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Almost beyond his notice, his fingers clench against the arms of the throne; his chest seizes. In his periphery, where a moment ago was a blank space, now there is the Sun Summoner.
“Not many people surprise me, Miss Starkov.” He’d meant it. From the very beginning, she has managed to flout every expectation. He cannot deny the thrill that alights in him to be truly startled, after lifetimes have taught him to predict every subtle shift.
He should have known she would learn to use it sooner rather than later, this thing that binds them. She’s bright, his Alina, and not just in the light that pours from her palms. He imagines that she always has been, although that’s all he has of her past, this imagining. He wonders idly who she would have been, raised at the Little Palace surrounded by Grisha, earlier to claim her birthright. His to mold from an early age; what would she, her powers, have been like? Perhaps she would not be so defiant now. Given the education, the belonging, she deserved, surely she would understand better what’s at stake, the pieces on the board, the urgent need to defend their people from those who would do them harm.
Perhaps, he allows himself to consider, she would be on this very dais now, ruling by his side. Sol Koroleva: his match, his counterbalance, his queen.
He’s scarcely heard a word out of the droning supplicant’s mouth, and the opportunity to dismiss everyone in the room does not come a moment too soon. He allows his gaze to fix on her, to drink her in. Here, in his throne room. It’s a dozen fantasies he’s occasionally indulged come to pass.
There are others that only start here, of course, but he won’t allow his wishing to carry him that far, not now.
Her face is a riot of emotions as he approaches: ferocity, fear, anticipation, grief, a heady hint of lust. More, spiraling, swirling. She thinks she’s learned to wear her features like a mask, but she’s so young yet, so new to this fragile dance.
“If only I’d known you’d prove such an apt pupil.” He allows his admiration and appreciation to soak the compliment. It isn’t an easy thing, to learn to wield gifts not bestowed on anyone before you. Her abilities before the amplifiers were a marvel; now, with the stag’s antlers adorning her throat and the sea whip’s scales encircling her wrist, she is a miracle. A fool the Apparat may be, yet how right his supplicants are to bow at Alina’s feet. A hint of concern - self-preservation, really - trills through him, and he continues smoothly, “Why come to me now? Has it taken you this long to recover from our skirmish?”
His careful choice of words has the desired effect: her mouth twists as she considers the implications, if this latest encounter truly was so easy for him. Satisfied, he can feel one brow raise in response. Good, let her doubts stir.
But she wrests back control from her worries, meets him measure for measure in their repartee. Such a confident tongue his Sun Summoner has. He allows himself the barest hint of a daydream of what that could mean for them in a different context, in a world where she put all that fervor to more… provocative use. As always, the bite of desire that surfaces whenever she is near carries with it an undercurrent of anger. Lately, he’s finding it harder and harder to tease out which is the primary reaction to her presence, and which follows in its shadow.
He narrows his eyes. “What have you come here for, Alina?”
Her answer is a dagger, dangerously unexpected. Savage in its honest simplicity. “I wanted to see you.”
“There are two thrones on that dais. You could see me anytime you liked.”
“You’re offering me a crown? After I tried to kill you?”
How to answer her? He shrugs. “I might have done the same.”
He observes, half amused, half incensed, as her indignation surges, hears the barbs in her voice as she accuses him of selfishness in his bestowing of the collar. “You tried to take my power for your own,” she spits, and recognition alights. For all she might argue to the contrary, she’s learned to identify with her Summoner’s nature, and will grapple tooth and nail to cling to it. In this, then, they are two of a kind. Here, he understands her better than perhaps he ever has. Power is his mother tongue, after all.
“I understand the desire to remain free.”
“And still you tried to make me a slave,” she accuses, acute venom lacing her words.
“After you ran from me,” he offers in easy explanation. “After you chose—” But he will not bring the tracker into this moment, not when it’s the two of them, as close to honest as they can ever be with one another. He shrugs again. “We would have ruled as equals in time.”
He has spent so long alone. At his mother’s knee, he learned ambition, yes, and a sense of responsibility for his persecuted people, but also an abiding dread for the centuries ahead, immortal and utterly unmatched. Then one day, there she was, a whisper of a promise that the long years of loss and aching loneliness had a purpose. She would share his burden. In Alina, Morozova’s amplifiers would at last find a home, as would Aleksander. With his equal at his side, he would never be alone again. Then she defied her purpose, defied him, had the gall to reject what she - what they were made for.
“We would be equals until the day I dared to disagree with you,” she shoots back, and then it’s her who brings the tracker’s name into it. He leans against the window, relishing the cool snap against his cheek. He’s tiring of her rebellious fury; he wants her to simply, finally, understand.
“Do you think it would be any different with your tracker beside you? With that Lantsov pup?” He cannot help the trace of a dismissive sneer that flashes over his features.
“Yes,” she says, automatically.
It irks him. He hates when she plays the naive child; it’s beneath her. “Because you would be the strong one?”
“Because they’re better men than you.”
It stings, but this he will not let her see. He shifts his voice to a murmur. “You might make me a better man.”
She would be mortified to know how easy she is to read. She pauses for half a beat, considering and desperately trying to hide it, before those lovely eyes shutter and she sets her shoulders. “And you might make me a monster.”
He sighs. Under her definition, he surely would. “I’ve never understood this taste for otkazat’sya,” he grumbles. “Is it because you thought you were one of them for so long?” Another thing that could have been remedied, had the testers found her sooner.
She’s quiet for a long moment. Her reply, when it comes, is as delicious as it is dangerous. “I had a taste for you once.”
All his efforts to appear unaffected are undone with that simple admission. His head snaps up, he feels his lips part - to say what, he isn’t sure; but perhaps that is the true miracle of Alina Starkov, this uncanny ability to unsettle his understanding of a reality that has been unerringly solid for so long, the reality that he alone has had the capacity to shape, that—
But she hastens on, unwilling to allow this revelation too much opportunity. He sees her face morph into an expression of satisfaction at managing to surprise him yet again, dark eyes sparkling, before she asks him why he hasn’t made a nuisance of himself via the tether like he did while she was staying in the Little Palace. He will not admit to even himself, much less Alina, how easy it was then to imagine a different story behind her appearance in his chambers. She may not believe that she ever truly belonged in those gilded halls, but it could not have been more obvious to him.
Sol Koroleva. His counterpart, his companion, his would-be queen. Although she approached him as an enemy, she had demonstrated quite a flair for leading the outcasts of his army - one aptitude of many which he aches to hone. It’s almost enough to excuse her insolence.
“I think you fear this thing that binds us,” she challenges. She takes a step toward him, and he does not flinch.
He dismisses the idea immediately. “I am ancient, Alina. I know things about power that you can barely guess at.” In time, she will come to know. There is nothing he would love more than to teach her. A pity that Baghra, of all people, has been her primary tutor in these arts, a slight he really must remedy—
“But it’s not just power, is it?” She takes another step, and he inhales a single breath, sharper than intended. Their bodies are separated by only the most minute space. He craves her.
She rests her hand against his cheek. If he’s allowed himself to forget that she isn’t fully here, this is a reminder, that the intensity of their connection doesn’t blaze through him, but that doesn’t make the contact between them any less real. It doesn’t stop every nerve ending from singing at even this simple touch. He freezes, then lets his eyelids drift shut. He wants, and it makes him weak, just as he told her, yet he cannot fully resent the wanting. She will be his undoing.
“It’s true,” she admits. “You are stronger, wiser, infinite in experience.” The things he could teach her - on the battlefield and off - in the brightest day, the Fold pierced by her light, or in the deepest night…
She allows her lips to brush his ear, and his stomach clenches. She whispers, “But I am an apt pupil.”
He opens his eyes, outraged at the audacity, just in time to see her fade out of visibility.
She will be the death of him, one way or another. And for every ounce of furor that she summons in him as easily as she summons the sun, he cannot help but welcome the challenge.