself, worn to the bone.
Baghra has never been one for religion, but the words escape before she knows it.
“All Saints,” she curses, her voice barely a breath. “What have you done?”
“What I had to.” He coughs then, and blood sprays from his mouth, staining the snow. “Madraya,” he says suddenly, a whisper of wind, a boy once more as fear shines in his sunken silver eyes—
And collapses.
vii.
She nurses him back to health, but when he wakes, there is something different in his eyes. Past the weariness, the exhaustion, a familiar expression shines.
Hunger.
“What on earth made you think you were beyond the consequences of merzost?” she chides, as soon as he is well. She holds a glass of water to his parched lips. “Please tell me you’ve given up this foolish pursuit.”
“I made a mistake,” he chokes out. “It simply means I need to know more before—”
“Before trying again?” Baghra shakes her head. “Is it not enough that you’ve plunged part of the world into your darkness? End this madness, before you—”
“Why are you trying to stop me? Is this not what you taught me to be? All the years of traveling, the lessons you said to heed. It amounts to this.” He holds a hand up, and a pool of inky blackness unlike anything Baghra can ever summon appears, filled with the echo of bleak nothing. “This power is my birthright,” he tells her, “and so is this world. Is this not what you raised me to be?”
You have no equal. You are destined to bow before nothing and no one.
She stares at him—in shock, in horror. The person before her wears the familiar face of the boy she raised, but he is a stranger now, inhabiting the body of her son.
What have I done?
viii.
Centuries pass, and he serves countless kings. He returns each time, and each time she returns to him, too. She stands idly by, uses her powers less and less. Her role is that of a teacher now—not that she minds.
Such is her fate, she supposes, to make amends by ushering the future Grisha.
A part of her wonders if she is searching for something—a search not unlike her son’s, only she means to look for someone to end his madness where she could not.
It is selfish, perhaps, but she still hopes that someday, the love of a mother might be enough.
viii.
Over the years, her search comes empty. His as well.
The Grisha nowadays are too stubborn, their books too limiting. If they cannot heed the reality of her lessons, what hope does she have of finding her answer?
She loosens her grip on that hope, reminds herself it is foolish. Has she not told her son the same?
Perhaps nothing will be enough after all.
ix.
The first time she hears of Ravka’s Sun Summoner, she sees the extent of her son’s—no, the Darkling’s—plan. He will surely make a weapon out of her.
“You will be her teacher,” he says curtly. “I will come by on occasion for updates on her progress.”
Baghra doesn’t give it a second thought. She has always known he would finish what he started when he created the Shadow Fold.
“I hope I’m not disappointed,” she says.
His back is turned to her, already halfway outside, but he pauses in the doorway. “My thoughts exactly,” he says, and without so much a glance over his shoulder, he closes the door behind him.
x.
The girl—Alina, as she continues to insist, though Baghra refuses to call her by name—has much potential, but it is all wasted. She cannot tell what it is exactly, but by the too-easy twist of her expression, Baghra knows how stubbornly the girl clings to a remnant of her past.
Still, she senses in her a hunger not unlike the Darkling’s. She wonders if she ought to teach her, warn her, now, before it is too late, before his ambition crumbles the ground beneath her feet.
xi.
“How are her lessons coming along?”
She snorts. “Having trouble shaking a little girl down for answers?” says Baghra. “Surely you’ve charmed her enough to have her trust by now. Or is she too stubborn to pour her heart out to you?”
He gives an icy smile, not answering, only grudgingly repeating, “How are her lessons coming along?”
“I’ve seen matchsticks make more light than she can.” Baghra gives a disappointing shake of her head. “That girl is as stubborn as a mule and twice as foolish. She keeps clinging to the past as desperately as you have. She can’t make any progress like this.”
A spark of feeling blinks in his eyes, brief as a strike of lightning. “Leave that to me.”
She has to restrain a snort. That is his answer to everything now, to leave everyone’s fate in his hands. The world is a grand game of chess laid out before him, and he moves each piece with the precision of someone who has already planned every step it takes to topple a king and reign victorious.
Or is it more accurate to say the world is wet clay before his sculptor’s hands, ready to be shaped and molded as he sees fit?
Baghra pushes the thought to the side and says to him, “In time, she will be enough.”
As the words slip from her mouth, she wonders how much she yearns to believe it. Is it wrong to hope, even now? Is it wrong to betray the ambition she had given her son?
He shakes his head. “No,” he says simply, and Baghra bristles. It almost sounds like he answers the questions plaguing her mind, but it is a far cry from the truth. Leaving as quickly as he came, he says, “It won’t be enough.”
“It never is.” By the time the words spill from her tongue, no one is around to hear. She stares at the door, almost as if she hopes he will still return.
It is every mother’s wish, she supposes, to see their son come home one day.
xii.
She realizes that she has grown fond of Alina, much to her own dismay. And more surprising than her fondness, Baghra finds herself warning the girl, albeit subtly.
Alina might be a naïve little thing, but she is smart. She understands more than she knows. Baghra is certain she will figure it out eventually.
“What is infinite?” she asks.
“The universe and the greed of men.” Alina grumbles her answer out with such vexation, Baghra can easily tell how she still does not heed its meaning. Greed has taken her son. Greed might very well take Alina, too, if she isn’t careful.
For her lack of understanding, Baghra gives a swat of her cane. “And you’d do well to remember that.”
xiii.
Baghra is making her rounds by the lake when he appears beside her, as swiftly and quietly as shadow.
“You’re fond of her,” he says, not quite accusing as he traces her gaze to the grounds across the lake, where a mousy girl clad in navy and gold is making her way to the library. “I never took you for the sort to have favorites.”
She snorts at that. “That girl is a far cry from my favor.”
“How are her lessons coming along?”
“About as well as the last time you asked,” she replies sourly. “She might have improved some, but she has a long way to go. Still, her potential is—” Boundless. “—there. It will take time, but she does learn quickly.” Baghra stops abruptly, levels her gaze at the Darkling. “Your plan is a fool’s errand,” she says, lowering her voice. “Even if it does work, she will resent you. She will rebel with every ounce of her being.”
“I know.” If she isn’t mistaken, Baghra swears she can hear some sympathy in his voice.
“But you still refuse to let her claim that amplifier for herself,” she says. Her tone holds no accusations, only understanding. “She trusts you, boy.”
“I know.”
“Why continue this ridiculous plan, then? Why chase after a legend?” she asks. “Why chain her power?”
“It has to be done,” says the Darkling. Any trace of the sympathy she might have heard is long gone now, replaced with his usual cold conviction. “I can’t risk everything on that trust. You taught me that.” He turns to look at her, but there is nothing accusing in his stare.
(Trust, he all but spits, near synonymous with love. And perhaps it is. Both bear similar dangers—a sword hanging overhead. Foreign as they might be to the infinite lives they’ve lived, she is familiar enough with the burden he carries now, enough that whatever remains of her heart aches ever so slightly.)
For a while, Baghra says nothing, and together, the two of them stand, suspended in silence.
He is about to leave. His back is turned to her, already halfway down the dirt path, when Baghra speaks at last. “She’s just like you,” she says. Just like you used to be. Try as she might, she cannot hide the sadness in her voice.
For once, he looks back. He manages, “I know.”
Despite the time they’ve spent together, the years and decades that blend into centuries, she cannot read the expression on his face. The realization makes her heart ache all the more. For all the times she claims to understand him, the boy before her, the Darkling, is a stranger.
Still, a tiny kernel of hope persists, even as he strides away. One day her son will return, and she will do whatever it takes.
It is the curse of a mother, she supposes, to hope, in spite of everything.