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Aleksander’s immortal patience snapped like treading frosty ground as they waited out a late snowstorm.
The intensity he showed in the Little Palace was him at rest, nearly jovial, compared to seeing the Darkling near the front lines. Alina found herself intercepting people and delivering the maps and correspondences they carried so fewer of them saw his murderous pacing. She had to supervise David’s summons to the tent, because the man was too nervous to comprehend what he was being asked.
She interfered openly only when she caught Ivan flinch. Aleksander slammed his fist against the post holding the tent, and there was a crackle of shadows drifting in the following long moment. There were signs of an outbreak of dysentery in the First Army, Ivan relayed from the healers. Movements had already been delayed for a harsh winter. They had been depending on making quick progress with spring.
“May we have a moment in private,” she asked the Heartrender.
To his credit, he did hesitate to glance at the Darkling, and receive a wave away. His loyalty was admirable, but he couldn’t help. Slowing Aleksander’s heart would only upset him over his lack of control. Things weren’t going well, but he needed to find the confident poise of a general.
Alina blamed herself. She hadn’t been invited on his trip to inspect the cities. She had talked her way into being included only a few days' ride from the Little Palace. She helped rally troops, and was set to ride back with an excessive guard. A late season snowfall buried the road home, and not even Inferni could have cleared it quickly enough to return her.
So they carried on, Aleksander cursing the moments she was not safe behind Palace walls. He was worried, unable to sleep, and their efforts were undercut by his lack of focus. It would hurt him to point out he was the problem. She took it on herself.
“I am your trouble being this exposed,” Alina told him. “I know we have guards and an army. I know how much you protect me. I have a constant thrill of fear down my back, as if our enemies are right there. As if you, and the armies, and my kefta cannot stop them from getting to me.”
He muttered a curse, but his face calmed to address her. “I will keep you safe. If all else falls, you alone will be untouched.”
Aleksander put out his hand and she went to him, letting him hold her. As their bodies swayed, she felt his darkness recede.
“I have lived in army tents before, without all your precautions. I think I would be better inside a house. I know there is a village nearby where the people evacuated. Maybe there is somewhere we could stay, just the two of us.”
They couldn’t go back. The way was too far to send Alina without his presence. The roads ahead had washed out and were being rebuilt. Their troops were stuck, and short of an emergency it would look weak to abandon them. She was meant to inspire the soldiers, not give them the idea her one life was worth scrapping a long-promised return from their general.
“We need our guards,” he said. “I admit this tent is not large enough for all of us. But it is safe, Alina.”
She had picked their haven, and tipped back to look into his face. “I had some of your own guards find a place. It’s a small farm, two buildings surrounded by woods and bounded by a fast-moving river. You could hang shadows in the trees and I’ll put up a curtain of light across the water.”
Aleksander had to know she’d been gently plotting against him to have a location at hand. He let her go and went back to pacing, but at least he wasn’t going at a clip anymore.
“You shouldn’t waste power,” he told her.
“But I need to practise, and I can’t just throw light around the encampment. How long do they think before the road will hold us?”
It was a simple thing to get a few horses and people across a washout. Hundreds of marchers, wagons and artillery required a certainty, or he would be killing his own people in the attempt.
Alina didn’t pester him with his aggravating reality. War was fought in feverish hours after months of painful lack of change. She knew he wanted her to understand what they were doing, but dwelling on his stress wasn’t going to help him accept an adjustment.
“My soldiers are having to cut down half the forest to build bridges over the gaps,” he said. “Sandbags and stones weren’t enough. I’m tempted to try my squallers as wood cutters, if it wasn’t so likely they’d fell trees on each other learning how.”
“So we’re here for a little while,” Alina said calmly. “And people keep walking into this tent and telling you more problems.”
He gave her an indulgent glance, before he took a seat with his usual regal poise. His hand turned upward, drawing her near until she was sitting in his lap and ruining his previous dignity.
“You are trying to soothe me,” he said, touching her gently even as he eyed her with some suspicion.
“I am happier when you are happier,” she said softly. “I sleep better when you do, and breathe easier when your shadows are not so quick to leap from your hands. There has to be a little peace in the midst of war. There has to be something you carry with you that keeps you sane.”
His head tipped back, leaning on the high carvings of the chair. All of his lieutenants tried to increase him to be more than a man. They insisted he wear the black uniform, be given his respectful silences and remoteness. They kept his life sanitized of simplicity. Everything had the mark of the Darkling; ornate heaviness from his furniture to the cups that held his water.
“You give me too much credit,” Aleksander said wryly. “I have been called mad more than I can say.”
Alina picked his hand out of a fist, and laid it over her heart. “You told me you’d been waiting for me to rescue everyone. I’m starting with you,” she said. “And I see you as a man first. Men need rest sometimes.”
He bent to her more every day. Their war victories would follow these small moments of union without a name. Their powers had married early, and every other aspect of their lives shuffled slowly toward the same conclusion.
Alina didn’t actually want a little farmhouse and an ordinary husband. She did want the quiet of it, and perhaps she craved the novelty of General Kirigan chasing a goat out of a kitchen door. She wanted to wake in the same bed under a thatched roof with sunlight leaking. She wanted to boil her own kettle for tea, and kiss him before she put his plate down in front of him.
“Ivan is capable of holding the camp and continuing the road projects,” he told her. “And it could be argued they could use a break from me.”
“You are going to wear out those boots unless we find something to do with you. Let me make you a farmer for a few days.”
Alina had a giddy sense of having talked her lover into something extraordinarily novel, even for them. They were escorted with all the pomp of the Darkling’s entrance to a tiny farm. It was beautiful, a little emerald of land next to a sapphire stream. The house was small and humble, and there was a little barn even more worn. The larger animals had been taken away with the farm’s owners, but the chickens remained.
She watched as the soldiers insisted on carrying the food supplies and their bags of clothing into the house. Aleksander led his horse into the barn. It had been his only condition that they have a way to escape quickly.
She walked to the water, idly letting sunlight follow her with a heat that traced up her covered arms. Her first plan was to take off her distinctive black and gold kefta and have Aleksander do the same. The weather had a bite still, but in daylight it was lovely.
The shadows hung in the forest made a wall that reminded her a little uncomfortably of The Fold. Before she’d been let down from Dash, Aleksander had joined his hands in front of her and sent them flowing to fill the gaps between trees where danger might sneak up on them.
It was hardly like the challenge of being real homesteaders, but she was excited to have privacy. It was trying to be quiet and chaste in front of the troops. Saint Alina was a role she had to keep, as much as Aleksander had to maintain his wise oversight for their armies.
She had to be the Sun Summoner for a moment, to guard them from the water side of the farm. The traces of sun pulled gossamer thin and spreading from her hands. It slipped along the shadows with a connubial acknowledgement of Aleksander’s power. Her light made a shimmering veil across the water, rippling to reflections from the stream. Alina held it carefully, and visualized it holding in place with a myriad of tiny anchors dangling down into the tiny waves and digging into the sandy stream bed. She liked the little twist of the shoreline, so she set it away from the edge of the land, leaving them some water where they might swim later.
“You’re improving every time you use it,” he said.
“Thank you.”
They weren’t so isolated as to be entirely alone. Soldiers were guarding the dirt road a half mile away. Any fluctuation in the shadows or light would bring them back.
Their escorts were mounted and riding away. She knew the moment they turned the curve in the road and were out of sight. Aleksander immediately pulled her back to his chest.
“This is nice,” he sighed.
“Isn’t it? No more depressing, dark tent full of fuming and scheming,” Alina said lightly.
He kissed her neck. “I brought my fuming and scheming with me.”
She leaned into him. “That will wash out with a swim.”
Alina pulled her kefta open, happy to be out of the heavy fabric. She was grateful for the protection, but it was a confinement. Wearing it made her feel like she was working, on duty for a task that could swallow up her whole life if she let it.
“I’m not sure it’s very deep here,” Aleksander said dubiously. “I wouldn’t dive.”
“I’m shorter than you are. But no, I won’t dive in. We shall wade carefully from this little beach over here I have named Darkling Beach.”
He took her hand and followed as she pulled him to the dip on the shore where the ground was covered with very dark stones. It slanted down into the stream, and was nearly large enough to lie out flat.
“I am underwhelmed by this honour,” he said.
“It felt arrogant to name it Alina’s Strand.”
She kept peeling out of her clothes, nudging him away to shrug out of the heavy coat. Taking his cue, the Darkling started taking off his own clothing. He watched her with a warm stare, rolling his kefta and tossing it behind him.
“We can name one of the chickens after you,” he said, shrugging. “You can pick your favourite when we go get the eggs in the morning.”
“It feels mean to take their eggs just when we’re meeting them. I should go visit today before we have dinner.”
He held her arm as she pulled off her boots. “Maybe later. I was promised a cleansing swim to ease my troubles.”
She was naked first, and Alina waded in alone. She looked back teasingly, and dunked herself until every trace of her careful hairstyling was drowned. It was nice to feel pretty, but sometimes she just wanted to be relaxed.
Alina surfaced to Aleksander right next to her, pulling her under again.
Their swim led to a search for towels in their bags, and the Darkling dragging a hay bale across the lawn so they could sit in the sun and dry out. Alina pulled on her dress and boots and met the chickens, stopping to pet Dash before she went into the house.
It was tiny but clean and had a big bed. Aleksander had laid their food on the table. The bread, cheese and dried meat was basic fare, but she had a wineskin. There were jars of dried berries in the pantry. Alina poured some of the wine into a bowl and added some sweet berries to plump up for their dessert.
They ate early, sitting on a bench pressed together and not bothering to talk. It was peaceful to know they wouldn’t be interrupted. Before the sun went down, Alina called her light back and released it. She looked up as the stars came out, aware Aleksander had followed her out of the house to guard her.
“I wouldn’t want this forever,” she said wistfully. “All the same, it’s a really good change.”
“It was a good idea. I can afford a few days away,” he said.
“Or a full week?”
“I’m a beginner at this quiet farm life. Three days is all I can handle.”
She turned to embrace him, brushing her lips across his beard. “But we haven’t even tried the bed yet. Imagine not having to be quiet at all.”
Aleksander nuzzled her. “I suppose, but we won’t have eggs tomorrow if we scare our chicken friends.”
Her hands gathered the fabric of his shirt, happy not to have to settle for feeling him through his layers of protective uniform. It was absurdly daring to be taking a small moment of normal life.
“It’s lovely here. A pretty spot with a house just big enough for the two of us,” she mused, leading him to sit on their haybale by the water. “Swimming in the afternoon and watching the stars come out after dinner, no one bringing us dire news of spies and insurrections.”
“It is a nice delay, if I have to tolerate waiting,” Aleksander said. “Alina, this little house just big enough for two would have to shelter a dozen children with us if this was really our life. The tiny loft wouldn’t be storage space. It would be the shared bedroom of the mouths our little heaven would have to feed. The nearest you’d get to an afternoon swim would be washing the laundry. I have lived a normal life. What is sweetly simple for a week is torture through a winter.”
She stiffened, but didn’t pull away. He ran a palm down her back. “I am not saying it isn’t lovely. It’s not better for us than our real lives. It’s not even easier. My responsibilities come with me wherever I go. Protecting a farm and a family would drive me as seriously as leading an army. It would be a smaller task but with more emotional stakes for every life.”
Alina turned her face and hid it against his chest. “I wish you could have some peaceful nights. Your life can’t be measured in victories or defeats. It’s too tiring. You need respite,” she said.
He sighed, moving her with it and nudging her head back to look at her. “I have my respite in you. The strain of it alone was sometimes crushing. But I have no desire for bitterness. My mind is clearer when I look for the potential gains.”
She stood up, staying close to him as his hands slipped down and away. Alina stroked his hair and kissed the top of his head, leaning in to press her face against his hair.
“Your crown never comes off, does it? I hate that it’s so heavy.”
He sighed, accepting the affection uneasily. “I’m no prince or hero. I am a man trying to learn from his mistakes.”
Alina held his face and looked down at him, the strange opposition of their usual heights making it awkward. The strain of being good to her was encroaching on his responsibility to Ravka. Aleksander couldn’t give her a life to make up for her role as his complementary power. They would never be able to quietly step aside for normal things.
“That makes you no better than anyone else, then, doesn’t it? And on any day, no worse,” she said firmly. “Saints don’t live anywhere. They’re all up in heaven. And we’re down here, doing what counts.”
Some people craved glory and acclaim, but Aleksander wanted only to start a life as an ordinary man. It was shameful to turn his back on his powers, but if he’d had the choice he would have done it easily. He could have grown up with the children of the village and married a sweet girl when they were both too young. They could have had children and grandchildren, coaxing their food from the soil as they led unexceptional lives.
“I wish there was a choice to have something simple and wholesome,” he told her.
“I don’t. I have a warm hearth and a bed to share with a man who loves me. I have years and years ahead of me, and the makings of a good breakfast when I wake. Don’t assume regrets I don’t have for myself.”
His hair ruffled under her touch, and Alina’s fingers drifted to fit under his collar. He had said bitter things about children, and it wasn’t really true. If a child came for them, rare as they were for Grisha couples, Aleksander would be happy to be a father.
“I made it sound like I hate children,” he said gruffly. “I don’t, it’s just not manageable right now. It’s not safe.”
He had to be careful not to make promises for a future he couldn’t deliver. The country would carry on, but his presence wasn’t a guarantee. Generals didn’t live long enough to make quiet homesteads with their wives, even after hundreds of years. His life had been promised away to the war.
“I grew up in an orphanage,” Alina told him. “I understand living with a great pack of wild children enough to know one or two sounds nice, and a dozen is more like having a zoo. I’m not brooding for a baby.”
“There are many young grisha who would be happy for some mothering,” he said. “You could also be obsessively affectionate toward me, should you need an outlet.”
Alina’s body shifted, and she rolled her face across his crown. “I do have cravings for a kiss. The shape of your mouth when you say ‘flank’ is very distracting. I was barely listening to you.”
Aleksander pulled away slightly, sounding puzzled. “When were we talking about flanks? Was the topic war, sex, or dinner?”
She paused to think, petting his hair idly. “I think it might have been horses. You were paying a compliment to Dash,” she told him.
His head ducked, and she knew he was embarrassed. “You make me sound very strange in my relationship with my horse,” he grumbled. “Horses like when you talk to them. What you say doesn’t really matter. He is an excellent animal. His speed saved our lives.”
She pretended to be a tailor, smoothing away the furrows in his brow. Alina traced the angles of his cheeks and the contours of his beard. She dabbed the small bare spots directly under the corners of his mouth.
“I like these. Like dimples in your beard,” Alina said fondly. “My handsome Shadow Summoner is beautifully daunting. You were terrifying when we met.”
She tipped down and kissed him, sweet and brief. Aleksander leaned forward, shutting his eyes.
“I was trying to be nice. I’m a grouchy old man. Caustic is my version of humorous. I was impatient to know if you really were drawing the sun.”
“I was,” Alina told him, and grinned. “I can sometimes also call just one shadow and have him show up fairly reliably.”
He opened his eyes and studied her pleased expression. “Quite a rare variation of Grisha ability you possess, Miss Starkov,” he said with a husky tone. “Your powers are extraordinary persuasion, surely.”
“Or my personal shadow is very cordial,” she said lightly. “I admit I find him so pleasing I would be happy to have him ever with me.”
His smile was blinding before she was swept up in his arms and carried inside to test the bed.
The next morning, she had to wait for him to awaken before she could go to the chickens and start her farming career. Alina put her wall of sunlight up, and watched the shimmer of the stream wink and flow with welcome of the light.
“I will fetch water,” Aleksander said. “Give my best to the chickens.”
A few minutes later, he let himself into the coop and moved gingerly between the chickens.
“Are you okay,” Alina asked. “You look strange.”
He was cupping one hand in another, as if he’d injured it.
“I found a nest floating down the stream,” he said. “I fished it out. I believe these are duck eggs. There was no sign of a parent searching for it. Likely it had washed down a while with the thaw, and may be abandoned. They should be given a new spot near the water, but they need to be sat if there will be ducklings surviving.”
She looked at the little nest, and around at their borrowed chickens. “Well, I believe if we left an egg or two of a chicken, one of them would foster a few foundling eggs. They are not quite the same, but close enough.”
His dark gaze watched carefully as she gathered the smaller eggs and slipped them into a nest, giving back two chicken eggs.
“I would think,” Aleksander said. “If they are neglected we can try keeping them in the house and next to the hearth. But I feel a bird mother of the wrong sort is more of a solution.”
She made room for him to see the eggs in their new fraudulent nest. “I will check back later, but I feel our lovely chickens would be kind to some baby ducks.”
They carried their harvested eggs and went on with their planned breakfast, a leisurely meal that lingered into afternoon. Their conversation led to a desire for fresh cups of tea and another swim. Having settled their approval of the bed, they retired for a bit and got up to have a short stroll in the waning afternoon.
“I like your simple braid and the little brush of suntan across your cheeks,” he said. “You are a beautiful farm wife.”
“And you a handsome farmer, with a silver tongue. Should we see if the chickens have decided to hatch the spotted eggs we left with them?”
They found a chicken dutifully incubating her mix of eggs. She was plump and seemed very relaxed in human company.
The Darkling bowed his head. “My lady, your gracious volunteer work is a boon to your country and your small family.”
“Thank you, Tetepka Olga,” Alina said. “I have named them. She has a little tail ruffle different from the others.”
Having settled their rescued duck eggs safely, they made a light dinner and went to bed early. It was a much nicer version of sleeplessness to lie awake talking about the way forward. It was necessary to have real privacy, and freedom to speak without lowering their voices to account for the guards outside the canvas walls.
“You are a good general,” Alina said seriously. “You know the toil of your troops from standing next to them and living as they do. But you must also spare your mind from all the strain of it. The patience in your strategy prevents mistakes, and saves their lives. You cannot allow your mood to sour into a hasty attack.”
She lay with her head propped on his bare chest, looking at his slow-blinking ease.
“I have moments of impulse I do not recognize until I have said or done something better done by measure and stealth,” he said. “War is not a good teacher for relaxation.”
“I am glad you care, but you must keep it to a rational point. The goal must be set by your example. And you are strong. That alone inspires many to act bravely.”
He had never considered how a young recruit thought of him as a man. It was odd to feel he might be noticed for personal traits instead of his decisions for the armies.
Over the next few days, they mastered the use of their simple cooking pots. The stream offered some success at fishing. Alina set The Darkling to picking fruit before it fell from the boughs of a tiny orchard, and used some sugar to make preserves. She found their chickens were prolific and boiled the extra eggs. She baked simple bread and was soon feeding their guards down the road with a hot meal, and sending some food back when messengers came to deliver letters.
“Next week,” Aleksander said, reading one such letter. “We will have a road soon. Both ways, so you might return to the Little Palace if you like.”
“I think I have proven myself a steadfast companion without servants,” Alina told him, reading his hopeful voice.
“And a lusty one, with a very good mind for thinking to move us here during our delay. It doesn’t remove my desire to know you are safe.”
“Nor my desire to give my company to a man who would save a nest of duck eggs in the midst of a war,” she said. “We have been sparring with my light. I can train with you. I have never fought, but I will stay behind with guards when it comes to that.”
He pulled her toward him, keeping a hand gently around her waist. “You are very good at being with me like this and still keeping your mind and attention on the soldiers nearby. I cannot claim to have the same talent for focus on the many, when the one in front of me is you, Alina. Spare me the failure of it until I work on accepting the need to have you on field with me eventually.”
She didn’t want to fight. It was true she was not skilled at battle, and her power was outsized for any typical conflict. The Sun Summoner’s presence would add considerably to the tension of what might otherwise be a tiny skirmish.
“We will decide with the weather on the day,” she told him. “A week is some time for things to alter. Do not worry. Today and tomorrow we are enjoying our farming and it is enough.”
His heavy sigh begged a kiss, and she changed the subject to their daily chores. The little farm produced a surprising amount of surplus food, and she was trying to have it ready to move with them when their wagons returned.
“I will take Dash out to stretch his legs,” Aleksander said. “Do we have some food for the guards?”
“It’s staying warm in the bundle by the fire. Go and see the ducklings. They are growing coal black feathers. I have begun to wonder if they are not emulating your coat to invite more of your attention.”
The eggs hatched with little trouble, and the small ducks were happy enough in the coop. They would have to be carried outside to be introduced to the stream, and encouraged to learn to swim. There was something endearing about watching the Darkling dabbing a finger gently on the scant feathers, and obviously trying to figure out if the mother chicken had any idea of her brood being unusual.
“If they want simple lives, they would be better growing some chicken feathers and staying where they are,” he said, giving her a squeeze as he stood up.
“They are already lucky ducks, having met you just in time to be saved. There are a lot of creatures under God lucky to have met you,” she said. “And it is always better to know what you are, because it will not be hidden forever.”
His instinct to brush off the compliment was undercut by her arch look and personal experience. Alina shook her head slightly, and he mimicked her with a twinkle in his gaze.
“I bow to your wisdom.”
“Hurry back for my summoning lesson,” Alina said. “There is a day’s work to be done, even here on our break from the front. We should not waste the light.”
Aleksander cupped her face, and breathed, “It is my ardent wish never to commit such a sin. I am never eager to be without you, only to know you are safe and well even if I have to be away from such comforts.”
It would embarrass him to make too much of his feelings, and she joked instead. “Then you must tell your horse to ride quickly, because if I have to share you with him I demand my time.”
He huffed. “Ridiculous. Do not pick on Dash because you do not like riding. He is a very fine mount.”
Alina pushed him to the doorway and turned to get the bundled meals for the guards. “Then he may prove himself by honouring our schedule,” she teased. “And I will take it as proof.”
A few minutes later she heard him riding away, aware he must have paused to see the ducklings he had named when he’d found them hatched with a bemused chicken mother puzzling over their odd bills. He was not a perfect man, but he had warmth in his heart when there was a quiet moment to express it. She would try to sustain it year round, through their winters apart and their summers of lovely days together.