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There’s an itch.
Something is off. No matter how she tries to ignore it, something's not quite right.
It had been there, small but present, ever since she and Mal escaped. An urgent, uncomfortable sensation in her lower back, the base instinct to flee. Of course, it’s to be expected when the most powerful man in the world is probably hot on your tail, eager to reinstate you as his slave and proceed calmly onto world domination. But even in the furthest landmass from Ravka in the known world, she can still feel the phantom pain.
Mal had tried to reassure her that there was nothing to be afraid of - the best tracker to walk the world had completed his task to the nth degree. No one was coming for them, and if, Sankts forbid, there was, they would see them from miles away, the glittering harbour of Cofton framing a clear view of any approaching ships.
“We’ll do what we do best Alina. Book it into the wilderness and not look back,” he joked, and they both knew he would drop everything in a heartbeat, burning a path of scorched earth to cover their tracks for her in an instant.
The days are lucid, halfway between a trance and the final peaceful moments of a dream before one wakes up. Some evenings the warm glow of an outdoor firepit illuminates Mal’s straight jaw and the hollows of his neck just so, lending a painterly quality to his profile. She has to keep herself from staring too long or she’d blush. Fireflies mingle in the air around them, and people are drinking, talking, laughing all around. Their peace and ease must diffuse into her, and she swigs rum, lets Mal twirl her around until her cheeks are red.
Other evenings she doesn’t know what to do with herself. She ponders whether this is it. Could she live a quiet life in Cofton? In Novyi Zem? Would her and Mal ever be able to settle in one place again? Her time of being someone is over, gone, never again to return. And she wonders, for all her protestations, all her sheepishness, if she truly enjoyed being the Sun Summoner more than she might have let on. Being the darling of the Little Palace, the image of a cult of personality springing up all over the country. Something was given to her during her time as a Grisha. Something life changing yes, but also life affirming, and she wonders whether she can go on without it. Her power whispers to her, calls out and bubbles just under the surface. Not being able to use it - it makes her feel just as weak as the entwined antlers around her neck.
She thinks the snatching away of something that made her whole is even more devastating than never having it at all.
A small, terrifying part of her wonders whether she misses the chase, the hot blooded anxiety of the Darkling’s approach, the palpitations when he spoke. She pushes these thoughts down, they’re unhelpful, but she often feels a shiver upon seeing a flash of black, a scent of smoke.
Sometimes it’s worse than a shiver. She catches whispers in her nightmares, her eyes fill with smoke and shadow and she hears the unintelligible mutters, in that smooth tone she was once enchanted by.
Tonight, it starts off innocuous enough. She dreams she’s back in Baghra's hut, calling her power. The old woman is nowhere to be seen, but she wishes she was. If only she could see the luminous beams of light she’s emanating. Her entire body is rejuvenated, alive with warmth and electricity. She feels incredible - no, not just incredible, she feels all-powerful. She could do anything, take on anything like this.
She’s still basking when she sees them from the corner of her eye. Flecks at first, but spiralling into long, black twists of shadow. She falters, and they circle her, enveloping her in a cloud of pitch dark. The black twists tighten around her, squeezing the breath from her, the light finally ebbing until it peters out. Abstractions fly around her, and even with her eyes shut she can sense the rubbery flap of a Volcra’s wings. The dreaded creatures begin screeching, a cacophony that rises in tandem with the dark tendrils gripping her even harder, closing in until she can't breathe, feels the agony of a cracked rib. She’s struggling and twisting in the darkness's grasp for what feels like an eternity, until she opens her eyes and-
She wakes, soaked in sweat, staring at the filthy ceiling of the inn room. Mal is undisturbed, sound asleep beside her, his bare back rising and falling in an easy rhythm, fist loosely clasped into the sheet. He is much too broad to fit in the bed with her, and had to be practically threatened into getting in. He insisted on taking the floor, with only a threadbare blanket to accompany him. She had argued, and argued, and argued, until one day he caved, his back aching from the combination of physical work during the day and only a hard floor for comfort at night.
Even now he still tried to make himself as small as possible, putting her first even in his sleep, and Alina feels a rush of love for the fool.
She loves Mal. She hates the creature dressed as a man in that black kefta. Men like him - she no longer thought of him as a peer - were poisonous. The Darkling’s eyes lacked even a hint of the sincerity and charming naivete she had catalogued in Mal’s over the years. She glances again at his sleeping form, thinks about how much they’ve grown up. The boyish wonder and naivete may be stamped out, but there’s a calming certainty in knowing the kind, caring glint will never fade.
Men like the Darkling needed girls like her. Girls to fool, string along. Girls who no one would miss. Girls who would hang on the every word of someone who could show them a sliver of decency. Perhaps if she had been given a life of privilege, grown up in a world where love did not interfere with the acquisition of power, she would’ve seen through the horseshit. But he knew exactly how to play her, and her experiences, like a fine tuned lute.
She had thought she was infallible, able to see through smoke and mirrors. Thought that the amount of long and miserable winters she had seen could exempt her from girlish flights of fancy. She finds it hard to accept still, that she fell right into the trap, into his orbit like a wasp to rotten fruit.
Control was always his goal. “Love”, or the wooden and hollow imitation he had reeled her in with, could not stand in the way of his need to own her. Perhaps love and ownership were two sides of the same coin. Who knew if he could even tell the difference anymore.
Moonlight shines through the hole-filled, thin net curtain, casting a dotted pattern on the opposite wall. The air is cool, and the town is silent. She used to find the silence of her room in the Little Palace oppressive and uneasy. She was used to the snoring, heavy breathing, grunting, and general restlessness of other people - first in Keramzin, then later on in the stout canvas tents of the Ravkan First Army. This silence, however, is calming. A reminder that they are as safe as they can be. She lies against Mal’s back, his steady breaths grounding her. Whatever happens tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that, didn’t matter. If they were together, they’d fight to the end, Darkling or no Darkling.