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Alina dreams of him every night, for as long as she can remember. The dreams are always eerily similar. She finds herself walking through a strange grey twilight. She can hear the screeching of strange creatures in the distance. Yet she distinctly remembers that she is never afraid.
Every time, she is drawn to a specific place in the valley of shadows. Always to him. He is at the very center of the darkness, shadows pouring out of him slowly, steadily. He is beautiful and terrifying at the same time. His eyes are always open, but he never looks at her, staring ahead into the distance.
His skin is pale as snow. He seems drained of life, cheeks sunken, deep black circles under his eyes. Yet there is something regal about him, in his posture, the set of shoulders. Alina inevitably steps closer to him, her feet moving of their own accord. Every time, without fail, just when she is close enough to reach out and touch him, she wakes up, her heart thundering in her chest. But never afraid. She doesn’t know how she knows, but she is certain that he would never hurt her. If he even exists outside of her dreams.
She never tells another soul about him, not even Mal. She wouldn’t know where to start. He is hers, hers alone. His face is forever burnt into her memory, the sadness and loneliness in his eyes haunting her. When she was young, she used to make up stories about him. Sometimes he was a prince, banished by his evil stepmother, the queen. Sometimes he was a powerful Grisha, trapped eternally in darkness as punishment for terrible crimes. Sometimes he was a cursed nobleman, waiting for a maiden’s kiss to release him from his suffering.
It is nearly a fortnight after she and Mal joined the Army together that, for the first time in her life, the dream changes. It begins as it always does with her walking through eternal greyness. She is not concerned. She knows with the unshakeable confidence reserved to dreams that she is going exactly where she is supposed to be, where she is needed the most.
As usual, she finds him eventually, her dark prince on his throne of shadows. He is kneeling, shadows swirling around his legs. His arms are spread wide, shadows pouring out of his fingertips, like they are being drawn from him. As always, he looks straight ahead without moving, a deep sadness etched into his features.
Instead of trying to reach out to him, Alina stops. I should use my light, she thinks. Why has she never considered it before? It is so obvious. She brings her hands together, creating a small orb of light. Alina looks down at the familiar glow and smiles. When she looks up, he is staring right at her, the utter blackness of his eyes boring straight into her soul. Alina gasps and stumbles backwards in surprise, extinguishing the light in the process.
She wakes up in a cold sweat, her heart racing. She lifts her hands. They are glowing faintly. Alina stares at them, completely stunned. She must still be dreaming. This can’t be happening. Somebody coughs in the big tent, and Alina flinches, quickly hiding her hands in her bedroll.
She shuts her eyes tightly. It can’t be. She can’t be Grisha. That’s a death sentence. Alina draws in one shaky breath after the other. No. It was a trick of the light. An illusion. A part of the dream. She hasn’t shown even a trace of Grisha power all her life. Isn’t it supposed to already manifest as a child? No, it must be something else. She will just forget about it.
Of course, at breakfast Mal immediately picks up on her strange mood, but she just keeps telling him that she is fine until he wisely decides to leave it alone. The entire unit is in a sombre mood anyway. They are now only half a days’ march away from their destination, the Shadow Fold. For most of them it will be the first time that they see it. A tense anticipation has settled over all of them.
Alina has only heard stories. A giant wall of shadow, cutting Ravka in half. So old that nobody knows for certain how it came to be. The only thing everyone agrees on is that it was the work of Grisha, meant to divide the country. One of the many reasons that Grisha are feared and hunted. The lucky ones meet a swift death at the hands of the Ravkan army or the Fjerdan mercenaries who are allowed to roam the country freely as long as they only attack Grisha. The unlucky ones are sold to Shu Han for experimentation.
Alina realizes that her hands are shaking, so she crosses her arms in front of her chest. Mal is frowning at her but she ignores him. Let him think that she is nervous because they are travelling to the Fold today. After all, she knows all too well how he, much like the rest of the people around her, feels about Grisha. Nothing good would come of telling him about her hands.
Maybe that’s why her parents abandoned her as a baby. Did they see her glow and wanted to be rid of her? Did they not consider her worth the effort, since being Grisha was almost assuredly a death sentence for all of them? She shivers, fighting down the tears threatening to fall. The look on Mal’s face changes to concern and Alina quickly gets up and walks away, unable to handle his presence any longer.
Alina is not sure what people usually feel when they see the Fold for the first time, but for her there is one thought overshadowing all others: How could she have been so stupid. The grey twilight. The shadows pouring from his hands. It is glaringly obvious that this is the setting of the dreams that have been with her for as long as she can remember.
She stares, enthralled, at the impossibly tall wall of the Fold, reaching as far as the eye can see, when all of a sudden, she feels his presence. She is suddenly absolutely certain that he is in there, her dark prince, kneeling in his bed of shadows, looking ahead eternally, unseeing. As in her dreams, a strong and inexplicable pull from the darkness nearly overwhelms her, pulling her towards it. She has to make a conscious effort to not start walking towards the Fold, towards him.
Later, Alina lies awake in her bunk, the by now familiar chorus of snores sounding around her. She can still feel him. It’s like the thrum of a pulsing heart, calling out to her with every beat. She wonders if maybe she has gone mad, now that her strange dreams seem to have spilled into the waking world.
She’s heard the stories of the volcra, knows, rationally, that going into the Fold alone is almost certain suicide. And yet, she is filled with a strange conviction: Just like in her dreams, the creatures will not harm her. They will let her walk through the eternal night undisturbed so that she can meet their master.
But this time, when she reaches out to him, she won’t wake up. She will be able to touch him. She stares at the roof of the tent, her heart racing. She wants to get up, go outside and walk into the Fold. She knows that it is madness, but she cannot shake the thought. There must be a reason why she dreamt of him all her life.
Alina closes her eyes, and there he is. A beautiful, dark, eternal creature, bathed in shadows. Maybe he was human once, but now he is something else, something she doesn’t quite understand. Divine, and yet diminished. Powerful, yet broken. Like many times before, she wonders if she is the only one who dreams of him. Are there others in this camp drawn to him in the same way she is? She can’t help but hope that there aren’t, that she is the only one he visits, that she is the only one he calls to.
She opens her eyes again, knowing that she will not get any sleep tonight. She gets up, and throws on her coat and hat, telling herself that she is just going to get some air. That’s all she’s doing. She steps outside, shivering in the cold air. She starts walking towards the Fold, rubbing her hands over her arms. There are only a few guards awake, otherwise the camp is quiet. Nobody pays her any mind.
It would be very easy to slip away unnoticed in the dark, she thinks. Slip away and walk into the Unsea. She stops dead in her tracks, torn over what to do. What if she’s wrong, and one of the horrible creatures in the shadows will tear her apart? What will Mal think if she’s gone in the morning, never to be seen again? Will he search for her? Will anybody else even care that she’s gone? Will the Army record her as a deserter?
Alina feels the pull to go inside the Fold stronger than ever before. She has to know if he is really in there or if he is just a figment of her imagination. He feels real, but how can she know that when she only ever saw him in her dreams?
Alina looks at the guards. They are not paying attention to the camp but are watching the surrounding area. She just needs to find the right moment. She waits, impatient now that she has made up her mind, for the time that the guards change and are distracted for a moment. Her heart is pounding away in her chest. Will she really see him? Or is she foolishly walking to her death?
The new guards finally arrive and Alina slips away from the camp quietly in the dark. She cannot see the Fold clearly. In the pale moonlight it looks somehow less imposing than during the day.
She arrives at the edge of the Unsea without incident. She reaches out a shaking hand into the shadows. They don’t feel like anything, not cold, as she expected, not warm, not solid in any way. Yet they feel strangely alive, like they are aware of her presence.
Alina takes a deep breath and exhales it slowly. Then she steps into the Fold.
There is nothing to help her orient herself, yet she knows with absolute certainty where she needs to go. She has never felt his presence as strongly as she does now. It’s like the Fold is guiding her, making a path for her, leading her to its master.
She hears several volcra scream in the distance, but as far as she can tell, they are not coming closer. They keep their distance. Alina thinks of trying to make her hands glow again, to have something to see in the almost absolute darkness. She decides against it, in the end. Who knows how the Fold would react. Maybe it would send the creatures to her.
He is close, she can feel it. Her heart is threatening to burst out of her chest, it is beating so fast. She can’t recall ever being this nervous before in her life. Still, she walks on without hesitation. She is certain that he’s here and she will not leave before she has seen him. Before she knows that he is real.
There is a faint light in the distance and Alina walks towards it. She gasps once she is close enough to see what it is. There he is, the man that has visited her dreams for as long as she can remember. He is bathed in moonlight, which seems to only penetrate the Fold right above him.
Shadows spill out of his outstretched arms, forming around him, flowing like water into the darkness. He is kneeling, just like he always was in her dreams, his back straight, his head held high, looking straight ahead. She cannot make out his expression.
Alina walks closer, unable to resist the pull, until she is almost close enough to reach out and touch him. She can see him clearer now. From afar, he looked like a king, reigning over his kingdom of shadows, but from close up, she sees the paleness in his features, his sunken cheeks, the dark circles under his eyes. He looks like someone who is wasting away from an illness, only holding on to life by sheer force of will.
As in her dreams, his eyes are open, and he is looking straight ahead, ignoring her. Like he doesn’t even see her. His eyes are empty and unblinking; there is no recognition, no intelligence, looking back at her when she regards him.
Alina closes the distance between them and slowly, hesitantly, she lifts a shaking hand. This is the moment when she always wakes up. She can never touch him in her dreams. He blinks and his eyes finally meet hers. Alina freezes.
“Please don’t,” he croaks and Alina stares at him in shock. He’s real. He’s alive. He’s talking to her.
And he doesn’t want her to touch him. It stings, somehow. Then again, he doesn’t know her. She thought she felt his presence in her dreams, but maybe this is the first time he sees her? Maybe she was the only one having those dreams?
“Why not?” slips out before she can stop it.
He smiles and it’s the most pained smile she has ever seen. “So I can pretend for a bit longer that you are really here,” he replies.
Alina just stares at him for a moment. “Do you dream of me?” she asks finally, because she has to know if all this time it was just her.
“I always dream of you,” he says reverently. Then he frowns. “But we never speak, do we?”
Alina looks at him, this strange, otherworldly creature that is more familiar to her than anything or anyone else in her life.
“What are you?” she asks him, because even though he is so very familiar to her, she doesn’t know the first thing about him. Is he even human?
He grins at her and there is something in his expression that she can't quite place.
"I'm a monster, obviously. I'm the darkness and the darkness is me. I bleed so that our people are safe." He gives her a little mock bow. "I'm the king of shadows and this is my kingdom."
He's mad, she realizes. Absolutely mad. He speaks with a strange accent that she cannot quite place. It sounds almost archaic.
"Our people?"
"The Grisha."
She regards him quietly for some time. At some point, he starts looking past her, staring off into the distance once more. Like he has forgotten that she's there at all.
She leans down until her face is only inches from his. His eyes snap back to hers.
"Hello little sun. Have you come to brighten my dreams again?"
There is a deep sadness in his words, an almost unbearable loneliness.
"I'm really here," she tells him.
His face turns into a grimace of pain. "Do not taunt me, my little sun. Please."
Alina smiles, lifts her right hand and slowly touches his cheek. He is cold to the touch, feeling almost like a statue under her fingertips.
And there is something else, a strange sensation running through her. It’s similar to the way his presence called to her before, it’s like something inside her wants to come out to meet him. A strange feeling of power surges through her. She pushes it down.
He stares at her with such a shocked expression that it is almost comical. It goes on for several minutes. He looks at her with absolute disbelief, mouth agape, frozen in place.
Alina starts brushing her thumb along his cheek and he finally reacts, closing his eyes and leaning into the touch. He gasps and opens his eyes again. The shock is still there.
“You can’t be here,” he breathes, utter disbelief in his words, but also something else, a desperate hope.
“Yeah? Well I am.”
He shakes his head. “I’m tricking myself. I want you to be here so badly that I’m imagining this.”
Alina brings her other hand to his face as well and leans down slightly until her forehead softly touches his. “I’m here,” she whispers.
He doesn’t move. The only sign that this is affecting him at all is his ragged breathing. After what feels like a long time, he pulls back slowly. There is still that look of utter disbelief on his face, but there is something else there now, something new.
“You’re here. With me.” His voice is barely a whisper and Alina only hears them because they are so close. “How?”
Alina frowns. “What do you mean? I walked into the Shadow Fold.”
Alina wouldn’t have thought it possible for the look of disbelief on his face to get even more intense, but she’s proven wrong. “Why?”
“Because of you. I dreamed of you and when I came to the Unsea, I felt your presence. I had to know if you’re real.”
“Am I?” he asks seriously.
Alina frowns again. She seems to be doing that a lot today. “Are you asking me if you’re real?”
He nods like this is an entirely reasonable inquiry. “I don’t feel real.”
Alina drops her hands from his face, standing up. She looks him up and down. “You seem real enough to me.”
He nods again. Alina experiences a moment of dissociation. This whole thing feels like a dream. What is she even doing here? She doesn’t know anything about this man, if he even is a man, and she walked straight into the Fold for him.
Her eyes are drawn again to where the shadows pour out of his arms, feeding the eternal twilight around them. She thinks back to her glowing hands and the dream that brought them on. She wanted to free him in that dream, she remembers now. Summon her light and cut him free of his bonds.
Maybe that is her role in all of this. That is why she has been dreaming of him. She is fated to free him of his prison. She looks down at her hands. In the dream, it was as obvious as walking or breathing, she didn’t even need to think about it, but now she doesn’t have the faintest idea how to summon light.
She leans down once more. His eyes follow her every movement now. She puts her hand on his face again, searching for what she felt earlier, the call to something inside her. Only this time, she lets it happen, lets it flow through her. She focuses on her left hand, the one that is not on his face.
She looks down and is surprised to see that it actually worked. Her hand is glowing faintly. She hesitates for a moment, gathering her courage, then she reaches into the swirling shadows on his arm.
They retreat immediately. Alina moves her hand slowly down his arm until it is completely free of shadows. She stares at it dumbly. She didn’t really expect that to work. She is just about to turn her attention to his other arm when he speaks.
He stares at his free hand, clenching and unclenching his fingers. “What have you done?” It doesn’t sound like he’s happy.
“I’ve freed your arm. Hold still, then I can free the other one as well.”
He shakes his head vehemently, looking panicked. “No, no, no, no, you can’t do that.”
The severed shadows from his right arm are swirling on the ground at his feet. He reaches down into them until they vine their way around his arm again. Then he leans back on his knees, resuming his former position.
Alina stands up, suddenly angry with him. “You don’t want to be free?”
“I have to feed the shadows to keep our people safe.”
If she hadn’t already thought him mad, she would certainly do so now.
“You are doing this to keep the Grisha safe?”
He nods, but she sees something flash across his face for a split-second. He knows the truth already, she thinks. Knows it, but can’t accept it.
“The Grisha are not safe. They are being hunted and killed.”
He shakes his head vehemently, almost swaying from side to side with the motion. “No. You’re lying.”
“Why would I lie?”
His eyes snap up to meet hers and there is absolute desperation in them. “I used merzost. It didn’t make the army that I intended, but it made this. It made the living shadows. The Otkazat'sya fear them. And they fear the Grisha who made them. It showed them what we are truly capable of. So they would be too scared of us to harm us ever again. The Grisha have to be safe. They have to be, or it has all been for nothing. Tell me they are safe.”
The last words are a desperate plea, and Alina’s heart goes out to him.
“I’m sorry, I can’t. People fear Grisha all right. But that just means they will betray them to the Fjerdans or the Shu Han without a second thought. Will even be glad to be rid of them. Being found out as a Grisha is a death sentence.”
“I don’t believe you.” His eyes are pleading with her and she wishes she could tell him something different, but she will not lie to him. She sees it again then, the terror in his eyes telling her that he very well knows that it has all been for nothing, but cannot admit it.
“Come with me. Please. You can do more for Grisha out there than you can ever hope to achieve in here.”
He seems to consider her words for a moment, but then he shakes his head again. “I’m needed here.”
“The shadows have had quite enough of you. They can’t have any more,” she tells him sternly.
His lip twitches in the ghost of a smile, the first real one she has ever seen from him. “Is that so?”
Alina decides a change of tactics is in order. “What’s your name?”
He ponders this for a moment. “Yes, I should have a name, shouldn’t I? Even monsters have names.”
Alina can’t help but roll her eyes at him. “Do you ever give a straight answer?”
It’s almost a whole smile this time. “Apologies. I am a little rusty. I think I had many names. Darkling. That was one of them.”
Alina shakes her head. “No. I’m not calling you that.”
He cocks his head to the side, thinking. “I’m afraid I can’t remember any of the other ones.”
Alina sighs. “Well, I’m not staying here.” There is a flash of panic crossing his face at her words. “So, you can either come with me or stay here forever for all I care.”
She crosses her arms in front of her chest for emphasis. He cocks his head to the side again, regarding her intently.
“I have been here far longer than you have been alive. I was here before your parent’s parents were born. I have been here long enough to forget my own name. And you expect me to leave, just because you say so?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple.”
“It can be,” Alina tells him with conviction. She can see that he’s starting to crack. What must it have been like, to be alone in here for such a long time?
“I’m tired,” he admits.
“Then come with me and rest.”
He looks away from her, staring into the twilight. She hears the screech of one of the volcra in the distance.
“Yes,” he says finally.
Alina kneels down in front of him again, smiling. “Yes?”
He nods and Alina gently puts her hands on his face again, feeling the immediate rush of power. She’s surprised to see that she is illuminating everything around them. Not only her hands, all of her is glowing.
“Magnificient,” he whispers, voice filled with awe. He looks at her reverently, with such an intense longing in his eyes that it almost breaks her heart.
She slowly moves her right hand down his left arm. Just like the first time, the shadows immediately retreat from her touch. When she reaches his hand, she intertwines their fingers and lifts their hands up to her chest. He just keeps looking at her with an almost childlike expression of wonder. Like he cannot believe this is actually happening to him.
There is another shriek from one of the volcras, much closer now, and Alina flinches. She takes a deep, steadying breath and focuses back on her task. There is another noise, almost like a hissing, and when she looks down, she sees the tendrils she just removed from his arm trying to join the mass of shadows at his legs. Alina closes the last of the distance between them, embracing him. All the shadows around his legs retreat in a rush.
She hears him sigh, so close now, then he slowly drops his forehead on her shoulder. The only point left connecting him to the twilight is his right arm. The masses of shadows are intensifying there, as if they are trying to pull him back. Alina quickly leans over and moves her hand down his arm. There is a sound that she can only describe as an angry roar, seemingly coming from all around them, the second she reaches his hand and frees him completely.
He brings his free arm around her immediately, drawing her even closer, holding on tightly, like his life depends on it. Alina draws her free arm around him as well. Her right hand is still intertwined with his left, pressed between them.
The faint glow emanating from her steadily intensifies. So does the roar all around them. A sudden wind starts howling around them at an ear-piercing intensity. They cling to each other with all their might.
It is as if they are suddenly at the eye of a storm. A storm that seems to be mad at the two of them specifically. Over the deafening noise of the storm, Alina hears the screams of several volcra, incredibly close now.
There is a build-up of noise, wind as well as a strange sort of pressure, making her ears pop. Alina’s vision starts to get blurry. She tries to stay conscious for as long as she can, thinking only of her light, but in the end it is too much, and everything goes black.
Alina comes to slowly. Her head is pounding and there is a copper taste in her mouth. She almost lets herself be dragged back to unconsciousness if it weren’t for the nagging voice at the back of her mind telling her that it’s important for her to be awake.
Alina groans and forces her eyes open. Everything is blurry at first. It’s too bright, she lifts her arm to shield herself from the sunlight. Then everything that happened comes rushing back at her all at once.
She lowers her arm again and looks around frantically. Her eyes are slowly adjusting to the brightness. She’s half on top of the man who lived in the Fold. The man she saved. She quickly moves to the side, looking at him. He is still pale as death, if anything, the dark circles under his eyes have grown in size.
Alina hovers her hand over his nose, feeling for his breath. It’s faint, but it’s there. He’s still alive. Alina breathes a sigh of relief.
She sits back and takes in her surroundings. It’s a bright, sunny day and there isn’t even the faintest trace of twilight. The Unsea is gone. What’s left is a barren wasteland, a desert. No matter where she looks, there isn’t a trace of green to be seen anywhere.
Alina stands up slowly, blown away by the sheer magnitude of what she did. Ravka is finally united again. What will this mean for the war effort? She looks down at the man on the ground. What will this mean for Grisha?
Her wandering thoughts are suddenly interrupted by yelling. She turns around to see an approaching scouting party. One of them starts running towards her, yelling her name. Mal. He barely stops enough to not run into her at full tilt when he embraces her.
He asks her what happened, but she doesn’t know how to tell him the fantastical tale that transpired, so she tells him nothing. She convinces the group to take the unconscious man to the medical tent, telling them that she recognized him as a First Army soldier who was thought lost to the Fold and that she doesn’t remember which unit he belongs to.
She’s lucky everyone is more concerned with the vanishing of the Fold than him and the fact that he really looks the part of a man lost in the Unsea, so nobody examines her flimsy story too closely. She will probably have questions to answer later, but for now they are brought to the medical tent.
Alina can tell that Mal doesn’t believe a word of her tale, but he has the decency not to question her in front of the others. She’s not sure what she is going to tell him later. It doesn't really matter. What matters is that the Darkling lives. She can’t have freed him from the Fold only for him to die now.
She hovers by the cot, asking questions, annoying the medics until she gets kicked out of the tent. Then she hovers at the entrance, waiting for any word as to whether he will live or die. Mal approaches her at some point, but she brushes him off. She doesn’t have the mental capacity to deal with him right now.
Finally, she is allowed back inside. The medic tells her, unhelpfully, that he will either wake up or he won’t. He’s malnourished and dehydrated but he doesn’t have any visible injuries. They will have to wait and see.
“Hey.”
Alina opens her eyes slowly, moving her head from side to side with a groan. Her neck hurts all over. Sleeping in a chair was not her best idea ever. She looks at the cot next to her. For a second she thought she just imagined him speaking, that his voice was still part of her dream, but his eyes are open and he is looking at her with an inscrutable expression.
Alina sits up, massaging her hurting neck with one hand. “Hey,” she replies, smiling at him. “How do you feel?”
“Everything hurts,” he states matter-of-factly. “Could I have some water?”
“Of course.” Alina retrieves a full glass for him from the nearby table and he gulps it down greedily. After he is done, he hands the glass back, and they just stare at each other awkwardly for a moment, neither knowing what to say.
After a long time, he clears his throat. “What happened?”
“It’s all gone. After I freed you, the Shadow Fold disappeared. I’m sorry.” Alina isn’t actually sad to see it gone, but thinks that maybe he feels differently.
He looks away from her, at the roof of the tent. “It’s probably for the best.”
Without thinking, Alina reaches out and places her hand over his. His eyes snap back to hers immediately and an expression of wonder appears on his face.
“I thought for the longest time that you were only a figment of my imagination,” he admits with a smile.
It’s contagious and she finds herself smiling back at him. “I thought the same about you.”
“What happens now?” he asks, his expression turning serious.
“Now you rest.”
He groans. “I’m afraid doing nothing is not really my strong suit.”
“Yeah? I don’t care. You need to rest.” Her words are stern, but the smile is still on her face.
“Yes, ma’am.” His voice is slightly mocking, but she can also hear the bone-deep exhaustion. Which is probably why he gave in so quickly.
“And once I’m well rested?”
He turns his hand and Alina intertwines their fingers. “Then you will tell me how you ended up at the center of the Shadow Fold.”
He swallows. “What if you don’t like that tale?’
Alina gives him a reassuring smile. “I doubt that very much. I like the ending already.”
He looks at her with that strange expression again. Full of reverence and wonder. Like he still can’t believe that she actually exists. Alina has to break eye contact because it is too intense.
“I see,” he says softly. Alina looks up again only to find that his eyes are drooping shut. She gently places her free hand on his forehead, and starts slowly drawing it through his hair. He sighs contently. Then his eyes suddenly snap open again, meeting hers.
“Aleksander,” he says. “That’s my name. Aleksander.”
“Aleksander,” she repeats quietly and he gives her a big, bright smile. It transforms him completely. He suddenly seems much younger.
“It’s time to rest, Aleksander.”
He nods and closes his eyes again. Even after his breathing evens out, Alina stays by his side for a long time, stroking his hair, wondering what the future holds for him. And her.