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1.
On the night of the Summer Solstice, a shooting star crosses the skies over Ravka. It is so close the skies light up like the sun arose from its slumber, and every Ravkan awake stares at its passing with awe and wonder in their eyes, a wish in their hearts and on their lips.
In the old tales, it might be said that a single wish fell from the lips of every Ravkan from every walk of life, and that the combined hope of that wish is what caused later events to happen. But that is not reality, for no two hearts are the same.
In the hearts of the poor came the wishes for money, or food, or comfort, or a place to rest in peace.
In the hearts of the soldier came the wishes of protection for themselves and/or their best mates, or the downfall of the enemy, or new boots and warm clothes, or better food than the gruel and hardtack most of them got.
In the hearts of the average citizen came wishes from all angles – greed and love and hate and sorrow and longing.
In the hearts of the Royal Family came the wishes of a long-lasting line, power absolute, more power, more wealth.
In the heart of one man in particular came the absent-minded longing for an equal, a companion, someone to share his sorrows and his joys, someone who could – even if only for a moment – lighten the burdens in his heart. This man was older than most would have thought at the sight of him, and the turn of the passing centuries had done his heart no favors. He was often regarded as a cold man, a monster in human skin, a demon masquerading as one of Ravkan’s many grisha. He controlled the shadows and was called Darkling to his face.
Never his name. Not even his mother called him by name anymore.
All these different wishes, all these different needs. According to the old tales, it takes unity to invoke the divine, to invoke a miracle. Any Star could tell it differently, if man had the ability to ask and understand. Unity was a nice thought to be sure, and the few times in history that it had happened there was a nice spice to the quality of the power, but really all that was needed was quantity. So many wishes, so much diversity, nonetheless united in their sheer want…. The power invoked was mighty, drawing many Stars to look down at Ravka and consider. So many wishes, many of whom contradicted each other…well.
That left a lot of leeway for the granter, didn’t it?
2.
The Star chose to fall because she was curious most of all. She was young yet, younger than all the Stars in the sky, not freshly made, but still newest in her light. Others had told her she was destined to be one of their brightest, one of the White Queens once she aged, but the Star did not want that.
She wanted, more than anything, to belong to something. She had often wished she had been born as a binary, but that was not to be her fate.
So when she heard the wishes calling out as one from a little planet tucked away in a small corner of the universe, she’d been drawn. Drawn to their love, their need. Drawn to their greed, for at the heart of her, she was such a greedy little thing.
But most of all, she was drawn to a vast darkness that reached out above all of them, a void so hungry for companionship that she knew she could fulfill.
And so she fell.
3.
There is a certain kind of magic in the art of falling.
It is, more than anything, a process of change. Falling in love, falling to death…it made no difference. A being starts in one state, and by the time they’ve finished their fall, they are left in another. Physically, emotionally, or both, nothing and no one escapes the change. It is more immutable than Death, for there are those that even Death cannot touch in its cold grasp.
The Star fell, and in doing so, changed.
4.
All of Rakva saw the falling Star. The Star fell into the Fold, a deep, dark, dangerous scar born of fear and sorrow and hatred in the center of the country. The shockwave rippled throughout the unsea, shifting sands for miles around, unearthing dried bones and shattered skiffs of centuries past.
All of Rakva feared, for nothing involving the Fold could ever be good.
All, but one.
The creator of the Fold felt his empty-heart beat – once, twice – and knew. Even before he made up his mind to investigate, he could feel it, a call that pulled at his shadows.
He told no one he was leaving. He used the darkness of the night to hide his escape. They only knew he was gone the following morning, and by then it was too late.
By then, he had already been claimed.
5.
The Star woke in a place of darkness, of shadow, of fear and sorrow and ancient loathing.
Creatures, twisted and wrong and terrible, called in the darkness, hungry and hating, circling.
It was only her light, soft while she slept, that had protected her.
She takes her time investigating her new form – the soft golden-brown skin, the delicate fingers, the long limbs, rounded gently and flushed with health. Her soft teats and lightly rounded middle. Her fingers explore everything, gently at first, then pressing, discovering what pleasure and pain in this form is like. She has only known light and darkness before, for space is an empty thing and touch is forbidden except to mate.
She flexes the toes on her feat and digs them into the sands beneath her and breathes deep.
She calls her light.
She watches it dance about her, spreading, spreading, rising from her pores, making her sparkle and glow like her skin is the vast emptiness of space with millions of stars contained within.
And she laughs.
6.
The Darkling races to the Fold, drawn towards the northern tip closest to the Fjerdan border. He does not stop, not even when the horse he is riding balks at the shadowy mass, leaping off in a display of agility not many would have.
He races, uncaring, heading the call that even now tugs him, deeper and deeper into his own creation. He does not hear the piercing cry of the Volcra that even now seek to hunt him down. He does not see their flapping wings or diving bodies.
All he hears is the siren song echoing through the Fold, bright laughter.
All he sees is the glimmer of light that even now dashes towards him.
A lesser man’s eyes would be blinded.
He cannot look away.
7.
She hears the cacophony of the Volcra as they scream in triumph.
Scents the crisp-cold scent of his darkness reaching through the Fold towards her light.
Feels the need in him, desperate and hungry. It is so strong, so overpowering, a craving that reached across the endless depths of space and pulled a budding White Queen down to answer it.
What can she do, but answer? What could she ever do, but respond?
She is moving before she understands what she is even doing, one foot forward followed by another, arms spreading wide and her light singing as she pushes it further and further.
8.
He does not stop, cannot stop.
He strides through the light that burns through the Volcra, the sheer heat of the light incinerating them.
He feels nothing but a gentle warmth, and part of him wonders at the duality of it all.
He sees her before she sees him.
Eyes as dark as his own, golden-brown skin that glitters with her own light, hair as white as sun-kissed snow. She is naked, and young. Almost too young a part if him notes, with a human body that appears to be just at the end of its teenaged years, but even if he did not know what she truly was, he would not be able to stop.
The call in his blood drives him beyond almost all reason.
There is nothing but her. There will be nothing without her.
He will have her, he will claim her and let her claim him, and he will never be alone again.
8.
Their unification is a beautiful thing in its own way.
It is fierce and ungentle, a ferocious collision of two opposing powers, the unstoppable meeting the unmovable.
The man carves out a space for himself deep within her untried body, ruining her for anything or anyone else, claiming her inside and out with harsh thrusts and bruising grips.
The Star in turn cleaves his heart from his chest and devours it, greedy beyond all reckoning for everything she can take from him, claiming him in turn, filling his void with light beyond all comprehension. She leaves her own marks – livid, bleeding scratches down his back and sharp, bloody bite-marks along his collar bones.
They kiss, greedy, greedy, greedy, devouring each other.
They join again and again, twisting and ‘twining around and around each other until neither is sure where one ends and the other begins. It is only towards the end that the softness comes in the form of gentle touches and softer kisses, in slow, languid movements, in them both just staring as they couple, each filled with a wonder and awe that they cannot contain.
9.
You are like me.
10.
The man leads the Star out of the Fold after covering her naked form with his own cloak. He finds his horse grazing peacefully in a pasture not far.
“Will you come with me?” he asks her.
She laughs, a sound that tinkles the same way her light glimmers beneath her skin even now.
“Of course I will,” she tells him. “You are mine now, and I would see this world you called me to.”
He cannot stop himself from smiling at her, from touching her shining face, from kissing her. He has never belonged to anyone or anything, and now that he does, he knows a true joy unlike anything he has ever known. He has known her for all of a half-day, and already knows he will do anything and everything for her.
He gets on his horse and pulls her up to settle in front of him.
He does not go back to the Little Palace, his prison and his seat of power both.
11.
They travel the world for a year and a day, arriving back to a Ravka torn even worse than before.
West and East struggle for power, and his grisha are little more than cannon fodder now that he has left the ruling family unchecked.
In another world he might have hated his Star for taking him from where he had been needed. But in this world, his Star grasps his hand tight and promises to help him fix it.
12.
It starts with the Fold.
His Star, his Sol Koroleva, walks right into the center of the mass to the dismayed cries of citizens and army both watching. They all know the Black General, missing though he had been for this past year, so when he calmly follows, many are drawn by curiosity alone.
The need to know is such a human thing, a call unlike anything any other creature in the universe will ever experience.
Deeper and deeper they go, following the white-haired maiden and the Black General – and then a miracle.
Light.
Light rises and rises and rises, and at the epicenter stand the two, hand in hand, staring at each other as if nothing else exists. The darkness of the Fold ripples and appears to be sucked into the shadows that cling even now to the General’s feet.
The people cry and fall to their knees as the Fold is destroyed, tears flowing, and arms outreached towards their new Saints. Someone starts a hymn, words changed in haste. One by one the crowd picks it up. It is a discordant song, not a one amongst them that can actually carry a tune, but there is a beauty in the sound nonetheless.
13.
Try as the nobility and the church tries to fight it, the people will not be stopped.
They have within their reach the Living Saints, the Light and the Darkness, the balance that restored their country to wholeness.
The people are tired. They are tired of war when their rulers rest in comfort. They are tired of meagre portions when their leaders feast on delicacies they will never know the taste of. They are tired of scraping by when their leaders waste so much.
Their Living Saints may not end up any better, but hope is a driving factor that none can deny. “What is the point of keeping the status quo?” The people argue to others that were not there, that have not seen with their own eyes the miracle the Living Saints performed for no reason other than that they can?
“Why are they here, if not to affect change?” and “They have made of us no demands, it is our choice!” becomes a rallying cry heard across a country torn apart again and again.
Grisha come to their cause first. Despite that the General abandoned them, he is still their first refuge, the one and only one who fought for them. With them comes the oprichniki, who in the General’s absence had been dismissed due to their loyalty to him. Various units of the First Army come on their heels, and more follow when they see their compatriots fitted with new boots and better equipment, given better training and better food.
14
He gifts his Star with everything she could want or need.
He knows what it is like to do without. Knows what it is to starve or suffer coarse fabrics against his skin. Knows what it is to wear shoes that pinch. Knows what it is to be forced to sleep huddled against the cold.
He wants none of that for her.
Anything and everything he can gift her, he does.
Flowers to tuck in her hair, the finest jewels and fabrics to adorn her body, the best and brightest of his grisha to be her companions.
Anyone that makes her cry or turn to him with doubt in her heart disappears (though these are few and far between).
15.
“Will you name me?” she asks him one day.
The Darkling thinks long and hard on the request. “Do you need one?” he finally asks.
The Star thinks on this. “No,” she finally says. “But I’ve noticed a curious tradition of naming things to make them owned. Parents name their young, lovers give their partners nick-names, children name their pets.” She hums. “I would be owned by you in this as well, I think.”
He looks at his Star, his Sun, his guiding light. “Alina,” he finally offers.
The Star hums again. “Alina,” she tries. “My name is Alina.” She nods finally. “I like it. What does it mean?”
The Darkling smiles and draws her in, awed over and over again at how perfectly she fits in his arms. “Bright,” he whispers against her mouth. “Beautiful,” he purrs as he lowers her into their bed.
And then he says nothing at all, determined to make her scream.
16.
She does.
For him, she always will.
17.
“What do I call you?” is one of the first questions she had ever asked him.
The Darkling had no response for the longest time. So many lives lived, so many names he has taken as his own. He does not want to give her one of those. They are stolen names, not fitting for her perfect mouth, nor does he hold any lingering attachment over them.
For she is right, in a way. There is possession in names. To know someone’s true name is to have a sort of power over them, limited though it may be.
He wants her to have him in all ways, and so he takes the time to trace his memories all the way to the beginning, to a name he has not heard for centuries before the creation of the Fold.
“Aleksander,” he finally tells her. “My name is Aleksander.”
18.
See, the thing is that Alina is not human, and Aleksander is so old that he has forgotten what humanity actually is.
They are Other, and its never more apparent than when they stand in front of a crowd, hand in hand, looking out upon their enemies. Light rises, scorching and burning and blinding, and beneath it crests the Dark, cold and hungry and deadly.
Their power is bolstered and made stronger by the other, and together they are made whole.
Under their rule, Ravka does improve.
Between the two of them, there is no need for others to fight their battles. They have no use of armies, so can disband them. They have no desire to do battle, and no mercy to offer to those that would rise against them, and so they obliterate them.
Though they are in their own ways as greedy and selfish as any man, their greed is limited to what they use. They have no need for Grand Palaces wrought in gold and ivory and marble, or grand feasts that will mostly go wasted. A relatively small estate, large enough to house themselves and a contingent of servants and guards and staff is all they claim as their own, and everything else is distributed where needed.
Under their rule, people know peace. They know full bellies and warm clothing on winter nights. They know peace.
18.
There will come a time when they will leave Ravka, bored with playing King and Queen, Saint of the Sun and her Starless Saint.
They will wander the world anew, forever young and forever bound.
And when all time ends and the planet dies, the White Queen will rise anew within the empty expanse, never alone for the dark void around her will be her beloved, her shadow.
19.
“Mine.”