Chapter Text
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Alina can remember the day her life changed, before she was sent to the duke’s home at Keramzin, before Mal, and before she had begun her training as a cartographer in the First Army.
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Fire was the last thing to take her village, after the last scream faded to the sky, after the last raider abandoned the dead to rot, after a small girl had gone hoarse from crying for her Papa and Mama. The towers of smoke could likely have been seen for miles, and it had been a clear morning, but no one had come to stop the Fjerdan war party, and no one had saved her parents.
It would be two days before East Ravkan soldiers would discover her, face marked with tear tracks in soot, and hands black from digging through the char remnants of buildings for anything passable to eat.
They were roughly kind, giving her to the unit’s erstwhile cook to mind before their leader decided to have a hired cart take her to the duke’s home in Keramzin, where there were other refugee orphans also known to be welcome. In the meanwhile, the rest of the unit had stayed to bury the dead of her village in shallow graves with no markers. They bundled her in a filthy blanket on the back of a cart, with a moldy chunk of bread and half ration of water.
In time she would not recall her parents' faces, but this she will cast as an image in the stone of her heart: the grey smudge of smoke on the horizon, and olive coated otkazat’ya piling blackened corpses together. Turning from the last look of her home she will ever see, she shrugged further into the dirty blanket they had given her, huddled in the back of a horse cart, and vowed to herself, Never again . Chiseled in tears and cauterized in flame.
Never again to be helpless, hungry, or discarded.
In a few weeks she will have a new home, as much as one may call a collection of discarded younglings a home, and not long after she will meet a stout, curly haired boy who will help her to distance her heart from the trauma of that burnt village, and the site of unmarked graves.
But her promise had been cast in stone, and while she is no Durast to manipulate the earth, she will carry the weight of it with her as a reminder of that small girl, covered in ash and fingers blackened.
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The sun summoner's lips are still warm from kissing, the blue iris fragrance still fresh in her nose when her world spins on its axis for a third time.
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The large mirror in the war room creaked open, and the girl jumped to readiness, hands writhed in light in moments.
“Come with me,” Baghra commanded.
“Baghra? Why?” Alina questioned, dismissing the light orb she had called to defend herself in startlement.
“You need to leave this place before it's too late!”
“What-why?”
“I’m trying to save you from living the rest of your life as a slave.”
Alina found herself stumbling down stone steps, following Baghra behind the mirror from the general’s war room, through old storerooms thick with dust and pungent with mildew and must of things long forgotten. There was much history there, but the Little Palace was not that old, was it?
“We should go back and get Alek-General Kirigan, I’m sure he can help.”
The old woman slowed, profile turned back to the dumbstruck girl, voice low, “I’m trying to save you from Aleksander. He intends to expand the Fold and use it for a weapon.”
Alina scoffed, “but the Black Heretic created the Fold centuries ago, and it was a mistake. Are you sick with fever? He wanted me to train to get stronger so we can destroy it.”
“Did he? Or did he want you distracted-thinking of your future with him? Treasured sun summoner, savior of all Ravka. Until you too were too convinced of the story to question it.”
“No, no-”
“Child , Aleksander is the Black Heretic.”
The girl faced Baghra, shaking her head, “no, you’re lying. How could you know this?”
“Look at me Alina,” and the girl did, as the old woman had never used her name before in all the months of her gruff tutelage.
She watched, stunned, as shadows spun from around Baghra’s fingers, pulling the darkness down the hall to surround her and the teacher. The weft and cobwebs of ink nearly identical to... “You’re his mother ?” she realized, hand coming to cover her mouth. The crone nodded her affirmation, and Alina took a step back from that hard truth.
“This was hundreds of years ago, how is it possible?”
“He has lived through generations of kings, wars and gone through many names waiting for you. He will control the Fold, and it will be his unopposed weapon. No army or empire will threaten Ravka or his Grisha ever again.”
Still doubting, Alina shook her head, wanting to cover her ears and drown out the accusations. “He told me the Fold was a mistake-it wasn’t meant to happen...”
Baghra continued, heedless of the plea in her denials, “He wanted power to threaten our enemies, to protect the Grisha he had gathered and trained. He turned to merzost as an answer, and it claimed women, children, and men alike when it was unleashed. He sought the power, but did not anticipate the volcra.”
Another punch to the gut, and Alina’s forgotten dinner was replaced with swift nausea. “The volcra were people ?”
Baghra’s hard gaze was answer enough. She swept past the shocked girl to a stack of frames covered in cloth, taking a moment to select one. “Here, look.” She pulled a curtain from a large faded painting, holding the lantern aloft.
Alina stared at a portrait of the Darkling in a different uniform from a different time, eyes wide with unbelieving. The man’s chin was lifted in haughtiness, dark gaze fathomless as the void. Not ten minutes ago those eyes-if it were true-had looked at her with infatuation and not a small amount of lust. Could that have been faked? How masterful could endless time make someone at pretending? Was she stupid to be tricked so, or just young? So starved for affection and belonging in her life-that it had made her the perfect target?
“He has nearly found the stag, and he will use it to control you and make a weapon of the Fold,” Baghra continued, seeming not to care that the young sun summoner’s world had been shattered, again. She led them over to a door in a stone wall, turning with the lantern back to Alina.
“Where will I go?” she sputtered, mind still half in shock with revelation.
“Anywhere, and as far as you can. Out of Ravka you may be safe. But do not stop moving. You are strong enough to get through the Fold on your own at least. I thought I would have more time to train you.”
She was handed the lantern and rushed instructions. “Wait in the food storeroom, Grisha loyal to me will come retrieve you and take you out of the Little Palace.”
She is left alone in a stone hall with a lamp and her whirling thoughts.
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Alina takes a right at the fork, sharp smelling cheeses and a broad mix of spices rising to her nose. She fights the continued nausea, dismissing her light orb to take deep breaths in the pantry room. How much time did she have? How long until her absence was questioned? A bundle of clothes was swaddled in the corner, a pair of breeches with livery emblems embroidered at the waist and a young man's faded blue great coat. The suggestion is obvious-a disguise, and in the excitement of the winter fete she will be one more servant in the bustling turnout.
Her hands shook as she started to unfasten her black and gold kefta , the buttons small and frustratingly numerous. I wish Genya were here , she wishes, but-no. Was Genya her friend or just another pawn in this newly revealed scheme? Did she know? Or did she blindly follow as another ‘treasured’ Grisha, raised within the walls of the Little Palace?
She halted in her undressing, visions of smoke and ash in her mind. This will be the third time I am forced from my home . The first by Fjerdan raid, the second when she had saved Mal on the skiff unknowingly. She had gone to the First Army with him in the hopes she might not lose her closest friend. And she had lost him nonetheless, months of letters unanswered, invitations ignored.
But were all the months I spent here a lie?
Maybe, if Baghra was to be believed. But Alina considered herself Grisha now. Had asked Genya to heal the scar on her palm to prove to herself that this was the life she accepted as her future. If Mal was not replying to her letters anyway (and she could still recall the cajoling of Dubrov and Mikhail of his numerous exploits ), what would he even see in her now?
Here she had power, food in her belly and clean clothes. No cold war tents, threadbare blankets and weeks without a hint of hot water. If she had survived the initial crossing of the Fold, that had been her future, barring injury and wounded discharge.
And after? If she had lived through her conscription contract? A pat on the back and maybe enough money to buy a plot of land for a small farm. If not Mal as her girlhood dreams had pictured, perhaps an ordinary husband who would knock her up a few times then go and drink his profits away at the local pivnoy .
Never again, said the shining kernel of power in her. She was not a helpless child here, and her power was no lie. But she was tired of secrets, of being pulled whichever way by those thinking they were greater than her.
I will not be a puppet here any longer, and I will have the truth of it.
Half her mind paused one last time. What did she gain by leaving? If she fled now, the chance to master her gift further vanished. On the run she would have no one-and she knew that road well. A half trained Grisha alone was a dead Grisha outside the borders of Ravka and sometimes within. She could be murdered, sold, or eaten.
Alina thought further on Baghra’s rushed warning, eyeing the bundle of clothes left for her. And what did she risk in staying? If she revealed her knowledge, and the Darkling still decided to deal with her as a pawn? If the embraces, heated looks, and the way he had smiled against her mouth all been an elaborate fabrication, what then?
She had kissed him first, that morning in his chamber. That may have never come to pass otherwise, and she would have been just another treasured pet of the Darkling, as Genya and once Zoya seemed to have been.
(“People don’t often surprise me, Miss Starkov.”)
Then I walked into that path with my eyes open, her heart answered.
Ana Kuya had always called her defiant and troublesome.
The sunlight answered her easily, and she retraced her steps back to the hidden door, only pausing for the briefest of moments to consider the arrogant portrait once more. She pulled the lever to re-emerge back into the war room, and waited.
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