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Mal is dead.
There is a part of Alina that knows that should mean fight on. They should mean get up, and finish what you came here to do. They should mean don’t let him die in vain.
But Mal is dead, and that drowns out any other part of Alina. She wants to scream, wants to cry, wants to use up all of the air in her lungs making sound so that she can stop hearing the words, as though that will somehow make them untrue. As though that will make his limp, twisted form rise up again.
She isn’t even the one who killed him.
"Alina."
He is. And Alina wonders if he knows, if he suspects. If he will break open Mal’s chest and tie her to him with the bones of her dead lover—
She vomits. And cool fingers slide back through her hair, pushing it off her face, out of the way. She doesn’t mean to lean into the touch, doesn’t want to, but Mal is dead and what is there left for her anymore?
Revenge, that distant part of her suggests. Ravka. You are not the weak, pathetic girl who can’t stand up for herself anymore. Finish this.
But Mal isn’t the only one who is dead. The screams are unending around her, and the silences are worse. The little pockets of quiet that used to have living, breathing bodies, and now hold only corpses.
No shelter but me.
"You killed him," she manages finally, as those fingers curl around her chin, tipping her face up. He looks drawn, but she can see the light of triumph there, fickering behind grey eyes. "You killed all of them."
"You forced my hand," he murmurs, not unkindly. "We could have avoided all of this."
She watches his gaze flicker sideways, and mouths the words she know he’s thinking. Except for the tracker. Mal was always going to die, because she loves him, and the Darkling can withstand maiming and betrayal and the death of his mother, but he cannot withstand love.
Somewhere, sluggishly, a thought kindles in the back of her mind. And Alina feels as ancient as she knows she will grow to be as she reaches up in slow, jagged movements to close her hand over his. He is, she thinks, barely breathing as she laces their fingers together, one by one.
"Take me home."
Mal is dead, and so is her voice. But it’s life that lights up the Darkling’s face, and she fuels her body into movement with thoughts of extinguishing it as he leads her away from the body.
He will love her, in his way. And Alina knows that his threat, his promise, will come true. One day, she will return the sentiment.
He will not withstand that love, either.