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Chapter Text

It took fifteen days for Ravkan astronomers to notice. The delay was a true testament to how the country's academic funding had long been monopolised by the Black General's pursuit of the Small Science. The Spinning Wheel observatory was already ceded to Fjerda, and it was over a century since the building closed its doors to learned scholars and leading minds.

And besides - it wasn’t the Bursar who lost a star. Nor the Hunter, nor the Scholar, or the Shorn Maiden.

The Three Foolish Sons remained three strong.

It was a small constellation, existing at the edges of everyone’s periphery. Often overlooked-

Easily missed.

It was Koja - the Too-Clever Fox. Named such by an amateur astronomer from Kerch, who had a nostalgic love for Ravkan folklore. Although it took a week for the halo around the star to fade from view and truly confirm it had disappeared from its place in the sky, it was this astronomer who wrote to the Merchants' Astronomical Society in Ketterdam to inform them of the development. He informed them that the tip of Koja’s right ear was now missing.

People were a little too busy with other, more pressing current events to care.

For this astonomer had noted the star's disappearance, the day the Sun Summoner was found.

The news caught Aleksander unaware - a rarity, in and of itself.

He was in the middle of a meeting, executing the seventh step in a nine step plan to earn the Second Army an increased budget from Lantsov. It was not the most exciting of meetings, nor the most exciting of plans. And still, it was a novel affront to find himself interrupted mid-sentence, as Fedyor abandoned his guard post outside the door and burst in with a missive in his shaking hand.

“What is it?” Aleksander said tersely. Although Fedyor had demonstrated insubordination in the interruption, the tone of his voice quickly restored order. He relished the way that several at the table tensed up, as the quality of the shadows shifted.

“I - General, I-” Fedyor did not seem to have the words. But nor did he have an excuse for breathlessness, given that he’d walked all of fifty paces.

Aleksander waited, unruffled, eyebrow raised.

“They… They found a Sun Summoner, moi soverenyi .” Fedyor said, then swallowed down another mouthful of air while several people at the table gasped. “She - she walked on foot into Keramzin.”

“Impossible,” and Aleksander meant it. If there was a Sun Summoner to be found, he had put measures in place that would guarantee he would be first to know. His testers would find them in Ravka when they were young, or his spies would find them elsewhere, and bring them to him in secret.

He snatched the missive out of Fedyor’s hand before his man could spill anymore of the details to others in the room and ruin his advantage.

Of course, it didn’t matter, did it? Looking down, he realised the letter had the seal of the First Army.

Aleksander was not the first to know. He had not found the Sun Summoner, as he had dreamed and planned for all these years. …He had no advantage to protect.

He was, in fact, scrambling, as he read the brief lines of text, describing a Shu girl who could summon light. She was residing in Keramzin - many, many miles away from him.

“Lies,” he said, half to room, half to himself, before glancing to Fedyor. “It must be some deranged fool with delusions of grandeur. Or a peasant with some half-decent understanding of alchemical reactions, creating some kind of lightshow, capable of feigning-”

“Forgive me, moi soverenyi... but I… don’t think so,” said Fedyor, looking sheepish. It was very rare that anyone outright contradicted the Darkling, but he persisted. “It’s just… they’re saying that…”

“They’re saying… what?”

“Only… that she burnt a hole through the Fold, moi soverenyi.”

He rode two days and two nights, and he didn’t sleep.

How could this have happened? How? He didn’t understand it. It was impossible. There was no way any of this could have taken place.

How could the Fold have sustained any damage without him sensing, without him knowing? It felt genuinely terrifying to have something so momentous happen, and it be so far outside his own control.

Keramzin was a place of little consequence. Its scrublands and dust-covered buildings passed Aleksander by in a meaningless blur, as he and the Second Army carriages followed the townspeople’s directions to the Town Hall. This was the building where they said the Sun Summoner was residing, waiting for them under First Army guard.

She walked into town, naked as a babe, said one old woman, hands trembling with rheumatism and reverence. Her skin was glowing. To see a Saint in my lifetime… truly, now I can die knowing happiness.

A handful of tents were set up in the central square, a makeshift barracks dedicated to protecting a single soul. Outside the building, a statue of Duke Keramzov astride a rearing horse - standard fare, for these small places that clung to whatever history they could to pretend they meant anything, in the long and dull passage of time. Aleksander actually remembered Keramzov: an inconsequential man. The features weren’t even accurate.

The townspeople froze and quivered in place when the feared Black General dismounted... as per usual. Aleksander supposed his control of the shadows was a little errant, with his tiredness and fury at this latest turn in the universe. The sky darkened overhead when he contemplated current events once more.

“Where is she?” he demanded of the first person he saw in uniform. They quailed at his expression, and hastily led him inside.

He didn’t know what he should expect. Someone below the age of testing, he supposed - the only logical explanation of how they’d so far alluded his grasp.

So it came as another infuriating surprise when the uniformed guard found him a First Army Lieutenant, who led him through the building, up to the Mayor’s study and library. Inside, Aleksander was greeted with the sight of a reed-thin young woman in her early twenties. She was laid sprawled out on one of the sofas for receiving guests, reading a book. Her dark hair was fanned over one sofa arm. Her bare feet were crossed at the ankles and resting on the other.

“Oh,” was all she said at the intrusion, casting a cursory glance at Aleksander and his entourage of Fedyor, Ivan, and Zoya Nazyalensky. She stretched out once horizontally, pointing her toes with a groan. Then, she placed her book face down on the Mayor’s coffee table, uncrossed her ankles, and sat up, smiling.

“Hello!” she grinned, “You took your time. Or at least, I think you did? It was pretty quick for me, I confess, but several days have already passed and I believe that kind of delay is definitely frowned upon, by most people. I had to sleep, and relieve myself several times, which, you know, terribly boring business. I’d rather be having conversations and doing fun new things, but I haven’t been allowed to leave this room.”

This monologue was met with confused silence.

“Although, I do find that I quite like reading, so far,” the woman continued, unbothered by the lack of response. She bought herself to standing with a dancer’s grace and brushed down her clothing, picking some lint off her shoulder and examining it.

She was slight and small, made the more so by her chosen outfit: an oversized roughspun shirt, and trousers that swamped her. The four rolls to bring them above her ankles signalled they were clearly borrowed. Her hair was long and dark, snarled with knots left unbrushed and loose in waves across her shoulders. Her dark eyes were bright and curious in her face, jumping from place to place and person to person with avid interest, drinking in everything with the innocence of a baby bird.

“The Mayor’s books were boring…" she continued, "but his wife’s! My goodness. Those were very interesting. I have learned a lot about Ravka, these past few days! Did you know that not only did Sankta Anastasia do all that terrible martyrdom stuff, with the blood and the wolves and the dying, but she was also in love? With a noble from Tsemna, whose father accidentally bought the plague she was destined to cure - it’s so very tragic! Hard to get through a martyrdom at the best of times, but to have to turn your back on love first? I don’t know how she could do it! She must be very brave, or very heartless. But she also cried a lot, and did cut off her own arm. So I think it must be the former. She definitely seems to have a heart. She clearly cares, a lot.”

It was at this point that Zoya covered a snigger, with a hand and a very fake cough. Several of the Second Army’s eyes flitted briefly to the book left interleaved on the coffee table: it was, as expected, a romance. Aleksander was amazed that the Apparat hadn’t had it burned on the grounds of blasphemy. But he perhaps he had, and being a Mayor’s wife gave one unfettered access to items deemed to be contraband.

And this woman was either a moron, or an extremely gullible fool.

“You are Alina Starkov?” he asked, tersely, eager to get this farce over with, disprove her claim, and go back to something resembling normality.

“That’s me!” the woman said cheerfully, beaming at the sound of her name. She tugged an errant strand of hair behind her ear. “Do you like it? My name? My sisters and I picked it for me. Some said it was a little on the nose to have ‘light’ and ‘star’ in there for everyone to see, but I liked how it felt, in my head! Apparently we misunderstood the conventions of your language a little, and it should be ‘Starkova’? But now that I have a mouth and a voice, the sounds are just so pleasing - I know I chose well.”

The Second Army contingent watched her silently, still uncertain how to react. She cocked her head to the side, blinking expectantly.

Ah, Aleksander thought, with a sudden and undeniable rush of relief. She’s not a Sun Summoner, then. She’s just a lunatic.

“It is… a nice name,” said Fedyor, the only one of them with a conscience or sense of social pleasantry. Even then, it took him a beat to muster a response.

“It is?” Alina smiled. “Thank you so much!”

“Your arm, please,” Aleksander said.

Alina Starkov looked at him and blinked again. “But you haven’t introduced yourself. Isn’t that what normally happens, before we shake hands? I definitely read that in more than one book, these past few days.”

Aleksander gritted his teeth, “General Kirigan. These are the contingents of the Second Army. Miss Starkov, your arm.”

“Ohhhh,” Alina said, nodding sagely. “You’re the Darkling! How silly of me, I probably should’ve been able to tell, shouldn’t I? From all the black! Is this a kefta, then? I like the patterns… the embroidery, is that the right word? I read about you in one of the Mayor’s histories. You run the Grisha, don’t you? An upcoming leader, the youngest in the bloodline of Shadow Summoners…”

She fell silent for a second - and what a second it was, a blissful respite - but turned thoughtful, examining his face. “Although… you don’t seem very young, to me. Something about you… Your eyes. You’re older than your face betrays, aren’t you? Tell me, do you know any stars?”

“Your arm," Aleksander said, without ceremony, and then reached out and grabbed her wrist, before any more ravings tumbled out of her permanently unrestrained mouth and caught on more uncomfortable truths. He wasn’t about to start believing in soothsayers, but a person who saw a slightly too accurate picture in a book from a century ago and then started running their mouth off could still be trouble. No matter how ludicrous they sounded.

“Ow, that hurts!” Alina complained, as he tugged her forward, and moved his ring on his left hand. “I think… I think you could bruise me!”

“This will only be a second, Miss Starkov.”

“Yes, well, I’m still learning how to measure those - OW!” she shrieked, overdramatic and shrill, as he broke the skin on her arm.

And wonderfully, blissfully, truly an answer to his prayers:

No light. No power.

All that happened was she bled.

Still, he must check. Aleksander dove his consciousness outwards, searching for something to amplify. Her heartbeat was thrumming like a hummingbird, and there was… something there. A blip on his awareness, but it was seemingly very small, almost a shadow in his mind. Nothing like he’d encountered in any other Grisha.

He reached out for it regardless. It was better to be thorough, if only to quell the small ‘what if?’ that would otherwise haunt him for decades to come. He tried to grasp onto that speck, and it… evaded him. Rather than rallying towards his influence, as usually happened when he latched onto a power to amplify.

In fact, it seemed so different from the signs he usually looked for, that he fought a triumphant grin. It probably meant there was nothing there, after all.

“Oh my goodness,” Alina Starkov was saying, looking down at her arm with wide, wondering eyes. “That’s my blood, isn’t it? Holy stars, it worked. My wish worked. I’m bleeding. I have flesh, I have blood. Oh my, it’s even red! I’m truly here to stay!”

“You are certainly destined for a life right here in Keramzin, Miss Starkov. Because you are not Grisha,” Aleksander replied, disgusted by her childish drivel and dropping her arm like it burned.

“And you,” he said, turning on the First Army representative, Tarasovich, “have colossally wasted my time, not to mention the Crown’s.”

“Y-you don’t understand, General,” the man stuttered. “Your test… it must be wrong. She’s the Sun Summoner. She called the light… I saw her do it.”

“We all did,” that was the otkazat'sya mayor, cowering in his corner. Somehow, his timidity was overcome in this brief moment, to defend the charlatan he thought a Saint.

“And yet, she did not pass my test,” Aleksander replied, with cruel satisfaction. “So whatever you thought you saw, you must be simply be a party to the same foolish delusions that this deranged woman-”

"Oh,” said Alina, who seemingly didn’t know how to be quiet. She was cradling her bleeding arm but not doing anything about the blood, simply watching as it ran in a rivulet to her elbow and then dripped onto the tarnished wooden floor.

“So that’s what that was" she said, frowning. "You just wanted me to shine? Why didn’t you just… ask me? Was the stabbing really necessary?”

Aleksander span on her, tiredness and panic and frustration all blending into an impatient anger that he did not bother to rein in. Particularly when confronted with one foolish woman who didn’t know when to admit her ruse was well and truly foiled.

"Go on then,” he goaded, in an icy and condescending voice, “summon the light for me. Do it right now, and I’ll give you the life in the Little Palace you must so desperately crave.”

“Well,” Alina shrugged one shoulder, indifferent at his threatening presence and simply sending more blood dripping to the floor. “Ok, then. But only because Lieutenant Tarasovich told me that that’s what I need to do to save Ravka. Otherwise, I’m not sure this ‘Little Palace’ is really worth my time - why do you advertise it as being ‘Little’, exactly? That's not exactly something you want to lead with, is it?”

Aleksander, despite his better judgement, was incandescent with fury. And then, Saints help him, she pouted: “I would also like it to be noted, that when I did my last demonstration, Tarasovich did at least deign to say please, first.”

The Darkling didn’t say please. He didn’t say anything.

And she was lucky he didn’t use the Cut, either.

Alina blinked at him for a second, then scowled, childishly. “Just one second,” she said, which Aleksander presumed meant she was stalling. She picked a letter knife from the Mayor’s table and stabbed through the sleeve of her shirt in one tug. It ripped like it was paper, and she pulled it off, beginning to bind her arm.

“I’m not used to bleeding,” she explained to the room, still shamelessly buying herself time. “It’s quite distracting, to cause such a stain.”

“There’s no point continuing with this pointless farce, Miss Starkov,” Aleksander said, eager to get home, back to the war room and the many plates he’d left spinning there for… this. “You’ve had your two days of sainthood, I’m sure you’ve been treated like a queen. Now just go quietly back, to whatever pathetic life led you to this urge to indulge in this fallacy-”

Aleksander Morozova choked on his next sentence, as Alina Starkov summoned a glowing orb of light into her hand.

It was the size of a dinner plate, and gave off heat like a furnace.

Impossible. He thought, for a second time. The test had not summoned her power, nor had his own properties as an amplifier. There was no way-

Alina summoned a second, into her other hand.

And then split the two of them by two again, so that she had four.

She glanced at him and his companions, now awe-struck. Her expression was bored and a little resigned. She dissolved the four spheres of light into particles that exploded outwards, out so that they danced like motes of golden dust on the wind. She arranged those motes into a storm, or a galaxy, then span them in a circle. She made a constellation out of them, and grinned to herself like she was making her own secret joke.

“Do you need me to glow, as well?” she asked, conversationally, maintaining the vortex of power in a corona around herself, still bare foot and bleeding through the linen on her forearm. “I did that when Tarasovich asked, but I think I went a bit bright, and then the room set on fire. The curtains caught. I’d rather not do that in the library - I’ve still got several books to read. I could do it outside?”

Aleksander’s mouth was dry. He had to swallow twice.

Amazement, and… panic.

Not just a Sun Summoner, but a powerful one. Already trained. She had to be.

“You look worried,” Alina said, with a genuinely sorrowful expression. “I’m confused. Isn’t this what you wanted me to do? Apparently I’m prophesied, or something?”

A rebel trap? A Shu-Han ploy? A plant, by his mother?

Alina blinked at him, and let her light die. “Everyone was saying that this is important. That what I did in the Inkblot was important, as well. But if you’d rather I didn’t, I’m quite happy just going for another walk. I was thinking about maybe seeing the sea-”

“The ‘Inkblot’?” he asked, through numb lips.

“Oh, sorry! The Fold,” she qualified. “That’s your name for it, isn’t it? It’s just that, from above, it looks like an inkblot. A smallish one. Or at least, my sisters - the ones who’d taken their pilgrimage already - said it looked like an inkblot, and I never understood what they meant. But now I’ve seen ink, and I find the analogy quite accurate. The Darkness was tangible, when I was inside it. It ran like water. Easy to frighten away.”

Saints, what the fuck was she? The worst fucking spy ever, if that was Shu-Han’s plan. He should kill her where she stood.

But he couldn’t kill her. Not with witnesses, and not when he needed her for his own plans. Still, Aleksander had to do something, before this entirely spiralled out of his grasp. Damage control was his first instinct. It was all he could achieve when faced with such a complex, frightening anomaly.

“Pack your things,” he said, trying to give his voice authority he once, for the first time, wasn’t certain he had. “My colleagues and I need to visit whatever you did at the Fold. Then we will come back for you, and take you to Os Alta.”

“Is that the rule, then? That Grisha have to go to Os Alta?”

You are not Grisha, he thought, mind fraying a little at the edges. A Grisha would’ve passed the test. He could’ve amplified a Grisha.

Alina continued talking, which seemed to be what she did whenever she was faced with a silence. “Tarasovich said that might be the way things have to be. Are you sure there’s room for me, in this ‘Little’ Palace of yours? I suppose I won’t take up much space, given I don’t have anything to pack! Although-” she looked down at her exposed and bleeding arm, “I could probably do with a new shirt. And I’d like to finish my book.”

“You do that, Miss Starkov,” Aleksander said, voice feeling very far away to his own ears. “Fedyor, Ivan, you stay and watch her.”

They could incapacitate her, should she try to run.

He turned. “Nazyalensky: you’re with me.”

The Fold had peeled back by half a mile on the South Eastern shore. Ground that had not seen daylight in centuries now baked under a cloudless sky.

The edges of the Fold itself, where the tear had formed, were singed. The injury dealt had given the Fold a tangible physicality, and the ripped edge still smouldered, like a burned piece of paper flaking into ash, or the dying embers of a fire. They surveyed the newly uncovered area, and at its heart they found a small indentation in the earth. A sunburst of soot, in the shape of a girl.

Further in, beyond their eyes, was a crater: thirty meters wide and ten meters deep, the sand melted on impact into a shining, dented mirror of onyx glass. But Aleksander couldn't see that: he could only see the devastation before him.

A section of the Fold, destroyed. And he hadn’t felt it.

Aleksander and Zoya stood there, speechless. Alina Starkov had detonated a section of the Unsea.

He hadn’t felt it.

A part of his own creation erased from existence, by a… a madwoman. And he’d been told, via letter.

“Just what… what is she?” he whispered. Luckily, the breeze snatched the words away before they could reach Nazylensky. He couldn’t let anyone know that he was at such a loss.

He didn't see the spot where the star had fallen. And it didn't occur to him to look.

“We got her a shirt,” Fedyor told him hastily, seeing the stormy expression on Aleksander’s face when they dismounted once more in Keramzin, “and… some shoes. We’re ready to leave, moi soverenyi.”

Aleksander had ridden the horses too hard, and so they needed to take the carriage back from here. Alina Starkov was waiting on the steps of the town hall with Ivan. Her mouth was moving, and Ivan looked like he wanted to be anywhere but in listening range. At least, when he saw Kirigan move straight for the carriage and not the girl, he understood the message with perfect clarity, and began moving them both down the stairs as well, eager to depart. At her side was a small satchel, seemingly stuffed with more books, but otherwise she had nothing else on her person.

“Sankta!” came cries from townspeople congregated in the square, several of them crossing themselves as she walked past. A group of small children ran up to her, and handed her a posy of flowers with the roots still attached, soil clinging to them.

She took them with a gracious bow and then spoke with them for a few minutes, smiling and grinning as one of them tugged on her sleeve.

Aleksander wondered if she was enjoying herself - if all of her pointless, incessant prattle was an affected eccentricity to sell the claim to sainthood and accelerate her canonisation. Was she possibly that canny? All he knew was, she was delaying them, and didn’t even look up for permission with which to do so.

The Darkling, waiting by his carriage like a lemon, for an actual lunatic.

“Please, Sankta!” one of the girls shouted. “Please show us!”

Alina cocked her head, as if considering. With an impish grin, she opened her hand and summoned the light for them.

At the sight of it, entire square went silent, like they were holding a collective breath. All except the children, who started clapping while Alina shaped the light into a flower, and made it bloom.

Aleksander tensed, as dread washed over him. Another story confirming her identity, that would spread before he had the time to contain it. She was doing this deliberately, wasn’t she? She had to be.

“Alright, move along,” Ivan grunted, grabbing Alina by the arm and moving her towards Kirigan and the others.

“I’m sorry!” the girl shouted over her shoulder, “Goodbye! Thank you for the flowers!”

“Get. In,” Aleksander told her through gritted teeth, gesturing to the open door she’d left waiting for several minutes.

“Oh, goodness, are we on a schedule?” Alina said blithely. “I’m sorry, like I said, I’m still getting used to how you all perceive time. And they gave me flowers! How nice of them! My sisters warned me that showing off my light could cause problems, but they were clearly wrong. Everyone is just so lovely!”

Sisters, again. Did that mean there was more of them?

Saints. Aleksander decided to save himself a headache by simply not contemplating it. “Just get in, Miss Starkov.”

Alina acquiesced. But whether anyone was thankful was a question up for debate, because it soon meant they were all locked up in a carriage with her, and she still didn’t stop talking.

She talked about everything: the carriage interior, the scenery breezing past the window, the food she’d eaten since arriving in Keramzin, and how she was excited to try chocolate.

Aleksander tried to tune her out, as did Zoya and Ivan. Fedyor tried his best to keep smiling and nodding along. But even his smile was looking a little brittle in the face of her incessant monologue.

“Oh, it’s so exciting to be travelling again, although you really do move slow,” she smiled, looking out of the window. “Oh, it’s just so thrilling! I’ve got so many things I want to do! I want to see a play, something where lots of people die needlessly and dramatically. And read something so moving it makes me cry. And swim outdoors, so I can feel the wind drying the water on my skin when its damp. I want a dress, the kind that shimmers, and whispers when you spin. I want to hug someone, and be hugged back, and laugh with someone else until I can feel these ribs of mine hurt. And I want to save Ravka, because everybody seems to think I could do that, and it would be nice if some of those stories that make people cry were about me, so that I can leave a mark here. And I want to fall in love, of course! My sisters tell me that that doesn’t always happen, but I’ll tell you a secret now that they can’t hear me - I think I have a nicer personality than some of my sisters. They are very stand-offish, and distrustful. And none of them shone here, which is clearly just the solution to making everyone immediately like you!”

If she is a spy, she is the worst spy I have ever encountered, Aleksander thought, fighting the urge to rub at a forming headache.

The double bluff present in that concept could have given him more reason to be suspicious. But no spy would act this way. Not when Alina’s entire persona made everyone within the confined space want to kill her without a single crime being committed.

“You’re so pretty,” she told Zoya, roughly forty-five minutes later.

The air in the carriage snapped taut in a second. Fedyor physically sucked in and held a breath, no doubt sensing the change in Zoya’s physicality. Her feelings were written plain on her face, as she glared at the new Sun Summoner with renewed fury.

Alina, obviously, didn’t notice, and continued, “blue looks so nice on you. I’m not sure how colours work with complexion yet, but we both have dark hair, so maybe blue would suit me as well? Is that what I get to wear, when I get one of these keftas? Do I get to choose?”

The carriage was dangerously silent. Zoya was practically crackling with static. Even Alina noticed this silence was different in quality from the impassive, apathetic acceptance her stream of consciousness had earned her so far. Unfortunately, she misunderstood it, glancing around the carriage, and saying hastily, “oh, I’m sorry, please don’t worry! You’re all very pretty, also!”

“You,” she gestured to Ivan, “are very tall, and your shoulders are very broad which means you have a strong silhouette.

“You,” she turned to Fedyor, “have a lovely smile, and very kind eyes. And you-”

She turned to Aleksander, frowned a little, while everyone else in the carriage seemed to physically cringe and wish for death.

“You have a lot of… presence. Also, your cheekbones are excellent. My sisters explained to me about cheekbones, and how they could make or break a face - clearly, you have been very lucky. But the fact remains that Zoya is also a woman, and with the same colouring. So I think she’s a much more useful model for me to follow initially, if I wish to look for ways to make myself pleasing, in preparation for falling in love. And while I like red as a colour, I am far too bored of black. It is blue, for me, I think.”

“...Are we really just going to let her keep talking?” Zoya asked, aloud. She looked at Fedyor and Ivan, “Can’t you send her to sleep, or something?”

Ivan actually glanced at Kirigan, silently asking for permission.

Aleksander shook his head imperceptibly, but even he could admit that his already thin patience was hanging on by a thread.

“Where do you hail from, Miss Starkov?” he asked. They were going to have to interrogate her at some point. Might as well be now, when they had her surrounded by heartrenders, and they couldn’t escape her even if they wanted to. It meant less time spent with her at the Little Palace, which was becoming more appealing by the second.

“I don’t know,” Alina said with a shrug. “Well, I know where my home is, but I don’t know where I landed when I fell here. Somewhere in the Fold. There were some buildings. I got quite turned around. I only made the hole when I got bored searching for the way out - turns out I was pretty close to the edge, but it's very hard to tell, when the darkness is that thick and you've got bat monsters haranguing you at every turn.”

The Darkling raised an eyebrow, “you know your home, but you don’t know where you’re from?”

“Pretty much,” Alina shrugged. “I have a vague understanding of your geography, but there were no maps in the library. So I haven’t got round to learning the names of cities and the like.”

“You look Shu,” Zoya observed, glaring.

“Oh, do I?” Alina smiled, “well, that’s nice! That explains why your features are different from mine, I suppose. You’re Suli, aren’t you?”

Ivan and Fedyor shared a surprised glance, and at Zoya’s startled look, Alina continued grinning broadly. “See, who needs maps? I can just tell! It’s a kind of kinship we hold, you and I. You’re like me - you know that home is not simply a place, but a group of people. That home and family are, in fact, one and the same thing. Not that I’m Suli, obviously - you’ve just told me I’m Shu! I just like the Suli, because some of your beliefs are similar to my own.”

“...So, you are from Shu Han?” Fedyor asked, while Zoya went paler and paler with every word from Alina's mouth.

“...Is it easier if I say yes?” Alina asked, after a thoughtful pause.

“It depends on what cover story you are trying to sell to us, Miss Starkov,”Aleksander informed her.

He did so, in seamless Shu. A slightly pointless test at this point, given that he thought she was far too deranged to be a spy. But one he couldn’t stop himself making, out of sheer curiosity.

A saint would have no Shu. A spy, on the other hand…

Alina frowned for a second, gaze going far off, and then replied, also in perfect Shu: "I don’t have one, really. At least, not for my sake. But you won’t believe me, if I tell you the truth. So I’m trying to work out what story will make you all feel the most comfortable. Is it believable for you, then, if I come from Shu Han?”

The rest of the carriage jolted into action.

Fedyor and Ivan’s hands each formed a complicated pattern in unison, and then Alina was gasping, choking on pain as her body locked up.

Instead of opting for lightning in this confined space, Zoya pulled a dagger from the bodice of her kefta.

“Spy,” she hissed.

“Who sent you?” Fedyor demanded.

Aleksander was impressed that they had reacted according to protocol, but still ultimately bemused. Very few Shu assassins would blunder through an interrogation with such a blasé attitude. Miss Starkov was too incompetent to be a good spy.

Of course… she could just be a bad one.

“No one sent me!” Alina said, strained and speaking once again in Ravkan. “Why are you suddenly so frightened?”

“We are a little concerned that you are fluent in our enemy’s tongue, Miss Starkov,” Aleksander explained calmly, even as his shadows began to kiss his own fingertips in preparation for the cull.

“But… but you spoke in it first!” Alina said, confused, affronted, and starting to fight against the heartrenders’ hold, “I was just copying you… I didn’t want to be rude! Why aren’t they attacking you?"

“Because I don’t speak Shu like a native.”

“But… but we sounded the same! Is this because you don’t look Shu?” Alina relaxed in the cage of her own body, and then started pouting again, as if she’d made a social mishap and was puzzling herself through it, “well. I suppose that does make it different for me. I think that’s awfully distrustful of you, but I can see how that would cause confusion, if you’re angry at the Shu for some reason. Does it help if I tell you I can speak all languages, then, not just that one?”

She turned to Zoya, got that slightly vacant look again, and then said something in Suli, that caused the woman to tighten her grip on her dagger. Suli had become less useful to Aleksander in recent decades, since the geopolitical landscape had last shifted, but he could make out the question in her tone: "this is the language of your people, yes?"

“What. the. fuck?” Zoya ground out. A perfect accent in a third tongue didn’t exactly provide evidence in Alina’s favour.

“Oh! And this one!” Alina said, in Fjerdan, “I spoke this one to some very mean and disgruntled men, and they seemed to understand me perfectly-”

She squeaked, as the heartrenders tightened their grip on her body.

“Who sent you, Miss Starkov?” Aleksander demanded.

“No one!” Alina replied, looking panicked and frustrated, “I sent myself!”

“So, you were in training for some kind of infiltration, and decided you could do it independently, without supervision,” he theorised, then sighed, “let me tell you, whoever your handler is, they were right. You really shouldn’t be out in the field.”

“Infiltration?” She said, flabbergasted, “I didn’t ‘infiltrate’ anything! You… you all came to find me and take me somewhere, because you said it was important! You think I wanted to be stuck in a carriage with four grumpy, violent people? I just wanted to see the sea!”

“What were you hoping to gain, Miss Starkov? Who sent you? Where are you from?”

“I've already said, if I told you, you won’t believe me! I’ve been explaining to people for days and they don’t like it, it’s just exhausting! I’ve decided It's just easier if you all decide on what is the most plausible. I can be from Shu if you want, or Ravka, if that makes you less horrible to be around-”

Aleksander gave the nod, and Ivan tightened his grip until she squeaked again.

“I’m on a pilgrimage!” she said, her face looking absurdly betrayed and hurt. She was stupid, but her acting was exemplary. “It’s just… it’s what we do! All the eldest and most staid of my sisters have done it. We get restless, and we know it’s time to fall, so we come down here and we find the thing that completes us, whatever we lack that has left us feeling so out of sorts. A purpose. And I came down here, and everyone immediately seemed so certain of my purpose, of what I could do, and who I came here for. You all handed me the instructions on your doorstep. So I thought it would be easy! Please stop hurting me!”

“The answer is truthful, moi soverenyi” Fedyor said, his face becoming overcast with confusion and weakness at the sign of her distress. She wasn’t holding up to questioning the way an agent would - unless that was all part of the act.

Aleksander cast his glance over at Fedyor’s less soft-hearted partner, who also nodded his confirmation. Either she’d trained her body to fool his two best heartrenders, or… she was actually in distress.

“Where are you from, Miss Starkov? I don’t want to hurt you, but I will not ask a third time.”

“The closest thing I am is Ravkan. Koja is named after a Ravkan story, I arrived in Ravka!” she sputtered. “But…” she bit her lip, then said, “and you can’t be angry at me, if I tell you.”

“I will be the judge of that, Miss Starkov.”

"You won't like it, but you also don't seem to like not knowing it. Please don't do this once you have my answer. It's not my fault you’re all impossible to please."

"And yet, I must have that answer, if you are to live."

“I’m… I'm from the sky!” she told him. “I was a star, and I fell. I landed in Ravka, so that makes me Ravkan. But I’ve only been in Ravka less than a week, so I don’t feel very Ravkan, which is why I didn’t know to say it like that. That’s all. I’m not a spy. And I’m not sure I’m even the Sun Summoner, like you all say I am, but the Sun is also a star, so maybe I’m a close enough fit that it will all work out! I just want to help people, and find my purpose. Please, you have to believe me.”

Everyone was silent again, save for Alina's laboured breathing as she heaved against invisible heartrender bonds.

...What, exactly, did a person say to that?

“She’s… um. Well, she certainly thinks she’s telling the truth,” Fedyor said, into the quiet.

“She’s actually unhinged,” Zoya observed. She glanced at the General, “Some kind of conditioning, gone wrong?”

“The Fjerdans are the only ones who radicalise their extremists using religious doctrine,” Aleksander told her calmly, “and while there is some overlap with lunar tradition, the symbology does not align with the Shu. I think she may just be mad.”

“Still a Sun Summoner,” Ivan noted.

Yes. That was true. Aleksander couldn’t kill her - not when he needed her to complete his plans.

“I am not a spy, and I have no interest in infiltrating or harming anyone,” Alina said. “I just want to help. I’m here to find my reason to be. Maybe my purpose is to make it so that you no longer hate the Shu and these Fjerdans and don’t assault people in carriages without just cause, which seems to me to be a very unfounded social practice, but…”

She looked at the four people, aggression entering into her expression for the first time, glaring at them like a child having a tantrum. “I will admit, I don’t know that for certain. All I do know, is that the people in Keramzin were nice. And they wanted me to destroy the Fold. I can do that. I will do that. That is a suitable purpose.”

A quick glance exchanged between Ivan, Fedyor, and Aleksander: all true to her. Albeit stupid.

“Please let me go,” Alina said, after a second. Her voice quavered a little, but she stuck her chin out defiantly, all the same. “Please stop hurting me. I don’t want to hurt you - but I will not ask a third time.”

Aleksander raised an eyebrow at his own threat being parroted back at him, with what he supposed she thought was imperial contempt. He made a gesture, and the heartrenders ceased their influence. Alina fell back into the comfort of a body that belonged to her, rubbing uncomfortably at her arms.

“Why are you all so angry?” she demanded, “isn’t this what you wanted?”

Aleksander was tired. This girl wasn’t a threat, but she was far from harmless.

“Send her to sleep,” he told Fedyor with a dismissive wave of his hand. “We could all do with a break.”

Chapter Text

They were attacked, a day outside Os Alta.

The druskelle were forty strong: an impossibly and unexpectedly large contingent. It wasn't clear whether it was because Fjerda's spies had reported that Aleksander himself travelled with the Sun Summoner, or the evidence of Alina’s ability had scared them into action. Perhaps their leaders had an ounce of sense hidden amongst all that fanaticism, and saw her for what Aleksander already feared she was: an easily-acquired and fired weapon against the Fold.

It didn’t matter much: the druskelle would all die, regardless.

“Stay here,” Aleksander told Alina, sparing a momentary glance back at her as he exited the carriage.

His voice brokered no argument, but she just glared at him in response. Since she’d woken up that morning, she’d been blissfully silent, all wrapped up in a ball and sulking in her corner of the carriage, knees tucked to her chest. She had started reading another awful romance novel, and spent her morning giving the four people who’d trapped her the deliberately performative cold shoulder.

The four Second Army soldiers left the carriage, ready to fight alongside the larger retinue. Fjerdans began falling like bowling pins. Four of the strongest Grisha in Ravka made quick work of their numbers, though it was the Black Heretic who took the lion’s share.

He watched dispassionately as they fell, the cut melting away on the air like smoke.

“Ow! Let go… would you… I don’t know who you are or what you want... would you please… stop!” came a familiar, high pitched screech from eighty feet away, back where the black vehicle stood. Aleksander fought the urge to roll his eyes, as he turned and glimpsed Alina Starkov struggling in the grip of a druskelle, a man with a good foot and a half of height on her.

Aleksander supposed it would have been too much to hope that anything about her transportation would go smoothly.

“I said stop! I don’t want to have to hurt you!” Alina was saying, in that incessant, innocent tone of hers. Obviously, the man ignored her, simply tightening his hold. She shrieked again as he twisted her into a lock, and hastily switched to Fjerdan, “I know that the Second Army seem to be very mean and needlessly antagonistic upon first meeting, but I can promise that I’m not going to hurt you, not unless you give me reason. I have no quarrel with you or your people, if you simply let me go. There’s really no need to hurt me. I wish to destroy the Fold, which I gather is something that has killed your people as well as Ravkans. So you surely must want me to help with that-”

She’s actually a fool, Aleksander thought, not for the first time.

The druskelle seemed to agree with him. “Lunatic witch!” he cried. Then he started dragging her across the deadfall by her twisted arm, and her hair.

“Ow! If you do not stop,” Alina said, voice wavering,“I will have to defend myself. You will not like it.”

“You will burn, you unnatural thing.”

“I’ve burned for a long time, longer than you’ve even been alive, and so I really don’t think that will kill me! Please let me go. This is the last time I will ask! Otherwise, I will act, and it is not my preference to do humans harm.”

“Give me strength,” Aleksander muttered to the heavens, and to himself. Then he started making his way towards his idiot Sun Summoner, the Cut beginning to reform according to his will.

Alina nor her attacker seemed to notice his oncoming approach. Aleksander watched, as Alina reached up and around with her one free hand. She grasped her attacker at his jaw, nails scrabbling and clawing at his cheek.

“I’m really sorry,” she said, fervently apologetic in Fjerdan. “I did ask, several times, and I’m weaker in this body. I have to do something. You really are hurting me-”

And then, before Aleksander could release his shadows and end the man’s life for her, Alina Starkov’s entire arm ignited.

Aleksander stopped in his tracks. He had never seen anything like it. Not even a newfound Inferni who lacked discipline would ever do such a thing, because the only person they would injure would be themselves. It wasn’t fire that illuminated Alina, but a flame so intense it burned bright white. It was immediately blinding, leaving a gold silhouette of her figure across Aleksander's vision as he hastily squinted and averted his gaze, hand reaching up to shield his face.

The Fjerdan began to scream, high pitched and keening. Something started to sizzle. Alina herself let out a sorrowful sound of pity.

Blinking away after images, Aleksander tried to look back at Alina Starkov. It was like half of her was ablaze. Her eyes were brimming with bright, luminescent light that erased her pupils from her face, and all her skin glowed. Even the parts that weren’t alight. There was a shimmering haze of heat in a trembling aura around her form, like the mirages that danced across the ground when it baked under hot sun. Her sleeve was beginning to singe, and the Fjerdan’s man’s face was already blackened and crisping where her fingers touched him.

She let go, blinked away the brightness from her face in an instant. The light around her died.

Then the man crumpled forward: dead, already half ash.

Alina looked down at the body. She didn’t start to cry, as the Darkling would've expected her to. She simply stared at the man’s corpse. It stank, and still sizzled. Her face was unreadable.

She looked up, as if she could sense someone was watching her, and her eyes found Aleksander's across the battlefield. There was something strange and alien about her, for a second: something familiarly inhuman.

He remembered what she’d said on first meeting: you’re older than your face betrays. Tell me, do you know any stars?

Then she blinked, looking surprised, and pointed, “General - behind you!”

Aleksander span. Two druskelle with a deathwish were advancing on him, and the unneeded Cut he’d summoned was wavering with the effort of keeping it in place. He threw it at the first assailant, who disintegrated into pieces in seconds, cut through in five places.

The second yelled another typical epithet about witchcraft, and then stabbed at him. Aleksander managed to shield himself with shadow and deflect the swing of the blade, but forming that took his effort and his energy. With nothing better to do, he simply punched the man in the face before he could ready another attack. The hit of his closed fist held enough force to send the Fjerdan reeling backward.

The man stumbled back four steps, and then-

He was also engulfed in white flame.

It took Aleksander a second to realise what had happened. The man hadn’t simply combusted: behind him, Alina had released an orb of light, sent it careening in the Fjerdan’s direction, and-

- And it had punched through his torso and taken half his chest with him. Leaving a single, smouldering, gaping hole the size of a wonky cannon ball - like someone had taken a bite out of him, with flaming teeth.

Aleksander watched, fascinated, as the man’s mouth formed a breathless, soundless oh of pain. That was all he managed, before he toppled lifelessly to the ground as well.

As Aleksander stared incredulously down at the body, Alina ran up to his side, a little breathless.

“Are you alright?” she asked him, absurdly. As if that was something anyone ever asked of the General of the Second Army following routine combat.

Aleksander was still staring at her second corpse. "I'm fine, Miss Starkov."

“I’m starting to understand why you don’t like Fjerdans," she said. "Or at least, not these types of Fjerdans. I really did ask him to stop, but he just wouldn’t listen. At least you eventually saw reason. And while I know you did not sedate me for my benefit, it is true that I currently struggle to sleep at night.”

Aleksander could barely hear her over the roaring of his ears.

“Do you have an amplifier?” he asked, absurdly. As if any Grisha could get hold of an amplifier without his help locating and requisitioning it.

“What’s an amplifier?” Alina asked, confused. Then, she shook out her wrist, which was smoking, because her sleeve was actually on fire.

Impossible levels of power. Impossible.

I don’t want to hurt you, but I will not ask a third time, she had said, yesterday. It had never actually occurred to the Darkling to be scared.

Now, it really, really did - with absolute clarity. He’d encountered a madwoman, and she was the most powerful thing he’d ever seen. Like an inferni summoning next to a vat of oil, or an infant with a zweihander.

But… there was a beauty to it, too, he couldn't help to admit. She had been magnificent.

“Are you sure you’re ok?” Alina asked him, again, gently. He jumped as she put her hand on his arm, but she was no longer glowing, and her skin was just human warm. “You seem a little frightened. I don’t like violence, either. And it must not be nice, people hating you for something you can’t help. Although it must be noted, you hated me simply for speaking Shu.”

And thus, the brief moment of admiration was dispelled. Aleksander had no time for idiots.

“My distrust of the Shu is justified, Miss Starkov. By manifold attacks, in a similar manner to the one you see before you," he replied coldly. "I am fine. Quite frankly, I have grown used to it."

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to mortality,” she told him, striking him straight to the heart in a single sentence.

As he tried to comprehend everything she was in that tense, strange second, she blinked up at him and continued: “My sisters explained it to me - that I could be harmed here. That I could harm others. But I did not think it would happen. And I also thought that if it did happen… that it would matter to me. I would feel something. But that man was hurting me,” she turned to look behind her, at the ashes she'd left in her wake. “And his life was already short. I do not understand why he would wilfully shorten it. And yet… I am still operating on a different scale, it seems. I feel like I stole seconds from him, if that makes sense? Not years.”

How old are you? he wanted to ask. But he did not, in the knowledge that he would not get a sane answer.

He guessed that girls deluded enough to think they were stars often considered themselves to be very old.

It was pure fantasy to believe that a woman as ageless as him existed. And the fact was that, if she did? there was not a way she could’ve evaded his grasp for so long. Not if she was Alina Starkov, who apparently had the self-preservation instincts of a matchstick.

“Do you realise?” he asked, instead, “exactly what you are?”

Not Grisha, but close enough. That display of power had, against all odds, renewed his determination. She was confirmed his strange, distorted mirror. His hope. His salvation.

His equal.

“Well, no,” Alina admitted. “Not really. That’s the point of a pilgrimage. That’s why I’m here: to learn what I am. I’m hoping that this world will show me, in time.”

A world, that he could control. If she was willing to follow him guilelessly to Os Alta, and protect him in battle even after he had interrogated her under heartrender hold.

Aleksander didn’t quite know how to feel. He should be pleased. He’d wanted a Sun Summoner who was young and malleable, perhaps even fooled and easily dazzled by wealth. A mind to mould into a tool, one he could use to execute his visions.

And it seemed that fate had laughed at him in much its usual manner, plonking a village idiot onto a Keramzin doorstep. A little older than expected, and also slightly too foolish to listen to reason. Be careful what you wish for, the universe said, presenting him with an actual moron.

There was another emotion, more difficult and unruly to name… elation, tinged with disappointment. He’d told himself for years, decades even, that he only wanted a Sun Summoner for their power. But that small yearning had always lurked at the edges of his plotting: the fact that, in finding someone who could call the light, he would also have found someone like him. An immortal counterpart. A companion.

A friend, more than anything.

Now, the idea of spending the rest of eternity with a boisterous, unkempt idiot with a passable face was already starting to feel like cruel torture… and it had only been one day in her company.

“So, she’s not just a Sun Summoner. She’s a world-ending weapon, and mad as a box of frogs, to boot,” his mother said, summarising Aleksander’s problem in a few pragmatic sentences over tea, as she was wont to do.

“...Still insisting she’s a fallen star?” Baghra asked, keen-eyed and smirking.

Aleksander nodded, with unspeakable tiredness. He didn’t think he’d ever encountered anyone who made him feel all his years quite as tangibly as his new Sun Summoner.

Alina had been in the Little Palace five days, so far. She’d crowed over the depth of the bathtubs, and the softness of the beds. The size of the library. He thought these simple pleasures would be enough to placate her and get her to stay put with minimal supervision. But then one of his oprichniki had come to him the evening prior, ears burning and bashful, to inform him that Alina had evaded her lockdown… to swim in the lake, naked.

Aleksander hadn’t believed what he was hearing. Not until he, Genya, and a contingent of guards had gone down the shore, and seen a silvery, minnowlike silhouette in the water, shedding light through the brackish depths.

It turned out, Alina could turn invisible at will.

“It took me a moment to realise," she’d explained, shoulder deep in the water, any revealing details reduced to a modest silhouette. "Light works a little differently here."

Then, he’d watched her vanish before him, incredulous, before she stepped out of the water and walked over to the towel and clothes she’d left in the mud. The only evidence of her presence had been her dripping wet footprints, and the gradual disappearance of her belongings as they got subsumed into her field of influence.

Aleksander had tried not to visibly panic at this new casual display of power, as she prattled on.

“There’s so many more things for light to snag and catch onto when I work with these kinds of mortal distances. Sorry for evading your soldiers - they’re perfectly polite, and I like having the company. But I already have people watching me bathe every day. I don't really want them around when I swim, as well. Besides, my sisters told me enough stories about what happens when a man watches a star bathe. It always ends terribly. It’s very rude, you know.”

They were doubling up her guard duty. Still, she had managed to escape surveillance this morning. But all she had done with that freedom was to go steal a new type of cinnamon cake from the kitchen. If there was still any doubt that she was a spy, her actions quickly quelled them, at least. The only positive in this entire travesty. No spy worth their salt would display such an open show of all their very useful skills for such pointless, frivolous ends.

Baghra took one look at his face, and then laughed a belly-deep, leaden chuckle at his expense. “Did she tell the king he was being graced by a star’s presence?”

“I didn’t let her say a single word to the king,” Aleksander replied, grimly.

Although he did remember the Queen asking her if she was Shu, and Alina replying, “well, people don’t seem to like it if I say I am, so no. Although I do look Shu, apparently, which is something I am learning I shouldn’t enjoy, although I personally think it has left me with excellent bone structure.”

He was simply counting himself lucky that she hadn’t delivered that reply in Shu, in response to the translator. He had clamped his hand down on her wrist before she had the chance.

“Maybe she is a star,” Baghra grinned cruelly, clearly enjoying his discomfort. “If she is, I doubt I can train her.”

“I’m not planning on letting you train her,” Aleksander retorted. If Alina had been a fledgeling Grisha new to Summoning, maybe he would have considered it: he was better at honing people’s skills, than awakening them.

As it was, with his mother’s refusal to use her own powers unless absolutely necessary, he didn’t think she was actually strong enough to contain Alina if anything got out of hand. And he absolutely didn't want his mother knowing that. This new curiosity was too powerful by half, for the delicate balancing acts she was upsetting at court.

Only he was capable of managing her raw power, which meant the dubious pleasures of training her fell to… him.

The idea of having to cope with her obnoxiously illogical presence filled Aleksander with dread. And even then, a small part of him was terrified - and excited, he couldn’t help it - that he would not be able to contain her. That she would quickly outstrip even him.

“Maybe she will settle, once she has a routine,” Baghra offered, after a close second of examination. “She is restless and searching for purpose - she said so herself, did she not? And you can accommodate a few little eccentricities if it gets you what you want. Can’t you, my son?”

Aleksander looked at his mother, for a second. His plans stretched unspoken in the gulf between them.

Alina’s lessons were going badly.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t summon: she just didn’t see much point in doing it well.

“What’s the point of it?” she asked him, head cocked to the side and expression bored when he first showed her the Cut.

Aleksander looked at her like she’d grown a second head. This was the weapon that filled his enemies with fear, and yet she was asking… “The point?”

“Yes,” Alina seemed to realise she’d offended him, and gave him, of all things, a patronising smile like she felt bad for undermining his effort. “I mean, it was very impressive! The way it sizzled and smouldered like smoke - very pretty! But… what’s the point?”

“Well,” he replied, through gritted teeth. “It kills people.”

“So?” Alina asked. “Doesn’t seem a very efficient way to go about it. All that time conjuring with hand gestures and stuff, it sure gives the people in question a rather long time to think about what exactly they’re going to do in order to survive. If I wanted to kill people, I could just light up and burn their eyes from their sockets until their brain melted away, and then raze them from the earth until they were only dust on the air.”

“No, you couldn’t. Not from a distance,” Aleksander said, impatiently.

This idiot girl might have more than a beginner’s understanding of Summoning, but she had not a single amplifier. And even if she did, no one could do that. She wasn’t an overpowered heroine from a bad periodical.

“Yes, I could.” Alina shot back.

“No, you couldn’t.”

“I think I definitely could.”

“No you-” Aleksander cut himself off before the conversation dissolved into something truly embarrassing, and instead glared down at her like he was the one who could burn her where she stood.

He sighed. “That’s not a thing any Grisha can do, Alina.”

“Well, I’ve done it before,” Alina offered. “There was a group of blonde people - more Fjerdans? Are they still Fjerdans, if they’re not in Fjerda? Oh well, anyway, they didn’t like it when I walked out of the Fold. I tried to reason with them, told them I didn’t want to hurt them, exactly as I did with that other man who pulled me from the carriage. But they were quite insistent, and they kept shouting at me. When I tried to warn them off with some light, they just shouted louder, and then some of them got out sharp things - and nets! The nets were bizarre, truly, like I was some kind of animal! But they kept coming, and it seemed that telling them to stop wasn’t working, so I burned them up. Accidentally, you understand. I was aiming for blinding, but I still haven’t got used to these things over your miniscule distances yet, which is embarrassing, I'll admit. But I don’t think it’s right to shout at people, or brandish nets at them, just when they’re going out for a stroll.”

Aleksander knew he was immortal, but he felt like he was having a stroke.

“Well,” he said, striving for calm, “that’s a thing the Cut can help you with. Precision.” He took a deep breath, “Control.”

“Oh!” said Alina, delighted understanding dawning on her face. “So it’s like a… party trick? Well, that could be fun!”

Aleksander tried to remind himself of all the reasons he needed a Sun Summoner alive to execute his plans.

It became very easy to remember, however, when she summoned. She frowned for a second, bottom lip between teeth. She copied his hand gestures, badly, and he opened his mouth to reprimand her and implement corrections, only…

Her hands started glowing. Red, then gold at the edges, like a heated iron fresh from the fire. A second later, a thin, silver filigree threaded between her hands, renting the air in two.

White light poured in waterfalls from her eyes, as the Cut blossomed.

On her first try. A thing that had taken Aleksander several years to master, completed in seconds… and not even with the proper gestures.

“But how does this help me defeat the Fold?” she asked, as she watched it sizzle on the air. “It seems like quite a small weapon to wield against a living void.”

“It doesn’t,” Aleksander told her, awe making him honest, briefly.

Then he recollected himself: “but it does teach you control, precision, and restraint. The Fold will take a surgeon’s blade, not a sledgehammer.”

Lie. A sledgehammer would work perfectly well, but Aleksander had no idea if he’d survive it. And besides, he didn’t want the Fold gone.

“Your methods are… unconventional. I cannot show you how to destroy the Fold if your understanding of your powers does not align with mine,” he continued, fighting to keep his voice reasonable.

There was a lot he didn’t say: that all his plans required finesse, not the brute might she seemed to wield. He was trying to sculpt her raw matter like clay, before it overpowered him and then them all. In truth, he'd simply expected that trying to teach her the Cut would impress her in some way, and more importantly, buy him some fucking time.

Whenever he imagined having a Sun Summoner to nurture, they had never arrived with enough power to destroy the Fold. But he was genuinely scared… that she could. That he was, in all honesty, searching for any reason for her to rely on him, before it finally occurred to her that she could already evade her guards and overpower his attempts at containment, and she could simply run away.

She was a fool, but she was currently a goodhearted and trusting one. This was his only advantage.

“You may drop the Cut now, Alina,” he said. He had shown her how to successfully diffuse the weapon, without ever expecting her to practice it so soon. She bit down on her lip again, brow furrowing, butchered the hand gestures in a way that made him wince and briefly anticipate being incinerated… but the light faded from view without issue.

Her eyes dimmed, and she turned to him, dark eyes wide and innocent. “Was that ok?” she asked him.

“It was wonderful,” he told her, with a smile he knew he could fake but didn’t feel. That was one thing that could honestly be said of Miss Starkov: she was a wonder, defying logic at every turn.

Alina beamed at him, accepting the praise with eagerness. She was no longer glowing, but there was no denying the way that joy lit up her face - it was just so sincere, and unguarded. Saints, the world has yet to teach her anything of sorrow, he thought to himself, with not a little envy.

“I’m glad,” she told him, “I was thinking on it while I was shining, and I see your point. Burning people up is very easy, but it is indiscriminate. If I was fighting alongside you, for instance, I’d also burn out your eyes and melt your brain, which would be very sad if it was not done with intention.”

Aleksander supposed it said a lot about him, that this time his smile at her words held an ounce of sincerity. Both at that innocent way she delivered everything she said, including death threats that other people would be murdered for on the spot. And the fact that the statement was once again so impossible, he almost believed it to be true.

“I’d like to see you try, Alina,” he said: a half-truth. “Even if you could scour people from the earth with a look like you claim, I would likely be one of the few to survive. My shadows would protect me. We are antitheses, you and I.”

“Would your shadows protect you?” she asked, cocking her head to the side. “I thought that shadows only existed where light was blocked, but they do not block the light itself?”

She shrugged easily before he could reply, “I suppose you know best. There were no shadows where I was before, only light and dark. And even then, the dark only existed simply because it was empty, and hollow, and there was nothing for our light to catch. No matter what we wished for it, we had no way to fill the emptiness. We could only look upon it, and hope it would one day be a little less desolate.”

Aleksander had no response to that. He simply gave her a flat stare, wondering if she’d realise the insult.

And, amazingly, she did.

“Oh! I’ve said something silly again, haven’t I?” she said. At his surprised expression, she smiled apologetically. “Genya has been explaining social convention to me. I was already one of the more chatty of my sisters, but apparently the way I talked with them is not the way people here talk with each other, and I can make people uncomfortable if I do it too much. With my sisters, words were words, and they had no ill feeling behind them unless you spoke the feeling and made it plain. But apparently here there can be feelings and meanings behind the words. I am still learning how that works, so you must tell me if I upset you.”

“You haven’t upset me,” Aleksander said, and was surprised when it was a lie. The words empty and desolate still rattled around uncomfortably in his chest.

“Well, you must tell me if I do, and then explain how I could do better,” Alina said. “Once I understand nuance, Genya has said she will teach me how to lie, which is very exciting. Lying will also mean I get a better grasp on humour.”

Saints help us, Aleksander thought to himself.

“...You probably shouldn’t have implied that my shadows were weak,” he offered, then gave her another fake smile, “I’m quite attached to them, and it hurts my feelings. Men are sensitive, about these kinds of things.”

“You see: that’s a joke!” Alina said, “I would even go so far as to say that that was sarcasm!”

“Well done, Miss Starkov.”

“But… but... but you are attached to your shadows.” She said, looking frustrated. “They follow you everywhere, I’ve noticed. I thought they were maybe just fond of black, and that’s why you wore black so much, but I think it must be because you are inherently connected. So it’s both a joke and a fact, and that is where I fumble a little.”

“I can confirm that they would follow me whatever I wore,” Aleksander replied, humouring her. “Maybe I just wear black so that my clothes don’t always-”

“-Look like they’re dirty,” Alina finished for him eagerly, and he blinked at her a little in surprise, because she wasn’t actually wrong. He’d been about to say that any colour turned dark on him, regardless of what it was. But it was also true that the haze effect of his shadows, that made him look like he’d sat next to a heavy tobacco smoker for centuries of his existence, had become tiresome after a while. It had long become easier to obfuscate them.

“Yes, this is what I thought,” Alina continued, grinning at him. “I explained my theory to Genya. She will be so pleased to know I am right.”

“I think she’s sweet,” Genya said, fiddling with a paperweight on Aleksander’s desk as they continued their briefing on Alina’s progress and movements.

Aleksander raised an eyebrow at her, and she shrugged. “I mean, don't get me wrong, she’s fucking demented, but she is also sweet. She keeps finding me shiny pebbles she thinks I will like, like a magpie. She gets really excited for new soap, and she sings whenever she’s in the bath. Badly. Yesterday, she asked me if I could shave her head and then regrow it, so she could know what stubble felt like.”

Meaningless details, and useless for the task at hand.

“How settled is she with the other Grisha?” Aleksander asked, “has she made any friends?”

“Oh, Saints, no.” Genya sighed. “They all hate her. They either think she’s mad, and struggle to hold a conversation until it all gets too strange, or they’re convinced she’s playing some elaborate joke on them. Not that she notices, or cares. She still thinks they’re all lovely, and chatters away at them non-stop. Do you think all real life saints were this barmy? I’m starting to get a new perspective on religion.”

Aleksander fought the urge to put his head in his hands. “No friends? None at all?”

Genya paused for a second, then said, “she gets on well with David. I think that’s more to do with David not caring that she’s a little touched, or maybe just not noticing it in the first place. Yesterday we went to see him and he discussed astronomy with her for two hours. Then we borrowed another durast’s telescope and waited until nightfall. Alina showed us where she thinks she’s from.”

“Where she’s from?”

...Why did Aleksander keep asking the questions he didn’t need to know the answer to?

“The constellation she thinks she belongs to,” Genya shrugged. “The ‘too-clever fox’. It’s very small, and I struggled to see it personally, but David seemed to be able to follow Alina’s little spiel - or he was just humouring her. But he’s nice to her, which at this point I think means she would consider him a friend. Or probably even die for him, to be honest. She’s very open and trusting. And then there’s Zoya-”

“Zoya?”

“Well. Um,” Genya fidgeted for a second, “I think she may have won Zoya over.”

“What?” Aleksander hadn’t met with his squaller since they returned from Keramzin, but last he checked the verdict had still been ‘affronted disgust’.

“Don’t look at me, I don’t understand it either,” Genya said, raising her hands in mock-surrender. “But Alina did that thing that she does, where she just talks and talks at a person and doesn’t notice if they obviously hate her. Which is the way you have to get through any conversation with Zoya, to be honest. And what’s more… she did it in Suli. She said she was getting homesick and missing those sisters of hers, and she asked Zoya if she missed having conversations in her mother tongue… and I guess Zoya did? Because they now have a conversation every morning over breakfast, and I mean… Zoya replies? In full sentences? In Suli though, so I can’t always follow it, and I can't say for certain if it’s cordial.”

It was still saying something, for Zoya.

“I mean, it helps that you clearly hate every second you spend with your Sun Summoner,” Genya continued. “It really diffused any jealousy Zoya might have had at the hint that she was no longer the favourite-”

Aleksander raised a silent eyebrow at Genya: a small reminder of who was the Commander of Ravka’s Grisha, and whose personal life was up for discussion in this meeting room.

Genya backed off hastily, though she didn’t look very apologetic at stating fact.

“I mean, I also heard the Suli word for ‘pretty’ a lot, and Zoya isn’t exactly unsusceptible to flattery, so that must have helped,” she shrugged. “I think she can like Alina now that she doesn’t present any kind of threat.”

“But… Alina is a lunatic,” Aleksander said, just wanting to make sure they were all still on the same page about that fact.

“Yes, but she’s also kind,” Genya stressed, the reprimand plain in her voice. “Her beliefs about her origins are harmless, and it’s hard to hate a person who’s main goals in life are to eat chocolate, save the world, and maybe fall in love the kind of way people do in books. Once you realise she means all the absurd things she says, hating her is kind of like trying to kick a kitten.”

Aleksander tried to consider that for a second, and still all he felt was frustration, and contempt. She was just so… fucking logic-defying.

But that wasn’t really Alina Starkov’s fault, he supposed. All she’d done was derail every single one of his carefully laid plans and all the thoughts he’d entertained about what a Sun Summoner might look like, when they entered his life. Even he could see that it was unfair to hate her simply for the fact that he hadn’t managed to come up with a workable solution for her yet.

Or he had… but not one he wanted to deploy unnecessarily.

After two weeks of lessons, it was clear that Alina’s power far outstripped anything he had planned for. It was scary, but it was also thrilling: already, he could find himself imagining what it would be like, amplified by Morozova’s stag, and even more so if it was his to command. It was a seductive idea, and one that he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t immune to, when he’d already commissioned trackers to locate the beast of legend.

However, Aleksander wasn’t hasty or eager to embark down that path. Not because of the morality of it - no, that was something he had long made his peace with. But because it meant he would be bound… to her.

There were few people he would ever want to share a volatile psychic tether with, and a girl who thought she was a star was very much not the prime candidate.

“Do you think she’s likely to betray us?” he asked Genya. Because at the end of the day, that was all that mattered. As long as it didn’t occur to Alina how much leverage she actually had in their current relationship, it gave Aleksander time to plan for a world where he was bound to her madness for an eternity.

“I don’t think the thought would ever occur to her,” Genya replied, confirming his suspicions.

“Not unless we hurt her,” he mused. Even interrogation hadn’t dented her optimism, but he was now realising that that was probably because she’d never considered herself to be in any real danger.

“Or she finds what she’s looking for, elsewhere,” Genya said, pointedly. “She does think her purpose is to destroy the Fold.”

Which I know you’re not going to do, was his little spy’s unspoken words. But others might.

“She has no incentive to stay,” Genya told him. “She has no incentive to leave, either, but that’s only because…”

Because she doesn’t know your plans.

“So, what would make her stay?” Aleksander asked, mildly, ignoring the other unspoken side of their conversation.

Genya shrugged helplessly. “A trip to the sea? Honestly, that’s all she talks about, these days. The sea, and falling in love.”

They shared another look, and he saw something change in Genya’s face - like an idea had occurred to her, and that she absolutely, unspeakably hated it, and also hated herself for being clever enough to think of it in the first place.

“Saints, no,” Aleksander said, disgusted as comprehension reared its ugly head, “don’t worry about that, Miss Safin. Even I have my limits.”

“Oh, so you’ll only use other people to seduce for your own gain?” Genya asked bitterly, anger briefly overwhelming her usually stalwart sense of self-preservation. “Good to know that your only boundary is your own bodily autonomy, moi soverenyi.”

There was a brief, dangerous silence. “Miss Safin?”

He let the shadows darken at the corners of the room, in warning.

Genya glared back, then sighed, defeated. “If you found someone for her to fall in love with, then she’d probably be happy and agreeable. And… if you’re too high and mighty to fuck her yourself, try being her friend, General. Not everything requires a grand and terrible scheme. She might be touched, but she’s also just a woman in a new place - and she’s very, very lonely.”

Chapter Text

He arranged to take Alina horse riding. As he dressed and delegated his day of appointments in preparation for such a pointless exercise in diplomacy, Aleksander couldn’t fight off the dread he felt at having to spend half a day humouring her.

His fears were partly ill-founded. Yes, she made an absurd fuss over the concept of horseriding (“one of my sisters explained that it feels like becoming the wind”), and spoilt her horse with sugar cubes he had a sinking feeling she’d turned invisible to procure from the kitchens. But he was surprised when the first ten minutes of their ride passed in blissful, merciful silence.

A few times, he heard Alina gasp to herself- when she saw a bird in the path, or heard the wind through the trees - but she didn’t say anything to him about it. It seemed that Genya’s lessons on social graces had finally started to take.

Twenty minutes in, however, her newfound restraint buckled under the pressure.

“I... have been quiet, waiting for you to start a conversation,” Alina informed him with careful politeness, “given that you invited me to be here with you, and there must be a reason for you to do that. Zoya said you do nothing without reason.”

Did she, now? Aleksander thought to himself. Another piece of evidence in the ‘Miss Starkov would paradoxically make an excellent spy’ pile: she had somehow got his occasional lover to provide intel against him.

“But… it seems you are not inclined to talk?” Alina pressed.

“I could be inclined to talk,” he replied obliquely.

“Oh, thank the stars!" she sighed. “Genya has explained to me that silence can be meditative for some. But if that was what you wanted from this interaction, then surely you would just embark upon it alone. I myself cannot abide silence. Even the silence of my galaxy was filled with the thoughts of my kin. We understood that no one should suffer through an eternity alone.”

Aleksander’s hands tightened reflexively on the reins.

“So…” Alina said, not taking a breath to notice his continued silence, “...how fares your day?”

He cast a bemused glance at her, and after a second, she grinned. “Genya has gone through the basics of small talk with me. I wish to master them.”

“...It is a day much like any other, so far,” he replied, after a tentative pause.

“Is it? But all you do is work. You don’t often take time away from your office,” Alina replied. “So being out here must have some novelty, in that regard. And it is a lovely day. I haven’t felt warmth like this in nearly a week.”

I have toppled kings, the Black Heretic thought to himself. And now he was discussing the weather… with Alina Starkov.

When he didn’t reply, Alina returned to her much loved hobby of filling the silence.

“I think I understand now why Ravkans have chosen to revere the sun,” she mused aloud. “My elder sister favoured rain, and used to talk about storms like they were living, breathing monsters for mortals to tame. But it is the light after the storm that I think holds the most power in it. It is a lovely thing, to watch something terrible and menacing and destructive melt away as if it never was. All taming a storm takes is a little sunlight - they just needed some warmth to soothe them once their anger and rage is spent.”

A fundamental misunderstanding of meteorology, Aleksander noted, wondering again how Zoya could bear to talk to this woman, even in Suli.

But still, he was here for a purpose: to leave a good impression, to be kind and agreeable. If he could master it with half the empty-headed delegates and politicians who graced his office, he could do it with her.

And it seemed there was one topic that would make Alina happy, above all else.

“The wisdom of your infamous sisters once more graces a conversation,” he observed with a small, sarcastic air. “And yet, I have never heard their names.”

“...You want to hear about my sisters?” Alina asked, and Aleksander didn’t need to look over to tell she was smiling: he could hear it in her voice.

“If you care to share.”

“Of my eight sisters,” Alina began, her voice taking on an almost regal tone, “six of us have fallen-”

“You mean there may one day be more of you to contend with?” Aleksander joked, unable to help himself. There was only so much a man could take.

“Oh, I do not think that my youngest sister will fall for half of one of your millenia, at least. She is still so timid, and she has yet to even reach the peak of her brightness, which is usually the first sign. And my closest would never come down here at the same time as me - she didn’t want to step on my toes. But please, don’t interrupt me,” Alina scolded, which Aleksander hadn’t even realised he was doing.

Alina waited for him to look suitably contrite and attentive, and then resumed: “My oldest sister fell so long ago, that she no longer remembers her human name. She found her purpose with a tribe of mortals in the West. They were scared, and hunted by monsters much bigger than her. So she gave their shelters flame and warmth and light, and she never told them from whence it came.

“My second sister fell next. Her name was Maradi: she is the one who loved storms, and when people saw her dance in underneath the clouds they thought she controlled them, because they moved as one. She found her purpose in a person: a friend, called Duli. When he was sad beyond recovery, she let out her light once, and only once. She returned home happy, knowing he no longer needed her help to live a good life.

“My third and fourth sister fell together. They called themselves Signy and Ulla. They lived on a pirate ship, and they wrecked the ships of kings. When they landed on a shore they sang to crowded taverns, songs so beautiful that people forgot they were warriors and thought their voices were the only things of worth about them. They thought their purpose was the ship. But they were always quick to anger, and one amongst their crew thought that he could turn each against the other for his own gain, not understanding that when sisters fight they do so out of love. They left the earth quickly, for they hated the way the men spoke about them. They realised their true purpose was in each other. You can see them whenever you look up, you know - they are the central band of the constellation, the pair that shines the brightest.”

Despite himself, Aleksander found himself getting a little lost in the romance of her story, and the soft cadence of her voice. She talked about this imagined family of hers with such affection. There was also something fascinating about the quality of her mind: creating a mythology for herself out of the lives of historical figures and fairy tale characters. Look at her, shamelessly naming one of the first Grisha amongst her kin as if he wouldn’t know where she’d taken her inspiration from.

And yet, he couldn’t help but ask: “And the fifth?”

“Oh, Laoise?” Alina grinned, seemingly pleased at his interest in her imagination. “She was a Kaelish whore - an expensive one. She found her purpose in cultivating beauty and wielding the love of others, in people’s smiles, and soft skin.”

Aleksander didn’t quite know what to make of that: a natural layer of sexual fantasy added to her strange daydream universe?

But Alina was already moving on: “Laoise came back to us probably one and a half of your centuries ago. She was the one who stayed here the longest. She never tired of people, of the way they could feel so strongly - she said that sometimes she felt like she was feeding on it, that she could glut herself if she was too careful. But she became scared that all the love she reaped was turning her cruel, and it seemed that she began to amass enemies. It was because of her I knew that the Grisha were hunted, actually. Several very jealous people accused her of witchcraft. But we had both hoped that when the time came for me to fall, the world would have bent towards something better.”

“You and me both,” Aleksander replied, and caught himself, surprised that he had given an answer without crafting it first.

“Yes,” Alina sighed, “it must be hard, living in such an unforgiving world, and being responsible for so many. I don’t envy you that kind of duty. Especially as you do not seem to like half the politicians you have to talk with as a result.”

That startled a laugh out of him.

Alina peeked a glance at him, and smiled bashfully, “sorry, I probably shouldn’t have said that. But you don’t hide it very well, when you think a person is foolish or inferior to you.”

Was that a warning? Probably not - he sometimes made his disdain for the Lantsov bureaucracy obvious, in order to remind all its little mortal cogs to be afraid of him. Alina's treatment held none of that threat. Still, he was careful to smile at her, as he replied, "I suppose I would admit, under duress, to holding some of them in contempt."

"Well if you were ever to confess such a thing to me, I would promise not to tell another soul. I might also counsel being kind to them no matter what you think of them - if I thought you would listen," Alina sighed. "You are quite intimidating. You scare even me, and I'm older than you."

"Are you, Miss Starkov?" He said, amused.

"I am, General Kirigan," she replied, mimicking the tone of his sarcasm if not the essence, "I might be freshly fallen, but I am long born. I remember not only when the Inkblot bled across the land, but when the islands of the Bone Road breached the waves, like notches on a great beast's spine."

Aleksander decided to press ahead in the conversation, ignoring the wild lies in favour of nurturing a rapport. "And yet, you find me intimidating? I suppose I should be flattered."

"I do," Alina said, shrugging easily, "my sisters told me I would land here and not know the hearts of men, and that many would feign the contents with ease. I did not understand what they meant, until your people caged me in my flesh, on an order that I didn't even see you give. And still, your face remained placid and still as a winter lake. Had I not been in pain, there would have been no way to know your opinion on me had changed. I am getting better at reading people, but you have a skill I will not ever possess. I cannot even pretend that isn't something that makes me nervous."

"...I see."

"I'm not angry anymore," Alina hastened to reassure him. "Zoya explained that people try to assassinate you all the time. No wonder you are distrustful. I might think your actions are wrong, but I can now at least understand and sympathise with the reasons behind them."

"Very few people would be so forgiving," Aleksander observed.

"Why should I hold the hardships life has dealt you against you?” Alina asked him gently, holding his gaze. “It is a little sad to me, I suppose. But it makes you powerful, and power seems very important to you. So I hope it brings you security, being so remote."

Aleksander didn’t really like to look at her when she said things like that. "...I get by, Miss Starkov."

"Yes. But it must be lonely, even so."

They were silent for a second, Aleksander pondering Alina's words. He had been wrong to think her a fool, then. She was, in fact, extremely perceptive, but it was just fed through a distorted mirror of her own delusion and idealistic worldview and it came out on the other side sounding like nonsense.

It was dangerous, too: he didn't believe anything she said, but the sincerity of it… he could see why others were beginning to find it endearing.

"I do not like the idea of you thinking of me as 'remote', Alina," he said, after a second, mind scrambling to find a way to turn this discussion in his favour. "I am your trainer, and it is only together that we can destroy the Fold. We are a team, you and I."

"Are we?"' She asked, "all you tend to do is order me around."

"...I shall endeavour to be more cordial, in future."

"I would prefer you honest," Alina replied. "Like I said, General, it unnerves me when your words and deeds don't match."

"Then you have my honesty, Alina, " he lied.

She was smarter than he gave her credit for, and so he was going to need to start working harder to keep her from seeing more than she should. That being said, he also needed her trust, and so, just enough honesty was needed:

"And please, call me Aleksander."

“Did she like the wishing well?” Genya asked.

“Of course she did,” Aleksander replied brusquely, remembering Alina’s delighted face when he’d brought her to the secluded spot that looked like it was something out of a fairy tale.

He also remembered her expression when he’d politely informed her that wishing well wishes came true… but only if the person didn’t tell another soul what she’d wished for. The art of secret keeping was one that Alina truly was not adept at. The strain of wanting a successful wish but having to keep it to herself in order to assure its veracity had left her frowning and nearly cross eyed with the effort.

“I just need you to know that it was a very, very helpful wish for Ravka,” was what she settled on telling him diplomatically, brow furrowed and glaring at some unseen villain in the middle distance. He’d had to fight not to laugh.

“Are you… smiling?” Genya said, confused.

Was he? Aleksander quickly schooled his face back to indifference.

“She fell in love with you, then,” his spy sighed. “And you didn’t have to take any of your clothes off. You must be so pleased.”

Aleksander shot a glare in Genya’s direction. “I told you, that was not the aim of the exercise,” he said.

While he wouldn’t pretend to be ignorant to his own appearance, and the effect his face and bearing could give to even the most innocent of encounters in the heads of starry eyed maidens, the horse ride had been more for intelligence gathering than anything else. It was true that he’d been keeping Alina at arm’s length due to her eccentricities, and that was bad strategising on his part. No matter how much she annoyed him in the moment, it wasn’t going to help any of them in the long term.

It was worth suffering her company if it earned him her loyalty, and in fact it hadn't really felt like suffering at all.

“Why?” he said, not sure why he was asking it, “has she said anything?”

“Not really,” Genya said, though he couldn’t tell if she was lying or not. He didn’t like that about Miss Safin - that she was a little hard to read, even to him.

Exactly the accusation Alina had levelled against him.

Genya continued. “She went to tea with Baghra after she was done with you, so most of today’s chatter was about that.”

“She what?”

“Apparently they did just drink tea, though it was laced with kvas, and then they played cards,” Genya said with a shrug, because she didn’t understand the import of who Baghra was, and why his mother talking with the Sun Summoner without his knowledge was cause for concern. “Alina didn’t win a single round, obviously. She can’t bluff.”

“...Did she say what Baghra asked her about?”

“Not really. She was mostly narrating what being tipsy was like - it was the first time it had ever happened, apparently.”

“Find out what they discussed,” Aleksander ordered. Genya raised a single eyebrow, as she was wont to do when one of his commands betrayed too much about his feelings, but then nodded. With her agreement, he moved on: “how are we managing court perceptions of Alina?”

Genya grimaced, “one of the nobles saw her swimming in the lake, again. It was either let them think her mad, or paint her eccentricities in a new light. I opted for the latter. They’re now all convinced she’s a Saint.”

The better of two situations, but not ideal: the more people revered her, the more likely Lantsov would be to pressure Aleksander into using her before he had full control over her actions. The pressure for the showcase of her talents was already high, and the Darkling had been hoping he’d have more time to confirm she was loyal to him. He'd wanted some security before throwing such a gullible person into a world where she would be easily influenced by whatever wolf snapped her up.

Speaking of wolves… “The Apparat has doubled down, as well,” Genya continued. “He’s not only labelling her a saint - he’s corroborating the claims that she’s a fallen star.”

“...What?”

“He’s saying that he had visions of a jewel plucked from a crown and placed into a beacon of light to create a prism, and a glowing sword plunged into the dirt, et cetera et cetera,” Genya said, giving him a helpless shrug. “Did you know a falling star was seen in the sky, the night before Alina walked into Keramzin? Some astronomer in Kerch sent a letter to the Merchants’ Council, which means it’s on their records. Somehow the Apparat got wind of it - he must have had his people searching for omens and auguries the moment her existence was announced. He’s using the letter as evidence that her story is true, and obviously trying to leverage it for all he’s worth.”

Aleksander pressed a thumb and finger to the bridge of his nose. What a headache… he hadn’t endorsed any of Alina’s ravings about her origins because not only were they not true, but because if he bought them to Lantsov himself, he’d be laughed out of court. He had spent too many years asking for the Small Science to be taken seriously as a discipline, demystifying the kinds of beliefs that led Grisha to be trussed up and roasted on a pyre.

If a person was religious, however, the entire narrative changed. Things that usually got a person spat on and called ‘witch’ in the street, suddenly became an object of reverence, and political power. Even the ravings of one girl who thought she was made of starlight, apparently.

Even worse, he could see how the Apparat's endorsement of canonisation would work in Alina’s favour. Every personality quirk, suddenly transformed into simply more evidence of the veracity of her claims.

He hated how clever this Apparat was proving to be. His predecessors had been much easier to manage.

I’ll have to find a copy of that letter, he thought, making note to follow it up with another one of his other spies.

Alina’s lessons remained an exercise in frustration. If only because Aleksander kept trying to find the limit to her power, and hadn’t yet been successful. When the Cut only distracted her for a week and taught him nothing about how her Summoning worked without any acknowledgement of proper technique, he decided to veer wildly away from anything else that could actually show her how to hurt, maim, or kill him.

Instead, he had her working on control, making her workings smaller and smaller and more and more precise. On the one hand, it was the one thing she actually needed to learn. And on the more pragmatic other, it was all he wanted to teach her, because he feared she already had enough power to stop the Fold. He wanted her to focus on making that power minimal, and stop her from ever sensing that that might be the case.

I need to get her in that collar and under control, he would think to himself, every time he watched her work in a way he couldn’t understand.

Sometimes, that thought would be accompanied by hunger, watching the way raw power bristled off her effortlessly. He’d always imagined the Sun Summoner as a well of energy he’d be able to draw from: what he had actually found was an ocean.

But, most of the time, all it bought him was pure dread. He still wasn’t sure what he was shackling himself to. It wasn’t some kind of Shu sleeper agent, but that might actually have been preferable. He would’ve understood how to break and remould someone like that. As it was, Alina remained an unfathomable mystery.

Like now: for instance. He looked blankly across his desk at Botkin. Botkin, who explained, with his usual stoic patience, that Alina had never once showed up to combat training. As if those words made any sense.

“I beg your pardon?” Aleksander asked.

He had given orders. The woman had guards. She was surrounded by Grisha who, when they hadn’t had the sense to see how befriending the Sun Summoner early might actually help their social advancement, had been politely informed by their General that they were tasked keeping an eye on her.

“The first few times, we sent people looking for her,” Botkin replied. “But, as we all now know, she can turn invisible. It was a waste of everyone’s time, so I stopped doing it and focused on teaching the people who cared to show up. I confess, I thought you knew. But it seems all my students were too afraid to tell you. So now, here I am: telling you myself.”

“...I see.” Aleksander sighed. He got up. He looked down at his very important paperwork, which included a missive claiming that a First Army unit had sighted Morozova’s Stag.

…And then he went looking for his Sun Summoner.

In this one way, at least, she was predictable. He found her in the library, a romance book open on a stand on the desk in front of her. Her hands were busy, a glowing web of light caught between her splayed palms like a cat’s cradle. The infinitesimal working was a thing of pure beauty, like a watchmaker’s clockwork. She wrinkled her nose, splayed her thumbs anticlockwise, and it tessellated over itself again, beams of light refracting in on themselves to create a small knotted kaleidoscope of light.

As always, Aleksander hated how fascinating it was to watch. He was powerful, it was true, but there was no denying that he had worked for his power - that he had been forced to do so, by his family. If his summoning looked effortless now, that was because he’d done his time, centuries over.

But with Alina? There was no logic to her method, whatsoever. Her eyes weren’t even on her hands, but the open book in front of her. She let out a little, excited noise at some plot revelation, and moved to turn the page with her elbow. It should’ve resulted in the working dissolving into the air, but it simply went with her, despite its complexity and her angle being entirely askew.

When she noticed him, two pages and three gasps later, she startled slightly. The working didn’t even waver, and she grinned.

“David has been explaining to me that light travels only in straight lines,” she told him, looking down at the puzzle box of light in her hands, “I don’t think he’s exactly right, but I thought I would give it a go. It is certainly pleasing.”

Aleksander went and took the seat opposite her. “Are you tired?”

“Not really,” she shrugged, like it wasn’t a working that took equal effort to the Cut, only folded in on itself again and again and again. “I think David is right in one sense, and folding the same beam is easier than making more. I’m not using very much power, and so it is more effort to keep it so small, to be honest. It’s why I’m doing it in the library - I really don’t want to hurt the books, which is making me concentrate extra hard.”

Terrifying, Aleksander thought - and yet, he couldn’t help but grin at her casual admission of power.

“Impressive as always, Miss Starkov,” he said, and then tried to make himself stern again, as he remembered exactly why he was here. “But not the lesson you are supposed to be learning.”

“Yes, well, I’m not sure this could destroy the Fold, although if I made it big enough I’m sure I could cage-”

The idea of her transforming a miniature working like that into something to enclose the whole Fold was absurd, and so Aleksander started talking, “I was referring to the fact that you’re supposed to be at combat training, Alina.”

“Oh.”

“Yes,” he said, “oh. Why haven’t you been attending?”

“Well, I just… is it really necessary?”

“I wouldn’t ask it of you, if it wasn’t.”

“But I just…” she huffed, “I don’t see the point. It’s not like I plan to hurt anybody.”

Aleksander thought about the two burned Fjerdans on the road to Os Alta. He thought about Lantsov, planning to use Alina as his wildcard in all his new wars.

Aleksander thought of the wars he was planning on using her in, as well.

“And if I do hurt anyone,” Alina continued blithely, “I’ll just burn them. Why do I need to learn how to punch? It’s silly, and it makes me sweat. Sweating is officially my least favourite part of being mortal. My face goes all red, and I smell awful.”

Aleksander blinked at her thoroughly pedestrian reason, fighting a grin. “I’m afraid we must all make our peace with being a little fallible, Miss Starkov.”

“You’re such a liar,” Alina observed. “You don’t do combat training, either. You don’t even run. You don’t sweat, and you still hurt people without issue. I’ve never seen you engage in any physical activity: all you do is stride around looking menacing, and do an elaborate hand gesture that gives your victims a twenty minute headstart.”

“...Are you…” Aleksander blinked, “sassing me? Intentionally?”

Those lessons with Genya were really starting to backfire.

“I don’t like combat training,” Alina repeated loftily, ignoring the question. “It’s not my purpose. You don’t have to do it, and so I don’t see why I should. According to you, our powers are one and the same.”

“We must all make our peace with doing things we don’t like,” Aleksander replied calmly, “and I would argue that combat training is part of your purpose, surely? You need to be able to defend yourself against those that would stop you from achieving it.”

“Worst comes to worst, I’ll turn invisible and sneak around them to get to the Fold,” Alina said, with a shrug that should’ve broken the working but again, didn’t. “Or, if there’s a lot of them, I’ll just explode.”

Instead of saying you can’t ‘explode’, which he could tell would be useless, Aleksander replied, “You need to have methods beyond what you can do with the light. It is foolish confidence and recklessness to rely only on the Small Science, when our enemies have spent years designing strategies to work against it. I learned to fight a long time ago. You saw me punch a man on the battlefield.”

“And you saw me burn that same man to a crisp. I defended you, there, General.”

“And while I appreciated your help, I didn’t actually need defending, because I am trained,” Aleksander replied, fighting to keep his voice level and even. “Had either of us been incapacitated, I would’ve been the one to get us out of it, because I have prepared for every eventuality.”

Every eventuality, he thought, except you.

“People like those druskelle train themselves to fight and incapacitate us, Alina. You need to be able to fight without your powers, because people will try to strip them away from you.”

Alina snorted, “what's a star without her starlight? You cannot separate the two, and I would like to see them try.”

“If you were bound-”

“I’d burn away the bonds.”

“You need your hands to summon,” he said through gritted teeth, “they know this. Usually, they break one of our hands. Or your arm, or your fingers-”

“I only use hand gestures because it makes you happy, I don’t actually need them,” she replied, which was terrifying. “Also… fingers can break? Stars, mortals are fragile. Why are you making me punch people, when my fingers are breakable?”

“They could drug you,” he continued, voice getting terse.

“Then I wouldn’t be able to punch anyone, either, would I? I’d be drugged.”

“Why are you-” he sighed, “of all the things to throw a tantrum over.”

“I’m not throwing a tantrum,” she replied stubbornly. “I’m sitting in a library, explaining to you why I don’t need to do combat training. It’ll be much better if I don’t.”

“Someone could hurt you,” he said, tersely.

He wasn’t sure why that came out the way it did. After all, a weaker Alina should’ve been something that he felt relieved by. Given all her illogical claims to impossible strengths, and the advantages she held against him. He shouldn't want her capable of defending herself.

But still he had an image in his mind, one that had plagued nightmares that had preceded her by years: of a Sun Summoner, his only salvation, bought low by one of the thousands of enemies that waited like hungry wolves on Ravka’s borders.

Every Grisha life was precious. And though he didn't think she worked the way she was supposed to, her own life, and the lives she could protect, had immeasurable value. She might frustrate him, but he didn’t want to see her hurt. Looking at her now, he couldn’t help but be aware that she was a deluded and astoundingly fragile young woman, who could be easily tricked, and easily overpowered.

Alina, however, continued to look unbothered. “I thought kefta were bulletproof.”

“There are many ways to hurt Grisha, other than bullets.”

“You know a place where a Grisha could get hurt?” she said, eyes flashing, “combat training.”

“Alina, don’t be ridiculous,” Aleksander said, running his hand tiredly through his hair, “we have healers on hand, and nobody’s going to hurt you beyond what teaches you the lesson. There’s no ill feeling that would cause an injury beyond the bounds of-”

“It’s dangerous,” she insisted, and clapped her hands together, destroying the working between them in a fizz of gold. It was then he noticed the discomfort in her demeanour: fidgeting in place, face downcast and stormy. She was avoiding his eyes. Her hands were quivering, like she didn’t know what to do with the emotion. And a slight sheen to her lashes, that spoke of some kind of hurt-

“Wait a moment,” he said, stopping himself mid-sentence as a new, dark idea formed in the back of his mind. “Alina, has someone… has anyone tried to hurt you?”

He felt the shadows in the library respond to his own anger at the idea. Genya had told him that people were bemused by her behaviour and avoiding her, but that hadn’t worried him. At the end of the day, he’d ordered anyone important to keep things cordial, and Alina was kind hearted enough not to realise she was being ostracised through any ill will otherwise. Besides, most of the Grisha were meaningless in comparison to her, anyway. He hadn’t thought they would be actively cruel to someone so clearly in his favour-

But she wasn’t in his favour, was she? Genya had also told him that people thought he didn’t like her, and one horse ride wasn’t going to fix that.

He was a fool.

“If anyone has done anything,” he told her in a low voice, that he didn’t recognise. “Tell me now, and I’ll end it.”

Again, that image in his mind, of a Sun Summoner lost through carelessness: hers, and now, his own. If there was any emotion churning in his gut, surely it was a reprimand for his own blindness.

I have to give her every reason to stay, he thought again, trying to rationalise that feeling in his chest.

“Whoever it is,” he said, “tell me, and I’ll take care of it. I promise.”

Alina looked at him, blinking away unshed tears from her shining dark eyes.

“Oh, Aleksander, you’re very kind,” she said, with a small sniffle, dabbing the sleeve of her kefta under her eyes. “But no one has tried to hurt me. They all mostly avoid me to be honest, I know they find me strange. I’m just - I’m afraid I’ll kill them all.”

“...What?”

“I’ve started to realise,” Alina said quietly, leaning forward like she was telling him a secret, “since being here, that you’re right. My control is awful. When I destroyed that part of the Fold, do you know how relieved I was that it was what everyone wanted? Because all that happened to me was that something tried to attack me, something monstrous with wings, and I panicked, and then…” she mimed an explosion with her hands, as Aleksander watched, uncomprehending.

Everything he thought he knew about her was once more overturned.

The destruction of the Fold: an accident? Saints preserve him. Just moments ago, he'd been worried that this massively destructive weapon was getting bullied.

“My sister’s warned me,” she sighed, swiping at her eyes again, “they told me that I was too unrestrained. But I didn’t think it was a problem, not if you all want me to shine. But I’m starting to realise exactly how much damage I can do. And I don’t want to do that, Aleks. I’m not here to hurt people - I’m here to help. It’s why it’s better that I’m in here, doing these exercises you want me to do, that teach me the way I’m supposed to be. That stop me from hurting people.”

In the midst of her impossible speech, he couldn’t help but notice the shortening of his name, spoken on a whisper.

“I’m not going to combat training,” she continued, “because I’m scared that if you force me through pain, I’ll do something I regret, and then everyone in the training ground will be gone. And I didn’t want to tell you, because I know that makes me dangerous.”

“I… already knew you were dangerous,” he admitted, calmly. More so every day, it seemed.

“So, you knew, and were pretending ignorance for my sake, as well. That’s kind,” Alina said, voice sombre and downcast. He realised for a second that she thought it was a bad thing that she had so much power - and it was, when you were the one trying to master it. Otherwise, however, it was a miracle, a godsend. He couldn’t imagine apologising for his own existence the way she did in that moment:

“Very well. I was hoping to get better on my own, but that was selfish of me. You have so many lives you must protect, and I have admitted I pose a threat to them. If you need me to leave, I completely understand. You need to protect your people, more than you need me.”

Something in Aleksander’s chest pinched tight. With Alina’s eyes intent on his face, he knew she saw it too. Your people. She wanted to protect the Grisha, and understood enough of him to know that it was his singular priority. She put herself second, without thought, then called herself 'selfish' in the same breath.

However, a Sun Summoner was worth more to him than most other Grisha combined.

“You’re one of my people too, Alina,” he told her. “Why would I ask you to leave? Your place is here.”

Alina blinked a couple of times, then her face broke out in a bright grin, a flush rising to her cheeks. “You mean it?” she asked.

Well, he mostly said it because he couldn’t afford to lose her, but it was also the truth. He found himself feeling a little bashful, if only because he was pinned under the weight of such a sincere smile, when he said, “I don’t say things I don’t mean.”

“No, I don’t think you do - at least, not about the Second Army, and your home!” Alina beamed. “Oh, thank the stars. I'm sorry I kept it to myself, but I didn't want to cause anymore trouble. I know I’m a liability, and I know a lot of people don’t like me-”

“Don't be absurd. I like you-”

“You tolerate me,” she said, her smile turning a little sly, and far too perceptive as Aleksander fought the urge to look away. “But that's fine, because I actually find myself quite at home here. I understand why you like the Little Palace so much. Not that I've been many places. But of what I have seen... the King’s house is so tense, and lightless, every room is so big and yet so close, and they just don’t have enough candles to illuminate the space. But here is lovely. Perfect. Just right. Maybe you are right: palaces don’t need to be big, they just need to be nice. Not that I expect it to always be this nice, of course. Zoya has explained that I am receiving quite a luxurious treatment in the hopes of keeping me amenable, and that it all might change when I’m not your world-saving instrument-”

“The Sun Summoner will always be worthy of a nice room,” Aleksander said with a small smile, to try and cover up his concern over how she had again gotten Zoya to admit things he was hoping she would never notice.

“...Will I?” Alina said, and he could see that her own smile was also a little teasing.

“On my word as the General of the Second Army,” he replied.

“...Because I’m ‘one of your people’?”

Aleksander rolled his eyes and smiled as she giggled. “So long as you don’t burn up my training arena, Miss Starkov.”

That caught her attention more than anything else. She leant forward eagerly: “Does that mean I don’t have to do combat training?”

“I would strongly, strongly advise that you do combat training,” he replied. When she looked crestfallen, like she expected her fluttering eyelashes to actually work, he added, “but maybe we can postpone that until some time in the future. I wish you had discussed your fears about control with me, prior to now. But I agree with you that if that is the case, it would be better to prioritise this practice, first.”

“Oh, thank the stars,” she breathed. “I was still reeling from the revelation that fingers are breakable.”

“You are certain pain would cause something to slip?” he asked, thinking about the process David had outlined for the hypothetical collar. “You had no reaction to the Grisha assessment at all.”

In truth, his amplification was what she should have reacted to in that situation, but still: he didn’t understand her fear of her control slipping in that case.

“Well, I mean, you were right, it didn't really hurt, after you made the cut,” Alina said with a shrug, “and you dropped me the moment you could, so I didn't think you'd try to hurt me more. Everyone was scared of you, but you didn’t have cruelty in your face. Of course, I didn’t realise that that was just the way you school yourself to look. Now I’d probably have the sense to be scared.”

Even as she said it, Aleksander carefully kept his face all affability.

“But compared to the monster, and the Fjerdans I had to burn with their weapons and their curses,” Alina said, “you didn’t seem angry or scary to me. Just… I don't know. Desperate?”

Chapter Text

It was a late night. The Little Palace lay still as Aleksander took another swig of hard, bitter tasting liquor, that made him grimace with the burn.

In front of him, the map of Ravka: the pieces arranged to make the threat of civil war undeniable. The news that Alina had destroyed a section of the Fold had been impossible to contain, and now Zlatan was panicking. Reports were conflicting on motivation - did he want to rally for independence before there was no longer a convenient barrier separating them, or did he want his troops to mobilise before the East used their new, impossible weapon on the West?

Regardless, one thing was for certain: rebels were amassing in Novokribirsk in higher numbers than ever before. In theory, that was fine - Aleksander was happy to move for war, and not take any of the blame for doing so.

But of course, he still had no guarantee that Alina would acquiesce to his wishes, and actually be the gamechanger on the battlefield everyone was fearing she’d become.

He was, in fact, certain that there was a high chance she’d refuse to attack at all.

Again, he couldn’t help but think there was some god or saint out there intent on just fucking him bloody. Here he was: he had the perfect weapon, ten times more powerful than he’d ever imagined. Who took minimal training to make deadly, and who was also pretty acquiescent, with few requests beyond those that a spoilt child might demand.

And yet, he had no true guarantee that she would listen to him.

The only equal he would ever be given, and the universe seemed to take pleasure in making sure he was aware of that at every turn. He had no idea what she thought of him. And he also knew that should he risk the trust she gave everyone without thought, she could hurt him - a lot.

It’s what made the stag such a dangerous gamble, one that he was still not certain was the right call even though he now had word of a few successful sightings to the north.

There was no telling what would happen if the antlers didn’t work, and he just had one pissed-off, powerful, and unhinged Sun Summoner to contend with.

Alina was his friend only because it had never occurred to her to be his enemy.

It would just be easier, he thought, massaging his temple, if I’d had another five years. If he’d just found the Sun Summoner a little later, and gotten a little more sleep. Sometimes, entire centuries would go by in a blind, tiresome grind with no end in sight. Then, when problems sprang up, they always did so twenty at once, making him wish he’d not wasted those years, and somehow prepared more.

Aleksander sighed… As if there was any fucking way he could’ve prepared for Alina Starkov.

Seemingly summoned by his thoughts, he suddenly heard a hollow thud, and a small squeak, coming from the other side of the war room, by one of the bookshelves. One of the dark leather bound volumes, wrapped and bound in twine, had fallen onto the floor, seemingly on its own - had it not been for that squeak, betraying another force at work.

Aleksander sighed, heavily. “Alina? Show yourself.”

A second later the air shifted in a prismatic haze, revealing a once invisible and now sheepish looking Alina Starkov in a nightdress and housecoat, hair loose in smoky waves around her shoulders.

“Sorry,” she muttered guiltily, half a stage whisper. “I just wanted to pop in and get a book - the library has its romances, but your shelves are so much more useful for when I’m trying to understand things. You seemed like you were in the middle of work, and you look so tired. I didn’t want to throw you off, and I just thought it would be easier to well… you know.”

Aleksander reached down and picked up the book wordlessly, trying not to let his relief show when it wasn’t anything of his past or his grandfather’s, but instead a history of the use of Zowa in Novyi Zem. He wondered if he’d ever be able to accept a world where someone could just sneak up on him without him noticing, take his belongings without him realising, and still use it for such frivolous reasons that it always felt like overreacting to be bloody terrified.

He glanced back at her. The neckline of her nightdress had ridden low and was slightly askew. In the candlelight, he could see wells of shadow in the dips of her clavicles, and the hollow of her throat. After a second, Aleksander wondered why that was what he’d chosen to focus on.

Must’ve drunk more than I thought, he thought to himself, looking down at his half full glass.

“Couldn’t sleep?” was all he asked, his only recrimination a single raised eyebrow. What would be the point in getting angry at her? She already knew she’d done something wrong, which was more than anyone usually got from her.

Alina shook her head, shoulders loosening with relief. “It’s the rain,” she said, gesturing to the window pane where water laced the glass in moving filigree. “I like watching it, but I’m not used to the sound it makes on the glass. I already struggle to sleep sometimes, but with that… it just feels too loud. So I thought I would read, until it passes.”

Aleksander followed her gaze to the storm outside, frowning. “I didn’t even notice it start.”

“You did seem pretty engrossed in what you were doing,” she observed, “if I hadn’t dropped the book, you definitely wouldn’t have known I was here.”

“...Maybe I should put locks on my doors,” he joked.

“Maybe you should, but I could always just burn them.” Alina smiled, “though that seems like an invasion of privacy.”

“Saints forbid,” he drawled.

“Now I’m here… I mean, now you know I’m here… Can I look?”

“Why not?” he sighed, beckoning her forward.

She came over to the table, catching a dark fall of her hair in her hand as she leant over to examine the details of the map. “Oh, dear,” she muttered, after a few seconds. “There weren’t that many of them before. Why would they…? Oh no.”

Aleksander briefly cast a quelling glance at the ceiling, running a hand over his face. Things must be getting bad, he thought, for Alina to notice them.

She turned back to him. “Zoya mentioned that there was a threat of Civil War. It’s because of me, isn’t it? They’re scared of me.”

“Yes.”

“...Couldn’t we just tell them I don’t want to hurt them?” Alina said, in that simplistic way of hers. Then she frowned, “no. It doesn’t matter what we say, they wouldn’t believe us. And the Fold grants them a degree of freedom that they won’t want to give up. Destroying it will take that away from them, even if we explain that we’re not interested in ruling them.”

“It doesn’t matter what we say,” Aleksander said, choosing to ignore the idealistic sentiments for the bits she got right. “We’re Grisha. No matter what you wish to do with your power, it remains a fact that you have it, and they don’t. Our enemies are threatened by your mere existence. You could offer to help and save them, Alina, and they still would imagine a world where you’ll hurt them, because that’s how little they think of us. They can only imagine the Small Science wielded in the same way they would use it, if they had it for their own.”

“War is such an ugly thing,” she said, quietly, uncharacteristically sombre. “I understand that mortal lives need a purpose, just as stars do. Otherwise they would simply get so overwhelmed with how short a time they have on this earth, and how little they can change. But why do so many people choose hate and violence, when they have so few years to dedicate to anything? I don’t understand it, Aleksander.”

He tried not to be frustrated by her innocence, but still, he couldn’t stop himself when he said, “that’s because you don’t know what it’s like to be hunted. You’ve never truly fought for your life. Some people revel in violence and cruelty, it's true… others just simply do what they need to survive. I was once like you. I thought that even if the work was bloody, it would be brief. But people will not change. They will always be afraid, and they will always be cruel to the things they fear.”

“Aleksander-”

“And the moment you choose to defend yourself against them, they will use that as evidence that they were right all along not to trust you. They might never realise that once you were ready to do things peacefully and without pain.”

“Aleksander-”

“Even now,” he continued, “after everything I’ve done. After I thought we were finally safe. When we should be stronger than ever, when we have a Saint at our side and a divine ordnance… our own people are turning their backs on us.”

He tried to stop his hands from shaking, tried to stop the room from darkening, but he was just so tired.

He wished the person next to him was someone he could understand, who could understand him. Exactly as he had always dreamed, in those small moments he denied existed, when he saw the long walk of eternity ahead of him and tried to imagine going through it with no one but a mother who hated him for company.

Instead he had… he had… a good person. Too good, so good it was sickening.

And she didn’t understand what would be required of both of them, what he knew he had to do, because it was inevitable-

The shadows began churning in the corners of his vision. “I have been fighting this war, alone, for so long. I have buried so many good soldiers. Friends. The coffers are running dry, the noose tightens, and our own people are turning against Grisha just as their kin once did-”

A gentle touch startled him. A hand reaching out and encircling his wrist, like he was a scared animal that needed to be calmed before it was leashed.

He was about to shake her off, when suddenly-

He felt something, like a kick in the chest. Briefly, the shadows that were already bleaching the colour from the room darkened further, blossoming and spreading quicker than he’d ever seen, in his own long lifetime. They reached the hem of Alina’s robe and nightgown, and it wasn’t his doing.

He hadn’t felt them roil in a tsunami like that since he’d first summoned merzost-

Amplified, he thought, the words impossible. I’m being amplified.

“Oh, sorry,” Alina said, glancing behind her, “I didn’t mean to do that. But I’m definitely not letting you go.”

She glanced at the clouds of darkness amassing all around them like a gathering storm, and waved her hand in a wide arc. Aleksander blinked and then squinted, as her skin glowed bright and a cage of her light surrounded them both and pushed outwards, pressing the shadows back into their corners, and then away.

She kept the bubble up, the shadows singing on its edges. She looked down at her hand on his arm, frowning. Though she did not move her fingers off his skin, Aleksander watched her, wide-eyed, as he felt something withdraw from within him, an influence. As it left his shadows died out, and the light in the room returned to normal.

She’d done that.

How?

He looked at her, uncomprehending. Her skin was glowing, and it wasn’t just with light, it was with health. The health that came from a fresh summoning. For an absurd second he wondered if she’d stolen something from him, but that was impossible. He felt no lack. She hadn’t taken anything, she had only given-

“I’m sorry. You are hurting,” Alina said, ignoring whatever had just taken place in favour of examining his face closely, like she was inspecting him for wounds. Her eyes were filled with a sincerity that somehow made his heart ache. “I can’t do much, I’m afraid, as there is a lot I do not know. But I can promise you, you are not alone.”

“You don’t -” he swallowed, uncertain why his voice was hoarse, “you don’t understand-”

“No,” she said, cutting him off. “I do. I have lived a long time, Aleksander, and if there is one truth I can tell you, it is that no one is alone. Not here, not on this earth. I lived a remote life, tied to my kin but never able to touch them, because that is not what we are meant to be, up there in the sky. We are meant to exist, and observe, and that is why I knew I would one day fall because I will tell you, that certainly gets lonely, even if such an existence never entails solitude. But… but here. I am here, a star amongst mortals, and I am farther away from my sisters than I have ever been, and yet I understand why we must allow ourselves to fall into bodies even for the shortest of times, because I am less alone now than I have ever been. Everyone is just so… so close. The immediacy of it, of people - to be able to touch others, to feel their heartbeat just through the sheer proximity? To hear voices echo down corridors, and to offer comfort, to laugh together and cry together and run and dance and sing… even simply to congregate in one place in one shared goal. What a fundamentally human thing to do. How on earth can you say you are alone? When you are standing here, in a palace that your people have built, for you, to protect you, and to stand as a symbol of your own strong unity?”

I built this, he wanted to say, though that would be a foolish reveal of information better kept to himself. He just… he wanted someone, finally, to understand: I did all this work, and still all I have to show of it is one speck of land.

And still, more is asked of me.

Instead, what he said, which wasn’t smart either, was: “you are... very young.”

She could playact at immortality all she wished, but she had to be young. To see this place as a victory, and not a testament to a thankless, relentless, and unforgiving game.

“I am not young,” she replied, with a snort of laughter that for her, bordered on derisive. “I’m just not sad. There’s a difference, you know. I hate to break it to you, young man, but your life is but a fraction of what mine has been. The ability to brood is not synonymous with age.”

“Then… you do not have much experience of the world.”

He was panicking. He wasn’t saying the right things.

There was something about her face as she spoke… even though his first instinct was still to dismiss her out of hand, repulsed by her casual claims to a lifespan he’d long resigned himself to as a curse, he found himself wanting to believe her. Even as he hated himself for it. There was something familiar in her gaze. Something that spoke of the kind of years she pretended to own, and it seemed to lay credence to her claims.

Something about her that was… like him. And yet so unlike him that he couldn’t work out if it was just his wilful imagination, in this moment of lonely vulnerability, wanting her grand stories to suddenly become reality.

“Yes, well, you did rather insist on locking me up in this palace of yours, although shutting yourself in here has not seemed to bring you any happiness, either,” Alina continued, looking down as she moved her hand from his wrist and chose instead to, bizarrely, thread her fingers through his and grip them tight.

“I do not say this to be dismissive of your pain, you understand. You are a man with a lot of secrets and a lot of responsibility that no doubt weighs heavy on you. But I do not like to see you so frightened. Whatever the obstacle that has got you feeling like this, that has you facing such hopelessness: I promise you, it will be overcome. Everything is overcome, in time. Mortals do it all the time, I saw from up in the heavens. Either you will overcome it, as you are no doubt wont to do. Or if you feel like you are truly alone and facing defeat, you could engage in the very novel practice of asking for help. That is what I am here for, after all. I would gladly help you, if I could. There is always hope - for those who are brave enough to look for it.”

It’s speeches like that that could lead to someone thinking you’re a Saint, Aleksander thought to himself. Dazed and overwhelmed, he thought perhaps she’d caught him at the one moment she could make a believer out of him.

How badly he wanted to place some trust in her, just to feel some of the weight lessen. How badly he wanted -

How badly he wanted.

Almost like before, when the shadows had bloomed without his control, he felt his hand move.

He didn’t feel entirely in control of his own actions. Yet, he didn’t stop himself as he reached out for her and touched the side of her face. There was a jolt of contact that he knew this time had nothing to do with amplification. She was so trusting, and didn’t move away, even though his hand was big enough to cradle half her face, and bury her fingers in that deep, thick hair…

“I have waited a long time for you,” he told her, because that was one truth, at least, that he knew she would understand.

“I know,” she replied, in that straightforward way of hers, completely unconcerned by the hand resting on her cheek. “I was prophesied.”

“Alina,” he said, voice low, slightly chiding. “It has very little to do with prophecy.”

Alina frowned. “I mean, I’m still not certain I’m the right-”

Aleksander stroked her thumb across her cheek, and whatever she’d been about to say was lost in a quick, sharp intake of breath. He couldn’t help but smile to himself when sudden comprehension brightened her features, and darkened her eyes.

“Oh,” she said. “I see.”

“Do you?” he asked, mildly interested as he idly stroked across her cheek again. He didn’t know why he did it, although her reaction was fascinating to watch. He must be drunk, on the liquor or the rush of power, he thought. Her hair was very soft. So was her hand, still gripping his tightly from when she’d tried to anchor him.

He should’ve known she wouldn’t need an invitation to talk: “um, yes. Well… I think I do. I’m kind of new to the concept. And Genya says I sometimes misinterpret things still-”

“Do you wish for me to state it plainly?”

“No! It’s ok! It’s just…”

“It’s just… what?” He murmured.

“It’s just… and I’m, um, really sorry, but… I wasn’t actually… ummm…” she squeaked, “propositioning you?”

And suddenly, the moment was broken, as she ducked back and freed herself from his grasp. She hastily dropped his hand.

It took a moment for Aleksander to realise what had happened. He had been about to kiss her. Not only that, but the girl who talked about falling in love like it was something to tick off a laundry list… didn’t want him to.

“I really wasn’t trying to do anything. I know you know you’re very handsome, and your eyes - I’m very happy for you that you look the way you do, truly! But I was mostly just trying to… you know. Be your friend. Like, a friend friend,” Alina said, firmly. “Because you were lonely. And you looked so sad, and I didn’t want you to be lonely - but, oh dear, I can see how that could be misconstrued. But I didn’t mean it that way!”

Aleksander looked down at her with a flat, hollow stare.

“And why me, if that is what you want? I mean, I thought that you and Zoya-"

It was about this time that Alina finally comprehended the stormy expression on Aleksander’s face as censure, and mercifully stopped babbling.

“That Zoya and I - what?” he asked.

“Well, it’s just, I know you like her and did things with her, so I’m very confused-”

“‘I like Zoya?’” he replied, incredulous, the words feeling absurd in his mouth. “Did she… tell you that? Saints preserve me.”

“Don’t speak to me like that,” Alina said, and it was the first time he’d heard her sound angry, or maybe it was just flustered, as a blush rushed up her throat and began to colour her cheeks and the tips of her ears. “Like I’m being childish, just because I care about other people. Zoya is my friend, and her feelings matter to me. And she doesn’t need to say anything, because I know this might be hard for you to believe but I’m not stupid. I’ve seen the way she looks at you.”

“How she looks at me is not anyone’s concern but hers,” Aleksander replied. He couldn’t believe the conversation had descended into something so pointless, so quickly. “Alina-”

“And even if you… even if you didn’t have feelings for her, which is just... just cruel... I’m still very confused as to how this even became a conversation. Why would you like me? It makes no sense! The first time we met absolutely nothing amazing happened, and your heart did not skip a beat! You just glared at me a lot. And I don’t think we have anything in common. You think I’m mad, and foolish. Which is fine, it doesn’t matter to me what you think when you’ve given me a home and a place to find my purpose. But it matters if you - if we - if you wanted to - if we were to -”

She blushed, looking down at the ground.

Aleksander frowned. He had no idea Alina had any idea of his true thoughts about her.

Even worse, that was what she was saying: the truth. Yet, he had been the one to make a move despite it, and she the one to reject him. The salt in the wound began to sting and make him retreat back into himself, feeling more remote than ever.

When he didn’t say anything in response, Alina flushed deeper. Her gaze moved from where it was pinned on his shoes, to meet his, and now it did definitely seem like anger was mixed into the embarrassment.

“So… you don’t like me,” she said, voice approaching bitter. “You’re just upset, and I was kind to you, because I don’t like seeing you in pain. Or even worse, I was just… here. And that was enough for you to decide to - because for you it is just as simple as - and it doesn’t matter if -” she stopped speaking, hands bunching into fists at her sides. “I should go.”

She took a step back, and then another, before she stopped, hesitating in place.

“...You can be alone, right? It’s ok for me to go? I think it’s best, because I don’t - I’m not in love with you or anything - but still, you shouldn’t be alone, if you’re still -”

Pity. From her.

“Get out, Alina,” he said, though there was no heat in his voice, only ice.

She blushed harder, confusion and hurt plain on her face - as if she had a right to it, as if she hadn’t just humiliated him. Then, she scurried from the room. Aleksander watched her leave. He didn’t want his eyes to follow her, and didn’t want to feel anything the moment the door slammed shut behind his Sun Summoner.

Alone again, and angry in a way he couldn’t understand, he downed the rest of his glass, and ran a tired hand through his hair.

What were you thinking? he thought to himself, disgusted.

The day of the Winter Fete came. It was three days since Alina had amplified him and then left him, alone, in the war room.

Again, Aleksander hadn’t slept.

This time, however, not sleeping served a purpose. Around him papers were scattered like deadfall: the report from the Merchants’ Astronomical society, folklore texts spreadeagled with spines bent, copies of his grandfather’s journals, and the originals, the pages thin as a holy text and just as delicate, translucent like onion skin. And on top of it all, a letter from the First Army, the wax seal broken, and a brief missive telling him that a tracker called Malyen Oretsev was due to arrive that afternoon with information on the stag’s location.

The time had come to make a decision. But before that, a question had to be answered: What was Alina Starkov?

Ever since that moment in the war room, where she had been the one to heighten his power, Aleksander had pursued this question singlemindedly. It was no longer enough to dismiss her as a bomb with not a single braincell, or let the knowledge that he had Morozova’s Stag leave him comforted.

She was not going to love him. She was just kind, and charity had a limit. He needed to stop scrambling and acting pathetic, and come up with a plan.

And he had to finally, truly admit that he wasn’t trying to understand or control a Summoner, but something else entirely.

He had read the report of a missing star in the Koja constellation, officially verified a week after Alina’s arrival in Keramzin. It was the place she claimed to be from, and he had checked in a telescope and seen that the ear was gone, save for a faint haze.

But that meant nothing. That wasn’t science, the Small Science, or even merzost: that was simply two things that had happened at the same time, and he needed more data.

He had read his grandfather’s works for anything that mentioned stars, and was left with only a handful of divination rituals for his trouble. Saints preserve him, he had scoured folklore for tales of fallen stars, and read every copy the library and university archive had of ‘When Water Sang Fire’, to see if any of them began with Signy and Ulla being anything other than sildroher. He had one of his spies in the Wandering Isle trawling national censuses in the hope of finding one Kaelish whore, if only to finally put his mind at rest regarding the ridiculous fabricated history of Alina’s sister.

That, he had to admit, had been a low point. So far the search had remained thankless, and without reward.

She was another living amplifier: she had to be. That was the only explanation, even if it was almost as impossible as the idea that she had fallen from the sky. The only amplifier bloodline that Aleksander knew of in existence was his own. But with the way Alina talked about her sisters’ love of secrecy, perhaps the Shu had more tricks up their sleeve than he’d ever given them credit for.

Alina was a living amplifier, and that was why she wielded such power without effort. Maybe amplifier bloodlines could be antithetical to each other for some unknown evolutionary reason, like magnets with the same two poles aligned, and that’s why her powers had reviled his upon first meeting. He had never met another amplifier that he himself had not helped craft, so it was possible that that was the explanation for the new sensation she could imbue him with.

Maybe she had spent her whole life amplified, and so the test at his hands had been meaningless to her because it was no different than her everyday reality. Perhaps, even, experiments with her powers had triggered something dangerously close to merzost and, untrained, unschooled and young, it had broken her mind beyond repair and left her convinced she was something she wasn’t.

Maybe (...and this was where he started to feel like a fraying edge) she was even as old as she claimed. And the story about being a star was how she explained that to herself, with no other point of reference to understand why she’d so outstripped a normal Grisha’s years.

These theories all felt dangerously close to fairy stories. But that was all they could be, because there was no real evidence beyond Alina herself, impossible and illogical as she was. Aleksander had never encountered a situation like this before - and apparently, neither had his grandfather.

More importantly - more pressingly - he had no clue if yoking two amplifier bloodlines together with the collar would create the most powerful weapon this earth had ever known, bouncing power between them like mirrors placed facing each other in a room.

Or if it would just break the both of them.

At the end of his fruitless search, the only fact he had was this: she had amplified him. It would have been nice to pretend it had all been his imagination, a moment of kinship with another person for the first time in an age, made into something it wasn’t. To say he had had too much to drink, and it had made him feel a plethora of things it was embarrassing and pointless to feel.

But it was something far simpler: a rush of power, at the hand of a pretty girl, who was something impossible, yes, but also something plausible. That could be used to his advantage.

An equal, came a voice in the back of his mind, the kind of voice that told there were easier ways to see how amplifier bloodlines reacted to each other. Easier ways for them to be combined. But he quickly silenced that. He was tired again, that was all.

There came a knock at his door. Aleksander closed the top to his bureau and turned to see a flash of red, expecting it to be Ivan. Instead, it was Fedyor.

“...I lost Alina,” the heartrender admitted without preamble. The days when guards quailed at making this confession were over: by this point, it was a fact of life when tasked with guarding the invisible Sun Summoner.

Aleksander rubbed his temple, willing himself to be unconcerned. “Get me my kefta.”

Fedyor nodded, and took the coat of a chair in the other room. Aleksander silently let himself be helped into it. Ever since his failed advance had shattered whatever romantic illusions she had about love on this earth and also thoroughly wounded his ego, Alina had been avoiding him. Something he had made very easy, when he saw no need to continue lessons she didn’t need for a showcase she could already ace blindfolded.

His hurt pride had even meant that he hadn’t interrogated Genya on the aftermath of whatever madness had gripped him that night. Alina couldn’t keep a secret. So it was safe to assume she’d told her friend the entire thing, no doubt not sparing him any humiliation.

What made it worse was that Genya would assume it had been a strategic tactic that had misfired. Not something that had been… sincere. A mortifying moment of weakness he was still regretting.

He didn’t need to be debriefed on his first failed seduction in decades.

Aleksander sighed, heavily enough for Fedyor to frown with concern. No doubt his heartrender registered the signs of stress the existence of Alina Starkov continued to wrought on his body.

“You lost her?” he asked, quietly.

Then he moved out, into the war room. The windows there overlooked the various stalls of the fete in the garden below.

Aleksander found Alina as naturally as breathing. People were already flocking to the performers, and it didn’t take a genius to know that his Sun Summoner would be among them. It took only seconds to find what he was looking for: there was a troupe of dancers doing something depressingly interpretive with fabric, and in front of them was a dark haired shape in a familiar dressing gown, and a white keftaed figure next to her, tugging on her arm and trying to get her to move away.

“There she is,” Aleksander said, simply, tapping the glass once.

Fedyor came to stand by his shoulder, “I - how did you…?”

“How did you not?” Aleksander sighed. It was all depressingly predictable, he thought, as the music presumably started up, and the dancers began. The dark haired shape clapped her hands, and then span in place in time to the music, hair in a dark fan at her back, while Genya tugged on her hand again and she threw back her head and laughed…

Aleksander turned away from the window.

“Best go get her then,” he said, tersely, clearing his throat. “She’s going to be late to the presentation, at this rate.”

“I - yes - moi soverenyi,” replied Fedyor, who chose wisely to make no comments about the heart rate of anyone in the room.

Aleksander should’ve known Alina wouldn’t follow any instruction.

The crowd parted around Alina like the sea as she entered the presentation room from the entirely wrong direction. She took in the lavish clothes and decorations with wide eyes, smiling tentatively at the strangers around her, dimples flashing. A quiet hush fell over the room, a silence that meant he could hear his heartbeat in his ears.

Aleksander would not pretend to be immune to the sight of Alina in black. He hadn’t been planning on pushing for his colours, given her own outspoken opinions on the matter. But then the Apparat had started trying to give his own input on her outfit. With gold as the Church’s suggestion, Aleksander had ended up insisting. If only to emphatically prove a point.

Her kefta was tight, neat, and ornate. Her hair was plaited delicately in the front, then dark and long and shimmering down her back. Genya had dusted Alina's skin with opalescent power that sparkled faintly on her cheeks and the line of her throat. On her head perched a crown of stars. It was a circlet wrought in silver and gold, gaslight getting caught on the snarls and knots of the metal work. It left her part martyr, part queen.

That had been the Apparat’s suggestion, leaning into the narrative of her blossoming sainthood. Unfortunately, he had gone to Alina directly with the proposal of ‘tiara’, which meant it had been impossible for Aleksander to dissuade her.

Now, he had to admit it did exactly what the Apparat intended. Every eccentricity was turned ethereal, and otherworldly.

Aleksander’s heart was hammering. He didn’t even know if it was Alina, or just the sight of another person in his colours.

Then her eyes caught his, and he saw the way her first instinct was still to smile widely and guilelessly in greeting before she immediately remembered herself and what had happened between them. She quickly turned from beaming to mortified, uncertain like she had wrongfooted herself.

By that point, Aleksander was already walking towards her, and he realised that was all lies. His heartbeat had nothing to do with the clothes or seeing them on another person. It was unmistakably, undeniably her.

“Um, hi,” she said, awkwardly. “Hello. Um.”

“Hello,” he replied, glancing around to make sure her oprichniki had followed her through. He didn’t bother telling her she should’ve waited for her guards, as by this point they were simply proven qualified if they kept up. “Are you well? Do you feel ready for the presentation?”

“Do I need to be, right now? I… um… thought it didn’t start for a few minutes? That I could - that we could talk,” she replied, blinking up at him through lashes that he was pretty certain Genya had altered. It was the only explanation. “Not about the - what we - well. Not really. More just. You know… to talk. How are you? Are you less… um. Tired?”

“I’m perfectly fine, Alina. We have a moment, but not long, and there are more important matters to attend to. What I meant,” he said, fighting to keep frustration (with himself, only with himself), “was if you felt prepared? You’re not nervous, at all?”

“...Why would I be nervous?” she said, wrinkling her nose slightly. “It’s not like you need me to do anything difficult.”

Her cockiness had him fighting a smile. She glanced up at him again, and then quickly away. He thought her cheeks seemed warmed in the glow.

“Let’s try to leave the true miracles for the latter days of Sainthood, shall we?” he mock-sighed. “If you do anything too wonderful too early, they’d replace me with you. And then you’d have the thankless job of fighting in all these wars.”

“Oh stars,” Alina sighed back, “I don’t think I want that. Once I’ve destroyed the Fold, can my job not just be to look pretty, and wear more crowns? Not out of any selfishness on my part, you understand. You just seem to love all those meetings of yours so much.”

Aleksander cast her a sidelong glance, and saw that she was grinning again, eyes sparking and dimples on full show. Aleksander had no idea if she was just trying to smooth things over after their hiccup the other night, or if she realised she was flirting.

“That was sarcasm,” she whispered back after a second, back to guileless innocence, confirming the former and gutting him in one fell swoop. “Genya said I was ready to try it out on more people. But I genuinely do not want your job, Aleksander. And more crowns would be nice.”

Somehow, breaking character for more of her usual openness was worse. He would have to ask Genya if she realised she was rapidly on her way to creating a monster.

Alina blinked at him again, and then pinked further when he didn’t say anything, which was definitely a new development. And while it might have been gratifying, Aleksander was once again reminded of the fact that he’d tried to kiss her and somehow he’d been the one to fail.

“I want a dress like that,” Alina blurted, gesturing to a woman in glittering, bead encrusted blue lace to the side. She seemed to want to break the silence. Aleksander barely even looked away from Alina long enough to notice the person in his periphery. He wondered why she had felt the need to bring it up to him, of all people, when she continued: “Can I wear something like that next time you need to show me off? I’ve always wanted a ballgown. Laoise used to brag that she had a whole closet of them.”

“What I believe your brief was,” he replied, thinking back to her monologue on the first day in her company, “was a dress that ‘shimmers and whispers when you spin’.”

“...You remember me saying that?”

“Believe me, everything you have said remains very memorable.” He gestured to the gold embroidery and beading at her shoulders, “I tried my best, Miss Starkov. I’m afraid that I sacrificed ‘whispering’ for the ability to stop bullets. But if you insist on being the realm’s only Sun Summoner, that’s just the way it has to be, and you must make your peace. Shouldn’t be too hard, given that you look lovely just as you are, and a kefta would hardly be bulletproof if it didn’t cover half your shoulders.”

She looked at him, confused, and then flushed again. Aleksander realised he’d just called her ‘lovely’, and he hadn’t meant to do it. It was almost a relief when his own fucking inferni signalled the commencement of the showcase.

“This way,” Aleksander said, thankful to be back to business without any transition out of whatever awkward hell this was. He placed his hand on her back and started guiding her through the crowd as fire flared overhead.

“Why did you think I’d be nervous?” she hissed, “do you think I’m going to make a mistake?”

“Not at all,” he reassured her, “It’s just a lot of people. I wasn’t sure-”

“It is a lot of people,” she said, as applause rang out, almost proving her point. They’d reached the side of the stage, and she turned back to him, “I love it.”

“Then you’ll do well,” he replied. “Power is not something to be feared or hidden away, but celebrated.”

He turned to go, but she put her hand on his arm to stop him. “This will help, won’t it?” she said.

“...Help with what?”

“Help Ravka? ” she asked, “and um… help you? If I do this well, and everyone thinks I’m the Saint, then it means you won’t feel alone. They’ll support us, and the thing with West Ravka… oh, I probably shouldn’t say that out loud-”

It was a very Alina question. One she was asking only because she was kind, not because she wanted his favour. Which was fine, he told himself, because it worked out in his favour either way.

If anything, this demonstration would be the spark that lit the powder keg. But she didn’t need to know that.

“Don’t do this for me, Alina,” he told her, “do it for yourself. It brings you one step closer to your purpose, doesn’t it?”

She blinked at him, and he could tell she was trying to work out if he was being sincere, or (Saints help him) manipulating her. She could probably tell that just because he used the words didn’t mean he believed her talk about a pilgrimage. But there was still a brief moment when he could tell she was touched that he’d made the effort to use them.

“Although…” he leaned in, “don’t think in straight lines, for this one. Ignore David's physics. We don’t want any accusations of smoke and mirrors. You just need to shine.”

And if it came out sweet enough to make her blush, it didn’t matter to Aleksander in the slightest. He took her hand, and she looked down at the point of contact with wide-eyes. But neither of them said anything further, as he handed her up onto the platform.

Once up there, she bent her head down to him, and she grinned, “I might as well just ask you to breathe. Don’t worry, Aleks. I’ll make sure no one has a reason to doubt us. It’ll be ok - you’ll see.”

Aleksander gave her a fleeting smile that felt strange on his face and that he tried to pretend was forced, before turning away from her. It was a relief, a little. In front of him, far safer ground: a room of nobility and political dignitaries, all of whom had fallen silent once Alina ascended to the dais. This, at least, he understood.

He relished the way they tensed in apprehension - in recent days, he often forgot he had authority that Alina just entirely disregarded. He inclined his head to the tsar briefly, then raised his voice:

“Her name is Alina Starkov, and she will bring liberation to us all.”

In the wake of his words, he had created absolute darkness. He knew this for a fact. Yet once he turned to look back at her, and his eyes had adjusted, he saw that she was outlined in a white glow - a glow that he knew some in the room would already be construing as a halo. Under their collective stare, the glow brightened slightly more to illuminate the dais. He watched her take a step forward, a wide smile on her face. Then, she extended her arms, curtsied like a showman, bowed her head.

Into the silence, she raised her chin, placed a single hand over her heart, and then pulled that hand out wide. A channel of light spooled out her chest like thread. The people in the room who had witnessed the Darkling’s cut let in a quick, terrified breath, but the light eddied like ripples on water, benign and beautiful. She caught it with her other hand, gathering it around her fingers, and arced it up over her head in a fluttering ribbon.

The arc mirrored the curve of her crown: he could tell from her furrowed brow that that was intentional. She poured more power into it, brighter and brighter, until Aleksander and the rest of the crowd began to squint their eyes against the glare.

Then, she let it break.

It took a moment to understand what had happened. Aleksander was too busy… flinching. He, like everyone else, had cringed - as the light broke out of its confines and crested like a bloated wave. It crashed over Alina Starkov’s head, over the slope of her skirts and the toes of her boots, and then over the edge of the stage like a waterfall. That was when it hit him, and a part of him, the small, feral, animal part made of fear long since mastered, tensed up and braced. The room was filled with his shadow, and it took every ounce of control not to summon them in the face of the bright deluge that he knew instinctively to fear like prey.

All it felt like was warmth, however. Suffusing through his chest and then falling to just below his knees, the after images shimmering like stardust on his clothes. The light, blinding yet harmless, churned off the stage like rapids, and then along the floor. It crept round the feet of the party guests, who made startled, scandalised noises. Alina kept pouring power into it - so much power, how did she have so much? - until it flooded the entire showcase floor ankle deep.

He saw the face of the other Grisha in the room, slackjawed and amazed. They, at least, understood.

Others were perplexed, however. There were murmurings from the otkazat'sya. “Very pretty,” murmured Lantsov, “but what exactly does it achieve?”

Lantsov was a fool.

It climbed up the walls in a glittering lattice, until the entire room was a cage of light. Aleksander felt caged, even though his shadows were as yet unharmed.

Alina was stood at the front, arms outstretched, a small furrow in her brow the only discomfort as the waterfall churned from her. She watched as the guests raised their eyes to the ceiling, as the light completed its encompassment of the room, and every crack was sealed over. On the other side, the shadow writhed and flinched. Aleksander swallowed against instinctual discomfort, and an uncomfortably dry throat.

Alina closed her fists, and that was when the shadow began to burn away.

There was sound, half sizzle, half paper rustle. Aleksander watched, remembering the singed edges of the burned section of the fold, as his shadows curled and flaked away like charring paper. The light ate them up. They smouldered red like dying embers, and then disappeared. Gradually, light returned back to the room.

And still no one burned.

His heart thundered. He had taught her that control. He had given her this power.

The room hushed, once more. It was no longer dark, every shadow burned away and erased from existence. Alina placed both hands on her heart, lowered her head with closed eyes, and the light died out as well. The room returned to a gaslit glow, leaving everyone blinking, confused.

But Aleksander knew, because he himself could feel it: there was a residue of warmth on everyone’s skin.

And they were all sparkling, ever so slightly.

Alina grinned. It was her only signal she was finished. All that was left was silence, as no one seemed to know what to say.

Saints, maybe she is a star, Aleksander couldn’t help but think, as she lowered her hands once more to her sides.

Fuck - did it matter? Whatever she was, anomaly or amplifier or impossibility, she was a wonder.

Alina didn’t seem to know what to do with the silence - not when she couldn’t fill it herself. The grin slipped off her face, and she shifted from foot to foot awkwardly. The colour remained high in her cheeks. He saw her dark eyes flitting around, scanning the crowd. It took him a second to realise she was seeking out his face amongst strangers.

Once she found him, she lowered her eyes to his, and gave a small hopeful smile. Inviting him into a moment of unity. Asking for his approval.

As if she hadn’t just erased every vestige of his power from the room.

Aleksander didn’t clap. Instead, he placed a hand over his own heart, and inclined his head in her direction. It was all he could think to do.

Then, the room erupted into thunderous applause. The cacophony was discordant, and overwhelming enough to make Alina flinch. Those who weren’t clapping crossed themselves. Several dropped to their knees.

I have to keep her, Aleksander thought. She can only be mine.

He’d be dead, otherwise.

But even as he had that thought, he knew that it was merely an excuse for something far more foolish.

Chapter Text

For Alina Starkov, the afterglow of the successful presentation was literal.

She couldn’t stop glowing. It was embarrassing.

Her sisters had warned her. They had told her she would feel something, something so strong it would fizzle in her human body like starfire. They had all explained the limitations of the human form. It could only contain so much power, the same way that her human heart could not seem to hold too much compassion, without overflowing and pouring it out into the world.

While she was happy, she would continue to glow.

And that was what she felt now, as she watched the way people stared at her. Like she was their saviour, their salvation. Exactly as General Kirigan had promised they would.

It was big-headed, she knew. She wasn’t any brighter than any other star in the sky. Anyone with a bit of shine and a bright-enough heart could do what she was doing, what these mortals thought miraculous.

But it wasn’t about her. It was about what she meant to them.

As she finished her presentation, she had seen the looks on the faces of Grisha who’d only borne her presence out of a sense of duty. Now they were filled with reverence. She saw a young Suli guard, in the back, eyes shimmering with unshed tears. The King, Lantsov, came over, and kissed her fingers. The King.

Even the General bowed his head to her.

They were so thankful that she was here. These people needed her help. This was her purpose. And as the sense of rightness overwhelmed her and sang through her bones, she couldn’t stop every molecule of her being from displaying the joy she felt to the world.

Zoya strode over and took one look at her shine, frowning. “...Did you drink?”

Alina shook her head. “I didn’t think I could. I can’t imagine that alcohol and starshine would mix.”

“Then why are you so,” Zoya waggled her fingers at her, “bright?”

“I’m happy, Zoya.”

“Well, if you keep doing that, we’re going to have a problem. The body double can’t glow. People are going to know which one is you.”

“Good,” Alina replied. She’d told Genya countless times: the idea of her needing a body double was absurd. “Then all those assassins you fear will attack me. I’m far more capable of defending myself than the double probably is.”

Zoya got that frown she got a lot in Alina’s presence, a single furrow marring the space between two perfectly manicured brows. “Just… try to control it, will you? You did well, no need to show off.”

Aleksander wanted me to show off, the retort was right on the tip of Alina’s tongue, but she knew better than to say it, especially after Zoya had deigned to give her a compliment.

Bringing up the General made Zoya prickly. Something Alina hadn’t noticed, until the General himself had told her they were not in love. It was strange. Alina had heard that they had slept with each other, and had assumed that meant they must have feelings for each other. It was only now, in retrospect, that she was noticing that she’d only ever heard this rumour from other people, spoken in whispers when they thought she wasn’t paying attention. A lot of the Grisha often treated her like she was a piece of furniture inconveniently left in the way, which meant she overheard a lot of conversations. She’d also realised that, while Zoya’s face often softened when she didn’t seem to realise it, Zoya and the General had never even acted like they cared about the other person. They didn't even touch. The way they talked was so taut and abrupt, no doubt efficient, in a way Alina would never be. She couldn’t imagine them speaking in the flowery ways of her books. No conversation she had seen had lasted long enough to get to heartfelt confession.

Maybe they hadn’t fallen in love even after sleeping together because they never spent long enough in a room together for it to happen. Alina idly wondered how long it took.

There was a lot she didn’t understand. About love, and the General, she was realising.

The morning after that strange night, Alina had sat at her vanity while Genya brushed her hair. If she’d noticed more snarls than usual from sleeplessness, her friend hadn’t said anything, and Alina personally felt that had been her downfall. She couldn’t stand silence.

“Genya,” she’d said, tentatively, hands tightening in her lap.

“Yes, little star?”

“If a person…” Alina had known she sounded stupid, even as she said it. She sounded exactly like General Kirigan thought she was: childish and naive. When really, all she was was a foreigner in a new land, trying to understand customs that made no sense to her, alongside having to contend with the new reality of having fingers and toes. “If a person who doesn’t like you suddenly acts like they do, what does that mean?”

“Who doesn’t like you?” Genya murmured. “You’re a delight.”

Alina levelled her most unimpressed gaze at her friend’s reflection in the mirror. “Most people here can’t stand me,” she replied, “I’m not stupid.”

Genya had raised her own unimpressed eyebrow in response, “no, you’re not stupid Alina, they are. They are all fools, little star. But who have you won over this time?”

The idea that it was a battle, some kind of challenge, something that could be won had made Alina’s stomach swoop, for some reason. It was true that she liked the validation, the knowledge that she was gradually finding her place here, not in the Little Palace but among people. That she was getting better at blending in. But there was something about conquest - that was used a lot all those books she’d been reading, like love was something that fought with tooth and claw and-

“No one,” she said, looking down at her hands while her cheeks started burning. “Like I said, they’re only acting like they like me. It’s not true.”

“Oh, you’ve noticed that’s a thing that people do, have you?” Genya actually sounded impressed, and… was that relief? Alina had no idea if she knew how to tell. “Well, they probably wish for something from you. Or they… wish to control you, and have your favour. That’s something people like to do a lot, here, Alina. Use a person for their own gain.”

Alina thought back to the moment when Aleksander had said ”I’ve waited a long time for you,”. The words rippled gooseflesh up her skin strangely.

Yes, she supposed. That’s the kind of thing a person said when they wanted something from you - otherwise, what exactly had he been waiting for, from her? Other than her utility, and her usefulness? But he’d already known she was going to be Ravka’s salvation and destroy the Fold. Surely he knew he didn’t need to say it?

And the look on his face then… it hadn’t been like all the other times he’d tried persuading her. There had been no affable mask, like he’d worn when he’d explained to her she had to wear black to the presentation. The congenial face that in her mind she’d started labelling as the opposite of what it was, in that confusing human way: it didn’t mean he liked her, it meant she was testing his patience.

Instead his expression in that moment had been something else. But stars help her, she had no name for what that ‘something else’ was.

“No…” she said, though she hated how uncertain she sounded. She bet Laoise was tittering away in the heavens, watching her sister stumble around like a newborn foal, all over one mortal man’s proposition. “I don’t think so, in this case. At least. I think… I think if they were trying to do that, they… um. Would’ve probably done it better.”

“...Maybe if you told me what they’d done, little star, I’d be able to help.”

Alina hated how much she was blushing. Human bodies were stupid, sometimes, or she was stupid in them. Why was she suddenly so warm? “Um, well. A person… a person that you don’t… um. Really know,” she lied, badly. “They… um. Well. I think they tried to kiss me.”

Genya’s hand stilled in her hair. “Oh?”

“But… but… they don’t know me! And whenever I try to tell them who I am, they don’t believe me!” Alina said, finally, frustration leaking into her voice. “How can they want to kiss me, if they don’t care about what I am?! How can a person care for someone without understanding them, understanding their essence, and all the while being unwilling to try?”

Genya was as still as a statue. Alina felt vindicated. “They can’t, can they? I think I was right! It cannot have been genuine! Love is meant to be - to be - to be a meeting of minds, and of - of mutual respect - that’s what every book says.”

“Oh, Alina-”

“And I just… I don’t think I feel very respected!” Alina said into her lap. “Which is fine, most of the time. I know I’m getting things wrong, even though I’m trying my best, and that I must look like a bull in a china shop to most of you. Anyway, I’ve got plenty of years to get it right and you’ll all be gone by then so there’s no use being embarrassed over whatever blunders I make in this first few fallen months. But still! I don’t understand why he did it - and - and he looked disgusted with himself, honestly, and then it was like it was somehow my fault, and that was pretty hurtful too-!”

She stopped herself there, with a big gulp of air and a big dose of clarity. She was pretty certain she had said too much. Kirigan was a very private man, and even Zoya - in that way she probably should’ve noticed, before now - avoided referring to him directly in any conversation.

“I just don’t understand,” she said, plaintively.

In the mirror, Genya’s face was unreadable. Alina hated the fact that people did that here. She always felt like she was scrambling. These people claimed to love her, but they never showed their true selves. For someone who’d lived among her sisters and sang her love for them to the far corners of the sky, it felt like she was constantly being spat at, in the face.

She was trying to get better. She knew she was the one in the wrong.

“Well…” Genya said, after a pause in which she had seemed to weigh up her answer. “If you’re looking for a reason, I suppose you have a few options. They… might still have been trying to control you, Alina. You should bear that in mind.”

“I think there are better ways to go about doing that,” Alina replied, honestly. Bribery had so far seemed to be Kirigan’s go-to approach, and she wasn’t ashamed to admit that it worked well enough that she didn’t see a reason for him to change tact.

“Then… maybe…” Genya seemed to be reluctant to speak, dragging every word out of herself. “He - the person - doesn’t dislike you. Maybe the person changed his - their - mind.”

Alina’s stomach had hurt then, and she hadn’t liked it.

“But he still doesn’t believe me,” she stressed. “And if he doesn’t think I’m a star, then he doesn’t know anything about me. What would he like about me? Why would he want me?”

“You don’t need to know a person, necessarily, to want them,” Genya replied. “You’re very pretty, Alina.”

“Oh, I don’t think that matters to h- to this person,” Alina snorted, “I’m sure he - they - oh, stars - could have many people who are prettier than me. That’s why it all struck me as pointless.”

“Then maybe he also likes you, as a person, if not as a star,” Genya said, but her face was still unreadable.

“Oh,” Alina had said. But mostly she was focused on her stomach, which was hurting again.

“And - and there’s something you should know about men, little star,” Genya had said, after a pause. “Sometimes, they don’t need to know the truth about you, to like you. They can like the image they hold of you in their head well enough to erase all else. You simply have to decide if you want to have them on their terms, or yours.”

“But… but…”

“He might still be manipulating you, Alina,” Genya said, resting a hand on her shoulder with a little more force than Alina thought even she was aware she was using. “Beware of powerful men.”

And just like that, the spell was broken: Alina burst into a snort of laughter, then clapped a hand over her mouth. When she looked at Genya’s surprised face in the mirror, she giggled again through her fingers.

“Sorry,” she said, knowing she was having another one of those moments that led people to dismiss her as mad. “It’s just… I could snuff him out like a candle, if I ever wanted to.”

Alina wasn’t scared of the General, she just didn’t understand him. Whatever she’d thought she’d known about him - his polite but aloof disinterest in her - had been overturned by his strange behaviour the other night.

And the look he’d given her at the end of the presentation… well, she thought that a look like that might be pretty hard to fake.

But if anyone was capable of doing so, it was probably him.

Zoya watched her light gutter slightly, in response to the strange, anxious feeling in her stomach. “Better,” she sighed, placing a hand on Alina’s shoulder. “You… you did do so well, Alina. I had no idea what you were capable of. You really might be the thing we need to end all this pointless suffering.”

“...You doubted me?”

Zoya smiled tiredly, “only a little, I promise. It’s sometimes hard to believe an end could ever be in sight. But maybe save some of that sunlight for the Fold, hmm?”

If quelling her light was better, then Alina guessed that was what she had to do. That was the only excuse, she thought, for replaying in her mind every moment she’d spent in the General’s company in the last week, trying to unpick whatever in all the sky he’d been hoping for. Her stomach swooped painfully, and the light went away. Zoya smiled at her, squeezed her shoulder, and moved away to talk with Fedyor and another dignitary dressed in gilded clothes. Alina couldn’t see the General anywhere, and even without her glow, everyone seemed to be reluctant to talk to her, giving her plenty of time with her thoughts.

...Does he like me?

The thought boggled Alina’s mind: he didn’t know her. What was there to like, when one didn’t grasp even the fundamentals?

…Was he just using her? Surely there were easier ways to trap a person - like with locks, and keys. Not feelings, which on this earth were fleeting, ephemeral, and easily hidden away.

You should’ve let him kiss you, came a voice, unbidden, in her head, raising heat to her cheeks. It sounded like Laoise, who would’ve had no problem with toying with a mortal man’s heart, and seeing in what manner it beat and bled for her. But then, Laoise hadn’t cared if hearts were not involved at all - from the way she’d used to crow, it had seemed to be mostly about the bodies.

A man with that look for you on that face, little spark? she would’ve said, what were you thinking? He could die tomorrow - who needs principles? Maul him where he stands.

But Alina was pretty certain that she wanted a grand, sweeping love, exactly like in books. She wanted to bring someone to their knees for need of her, and feel her own heart lanced through. A love she could brag about in the sky, when the years had passed and she was home once more.

A story to rival her sisters.

And… and the General seemed too important, and maybe a little too handsome, to use as practice. Better to find someone who didn’t already judge her every move, surely? She’d only embarrass herself if she tried.

Only, he’d basically wanted to use her as practice, so maybe he wouldn’t - he wouldn’t mind-

Oh stars, she thought, light well and truly gone. I’m thinking myself in circles.

She grabbed a flute of sparkling wine from the nearest tray. Then she did what Baghra advised with the bottles of kvas at their late night card games, and downed it.

The wine was not enough to go to her head nor stoke the glow in her chest. Still, when a squaller who hadn’t spoken to her in week - not since their first conversation she’d tried to ask Alina if she was homesick and Alina had explained that she was mostly just exhausted from the fact she usually slept through the day - came up to her and held her hands, calling her Sankta, that light leaked out again from the edges. Stars, but it felt good to be wanted.

Alina didn’t think much of the glow, deciding there was nothing to be done. She wanted to enjoy her first moment of certainty after her first human months of absolute and terminal confusion, and she wasn’t very good at denying her desires.

But then it caught the wrong person’s attention, and a dark figure slunk from the shadows of the staircase where he had been hiding.

Oh stars, she thought. The Apparat.

He was one of the few people she actively disliked - more patronising even than the General in the early days when he’d thought her a time waster, and constantly speaking to her like she was a child. Was it too late to turn invisible? She glanced towards Fedyor, whose own brow furrowed at the man’s presence. Fedyor then glanced towards her, which told Alina that the heartrender knew her well enough to tell that she was considering it.

But the Apparat had already spotted her from across the room, and was making his way over. She wondered if he noted the way her light guttered, in apprehension of his presence.

“You have earned the pride you now wear,” he observed, without any kind of congenial greeting. “Do you like the crown I made for you?”

Alina frowned. “You didn’t make it. The Fabrikators did. David helped me with the fitting.”

The Apparat didn’t seem to hear her, or perhaps just not her dissent to his cryptic pronouncements. “I should say, Zvezda Koroleva, you are becoming quite dangerous.”

“Zvezda Koroleva… ‘Star Queen’?” Alina asked, nose scrunching in distaste.

The name may acknowledge her origins, but… imagine placing herself above every other star in the sky! Her sisters would never let her hear the end of it. There were a couple of stars that burned brighter than most, but that just meant they were older and had outlived their siblings. It was a sad thing, more than anything, to be alone. Most belonged to constellations for a reason.

“And you are becoming more dangerous still.”

I’ve always been dangerous. I was around before you were even born, and didn’t note the occasion, she thought, glaring silently, and then felt bad for allowing her mind to go to such a venomous place.

“You have no idea how much larger a role you have to play, do you? The people-”

“The people will love me, and that will change the situation for Grisha, not to mention the political landscape of Ravka, and many people will try to take advantage of that, you included,” Alina finished for him.

She had to interrupt him. Otherwise, he’d start monologuing, and the last time he’d done that had been in the library, when she was halfway through reading a smut scene in one of her books. It had been very embarrassing, trying to hide the pages from a man of the cloth.

When the Apparat started blinking like a startled fish, Alina continued: “I am aware, sir. Luckily, it is my purpose to destroy the Fold, and save Ravka. While worship strikes me as a little absurd - for I am just the same as any star tumbled from the heavens - it makes my friends happy. And it gets me closer to my goal. But if you want me to abuse people’s faith and trust for anything else other than that which is my true purpose, then I am afraid that I am not the star for you. I already feel incredibly awkward about the whole thing, and am trying my best to be what I believe you call… ‘pragmatic’. I’m not about to spit in the face of people who need me, just for the sake of my own ego, or someone else’s. Is that what you do, to those who appointed you the voice of God?”

The Apparat’s bewildered silence told her that that might, indeed, be the case.

Often Alina misunderstood situations. It came as an unpleasant surprise to understand this one perfectly, first try.

She also didn’t like how her voice had somehow risen, without her noticing. The Apparat had been speaking to her in a murmur, trying to have a private conversation. She might not like him very much, but she should at least have honoured his wishes. Now, a couple of the people around her were glancing in their direction, and it seemed there was meaning behind those gazes, meaning that she couldn’t understand. Fedyor, in particular, was staring at her like he was trying to wordlessly communicate something to her.

But people couldn’t do that. Only stars.

Panicking, unsure what else to do, Alina turned invisible. A gasp rose up from the crowd. Fedyor winced. But Alina didn’t notice, as she was already hurrying away.

Invisibility was a tricky thing, as far as Alina found anything difficult. She was aware of how her bumbling trajectory was easily followed in the crowd. A couple of people made startled noises as the hems of their gowns briefly disappeared, falling into her sphere of influence. One man briefly lost a shoulder. Another walked into her and stumbled, spilling fine spirit all down his shirtfront.

If the Apparat wanted to follow her, she’d made it absurdly easy. Alina peeled off down the first corridor that was empty, and raced down it. The next corner she found gave her a corridor in shadow - she took it. And then she stopped, took a big, heaving breath.

Her heart was racing in a sickening way: the new way, that told her she had made a mistake. It had been happening more and more since Genya taught her there were rules she was supposed to be following, that went unspoken but were known to everyone but her.

Normally she didn’t mind knowing she’d made a misstep. But she’d promised Kirigan that she would make people like the Grisha more, not less.

Maybe she should’ve pretended to the Apparat that she was willing to do what he wanted. That would’ve made him like her, at least.

That was probably what Aleksander would’ve done.

The corridor was silent, with the strains of violin music muffled by distance. When a door opened further down the corridor, she jumped out of her skin, thankful when the murmur of voices rose over her own gasp.

“Thank you for your help. You will be compensated for the information, of course.”

That was Kirigan’s voice. Alina took stock of her surroundings long enough to realise the place she’d fled was the corridor outside his rooms. Which explained why it was deserted, of course. Only a fool would spy on the Second Army General’s living quarters while he was conducting private business -

“The reward will be delivered as promised - and perhaps a stint of leave from the frontlines? I’m sure you’d be grateful to be out of the line of fire.”

“I think the bullet wound will take care of that all on its own, sir,” was the softspoken yet dry reply.

Alina pressed herself into the wall. Aleksander was talking to a man, ushering him out as he spoke his quiet goodbyes. His companion was younger than him, though hunger had made the planes of his face sharper. He was dressed in drab First Army fatigues that also made him look like a watermark on a page. The light from Aleksander’s rooms caught on a light dusting of close cropped hair and tired, dark eyes.

All these children sent to war - Alina couldn’t fathom it, and when she’d asked Zoya, her friend had no answer either.

And yet… there was something about him. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, as she watched the light outline his profile from a distance.

He didn’t feel old, the way Aleksander sometimes did if she caught him with his congenial mask slipped down. But still, something - she could hear a buzzing in her ears, like something was trying to talk with her the way she was used to, in the sky…

“We can have that taken care of for you,” Aleksander replied smoothly. “Our finest can have you healed in no time - but no need to tell your superiors about your taking a little shortcut. You may still take all the time you need to heal, Mr. Oretsev. And of course, the payment is all yours.”

“I’d like two thirds of it to go to the families of Mikhail and Dubrov - if that’s alright with you, General?” the man - the boy - looked down at his hands, fisted in a hat pulled from his head. “I don’t know - I don’t know why I kept going, despite everything… But if it was for them-”

“Of course,” Aleksander said. There was sympathy in his tone, but Alina was surprised to recognise the voice he used when he’d already moved onto the next problem in his head. “The money is yours, Oretsev - do with it what you see fit.”

That was the boy Oretsev dismissed, it seemed. He looked at Kirigan once more, then down at his hands, before moving down the corridor. He brushed past the invisible Alina without noting anything incongruous, eyes straight ahead and a hollowed-out look on his face. He looked exhausted and easily breakable. Enough so to make Alina want to reach out and comfort him, even though he was only a stranger.

Again, that strange feeling - not quite a sound, not quite a touch, and more a sensation, hooked inside her brain, no, her chest, no, to no part of her human anatomy whatsoever-

And then Oretsev was gone, turned down another corner. The not-quite-buzzing faded. Whatever she had felt had not seemed to affect the stranger, and then Alina was alone in the corridor once more.

Only… when she turned back, Aleksander’s door was still open. The General stood in the doorway, a dark silhouette against the buttery yellow glow of candlelight, face turned in her direction. She glanced back down the corridor, wondering if he was following Oretsev’s progress - but there was no one else there. She glanced back - he was still there in the doorway, frowning down at the floor. She followed the direction of his gaze…

…And realised she hadn’t compensated for the new source of light that had emerged in the corridor. Where the pathway of yellow light from the General’s doorway should’ve kissed the skirting board behind her, it stopped short in shadow, marking the edge of her aura of influence. It was like someone had taken a bite and swallowed the light whole.

“...Alina?” Aleksander said. His voice was as unreadable as ever, but she swore he sounded incredulous, like even he couldn’t believe he was speaking to the air. “...Are you there?”

A couple of seconds stretched taught. Aleksander’s brow furrowed. If she stayed silent, maybe he’d believe that he’d imagined it.

But… that felt cruel.

“I’m sorry!” she blurted, dropping her invisibility to reveal herself pinned against the wall opposite, no doubt looking guilty. “I swear I’m here by accident. I wasn’t looking for you, or listening in on your conversation, I promise. I just fled down whatever corridor I could find. I couldn’t even tell you what you were talking about, or who that sad man was. It’s just that I was talking to the Apparat and he -”

She trailed off, not wanting to talk about how she’d upset the Apparat in case that made him angry. Aleksander blinked at her, twice, then put his hand to his face in exhaustion he didn’t try to hide. He ran his fingertips over the wrinkles forming in his forehead, and then raked those same fingers through his hair.

“The awful thing is, I believe you,” he muttered, half to himself. “Saints have mercy - are you sure you’re not a spy?”

“A spy? I don’t think I’d be very good at it,” Alina replied honestly. “I can’t lie, and none of the books I’ve read have been very informative about what it is a spy actually does. Usually in the stories, they try to get close to their mark and develop feelings for them. Or they’re trying to seduce them for professional reasons and then they develop feelings for them along the way. Whatever the reason, all those feelings tend to get in the way of any real spywork. It makes me question if these stories are actually well-resear…”

Aleksander was looking at her again, in that way he did, that had weight behind it and often made Alina feel like she was suddenly pinned in her body. She realised what she had said, and her stomach did another painful contortion that she felt like a ripple of heat.

“Sorry. Again.” She settled on. Maybe less words was better.

“You don’t need to apologise to me for standing in a corridor.”

“And yet, it seems like the kind of thing that would make you angry.”

“I’m long past the days of telling you not to abandon the guards I assigned to keep you safe.” he said, in a voice that reprimanded her for doing just that.

“I didn’t mean to,” she told him honestly. “I just - the Apparat was talking to me in that - that - that slimy way he does, where he’s saying things he doesn’t mean but looking at you like he expects you to understand whatever lies behind every single one of them-”

Aleksanders eyebrows climbed, but he nodded, “I’m familiar with it.”

“Of course you are, you do it too!” Alina said, then checked herself. “Not that it’s slimy, when you do it! That’s not what I meant! Kind of the opposite, actually. It took me a lot longer to realise when you were doing it because that version of your voice tends to be nicer than your normal voice. Whereas the Apparat just - he makes my skin crawl-”

“-What did he ask of you?”

“I’m don’t know,” Alina said, frustrated. “Because none of you ever just ask for what you want. But… you know he’s calling me the ‘Star Queen’? And he said I was ‘dangerous’. Like that was news-”

“You don’t like ‘Star Queen’?” Aleksander asked her, mildly.

“No!” she blurted, “it’s the kind of thing that will get me teased mercilessly, back home. Why does he think the stars have a monarchy? That’s a thoroughly mortal invention.”

“...You’re wearing a crown.”

“I am wearing something pretty and sparkly,” she said, glaring at him, “if I was aware that it was anything more than that, I would have politely declined. Sometimes a thing is just a… a thing, and if it is otherwise it just needs to be said that way! I don’t know why you all dance around it so much and make things more complicated than they need to be.”

“You’re the one wearing a crown, not wanting to be a sovereign.”

“And you’re the one going around getting called moi soverenyi, but not wearing a crown!” she flung back.

Oops, maybe that was a bit too rude. But when she looked back at him, he was grinning.

“I’ll consider myself thoroughly scolded,” he replied. His voice was level, so Alina must be imagining the smile that seemed to toy at the corners of his face. “Did you shout at the Apparat, as well?”

“...Yes,” she muttered, miserably. He covered a laugh with a cough, badly.

“It’s not funny,” she said, “what if I’ve made him angry? What if he takes it out on the Grisha? What if he-”

But she didn’t get to finish her thought, because she heard footsteps approaching.

With hindsight, it could’ve been anyone. It could’ve been her own guards, trying to find her, or even just Fedyor. This knowledge would haunt her, in the dawn hours of the next morning. But at the time, she simply panicked: the Apparat.

She didn’t want to speak with him again.

Without a second to consider, she launched herself at Aleksander, pushing him backwards through the doorway and into hiding. She was certain it was only the element of surprise that allowed her to do it - he made an incredulous noise as she planted both hands on his chest and shoved him unceremoniously back into his own room. “What are you-”

“Shh!” she hissed, as pressed and hustled him backwards into the space. He took the manhandling with a disgruntled series of noises. Then, she turned, and carefully inched the door shut.

Kirigan sighed, “You can’t be serious-”

He had recovered from being nearly toppled by leaning up against the doorframe, to watch casually as Alina pressed her eye, nose and one side of her face against the crack to see who was coming. Which worked fine for her, she thought, as without looking she slammed her hand on his shoulder again (with not much force but no elegance either) and immediately snapped both of them into invisibility.

“Hush,” she told him, as sternly as she could manage. “I don’t want to talk to people.”

They were a lot closer now - they had to be, to keep the bubble intact.

The door, traitorous thing that it was, began to inch open the moment she let the handle go, with a creak. Through the gap, barely breathing, she saw two silhouettes, one carrying a torch. In a second, they resolved into oprinichki. Just guards, on a routine patrol. Or at least, she thought so - one of them was the Suli woman from earlier, and she was very small.

She sighed in relief - there had been no need to worry. She was about to release the invisibility, when the room around her began to darken. A breath rustled her hair. She realised the General was lowering the light in his quarters, so that it wouldn’t sneak around the edges of the door and alert anyone to their presence.

He was also somehow closer. Unlike other humans, the proximity of his body was without heat, instead the placid cool of standing in shade. That probably meant she was burning him up, and that thought made her feel strange. Alina tightened her hand on his kefta, but maintained the invisibility given that he also seemed to want to go undetected.

One of the pairs of guards, the young man without the torch, frowned at their doorway. Alina held her breath instinctively. Aleksander was himself entirely relaxed - she supposed it made sense for him to be unafraid of being caught, in his own room in his own house, even if he had turned down the lights. But he must have felt her tense because a hand came to rest lightly on her back between her shoulderblades, in reassurance.

The guard looked at the empty, dark doorway, cocked his head in consideration. He seemed to weigh up the pros and cons and quickly come up with a solution. If he was a guard, he knew the Palace layout - and that it was best to not risk opening the Darkling’s door. He reached out, and tugged the door shut all the way. There was a small snick, the murmur of voices. Only once there was a sound of retreating footsteps did Alina dare loosen a breath, feeling a little silly and lightheaded from a piece of melodrama worthy of one of her books.

She dropped the invisibility. Aleksander slowly quelled the shadows in the room until the light returned.

He was still standing too close, and his hand was still on her back. Alina felt the touch all the way through her spine, and somehow even in the tips of her fingers. Human bodies were so bizarre.

“Sorry!” she said, recollecting the way she barrelled into him. “I just thought-”

“If you wanted to be alone with me, Miss Starkov,” he murmured. “You only had to ask.”

He leant in closer, until his breath ghosted the shell of her ear, “ I don’t know why you dance around it so much, and make things more complicated than they need to be.”

And then, he dropped his hand, and moved away from her, back to his large table. This time, there was a definite curve to his lips.

Alina stared back at him, dumbly. Flirting. That was flirting. She may not understand a single stupid thing about mortals, but she had read enough books now to know that that was definitely flirting.

Her stomach hurt again. She was starting to realise that that was meant to be the good way, also talked about in all her books. But mostly it just made her scared she was going to burp and vomit on his shoes.

“I - um. I thought maybe-” her throat felt dry. “That it was the - um. Apparat…”

The General made an interested noise of ascent, as if nothing was wrong. Maybe there wasn’t anything wrong. Alina didn’t know why she was panicking. They'd done this a few nights ago, and yes it had been a complete travesty, but it wasn't like she'd died.

With careful precision that he pretended was absent minded, he cleared away some papers from the top of the table, including a map with a small marking and coordinates on it. Without looking at her, he folded it up carefully and tucked it - along with several troop requisition forms - into the bureau. And she stood there, watching him, uncertain of what to do with herself.

She’d intruded on his privacy - the best thing to do would be to apologise, and leave now. It wasn't like she was any use to him here.

Instead, she took a step forward.

Aleksander spared a sharp glance in her direction at the movement, and then went back to clearing away his documents. He picked up a fountain pen and sealed it away in a leather case, taking his time. He moved it from his left hand to his right, to place it in the bureau behind him.

The silence was unbearable. Alina needed to say something.

“I think I want to kiss you now!” she blurted.

Aleksander dropped the box.

Chapter Text

Admittedly, the heroines in her novels usually had a little more finesse.

Aleksander stooped to pick up the box he had dropped. A single, fluid movement, as if the floor was where he’d been planning to put it all along. Alina noticed a pink flush crawling up his neck behind the collar of his kefta, but mostly he just looked offended. He turned away from her, placed the box on the nearest flat surface (a bookshelf), then turned back.

“I… beg your pardon?” he said, clearing his throat.

“I'm so sorry! I’ve changed my mind, it seems. Does that make me fickle? Wicked?”

Aleksander blinked at her.

“I mean, I’m definitely still not in love with you, just to be clear,” Alina said. "That hasn't changed."

He blinked again.

She tried to remember any of the speeches she’d poured over, in the novels she’s set herself as homework. She imagined Laoise giggling at her from the sky. Mostly, she just felt very warm.

“But that didn’t seem to matter to you, did it? Not very much. The other day. And now I’m… well. I’ve reassessed my state of mind, and I’ve come to the decision that I think I would quite like to be kissed. And you might be a very nice person to be kissed by. If you still wanted to, of course. Zoya-”

Oh, stars, she probably shouldn’t have said Zoya’s name at all. Looking at the way the General’s eyebrows crawled towards his hairline, it was a fundamental mistake.

“My kissing skills come highly recommended, do they?” he said, voice chilly.

“No! No they don’t!”

...No, wait! That was the wrong thing to say, as well.

Alina looked down, swallowed, and became engrossed in looking at her silly mortal hands. “That is to say, she doesn’t really talk about you at all. I’m sure you’re very lovely, though. Oh, forget I said that. I don’t know why I said her name. I don’t know why I’m speaking at all! I can just… leave.”

“No, please, Alina. When have you ever employed tact?” the General said, mildly, still far on the other side of the room. “Don’t stop now. Commit. I’m interested to see where this all leads.”

She glared at him. It probably wasn’t very effective. She was probably very pink.

“Well, then,” she said, rallying. “I think I was right, the other night, when I said that you’re not very invested in me-”

“I have given you anything and everything you've requested-”

“You are invested in me as a tool, and as a person,” she interrupted, which was probably another stupid thing to do. “But I am neither of those things, General.”

The General stared at her, dark expression unfathomable.

“But I also think… I was wrong,” Alina said, tentatively, into the silence. “When I said that those things were… necessary. That was probably a little naive of me, I think. In fact, although you pretend a lot of things, I’m the one who made your offer mean more than it has to, for either of us. And, now, on reflection… I think I… that I might regret it. Or rather, now I’m fine with the offer just being what it is... But maybe I shouldn't think that?”

“I’m not about to tell you what you should or shouldn’t think,” the General replied.

“Then maybe I should be more subtle about it? The whole kissing thing? Pretend to think about it for longer? Hint at it first? But… what’s the point? Either I’ll get that part all wrong, or I’ll get it right and it’ll happen anyway, we’ll just have waited another few weeks. I don’t know… bodies are strange. My stomach hurts. And I’m sorry I can’t do that thing that you do, where I make it sound neat, or planned, and like I’m not learning everything as I go, but… you literally just flirted with me, so you can’t be that against the idea-”

“I said a single sentence to you.”

“Well, it was still flirting, and very efficient too. So you should probably feel very pleased that it worked!” she replied, hugging her shoulders.

Tense silence followed, in which all Alina could hear was her foolish mortal heart.

“...You do realise you rejected me three days ago, Miss Starkov?” The General said. “I won’t pretend to a small ego, nor claim to be made of stone.”

“I rejected your proposition, yes,” she said. “But like I said, I think I misunderstood the parameters of it. I think I was… hasty.”

“Most people would at least lead with an apology,” he noted.

“I’m not asking you for an apology, even though you admitted you don’t actually like me,” she pointed out.

Aleksander looked away, suddenly intrigued by the woodgrain of the table. “All the more reason you should be kissing someone else, surely?”

“Well, no one else has asked,” she replied, a perfunctory statement of fact. “And I’ve decided I want to be kissed. I’d go to a person who believes me when I tell them what I am, if I wanted to assuage my morals. But unfortunately that leaves me with only the Apparat, and I just managed to hurt his feelings as well.”

Aleksander coughed into his hand, and Alina smiled, glad that even a small laugh was possible in such a strange and silent situation.

“...You’re telling me, to my face, that you’re only interested because you’ve decided I’m your only option?” The General asked, incredulously.

“And I’m the only Sun Summoner you have. So now you know, at least, a little how it feels,” she shrugged. She felt like she was winning the argument. When Aleksander opened his mouth, she continued, “and it’s not so bad, is it? Because yes, you’re the only person, but that’s not the only thing to recommend you, in the same way that my starshine is not the only thing to recommend me, I’m sure! At my end: you’re handsome, you clearly know what you’re doing, and we have a mutual understanding. I don't pretend to be perfect, but it seems I am a comfort to you, to some degree. And you called me pretty, I guess that might be enough.”

“...You have to understand what an unconventional offer this is.”

“I understand that you have a lot of choices. But if that’s the case, then me asking shouldn’t be something out of the ordinary.”

“I thought you wanted romance.”

“So did I. But I’m starting to realise it’s not an either or situation. And I’m nothing, if not curious.”

“...You're saying you want to use me.”

“And you’re using me, are you not?” Alina said. “I confess I’m still unconvinced as to whether you respect me. But it’s fine, surely… if I choose not to respect you, either?”

Aleksander stared at her, and his gaze was frustratingly opaque. She realised that she had basically called him unworthy of her romantic fantasy, which might be a very hurtful thing to hear. But at the same time, he didn’t love her. Surely it wasn’t an insult, then? Merely a reassuring statement of fact?

“...Are you angry?”

“This was unexpected, and I am… thinking.” he replied, and she did at least understand the hard quality of his voice, and the way his jaw clenched.

So she decided to let him think.

That lasted thirty seconds. Then, she started to pace.

“You know what, just forget I said anything-”

“Alina.”

“I mean, you already have some kind of relationship with someone else, even though that didn’t seem to matter to you the other day. But it does at least mean you’re probably not that lonely, and you aren’t aware of the nature and standing of my constellation, so of course I have little to recommend me-”

“Alina-”

“And I made it sound like I don’t like you. I mean, I don’t. Not romantically. I like you, though. You’re charming, you know that! You walk this earth, clearly knowing that. And I’m definitely attracted-”

“Alina.” A hand landed on her arm, and yanked her to stillness with a gentleness that still held tangible force. The General had crossed the space in the room without her noticing, in that silent way of his, as she frantically churned herself into a tizzy. He now stood quite close, and she had to crane her neck to look at him, eyes grazing over his lips then his eyes. The weight of the crown of stars on her brow shifted with the movement, and she swallowed as her stomach started to tense up again.

Yes, it seemed like the feelings people wrote about in books did not necessarily need love as a prerequisite, and she could certainly see the benefits of being kissed by someone like him. She tried to focus on his eyes, so she didn’t do anything else stupid.

His own gaze was roving across her face. It was the same look that she had seen David get as he calibrated the telescope he borrowed for her. Calculating, and concerned with angles. When he finally came to settle and realised she’d been staring at him, he swallowed, hard. Alina felt her own proposition had more of a fighting chance than she expected.

"You want to be kissed?" the General asked her quietly.

"There's a lot of things I want to do, " she informed him, thinking back to the pile of favourite novels she’d started stacking by her bed. "But a kiss would be a good way to test if you're the mortal I want to do them with, don’t you think?"

He closed his eyes for a second - either a well-repressed wince, or a small prayer. She’d seen that expression on his face before.

“I don’t mind you testing me out either,” she hastily added, worried she’d offended him again. “I admittedly might not be very good. Only because I haven’t done this before, you understand. I’m sure you could teach me.”

Aleksander’s hand tightened on her arm.

“Genya has a lot to answer for,” he muttered, half to himself.

Alina could feel herself smiling, because the General had now said more words than he usually did in any conversation with her, and none of them had been ‘no’. This was rapidly transforming into her smoothest negotiation yet.

Something changed in Aleksander's face as he smiled back. It was less of a smile and more of a smirk, exactly as was written about in her novels. Alina was sad that she couldn’t tell if it was real or not, if it was hiding some secret hurt or agenda. But it certainly softened the harsher lines in his face, and made him something approaching beautiful.

"You want to use me?" He murmured. His voice had changed, like it was putting on a fancy jacket: the pitch was low, incredulous, and obviously amused. It sent a strange sensation up her spine, as he ducked in once more to murmur in her ear. "How heartless of you."

As he leant in, his hand came around to rest on the small of her back. Even when he moved back, it stayed there. Alina pretended not to notice, though her voice did waver as she replied.

"Genya tells me that's what everyone does here. Surely you should be pleased. You want me to fit in."

"Why?"

“Why do you want me to fit in?” she frowned, “well, you know that better than I do. I assume it’s for some political reas-”

“Why do you want me to kiss you, Alina?”

Alina tilted her chin up, not sure why she felt she needed to be defiant. "Maybe I just want to see what happens."

"...And what do you think will happen?"

"I don't know," she told him, honestly. At this point, she felt a bit silly with her hands hanging limply at her sides, so she chose to rest one on the swell of his shoulder, just for something to do. "Maybe you'll fall at my feet, immediately in love with me. Maybe you'll finally understand you’re holding starfire. Or maybe I'll be bad at it - although I hope I won’t be. I’ve done extensive reading.” She shrugged as if it didn't matter, though that felt a little like a lie, because at this point she couldn’t find the willpower to look away from his face. “Maybe it will just be... fun."

“You want to have fun?”

“That’s why I came here, Aleks,” she said, patiently, thinking about all the activities she still wanted to do on this earth. She still hadn’t even seen the sea! “Yes, I have a purpose. But I can’t pretend I wasn’t a little intrigued by everyone’s goings on-”

Her sentence was silenced as the General sealed his mouth over hers.

If she hadn’t known any better - if she hadn’t read all those books - she would’ve thought he was almost angry with her. The force of his kiss bowed her spine so that she was forced closer against him, and the hand on his shoulder was all she had to anchor her, so she looped it round his neck on instinct.

Every moment he made was usually so compact, so restrained, but immediately he was grasping for her. He buried his own hand in her hair, fingers cradling the nape of her neck under the weight of her crown, all her carefully manicured braids and curls. It wasn’t tender, exactly, but it didn’t need to be. It was enough that it simply allowed him to drag her closer, and by then, the kiss was already open-mouthed. Alina was glad - she hadn’t wanted to have to request that directly, but the literature implied it was a far more enjoyable option.

Mortal mouths taste funny, she thought - for he hadn’t drunk any alcohol, and so he tasted like nothing much she could recognise. His mouth was soft, but the rasp of his beard scrubbed at her chin. His tongue slid across hers. Then, through some strange choreography she hadn’t quite caught up with yet, he had her bottom lip and he had bitten it. Thought became impossible.

She knew she wasn’t particularly artful. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. In the beginning, they were scrambling for purchase. She looped both arms around his neck, but that felt too… too passive, when she could feel his own hands gripping her hard. Not hard enough to bruise, but enough to imagine she’d feel the shadow of them all over her, know their absence the moment it was over. Her waist, her hip, the curve of her ass as he manoeuvred her to the table and encouraged her to sit with a leg looped round him, to keep them tied. The sensations set her mind spinning into delicious confusion, that didn’t need to be puzzled over, only felt.

She wanted to do that to him. She put a hand in his hair, as well, scrubbed blunt fingertips across his scalp in a way she hoped was just the right side of gentle. He made a sound, and it seemed approving. The other hand, on his chest, fisted in his tunic. It was a close thing, but under her fingers, his heartbeat was slightly faster than hers.

He skimmed a hand across her jaw, to her chin, to her throat, to the high collar of her black kefta, and then his finger hooked under the first clasp at the front..

Alina let out an inarticulate noise. Even she wasn’t sure what it meant. It was a little embarrassing, but she didn’t know why, beyond the fact that she was usually capable of sentences.

The General - well, now she probably should just call him Aleksander - broke away and immediately stepped back at the sound. His hands dropped from her, as if she was indeed starfire, and he had been burned. His usually pale face was flushed, colour high and bright in his cheeks. He was breathing hard, and his eyes sparked.

“My apologies,” he said. “All that you requested from me was a kiss.”

Alina opened her mouth to speak, but then he was looking at her mouth again, and the thought flew entirely from her brain.

A few seconds passed. Aleksander became confused, then amused, at her silence.

“...Alina?”

"Oh, stars. Is that what that's like, even when you're not in love?" She blurted, feeling the way her lips tingled like a fresh bruise. "That's - well - I mean… I… Wow."

The General smiled with his own reddened mouth. "...Alina Starkov, speechless? A true miracle has graced us, this day.”

She tried to think of something intelligent to snipe back, but it proved impossible.

“I’ll take that as a compliment."

“I, um…”

Aleksander stepped in closer to where she was perched on the edge of the table. She immediately drew in a deep breath - mostly in anticipation of how much air she wouldn’t have if his mouth fell on hers again. He grinned at the way she tensed, the most real smile she thought she’d ever seen on her face, though she could not trust her judgement. It seemed boyish, almost.

Rather than kiss her straight away, he reached for her with both hands, and plucked the crown gently from her brow. He brushed the few long dark strands of hair that clung to it, placed it on the table next to her, and rubbed a soft thumb across the small indent its weight had left in the centre of her forehead. Then, his hand softly cupped her cheek.

“Would you like me to kiss you again?” he asked. His voice was soft and steady. Certain.

Alina was grateful that all she needed to do was nod.

Kiss drunk, Alina had never felt more mortal. Her heartbeat thrummed through her chest, reverberating even through her hands and grasping fingers.

The cold, beautiful sky had nothing on this feeling, though she thought perhaps there was something familiar to it - that maybe Aleksander was something close. His skin was slightly chill to her touch, like a stone in shade - though whenever she pulled back his cheeks were stained red just like hers. She supposed she did run hot.

When the knock sounded, she didn’t notice it. Why should she?

It was the General who tensed against her, and pulled away. And continued to do so, even when she made a grumble of protest.

“Hush now,” he sighed, prying her hands from his chest even as ran his thumbs gently over the knuckles. “There’s someone at the door.”

“And you’re going to answer it?” she asked him, incredulously. She gestured at his chest, and its proximity to her own. “Really? Does now seem like the time?”

He let out a breathless laugh, “you place yourself above all the nobles, generals, and diplomats of the Os Alta, in terms of import?”

“Right now? To you? Yes!” she said without thinking, and when he looked amused with her she frowned. “Am I misunderstanding? Books make it sound like men are insatiable for this kind of thing. And it’s not like there aren’t certain…” she briefly glanced down, “indications of urgency.”

She thought, for a second, that she had him then. At least, his eyes got darker, as did the shadows in the corners of the room.

Then the knock came again, and a voice on the other side of the door. Alina knew there was no hope, short of shedding her kefta there and then, and she’d hate to traumatise the stranger on the other side.

The General saw the resignation in her face, and kissed her knuckles gently,

“I’d happily stay locked in this room with you, Miss Starkov, until the end of time,” he murmured. “But alas, that is not how duty works.”

He sounded sincere. But then, he always did.

“You look a mess,” Alina told him, hands dropping. She saw no point in clinging to him. “I think it works for you, but I wouldn’t say it looks ‘dutiful’.”

With a smirk, he walked to the door, smoothing his hair as he went. It probably didn’t help much. It was Fedyor at the door, and she saw the moment when his eyes darted from Kirigan and then towards her, sat on the table with feet dangling off the floor. Alina starting smoothing out the snarls in her own hair and creases in her skirts as he had a hushed conversation with the General. She didn’t see the point of eavesdropping - she knew there was so many intricacies within court that she had no clue how to keep track of. There was no blood on Fedyor, and no one obvious to burn, so she would be of little help.

“I’ll be a moment,” Kirigan said to his aide, and then he left the door open as he strode back into the room. Alina slid of the table and stood up straight, assuming that was her dismissed, then let out a small squeak as his mouth descended on hers in another biting kiss. When he pulled back, she glanced to see Fedyor still in the doorway, examining the woodwork with devoted and somewhat incredulous attention.

“Stay here,” Aleksander told her.

“Why?”

“...Is it not enough for me to simply ask?”

Alina looked up at his pretty face, considered the pros and cons of more kisses, then nodded slowly. It clearly was not the reaction he was expecting.

“Is this really the method by which you become manageable?” he asked her, disbelieving.

“I mean, if you continue to be enjoyable,” she shot back. “Maybe.”

A slight scoff. “Forgive me my mistake, Alina.”

She thought she saw his hand reach towards her, as if he planned to touch her face. But it must have been her imagination, because the next second he simply turned and left. The sound of her name on his lips hung heavy in the dim and empty room.

The silence that followed the door being closed was strange, and immediately uncomfortable, reminding her what it was to be alone. She hugged her arms, suddenly cold for no reason. She didn’t trust Aleksander, and she didn’t love him. But it seemed that the feeling of being wanted had already wormed its way under her skin.

Feeling lonely was boring. With a frustrated huff, Alina started walking around the room, just for something to do. She stopped in front of the drawer he’d shoved that map in when he’d thought she wasn’t looking. Normally, when she snuck in here, she never snooped - it was just for the history books that helped her understand the world better. But that was because she was always worried about setting off some kind of alarm, and now that she knew it was just open-

She reached for the handle, feeling the first creak of old hinges and varnished wood against her palm… and then had a very mortal moment as a door opened to her right, nearly giving her a heart attack.

“I wasn’t sneaking I promis-”

But the person stood there wasn’t Aleksander.

Chapter Text

“Baghra?” Alina blinked. It was strange to see the old woman outside of her hut, without a fan of cards in front of her. She glanced at the wall - she was also pretty sure that door hadn’t been there before, which was confusing.

“Well,” the woman said. “This is disappointing.”

Alina looked around the room, not entirely sure what she was talking about.

“I thought you knew better than this,” she continued, “I knew that he wouldn’t have a care to stoop so low - if anything, him thinking you a simpleton would likely encourage this kind of behaviour. Saints know he prefers someone he thinks he can outsmart. But the last time I spoke with you, you said you didn’t like him. Now look at you.”

Alina did not remember any time that she had discussed General Kirigan in Baghra’s presence. But that might be because there were always several hours of time that got murky whenever she was with her, usually towards the end of the night. Alina hadn't thought to pay those hours any mind - alcohol left her feeling warm, more than anything, and she always found herself tucked up safely in her bed come morning.

But the idea that she’d now said things she didn’t remember was disconcerting. Everything she said already seemed to upset someone, it would’ve been nice to keep track.

“No matter, you’re still a baby, all things considered,” Baghra said, not having bothered to let her reply to any of these strange accusations, or sudden interest in her love life. “Come with me.”

“I-”

“Now, Alina.”

Alina looked down at the drawer one more time, then at the doors - both of them, the one in front of her and the one Aleksander had left through. Kirigan probably wouldn’t care that much if she left the room, but she wasn’t sure about his feelings on secret doors that led to where he kissed people.

“Come now,” Baghra said, in a tone that sounded very important and bad to ignore. “Leave the crown.”

“I am definitely taking the crown,” Alina muttered, picking it up off the table and hugging it to her chest. She hurried through the doorway, and started following the woman down a stone paved passageway. The soft echo of music was there for all of a second, and quickly faded as the temperature also dropped. Alina thought they were going down, underground into the foundations of the Little Palace.

“I didn’t realise how powerful you’d gotten,” Baghra continued, voice echoing off the walls. “Should’ve known that was what he was hiding from me, but I thought he was keeping me away from you so I couldn’t shape you into something useful. I thought he’d be too intent on keeping you and your powers stunted, to actually train you. I suppose it’s more in keeping with his foolish ambition - he never could resist power, no matter what form it came in. Even if it threatens everything he holds dear.”

“I-”

“Of course, he must never have guessed you’d be anything close to what you are. That means he’s going to be taking some very different steps now, Saints help us. I bet he’s shitting himself after that presentation of yours-”

“You are saying a lot of things, very quickly, and some of them are rude,” Alina said, picking up her skirts as they took another set of stairs. “Is this about the General? Why wouldn’t he be training me? That’s literally his job. And he wanted me to do well, at the presentation. He told me to. That’s what is best for the Grisha. That’s the only way we get to go back to the Fold.”

“Oh, sweetheart, he doesn’t want you within a hundred miles of the Fold.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“When I heard you’d punched through the shadow like paper, I was amazed he even let you live,” Baghra glanced down a tunnel to their left, pushed ahead. “But I suppose the opportunity was too much to pass up - a Sun Summoner, in his eyes, what he’s waited for all this time. I’m pretty sure there’s quite a few parables about being careful what you wish for.”

“Can… can you get to the point, please?” Alina said, frustrated. The conversation was veering into Apparat territory, again - people speaking in phrases they really didn’t mean, with secrets stashed underneath that they expected her to dig up. “If you are talking about Kirigan - you didn’t actually say you were, by the way - then yes, he has been waiting for me," she blushed, "he… he said so himself. And what else was he waiting for, if not for me to destroy the Fold? That’s what I’m here to do. That’s my purpose.”

“And it was never his,” Baghra said. “Why do you think you are here, child, behind so many walls, when you dealt it harm on your first day here? Aleksander doesn’t want the Fold gone, Alina. He wants it expanded, to use as a weapon.”

“No, that can’t be right. He’s clever, and that’s stupid,” Alina said, “the Fold kills everything, doesn’t it? Everything in its path? That’s a pretty silly weapon, like a sword with another sword for a handle. Everyone would end up on the floor and bleeding. That’s like me if I wasn’t trying… only it’s not animate, so there’s no way to control it. Even the person who summoned it had not a clue what he was doing, let me tell you. We watched that thing grow from only a seed, and it really did just look like someone had knocked over an inkwell. It was so fast, and there was no rhyme and reason, it just kept going and going-”

“Yes, it did, but that was always his intention,” Baghra said grimly, “it was what came after, that proved beyond his control. The volcra, and their hatred of him, burned into them by what he’d made them, what he’d done-”

“...Are we talking about a different ‘him’ now?” Alina asked, “we must be, yes? Through context clues, I’m guessing you’ve skipped to the Black Heretic. Kirigan wouldn’t want reckless destruction - he’s a pretty precise person, I would say. At least, whenever I’m reckless he never shuts up about it, so-”

“There is no difference, Alina,” Baghra spun on her, bringing her to an abrupt stop. “The Black Heretic and Kirigan are one and the same.”

There was a short silence, following this proclamation. Baghra was watching her expectantly, that way people often did.

“Well, I would say that that is a little judgemental of Shadow Summoners,” Alina said, haltingly. “Genya tells me there are people who think all Shu are the same, just because they look alike, but that’s just mortals being foolish. Just because they both controlled and manipulated darkness doesn’t mean both the Black Heretic and Kirigan are cruel people. Darkness isn’t inherently evil, or anything, it’s mostly just dark. I don’t like it very much, but that’s probably my own prejudices at work-”

“Saints save me, from freshly fallen stars,” Baghra whispered up towards the ceiling, which was, Alina supposed, probably the floor. “That’s not what I’m saying, Alina. Aleksander and the Black Heretic aren’t similar, they’re the same person. The same man, with the same heart, the same mind, the same plans. Just a new name to go along with it, as he gives himself every generation.”

Alina stopped. Blinked. Thought about it for a second.

The Black Heretic had been so small when she and her sisters had watched him from above. Just a speck on the landscape. He had had dark hair, she supposed. But Alina hadn’t been focusing on him too closely, really. She had been a lot younger, less concerned with politics, and there’d been a troupe of Kaelish actors in the north who’d just gotten new pet dogs for company on the road. Obviously, the stars observed most historical events, out of duty, as was right. But when Alina had taken times of focus, to dip into the lives and stories of men once the inkblot was tipped and spilt, she’d gone back to watching them, with their puppies. That had been what held her attention. It was always nice to know that life continued, after just witnessing so much death.

“Um.” she said, embarrassed at not being able to contradict the woman directly, despite having an eyewitness account. “I’m… pretty certain none of you can live that long. You’re mortal.”

“Not Aleksander. Not him,” Baghra said, eyes dark and hard. “If Grisha use their powers, it keeps them in good health. And he had a lot of power, even before the merzost. Through his own folly, it is likely he is eternal.”

Alina thought back to how Kirigan was so certain she was young. She’d thought it was just because of her appearance, and she supposed her way of talking. But no - his dismissal had always held a certainty. He thought ageing was pain, and agony, and acute exhaustion, and that had always made her sad. Because he was so young, and so he must have had a bitter life, to feel that way. Because he had no one - or because he’d… he’d made sure he had no one- or- or- had lost them all, every single one of them-

Stars, Alina thought. Well. At least I don’t have to worry about being a cradle-snatcher.

He was still younger than her, but the age gap wasn’t quite so concerning. It did put some of sillier opinions in a new light, however. She’d been giving him the benefit of the doubt, on so many of them.

“Even… even if you are right, how could you know this?”

“How do you think, child?”

Alina looked at her, at her dark clothing, and darker eyes. The stern cast of her face, and the cadence of her voice. The cryptic vocabulary. The condescension, and calculation.

Alina didn’t understand many things, but family was something she knew, intrinsically. Baghra saw the moment when comprehension dawned, and nodded once.

“...You’ve never questioned that I’m a star,” Alina said, quietly. That was one of the reasons she’d liked spending nights with her - Baghra still had those stunned moments, when she became confused by the things that tumbled out of Alina’s mouth, but it had never been the ones about her falling. Whenever Alina had talked about her sisters, the woman had simply nodded, and asked more questions. It had been such a relief to receive no judgement for her honesty. When she’d mentioned Signy and Ulla, Baghra had smiled fondly, almost with recognition, and she’d said something - Stars, what had she said?

Alina tried to fight off the drunk cast of the memory, attempting to recall Baghra’s words. Something about how Ulla was another child she’d helped on her way, kept far away from -

Aleksander.

Alina swallowed, “but he doesn’t believe me, whenever I tell him. He doesn’t think that I’m real.”

“And we should thank your every living sister in the sky that he doesn’t. I made sure of it. I ensured that knowledge of the stars was erased from our histories. I burned every one of my father’s journals that spoke of you and your kind,” Baghra told her. “What my father did to those first fallen girls… even to simply witness it, felt unforgivable. I vowed never to let it happen again. And if Aleksander knew what you were truly capable of, what he could be capable of, with a heart of a star?” She shuddered, “it's a very, very good thing that he’s a cynic.”

“I- I don’t understand,” Alina said. “He couldn’t hurt me.”

“Of course he would, child. In a heartbeat.”

“No, not that he wouldn’t. He couldn’t. I’m stronger than him. Even if he is old.”

Baghra gave her a long hard look, head tilted. She looked very like Aleksander, in that moment.

“It seems there are some things your people have forgotten, as well,” she said, as if this fact interested her.

But then she didn’t say what it was that Alina’s people had forgotten.

She just opened a door to her left, a small one halfway up the wall, and turned back to her, like she expected Alina to know what to do next.

“...Are you planning on leaving? Did you just bring me down here to tell me that? Do I just go back?” Alina said, confused. “Isn’t there… um. Some kind of plan?”

“Go through this door,” Baghra replied, “take the path to the right. You’ll find food storage. Wait there. There are some Grisha who are loyal to me. They will help keep you safe, until I find a way forward.”

“...Why would I go with you?” Alina asked.

Baghra, another woman without time, cast a scathing glance back at her. “Come, dear, we both know you’re not as airheaded as they say.”

“Um, you can’t think I’m particularly bright, if you tell me that everyone’s been playing a trick on me and then still expect me to follow you without question,” Alina said “The General is the Black Heretic, and lying to me. Fine. I accept that: I knew he was hiding something, and that seems like something he’d want to hide. Maybe he’s even cruel and evil. Why don’t I just go upstairs and fight him, then? I’m strong enough. I’ll admit, that it’s a choice that I think does make me rather fickle. But it’s not like I have to kill him - just hurt him until he lets me go to the Fold. And his shadows are nothing to me.”

“I am not having you reveal yourself to the world,” Baghra said. “Not before it’s time.”

“So… you’re just going to take me to another building, hide me away, with more walls between me and my purpose?” Alina said, “until it’s ‘time’… time for what? What is it you’re waiting for? I caused harm to the Fold on the first day, didn’t you say so yourself?

Baghra didn’t reply, but Alina saw the way her hands tightened on the door handle.

“What is it with you people, why don't you just talk!?” Alina said, through gritted teeth.

In fact, she realised a second later that her voice was raised almost to a shout. It was strange. She wasn’t angry or hurt at Kirigan, she didn’t think. It was a relief, more than anything, to have the missing piece of the puzzle, the one that she had known was definitely there but didn't feel clever enough to find. He’d obviously been hiding many things from her, and she’d also seen him hurt people. If he was lying to her to hurt more people, surely that was perfectly logical, and she could even understand it. Of course he would hide it from her - she didn’t want to hurt people. She just wanted to go to the Fold and erase its ugliness, and the pain it seemed to cause people, from the landscape.

And she still hadn’t done that. Why hadn’t she done that?

She felt stupid, in all those ways the people here thought she was. How had she become embroiled in all these pointless mortal intricacies? How had she let anyone keep her from her purpose?

She wasn't a true star.

“If he’s going to weaponise the Fold, and that’s what makes him evil, why don’t we just go to the Fold now, and get rid of it, so he can’t be evil anymore?” Alina asked. “Won’t that fix everything?”

“We’ll have time to talk once you’re out of here, Alina,” Baghra said. Her voice then was Kirigan’s too. Congenial, calm, placating. The ‘it’s time to manage Alina’ voice. “Trust me, when I say that I will get you to the Fold, once it’s time. You’re not strong enough-”

“Oh, we both know that’s a lie,” Alina said, vexed by her horrible feelings and hating the sound of her own voice. She noted the way that Baghra instinctively backed up a step. Yes, this woman knew that that was indeed a lie - and she also definitely knew that Alina was a star.

“Kirigan - Aleksander - the Black Heretic, whatever he is, may have brought me here for the wrong reasons. But he at least brought me here, to the Palace, where all the people who want to fight the Fold are - people like the King, and Zoya, and David. And he’s training me: I am stronger now. For all that he has served his own ends, he also served mine: he has made me more capable of destroying the Fold, and that’s my purpose.”

“Come child, it’s not that simple-”

“No, you see, it is that simple, but you all keep trying to make it more complicated! You’re doing what he did, putting new things in the way and then not telling me what they are, so I can't get around them. You're all obstructing me... it’s not like you’re telling me the truth, either. You’ve literally got the same way of speaking, without saying what you mean. It’s probably inherited. Why on this earth should I leave with you?”

“Well, Alina, maybe it’s because I didn't create the thing you're trying to tear down."

"But you created the man that would, yes? You are his mother. Maybe you taught him exactly what to do."

That got a reaction: some kind of spark of anger "Then do it out of self-interest, girl. I don’t have any ulterior motives and designs on-”

“Of course you do, everyone here does. None of you are stars!” Alina interrupted. The lack of hurt surrounding Kirigan’s action was transforming into something else: frustration. She hated the way that humans made everything into a labyrinthine trial when really, at the end of the day, it was a nice and easy straight line to the Fold. “You could’ve told me about Kirigan weeks ago, if you had no 'ulterior motives', if you simply wanted me at the Fold, or safe. But when we first met, you simply got me drunk, and you made me tell you everything about myself and my sisters, and you gave me nothing in return. So go on then, you’ve told me Kirigan’s secrets. What are yours?”

Baghra looked at her. The family resemblance was striking. Alina reached out, took her free hand, held onto it beseechingly.

“I understand him better now,” she said. “That means I can handle him better. Understanding him means that I understand the Fold, and that I am more capable of achieving my purpose. I’m finally playing a game I know I can win. So why are you trying to make me more confused? Don’t you want me to understand you, as well?”

“I will explain myself when we have time to, child,” the woman sighed. Her hand tightened on Alina’s to a vice like grip, and she tugged her towards the open door, “as it is, we simply need to get you out of here while he is distracted, and feels complacent because he thinks he’s got you.”

“He’s never ‘had’ me. I cannot be owned,” Alina said. When Baghra tried to tug her once more, she dug her heels in and dragged her to a stop. Heat rose within her, and Baghra dropped her hand immediately, even though she had not scaled the temperature bright enough to burn.

Alina looked at her. “If I leave with you… are we going straight for the Fold?”

Baghra opened her mouth. Weighed up lying - Alina saw it happen! - then closed it, opting instead for silence.

Alina felt cold and leaden. “So I wouldn’t be serving his purpose, but it wouldn’t be mine, either. Just yours.”

“I keep telling you, things aren’t that simple, child-”

Why not?

Alina could just… make them that simple. If she wanted to.

She was tired of going from place to place blindly, always scrambling for understanding that came so easily to others. She didn't want to be wrenched away into new place, full of lying strangers with unreadable faces. Not just when this one had begun to finally make sense.

I just need to get to the Fold.

“Right, then,” Alina said. And then, she turned her back on Baghra and the open door, and started walking in the opposite direction.

“Alina!” Baghra shouted. “Girl, don’t be stupid-”

Alina blanked out the rest of it. Baghra might be older than her, but only just. At least the woman knew better than to try and fight her. Even if she was Kirigan’s own mother, and probably held substantial power of her own, she knew that to do so would be to lose her life.

Alina walked back down the corridor, the way they had come. Hollow sounding footsteps on empty stone. Up the stairs. Through the door. Back into the General’s room, the place where he’d seduced her. The place where he'd kissed her, for likely no other reason than that it would help him get his way. Because he was Evil, and he wanted her distracted by her other, pettier mortal goals, so that she couldn’t destroy the Fold. The Fold that caused people unrelenting misery.

The Fold that he had made.

She wondered, briefly, if it was still a seduction, if she had asked for it. Then, she felt bad for wanting it in the first place. If he was evil, shouldn’t she have known?

And she’d known that he hurt people, for certain. That wasn’t new information.

What did it mean, to want affection from someone who hurt others?

Alina briefly contemplated vomiting. That’s what people did in books, when they’d learned something horrible about someone they cared for. But it seemed her body wasn’t capable of doing it. Maybe it was simply because she hadn't eaten, or maybe she didn't care about Aleksander at all.

Disappointed, she simply kept walking.

She traced her path back through the corridors she’d ran down. She was halfway back when it occurred to her she should probably put her crown back on, rather than clinging to it like an anchor. She placed it back on her brow, briefly remembering the gentle hands that had lifted it away.

When she got back into the crowded rooms of the presentation, she started noticing how many guards there were. Grisha in their kefta, all noting her passage with raised eyebrows, and a concerned glance from Zoya. All the oprinichki in their serious, drab browns. She had never found them threatening before, because they were all so useless against her. Now she realised that other people didn't know that.

“Miss Starkov,” one of them, a woman, said, “aren’t you supposed to be-”

Alina walked past her, not bothering to turn invisible to evade the guard’s notice. If the woman took ahold of her, Alina could’ve burned her where she stood. She heard footfalls behind her as she kept walking, but she was met with no resistance on her way to her destination, so she presumed they must all be running in the other direction.

Lantsov was still in the receiving room, sitting in his throne.

Lantsov was a mortal man, old and lacking strength. But despite appearances, Alina thought he had more power than Kirigan. Because Kirigan had weaknesses, and he had secrets. If Lantsov knew that Kirigan was the Black Heretic, he would be angry, and Kirigan knew that. Alina figured that that was a pretty straightforward equation, one even she could understand. Meanwhile, Lantsov’s power came from what he was, not what he was pretending to be. It was something much more simple, and didn’t rely on any intricate games. Because everyone obeyed Lantsov’s words without question when he said them, so no games were needed. Only the Grisha obeyed Kirigan without a negotiation or a fight, and she’d just never noticed.

If Alina asked Lantsov to let her go to the Fold, told him that she could destroy it in the bat of an eyelash, without breaking a sweat, Lantsov would order it to be done.

…And Kirigan would have to obey.

She made a beeline for the King. Why had she ever allowed her starshine and her purpose to be mediated by others?

Halfway across the room, she saw something else in the corner of her vision. A shadow detached itself from the wall. Alina didn't bother watching it, because she didn’t need to. She knew it would resolve itself into a man, a man with handsome eyes and dark hair.

A liar.

- One who could walk quite quickly. But that was no bother, Alina just needed to get there first.

And she did.

“I’m ready to go to the Fold,” she told the King, just as Aleksander’s hand locked onto her arm.

Chapter Text

“I’m ready to go to the Fold,” said Alina.

Alina, who should’ve been waiting for him in his chambers, lips bitten red and soft skin warm. Plied with kisses, and pliant. Ready to be laid down amongst his sheets, beautiful and burning and finally manageable. Finally his, and under his control.

Only she was never under his control, and Aleksander was an idiot, because all he’d done was left her in his rooms, unsupervised.

He closed his hand over her wrist, “Alina-”

She was tense and resistant the moment he touched her, but she didn’t even bother looking at him. She raised her chin, and her eyes burned into Lantsov’s as she said, “I am ready to destroy the Fold. I would like to go there, immediately. I am trained, and it is time.”

Lantsov was blinking at her like a startled owl, though there was something laconic about it - the man was clearly already half cut, the food and alcohol and tight confines of military uniform likely leaving him fighting the urge to nap. The Queen looked like one of the maids had suddenly taken all leave of etiquette and started holding a conversation with people several stations above her.

But all this was thankfully illegible to Alina. Aleksander tightened his hand on her arm in warning, then fought a hiss as her skin became broiling hot under his touch, even through the stiff material of her kefta.

She tugged her wrist out of his hold as he reflexively let go, folded her arms, and continued, “You watched my presentation, did you not? None of you here can argue with me, or my assessment of my own capabilities. So I would like to charter some kind of transportation to the Fold, and I would like to go there, preferably tonight. I’ve been held here for far too long.”

If he hadn’t been suffering from a fit of sickening dread, Aleksander would’ve almost felt sorry for her.

He remembered every single one of his presentations to the King and his cabinet of advisors. He knew what it was, to have done every calculation, to have collected a vast array of inarguable and conclusive evidence in favour of his course of action. To have slaved day and night over plans and proposals and to know, deep down, it was pointless, unless you also went on the Hunt every summer, or drank with Lantsov in his chambers with his friends and his women.

To have continued to work anyway, no matter how thankless, because you believed you knew what was right, and to work unendingly on the off-chance you’d catch him on a good day, when logic might sway him.

Today might have been a good day, having just proven his might - Alina’s might - to the world, with the good wine brought out of the cellar to boot.

…But Alina was not a good politician.

Lantsov blinked at her, then said, “I may have kissed your hand, as any observer of the church should, and let the Apparat give you a crown, girl. But you seem to forget it is merely for show.”

“You forget a lot of things, in fact,” the Queen chimed in, disgusted. She turned her gaze on Aleksander, “I know your charge is eccentric, Kirigan, but you might want to handle her better, particularly in public.”

“My apologies, moya tsaritsa,” he said, in a hollowly pleasant voice to match a hollowly subservient bow. “Alina is simply very passionate about Ravka’s safety, and our cause. But her enthusiasm is no excuse for impoliteness-”

“She forgets her place.”

“She does, moya tsaritsa,” Aleksander murmured. “It will not happen again.”

When he glanced at Alina, hoping to gauge whatever had brought on this sudden resolve and perhaps quell it in places that could get her killed, she was glancing between the three of them with incredulity. When he caught her eye to try and silently signal her to stop, he was horrified when she saw her expression morph into unbridled fury.

She turned back to Lantsov. “Don’t you want the Fold gone? It harms your country, and your people,” she demanded, then took a deep gulp of air, nostrils flaring as she added, “...moi tsar.”

Lantsov regarded her with an amused smirk. “Of course I do, child.”

“Then let me get rid of it for you!” she blurted, “I know I can do it, and so does he,” she gestured in Aleksander’s direction, in dismissal. “The… the monstrosity that has plagued your people for centuries, I can have it gone for you by the end of the week! And you don’t even have to get out of your chair.”

Aleksander fought a wince - Lantsov might be indolent, but no one ever accused him of it to his face.

“It will be gone in the blink of an eye. Moi tsar,” Alina added at the end, like she thought it was a magic word.

“Now, Alina,” Aleksander found himself saying, voice terse, “let’s not make promises we can’t keep.”

He reached over to place a hand on her shoulder. She flinched back, blinked at him, then snorted, before she spat back, “I don’t do that, Aleksander. And you know it. I tell only the truth, which means when I vow to erase the Fold from the landscape, I know for certain that is what I will do.”

Aleksander kept his face carefully neutral, as his mind began to whir over exactly how catastrophically things had gone wrong. The Queen’s eyebrows shot up at the use of his first name, as her opinion of Alina no doubt plummeted further, and the Palace gossip mill was probably given enough fodder to run for the rest of the month. Meanwhile, Lantsov’s face was quickly losing its humour.

“Get me to the Fold,” Alina turned back, her voice becoming beseeching. “Please, your Highness. This was what I was meant to do.”

“Your patriotism does you credit, Alina,” Aleksander said, “but we must think of your safety-”

“I don’t care about my safety, and I bet no one else here does either,” Alina replied, voice raising enough that the people around them not already watching all glanced in her direction. “So just get me to the Fold. Either I’m raving like the lunatic you think I am, in which case none of you have anything to lose, or I’m right, and there’s only one person who loses anything here. And you all saw my powers - does it even matter what you think of my words?”

“You should control your charge, General,” the Queen said.

Believe me, I am fucking trying, Aleksander thought.

“The girl is right though, Kirigan,” Lantsov mused aloud, as Aleksander’s stomach dropped like a lead weight. “We kept her away from the front lines on your advice. You said she needed to train, but what else does the girl need to learn? She might be a simpleton, but it seems she is correct when she says she is capable of the task-”

“Stars, thank you,” Alina said, relief plain her features.

“And with Zlatan coordinating his forces, we could certainly stand to gain any kind in advantage,” Lantsov said, ignoring her entirely. “You’ve shaped her into a nice weapon. If we were to add her into our strategies, our plans for the offensive next month could prove-”

“Next month?” Alina interrupted, “no, no, this needs to happen now-”

“Silence, girl,” the Queen said, “do you wish to lose your tongue?”

“I’m not going to simply destroy the Fold without a plan, child,” Lantsov said condescendingly, “even if you could do everything you say you can, you think I’m going to remove the Unsea and any protection it offers us on your whim? To change the state of play in such a pivotal way requires time and preparation, or it could benefit my enemies just as much as it benefits me. My armies could be slaughtered in seconds. We must fortify our defences this side of the border before any further action is taken - unless of course, you are trained in precision. If you simply carved a path through the Fold, available only to us - then perhaps we could remove Zlatan’s forces covertly.”

Alina looked at the Tsar, horrified. It had of course not occurred to her that the Fold was a tactic that could be used to their advantage - she only saw it as a nightmare that must be vanquished. She opened her mouth to say something, something probably stupid, and Aleksander cut her off to say, “Alina is not ready, moi tsar.”

“She seems to think she is.”

“Her powers are certainly a thing to behold,” Aleksander improvised, scrambling, “but she is not yet trained in combat or military manoeuvres. She has not yet learned to fight.”

“You haven’t been teaching my vanguard to fight, Kirigan? What use is your superweapon to me if she cannot kill people?”

“As you can see, she is delicate, and temperamental,” Aleksander said, “we believe it is past trauma, or perhaps a personality disorder. We didn’t want to upset her mind with unnecessary violence or pain before we knew her mind could withstand it. These things take time-”

“If - if you take time to strategise,” Alina interjected carefully, though still incautious enough to step in front of Aleksander, “then word of my powers will get back to Zlatan, from this presentation. He will know what I am capable of, and he will also plan accordingly. He’ll fortify his defences on his side, as well. Isn’t it better to destroy the Fold as quickly as possible, before he has his contingencies in place? You… you don’t want to lose the element of surprise.”

Aleksander looked at her, unable to believe she had interrupted him, and that she was canny enough to have said the very thing that would appeal to Lantsov’s sensibilities. This was even Aleksander’s own plan - to use the presentation as a show of strength that would tip the wider balance of power over the nations, then wait for Zlatan to nervously amass his forces at the border, fearing invasion after his spies fed back to him. They would all wait conveniently at the edge of the Fold, and then Aleksander and the collared Alina would wipe out all of them, and Novokribirsk, in one fell swoop.

Of course, none of this had occurred to Lantsov, whose gaze suddenly sharpened on her. “The girl makes a good point, Kirigan,” he said, as if Alina was not there in the room to address. “Many of the ambassadors will pass back through the West - Zlatan is probably counting on it. Word will be out by the end of the week.”

“-And maybe word will be enough to trigger surrender, moi tsar,” Aleksander countered smoothly. “Alina’s display of strength was orchestrated to display things that no one else can yet explain, save the Grisha-” he couldn’t quite explain it either, but Lantsov didn’t need to know that “-to place the fear into the hearts of our enemies, and show we have teeth. Zlatan may not even risk succession, not when he does not fully understand or comprehend the consequences he could face at Alina's hands.We should let him hear of it, moi tsar. Sometimes a show of power is all that is needed to make the enemy fear us, and force a retreat. We should at least wait-”

“We shouldn’t wait at all!”

“Why is this girl still intent on talking, General?” The Queen said. “Did I miss the agreement in which she also began to consult on military strategy? Will we be inviting all the mystics to contribute their thoughts? Will there be sacrifices in our war room? Will the bones and entrails be read before our strategists and leaders?”

"I'm not a mystic, I'm simply telling you the truth!"

“I admire your fire, child,” Lantsov said, “both on the stage earlier, and now. Though your features are Shu, a true Ravkan soul burns within you. But you are very young, and the matters of war are not your playthings-”

“No, they’re just yours, and his,” Alina spat. “And maybe, not all of your interests align-”

“Alina,” Aleksander said, whirling on her. She glared back at him, and he’d never seen her look like that. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her truly angry, never mind hateful. He had feared it, but he realised that until now he hadn’t truly thought her capable.

What had she found in his office?! The battlemaps? His reports from Genya? His family’s journals?

Saints, not the collar.

“I will not ask you to be silent again,” he told her, before lowering his voice, trying to gentle it. “Please understand, I am not doing this to be cruel, I am trying to save this conversation from ending in tragedy. Please do not blunder into things you do not understand - disrespecting the Tsar might get you killed.”

“I would like to see any of you try and kill me," she hissed back, eyes never leaving his face. “You know they couldn’t do it - and you wouldn’t dare.”

Though Aleksander knew he should be scared, the thrill of fear felt dangerously close to something else. He wanted to watch her scour Lantsov from the earth, in that moment, then kiss her amongst the ashes.

“You’re lucky she’s the wildcard you promised us, Kirigan,” Lantsov chuckled, under the impression that things had tipped in his favour. “I wouldn’t countenance this disrespect from anyone save our new Saint. Thankfully, I like a warrior with a bit of fire. Don’t all crusades need a burning figurehead at their helm?”

“I apologise for her impertinence, moi tsar,” Aleksander murmured, turning back towards him, “her fervour for the cause cannot be understated, but it can sometimes get in the way of her logic, and her self preservation. In fact-”

Did he dare?

He had no other choice.

“In fact, Alina is mistaken to think she is ready, because she is not aware of all that we had planned,” he continued, smoothly.

He looked towards Fedyor out of the corner of his eye, gestured for him to come join them both at Alina’s side. Alina was far less likely to commit violence if there was someone she liked in close proximity - and if she suddenly didn’t like him, less than an hour after she’d been moaning his name, he needed a back up until he fully understood what had changed.

Aleksander continued, “In order to deliver on everything the Apparat and I have promised you, and give you the divine figurehead you deserve, there is one final step. I have sought out the relics of old, worthy of a true Saint. As of today, I have the location of Morozova’s stag-”

“You sound as mad as your Sun Summoner, General.” the Queen smirked, placing an emphasis on ‘your’.

“I am a man of science and speak only in fact, moya tsaritsa,” Aleksander murmured, dipping his gaze, as that was all the comment had been designed to get him to do. The Queen liked making others feel small. At his back, he could practically feel the heat roiling of Alina in waves. “Whether you believe in the stag’s mythic power or not is actually irrelevant - its bones would act as a powerful amplifier to any Grisha, as you observe in many amongst the Second Army. The animal’s folkloric significance is merely an… additional bonus, contributing to the narrative you and the Church have asked me to construct in our mutual favour. I do not ask you to believe in its abilities, merely understand that the people believe in them. And West Ravkan civilians might be more willing to rejoin the Old Country, if they feel that the Saints dwell there.”

"What are you taking about? I don’t need to be amplified,” Alina said.

Aleksander continued, feeling more confident as the pieces of his extemporised argument finally slotted in place, “the trip will only take a few short weeks at most, moi tsar. Enough time for you to and the First Army to factor our Sun Summoner into your invasion plans. Alina comes back even more powerful, meaning that whatever Zlatan has heard still does not prepare him for her reality. And we can train Alina in combat on the road, so that her determination is put to more… productive use.”

"Amplifiers don’t even work on me,” Alina said. “Zoya told me so.”

But Lantsov wasn’t listening to her anymore. He was looking for a quick end to this conversation, and Aleksander had just offered him weeks of his own absence as part of the deal. He knew the King would love to plan his battles without him defending the wellbeing of the Second Army at every turn - but what did it matter, when the war of his imaginings would never happen, and Aleksander’s coup would arrive before anyone else could strike a single blow?

“Better the girl knows at least something of battle before she tries to win me a war,” Lantsov said with a low chuckle. “The first blood of a hunt will test that fragile mind of hers. And if an amplifier gets her stronger, maybe she can work on removing the… helpful bits of the Fold, if you catch my meaning? Get working on that tunnel concept, perhaps?”

“It is certainly an avenue worth pursuing, moi tsar.”

“There are no ‘useful’ parts of the Fold, it kills people,” Alina said, her voice close to tears. “And he - and he made it-”

“Get this girl out of our sight, General,” the Queen said, “she has tried my patience long enough, and now she is getting hysterical. It’s embarrassing, for the both of you.”

“The travel will do her good, moya tsaritsa,” Aleksander replied. “The confines of the Palace are stifling, and she knows very little of the world.”

“Fascinating, that you have kept her that way,” the Queen replied, with a poisonous smile.

Aleksander fought the urge to summon the Cut, and instead used his hand to motion to Fedyor. Alina let out a sound as the Heartrender took her arm. “No, you can’t-”

“Please don’t make a scene,” Fedyor murmured gently. Aleksander glanced behind him, to see that Alina was fighting off his grip, not using force nor sunlight, as he had hoped.

“Why is being honest making a scene-”

“Stop that, can’t you see you’re upsetting her?” that was Zoya’s voice, as the Squaller came in from the right and placed her arm around Alina’s shoulder. She bent close to Alina's ear and murmured, “Whatever has you rattled, Alina, we can talk it through together. Or I could get Genya? I saw you talking to the Apparat, did he try something with you? You know it’s not your fault if he did. These people are not kind, and you must learn to protect yourself from their cruelty.”

“Zoya,” Alina said, her thick voice switching to Suli as the two of them pulled her away from the dais, through the room of gawking aristocracy. “Zoya, you’ve got to help me. Something terrible is going to happen if I don’t get to the Fold. We could ride there together. You know I’m strong enough to end it all now, you saw it-”

“Yes, you are very strong, and so very brave. But that’s not always enough, not here. You’re lucky the General helped-”

“The General has never helped me, not ever. He doesn’t want me within one hundred miles of the Fold. He’s the reason you’re separated from your aunt-”

“Zoya, get Genya,” Aleksander interrupted, before something catastrophic could happen. What the fuck had she found in his rooms?

Zoya glanced up at him, and Saints saved him, glared. “I’m pretty certain Fedyor could find her quicker than I.”

“And yet,” Aleksander said, through clenched teeth, “I am asking you.”

He watched the conflict of loyalties play out on Nazyalensky’s features incredulously, unable to believe it was even happening.

The girl he had plucked from obscurity, who owed him everything she had, and her very life. Her new protectiveness of a reckless girl was enough to give her doubts.

But finally, she nodded. “I’ll be back soon,” she said to Alina in Suli, “I promise.”

“No, don’t, please-”

Zoya peeled away from them as they dragged Alina out of the party, returning to the darkened corridor. Fedyor retook his place at Alina’s side. When they re-opened the doors to Aleksander’s rooms, the Heartrender cleared his throat awkwardly, no doubt wondering the same thing as Aleksander: how things had gone from perfectly pleasant kisses to lunatic ramblings in half an hour flat.

He led Alina through the door without comment, then took a step back so he was at the doorway - able to intervene with her emotions if it was needed, and drop her, at Aleksander’s bequest.

Aleksander turned around, grateful to have space once again to think. The first thing he saw was that Alina was now crying. The tracks of tears down her cheeks were shining like quicksilver, golden and shimmering in the light. Her entire body was shaking with the force of her emotion.

“....Fuck!” she shouted, unexpectedly, the word exploding out of her.

It was the first time, Aleksander was certain, she had ever cursed.

“I don’t understand. They know I can do it, they all saw me. Are they… are they stupid? Is this a Shu thing? Or a woman thing?!” She looked up at the ceiling, tears catching the light, and let out a rawthroated scream, “…FUCK!”

“...Are you done?” Aleksander asked, voice fighting for calm.

“No! Fuck you!” she spat, as Fedyor’s eyebrows climbed into his hairline and he studiously focused on the middle distance as if he was trying to will himself invisible. “‘Personality disorder’... you utter bastard! I hope my every sister falls from the sky and plagues your every living moment, so that you know a true eternity of suffering. You cold-hearted… manipulative… cruel-”

She gasped raggedly, half sob and half retch, as if her body rejected whatever brewed within her.

“Stars,” she choked, “I hate this. I hate anger. This is horrible. I can’t stand it. You’re all - you’re all impossible,” she span on him, “and no wonder you have never known happiness, when all you deliver is pain-”

“You insulted the King and Queen to their faces, Alina. You can hardly expect me to stand by and let your words get you killed,” Aleksander said, feeling very far away from his body. “I know my words were hurtful, but they were necessary for your survival. Better they think you mad, than willing to throw away everything we’ve worked on for the sake of a tantrum-”

“We have worked for nothing together!” She looked over at him, and screamed, “and how dare you look hurt! You expect me to believe you? All you do is lie!”

Did Aleksander look hurt? Surely not.

What he was doing was a silent mental inventory of everything she had likely read or caught a glimpse of. But when he glanced hastily around the room, everything was exactly as it had been, before. Even the passageway out of his room was locked tight.

Meanwhile, Alina was pacing.

“I hate this place!” she railed at nothing. “I hate this world! I hate being talked down to! I hate being treated like a moron! I hate how none of you tell me anything and then make fun of me when I don’t know things! I hate secrets and I hate lies, and I hate that anyone would knowingly inflict pain and suffering on people for centuries and not even have the decency to come clean about it, so that their families and loved ones might actually have someone to hate other than the universe, and receive some justice for those that were stolen from them, and finally know peace! I hate that everyone thinks me stupid, and foolish, for feeling this way, and for wanting to do good! And I hate that you make me feel like I’m the evil one, like I could burn this whole building to the ground and raze it from the earth, and kill everyone inside it, all so that you would finally listen to me, and realise that I am not a fucking child!”

Aleksander took a step towards her, reaching out, and she threw her hands up. Light flared in blinding coronas around her open palms, brighter than anything he’d ever seen, and she shrieked at him, dark kohl and shimmering light streaking her cheeks.

“Don’t you dare touch me!”

Aleksander froze. There was a shattering pain in his chest. It was so strong, that as he flinched he didn’t even think to raise his shadows to shield him.

But the light didn’t strike him.

As he squinted against the radiance, he raised his hand to shield his eyes, and looked back at Alina, confused as to why she had not hurt him in his moment of foolish weakness. But she was frozen as well, almost as shocked as him that she had been driven to the brink of violence. She looked at his face, then at the raw power burgeoning in her hands. She let out a wounded noise, and the room darkened as the light dimmed and fell away.

She put both hands to her face, and sobbed.

“How can you turn people into this, make them feel this wretched, and just not feel anything?” she cried through her fingers, tired and broken, “this is just… it’s just so ugly. How can you live like this?"

She sniffled, and said, "I want to go home.”

“Moi… um, moi sovereignyi,” said Fedor, from the door. “Should I…?”

Aleksander shook his head, once, curtly, refusing to give the order to render her unconscious. “Wait outside,” he said.

Fedyor looked like he thought that was a very, very bad idea. But he also knew better than to question it directly, and silently stepped out of the room.

Alina was panting and shivering, crying as her anger was spent. If Aleksander had any sense, he would call his guards on her, or draw on the Cut while her back was turned and her tiredness overtook her.
But he did neither of those things.

He could not afford to lose his Sun Summoner, he told himself. And there must still be a way that - somehow - he could retain control.

“What did you read?” he asked her, quietly.

Alina snorted phlegm, looking up at him through swollen eyes. “Read?”

“What did you find in this room, Alina? Is this why you came here this evening, and told me you wanted to be kissed?”

“I… what? No! How can you think… that’s something you would do! I just-” Alina glanced around, then laughed brokenly. “Nothing. I found nothing in the room. Is there something to find? No wonder you hate me coming in here.”

“Then what happened?”

She glared at him. “I’m not going to tell you that.”

She couldn’t lie outright, but there was something she was protecting. A person, then?

Aleksander rallied, thinking about what questions she would answer honestly. “What do you know?”

She sniffed, not bothering to wipe her face. “I know that you are the Black Heretic,” she told him, “I know that you don’t care about me, or my purpose, and will probably work to sabotage it at every turn. I know that you are older than you claim to be, and that you lie to protect yourself, and that everything you’ve said to me since I came here is probably a lie for that exact purpose. And now I realise that you probably wanted me trained in precision, so that I can do exactly what the Tsar just asked - craft you a tunnel through the thing you created, so that nothing inside it can hurt you, but you can use it to hurt more people. I could destroy it on day one, but no one would let me. You brought me here because you didn’t want me to do that, and you wanted me to stop conceiving of my power in that way.”

“...I see,” Aleksander said, knowing he should be panicking. “And you didn’t think to tell the King?”

There was a pause.

“...Fuck!” Alina said, again. “That’s what I should have done? That’s my first choice?!”

“Who could say?” he replied obliquely. On the one hand, it was Alina who’d be making the accusation, so he’d likely survive it. On the other, both the Apparat and Lantsov were always looking for an excuse to have the country eat him and the Grisha alive.

Alina looked frustrated. “I knew you’d be ruined if it got out, but there’s the other Grisha to think about. I don’t see any need to resort to inflicting harm just because that’s the only thing you understand and you… no,” she sighed, “None of them would believe me anyway. You all think I’m mad. If I walked into a room telling everyone you’re centuries old, they would just roll their eyes and move on. No one believes the truth about me, why would they trust me making claims about you? I thought it was more logical to - you all saw me! You know I can destroy the Fold!”

“Yes,” Aleksander replied. “I do.”

“But you don’t want me to.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Because you created it.”

“Yes.”

“And you… you don’t regret it?” she demanded, looking even more frustrated than before. “I saw it happen, Aleksander. It was ugly, and it was wrong - you can’t leave a whole scar across a landscape and not think it is a horrible, painful thing. I thought it was a mistake, my sisters all thought so too - you were cornered, and you were scared, and no mortal fully understands the making of the heart of the world, when it evades even us. But if you did not learn from the mistake, or you continued to do what you did with intention? How?”

Aleksander was still feeling very out of his own body, an experience he was not very used to. She’s delusional, he told himself, but that excuse didn’t work the way it used to. And now that she had said it he was imagining her watching him, as he drew on the merzost and it exploded out of him in that roiling, choking wave-

“I had no choice,” he replied flatly.

“That’s another lie, there’s always a choice!” she said.

And he supposed that was true, because she should have murdered him moments ago, and now instead she was choosing to scold him like a child.

“And look at you!” she continued, “you’re just so sad! And angry, and alone. What has the Fold brought you, except an immortality you seem to despise? Why do you want it to remain? You now have the chance to heal the wound you dealt - why instead would you choose to keep inflicting pain, and suffering? You would not drink poison from a cup!”

“You have no understanding of any of the forces at work,” Aleksander told her tiredly. “Of the things I must do, and the choices I must make. You run your simplistic equations, because you think yourself invulnerable and believe everyone to be good. I know neither of these things to be true. Do you know why I left you this hour? Someone tried to kill you.”

“No, they didn’t.”

“Yes, they did,” he told her. “They attacked Marie.”

Alina frowned, “...well, I told you a double was a stupid idea. We should’ve just let them target me. I could’ve wiped them from existence if they tried anything.”

“Awfully strong boast, for a woman who couldn’t hurt me just moments ago,” Aleksander bit out through gritted teeth.

Alina glared at him.

“When exactly will you realise, Alina, that nothing you have placed your trust in has worked according to your foolish beliefs? How long can you keep playacting innocent and naive… until I - until we - stop seeing that as a reason to humour you? Do you not see the way that Lantsov talks down to you, and cares about us only when we are useful, while the Queen would rather we did not darken their doorstep at all? And this is the country where we are safe, so long as we are compliant, and fight in their wars. What if you had stumbled into Fjerda, spilling your nonsense about falling from the heavens? You’d have been hamstrung and burned to ash before the day ended, spat on and belittled. Shu Han? They would give your claims credit insofar as it would justify their experiments. You’d be locked away until they found out exactly what flowed through your veins. The Ravkans tolerate us, and even that would ebb and flow and tank with the generations, if I was not here to ensure that progress was made.”

“But if we got rid of the Fold, maybe they would-”

“If we got rid of the Fold, I would be powerless to protect the only people I care about,” Aleksander said, “and they would all forget what you did for them, in time. Trust me, I know how long an act of heroism or servitude lasts in a country’s history. Would you deem that sacrifice worth it, if in the future Grisha suffered for your own hubris?”

“You can’t just hate people for hurting you when you’re hurting them back!” Alina insisted, “they feel threatened, because you threaten them. Someone’s got to do something kind, if you ever wish for the Grisha to be loved, not feared. No one loves a cruel person!”

“You are not being kind, Alina, you are being selfish,” Aleksander replied tersely. “You think you are a very nice person, but sweetness does little to disguise the fact that, like a child, you seem to think only of yourself. You are upset with me because I am trying to tell you that the grand, heroic quest you wish to embark on will not work, that the story you wish to play out for your own amusement is inherently flawed. That the things you want aren’t magically the right things for the situation, just because you think that you deserve them to be.”

“Actually,” she replied haughtily, “I’m upset because you aren’t a very pleasant person. You’re also an idiot, and you no longer have youth as an excuse. Don’t think you can belittle me into forgetting everything you’ve done.”

“No matter what you think of me, surely you understand now, after that travesty in the ballroom, that things aren’t that simple?” Aleksander replied, “I commit underhand acts out of necessity, not for my own amusement. It’s the only way that things can ever work, when every one of the odds is stacked against us.”

“How do you know?” Alina flung back at him, “How do you know things ‘aren’t that simple’? Have you ever tried another way? Attempted being honest? Tried undoing your own mistakes? Or have you just spent too many sleepless nights telling yourself that everyone is as bad as you are, and that that means everything you’ve ever done was justified, and dug yourself deeper and deeper into this hole lined with bodies, all to avoid ever admitting that maybe you didn’t need to murder thousands of people?”

The silence that followed was loud in Aleksander’s own ears. Alina’s expression was fierce, and her breathing was ragged, and he didn’t understand why she wasn’t trying to kill him.

He didn’t understand why he was still so scared, now that he knew she wouldn’t.

“I’m not going to hurt you now,” she said softly. “I don’t know why I… there’s still a chance you can learn. Change. Be the person I - that’s probably the stupidest thing I could think, isn’t it? That anything you’ve shown me until now was ever true. This moment of indecision is probably the whole reason you even did any of it in the first place - I know you feel nothing for me.”

Aleksander was feeling more than he’d ever felt in a very, very long time.

Alina sighed sadly, and then took her crown off her head. She placed it on the table.

“But please understand, Aleksander , the moment you actually stop me from going to the Fold? That is the moment I will kill you. And if you ever try to use me to hurt others, I will simply leave.”

“Where would you go?” he didn’t ask her how she could ever hope to leave, when he wouldn’t let her. She might be able to turn invisible, but he’d had metal sewn into the lines of her kefta, and placed in the soles of her boots. And there was the collar to come. He could find her if she ever evaded his grasp.

"Home,” she replied. “To where I am at least loved, and understood. I wanted to stay for longer, but I can’t say I haven’t learned a great deal about the world, even this small and painful span of moments.”

You can’t leave, he thought, but that thought disgusted him. It was not a statement of fact, but a desperate plea, and so he did not speak it aloud.

He kept his emotions off his face. Alina glanced at him, and sighed, “maybe you don't care about either of these things as consequences. But I do. I want to stay, and I don't want to be a killer. So please, Aleksander. Do better, and do not stand in my way. Because I'm certainly not going to let myself become worse, for the sake of you."

She turned away from him, and started unwinding the braids in her hair, unpicking hairpins as he had wanted to when his mouth was on her. She did it messily, stuffing her fingers into the plaits so that they frayed and bloated in the wrong places, loosening it in ways that would only create knots.

He wanted to smooth away the snarls himself. He also wanted to kiss her while the fire was still in her eyes, taste the salt on her cheeks, and let her claw at him. Show her what other things he could make her feel this strongly, until her whole body shook with it.

But she was no longer even looking in his direction. It was like he wasn’t in the room.

“If you destroy the Fold, I die,” he said suddenly, into the silence.

And then he cursed himself, wondering why he’d even said it. Sure, it might earn her foolish sympathy in the moment, but he’d just divulged his biggest secret to a woman who refused to lie. He might hope that her refusal to hurt him would stay her hand, finally get her on his side, but he had no guarantee.

How could he take such a stupid risk? What was he expecting, exactly? She’d already said she didn’t care about him.

But it didn’t matter - he’d already said it, and he didn’t even know why.

Alina glanced back at him, over her shoulder. Her eyes looked sad.

“I’m sorry, Aleksander,” she replied, and her voice wasn’t kind, only honest. “But that’s what all mortals do.”

Chapter Text

The North was cold.

Not that it really mattered to Alina. Yes, she loved the way her breath floated visible on the air, blowing streams of it like ribbons out of the carriage window. She liked the snow too - its confetti dance was so beautiful, that when she stared up to the night sky she didn’t mind that she couldn’t see her sisters. Instead, she tried to see where the flakes first came from, but they always evaded her notice and seemingly appeared from nowhere, to hit her nose and lashes and fall into her open mouth.

But she wasn’t actually cold. She only wore her kefta because it was bulletproof, and her furs because they were soft. All thosee layers hid the way the snow sometimes melted on her skin, sizzled on contact and rose like steam. Other people’s breath smoked - if Alina had stood naked in the blizzard, her entire body would’ve done the same.

Instead, she had three layers and a big stupid hat, pulled low on her ears. She felt like a living furnace. Her guards initially told her to stop lying in the snow and making snow angels because it would get her clothes cold and damp. They gave up when they realised she always ended the day bone dry.

These were the kinds of things she took pleasure in, on the trip up north. She was deprived of company. Genya was not with her, and Zoya -

The General had told Zoya that she had kissed him. That was the excuse he was going with, for her 'strange behaviour' at the Winter Fete's close: they’d had a romantic interlude, and it had backfired. That was how he was keeping the two of them apart, on this trip up north, when perhaps the Squaller would’ve been her only ally. He’d broken Zoya’s heart, all for the sake of strategy.

“He said you two were… caught in something, after the Fete,” Zoya had said, the day before they left, in a cold and distant voice that the General himself had no doubt taught her to cultivate. “And then you threw a fit when he told you it wasn't anything more than just a... a physical-”

“I’m sorry,” Alina had blurted, feeling wretched.

She would’ve been angry at this newest lie, that branded her as emotionally stunted and useless once more. But she didn’t see the point, not when it was based in truth that was born from her own selfishness. She had kissed the General, of her own volition, and Zoya had every right to be hurt by it.

Besides, what had she expected Aleksander to do? Let her tell people he was the Black Heretic?

"Are you angry with me?” she asked.

“...No,” was Zoya’s reply. “I’m angry with him, more than anything. He should know better. But even if he toyed with you unfairly, that’s no excuse for making accusations, Alina. We serve a cause, not a man - your loyalties can’t waver just because you’re upset with him.”

This was the thing that hurt. The lack of blame. It didn’t seem to occur to Zoya that Alina was capable of making her own decisions, and that her judgement was not clouded by her emotions. Yes, Kirigan had manipulated her, but she was the one that had asked to be kissed, and it had had little to do with her feelings at the time.

If Zoya had thought her cruel and conniving, at least it would’ve felt like she’d been given credit for the wrongs she’d actually done. Better than being thought incapable of anything.

The fact was, everyone respected the General, and dismissed her. They did all truly see her as a child. Even her friends - they only protected her because they thought she was weak, and in dire need of protecting. It wasn’t because they liked her, necessarily, though maybe they did that as well. The only constant she had was pity.

In fact, the only person who’d treated her as an equal was-

- And that, she reminded herself, had been a lie.

She shouldn’t have announced herself a star. Alina knew that now. Though she wasn’t sure if she’d ever have been capable of lying about her nature, she knew very acutely that she hadn’t needed to make a song and dance about it. It was no use having such regrets, however. This was the hand she’d dealt herself, and she was still, eventually, going to win.

As her sisters had told her she would. She was not alone.

Even if she felt lonely.

If only, she thought, glancing above the pages of her latest book to see Aleksander on the other side of the carriage, silently absorbed in paperwork.

In another bid to make sure she didn’t communicate what she knew to anyone else, he had made sure she was travelling with him, in his hunt for the stag. It was awkward, and unpleasant, and Alina had gotten much more practised at silence, these last few weeks, saving all her observations of the landscape for the female guard who accompanied her on bathroom breaks.

The first day of travel, when she was still angry, and quietly fuming, the General had cleared his throat, and said, “you know... I have a theory that you might be like me. When you claim to be long lived, maybe you are correct. You may have also held your powers for a long time. After all, you claim you have always used them, even if you were never found or tested when you came of age. That might be because they manifested before I instituted testing. If you are indeed many centuries old, as I am, your powers would be the explanation for that. They sustain us, extend our lifespan. But this fact was not something that was shared, in the times where one could be burned for witchcraft. Maybe your family did not know. I think immortality would be hard thing to navigate, without a frame of reference, or help. Maybe you are-”

“We are nothing alike,” Alina replied flatly, not bothering to look away from the window. “Please stop trying to fit me into your own limited understanding of the world.”

Aleksander let out a long sigh.

“I am merely trying to say that I might give credence to your claims about your age. I am also offering you an explanation as to why you’ve lived so long,” he said, keeping his voice even. “When you were young, did you ever manifest the light? Did your sisters? How long ago was that? Perhaps that is why-”

“I was born more powerful than you could ever comprehend,” she interrupted. “And I have no interest in being explained by your beloved Small Science, that cannot even account for your own existence. Believe what you want to believe, it doesn't matter to me - I know what I am. I only cared about you acknowledging my true nature if we were to ever fall in love. Of course, now, that eventuality is of no concern to me.”

Her eyes had flicked to him then, and his expression was carefully blank.

“You have not tried to run, Alina,” he said, “nor have you fought. I thought this might be a gesture of cooperation - is it instead simply an opportunity to sulk within my view?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, am I being an inconvenient captive? Am I annoying you on your journey to whatever you plan to do next to sabotage my purpose?” she flung back. “If you wish to give me a second carriage, or leave me behind, by all means.”

“...You know I cannot do that.”

“And now you know that just because I choose to be nice to people, it does not mean I’m a pushover,” she replied. She tried to channel Laoise as best she could, as she said, "I’m sure you would much rather I lay back and just take it, General, but alas. Your discomfort is earned."

There was no visible emotion on his face, so she had no idea whether her words baited him. Instead, he asked, “then why are you still here?”

“Because I do not want to kill my friends, and that is what I would have to do, if I ran. You are smart in the cruellest way, and so you would send the ones I care for the most after me,” Alina replied. “Instead, I shall watch you do whatever it is you think will distract me and prevent me from reaching the Fold, and enjoy finally being able to travel beyond the Little Palace walls. Then, when your plan fails, we will return here. Lantsov will want me to be his vanguard, and you won’t want him to know who you truly are. So I will be escorted to the Fold, and I will remove it. And if at that point you try to stop me, then I will remove you, also. I’m still willing to discuss other options, if you’re willing to compromise. But that’s the wonderful thing about being immortal, Aleksander. I can wait. Nothing you can do will actually hurt me, and even against you, all I’ve got is time.”

At the end of her speech, she thought the General looked troubled, but whether that was because of her words or something else, it was hard to say. Alina didn’t spend long trying to decipher his mood. She was too busy being proud of herself for giving an answer that said so many true things, that it hid the lie she'd planted underneath.

None of those justifications were the reason she was going north with him. She was going north because her sisters wanted her to.

The night of the Winter Fete, after she had cried herself silly and sick, she had in fact tried to run. She’d packed all her things and her favourite books, gone invisible, and she’d melted the lock on her balcony window, knowing her door to be guarded. As she’d stood on the ledge, looking down at the grass below and wondering exactly how breakable mortal legs were, she’d heard a voice in her ear.

Oh, little spark, Laiose had said. Things aren’t going well for you, are they?

“Laiose?” Alina hissed, glancing up at the sky incredulously, and seeing her sisters spark and twinkle above, “now’s the time you choose to check in?! If this is all to say, ‘I told you so’-”

We always knew you’d be too softhearted for the world as it is now, came another voice, that of Signy, but why would we reprimand you for it, dearest? We never wanted you to think of your good soul as a weakness.

The decision to immediately become a religious figurehead, however? Laiose interjected, none of us had placed our bets on that one. Didn’t know you had it in you. I’m actually a huge fan of the entire concept! I’ve adjusted my predictions to ‘full blown cult’ by the time the year is out-

This is rapidly becoming the most entertaining pilgrimage in aeons, added Alina’s younger sister, not yet named, and her voice sounds falsely teasing, like she was maybe a little jealous.

“Well, it’s not exactly ‘entertaining’, to experience it directly,” Alina offered her as consolation.

Come now! said Laiose, You’ve only been down there a few months! Don’t be all glum and give up just because of one man! You really can just find another-

I mean, maybe courting the Black Heretic was a little ambitious- said Maradi.

If it ever gets too much, know that you can come right back, little spark. It was always you that insisted on having some big grand purpose, we never needed you to- said Ulla.

“Hush!” Alina whispered, “that’s a lot of voices, in this form!”

Goodness, said her eldest sister, whose name was lost, in her pondorous, worldly way. Still so young.

“Why are you here, then, if it’s not simply to make fun of me?” Alina asked.

We’re here to give you a little hint, Alina, said Laiose.

Well, more just emotional support-

Maybe your purpose is a little different than what you think it is, little spark. said Signy.

“I’m still going to destroy the Fold,” Alina told them, “it doesn’t matter what he says, it makes people miserable. I’m not just going to leave it there, not when I can do something about it.”

And if that’s what you want to do, we’re not going to discourage it, said Ulla, however...

The Stag, said Laoise.

“The… what?” Alina said. Then she sifted through the exhausting, headache-inducing catalogue of the Winter Fete’s events, and remembered. “The thing that Aleksander was talking about?... Morozova’s Stag?”

She watched, as parts of the sky rippled, and the oldest stars quivered at the sound of Morozova’s name.

“What is it?” Alina whispered to the night. “What’s wrong?”

The elders will not say, said Laiose, in the voice that told Alina that their eldest sister was also being wilfully obtuse. But there is something about that stag that’s got them spooked-

If you want a worthy purpose, sister, said the oldest star in their constellation. The Stag is a good place to start.

The funny thing about destinies, added Maredi, is that you only see them after the fact. You’ve fallen with some very grand plans, sister, but the Making has plans of its own for everyone. When your pilgrimage is complete, you will know it, and you will always come back here with a story to tell.

If it’s this important, it’s very nice of the Black Heretic to find it for you, Laoise said impishly. I think whatever happens next, it’ll probably be funny.

And so, knowing that her sisters would never hurt her or wish her ill, Alina had gone back inside, away from the balcony edge. She had put all her things back in her draws. She had not looked at Genya the next morning when her friend had noticed that her window locks were beyond repair even as Alina sat in her bed, puffy eyed and belligerent, unable to eat breakfast.

It was easier, knowing she was watched over, by the family she loved and trusted most. It reminded her who she was, at her very core, even as she began to realise that outwardly she must change, and adapt.

So Alina had let Zoya be angry at her, and she hadn’t tried to fight for her version of the truth. She had gotten into Aleksander’s carriage two days later, and she had decided to bide her time. Alina was actually terribly impatient, and even though she could do it in theory, waiting was utter agony. But it was made easier, knowing that her sisters were with her, and would be there when it was all over.

The pain dulled in time, as did her anger, which soon proved exhausting to maintain. She spent her first few nights worried, of what would make the eldest among them tremble, and everything Baghra had said about stars. Then she realised that being afraid wouldn't make anything happen any quicker, and let that go, as well.

Mostly, she was just reading a lot of books.

Aleksander hadn’t looked up from his paperwork, so she readjusted herself in her seat and returned to her place in her current read. She hadn’t known whether to take new books or old favourites with her on this journey, but Genya had capped her tersely at ten, so she’d opted for favourites. She was on her seventh (she’d been rationing them, and even then that hadn’t worked out very well), and it was her favourite part: the moment when the romantic lead realised that the heroine who he despised was in fact his childhood friend he’d long thought dead. They were in a crowded space filled with people, but he was overcome with emotion, and though many eyes were on them, he’d reached out and pulled her close into a embrace-

Alina’s cheeks pinked, unable to keep her gleeful smile off her face even as she fought the urge to kick her feet. Stars, she thought, the world can’t be that bad, when there are books.

The heroine was obviously confused, as he’d only been horrible to her up until this point. The male lead leant in closer, and bent down to whisper in the heroine’s ear-

If you wanted to be alone with me, Miss Starkov, all you had to do was ask.

- And this, Alina thought, stomach churning with what she thought was probably indignation, was the only problem. A strange phenomenon was happening, on this reread of all her stories. Whenever she read something romantic, it only reminded her of what had happened with Aleksander in his rooms, before everything had gone wrong. Whenever an author described the love interest, all she could see was him.

She really had no excuse, with this book! This man was definitely described as blonde! That’s why she’d picked it to read next!

It was becoming extremely uncomfortable. She was in the same carriage as him! It was all fun and games when people were hand holding or divulging deep emotional truths, but when the sex started…

I need to sleep with someone, Alina thought, not for the first time on this trip. She’d decided that the only reason this was happening was because of her depressingly limited experience. All kissing the General had proven was that she really, really liked kissing, exactly as she had predicted she would. She just needed to do more of it, with more people - that would fix the problem. The fact that she’d only done it with one person meant that her imagination had very little to draw from. Her brain had no option but to keep revisiting those moments against her will.

She just needed to find another pretty person, and kiss them for a bit instead, and that would cure her of all these very silly flashbacks, that were actually quite painful and caused her chest to hurt.

But when she had idly asked Ivan if there were any brothels she could visit on the journey north, he had choked on air. His reaction had surprised Alina, given that this had been when he’d been babysitting her after they’d stopped to resupply in a small village, and so it had struck her as perfectly reasonable to expect access to other towns and settlements, and their various attractions, further along the route.

“Not… for Grisha,” he’d wheezed, face turning as red as his kefta.

“Oh, really?” Alina had replied, glumly. “That seems like a silly rule. The way my books talk about our powers and the ways they can be used, you’d think everyone would want a piece.”

“I really think we should stop talking,” Ivan said through gritted teeth.

So that ruled out the most obvious course of action. And no one in their cavalcade seemed interested. She’d tried flirting with one of the prettier guards. But for some reason when she'd smiled at him, all the colour had drained out of his face and he’d kept looking somewhere behind her head, rather than at her.

When she’d glanced behind her, she saw the man had been looking towards the carriage she shared with the General. But that didn’t make sense, either. Aleksander had only ever been playacting his interest, and unlike her, the General was taking someone new to his tent every night.

Zoya was livid, on both of their behalf, it seemed, that suddenly everyone and sundry was fair game. Meanwhile Alina was left here, sexually frustrated, with only her books for company, and her own hands at night. Both of those methods relied on her imagination, which was proving worryingly limited.

But it wasn’t her book’s fault. She shook her head stubbornly, then ploughed on to read the next line, with renewed determination. Ten pages later, the world fell away and it was like Aleksander didn’t even exist - at least, the one in the carriage. If the very, very blonde man in the book spoke in his voice, then that was fine, because he was also much nicer and what little cruelty he performed was a front that she already knew hid a heart in turmoil, which she couldn’t imagine the General necessarily having. Compartmentalisation was easy in that regard. She blinked, and she was another six chapters in. The sky was darkening, so she summoned a small light on her shoulder to read by.

By this point, the hero was feeling very stupid that he'd been so mean to the girl of his dreams for such an unconscionable amount of time, and Alina couldn’t help admitting a little satisfaction in that. He also wanted to kiss the heroine very, very badly. Alina could barely contain her excitement, even on a second readthrough. After curling herself up in knots in her seat to stop herself from fidgeting too much, she was still worrying at her thumb.

When he told the heroine that her eyes were the most beautiful thing about her, Alina squeaked.

“...What is it?”

“Shush!”

“Oh, forgive me, I didn’t realise I was interrupting.”

Even without looking up, Alina did not think Aleksander sounded very contrite at all.

However, his interjection had meant she'd lost her place on the page. “Well, you are interrupting, so shush.”

“Alina. You do realise we begin our search for the stag tomorrow?”

“And I reach a kiss scene in three pages. We each have our priorities.”

“...I cannot fathom if you are being wilfully ignorant, or genuinely think you are under no threat of harm.”

“You know exactly which one it is," she told him, "you’ve just decided to believe it is the other.”

“Aren’t you the least bit curious to know what the stag does?”

“No," Alina replied, staring down at her page with spiteful intensity, "what holds my interest, at this particular moment, is this very gallant man kissing the life out of a girl who has proven very deserving of a good time. Are you done with your work, and pining for attention? Go call your guards, there are many here who would listen to you speak.”

“Oh, well. Perhaps if I spoke in platitudes, and flowery prose-”

There was a note of something in his voice that she had no idea what to make of. Alina paused, and raised her eyes above the top of her page, to see Aleksander looking very angry at the window, for no apparent reason that she could fathom. There was no way - she was stupid to even think it - there was no way he could be jealous-

“Aleksander,” she felt the need to remind him gently, “you hate it when I talk. Surely this is a welcome reprieve for you.”

“Bold of you to think that when you read, you are anything close to silent,” he muttered.

She snorted. She couldn’t help it. The General glanced at her as she covered her mouth and fought off a fit of giggles, though for the life of her she was not about to admit the source.

“Sorry,” she muttered, “but if you must know, I don’t care how this very gallant man speaks, although I do think the writing is a little bit over the top. It is his thoughts and his actions that have me invested-"

There it was again! That small furrow between his eyebrows!

“He is also, of course…” Alina couldn’t believe she was saying this, “very handsome. The book says that a lot.”

...The furrow got worse!!

She didn’t know what she was doing. To be honest, it wasn’t even a deliberate attempt to bait him. Instead it was mere fascination surrounding whether she could.

Was he actually angry? Were those women he was sleeping with… not very good?!

Aleksander’s expression was mullish. “You share a carriage with the Black Heretic, and then waste your time with foolish novels. Aren’t you afraid?”

“Would you prefer if I was?” Alina snapped.

He looked pleased to have gotten a reaction, as she abandoned staring at the page in favour of him. That just made her angrier.

“Stars, maybe you would. Your grand plan is about to take place, and I am not the spectator you wanted. Would you have me quiver and quake in the corner, Aleksander? Would that make the time pass any quicker for either of us? Or would it be reassuring, and help you think that you were still in control?” she sighed. “Look at you, using your big scary title to try and convince yourself you have any power over me. I really don’t care that you’re the Black Heretic.”

The General raised an eyebrow disdainfully. “That seemed an insurmountable obstacle, a few weeks ago. I remember you having a rather violent reaction to it.”

“Oh, I care that you are a cruel person, and that you’ve done terrible things,” she shrugged. “But the names you attach to it for the sake of narrative are meaningless to me. Whether you’re over forty or over four hundred, that is also meaningless. But I’m sure it makes you feel very clever and secure and strong.”

“I do not understand how you simply cannot care,” he said. “You did not run or attempt escape, yet you refuse to talk to me. You consider me hateful, then seem content to ignore the very fact of my existence.”

“...So you do want attention?”

“If all of this is so distasteful to you, Alina, if your morals are so pristine and intact enough to make my company this unbearable - why do you bear it? Why are you doing nothing to avoid your fate?”

She closed her book with a soft thud of pages. “And why do you want me to fight you? Why should I give you the satisfaction of my effort? If you really want me to avoid whatever terrible things you have planned, General, all you have to do is not do them-”

“I just wish,” he said, through gritted teeth, “that for once. You would make sense. You declared yourself my enemy, and me a villain, and yet now you're just... content?! How can you just… sit there? Reading?”

Alina placed the closed book in her lap, folded her arms, and sighed. “Aleksander? This ride is very boring. You stole my friends from me. And conversation with you has always been an exercise in frustration. If I asked you about the stag, you’d lie about its true purpose anyway. It’s much easier, and less confusing, to go in blind. So forgive me, if I wish to indulge in the fantasy of a nice man who tells a girl what the most beautiful part of her face is and isn’t telling a lie when he does so." She shrugged, “I’d much rather I was enjoying my reality as well, but unfortunately that’s not currently a very fun place to be.”

Aleksander listened to her tirade silently, his face unreadable. "There are things you can do to change that," he said.

"Oh, can I? Do tell! Do any of them involve capitulating immediately and letting you kill people?" Alina smiled at him sweetly. “Stars, why are you even complaining? Didn’t you want me compliant? Surely this is all your wildest dreams come true.”

Aleksander froze mid-retort, blinked at her. Then the fight that had been beginning to build tension in his shoulders left him, and he rubbed his temples, dragging a hand tiredly down his face. “I’m losing my mind,” he muttered into the heel of his palm, mostly to himself.

“Oh dear. Maybe you have a ‘personality disorder’,” Alina cooed with faux sympathy.

The glare he gave her made her grin back savagely in response. She knew she’d get a handle on sarcasm, once she understood lying - and once she knew the man well enough to understand how to get under his skin. Every single one of her ineptitudes could be explained simply by ignorance.

“You know, if it turns out that you were a double agent all this time,” he told her, after a long pause. “I would genuinely be very impressed.”

“It would be terrible, wouldn’t it?” she agreed. “I know so many of your secrets.”

And you’re leading me exactly where I need to go.

She didn't say that, this time, as she once would have. But she worried it showed in her face somehow, simply because she had no clue how to hide it. The General’s eyes narrowed, and she was worried she was caught again.

Aleksander opened his mouth to speak, but then there was a familiar shout in the distance - the same one they’d heard every night, after the day of travel. The carriage jolted to a stop, with the sound of the snow slurrying under the wheels as Alina braced herself in her seat. The sky outside was now approaching dusk. Inferni began lighting torches as the procession of vehicles all halted, and camp supplies were unloaded.

Normally, the both of them would wait in silence until the process was over. But Aleksander was proving talkative, and that meant Alina found herself to be sick of his company. Time to ready an escape under the guise of a bathroom break she didn’t really need.

She rapped twice on the window, then gathered her skirts, preparing to alight from the carriage. But as she reached for the door to open it, Aleksander’s hand closed over the handle and prevented her. Alina glared over at him, wondering what was left to say.

“Your mouth,” he said, softly.

“...I’m sorry, what?”

“That’s the most beautiful part of your face,” he informed her. His voice was calm, and not a little clinical. “And I’m not lying.”

Alina was ashamed to admit there was a jolt in her chest. It was nice to hear such pretty flattery, and she was not immune to that brief moment where it did indeed feel like she was in one of her novels. In a world where everything was easy, where she could have everything she wanted, and it would all end happily. Her tongue darted across her lips briefly to wet them, and he smiled to himself, like he had won something from her.

Then, she shook it off.

“Actually,” she told him haughtily, “That’s an incorrect answer. Everything about my face is perfect in equal measure. Can I get out, now?”

“My mistake, Ms. Starkov,” he said, exactly as he had said that night before he left her. That smile was still there on his face, as he let go of the handle, and let her step out of the carriage down into the snow.

For the first time, Alina's cheeks heated, as she noticed the cold.

If Aleksander hadn’t told her that they’d arrived at their destination, Alina would have been confused at the changes to their camp. Rather than simply pack the snow down tight and set up her cot atop it, the Fabrikators lay down waterproof tarpaulins beneath her tent canopy. Within two hours of Alina sitting inside it, the makeshift room was baking, and she no longer needed her furs even for pretence. She noted how her guards kept taking ‘breaks’ just inside the entrance, warming themselves and returning the feeling to their hands. Even so, it was Inferni who melted snow for her, as a copper bathtub was brought in. Where from, she had no clue - though her guess was that it was likely a staple of Kirigan’s tent.

When she sat in the water, it was mere minutes until it was steaming hotter. She smiled to herself - boiling water was her favourite, and luckily in this kind of cold no one noticed the difference.

She had a small twinge in the back of her mind as she laid down to sleep that night, with her dry hair soft and no longer stiff with dirt. Morozova’s Stag lay ahead, and she expected Aleksander wanted to do something terrible with it. Though her sisters seemed to think she would know exactly what to do when the time came, she’d made so many mistakes up until now that she worried their trust was misplaced.

No matter what happens, I’ll never get it wrong enough that they won’t let me come back home. That thought alone was all that was needed, to let her fall into a dreamless sleep.

When Alina woke up, it was with a sourceless jolt. She knew instinctively it was the early morning, and it was still dark outside. That wasn’t disorienting for her. It had been much more of a struggle to drag herself out of bed in the daytime, in those first few weeks.

Two things had caused her to wake. The first was the sound of footsteps outside, crunching through the snow, quiet enough to be secretive. The second was something else. Something was… off. A sense of unease separate from the footsteps, so far away that she couldn’t pinpoint the source. It slithered along her spine and made Alina shiver under her blankets, even though she never got cold.

She sat up straight and swung her feet out of the cot. At the sound of rustling fabric and squeaking springs, the footsteps outside stilled. Was it one of her guards?

But when Alina walked to the entrance and pulled the tent flap aside, it was the Darkling who waited outside her doorway. His black-clad figure cut a clean, monochrome silhouette in the darkness, against the night blue lilac of the freshly fallen snow.

“What are you doing here?” Alina asked him, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She was pretty certain he could’ve hidden himself in the shadows, if he hadn’t wanted to be found.

Aleksander blinked at her. His eyes took in all of her, and she noted that they struggled to stay on her face. Alina glanced down at herself, and realised the source of his confusion. While he was in at least three layers and a large fur lined mantle, breath smoking on the air, she was just barefoot, in her slip that stopped at mid thigh.

“Oops,” she said, and went back in to shoulder on her kefta so that he wouldn't wonder why she wasn't freezing herself to death. She didn’t invite the Darkling inside the tent, even though it was now very toasty inside to the point where her legs had been kicked free of the covers. Let him suffer in the cold.

“Why are you here?” she asked again, once she’d returned to the threshold. “It’s early.”

“I know. I came to... see you,” he said. “We are about to depart, in search of the stag.”

“So?”

“...I was wondering,” he continued, looking a little like the words pained him. “Do you want to join us? On the hunt?”

“I don’t know. Does your plan involve me joining you?”

He huffed, “now you ask?”

“I’m just not sure why you’re being all… nervous and shifty about it. If your plan needs me, why not just chain me and drag me along behind you? No need for any of the flattery or pretences any more - at least, not at my end.”

“It doesn’t-” he winced. “I could do this without you.”

“Then go do it,” she said - again, the closest she could get to a lie, because she had a feeling it would unsettle him and place him on guard if she immediately agreed to come along, even though that was all she wanted to do. “What do you need me for?”

“I-” he started, looking frustrated, and began again, “you-”

There was a long period of silence, that Alina was used to, with him. It seemed to be causing him some consternation, though. He looked very uncomfortable about it, the whole time.

“...Yes?” she prompted, when she felt like he needed her help.

“There’s... There's still a way we can do this. One that is… easier.”

“Easier for who, exactly?”

He raked a hand through his hair, and then side-stepped that question entirely. “Look - the stag is an amplifier.”

“I know it is,” Alina replied, “but I figure it must also be something else, given that amplifiers don’t work on me.”

Aleksander looked a little panicked for a second. It was only a small second - still a lot, for him, and all the confirmation Alina needed.

She sighed heavily, “and you want it to use it to do something else to me, something other than amplification. Something bad, most likely. Aleksander, why on earth would I go with you?”

“If you,” he sighed, “if you kill it - that is, if you come with me, and we kill it, together - we can- I could-”

“I’m not killing anything for you. Haven’t we already discussed that?”

“Why? Why not kill it?” he asked her, once more driven to frustration for no reason that Alina could see. "If not for me, then for yourself. Don’t you want to be stronger?”

“Not particularly. I’m plenty strong.”

“...So you’re just going to let me take it?”

Alina smiled, bemused. “You seem to want me to fight you again, Aleks. Is that all you woke me up to do?”

“Because if you don’t, I’ll - I’ll have to -”

“-Once more, I’ll remind you, that the only person who keeps making these choices, is you. No one’s giving you orders. No one’s summoning the Cut at your back. You claim I make things too simple, but you're making them way too complicated. If you’re feeling bad about something, just don’t do it. It doesn’t seem like you need me crying or yelling at you to help you along the way. You’re a grown man, and claim to be clever. Work through the logic of your own entirely self-created problems.”

That made him angry. “Why did you come all this way with me, then, if not to fight me? If not to present some kind of obstacle?”

“I told you. Because running would not have worked.”

“You were so-” again, he looked frustrated and agitated, but more with himself, than at her. “You were so full of - of rage, on the night of the Winter Fete, and now you’re just-”

“Bored? Of you?” Alina said. She shrugged. “A little.”

And oh, did a part of her feel slightly victorious when he flinched.

“If you’re not angry anymore, then why aren’t you just… on my side?” he said, and it was clear even to Alina that it embarrassed him to say it.

“Aleksander, I will never be on your side,” Alina replied. “Not if this is the path you insist on taking. But do you really think I’m going to give you the satisfaction of my fury, now that the argument is over? After you’ve made your choices, and I’ve openly stated mine? It was a shock to realise you were lying to me. I believe I had what they called a ‘tantrum’ - it was certainly very exhausting. I don’t think I can handle hatred for long, it just makes me feel like I’m going to be sick. I appreciate that all human emotions have their worth, but the only person my anger was hurting was me. Especially if, apparently, all it did to you was keep you well fed, if you feel its lack so keenly now.”

“Alina, don’t you understand?” Aleksander said. “I’m… fuck. I’m trying to give you one last chance.”

“To what? Give in?”

“I’m about to do something,” he said, “I’m not lying to you, when I say I don’t fully know what the consequences will be. But unless you suddenly become… become predictable, or help me understand you, or agree to work with me, then I will... I will just have to do it.”

“The only thing stopping you from understanding me is the limitations you place upon yourself,” Alina countered.

“Alina, now is not the time to be stubborn.”

“...Tell me, do you ever listen to yourself talk?”

“You had two weeks to state your case, you spent them sat in silence. I don't know what to make of this new tactic."

"It worked, apparently. If you're here now, feeling all sad about it."

"Look, I’ve tried explaining, it is your mind that is limited, by your flawed preconceptions of the world. Only I know the reality of what we face,” he said, his voice taking on the quality of talking through a battle strategy, or plan. “But you are right, you can learn. I no longer need to keep things from you. Once we have the stag, I will explain everything. I will answer every question. No more lies. Despite everything, we already have common ground. You want to help Ravka, and the Grisha, yes? That’s all I’ve ever done. It’s what I will continue to do, even if my methods require sacrifice. Please understand, you are my one chance with which to succeed. I’ve been planning this for years, I’m not going to stop just because one girl asks me to-”

“-Are you trying to convince me, or am I just the witness to this argument you are hosting with yourself?”

“Alina, please,” Aleksander beseeched.

“Aleksander. No. Why would you even want me with you?”

He looked utterly wretched, for a second. Alina was also feeling stupid. She should’ve just capitulated. Then that was her escorted safely to Stag, to do whatever needed to be done.

But it turned out she was still utter shit at lying, and there was a glimmer of something she refused to let go of - some small thread of regret that she imagined he was worrying at like a loose tooth. Thank the stars her anger had worked on him, though she didn’t quite understand why.

“If you claim the Stag,” he said quietly, “then you are my equal. We are-”

Again he stopped.

Started again: “I thought I was past the point of expecting you to be anything but a - a tool, or an inconvenience -”

Stopped.

“But then you found out who I am. You learned my secret, and still you do not run-”

"Oh."

Aleksander stilled. He looked a little afraid.

"I suppose it must be nice," Alina said. “To have someone fully see you for who you are."

She thought back, to how the silence in their carriage had thawed out from terse to companionable. About all those moments she'd forgotten about him, and then he'd try to remind her, to trigger some kind of a reaction. Like he was testing something.

How he kept being confused and almost angry at the fact that she sat across from him, dismissed the spectre of the Black Heretic to his face, in favour of the man.

An idiot man. A cruel man. But a man nonetheless, and not some terrible monster.

Alina had been very lonely these last few months, with only Baghra understanding her nature. Aleksander had been living like that for centuries.

Well, fuck. She almost felt sorry for him now. Not again. Not when he still denied her the same understanding.

"If you're not-" he faltered, as if he didn't dare say the words. "You didn't leave, and for the life of me, I don't understand why. I’m beginning to wish you had, because at least then, I would know for certain. Know that this is simply the way it has to be. I would not have hope. But if you're here…”

Alina waited, to see if he would say anything of note.

After a silence, he continued, “I know you're angry now, and disgusted. But such things fade, with time. You'll understand that eventually. Maybe we can - Alina, I don't want to hurt you, for the sake of a disagreement that will mean nothing, fifty years from now."

"So, just don't."

"I have no choice," he said. "But you do. You can come with me. We can do this together. If not, then tell me, why did you come all this way?"

Alina knew why, of course. She felt a strange wave of guilt, as she had that night in the war room when her comfort had been mistaken for something more. When he had thought she was offering herself, and not just her kindness. Only, this time, his confusion was a result of her deliberate choice. The misunderstanding worked in her favour, and she couldn’t help but know it. If she carried forward, it would be a deliberate manipulation, the kind that hurt. Already, she was fighting the urge to correct him, to explain, just out of the guilt of having messed up all over again.

He wanted to know what compelled her to stay. She already knew: love, and trust. Not for him, but for her sisters, and her people. This was what they wanted her to do.

Yet it seemed he desperately wanted it to be something else. Loyalty? Newfound companionship? Surely not anything more.

He did not want her as an enemy. He… wanted her with him.

And she didn’t have to lie. She just had to… let him believe his own lie. It was exactly as Genya had said. Men chose to trust the images that they constructed in their mind, rather than the living and breathing person that was stood in front of them. It was no different than her dropping their disagreement over whether or not she was a star. If she told him the the truth, it would anger him and he would just think it was stupid. It was-

It was easier to not say anything at all.

“What if you’re just… lying again?” Alina asked, changing topic just as he had done so many times before, given that it seemed to work well from him. “To get me to come with you.”

“I wasn't lying, when I said I could leave you here and hunt the stag alone,” Aleksander replied. “But if we make the kill together, we achieve the same end, without any pain. That is a promise.”

Only Aleksander would not equate killing something with harm. Nor did he feel the need to tell her what end he hoped to achieve. Alina clamped her mouth shut to stop herself from pointing either of these things out.

Instead, she said: “I need a moment to think.”

Aleksander nodded, relieved and yet still looking like he was somehow wounded. “And I will… wait. I suppose."

Alina stepped back inside the tent. She did not have the strongest grasp on mortal time, but she counted to 400 in her head, which she thought was a suitable and believable number for a moral quandary. Then, she added an extra 50 for good measure.

In that time, she did think, so it wasn’t a lie. She thought about why he only expected her to compromise herself. And why he did not budge, when he clearly wanted something so very badly. Something that he could not seem to articulate, and that he was never going to get from her without changing.

She returned and pulled the tent flap aside. Aleksander was still there, frowning into the middle distance as he scuffed his booted foot through the snow.

“Ok,” Alina said, “I’ll come with you.”

His head snapped to look at her. “I… what?”

“I’ll come with you,” Alina repeated. He looked so dumbfounded that she frowned. “Which is what… you wanted? Or was the invitation just an empty gesture, to make you feel better?”

“No! No. It wasn’t empty,” he replied hurriedly, before raking another hand tiredly through his hair. “I just did not expect it to work.”

“Are you used to people leaving?” Alina asked, “or simply not bothering to talk to them in the first place?”

“It is… a little early for those kind of questions, Alina,” he sighed.

“Again, Aleksander, you came to me,” she sighed back, “stop acting surprised that I’m stood in front of you, asking you questions.”

Aleksander stood silently in the snow and offered her no reply, which was no different than any other conversation they'd ever had. Except it was, a little. Alina didn't know if she was just being over-imaginative, or naïve (she probably was), but when she glanced up at him she was surprised at how stunned he looked, and she thought, he can't keep his eyes off me. There was a hunger within him that she knew even he didn't understand. She supposed that it came from thinking everyone else was beneath you - that kind of logic risked leaving you convinced that you the only person in the world. She wondered if the Black Heretic even knew if he was lonely, but in that moment she actually thought that, yes, he might know it very keenly indeed.

Then she dismissed it. This wasn't a novel, after all. She tucked her hair behind her ears, and then squared her shoulders, aiming for practicality, and focusing on the goal ahead of her. “Come on then," she said, "let’s go.”

She stepped out into the snow, placing her hands in her kefta pockets, and Aleksander coughed. “Would I suggest… getting dressed?” he asked, in a strained voice.

Alina glanced down, at her silk nightgown and her bare feet, “oh yeah. Sorry!”

“So, what is so important about this stag?” she whispered, in her three layers that served Aleksander’s sanity, not her own health.

Aleksander gave her a sidelong glance. They were trudging through snow as silently as they could, a guard of Grisha fanned around them in the shape of an arrowhead. The majority had been left at the camp - only ten of them travelled in this group, seventeen if you counted the two trackers and Aleksander’s oprichniki. Zoya, Ivan and Fedyor were all there. Though no one commented on the fact that Aleksander had brought Alina with him, she’d seen all their raised eyebrows when she’d emerged as a second shape through the undergrowth.

“No more secrets,” she hissed up at him, when he remained silent. “Remember?”

“There was a man,” he told her, in a hushed voice as they moved forward. “a Grisha. Ilya Morozova. He possessed many skills, but above all else he was a master Fabrikator. He imbued three animals with great power, until they became amplifiers of legendary potential. The stag is one such creature.”

Alina hugged her arms. She wanted to ask more about this Ilya Morozova, but she didn’t think she could explain her interest. He must have lived a very long time ago, for only certain stars to know and fear him.

Instead she asked, “What is it that makes these beasts special? If I cannot be amplified, what makes you think these ones will work instead?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. She assumed he was lying, as he continued, “But they are spoken of in stories of the Sun Summoner. It was always my intention to give them to you, before I knew who you were.”

“And to achieve whatever it is you want, we have to kill it?”

“...Yes. Together.”

And why on earth do you think I’ll do that? “Why?” she asked, instead.

“Because that is how you harness an amplifier’s power, Alina. Surely Zoya must have told you.”

“She did, but it didn’t make any sense to me,” Alina admitted out loud. “That’s not how power works. It is shared, or it is given, willingly.”

“Once more, I am reminded that we live in very different worlds,” Aleksander replied, voice dry.

“No, we don’t,” Alina said. “What I’m saying is true. Just look at the stars - there would be no life on this earth if the sun didn’t shed her light, and that is the gift she gave you. No one took it from her. Theft is not how creation happens. Oh, certainly, you can steal power, and you can wrestle it out of people’s grasp, or loot it from their lifeless body. But to do so leaves a wound. A scar. Or, even worse, a void, that will soon hunger to be filled. I mean, just look at the Volcra. Surely you know that from the Fol -”

She stopped herself, as Aleksander gave her a sharp look.

“All I know,” Alina said, hastily restarting her sentence, “is that all power comes with a cost. If that burden is not shared, or shouldered by the one who willingly gifts it, then there is only one person left with the debt to pay.”

Her words seemed to make Aleksander thoughtful. “So what if I choose to pay it? That debt?” he asked.

“Well, it depends,” Alina replied. “Maybe you suddenly become very selfless, and take on all the consequences of your actions. Or you might simply think you’re paying it. Very few people ever know the full sum they've exacted of the Making. How do we know what the true cost is, here? Are we asking the stag what is owed, first?”

He huffed, in what sounded slightly like a laugh. “No, Alina,” he said, “we are not ‘asking the stag first’.”

You fool, she thought. She suddenly felt much less bad about tricking him. She turned away from the conversation, and continued forward.

Seven steps in, it hit her.

The sickness. The skin-crawling heavy weight of it. The lead-heavy nausea in her stomach, and the pain in her chest. The sweat immediately limning her body, like she was trying to make herself slick enough to shed her mortal casing.

It had everything to do with her human form, and simultaneously nothing. It was like the way that she had jolted awake earlier - that moment between consciousness and darkness where nothing and no one was in control. Only this time it was like she was both star and mortal, and somewhere in between, somehow neither. What jarred was her, her very essence, her soul, her shine. For a dizzying moment, she thought she’d lose hold of her body there and then, like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis, only she didn’t know what would be left after.

She hadn’t even known that her form was mutable - much less, that it was fragile.

She was very, very proud that Aleksander didn’t notice. She stumbled with the weight of sudden strangeness, not quite pain but something equally unsettling, her entire mouth flooding with bile that she hastily swallowed. He braced her with a hand on her elbow, thinking she’d slid on the ice and snow, as she blinked away wavering, kaleidoscopic images from her vision, and forced herself to stay on her feet when all she wanted was to fall.

“Careful,” he murmured.

There is something very wrong, she wanted to say, but she didn’t think she was capable of speech. Had she lost it, along with her mortal body? But that was still with her, somehow. It took all her focus to stay upright, like a puppet with all its strings tangled in a knot.

“Moi sovernyi,” said one of the soldiers, suddenly appearing at Aleksander’s shoulder, “it’s been sighted. Ahead, north east.”

Aleksander’s hand on her tensed. Alina shook him off, and doggedly stepped forward another ten feet.

That was when the wailing started.

Her star-mind would’ve comprehended this sudden strange rupture of her consciousness, she was certain. But all that her mortal form got was an immediate migraine, as fear and alienation and utter abject misery assailed her, in her brain and her body and her centre. It pierced her deep, in her heart. It wasn’t quite a scream, but it might as well have been, the way it threatened to separate her from her very self, drag her under the depths of despair with it.

This time, Alina couldn’t hide it. She doubled over, clutched at her head with a gasp.

The voice that lanced through her was impossible to understand, at such a close proximity. It was just… noise, after so many months of silence.

She had thought she wanted to be able to hear people speak this way to her. But even her sisters’ voices, over their millions of lightyears of distance, had hurt her mortal brain after a few minutes. She had not spoken to another star so intimately, not since she fell.

And this star was one in pain.

Chapter Text

You. are. an. idiot.

As Aleksander walked silently through the snow, Alina crunching with every step at his side, there was no avoiding his own internal reprimand. This, he knew, was a mistake. With every step forward, he was sabotaging himself. There were no excuses. It defied logic, because logic was not the means by which it operated.

It had nothing to do with calculation, and everything to do with two weeks of sitting opposite her, never being able to touch. Two weeks of waiting for her apology, dreams of her acquiescence and surrender. And when that didn’t come, anticipation of other things: the knife in the back, the Cut forming above his head as he slept, the smudge of a solar flare in his periphery as he was wiped clean from the earth. An empty carriage, an empty tent, a chase through the woodland in which he caught her and took her down in a delicious tangle of limbs-

Two weeks of Alina occupying his every waking thought, becoming the uncontrolled variable in every plan... and him being of no consequence to her whatsoever. Somehow, it had gotten under his skin.

He wanted to win this war, that had been his battleground for centuries and generations. But he wanted her with him. And apparently, it wasn’t enough if it wasn’t by choice.

He was used to getting what he wanted.

But you usually get it by being clever, don’t you? Aleksander thought, scathingly. Not by being a cunt-struck twat.

If nothing and no one was purging her from his system, then possession was the only way forward. Only he wasn’t even doing that, but some bastardised, collaborative version that was hours old, ill-conceived, and bound to go wrong. It was the kind of plan that Alina would come up with.

But at least I can touch her again, he thought, his hand on her arm. That sent another cascade of mockery through his own brain - the Black Heretic, reduced to pining after contact through three layers of clothing after not a single night left alone. Meanwhile, apparently Alina was perfectly content getting railed in her own brain by handsome imaginary men.

“Moi sovernyi,” said one of the soldiers, moving through the snow to attend him and breaking through Aleksander’s chastisement, “it’s been sighted. Ahead, north east.”

Aleksander’s heart hammered, as he gave a curt nod. This was the moment, then, he supposed, as Alina shook free of his grip, and started forward. Either she was about to betray him, or he was about to betray her. Or somehow, they’d reach that idyllic, utopian equilibrium she always spoke of in fairy-tale simplicity.

Then, suddenly, she stumbled, and cried out.

“Alina?” he said, as she fell to her knees in the snow clutching her head with a gasp. He came to her side, but didn’t dare stoop, in case it was a ploy. “What is it?”

All the guards paused. Zoya glanced over at them both, looking conflicted.

“There’s something - I can’t -” Alina’s fractured sentence tapered off into a moan, sounding pained. “It’s too much-”

“...What’s too much?”

“It can’t be. It’s impossible. But… Oh no,” she whispered, to herself, as if she didn’t even hear him. “Oh no. Oh no no no no no-”

And then, she bolted.

There was a spray of snow behind her, as she hiked up her skirts and ran for the treeline without even a glance over her shoulder. For a second, Aleksander watched her, incredulous, and that meant the oprichniki did the same.

There’s no way, he thought. That couldn’t have been her plan, all this time. Some poorly acted fainting ruse in a field, and then a simple race to the finish line.

Then, Zoya reached out for her, and Alina dodged, before turning invisible. It didn’t matter, of course, when she tracked ankle-deep tracks through the snow. But the act of subterfuge was enough to send Aleksander reeling and cause another stab of pain deep in his chest.

So. Betrayal it was, then. From her.

And he hadn’t lied, had he? When he said it was, in some ways, a relief.

At least this was something he understood.

“No gunfire, only summoners. We cannot startle the beast. Ivan!” he barked.

All his contingencies slotted into place, and then he was running as well. The leak of pale light across the horizon heralded the coming of the Stag’s habitual twilight, as he sprinted. From Alina’s tracks, she’d already made it to the tree line. There was a cry, a stumble without source, but then the tracks resumed again, and started veering east.

“I can’t get at her,” Ivan said, now at his side. His voice was strained, and incredulous. “I had her, for a second. And then she wasn’t - her body just - it’s like it vanished.”

Aleksander cursed, and then summoned the shadows. He stepped through them, merged with the silhouette of the larger pines ahead, and dragged himself out into the forest. There was sound to his right, as the absence that was Alina barrelled past him twenty feet away.

I have to get there first.

He parted the shadows again - another doorway, a hundred feet forward, in the shaded side of another of the bows. He travelled that way through the tree canopy, until it started to thin and there were no more shortcuts, leaving him once more on foot.

And then there were no trees, and more watery daylight like a haze across the landscape, and the-

The stag.

It was there, in front of him, in the clearing. The silhouette was surreal at first, mirroring the way a rush of vertigo played with a person’s perspective, as Aleksander took in its lone figure and its strange, impossible antlers, that shone like they were sculpted out of opal. Alone, but not grazing. In fact, it was motionless, poised as if it already knew it was prey, head alert and turned in his direction. The moment it sighted him, Aleksander’s heart sunk, thinking it would baulk and run. But it didn’t move. Its ear twitched, and it turned its head to the right. Like the movement it was tracking was not him, but someone else-

Aleksander knew exactly who the stag was waiting for. Hands trembling, he summoned the Cut, and all he tried to think was how convenient it was that it now faced away from him, neck outstretched.

He let the arc of shadow fly at the beast.

“No! Stop!” came an anguished cry. As-

As a shimmering constellation of light in a rough suggestion of a scythe cut his own Summoned shadow to tatters mid-air. Both faded on the breeze like smoke.

As Alina barrelled into the clearing from the west, suddenly visible once again, with tears in rivulets down her cheeks.

She was glowing. She didn’t seem to notice.

“Please. Don’t!”

Ignoring her, Aleksander summoned the Cut again. Once more it was shredded mid-flight. And the next. Alina's third countering shard of brightness didn’t even require hand gestures, exactly as she had promised. That meant her casting time was always going to be less than his, would always beat his. Her ephemeral, hastily summoned light smote his power, honed for centuries, mere seconds after leaving his hands.

And that was bad, because it meant that he had to hurt more of than just the Stag-

He threw one more attack at Morozova’s beast, to give her a chance. But it was foiled in the same breath as before, with a few sparks of light on the breeze.

“Please stop, for a second!” Alina cried, “I need to - you don’t understand!”

“Oh, don’t worry Alina,” he said, with a callous and cold laugh that seemed to come from somewhere elsewhere than him, “I understand perfectly.”

“No,” she said through gritted teeth, as the guards and the other Grisha began to emerge from the trees, “you literally fucking don’t-”

One of his guards tried to pounce on her from behind. Aleksander winced, on his behalf. One moment, she was grappled in the man’s arms, the next she was a pillar of flame, and he fell away, screaming.

Taking in the number of people that approached, Alina gave what he thought might be an apologetic glance in his direction, and then darted in towards the beast. Aleksander tried to capture her with her own shadow. She cursed as it bound her legs and caused her to stumble, but there was a flash, along the lines of her silhouette, like the embers of a fire when someone fanned them with breath. Suddenly, she didn’t have a shadow anymore. They’d been burned away, exactly as she had performed at the Winter Fete.

Aleksander used her distraction to fling another Cut at the somehow still motionless animal, but still she tore it from the air. For a second, he thought that had earned him her first grunt of effort, but all she was doing was moving her leg through knee deep snow.

Another oprichniki tried to tackle her - that had been the established protocol, given her distaste for violence - but by this point she was wreathed in white fire. She flung out a hand and a wave of it came off her, in a glaring ghostly apparition. The woman screeched as her clothes smoked, immediately downing herself in the snow to cool her smouldering body. Aleksander tried to Cut the Stag again - Alina shouted, “stop that” and the shadow just evaporated on the breeze with a roiling blast of heat, as if it had never existed.

After the first of them fell, the other Grisha were waiting for their orders. Aleksander wondered if there was any way even she could fight off twenty of them. All he needed was a momentary distraction - enough to get him the beast. “Whoever kills the creature, the spoils go to me,” he ordered. “Fire!”

“No!” Alina shrieked, voice breaking.

And then she flung herself between him and the Stag, arms outstretched.

There was a flash of light, so bright that for a second Aleksander was blinded, and for a few seconds after that, as well. From the sounds and gasps around him, everyone else had also been affected. Another pained moan from his left, from the man who’d fallen first. Panic set in, as he blinked rapidly, trying to return anything except blistering after images, and he only took his first true breath when the outline of trees began to seep in from the corners of his vision.

He felt a flash of heat. He heard someone scream.

Ten seconds later, he could see again. But still, he was blinded, by a dome of pure, white light that encased Alina and the stag in the centre of clearing. He placed his hands to his face to shield his eyes. The heat that radiated off the structure was like a furnace. All the snow around them was melting, to reveal insipid, mossy grass. To his left, one of his heartrenders was down, clutching both hands to his chest. When Aleksander blinked through the haze, he realised that the man’s hands were scalded, covered in burns.

And one of them, the hand he used to control heartrate, was missing fingers. Sliced off, and cauterised, lying in the dirt. He’d never be able to stop someone’s heart ever again.

“Please, please, please don’t hurt her,” Alina was chanting, sobbing. She wasn’t touching the beast - the dome was of her own creation, churning out of her and eddying with currents of light. Her own silhouette was searing. Like she truly was some saint, there to purge the world of its sin and reduce it to ashes in holy fire.

But now light also poured bright from her eyes, emanating beacon-like from her face until no pupil was visible. That was what tipped her over the edge, into inhuman.

“Ivan, Fedyor,” Alina said. “If either of you try to stop her heart, I’ll do it to you as well, I swear on all my sisters.”

Ivan and Fedyor were both still reeling from the blast, but Fedyor glanced at him, blinking dazed as Aleksander was. Aleksander shook his head, confirming they stand down. If they couldn’t down Alina like Ivan said, then killing the Stag now would simply give her the antlers. And he wasn’t about to lose all his Corporalniks in one fell swoop.

“We should-” he groaned, doubling over.

He wondered why he felt so ill, and then glanced around, realising there were no shadows. Not on the ground, not on the disappearing snow, not on the people around him, not even at their backs carved away by the dome’s bright radiance. All the trees were bleached to impossible detail, lifeless like they were under a microscope.

No darkness. Just light. He didn’t dare try to summon, because he had the horrible feeling he wouldn’t be able to.

“Shhh, it’s ok, you’re ok,” Alina said, and for a foolish, disoriented second Aleksander thought she was speaking to him. But as he squinted through the walls of her self-made shelter, he realised she’d turned her back on him, and was at the stag’s side, laying a soothing hand down against the beast’s white fur. “You’ll be ok, I’ll make it all alright. Oh, cousin, kin, I’m sorry, I’m so so so sorry-”

Her voice tapered into a quiet whisper, muttered into the beast’s shoulder as she pressed her cheek into its body.

Aleksander tried to step closer, though it made him feel strange. “Alina-”

“Hush now, please, you’re hurting me,” Alina said. “Can you… can you speak?”

She let out a shudder, and a cry, knees buckling against the stag’s side. He watched her fist handfuls of its fur to stay upright. Even so, the dome did not waver.

“Oh, I’m so, so sorry, I’m so sorry,” she was babbling. “I’m here. I’m right here with you, I feel it, I feel it, I do. I’m sorry. I’ll share it, I’ll sing it, I’ll make him pay. I’m sorry. But I cannot talk that way, not right now, not without-”

“Alina-”

“Is this better?” she said, and Aleksander stopped once more in his tracks, as a version of Ravkan he’d never thought he'd hear dropped out of her mouth. “Cousin, what is your name?”

At first, he thought it familiar because it was the dialect he had been born into. But he realised that was wrong as well. He understood it, but could not speak it. He knew it but he did not know it… because, he realised, he’d only ever seen it written down. In…

In his grandfather’s journal.

There was a pause, as Alina listened, and Aleksander tried to reorient himself. “You do not remember your name?” Alina whispered, bereft. “Would you like one, darling one? I can give you one, or if we make it till nightfall, I can ask? See who knows you?”

Another pause.

“No. No, cousin. If you do not wish to make it until nightfall, you do not have to.” Voice thick with tears. “This I swear.”

She ran another hand down the creature’s body, made a soothing sound that was half the hum you would make to a pet, half something else. Like a song, or a musical note, that Aleksander did not hear so much as felt, like a kick in the sternum.

“Alina-” he said for the third time.

“You,” she said, voice suddenly switching to venomous, head snapping to him and signalling that this time, the vitriol was directed at him. “Will shut your mouth. Give me, give her, the decency of a moment to ourselves. Do not meddle in my people’s affairs, not after months of denying our existence. And you say I have no decorum.”

Her eyes still scorched bright, pinning him in place. The tears down her cheeks shone like molten gold. Aleksander found himself standing there, mouth open, in front of his elite unit of troops, thoroughly unable to speak.

Alina shuddered, again from pain, turned back to the stag. “No, cousin, darling, no. He won’t hurt you, I promise, no one else will hurt you. I won’t let them.” She let out a small sob, “I know, I know. I feel it, I share it, I carry it and you are alone no longer. Will you tell me your story, cousin? So that the burden is shared amongst kin? So I might stop it, so that no one else feels what it is you feel? So that you are never forgotten? So that it never happens again?”

The stag let out a low, bleating moan, that ended in a pained note in its register. It hunkered down on its haunches, until it was sat awkwardly in the fast vanishing snow. Alina soothed it again, kneeling and then seated by its side. She placed her head on its shoulder. At this prolonged contact, the stag began to glow with that same, ethereal white light as well. All the while, the dome around them churned, renewing itself with their combined power.

Outside, a few panicked whispers. Someone tried to touch the dome, they hissed in pain. Someone moved to the right, and then cried out. When Aleksander glanced over, he saw that one of his squallers, the kind who controlled the air currents and likely had try to do so behind the barrier, was now bound in light. After a few seconds, they fell, hands fisted against their eyes with a sob but otherwise unharmed - at least, it seemed that way, until they continued to rub at their face, breathing strained with panic. Zoya came down to their side as they reached out blindly. Her own face was tight and worried as she watched Alina in the dome.

Feeling him watch her, Zoya turned and met Aleksander’s eyes. There was desperation there, a clear and beseeching what now?

But Aleksander didn’t know. He didn’t know what Alina was doing. He didn’t know why she hadn’t killed the Stag. He didn’t know why she didn’t need it to blind them all.

So, silence reigned, and he watched her through the haze of her own light as she stroked the Stag’s fur, and tears silently dripped down her cheeks. Glowing brighter and brighter, until it hurt to look at her.

Yet still, he persisted in doing so. The moment stretched out - this strange, foreign, and incomprehensible moment. Aleksander felt like he was intruding, exactly as she had accused. As if he was trespassing on some secret meeting shared between friends, between family, between lovers-

It’s just a beast, he thought. But that felt much the same as what Alina is just mad had come to mean, these days, in his mind. Like a limited, and thoroughly inadequate hypothesis. How were they communing with each other? What where they saying? And it wasn't impossible, was it? Morozova’s stag was a creature of legend, and of unidentified magnitude. It likely had sentience. It certainly had power.

Maybe it was- maybe it was a -

“There are others?” Alina whispered, horrified. “He took your siblings?”

The Stag let out a snort, a low whine. Alina hugged its neck tighter. Aleksander thought back to the way she spoke of her sisters.

“I’m sorry,” she said, and cried harder. “I’m so sorry.”

Many times, she was racked with pain. Each time, her arms looped around the Stag’s neck clung on tighter, sobbing into its fur when it became too much. Even so, she never let go.

Each time someone tried to breach the dome, they fell. She never looked up.

And Aleksander… just stood there.

It couldn’t be true.

But… what else was there? It wasn’t like he’d taught her anything he saw in front of him now.

At one point, Zoya shook him, from his left. He hadn’t even noticed she was there. “Do something,” she hissed.

Aleksander shook her off without a word. He tried to make it look commanding. Not like he didn’t know what to do. It took everything he had simply not to look away, until he too was blinking away tears from her glare.

“You’ve been in so much pain,” Alina murmured, finally, as the dawn light was firmly risen and the clearing was bright with the oncoming day. “You’ve been so brave. I’ve barely been able to live on my own, these few short months, but you-”

Another small pause.

“Yes,” Alina said. “I know. I promise.”

Then: “If that is what you want, cousin most loved.”

Her voice was tired. It was at total odds with her figure, still aflame. And yet, even with her exhaustion, she didn’t sound entirely human. She’d clearly cried herself out, but her hoarse, hollow voice and that strange bass note thrumming underneath it made Aleksander know that her emotions were dull, deadened, and far away. The Grisha all shifted in the snow, readying themselves, as she got unsteadily to her feet. She moved with fatigue. Her limbs were leaden. Still the dome did not waver.

“You are my cousin. You are my kin. I’m sorry we ever forgot you. I’m sorry we ever left you. You are loved. I will carry your story in my head, and your song in my heart, and when I shine, I will shine for you as I do my very own sisters,” she said, in that strange, ancient dialect. “You will know the sky again, through me.”

“What little justice is left,” she intoned, “will be done. This I swear.”

Then her hands moved, and Aleksander waited for it to happen. He waited for her to kill the Stag.

But she didn’t.

Instead, Alina placed both her hands either side of its head, beneath its strange, impossible antlers. She bent down, and she kissed the beast’s forehead, on the crest where they met.

There was a moment of silence that Aleksander would remember for the rest of his life. Alina stroked a hand down the stag’s cheek, and said, in simple Ravkan, “you can rest, now. I free you from your bonds.”

Then, the clearing exploded.

Everyone was blown back, as another flash of white hot, silvery light hit them all hard enough to burn. It ran through the clearing like a powder keg. It threw him back, flung him off his feet, left him winded and gasping with ribs bruised. The person next to him tumbled over themselves like a ragdoll, or at least, he saw their form fly further before once again he was blind, ears ringing, face scorched like a day spent in the sun. He was on his back in the dirt. The corona of light faded, spots dancing across the clouded sky that pinwheeled above, and he was amazed to find that somehow he was still alive. How had she not killed him? Why?

He heard some trees groan, and fall.

Aleksander sat up, clutching his temple. His hand came away bloody. All around him, the Grisha were getting to their feet again, trembling. A couple didn’t get up. The dome was still there, but there was now only one figure inside it. Aleksander blinked, incredulous, as slowly the wall of light fell away. Inside it was a single tear-stained, bedraggled Alina, still smoking at the edges with her bright aura. And no stag whatsoever.

No stag. No corpse. No collar.

There was nothing left to show of his final, desperate plan. Had she already claimed the power of the amplifier for herself?

But that didn’t make sense - not in tandem with her words, and not when there was nothing there in the dirt to show for it. No blood on the grass, no trophy wrought of bone. Nothing, except a few motes of starlight, that clung to Alina’s shoulder. With a small, choked sob, she brushed at them, and then, like the seeds of a dandelion, they floated up on the breeze, and far into the sky.

“I guess this is my purpose,” she whispered quietly. Her eyes dimmed back to a human register. She looked lost, and alone.

She’s a star, Aleksander realised.

For there was literally nothing else she could be.

Would that he’d had even a second to catch his breath.

As it was, he was still sprawled on his arse as Alina strode directly over to him. Her eyes were dark once more, but she was still glowing at her edges, and the air around him heated with her proximity. Next to him, Ivan raised his trembling hands in an attempt to execute her. He’d probably have lost his fingers as well, or maybe simply be cut neatly in half, if Aleksander had not had the presence of mind to swat his form out of the air with his own hand, directly through the centre of the casting.

“Ilya Morozova,” said Alina, in a dull, rage-filled voice that transcended even that of the Winter Fete. “I’m right in thinking he’s dead, yes? He’s not hidden away, somewhere? He’s not like you.”

“Definitely dead,” Aleksander replied, choosing to elide the fact that yes, his grandfather was very much like him, in some ways. “Very, very dead. Martyred, in fact.”

“...Do you know,” she said. “If it hurt?”

“He drowned,” Aleksander said, staring up at her with very real fear. “Wrapped in iron chains. I can’t imagine it was pleasant.”

“Good,” she replied, with feeling.

And then, she started walking right past him.

“I - wait!” Aleksander scrambled to his feet, slipping over the sludge of melting ice and mud. He didn’t even have the thought to be embarrassed by it. Absolutely no one was composed. Zoya was also scrabbling for purchase, to get her feet on the ground to follow after Alina. Two of his fucking oprinichiki were fucking crossing themselves. Whispers, as they left the field:

“What did she do? Where did it go?”

“She spoke in tongues.”

“The General couldn’t even move, he was rooted to the spot.”

“The beast knew her. Did you see the way it glowed?”

“My fucking hand!”

Aleksander ignored them all, pursuing only Alina as she began to move towards the trees. “Alina - you can’t just - what the fuck was that?”

“Tell me, Aleksander,” she flung over her shoulder, “what on earth do you care?”

“Of course I care! You just decimated the unit, you can’t just… walk away!”

“I think I can. Do you have anything else to offer me?”

“Offer you? Do you think we’re bargaining? Did you just - did you take the Stag?!”

“You said there were three beasts, didn’t you?” she didn’t even bother turning around, neither of them striving for elegance as he tripped through the snow after her. “Do you know where the other two are?”

Aleksander couldn’t help it: he laughed, wild and the closest he'd probably ever got to hysterical. “Why the fuck would I tell you? Either you have claimed this one for yourself, or you just destroyed it entirely!”

She wheeled on him, he collided with her. It was, of all things, blisteringly hot. A flash of light rather than hands rebuffed him, pushing him back several steps.

“What was there to claim? Tell me, Darkling, who wants ownership of a mutilated corpse? You? Do you even have any idea what that was? I destroyed an abomination,” she seethed, swiping at her cheeks as new tears formed. “Morozova is lucky he is dead. Otherwise, I would drag him to the cold, airless depths of the night with me, and I’d watch him suffocate. With his last breath, I would carve his heart from his chest. And then we’d hold his corpse on trial, for the crimes he has committed against my people.”

“Alina-”

“You will tell me everything you know about the other two… the other two cruelties this monster inflicted on the world,” she said, jabbing a hand into his chest.

“Alina,” he said for the last, stupid, time, and then, with an amount of self preservation that would’ve made her proud, stepped in, and grabbed said hand. It burned in his grasp. It near blistered. She was impossible. “Alina, I cannot help you, if you do not explain. Take a breath, please. Tell me what is wrong. Tell me what the fuck just happened. I have gotten my men to stand down -"

"Like you had a choice," she spat.

Aleksander… persevered. He locked his other hand over hers, ignoring the pain. "I did not fight you, no. I'm not stupid, certainly, but knowing me, you also cannot say that I'm not being generous. You’ve irreparably injured several of my people. You’ve just stolen something from me, and made me watch you do it. And yet I raise no hand against you. No more threats, not until I know why you are hurting, and what heralds this… this anger.”

Alina looked at their clasped hands, then up at him. “Maybe it’s you I’m angry at,” she accused, “she’s not a thing I could claim or steal from you. She’s not a thing at all. And yet you were going to kill her like she was meat.”

“Yes, I was,” Aleksander admitted. “So, why don’t you help me understand?”

"For the same reason I'd never bang my head repeatedly into a wall. It’s not like you will believe me.”

“Try me, Alina,” he said, tightening his hold. He searched for words, and found her own: “Isn’t it better to tell me, so that… so that it is not forgotten? That which is… shared amongst kin?”

Alina blinked twice, and then let out an incredulous, teary laugh. It shook her entire body.

“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she spat. “Now you see me? Now you understand? Now?! That’s what it took?!”

“Yes well, miracles will get you a great deal of credulity,” he muttered to the ground, feeling a little like a scolded school child.

She shook her hands free of his grasp (the relief from the pain was immediate), but he was pleased to see she stayed put, and didn’t run. “I suppose I’m meant to be grateful? That you now have your ‘evidence’?” she said, bitterly. “Stars. What you just witnessed wasn’t a miracle. It was mercy.”

She sounded so similar to the kind of immortality he understood, then, that he couldn’t keep the fervent fascination out of his voice when he asked, “how? How was it mercy? What did you do?"

“I set her free.”

“Who? The Stag?”

Alina levelled an unimpressed glare at him, and Aleksander couldn’t blame her. He’d used that look himself, many times before, when people were asking stupid questions, and being slow, unable to keep up with the very obvious even when it was laid out in front of them. He already knew who Alina had set free - he just didn’t want to be the one who said it. To think it even, felt absurd.

“The prisoner inside the Stag’s body,” she told him, “the soul that gave it its power.”

“The… star,” he said, and still it felt foolish.

“Yes. The star.”

“But-” he hated himself, as he blundered forward, “but it wasn’t a person-”

“No, she wasn’t,” Alina corrected him, coldly. “That wasn’t a form she chose. We have to choose, you understand. Existing on this plane, in your dimensions… it takes a lot of wilful sacrifice. We come down here, and we do what is needed of us to pay that cost to the Making. If we don’t… well. Then all that’s left is pain.”

Aleksander floundered in place.

“Do you understand yet, Aleksander?” Alina said tiredly, “Do you need me to spell it out for you? There’s still time to call me a lunatic and let me go on my way.”

“You… didn’t claim its power for yourself?”

“No, Aleksander, I didn’t steal her life force and bleed her dry. I thought she deserved that act of kindness, at least. So sorry to disappoint.”

“But… but how? What did it - what did she tell you? What on earth just happened? What is she?!”

What are you?

“Her story? It is a story of three,” Alina said, voice still hollow and detached. “Three stars. Three of my people, who fell to earth, as we are wont to do. Before I was born - before either of us were in this world. They fell together. They were a family, and the youngest among them, she didn’t want to be alone.”

“But they met a man,” she said. She looked at him, through him, as she said it, the accusation unsaid and yet spearing him deep through the chest. “A handsome one. A kind one, they thought, with honeyed words. He had been searching for them, he said. He’d been looking for so long, following the tales of our exploits on his earth. That was his only difference from you, you understand - he had an… interest in my kind. He wanted to understand the essence of what we were - just for academic curiosity, for the sake of study, he said. ‘Perhaps we will work together’, he said, ‘perhaps we can help the world as one’. Sound familiar?”

Aleksander felt dread squirm deep in his stomach, but he didn’t try to interrupt her this time.

“So they followed Ilya Morozova to his hometown,” Alina continued, each word as sharp as a knife. “They thought him sincere. They trusted in him, and in his hospitality. He fed them. He bathed them. He clothed them. And then as he lay them down in their nice warm beds for the night, he cut out each of their hearts, still beating, still glowing, in their chests.”

Aleksander froze.

“He placed each of those hearts in a beast, to give them the power you coveted enough to come here for,” Alina continued bitterly, the new tears leaking slowly down each cheek, one by one. “I’m not going to tell you how, because you’d probably want to try it, wouldn’t you? But suffice to say, he didn’t even have the decency to kill them. Or maybe he just didn’t realise. Maybe he didn’t know the cost, and thought they were dead under the knife. Maybe he thought you could preserve the power of the body, without the person, the shine without the star. But that isn’t how we work, Aleksander. My shine doesn’t come from my blood, or my bone, or my sinew, what gestures it makes and what words it utters. It comes from me. Me, us, who I am, what I feel, what I think-”

She looked up at him, “she was the eldest. She was first. If I am feeling generous, perhaps she was the messiest, although I do not think you mortals learn the lessons that come from inflicting harm on others very quickly. She was never dead. She was trapped in the form you’ve just seen before you, forever prey, forever stewed in the fear of that moment, that final moment of agony when Morozova corrupted her and deprived her of her very selfhood. I am sickened.”

Alina looked so world weary, and tired, as she wiped her sleeve across her face. Her light fluttered a little, but her edges still radiated heat as all her anger, unspoken, burned through her body.

“But you’re right, Aleksander,” she said quietly, “I stole something from you, and made you watch. How horrible for you. Instead, I should’ve just stood back and let you slaughter her vessel. Another brutal death for her - without kindness, without decency. And then I would let you pick through the spoils, and pluck out that heart once more, though you would not have recognised it for what it was. What were you going to do with it, I wonder?”

Make you wear it around your neck like a trophy and hope it cowed you, he thought, dizzyingly, fighting rising bile as his life very literally flashed before his eyes. What a crime to commit. It would have been as good as signing his own death warrant.

Saints, such a colossal mistake, in ways that that other version of him never would have understood. As it was, it made this version of him shudder in a deep, disgusted way. Dressing Alina up in the bodies and bones of her dead relatives. Even if you took morality out of the equation, it was a stupid, messy, mindless act of cruelty. He would’ve sealed his fate ten times over. He would’ve deserved any death she dealt him, in repayment for such an atrocity.

“I’m - sorry,” he rasped, hoarsely. “I didn’t- I didn’t know-”

“No, neither did I,” Alina muttered. “My sisters told me I should come here with you, but I never thought this would be what I would find. The cruelty of your people truly never fails to amaze.”

Aleksander wanted to deny it. But Morozova was his people, wasn’t he? His ancestor, his literal bloodline, now flowing through his veins. For the first time in a few centuries, since he’d numbed himself to the horrors of the Unsea, he felt vaguely tainted. It felt almost unfair, that the crime that bought that feeling back wasn’t even his own. Yet the familiarity she threw at his feet, and the knowledge of what he’d been about to do-

“You must know,” he said, “if I’d known, if I’d understood… and I would never - not, never to you-”

“Wouldn’t you?” Alina replied, cold as ice. “I’m not so sure. You don’t seem to spare any of those families in the Fold much thought, and I’m sure I too could be explained away, in time. It’s not like I’ve been lying to you, Aleksander. You just never listened to what I had to say. Maybe Morozova just thought he’d taken home three mad girls, too, who could do impossible things-”

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice breaking, “Alina, I’m sorry.”

“Why? Shouldn’t you be happy? I have found my true purpose, and it will take me far away from the Fold. You can go back there now, and murder as many people as you like.” she continued, unrelenting, “And you’ve been proven right, haven’t you? It seems my estimation of this world is foolish. What good have I to hope for, in a place such as this?”

Watching her, Aleksander sickened further, a deep, visceral twist in his gut. For a second, he thought it was at the thought of losing, because it was the first moment he knew he couldn’t do anything with the Fold. She was too powerful, and the amplifiers were something strange and flawed, that he could never hope to master.

Then, he thought it was at the thought of losing her, because there was no hope of making her stay.

But then, as she bunched her hands at her sides, grasping at nothing and looking so alone, he realised exactly why he felt so full of loss, and dread. At this point, Alina was shaking, even as her glow remained strong, making him fear that it would soon fall loose of her control. He didn’t feel sick at the idea of losing her, it was at watching her lose herself. It was like he was looking at his past, the younger version of himself, in the valley that would in seconds become the Unsea. Panicking and floundering in the throes of pointless, preventable, merciless grief, Luda’s blood still fresh on his hands and in his memory. She was even wearing black, the image he’d crafted for her, and her expression was the same as his must've been: hollowed out and hopeless.

And somehow, after all her months of blind illiteracy, this was the moment Alina read him like a book.

“Tell me, Darkling, is it my turn to snap?” she taunted him with unflinching cruelty. “Do I get to have my own little genocide, now? Do you think it will be justified?”

“Alina,” he said, quietly. “Who, exactly, would you kill?”

“Anyone! Everyone! You! Go ahead,” more tears, and these ones weren’t glowing, but they were the ones that hurt him most. “Go on and try to deny me. Are you finally afraid? Do you finally understand? I could end you all. What are you going to do to-”

Well, fuck. thought Aleksander Morozova, as he reached out, and pulled a burning star into an embrace that was probably going to get him killed.

Alina came to him with a wordless shriek, and Saints did it fucking burn, those first few seconds, as she fought his hold blindly. The struggling and the blows hammered against his chest, he could handle - she truly had never learned how to fight. It was the light that scorched him. He pulled as many of his shadows to him as he could to shield himself from the heat, but as always she shredded through them like they were paper, until all that was left was kefta and determination.

“How fucking dare you,” she seethed mindlessly into his shoulder.

“Yes, well, unfortunately there’s only so many immortals in the area at this given point in time,” he whispered into her hair, stroking a line down her back and then wincing as his skin started to peel.

“Let me go!”

“So that you can hurt people? Would you like that?”

“Oh, like you fucking care!”

“I don’t,” he muttered, “but you do. And you will, when this pain is past. So just give it to me, Alina. You know I can take it.”

Actually, he really wasn’t sure he could. But he would admit that the sentence was one of his better lines, and that he was very proud to have conjured it through the black spots clouding his vision.

And sure enough, the next incoherent scream of fury tapered off into a sob, and then Alina was crying again. The dam burst, and the rage that was so antithetical to the person she was slipped free from her grasp, cast downstream to make way for the oncoming torrent of sadness. It took another minute or so for the light to die, Aleksander gritting his teeth to remain silent against the heat and agony, to not let her know how much it hurt.

Then, blissful respite. He held her closer, now that her proximity didn’t scorch like a brand. She was just a girl, once more. Her body became heavy, and her hands stilled on his chest, and she cried wordlessly while he tried to think of soothing things to say into her hair. Mostly, he just ended up shushing her each time a shudder seemed like it threatened to break her apart. He managed to sneak in a few more “I’m sorry” and “I know”s, as his own body started to feel the toll of his foolish and frankly suicidal actions.

When she was still, and he knew for certain he wasn’t going to collapse in front of her, he gently rested his hands over hers where they were fisted in his mantle, stroked her knuckles, and said, “I’ll tell you everything I know about the other amplifiers. It isn’t much.”

She looked up at him through sticky, swollen eyes. “I’ll be able to find them,” she said, the words hoarse and exhausted. “Once I’m close. I can sense them. The way she screamed at me when I got near… she couldn’t help it, she was just in so much pain, and so alone-”

I’ll go with you, he opened his mouth to stay.

“I’ll go with you,” said Zoya Nazyalensky.

Aleksander startled, looking up, and then realised to his own fucking mortification that not only had this idiotic, insipid hug nearly killed him, but it had been spectated. Zoya was on his heels for the entire chase, he remembered, she’d just fallen into the background of his own mind very quickly. That meant she’d been witness to the entire conversation. Ivan and Fedyor had joined her at some point, watching them both - perhaps they were the reason he was still standing. Looking down at his blistered and weeping hands, it seemed incredibly likely. Others were watching, wide eyed and whispering amongst themselves. Had he been younger, he thought he would’ve blushed.

But Alina, of course, didn’t care, or simply didn't fucking notice. “You will?” she sniffled, moving back from his hug to look at Zoya, and breaking whatever moment he hoped to maintain as his hands fell limply to his sides. “But… I thought you were mad at me?”

Saints, let this death come swift. thought Aleksander.

“After what I just witnessed, either you’re a star, or you’re a saint like we’ve been promised,” replied Zoya, in her stoic, pragmatic way, herself ignoring any suggestion of emotion in public, which Aleksander frankly thought was admirable in his current state of affairs. “I’m not going to pass up the chance to travel with you as you make history. And if your… kin have been wronged, as you say, then the cause is also just.”

“You’d really come with me?”

“If… um. He will let me.”

“...Will you let her?” Alina hissed, looking sheepishly at Aleksander. Suddenly contrite, like she wasn’t some impossible creature and she hadn’t just fucking annihilated him. As if the intricacies of rank and file mattered to him, in this moment, when he was fighting not to pass out. “Sorry, I know she’s one of yours, but-”

“Whatever resources you want for this mission will be at your disposal,” he said, needless formality dripping from every word as he forced himself to straighten. “Because I will be accompanying you.”

“What?” Alina said. “No, you won’t.”

“Yes, I will.”

“No, you won-”

“Alina,” he said, firmly. The world swayed slightly, but no one else noticed, so he ploughed on. “What Nazyalensky says is right. You’ve just uncovered something that vastly changes Grisha history, alongside our fundamental understanding of the world. Do you think I’m going to… what? Stay at home?”

“But,” Alina floundered, “but you have your… your plans. Your war, the one that Lantsov is running. The Fold-”

The Fold, that he had created and controlled. The Fold that he still couldn’t use. The Fold he had no hope of using, he realised now. Because the collar was lost, destroyed - and Saints help him, he wasn’t even sure that knowing it made him sad.

All his plans, gone. Ended. No - postponed. Until he got given an actual, true Sun Summoner. Or maybe, until the next star fell- A thought which, for some reason, made him feel very, very ill, all of a sudden.

Maybe if you help her, you’d make her your ally, and she’ll commit to your plan, said a voice in the back of his head. But it was a very small voice, drowned out by all his screaming nerve endings, and he could tell it was a snivelling coward and a liar, conjuring an excuse to justify what he truly wanted, even in the confines of his own brain.

The woman in front of him had no reason to ever ally herself with him, even as she looked up at him expectantly. And yet -

“The Fold can wait,” said the Black Heretic - a man who, for the first time in years, had no idea what came next.

Chapter Text

Next, the Rusalye.

And Alina, finally getting her wish.

“No carriage for me, today,” she announced, as she came down to breakfast from her night in a very pleasant inn. “I want to see the sea first hand. I want to taste it.”

The Black General and Zoya didn’t bother to deign respond - this, she knew, was because neither of them had yet had their morning coffee. They just gave her sour looks over their plates, then returned to their meals in silence.

However, several other parts of the inn moved rapidly into motion, as if she’d given an order, rather than just an update on her day. The Grisha that had chosen and been selected to follow her stumbled over themselves, as did many of the locals. Food was given to her in trembling hands, and Alina pretended not to notice, though she did so badly. She actually made a sympathetic noise, which made the innkeeper’s son’s hands tremble further, so badly that the silverware made an unpleasant sound against the plate.

This was what being a Saint meant, it seemed. Word of the Stag had not only travelled fast - it had blossomed and bloomed in directions she never could have anticipated. Like rot. Aleksander had sent a large contingent of his men back to Os Alta to keep his own machinations in check, and though Alina assumed he must have sworn them to secrecy, he must also have accidentally picked all of the most talkative.

For every story that told of her releasing the mythic stag of Morozova from its eternal servitude to unknown powers, touching the Making at the very Heart of the World itself, there was another of her wiping out ten battalions of Heartrenders and wearing their fingers as a necklace. Most people were choosing to believe the former, if only for there own comfort. Alina was careful to be extra nice to Fedyor and Ivan whenever they were around her long enough for a conversation - which was admittedly, not much, anymore, not since they’d caught her in that in-between stage when the Star had been frantically tugging at her form and taking her a little out of her body, away from her mortal organs. She also kept speaking archaic Ravkan whenever the townsfolk started to look a little too nervous and like they doubted her nature... but that tended to just make them more nervous than before.

Those who had witnessed her interaction with her lost cousin had all deemed it something that couldn't be understood. For most, that was sainthood. For a select few, it was the evidence they needed to finally believe her own story of her origins. For others, not knowing was scary, and with that fear came power, exactly as Aleksander had promised.

The first night Alina had made her battalion of twenty - hers, apparently, though it was the Darkling’s word that made it so - stop outside a hotel, Aleksander had tensed up. He did that a lot, these days. After many months of him being near silent in her response to her effusive presence, it had taken her a while to realise he was now fighting not to speak.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I know I said any resource,” he said, “but the caravan to the Stag was already expensive. There’s no need to house us in buildings along the route-”

“I want a bed. And wine. I’m hoping I might… finally sleep,” she had replied honestly, for it was five days after she had freed her cousin from her cage. After the first night sitting in weeping vigil with her sisters out in the frigid snow as she told the story of Morozova’s Stag to her people (another interlude that had definitely added to much of the confusion surrounding her strange and foreign sainthood), she hadn’t slept for long any night. It was not long before the shared emotions and pain that lingered fresh in her memory had her jolting awake. The guilt that followed, stinging like an open wound, was what kept her from falling back into slumber, staring at her ceiling and reliving all the months she'd sat in the palace while her cousin was in agony.

“...I’m not being selfish, you understand!” she clarified to the Darkling, “everyone can have a bed, we’ll book out the whole place. I’m more than happy to share, for the sake of economy. I mean, you don’t have to be happy to share, I know you’ll want your own room, but-”

Aleksander had looked at her, and then nodded, silently. So she bought every room in the hotel, and she shared hers with her trusty bathroom break guard. And with Zoya, who had been very insistent on rooming with her, glaring at something or someone behind Alina’s head the whole time she was stating her case.

Thankfully, even with people doubled up, the General needn’t have worried about the expense. The next morning, when Alina asked him for coin and he gave it to her, the innkeeper had refused it.

“I’m a faithful servant of the Saints, my lady Sankta,” she’d said, putting Aleksander’s money back in her hands. “I’m not about to make you pay for my hospitality, I am a good and pious woman.”

“Oh, well,” Alina had said awkwardly, not sure how she felt about either of those sentences. “for the food, at least-”

But the woman had refused, and so it had gone in the weeks since then. It was another script Alina took a while to learn, and follow. By their third inn, Aleksander had simply rolled his eyes, as he handed her the coin they both knew would be handed back to her out of reverence and fear. “No tips hidden in the stables on the way out, this time,” he told her. “We don’t even know who’s taking them. While I’ve sent a deposit ahead for the ship, we’ll still need to pay their commission on arrival. This is rapidly becoming the most decadent excursion the Grisha have ever known.”

“Oh please,” Alina had huffed, “I’ve seen that bathtub you deem portable. Let’s not throw stones.”

Again he had studied her, and in that look she saw him see her for what she actually was… and back down. There were scars still healing on his hands, and he was a little afraid of her, as well.

Aleksander didn’t fight her on much, these days, instead silently waiting, and presumably biding his time. Alina, who was not one for forward planning, decided to take advantage of this apparent lenience while it lasted. He didn’t refuse her the horses that day, either. Alina was surprised to see that despite their earlier reticence at breakfast, he and Zoya even joined her. The day’s ride was tersely silent as a result, given that it was not the most comfortable of company. Alina could talk enough for all three of them, on a good day, but the upcoming encounter with the second sibling weighed heavy on her mind.

As did the first, still, if she was honest. Which she wasn’t, to anyone except her sisters at night, when sleep in her fancy bed eluded her, and she ended up drowsing on the windowsill, looking up at the night sky for community, and comfort.

In truth, her excitement for her first glimpse of the True Sea was such a blatant distraction even to herself, that she wondered if she would ever get a handle on lying. Alina also worried, for a second, that she had made a mistake. The landscape was beautiful, but it was much the same as what they had traversed every day, on their way to the True Sea. Maybe she’d gotten her calculations of distance wrong - and she’d forgotten how much riding hurt, after a while, once more fully couched in her mortal form.

Then, in the mid-afternoon as the sun started to dip towards the west, she felt it. The first cold breeze and, as Signy and Ulla and Maradi had promised, that touch of salt on her upper lip, fresh and stinging in her nostrils.

“Oh, my goodness,” she breathed, loud enough for Aleksander to cast a critical glance her way.

And then she dug her heels into her horse’s flanks, and rocketed forward, chasing down the promise of the ocean.

“Alina! For fuck’s sake!” came Zoya’s shout from behind her, before Aleksander hushed her. Then all the world fell away, as pounding hoof beats and Alina’s pounding heart filled her ears, to then be overtaken by something else - a far off roar, and a howling wind that crested the bank of the hill in front of her, in such a way to make her realise it was not a hill, but a cliff. She raised her arms to let it buffet her with a delighted laugh, then threw back her head and felt her hair cascade behind her in a banner. The horizon fell away, and she looked down on a glittering ocean, a small town in the curve of a bay.

Nothing could keep her from it. She barely even slowed to a trot as she followed the winding track down its meandering switchbacks on the cliffside, mesmerised by the dance of light and colour across the waves. The road once more became scattered with people, on the outskirts of the port town, but Alina was unable to look away.

When she nearly crashed into a merchant carriage coming the other way, her reins were suddenly in someone else’s hands, steering her out of its path. Alina glanced to her left to see Aleksander once again a silent presence at her side, a rueful and unidentifiable expression on his face.

“This way,” he said, gesturing not to the path that would lead them into town, but an unassuming dirt track that forked off to the right. “It will get you to the shore quicker. In the name of self preservation, if nothing else.”

She let him lead her silently, until they were on a grey pebbled shore. For all that the ocean was beautiful, Alina knew she wasn’t seeing it at its best. They were too far north for the tropical paradises Maradi had spoken of, and rather than the brilliant turquoise Signy elegised, the water was a sullen, stormy shade of blue, bruise like, with grey patches from the clouds scudding up above. A cold, stiff wind slapped her wholly in the face, each breath a mouthful of spray.

It didn’t matter though. It was still impossible, the same way the sky would be to a mortal. There was just so much water, so much that it was in the very air itself. As she dismounted and walked forward, a wave crashed and the sound shook her like a star call.

“Finally,” she said aloud, “something good.”

Something that doesn’t disappoint.

At that thought, there was a guilty glance in Aleksander’s direction. He nodded to signal that he’d heard her, though he had no response, and now, as always, his handsome face was frustratingly unreadable. She turned back towards the sea hastily.

After a few seconds stood there, however, her impatience outmanoeuvred her politeness, and she glanced back at him once more. “Can I…?” she asked.

“I’ll stay here and watch the horses,” he confirmed. “We have an hour until we meet with the ship’s captain, so if you want to walk along the-”

Then, he was choking on his sentence, as Alina started unclasping her kefta.

“Alina-”

“Oh, of course, sorry,” she said, and threw up her invisibility, as she stepped out of the stiff fabric of her coat and let it fall to the floor. She started to untuck her white shirt from the waistband of her skirt, toeing her boots off without bothering with the laces.

“Alina,” Aleksander said again, though there was no ounce of hope in his voice, and a lot of something else. “Please tell me you are not serious. The True Sea is unforgivably cold.”

“Aleksander,” Alina replied, pulling herself out of her skirt and stockings, shimmying her chemise over her head. “We both know that means a whole lot of nothing to me.”

“Would you please consider-”

“-Did you think I was going to get all the way to the sea, and then not swim?” she asked him, incredulously.

“Then… would it at least be gentlemanly of me, to remind you that your kefta is bulletproof?”

“Oh, so the sea is armed, is it?” she joked.

“You know that’s not what I mean. You are officially one of Ravka’s greatest assets. Anyone could-”

“- Please. I’ve got a feeling that the only dangerous person here is you.”

“How gratifying it is, to hear I still count,” was his mild-mannered reply. “I was starting to worry that I was the one who'd become invisible.”

Alina could tell he was being sarcastic, but was uncertain as to what end. She thought he was going to say something more to clarify, from the way he was staring in frustration at the patch of ground where he knew she must be. He was looking so intently, that a lesser star might worry they hadn’t manipulated the light correctly.

But Alina knew for certain that her invisibility was well and truly in place. She was also now fully divested of clothes, and patience was not her strong suit. She absolutely had to be in the sea.

“Now, General, stop your grumbling,” she said cheerfully, “just stand there like a good boy, and take good care of my horse.”

Then, she ran full speed at the True Sea with a war cry. She was invisible, but Aleksander likely knew when the first wave hit her, as the cry turned into a wild, surprised shriek. Two hits, hard as a brick wall, and another wave at her ribcage that managed to steal even her breath. Then she dropped her invisibility, as one wave sent her tumbling and she dived under another until she was fully submerged.

When she came back up for air, gasping and giggling at the sensation of salt on her lashes, Zoya was another stormy-looking presence on the shore.

“Oh, so we’re just throwing caution to the wind and stripping naked in front of the Darkling now, are we?” her friend asked darkly in Suli, projecting her voice above the roar of the ocean as she glared down at the incriminating puddle of Alina's clothing. “Tell me, does that seem particularly wise?”

“Why not?” Alina shouted back, too stupid with happiness from the ocean. “Did your thoughts dwell much on wisdom, when you got naked in front of him, back in the day?”

“...Alina!”

“What you going to do?” Alina taunted, switching back to Ravkan with a laugh as her friend turned bright red and seething, “come in and get me? You can’t! You are both too allergic to fun!”

Aleksander just stood there silently, face set to its fastidious neutrality as both his horse and Alina’s grazed on some grass in the nearby dunes. For a brief second, Alina wondered if he understood Suli. Then, another wave crashed over her head, leaving her weightless and tumbling in a void so similar to her home. Gleefully, she found that she just didn’t care.

"Oh, hello there! You know, you are remarkably similar to a woman I saw swimming naked in the ocean earlier-”

"I’m sorry, I haven’t a clue what you mean!" beamed Alina. Her face was bright red, her hair stiff with salt and still drying on her neck as she stepped up onto the decks of her first ever ship.

“Ah, of course, my mistake,” said the man who had greeted her, gallantly, with a wink that made Alina immediately like him. “It must simply be the remnants of a very vivid and extremely enjoyable dream.”

He started to walk towards them, but before he could reach Alina, Aleksander intercepted his path. The Darkling had chosen to stand just in front of her, which was not a position he often occupied anymore. “Captain Sturmhond, I presume,” he said, his voice carefully formal.

“The one and only,” the Captain said, sketching a small bow. He was a tall man, but half a head shorter than Aleksander, with red hair a few shades darker than Genya’s. He wore outrageously wonderful clothes, including a beautifully embroidered jacket that reminded Alina of a peacock. “Meanwhile, your cheerful demeanour and colourful wardrobe tells me you are General Kirigan, which makes your charming companion here our fallen star.”

“Hello!” said Alina, leaning around the side of Aleksander’s figure to wave at him, “I like your coat.”

“Goodness, darling girl, flattery will get you everywhere,” Sturmhond smiled. “As will money. I believe I asked for my commission upfront, for this particular questing beast?”

Aleksander stepped forward again, now entirely blocking Alina from the man’s view. “I have the payment here.”

Taking that as the rather obvious signal that it was, Alina left Aleksander to talk business, strolling over to the railing to drink in the sight of the sea some more. She was aware that this was a pretty hands-off approach to her own mission, but thought she had little hope of being useful at any stage that involved haggling or bartering. She already thought that Sturmhond had a very lovely boat, and seemed to be a very lovely person, and that was the sort of thing that Zoya had explained would lead to her losing money very quickly. Better to hold off until the actual planning part, where her instincts surrounding where the next star might be could take over.

She cast a quick glance in the direction of the Darkling, wondering if she was being naïve to trust him. It was a question she had asked herself a lot, in these strange few weeks of uncertain equilibrium. They were, she thought, uneasy allies, until the very moment he chose to act. It was his choice, after all: he was the one who would incite her to violence, not the other way around, and they both knew it. The fact he hadn't done so yet confused her greatly - but what else was new, when it came to him?

Aleksander wasn't being a condescending jerk anymore, but that meant a whole new array of utterly unreadable and unintelligible behaviours to try to make sense of. In the aftermath of the Stag, after Alina had conducted her rituals of mourning, Aleksander had sat her down in his tent and interrogated her about stars. An absurd interaction, if Alina was honest, given that many of her answers were stories she had already told him freely, in the beginning. It was enough to make a girl think he hadn’t listened to any of them.

“And your sister was a girl called Maradi?”

“A woman, Aleksander. But yes.”

“And when her friend was lost, she… she shone brightly. As in, like a star. That’s what helped him find his lover?”

“How else was she going to shine?” Alina had asked him. “I know that you all thought she was a squaller, and parted the clouds or whatever, but that doesn’t really make sense, does it? Awful lot of effort, considering that the moon is not the brightest light in the sky, if you don’t mind me saying. I like the fact that the Zemeni never tried to classify it as anything, other than helping someone. That makes a lot more sense to me than this taxonomy you’re so attached to. ”

“So… Sankta Maradi is your sister. And a star.”

“Yes. And though I love my sister, and think she had a very worthy purpose, I will just say it plain: I can’t believe she gets a Sainthood for that, while I have to work so hard to be taken seriously.”

By the end of the conversation, Aleksander was looking a little like a fraying thread. Mindful of Baghra’s warnings about what he would become if he knew too much, Alina elided much of what Morozova’s Stag had told her of Morozova’s own magics when he asked her. She hid some of the other properties of her shine, which even she could tell would be better kept to herself.

But it was honestly very nice to finally be able to tell the truth, and have it received with something else other than derision. Even if that ‘something else’ was bewilderment, and a seeming desire written plain on his face, to smash his head into a wall and hopefully trigger amnesia.

“And when you fall, you just…” Aleksander made an inelegant gesture. Alina found herself wondering if he knew his hair was sticking out at odd angles all along the right side, from all the times he’d put his head in his hands. “What? Launch yourself at the world? Is there a protocol? Do you become a woman… when you’re in space? When you break the atmosphere? When you… land?”

“...What’s the atmosphere?”

“Sweet suffering Saints.”

Despite everything awful that had assailed her in the last few days, Alina couldn't help grinning at his rapid descent into madness. She knew full well what the atmosphere was, by that point, being friends with both Zoya and David.

“I don’t know how it works, Aleksander,” she told him, honestly. “We don’t define it by any terms that would make you comfortable. It’s just a thing that happens. Like growing up, or breathing. The closest thing I can think is we just… get an itch. I always wanted to Fall, then one year I knew it was just… time. I knew what was needed. Maybe it’s the Making, maybe it’s just instinct. A… heaviness, perhaps? Given that it’s falling.”

“And there’s no… pattern to it? No planetary alignments, or… or… a season? Not every 15 years, or 50?”

“Stars, no. I mean, every family has their traditions, but do you really want to put everyone on the same timeline? That can lead to certain kind of complexes, I’m sure.”

“We don’t get to choose where we end up, though. That’s the Making’s decision. And we become human when we land, of course,” she told him primly, as he burrowed his head in his hands again. “We touch the ground, and suddenly we have feet to touch it with. I mean, you know how breakable mortal bodies are. If it was any other point in the process, I’d just be a bag of smashed up bones in the Fold somewhere.”

“But when you go back-” he asked, lifting his head as his eyes suddenly became very intent. “Is that the same, then? Just… knowing? Or do you make a choice? What if you wanted to stay?”

“I’m not sure,” she told him, “because I’m not there yet. Maybe it’s a mixture of both? Signy and Ulla certainly left before they needed to. I’d barely grown at all in the time they were away. And Laoise stayed for long enough that people began to notice she wasn’t ageing the way she should, like you. She’s the most selfish soul I know, so I think she must have put it off as long as possible, stayed until she realised what it was she was avoiding.”

“So... it is a choice?”

“I feel like it's more than that. That Laoise was fighting against the current, but that she needed to flow downriver, eventually. We’re doing this for ourselves, yes, but it serves a greater purpose. So maybe it’s that debt I talked about, the one we owe the Making. Or maybe we just get tired, and homesick. I don’t know, they say you never know until you’ve experienced it. But I can imagine what it’s like. I like being mortal, but there are some things about it that are different enough. I feel a little alien in this body.”

“Then... what happens? When you decide to leave?”

“I’m… not going to tell you that,” Alina told him, quietly.

“Why not?”

“Because… there’s a world in which you might try to stop me.” She had felt very self-aggrandising saying it out loud, like she was fantasising about a version of reality where he begged her to stay with him forever. But at the same time, there was the more sinister version of events, where he stopped her for other reasons, exactly like Morozova had with his victims.

Aleksander had stared at her for a long time, and then simply nodded. “And…” he swallowed, “how old are you, Alina?”

Alina hadn’t been able to help herself then, she’d grinned wide and watched him squirm. “Far older than you, Darkling,” was all she’d said, and their interview had quickly drawn to a close.

Since then, it had been that same terse almost-silence, where he simply followed her like - for want of a better word - a shadow. Off-hand comments, small and careful conversation at mealtimes, a near constant yet absent presence at her side. Watching, observing, a little like when she had been his Sun Summoner, and he’d been scrutinising her in order to try and predict whatever it was she was going to do next. Only this time, he wasn’t trying to control her actions. At least, not in any way that Alina could see.

But would she ever be the one to see it? This concerned her, because while she was now looking very, very closely for ulterior motives, she was also aware that she wasn’t the best at finding them. She’d asked Zoya, figuring her friend might be slightly better at it, or at least know him well enough to chip in.

At her question, the squaller had given her a long, hard look.

“I think what he wants is pretty obvious, Alina,” was Zoya's flat reply. “As to the lengths he’ll go to get it, well… I don’t think I know that, honestly. A year ago, my guess would’ve been wrong, because I was also acting like an idiot. Two months ago, it would’ve been accurate. Now, I haven’t a fucking clue. I think you’ve changed the rules of play a little. I think you really do scare him.”

This answer had gratified Alina, because that was what she thought, too. That Aleksander was obviously only playing along so that he could distract her and trick her into gratitude. He would this time as leverage to try and get her to help him with the Fold, eventually. But he was being far more careful about it, and was unlikely to resort to violence when he already knew who would win. Being seen as a star was actually now a source of power, not a weakness.

But then Zoya caused confusion by adding:

“Also, Alina. We all saw that hug. Literally everyone. I’m amazed he didn’t kill us all.”

Alina hadn’t known what to say to that. One, because that hug had, she was pretty certain, been a manipulation to prevent her from killing everyone, not him. Two, because for all she’d thought Aleksander to be an extremely private person, he’d actually been very public about physical affection. There was that time he’d kissed her in front of Fedyor, and all those women he’d taken back to bed on the journey north. He’d not been shy about any of it.

So all in all, a mystery. Maybe he and Sturmhond were negotiating her capture and imprisonment as she watched, from twenty feet away.

But if she was honest, the one thing Alina did put faith in was Aleksander’s selfishness, and his self-preservation. He knew now that she could hurt him. And though she wasn’t very good at committing to doing so so far, it seemed, she was certain he also knew the circumstances under which she absolutely, definitely would.

Sturmhond plotted them a course that took them through the stretches of the Bone Road that had reported sightings of the Sea Whip, in official records and in legend. When they got close, the hope was that Alina would be able to sense its presence, or reach out herself and call it to her. If not, she could always ask her sisters for more pointers. Though she had a feeling that a sea creature was far more elusive to stars, hidden under the ocean that had always seemed so flat and featureless from above.

“Honestly, it’s probably a little like you all thinking the earth was flat,” she said, “or that the night sky was lifeless. There’s very little concept of depth when you’re looking down from such a distance. I never could’ve imagined that the ocean was like this, all loud and moving and alive.”

“You’ll be sick of said ocean by the time we’re done with this search,” Sturmhond informed her over dinner, the first night after they’d set out from port. He’d organised a meal for them all in his lavish cabin, with a ready supply of alcohol that Alina had been more than happy to join him on. At his right hand side, she had a feeling she got far better wine than the other Grisha, seated at the far end of the table.

“Oh, I don’t think that’s likely,” Alina told him, draining said glass of very nice wine. “I have decided that I love the sea.”

“I’m glad to hear it! If you, or any of your delightful companions, wish to stay on as crew…” he said, with a glance down the table at the silent Darkling that seemed cursory at best. "You know I'd be more than happy to have you."

“Zoya’s a squaller,” Alina offered.

“Always useful,” he acknowledged.

“I mostly just burn things.”

“A woman after my own heart.”

“I suppose I could light up the sky, if you ever needed me to. Maradi might call me a copycat, but I’m not really sure what else I could contribute.”

“You’d certainly improve the view. And make for a charming dinner companion.”

“But why do you say we’ll get sick of the sea?” Alina asked, “aren’t you a… Sea Captain? Isn't the sea your first love, or something? Should I be worried you aren’t qualified?”

Sturmhond grinned as he poured her more wine, “I merely meant that this life is not for everyone, my lady star. I thought someone who spent her life in the sky might not like the water.”

“Oh no. I love it, big fan,” she smiled, “I know that seasickness is a thing I’m supposed to anticipate, but try moving from incorporeal starshine into a mortal body. That’s far worse, trust me. I couldn’t walk straight for a week, and I’m not sure why most of my books talk about that like it’s a good thing.”

She watched, as Sturmhond went through the same process that everyone went through, upon first conversation with her. It took him far less time to come out the other side than anyone else thus far, even Baghra. There was a momentary spot of confusion, a crease between the eyebrows like plucking at a loose thread, before he was grinning broadly, and sweeping out his hand in a broad, theatrical gesture.

“And you see! This is why I wouldn’t change my life for the world. Other sailors feed themselves with routine trade routes. Instead, I chase after a cursed prince and creature of legend! With the Star Saint, for company, as beautiful as the day she fell, with an even more strange and bewitching story for my ears,” Sturmhond smiled, “it might just be the wine and the company talking, but I find myself more than happy with my lot.”

“Oh,” Alina said, tucking hair behind her ear a little bashfully. She wasn’t sure why she felt gratified, other than the fact that she’d finally found someone who talked as much as she did. She was taken in by the Captain's grandiose charisma, and the fact that he was one of the few people it had proven easy to converse with, on first try. “I’m very flattered that this is fun for you, but unfortunately I’m not a Saint.”

Sturmhond’s grin only widened. “Oh really, now? Do tell me more. Anything particularly scandalous that means you’re disqualified?”

From the other side of the room, someone’s glass slammed down more loudly than necessary on the table.

“I mean, I’ve murdered some people. You’d think that kind of thing would immediately disqualify you, honestly. And also, I’m not even sure I believe in Saints,” Alina admitted. “I mean, I believe in the Making, you’d be a fool not to. But the Apparat was a very strange man, and half the Saints just seem to be things humans can’t understand but which I already have my answers for, so-”

“-I confess, I was hoping for something a little more titillating than a sudden dip into theology.”

“Oh!” Alina said, suddenly comprehending. “Oh! Wow, was that flirting? I’m so glad you clarified! I’m so sorry, I promise that if I’d known I was flirting, I’d be much better at it than that. I wouldn’t open with murder, for one thing. As it was, I was just stating fact.”

As Sturmhond blinked at her, she took another drink, and added, “But it’s lovely that it was flirting. And that you think I’m beautiful and charming and bewitching, I suppose you said that earlier. But I thought you were just being nice, given that you have been speaking that way to everyone, and also keep staring at Zoya -”

Further down the table, someone else snorted into their own glass of wine, with derision.

Alina continued, “but wow, how very nice to be flirted with! I was really starting to worry I’d lost my touch, to be honest. Not that I’m certain I had any touch to begin with!"

Sturmhond’s expression was fluctuating between fascination and amusement, but her favourite thing about him so far was that he knew when to interject, rather than leaving her to ramble without a direction. “How so? A ravishing creature like you? Surely you have manifold charms to draw upon?"

“Well, I like to think so. And I know a lot in theory, from my reading. It's more I've just never got a chance to practise.”

“Well, far be it for me to stop you practising...”

“Oh, stars, thank you! All I want is practice! But everyone thinks I’m terrifying, these days,” she shrugged, taking another big gulp of wine and wondering if she was talking too much. “Which I understand, I know my sisters and I are very daunting when we’re placed on your scale, and it’s far more flattering to be taken seriously than coddled like a child -”

“-You have sisters? How many? Are they all as pretty as you?”

“Captain, please don’t interrupt me, or I will entirely lose my train of thought,” she confessed, though she knew from her tone of voice that she couldn’t hide how much she enjoyed being asked the question.

“But yes, there are seven of us, and we are all very pretty. They were probably nicer looking than me when they were down here, as well. Not that I think there is anything wrong with me, you understand. It’s more that I keep getting stuffed into these very utilitarian clothes. Not a single ballgown yet. Which might also be my problem. Maybe even if I had a nice jacket like yours, people would flirt with me. I just don’t know. I tried flirting with someone on the road, and it utterly backfired. And I’ve been told I’m not allowed to go to brothels, so at this point I don’t think I will get any education in how to act. I think I’m just stuck like this.”

Silence, throughout the cabin.

“...Well,” said Sturmhond, valiantly raising his glass. “I think this is going swimmingly, so far. You are thoroughly pleasant, and not at all scary. Maybe I'm just a strong and very brave man, but I find I like you just fine.”

“Oh, really?” Alina smiled happily, raising her glass in turn. She figured they must hit a wave, because a little sloshed out of it and hit the table. “I like you, as well! You’re lovely!”

Sturmhond winked, “I know. And if you ever get permission for those brothels, do let me know. I’ve got some excellent recommendations for the Ravkan coast-”

The conversation continued on from there, and Alina was delighted to find that her cup never seemed to be anything less than half full, no matter how much she drank. The churning in her stomach she felt at setting out for the Rusalye and facing her purpose head on quickly dulled to background sensation, against her full belly and the never ending stream of easy-to-follow pleasantries Sturmhond seemed to supply her with. Rarely had a conversation been so easy. For once, she didn’t feel like she was scrambling, and whenever she did put a foot wrong, as was still often inevitable, the Captain took it with such disarming grace that it was like she wasn’t an awkward foreigner at all.

Aleksander snuck out of the room once the plates were cleared away, not choosing to partake in the next two bottles of wine that followed. Alina tried not to watch him go. She knew he had work to do: correspondences didn’t just stop because they were suddenly in the middle of the ocean. They’d be passed on the next morning, to whatever trawler they passed on their way out into the open sea.

It was a very late hour, and very dark outside, when Alina figured it was time for her to go to bed.

“Leaving so soon?” Sturmhond asked, even though she was one of only five left, including Zoya and three members of his own crew.

“Oh, I need to speak to my family before bed,” Alina explained, her words feeling a little sticky in her mouth. The world listed to the side as she got out of her chair, presumably because of the waves. That was how seasickness happened, she knew - the incongruence between mortal balance, and the invisible shifting of the ocean with the horizon out of sight.

“Far be it for a man to get in between a woman and her sisters. Do let me know if any more women fall to earth while I’m gone,” the Captain said with a gallant hand gesture, though his elbow then missed the table and he slumped on the wood.

It was then Alina realised she might have outdrank him. She felt that must be a testament to her own skills. He was so tall.

“I had a really nice time,” she said, trying her hand at flirting. “You’re very lovely. Rarely has a conversation been this harmless.”

“...Harmless?” Sturmhond said into his table, “you think me ‘harmless’?”

“Oh... is that not a good thing?”

“Normally one prefers there to be even a hint of frisson, with the woman he’s just spent the night entertaining.”

Alina did not know what 'frisson' meant, precisely. But it was nice to know how it was meant to be pronounced, given that she'd only seen it written down in her novels until now.

“But… we’re not actually going to do anything, are we?” she said, suddenly worrying that she was not good at flirting at all. “I mean, you don’t actually want to sleep with me. You’re just being nice, and trying to get me to like you so you can use me as a work-around for the General, because you think I’m the softer one. Flirting can also be used as a social tool for leverage outside of romantic interes- interaction,” she said, slurring over the word. “Genya told me this once. It does not always mean true love. So, aren't you glad that it worked?”

Zoya, who was red-cheeked but upright still, chuckled into her cup where it rested against her lip. Sturmhond glared at her, though his being horizontal didn’t make Alina want to re-evaluate her verdict on ‘harmless’.

“We can try again, if you like?” Alina added, feeling a little guilty. This was exactly how that first conversation had gone with Aleksander, as well - her getting her wires crossed! “If you actually do want to sleep with me, I mean. I’d be happy to give it a go! You’re very handsome, and I need to work on my sample size. I can certainly aim for ‘frisson’, if that’s what you need!”

“My lesson to you, Miss Starkov?” Sturmhond said, pulling himself upright again with immense difficulty. “If it’s something you have to work at, or ‘aim’ for? You’re probably with the wrong person.”

“Oh. Well. That makes a lot of sense, actually. But we should definitely flirt together again, as friends!”

As she left the room, Alina had a feeling that the sea and the world were both conspiring against her. Three steps from the table, she realised just how uncoordinated her body and mind had become - it must be a very strong storm outside, though she supposed that the weather alone could not be blamed for double vision. As she tumbled through the door to the captain’s cabin, she thought she heard behind her, “oh, so she was making him jealous!”, but she was too busy trying to keep the walls vertical to pay this accusation much mind. Walking was tremendously difficult, like dragging her body through honey as she tried to move down and through the quarterdeck. She ended up pulling herself along the wall. She was worried that they'd found the Rusalye already: she couldn't hear it talking to her, but it was as if the dimensions of the mortal world had slipped from her grasp once more.

When she got to the end of the corridor and the ladder that would take her to the open air above, she managed to climb one step before everything shifted again, all dizzying. It seemed a lot easier to just sprawl against the ladder, half sat and half clinging to it, as the world buzzed in and out of focus.

Her eyelids fluttered shut, warm cheek against the wood. Time went a bit strange, and the next moment she opened them it was because a cold wind had disturbed her nice and perfectly comfortable doze on the hard wooden steps.

Alina looked up, bleary eyed, to see a rectangle of perfectly clear, still night sky… and the Darkling, looking to descend once more below deck, and finding her entirely in the way.

“Oh,” she said, intelligently. “Shit. I’m meant to be… up there.”

Aleksander was entirely silent as he looked down at her, inelegantly slumped across his path. Again, this was a perfectly standard interaction for them both. But Alina was also having great difficulty speaking in sentences, so she wasn’t the one who could fix it for him, this time.

“Sorry,” she muttered, then tried to pull herself to standing with an inarticulate and embarrassing sound. “I’ll get - out of your-”

The world did seven different things when she bought herself upright, all in opposite and conflicting directions. She didn’t finish the sentence as she once more slumped like a puppet with her strings cut, clinging to her trusty bannister and pushing her forehead against its edge hard enough to leave a mark.

“Hmmm.” she said, ponderously. “I think this might be a me thing.”

Eyes closed once more - she didn’t remember doing that - she heard the door slam shut above her. A second later, the shadows behind the ladder shifted, and Aleksander emerged from the dark corner of the quarterdeck, having foregone the ladder entirely.

“Are you well?” he asked, walking over and placing a hand on her shoulder, jolting her slightly as if to rouse her.

Alina snorted.

“Yes, well,” he amended, “can you walk?”

“F’course I can walk, Aleksander,” Alina replied, affronted. “My body is roughly 20 years old. M’not a baby.”

“...But can you walk right now?”

“Don’t see why not.” Alina said, and once more pulled herself to standing. A thing she was definitely capable of doing, except at some point in the process everything went catastrophically wrong once more. The world kiltered off to the left, dramatically, and she would’ve fallen again if Aleksander hadn’t suddenly braced her with a soft huff, slipping his arm around her waist.

“Seasickness is terrible,” she moaned, feeling cheated. In truth, it wasn’t entirely unpleasant - everything was sort of floaty, like she was once again in the sky. But it was embarrassing to have lost all control of her mortal form.

He let out a small laugh, “Alina, sweetheart, you’re drunk.”

“NOooo, I’ve been drunk before,” she argued. “It s’fine, I just talk more than normal, and then I sleep. I can always walk… this must be the sea.”

“Mmm-hmmm, of course,” he murmured, in ascent. “And how many more drinks did you have?”

“...A few.”

“Yet the Captain didn’t offer to take care of you?”

“Why would he… am I th’ only person who realised he didn’t want to sleep with me?!” Alina grinned, pleased with herself. Then she realised Aleksander wouldn’t be able to see it, because somehow the world had moved again and she wasn't leaning against the ladder, but into him. That meant she was smiling into his shoulder. “Pfft. I’m better at reading humans than you are.”

“Are you, now? I think there might still be a few things you miss.”

“Hmmm, probably. But I’m also a magnet for men who want to use me,” she said, with a half-hearted poke at his chest. Not too hard, because she really didn’t want him to move away. The darkness of his coat was different from the darkness that had swamped her before - more stable, though that might be because he was bearing all her weight.

A moment of silence, where Alina assumed he was feeling suitably contrite.

“I can take you up onto the deck, if you still wish it,” he said, after a moment. “Are you in need of the fresh air, or a railing over which to be sick?”

“I don’t vomit,” Alina said with a certainty that had been in no way earned. “I refuse to. Inside bits should stay inside. Mortals are gross.”

“I’d ask if this was a heretofore unexplored element of star biology, but I’ve learned not to listen to the boasts of those who cannot stand,” the Darkling observed. “I think it best if we venture upwards. The cold might sober yo- then again, maybe not, now I think about it.”

“Just wanted to talk to my sisters,” Alina slurred. Then, a horrible thought occurred to her. “Oh no.”

She stepped back, and the world pitched again. Aleksander spoke a soft oath, putting a hand behind her head to pull her back in and stop it from thwacking against the bannister. She placed her hands on his chest to keep space between them as his grip tightened to compensate for the way she reeled, until they were in a strange sort of distanced, braced hug. But such things were secondary to Alina’s overwhelming dread as she stared up at him: “Aleksander, were you talking to my sisters? Is that why you were outside?”

Aleksander frowned. “No, I just couldn't sleep. I wasn’t actually aware that talking to your sisters was something a person like me could do,” he said. “They are… very far away.”

Relief gripped Alina immediately, the fight going out of her. She stopped bracing. Another oath, as she fell against Aleksander once more, and he nearly overbalanced in the other direction.

“They probably wouldn’t speak to you anyway,” she reassured herself, once more pressing her forehead against that very restorative bulk of chest. To him, it was probably like being hit with a sack of very cuddly flour. “Probably mad at you for breaking my heart.”

Familial protectiveness would outweigh even Laoise’s desire to fuck with her. Even if a pretty man was involved.

“...You think I’m pretty?” came an amused response, as Alina realised she had spoken something aloud to this effect.

“Shut up,” she muttered. “You and your jawline. And your stupid hair.”

“Flattery really will get you anywhere, Ms. Starkov.”

“You know this about yourself. You are aware.”

“But I wasn’t aware I broke your heart, Alina,” he said, calmly. “After all, you said it yourself, you didn’t kiss me because you were in love with me.”

“Stupid,” she said, with another poke. She pulled back, but gripped the collar of his coat this time so she wouldn’t reel back. It was too undignified. She tried to give him a serious look, narrowing her eyes as she imparted something very important. “You think this’is about kissing? Hearts aren't given just in love, you fool. In trust. I was alone here. I helped you. Thought you helped me. You were one of my only anchors on the earth, and you weren’t even there. Eph- ephim- ephema-” she frowned, angry with her own tongue. “...Like a shadow. And I’m not - love and ‘in love’ are different. I can still care about someone, enough for it to hurt. Made me feel sad about you. Lied to me.”

She frowned, before adding: “Also, the murder.”

Why do you think I shone for you? she thought, remembering the moment in the war room where she’d given too much of herself, and he’d felt it, his shadows blossoming all around them. Even when offered in simple compassion, her heart was strong. She knew this about herself now, after she had borne the weight of the Stag.

But she was very clever, and not as drunk as she feared, because she remembered that she didn’t want him knowing about that.

“I’m sorry,” Aleksander replied, eyes roving across her face. She was too drunk to know if he meant it, and which of her grievances he addressed if he did.

“Hurt me,” she insisted. “Sisters will beat you up.”

A ghost of a smile. “They are certainly welcome to come down here and try.”

She snorted. “Stupid man, you’d be a smudge.”

“Why don’t we go up and introduce me?” he said, lightly enough to tease. “I’m sure I can charm a few of them onside, so that they pull their punches, at least.”

“Noooo, no no no,” Alina said, shaking her head and trying to communicate how bad an idea that would be. When his face shuttered, not crumpling with hurt but going all closed off and remote, she shook her head again, to avoid a misunderstanding: “Not you - me. I don't think I should speak to them now. Don’t want them knowing I’m drun- seasick.”

“...Oh? Of course. I would hate to embarrass you, in front of your family.”

“Signy threw up once,” Alina confided. “It was disgusting. She still gets called a lightweight now, Aleksander. It’s been five hundred years.”

“Well, won’t she be glad to know there’s a new sister deserving of that title?”

“I am not being sick. I refuse,” Alina said emphatically. She glared at him to impart her resolve on this matter, but then his image wavered in place, and she found that his shoulder was once more infinitely preferable. Freshly grounded, she sighed. “Should’ve asked the Making for an older body. Less… metabolism. But all these joints are ones that work. No backpain. I heard that that’s th’worst.”

“Did you get to pick? Who you were when you fell? What you looked like?"

“No, f’course not,” she giggled. “If I could pick, I’d be taller. As tall as you.”

“I like you, just the way you are.”

“Liar.”

Silence, for a second, before he said, with a measured calm, “No. I don’t do that anymore. Not with you.”

Alina froze up, in his arms, distantly aware that she was far too drunk for this. If she was normally a bull in a china shop when it came to conversations, here she was a bull on twenty gallons of liquor and blind, in a museum of very expensive one-of-a-kind porcelain. She leaned back once more, aware that she relied on Aleksander to do so with anything approaching moderation or care. She looked at him, trying to gauge his sincerity. If she was feeling sick, undoubtedly it was because of all the wine.

“I’m still not going to kill people for you,” she reiterated, as carefully as she could manage.

“I know that,” Aleksander replied.

“You can’t say things like that just to make me change my mind.”

“Trust me,” he said, “I know.”

“I’m drunk.”

“Really, Alina?” he said, mildly. “And here I thought it was seasickness?”

“You can’t make moves on girls when they are drunk,” she reprimanded with the certainty of law. “In my books, the man is always chivalrous, and just puts her to bed. That’s the noble thing to do.”

“Is it now?” he asked, face splitting in two with a smug grin. “I don’t think I’ve ever been called ‘noble’ or ‘chivalrous’. And yet, I also don’t remember making any ‘moves’ this evening, so why are you the one bringing up bed, I wonder?”

“You’re flirting.”

“Am I?”

“Stop asking cryptic questions, that’s flirting!!”

He laughed, and it was almost like he couldn’t help himself to do so. For a few seconds afterwards, Alina thought that the sound surprised even him.

“Is this what you’re actually like?” Alina couldn’t help but ask, too drunk to stop herself. “I can never tell.”

Aleksander was quiet. It was as if he didn’t know the answer either. The longer he took to think about it, the more the silence took on a different quality. It was a quality that Alina thought Captain Sturmhond would have a lot to say about, and so she did the only thing she knew how to do, which was keep talking.

“It’s just, I liked you before,” she said, “but you were making me like you. You thought I was stupid and frivolous and mad, and you were just humouring me. So if I like you now, how do I know you’re not just doing it all over again? How can I tell? You’re probably just trying to stay alive, aren’t you? You could be thinking horrible, poisonous things about me, and it would never show on your face, not once.”

His face as he watched her proved her point. She couldn't tell what he was thinking, at all. He met her accusations with silence, and instead he asked softly, “do you like me, Alina? You know I’m a bad person, now. You didn’t before.”

“Yes,” she said, deciding she was answering the second part. “And I’m still going to destroy the Fold.”

“Do you think yourself capable, of killing someone you like?”

“I’m not selfish, Aleksander,” she told him, with utter conviction. “You could be the nicest man in the world, and I still wouldn’t make other people suffer, just to have you near me.”

Oops, maybe that was the wrong choice of words. She glanced down at the very little space between them, unable to stop herself. Even though the current hold he had on her was definitely just for practical purposes, and there was absolutely nothing sexy whatsoever, about needing someone’s help to stand.

Except there was, wasn’t there? Because as soon as she finished taking stock of their situation and how close they were, she was burning bright red all over, and when she looked back up at his face she could tell it was very obvious to him what she was thinking.

But she didn’t close the distance. And he didn’t, either. Even though he was the villain: the one bartering with her heart for any advantage, and a chance at survival.

It seemed… they had reached a stalemate.

A couple of seconds passed, in which Alina’s mortal heart was hammering, and her true heart thrummed with something that hadn’t gripped her at any point in the conversation with the Captain. She thought she could go to a brothel, and pay her weight in gold, and still it wouldn’t happen. But maybe that was naïve of her. Maybe all it took was this much wine. She still didn’t know many people, and none of the ones she’d met were as handsome as him.

Aleksander watched her, avidly, like a man starved. Until he saw none of her indecision resolve itself, and he sighed.

“Come now, Alina Starkov,” he said, sounding resigned. “Let’s get you to your bed, in an entirely chivalrous and noble manner.”

He dutifully rearranged their stances so that they were no longer dangerously close to kissing. They turned their backs to the ladder, and he helped her down the corridor, though he was doing far more of the work, if she was honest. Alina initially started with her hand on the wall, but it was so badly coordinated that it became much easier to just let him lead her, arm round her waist, hand carefully on her hip, breath in her ear as he stooped to support her. She had her arm looped over his neck. He smelt like the cold air, and the sea. She found herself wondering what he’d smelled like, before. After. In the Little Palace. When he was alone, in his space and amongst his sheets, not elsewhere, following her across the world without complaint.

Was that a safe thing to be thinking?

"Sorry,” she said, “I talked a lot."

Aleksander aided her with turning the corner, with a small noise of exertion as she tripped over her skirts. "I like listening to you talk,” he murmured.

“That’s lying,” she wailed, indignantly.

She tried to squirm out of his arms, to turn on him and tell him off. It was not very effective. Mostly, he looked frustrated, and simply clamped his arm tighter to prevent her from sending them both tumbling. Still, she couldn’t let this stand, as she continued, at volume: “You hate me talking. You used to want to murder me over it. You don't need to say these things, Aleksander, not when they are lies. Why don’t you just tell me the truth?!”

“I didn’t like listening to you talk when nothing you said made sense,” he told her, “I thought you eloquent, but also stupid, and frustratingly insane. Now I know differently, and I can adapt.”

“Yes. But I’m still annoying,” she insisted. “I talk too much, humans don’t talk enough. You keep all your things to yourselves, even though it seems to hurt only you. I don’t get it, but it’s a cultural difference. I annoy Zoya sometimes,” all the time, “and Zoya is my friend. You don’t have to pretend, Aleksander. I really don’t want you too!”

“My only annoyance currently, is your inability to conduct yourself in a straight line, and your belief that I would ever not know my own mind, Alina,” he replied. “I told you, I am not bothering to lie to you anymore. It serves no one, and there is no need. Since you nearly killed me, I find everything you say to be fascinating. I also enjoy it, when you forget yourself enough to talk to me like you used to. Why wouldn’t I? This is simply good sense. You are an impossible thing I didn’t know existed, and I want you to trust in me the way you did, before.”

“...Please don’t trick me like this,” she said, in a strangely pathetic and plaintive voice. “Not again.”

“No,” he agreed. “No more tricks, between us. But I understand that you need time.”

Alina didn’t know what to say to that. She kept walking down the corridor, hoping he was keeping track of doors. Though if she was honest, she had no idea if he knew exactly where she slept.

“Why can't you sleep?” she asked, when the silence went on too long again, and she feared she’d do something stupid.

"I'm pretty certain I know what will ail me after this charming little interlude," he said dryly. From the corner of her eye she saw him smirk. "But perhaps you are referring to before I found you?"

"You left dinner early," she said.

"You noticed that, did you? The Captain cannot be half as diverting as he seems to think he is."

Alina ignored this comment with great dignity. "Is it your work that distracts you?"

Aleksander let out a small huff. “Do you actually want to know, Alina? You are on your grand quest, and I no longer stand in your way. Is that not enough?”

Alina wondered, for a second, if it was. She'd never cared much about the machinations of the Little Palace before, but she was now aware that she really should've been paying attention. And still, despite everything, she worried over the idea that he might be tired. She wondered if this was the compassion that he bemoaned as weakness, or out of concern for him, specifically.

“Is something wrong?” she persisted, and Aleksander sighed, as if surrendering.

“Lantsov was far more lenient about me gallivanting off with you when he thought my head was simply turned,” he said. “Now he believes it was all some kind of grand plan. That I was prepared, in any way, for this cross-continental chase, and that I've taken his most powerful weapon from him in the process. With his express permission, no less. He thinks he’s been played for a fool, as if he ever requires anyone else’s input to make it so. You two should maybe have dinner together, to discuss how everything I do these days is entirely planned and premeditated, and definitely not improvised on the fucking spot."

Alina thought this might be the most words Aleksander had ever said to her, about himself or his work. "He thinks you stole me away?"

"He thinks I doctored your little speech at the Fete to make it seem like you were mad, and that you've been a supernova this whole time,” Aleksander said. “And now I'm holding you for ransom on a ship in the middle of the ocean, in preparation for whatever demands I make next.”

“That doesn’t seem very fair,” Alina reasoned. “I mean, it’s definitely something you would do. But I did tell the King what I was. I’ve been telling everyone, from the very beginning. He was the one who chose not to listen.”

“Precisely. I would scorn him for it-”

“-That would be a little hypocritical-”

“-But as it is, I simply need to work out how to play it to my advantage,” the Darkling continued, matter of factly.

Alina thought for a long second. She wanted to ask if she was a hostage, and what exactly it would entail. But that was definitely the alcohol talking. Being a hostage in a romance book was usually a thoroughly enjoyable experience, but this might be one of those times when the real life applicability of her stories was in question.

“Well,” she said, carefully. “Is there anything you want?”

Aleksander chuckled, and she felt it all the way to her toes, even though the wine had long ago made her question if she had feet.

“Are you my consultant now?” he asked into her hair, and she realised that it hadn’t been a dirty laugh at all, merely wry and self deprecating. She just simply felt those sorts of things, about his laugh, all on her own. “What if my demands are terrible, terrible things?”

“Then I would probably write to the King myself, and tell him I’m not a hostage in the least,” Alina replied. She paused, biting her tongue for all of a second, before realising she couldn’t help but continue. “But… that seems like a wasted opportunity, doesn’t it? Given that the King got himself into this mess. Why don’t you ask for something nic- something useful, that doesn’t make Ravka worse and maybe actually improves it, and then I can corroborate your story, and we can just get it, without actually having to do anything?”

Aleksander was silent. Alina wished more people would talk, so that she didn’t have to, as she added: “I just don’t want the King actually thinking I’m being stolen. That risks him descending on the boat to rescue me and scaring away the Sea Whip, and stopping me from doing what I want to do. It seems more sensible than us fighting each other, and letting the King be stupid and inconvenient for free.”

“That’s a little bit treasonous of you, Alina.”

“Monarchies are a mortal invention,” she couldn’t help but retort, as if by rote. She still wasn’t quite sure if she’d forgiven the King and Queen for abandoning her in the ballroom, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to commit to any vindictiveness either. Aleksander seemed to have that firmly covered, at his end.

“So they are,” he smirked.

“You’d need to tell me what you were going to ask for!” Alina reminded him. “You can’t just go putting my name to evil things and expect to get away with it. But… there must also be something you can ask for that isn’t awful.”

“I’ll draw up a list of ideas for you to approve, shall I?” he drawled.

“Why not?” she said. “I’m the one getting ransomed.”

Aleksander was quiet, and Alina also realised they were also no longer moving. A glance to her right told her that he had successfully found her door, and she tried not to be disappointed about it.

“I’ll… think on it,” he said, in that same thoughtful voice that Alina was really worried was his true self.

“If there’s a way to improve things for the Grisha,” she said, “you know I’d do it.”

“Yes. I do.”

And there they were by her door, standing there, together. Alina really wished, for a small selfish second, that the good men - the ones who respected you and were actually in love with you for real - didn’t leave drunk girls innocently and chastely on their threshold. She supposed she should have seen it as a mutually advantageous prospect, with no losing option. If Aleksander was still not a very good man, as she had to keep thinking he was, then he would fuck her senseless without any moral qualms and at least she’d enjoy herself. And if he didn't, well, maybe that meant…

As it was, her stomach dropped away with a new wave of terrified nausea, when he gently disentangled her arm from his neck and placed her hand on her door handle. He let his touch linger. Alina swallowed.

“I trust you can take care of yourself from here, Miss Starkov,” he said, with a sinful smile that held a lot of promise he was just daring her to commit to. “Do let me know if there’s anything else you need help with.”

And then the moment was broken, as he let go of Alina, and everything went wrong again. Alina wished that Aleksander would finally just accept she was very clever, and that she could say enough half-intelligent things, even when she was shitfaced. As it was, he clearly assumed she had sobered up. This was profoundly not the case.

Without any of his still very much-needed support, she crashed, loose, adrift and unmoored, face first into her door. This door was unlocked, which meant she then sailed through it, directly onto the floor. Sprawled out and bruised in ways she wouldn’t feel until morning, palms scraped and nose smarting, she took one moment to look up at him and his startled face, and laugh at his expression.

Then, she abruptly passed out.

Chapter Text

They were eighteen days, two lists of demands for Lantsov, scrawled across and through with corrections and haggled over until early hours, and four colossal hangovers that seemed to never ensure she learned her lesson, into their voyage when Alina felt something, deep in and past her bones.

It was mid morning. The world was a watercolour streak of grey. Nothing and no land graced the horizon; only silent, drifting towers of ice above dark, dark water, and a fog that made the world seem formless. Still, Alina felt that same unease that had found her in the frozen north, and she felt it towards the north west.

The memories she carried with her meant the feeling was more personal, this time. Deep and unpleasant in her gut, but that dread was in its own way a harmony, more in tune with the soul she sought out. She had not taken the Stag’s power in any way that Aleksander would understand. But she had accumulated a part of her, in their interaction. She would carry the Stag with her forever, and on into this meeting with her sibling.

“It’s that way,” she told the ship’s helmsman, pointing where she felt the pull. The woman looked at her dubiously, and at the stretch of horizon that was in no way distinguishable from any other.

“Captain needs to approve any change in course,” she told Alina, with sullen disdain. Alina, not knowing the etiquette of ships, accepted this at face value.

However, she couldn’t see Sturmhond’s red hair anywhere above deck. He wasn’t even annoying Zoya where she stood beneath the mast, adjusting the winds to help them sail round the ice. This was now the first place Alina always thought to look for the Captain. As her spine crawled and her teeth sat on edge, she schooled herself to patience, ducking below into the quarterdeck to search for him.

Without much thought, she strode down the corridor, and burst through into Sturmhond’s quarters. They’d flirted many times as friends by now, and she thought it was certainly the sort of friendship where bedrooms were talked about enough to be entered without ceremony. She wasn’t invisible either, which was certainly more courtesy than anyone in the Little Palace had ever been given.

So Alina felt a little confused but certainly shamefaced, when the door swung open to reveal two people inside the cabin: one of them shirtless, and neither of them Sturmhond.

“Oh,” she said, taking stock.

One of the men she recognised: Tolya, who she’d first noticed because she thought he was the biggest person she had ever seen. She quizzed him about poetry whenever he'd had enough drinks to keep up with her volume, quantity, and speed of speech.

The other boy, however, made her blush a little: he was the shirtless one. It was her first experience of a shirtless man, and she suddenly had more understanding of Laoise than she’d ever possessed in their centuries long relationship. Human bodies were fascinating and, by the stars, were they pretty.

He was also blonde. Alina finally understood why blonde hair featured so heavily in her literature. This was all the proof she needed that her imagination had simply been hemmed in and forced to dwell on dark eyed brunettes, by circumstance.

“Um.” Alina said, “I was looking for the Captain. Is he… here?”

With these two men. In a bedroom. One of them shirtless.

Hmm. Maybe she’d been misunderstanding Sturmhond’s interest in Zoya. She really couldn’t get anything right.

The blonde man blinked at her, equally startled. As she watched him, a red flush started creeping up his neck and across his shoulders. Alina couldn’t help but drink it in shamelessly, because it made him look even better.

It was around this time, remembering to glance back up at his face, that she realised she’d never seen him before. She had a feeling she would remember. Maybe he was less memorable when he was in his clothes.

“Uh. Not exactly,” the blonde man said, in a highly cultured Ravkan accent. “No.”

“Oh. Well.” Alina said, trying to remember keeping her eyeline higher than the swoop of his shoulders and utterly failing. “I’ll just leave, then, to go look for him. Ever so sorry to interrupt!”

She paused, and when none of the three of them moved, she said, “But are you… um. Are you sure you can be doing that in here? Won’t you get in trouble?”

An expression crossed over Tolya’s face: it was either barely hidden amusement, or abject pain.

“Not the sex, of course,” Alina clarified hastily, “I think that the Captain would be very supportive of any and all of that. But doing it in his quarters… I know he has a nicer bed than the rest of us, but surely that’s just not allowed.”

“Um.” said the blonde man, intelligently.

“Well, how about we just don’t tell him, my lady star?” said Tolya, with a smirk that Alina didn’t think was trying to be sexy. But then again, what did she know? She wasn’t having any luck getting men shirtless, and here he was, putting her to shame.

Tolya continued dryly, “And maybe don’t tell anyone else, for that matter. I would hate for people to know about all the sex I’m having. In Sturmhond’s quarters. With the man before me.”

“Tolya,” the blonde man said, through gritted teeth.

“Come now, buttercup, don’t be shy,” Tolya deadpanned. “I’d hate for her to get the wrong idea about what we’re doing together. In Sturmhond’s quarters. Without Sturmhond anywhere in sight.”

“Well, he’s very pretty,” Alina replied, moved by this apparent declaration of affection or at least ownership, as the blonde man choked, “so I think it would perhaps be a waste, for me to ruin it for you. Your secret is more than safe with me. Could you read me more poetry, later?”

Tolya had not doubt known to expect this payment. He bowed his head in assent. “Of course, my lady star.”

Alina bit her lip. “And… could you tell the Captain I’m looking for him? If you happen to see him first.”

“Yes, I’m sure the Captain will be with you, shortly,” replied Tolya.

“Well…” Alina managed to draw her eyes away from the blonde man’s very nice chest and started backing up hastily, feeling that she’d been slightly greedy, and had more than her fill. She felt the doorknob dig into her lower back behind her. “This has been nice! Good for you! And um. Nice to meet you!”

She didn’t know the etiquette of making introductions when one person was undressed, so she decided she’d ask the blonde man for his name later.

“Not a word,” she heard him hiss, as Alina ducked hastily out of the room.

“You’re the one insisting on being tailored shirtless,” she thought she heard Tolya reply. “At least it wasn’t your Stormwitch, she’d work it out in a heartbeat.”

But Alina didn’t hear any of it clearly enough to pin the words down, and would only understand the meaning of the sentence later, with context. As it was, she was too caught up in the urgent need to go up on deck to drink in some fresh air.

It took them two days to track the Rusalye. The Captain did indeed come up on deck very quickly, and the exertion - or the situation in which he’d been found - left him very pink in the face. Alina did her best to lie to him, trying not to let any of her thoughts show on her face as she patiently explained the pull of the Rusalye to the west. It did not go very well for either of them. She was now experiencing a lot of trouble not imagining everybody shirtless.

The first time she saw Aleksander, she thought she was going to have a heart attack. It was quite embarrassing really, him all sombre next to her, carefully going over their plan of engagement and judiciously checking if the Rusalye’s presence was uncomfortable for her the same way the Stag’s had been.

And Alina, stood there, keeping her gaze pinned very carefully onto the wide expanse of ocean. Not looking at him. Very much not imagining a chiaroscuro of pale limbs and dark hair, and very much not wondering if his skin would flush the same way the blonde man’s had, under her gaze.

Alina honestly didn’t remember any of that conversation. She’d definitely not been on top form, but thankfully Aleksander had misunderstood the reason why. Clearly assuming her addled by standing out on deck for hours on end, he’d asked Zoya to bring her a blanket, and a plate of warm food.

But Alina didn’t feel the cold, and she decided to forego sleep, as well, in the pursuit of her cousin. Tired, stiff and once again hungry, she felt the moment when they crossed a threshold, as she had with the Stag. The Rusalye’s presence, which had been like the edge of a sword along her spine, suddenly coalesced into a voice: an incoherent roar, screaming its rage and pain into the silence, with no hope or expectation of a reply.

This time, when the connection formed, it was not against Alina's will. That was easier, but still she was overwhelmed. It was the difference between fighting a current, and being pulled downstream with just enough time to take a breath before you were dragged under. She felt her kin enter her consciousness like two pieces of fabric suddenly stitched together with the sharp prick of a needle, and pulled taut. No, more visceral than that: two pieces of skin, under a surgeon’s tools.

The pain that was needed, in order to heal.

Aleksander stood by her elbow. There were only a handful of them up on the deck: the Captain and his closest men; Zoya, and Ivan. Zoya had lashed herself to the mast, and planned to hold the boat steady if needed. Sturmhond had tried to stand with Alina, daring and curious to the last, until the squaller had grabbed his arm, and told him to stay put with her, for the sake of his safety.

But Aleksander. He was close. They could’ve been holding hands, if that was a thing they ever did. He saw the moment when the connection claimed her, from the way her hands tightened white-knuckled on the ship railing.

“You have it?” he asked.

“Him,” she corrected with gritted teeth.

“Him?”

“The Rusalye,” she replied. “We don’t really do gender the same way you do, necessarily, but he fell as a man. I suppose that’s where all the Cursed Prince rumours came from.”

“Sounds like something out of a storybook,” Aleksander observed, in a tone of voice that Alina recognised as his jealous one. At the very least, it implied that he thought she was about to make certain kinds of decisions.

“I mean, for one thing, Aleks, he’s been mutilated and shoved into the body of a sea serpent, so I don’t think there’s much chance of a romance between us,” she replied, as primly as she could manage as she wrestled with her newly split consciousness. “But also. He’s so old.”

Aleksander cleared his throat, and offered no further comment in this direction.

“Is there anything you need of me?” he asked her, “it hurt you, last time, when you and the Stag spoke. How can I help? What can I do?”

“If you could not try to kill him,” she said. “That would be swell.”

“Very funny,” Aleksander replied tersely. “I’m not going to steal it - him - from you, Alina. But I would prefer not to just stand here, like last time. There must be something I can do to aid you.”

“When you shoulder the burden and grief of your people,” Alina said, “do you let anyone share the weight? Do you trust anyone else to bear it, the way you know you could?”

His silence told her his answer, but also his understanding. Alina thought they might finally know one another in a way that could foster respect.

“If it helps,” she added. “I wish I did not have to do this alone. But I make the choice knowing there is no way you could speak to him, even if you wanted to.”

It was only as she said it, that she realised her words did not help at all. Aleksander clenched his jaw, then nodded once. He was used to being the one who made these kind of decisions, not receiving the orders that resulted from them. And above all else, he hated being powerless.

But Alina could not pretend he was something he was not.

“There,” she whispered, raising her finger and pointing in the direction of the Sea Whip. The skin on her arms raised in gooseflesh under her clothes. The water was featureless and slate grey, but she could feel it gliding under the surface, closer and closer, without a sound. It was not like the Stag - the Rusalye did not call out for her. He felt her presence, and he pursued it. He hunted.

Here, she said, in her other voice, a clear ring of a bell, a tremor across hairsbreadth wire.

She saw Aleksander tense at the sound of her first language, reverberating through him as well, though it was not something he could comprehend. The time had passed for her to care about what he was thinking or what he might do - if he stabbed her in the back now, she wouldn’t even feel it, heart in her throat and half out of her body. The Sea Whip’s presence loomed bigger and bigger, until it eclipsed all else, even the Black Heretic.

“Are you well?” Aleksander asked.

And then, the Rusalye’s response erupted along their connection. Her greeting was a ripple, his a tsunami: a screech, a scream, a wave of pain and anguish and hurt and anger and then recognition and fear and joy - but the joy warred with something else - the blood in the water - the twitching of muscle and sense - the animal he had long since merged with -

“I think you might want to step back,” Alina managed to say, as the Sea Whip’s voice caused her shine to churn to the surface the same way a mirror reflected light, and the ice dragon’s sinuous, pale body ruptured the ocean.

The Rusalye rose to regard their ship, his body rearing seventeen feet above the waves. Along with the hard, uncaring slap of seawater that hit Alina full in the face, came a tidal wave of emotion. The Stag had been tired, exhausted by her sadness and ready for her life to end. The Rusalye was a churning vortex of anger and agony.

The same grief, given claws. Given teeth.

There was a roar through Alina’s mind, so loud it shook her bones and her very being. It took a second for the ringing in her ears and the spittle on her cheeks to tell her that this was not just an internal scream of pain. The Sea Whip’s roar was for all of them. She could hear people moving behind her - curses from crewmen, orders from Aleksander and Sturmhond.

“You are not to hurt him,” she said, placing her arms out as she had done for the Stag. At the end of the sodden dark sleeves of her kefta, her hands were beacons of light.

But this was not the Stag - the ferocity and the power of the Rusalye's sleek predator’s body, impossibly large, scared even her. Alina's voice came out as mere breath.

Cousin, flee them! the star inside the Rusalye cried. They cannot be trusted. I will rend them tooth and claw. They shall not hurt you as they hurt my family. Dive under the ocean with me! I will protect you!

“You don’t understand,” Alina shouted, above the beast’s din, “they bought me here! I’m here to help!”

You are a star, alone among men! Liars! Cheats! Murderers! Hunters! You are not safe!

The Sea Whip lashed his tail, the part of him still underwater. The ship rocked with the force of it.

“Darling, this doesn’t seem like the safest of parlays!” called Sturmhond from somewhere behind her, but his voice was very far away. Alina wished she could raise the same barrier she had for the Stag, to protect all of them. But the ship was made of wood, and Sturmhond had gunpowder on board. This was not the damp, snow-logged ground the Stag had called home. When she glanced down, her feet were already leaving a smouldering, smokey impression on the tarred deck.

They must be lying to you, cousin, the sea whip roared again, that is what they do. All they know is hurt, and pain, and how to inflict it. I have seen them, with their shining weapons. All of them gleaming: Ilya’s implements, the hooks and chains and spears of the ships that pass through my new world. Look, they ready them now, even as you call to me, and I know kin for the first time in an age-

Alina glanced behind her. Sturmhond’s crew were readying harpoons. From their troubled expressions, it did not seem to be out of spite, merely a precautionary measure.

Not that it mattered, to the torn and smarting soul of the star in front of her. She could already see the string of events as they would fall: one wrong move, one hair trigger, a bleeding monster and a smashed deck. Fragments of the ship in the water. She would live, but they would all be gone.

This was why she had created a barrier around Morozova’s Stag. Because the Sea Whip was right: humans couldn’t be trusted. But neither could the star in front of her: a soul filled with fear, and in so much pain.

“Sturmhond,” she shouted, “drop the weapons! You need to stand down!”

You are young and freshly fallen, the Rusalye said. You remind me of my sister. I remember what happened to my sister.

Another cacophony of pain and shared agony through her, as the Rusalye screamed with its maw. It was a sound of mourning, but no one else understood that. To them, it was just a wild beast’s roar.

“I think I’ll keep the harpoons where they are, Alina, if it’s all the same to you,” was Sturmhond’s cordial yet strained response. “I’m realising I really should’ve quizzed you on the specifics of this encounter - an oversight on my part, I’ll admit-”

Liars! Cowards! Brutes and beasts! They will hurt what they do not understand!

It was getting harder and harder for Alina to care about the mortals on the deck, as another wave of incoherent rage overwhelmed her senses and drove her light to brighten further. Sturmhond was a friend, but he was not kin. He was not listening to her, as every other mortal had not listened to her. And what was his fear in the face of the Rusalye’s fear, that had had centuries to fester, had long morphed into a wild and primal anger?

The star wanted to share his pain, but the mortals here did not speak the way they did. The need for his agony to be understood had long become the need to make others bleed, to rend and tear, and-

Alina came back to herself, gasping. The Stag had been kind when they spoke to each other. The Rusalye was not kind. Nor could she ask him to be, not when she saw the wounds that ailed him, not when they flooded her mind as well.

He had seen his sister die. Tied down and helpless, unable to stop it.

“I’m sorry,” she said. It was the same chant she’d given the Stag, “I’m so so sorry. But these people did not harm your sister, they are under my protection. You’ve been so alone, but I’m here, I promise I’m here-”

It did not placate him, the same way it had his sister.

Another roar, and the Sea Whip's claws smashed onto the deck, either side of Alina. The railing was obliterated with a fracturing of wood. A panicked, human sound came from behind her. Aleksander stumbled back. The Rusalye hunkered down over her, its torso and sleek muzzle becoming a partial shield around her body as she craned her neck to look in his face. It was a protective, not aggressive, stance. He had not yet attacked anyone on the boat, but they would not see that for the restraint Alina knew it was.

“Stop!” she said, using Ravkan so that the scared people around her knew she was working for their protection. “Please! We aren’t here to hurt you!”

But this privileging of mortal words came at a price: the Rusalye was lost in its animalistic fury, and did not heed her.

They will spear us clean through! he cried. They will carve your heart from your chest!

Alina glanced towards Aleksander, panicked. She hoped he, at least, would understand. She’d had some very strong and insistent opinions on the presence of harpoons.

The Darkling had inched outside the halo of her new rising power, grimacing and looking a little sick as he watched her burn brighter. His eyes were on her, not the beast. Her glow placed him into stark relief, the true gaunt presence of a starving man. A splinter of wood had sheared off in his direction with the Rusalye’s clumsy boarding, and left a cut across his pale forehead, leaking a thin trail of blood, spreading quickly across his damp skin.

And when she caught his gaze, he did not look away. That was good. He did not speak like a star, but she knew that, for him, people’s faces were an open book. For once, it helped to have never learned to lie.

Help me, she said.

It would only be later, that she understood which voice she spoke with. As it was, it was a struggle to stay coherent, to hold onto herself and the part of her that cared about humanity, when the damaged trust of the Rusalye loomed so close in her mind. She could not say negotiate with Sturmhond and get him to stand down, but that’s what she expected of Aleksander, so silvertongued, and so intimately understanding of how others’ fear worked.

Aleksander heard her, and stumbled. One of his hands clutched frantically at his chest, and he blinked up at her, confused.

Protect him, she said, again.

Aleksander took a deep, shuddering breath, and looked down at his own hands.

He is the most dangerous thing here, the Rusalye observed, incandescent scale rippling over muscle as it hauled itself further up into the boat and sent it kiltering with the weight. He has a murderer’s soul, I see it in his eyes. Shall I kill him first, cousin?

Alina turned back to the Rusalye. It was no longer safe to divert her attention elsewhere. She would simply have to trust in Aleksander’s unwavering self-preservation, once again.

“I don’t want you to kill anyone, cousin,” she told the Sea Whip, reaching up and placing her hands against its cold, callused hide. “I’m here to help you. Your sister sent me. She sleeps now, and knows peace. But you were the last thought on her mind as she left this world. She asked me to come here.”

Alina… had never been very good at talking.

My sister! the star cried out in agony, and its dragon body thrashed mindlessly like an animal in pain as a wash of memory came over them both - a girl, with dark, night black skin but pale, pale hair. Looking down at her new hands, skin stretched taut over bone, laughing at her new body. But that laughter had held fear, because they were breakable now, in a way they never had been before-

A girl, strapped to a table, screaming-

The sound of a wood, fracturing.

Alina let out a sob, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry-”

“Alright. Fuck this,” came a voice from somewhere behind her.

“Get your men to stand down, Sturmhond,” Aleksander’s voice, curt but shaking. “I will not ask twice.”

“We can’t take another hit like that, it’s as big as the fucking ship!” Sturmhond said, “I thought she could talk to these beasts! ”

An argument. Raised voices. A curse. Alina was shuddering, her face and body plastered against the Rusalye’s breast as it screamed its grief.

"Alina will handle it. Your clumsy meddling will only make things worse."

“And how can we trust your word, Darkling? You!” Sturmhond’s incredulous shout above the din, “when she’s your superweapon!”

“She’s isn’t my anything - but those are not your words, are they?” Aleksander, voice turning cold. “That’s Lantsov speaking. He said the same, in his last letter.”

Another curse. A patch of lost time. A whistle, as a harpoon was loosened-

- Only to hit nothing.

Alina came back into her body, the wave of pain and horror crashing and breaking on the shore as she finally caught hold of herself in the torrent.

The world she returned to was suddenly, unnaturally quiet. The only light she could see was her and the Sea Whip. The rest of the deck was shrouded in darkness. Confused, she stole another quick glance behind her.

Between the crew and her, there now stood a wall of shifting shadow. A dark, smoky mirror to the illuminated dome she had crafted the Stag. Alina could not see what stood on the other side. She could not say who had shot the harpoon gun. Who had made that choice.

But she knew who had made the choice to stop them: the only other figure who was on this side, with her.

Aleksander had conjured their shield. And he was holding it now, entire body shaking.

It took him far more work to maintain the barrier than it did her. Alina wondered what it cost him - he had not dared summon, before, in the clearing. She had not expected him capable, nor had she asked it of him. The dome was in fact only half-formed: the shadows started to peel away and smoulder whenever they got too close to Alina and the Sea Whip, wrapped up in each other and feeding each other’s shine.

Aleksander had not done what she wanted. He had done something better, and bought her time.

The Sea Whip could no longer see the other mortals, which meant their presence could no longer incense him. The peace and silence inside this dome of shadow was exactly what was needed. Alina turned back to the Rusalye, and shifted entirely to her first language, no longer needing to mediate communication for the mortals’ benefit.

Yes, your sister. I know you miss her, she said, trying her best to be soothing. But her fear is gone now, cousin. She is resting. Her pain is at an end, and her story is told.

She opened up herself, made herself a conduit. She recalled the Stag’s side heaving under her cheek, the steady change of her breathing from laboured to calm. Her pain fading to nothingness, her remnants scattered to the breeze. Alina tried to pass on the emotion the Stag had known, in her final moments: sadness, but a gratitude for an end. Her bittersweet calm. And then, what Alina had given her: love, all the love in her chest, all the love her body could carry. Every last ounce of herself.

I helped her as best I could,, she said, a truth in the way only a star could tell. And I am here to help you.

Alina could finally open her eyes to look at the beast before her. His vessel was old, in whatever way a dragon could be - whiskers missing, scales blunted and snapped off. Long-healed lacerations across his eyes and muzzle, a welt of scar tissue along the muscle bound bulk of his right shoulder. He was also otherworldly, and beautiful: the scales that remained shone like opals, like pearls, iridescent, and blinding in their light.

“Cousin,” she whispered, in Morozova’s Ravkan.

The Rusalye sighed. His anger was not spent, but finally it had abated. With no other mortals in front of him, he was no longer frenzied.

It is good to speak, cousin, he said, fangs dripping with water and saliva, as his muzzle drew level with her face to regard her. I have not spoken in so long. They made a predator out of me. A monster. All I know is the hunt, this neverending chase. Morozova made my soul cruel.

Alina reached up, and placed her hand on his cheek. The beast shuddered, with the pleasure of touch after years of ice cold loneliness. They both burned brighter as the connection between them strengthened.

“No, he didn’t,” she replied. “You did not harm anyone on this ship. All you hurt was wood, and wood does not feel. You are not cruel.”

I may come to regret it, the Sea Whip observed. These mortals are monsters, and repay any kindness or mercy with hate.

Alina felt sick. For a second, she was uncertain if she could deny it.

“Not all of them. I hold out hope,” she told him, eventually, testing out the words a little for herself. It came out more certain than she had expected.

The Rusalye narrowed its eyes, and Alina wondered if he would chide her for her insolence and naiveté, the same way everyone else did.

Instead he just made a disgruntled sound deep in his throat, like a grumpy old man. You are young, cousin, the star said, but you have done my family a great service, and now a man who stinks of Morozova himself raises a barrier in my defence. I will warn you against these mortals you have protected. They will harm you, in the end. But I will not harm them, if only for your sake.

“Thank you,” she said, knowing exactly what his restraint had cost him.

This man’s blood and magic both reek, cousin. They smell of him. Do you understand what I tell you?

“I know. But of the many crimes he's committed, this is not one of them. That is not what family is. If he feels a blood debt, at least he’s helping me make it right.”

The Rusalye made another grumpy old man sound. Alina thought their connection was pulling him further back into his star body, dredging his personality out from the beast he had merged with. When he paused, then grumbled, I don’t like the look of him, he sounded almost like a disapproving uncle.

Alina let out a small laugh. “No. But he has given us this time, and allows you to hear the choice I have for you. You do not have to like him.”

And so she spoke to the Sea Whip the way she had to the Stag, explaining to him her purpose.

“I can give you peace,” she said, “or I can let you go now, and we can meet elsewhere, and continue speaking together. I can keep you in your body for as long as you want. We could make new memories for you, ones without this anger or this pain.”

Alina made up this offer as she went along, for the Rusalye was not the Stag. His body was more capable of accommodating him and his sentience, once clarity was returned to him. He was not tired, and aching, the same way as his sister - not exhausted by the ever-watching vigilance of prey.

And yet, it took the Sea Whip the same three breaths as his sister, to know what he wanted.

Rest, he said, body shuddering with a sigh. I was not meant to live on this earth so long. I do not wish for this bloodthirst. The sea here is cold. I miss my family.

Alina swallowed against the tears thick in her throat, and nodded. “Then, will you tell me your story, cousin? So that you are not forgotten? So that the burden is shared amongst kin?”

She felt dread as she said it, imagining the nightmares that the Rusalye’s words would give her: the ones where it was she who was lashed to a bed, Morozova leaning over her with his surgeons tools and a clinical expression stolen from Aleksander. She never saw Morozova’s face, but she tried not to think about how many times the Saint wore a black kefta in her dreams, not Fabrikator’s purple.

But that fear was selfish, she told herself. Her fears were imagined, not lived, and it was her purpose to bear witness to Morozova’s victims and free them, no matter what it cost her.

The price was so little compared to what they had suffered.

So the Rusalye told her his story, and his curse - to be as far from the sky as possible, in a watery darkness that made a mockery of his true home. Of the years of hunting, and being hunted, in the dark with no other voices to make the emptiness feel whole. Until all that was left was instinct, and the taste of blood on the current.

I wanted to be a musician, he said. That’s what I thought I had fallen for. I was going to play, and my youngest sister was going to sing.

She watched as his muscles spasmed and twitched, fighting the urge to use his powerful body for what it was meant for, as this centuries-old grief and anger resurfaced. She soothed him as she had done the Stag, with her words and her hands, stroking his side.

She kept her heart open, though it hurt to do so. She took everything in.

Do you think they would hurt me, if the shadows dropped? asked the Sea Whip, once the tale was done, and the calm in the inevitable end had begun to overtake him. Your man is flagging, and given that my life will soon be over, this would be a colossally stupid way for him to die.

Alina looked behind her, through the Sea Whip’s legs where he had her half-shielded, half-embraced. Aleksander’s back was to her, but she too could tell he suffered, from the pained tension in his back, and the strain in his stance. She wondered how long it had taken the two of them to reach their agreement - the world had fallen away, and she’d nearly forgotten that there was anyone but them in the world.

“Aleksander, it’s ok!” she shouted, “we are at an accord, and my cousin has made his decision. It is time. Let the wall down. Sainthood requires an audience, after all!”

Thank you, she couldn’t help but say, in her other voice, and Aleksander’s gasp was lost to the wind as the now translucent shadows of his shield grew momentarily opaque, darker and stronger for a short second, as if strengthened.

But after a confused moment, the roar of the waves and wind returned as he heeded her order and the shadows fell. Alina turned back to the Sea Whip, who was growling low in his throat as if he couldn’t help it, instinctively fearful once more at the sight of mortals

“Hush,” she murmured, pulling his face down to hers once more, close enough to kiss. “Let’s not have your final moments dwell on them. We are here together, cousin. You are not alone.”

The Rusalye narrowed its garnet eyes, her voice drawing his consciousness back to the fore.

Your kindness does you and your family credit, cousin. Your heart is bright, and you are strong. But do not give that strength to the wrong person.

“What do you mean?” she whispered.

Do not give any mortal your heart.

“If you fire any of your contraptions at the beast, Lantsov,” she heard the Darkling say behind her, his voice ragged with pain. “I will end you with the Cut myself, and Vasily will no doubt give me a fucking medal for taking the spare out of the mix.”

Alina hoped this threat was convincing enough to not require follow through. She didn’t think Aleksander would actually be able to summon anything stronger than a wet tissue, with his voice sounding like that.

She could feel the Rusalye's eyes on her, watching her knowingly.

“Oh,” Alina said, quietly, so that Aleksander wouldn’t hear while he was distracted. “Well. I’m not planning on giving him that. We are not in love, you see.”

And yet, you just did so, without thought, the Rusalye observed, with that same disapproving uncle tone. And while I simply said ‘any mortal’, your mind went immediately to him.

Alina hid her blush in her cousin’s shoulder, feeling stupid and, indeed, very young. After a second, she pushed it down with determination - this moment was not the time to think about her own foolish decisions, not when her serious duty was yet to be accomplished.

“You wish those to be your final words, cousin?” she said, trying to make her voice teasing, “advice, on my love life?”

I could not protect my own sisters, he said. But I can protect you. Never give a mortal your heart, cousin. They do not have to rip it out of your chest, for it to cost you everything it gives them.

Alina stepped back, swallowing nervously. The Sea Whip adjusted its body with a huff from its flared snout, but the tension of its strong muscles was already waning, as if in surrender.

“My cousin, my kin,” she said. “You are loved. You are remembered. You will know the sky once more, through me.”

A worthy send off, the star rumbled. The dragon closed his eyes, and lowered his head even further, as if bowing to her.

She leant forward, ignoring the stench of fish and blood from its maw as she placed a kiss on its scaled brow.

“Rest now,” Alina said. “Follow your sister. I free you from your bonds.”

The star inside the Rusalye exploded into light. And ten feet back, Aleksander dropped onto the deck, into unconsciousness.

Chapter Text

She held his hand until he came back to himself.

It took all of seventeen minutes, but Alina knew that it was a terrifying seventeen minutes for everyone on board. While she knew he'd be fine, no one else had ever even seen the man that was General Kirigan fall. Ivan was the one who carried him below deck and out of Sturmhond’s eyeline, and it was Ivan who watched now from the corner, glaring at her, as he monitored Aleksander’s vitals. Alina knew his anger was an expression of his fear, more than his resentment. She knew he didn't trust her, and she knew he wanted her to leave.

But though Ivan was the one making sure Aleksander's heart was beating, Alina was the one speeding his recovery.

Alina remembered the darkness of the war room. And she heard the Rusalye’s words, still ringing in her ears, and firmly ignored them, as she opened her heart and fed the dying fire of Aleksander’s power, deep at the heart of him. She poured out her shine like water from a holy spring, and urged him to wake the fuck up.

It didn’t count, she thought, so long as it was for practical purposes.

She needed Aleksander up, because he was the one who’d just threatened everyone on board, for her, and that meant that no one but Alina was going to do it.

In fact, she had a feeling everyone outside of the Second Army would be very happy indeed for General Kirigan to stay dead. He wasn’t dead, she knew - simply the most vulnerable he’d ever been. Which for the Black Heretic was probably very close to dead, and certainly could be classified as ‘extremely killable’, if it were not for the Fold.

But they were very far from the Fold.

And if he died... then who would protect the Second Army, in his stead, without preparation, in the middle of the ocean and so far away from Os Alta?

Alina could not let that be her fault.

Alina was also pretty certain that it was only his fear of her that had kept Sturmhond from shooting Aleksander while he was down. Glowing like a furnace, she had not spared a moment to observe the Sea Whip’s phantom as its dust motes of gold were whipped away on the ocean wind in a blink. She was so tired, weighed down with memory and imagining she could still taste blood in her mouth from the Rusalye's rage. Her legs had shaken as she had moved to stand protectively over Aleksander’s body, but she thought the explosion and her light was enough to intimidate the Captain to back down.

“I’m sorry about the damage to your boat,” she told Sturmhond, as she took a casual stance between Aleksander’s prone form, and him. As if it was nothing to worry about. As if the Darkling passed out all the time. There was no reason to be frightened, she told herself - surely one small act of heroism was not out of character enough to kill him. “I will pay for the repairs.”

“Oh,” the Captain said, in a shaky voice. Alina’s glowing worked, and he kept his eyes on her, hands trembling at his sides and not reaching for a weapon. “That’s ok, actually. This isn’t my main ship. This was hired, you see.”

“That’s good to know,” she said, fighting for calm. “But I’m sorry to whoever you hired it from, for the injury dealt it. I wasn’t expecting my cousin to be so big.”

“Your... cousin?” Sturmhond said weakly.

“Yes. My cousin. The soul I just released. I’m certain I told you that the Sea Whip and I were kin.”

“Yes. Yes, you did,” Sturmhond was doing his best to have bravado, but mostly he just sounded dazed. “But I confess, I didn’t really believe you. I don’t believe in the Saints either, you see. Or in stars that walk the earth. My father thought that the two of you were just spinning a yarn that would get you on the throne within a year. I told him I didn’t see the Stag anywhere on you, but he said that that didn’t matter much, with Grisha, and with Kirigan.”

By this point, Ivan was picking up Aleksander’s body and slinging it over his shoulder. Alina was pretending not to notice it, so Sturmhond - ever a good team player - was pretending to ignore it as well. Still, the fact that the Black General was being handled like a heavy rag doll escaped neither of them. Alina stoked her brightness higher, until Sturmhond had to squint, ensuring that she remained his top priority.

And then she said something that she thought Aleksander would be proud of her saying: “So you're the reason the King rejected our most recent round of demands.”

“..Yes,” Sturmhond said weakly, “I probably am, I confess. I’ve been feeding back to him on your behaviour. I explained to him that you haven’t menaced me once - until now, of course, you’re doing so excellently. And given you are very much not a hostage, but in fact have Kirigan wrapped around your little finger, I was telling him that half the stories picking up speed in the Old Country must be bullshit. And yet, they’ve all proven to be true. Fuck me, amiright?”

Alina wondered what Aleksander would do, when face to face with a traitor who was sabotaging their plans. In the period of silence it took her to puzzle this through, Sturmhond spoke again, voice wavering.

“But, the good news is, even if you are clearly some kind of supernova, you did at least decide not to weaponise a dragon against the Royal Family! The dragon, that you just exploded, in a breath, with no visible magic. Which, honestly, means that I am still firmly on your side! At least in the middle of the ocean, on this very, very flammable boat.”

Alina thought for another long second, and Sturmhond kept talking, his smile firmly planted in a mask over his very scared face.

“I mean, I’m not about to try and challenge the woman even General Kirigan is afraid of! Not for my father, and certainly not for the amount he’s paying me!”

Soothed by his panicked prattle, Alina came to a decision. It wasn’t the one that Aleksander would’ve come to, but he was currently unconscious and being taken down to the quarterdeck.

“You will sit in on our next discussion of demands, and we will read your own report and amend it, so that Lantsov gives us what we want,” she said, testing the words on her tongue. “And you will finish the work you were contracted to do, and take us back to land. Because we paid you, and you gave us your word. Is this ship salvageable, or do you want to use your other one?”

“Oh, the other one is only a day behind,” Sturmhond said through his smile, “and your dragon smashed our rudder. Probably quicker to just wait for them, really.”

Alina was not the person who could tell if he was lying, so she simply nodded. “I’ll check with Aleksander once he’s awake,” she said, making it sound like a certainty. “He’ll probably want to kill you. But luckily, you flirted with me for social advantage. And I am, of course, the softer one.”

“Sounds like a wonderful, and very safe, and not at all deadly plan!” Sturmhond said.

“Don’t worry. If he wants to kill you, I’ll stop him. So long as you keep your word.”

“Splendid! Capital! I’ll just go hale my ship and get them to speed it along, shall I?! Are you going to stop glowing, or should I get a bucket of water on hand for if the deck catches?”

Alina darkened herself by a fraction, but kept her skin bright for the warning it was. She turned away, in the direction of the quarterdeck, paused and then turned back, frowning.

“...Why don’t you look a thing like Lantsov, exactly?”

“Tailored! By an amateur, but the disguise seemed to be working,” Sturmhond replied in a strained voice. “Though, I confess, I do take after my mother. You’ve met me, actually! A few days ago! I can get shirtless again, if that means you’re less likely to murder me!”

Ah, thought Alina, as everything started making sense again.

“If you got shirtless, I'd be more likely to spare you, but in Aleksander’s eyes, you’d probably be a dead man,” she told him honestly, and then walked over to the door that led below deck. "Zoya, follow him and make sure he doesn't fuck us over."

“Come with me, your highness,” Zoya said, her voice so chilled as to reach subzero.

“Oh, I don't think I'm a 'highness', or even in the running, actually! Is now a good time to mention the extensive doubts surrounding my legitimacy?" Sturmhond started, hitting shrill pitches as the Stormwitch led him away.

Alina walked placidly into the quarterdeck, and only started running once she was down the ladder and out of sight.

And now, it was fourteen minutes and seventeen seconds later. And as she funnelled shine into the part of Aleksander that he had foolishly exhausted, she felt unspeakable relief as his eyelids fluttered open. The Darkling blinked a couple of times, dazed, looking up at the ceiling, then at her face, and then down at their intertwined hands, which she thought must be quite warm.

Then, he jolted upwards with a gasp, sitting upright in his small bed.

“What happened?” he said.

“You fainted,” Alina replied.

“Protecting her,” Ivan added, with venom.

Aleksander blinked away his disorientation, and they all pretended not to see the panic in his face at the idea he’d been injured. Then, he looked down at the hand that held his again, like this was still the thing that puzzled him the most.

“I won’t let you go until your power is back,” Alina told him, trying to be reassuring.

“My… power?”

“That’s why you fainted,” she explained. “I think it took a lot of energy to uphold a wall of darkness, that close to the Rusalye and I. There were barely any shadows at all for you to work with. None, even. It seems you made your own, from the very heart of yourself. But it’s ok, you didn’t burn yourself out entirely. You’ll be right as rain in a few minutes. It’s just like adding fuel to a fire.”

“I,” she heard the unspoken, the Black Heretic in that statement, “fell unconscious."

"Briefly." she felt the need to stress.

"And you’re… helping me?”

“It’s only been ten minutes,” she lied. “I’m sure you’d be fine without my help.”

Aleksander frowned at her, a little befuddled. “I fell on the deck, didn’t I? Why didn’t you just leave me there?”

“Oh, it was Ivan that moved you, I’m not very strong.”

“That’s not what I meant," he said tersely, "You could’ve taken me out entirely. Dropped me in the ocean, rallied Zoya at the sails, gone straight to the Fold. Instead you’re here by my - by my sickbed.”

Alina frowned, “that really doesn’t sound like the sort of thing I would do.”

“You could’ve killed me.”

“Surely you can swim?”

Aleksander gave her a look that told her that observation was missing the point slightly. “Not unconscious. Not in water that cold. It would’ve been over in minutes.”

“...Oh.” she said. “But I didn’t want to kill you.”

“You’ve threatened to kill me before.”

“Only when you force my hand, Aleksander,” Alina said quietly, “I’m not looking to murder you the moment the opportunity presents itself. That’s you thinking I’m like you.”

“I bet the Lantsov bastard thinks like me.”

“Well, if he did,” Alina replied, “I stopped him from acting on it. But I don’t really believe he’s a bad person either. He was much too easy to frighten.”

Aleksander looked at her again, like he was trying to see through to the very heart of her. As if it wasn’t already bared, unarmoured and beating, as she stoked his summoning back to its usual strength.

“We should kill her,” Ivan said, reminding them both that he was also in the room.

“Well, Ivan,” Aleksander said, congenially, “the fact of the matter is, neither of us is capable. So we must work firmly within the realm of the possible, and muddle through.”

Alina glanced at Aleksander, who was once more examining their joined hands. She couldn’t help but understand why Ivan had said it, and what he meant. Aleksander had done something very foolish for her, that put him in danger. He never put himself in danger. Even if he had only been placed in momentary peril, it was still probably the most vulnerable he’d ever been - around allies, and enemies alike.

At the very least, she thought it was the kind of thing that would make the Darkling angry. This preternatural calm was quite unnerving.

Aleksander ran a thumb softly over her knuckles, an almost thoughtful gesture, that startled her so that her spine was suddenly ramrod straight.

Ivan glowered. “This is madness, you nearly-”

“My heart seems fine now, Ivan,” Aleksander interrupted, “I suggest you leave the room.”

Ivan looked like he was ready to strangle them both with his own hands, foregoing heartrending entirely. “You cannot be serious.”

“Maybe… you could go tell Zoya that Aleks- the General is awake,” Alina said, trying to peacekeep. “Very loudly, near the Captain, for his benefit.”

Ivan ignored her. “She is nothing but a liability, moi soverenyi, and we have been away from court for far too long-”

“Ivan, the request to leave is no longer a suggestion, but an order,” Aleksander told him mildly. “When you can command dragons of legend, or maybe just heartrend one girl with a harpoon, know that I will take your counsel.”

Ivan’s expression was thunderous, but he was too loyal to not heed the command. He made a show of checking Aleksander’s pulse, to a scoff from the Darkling, and then stalked from the room. He left the both of them in silence, and that silence stretched out, with only the crash of waves in the distance for respite.

Alina was starting to wonder if she should let go of Aleksander’s hand.

“Thank you,” Alina said, wanting to fill the quiet. “I suppose I should tell you you were stupid, for choosing to put yourself in danger like that. But it was the right thing to do, so... thank you.”

“Your inability to lie somewhat impacts your bedside manner,” was Aleksander’s dry reply.

“You did something good,” she said. “What need is there for me to lie?"

Aleksander was watching her in silence, face placid and a little pale at the edges, making his eyes all the more dark and unfathomable. Alina wanted to look away and examine the wooden walls of the cabin, but something about their situation seemed to make it impossible to do so. This was obviously the worst thing in the world for Alina, and she knew he knew that. He was probably doing it in order to get her to vomit up her words again.

She tried not to let it get to her, but when five breaths passed in that strange, tense silence, she added. “You’re taking it awfully well though. Doing a good thing. I thought you’d be more upset about it.”

Aleksander raised an eyebrow at her. “Nikolai Lantsov is a fool who hasn’t taught his men discipline. Your cousin would’ve taken down the whole ship if angered, or injured. Placating the Rusalye was the only option, if we wanted to make it out in one piece that wasn't just a block of ice.”

“I’m not saying the decision you made wasn’t one of self preservation,” Alina replied. “I know that’s why you do things. I’m just surprised that you’re not more angry at the fact that it didn’t… you know, work.”

That startled a chuckle out of him, which was almost worse. That took away the threat of him exploding at her any second, of his saying something cruel or heartless to hide his fear, or trying to hurt her for making him feel it in the first place. The silence left behind in wake of that knowledge was even more intimate than before.

“I wonder if I’ll have any ego left to speak of, by the time you leave,” he joked with a wry tilt of his head.

“You’re being very strange,” Alina told him. “You didn’t hit your head, did you?”

“Will you tend to me, if I have?”

“I will obviously get Ivan,” she replied. “I have no working knowledge of mortal anatomy, or medicine.”

He smiled, “I haven’t hit my head, Alina.”

“Then… why are you smiling?”

“You didn’t kill me,” he replied.

“You were never in any real danger,” Alina reminded him, “I’m sure Ivan would’ve gotten you back up, without my help.”

It might’ve taken a mortal heartrender days they didn’t have, but she was certain Aleksander would've survived.

“That is not what I'm referring to. I mean, that you didn’t make the choice to kill me. You had me at my weakest, and you didn't use that to your advantage."

"Yes well, again, I'm not you-"

"Weeks ago, things would’ve been different,” Aleksander continued, still examining her face, “you would’ve ended my life.”

Alina wondered where that certainty came from. Yes, the fury she had felt before had left her wanting to inflict harm, but that didn't really mean she was capable of deliberately killing someone. All her murders so far had been accidents, and though she didn't feel exactly bad about them, she wasn't trying to increase the tally either.

Aleksander squeezed their intertwined fingers tighter, bringing her back into the room, “you certainly wouldn’t have sat by my bedside. You wouldn’t have helped me to get back up.”

“You were injured in the act of helping me,” Alina pointed out angrily, feeling almost defensive. “What kind of heartless person do you think I am, Aleksander, to just leave someone unconscious and hollowed out after they did something for my sake-”

“You’ve forgiven me,” he said, quietly. “You could’ve left me to die. You could’ve let Lantsov take his shot at my unconscious body, and make his father proud. You could’ve turned your face away and let Zoya tip me overboard. You could've ended me by your own hand. But you didn’t. You’re here now, with me, and you care whether I live or die. You’ve forgiven me, Alina.”

Alina blinked at him. Had she?

“That is why I am smiling,” Aleksander told her. Another smile, as if to prove his point, and another quiet laugh, “the closest I’ve come to death in an age, and instead of pushing me over the brink with glee, you pull me back from it. You care for me, once more.”

“I - I think that Ivan was maybe the one who-”

“Ivan does everything out of duty,” he replied dismissively, “I will never doubt his loyalty, nor will I fear his betrayal. I do not love Ivan-”

“It’s only because you did something good!” Alina interrupted. She did not understand why her voice was suddenly so high, or why she suddenly had to talk over Aleksander, after all those months of willing him to speak. “I’m not going to kill you for trying to be a good person. That seems somewhat counterproductive!”

“And aren’t there worse things in the world?” Aleksander murmured. While she was suddenly panicking, he looked more calm than ever. “I’ve certainly done far, far worse. The worst things I thought I could imagine, all for the sake of my next breath. Every crime I have committed that disgusts you - all the horrible, cruel choices I’ve made - were for my own survival, and for the wellbeing of my people. Who am I to complain, if suddenly all that either of these things relies upon, is the approval of a good woman?”

He was staring at their hands again. Alina looked down, worried, wondering if he too could see the channel of power flowing between them. She was suddenly very scared. What if he had realised? What if he knew what she was doing?

It had only been for practical purposes, she told herself. She knew that she was more free with her heart than most, but surely that meant it was safe.

“I think I should let go of your hand now,” she said, aloud.

Aleksander grinned wolfishly, “not a chance, Miss Starkov. I find that I’m still in a great deal of pain.”

“You’re not in any pain at all, you liar,” she replied. “And if you were, I couldn't help you with it.”

“I would thoroughly disagree. Your mere presence is a balm.”

“Don’t be silly. That’s not why I am holding your hand.”

“Oh, really?” he leant forward, fully into her space, “why are you holding my hand, then? Please, do tell.”

But Alina didn’t want him to know what she was doing, so she leant back and away from him, looking towards the wall and feeling her cheeks burn hot. “Stop it. You’re delusional. Maybe you did hit your head.”

“Oh, does Alina Starkov not like it when I blurt out uncomfortable truths simply to fill what was shaping up to be a perfectly pleasant silence?” Aleksander grinned. “What a fascinating development. I cannot say whether or not I relate.”

“You don’t lo-” love me. She couldn’t say it, it felt ludicrous in her own mouth, sending a new flush of heat all over her neck, shoulders, and back. “You can’t say things like that. Not when you don’t mean them.”

“Again, you dictate my own intentions,” he observed. “How can I be this terrible mastermind you imagine me to be, and yet not also be entirely certain of what I want, and how I feel, at all times?”

Alina curled into herself, remembering the conversation they had had when she was drunk, or the snippets she'd managed to hold onto when no longer reeling. They'd never discussed what had taken place that night. Not even when Aleksander had walked up to her on deck two days later, with the drafted list of demands he thought worth her ransom. She felt it was almost wrong of him to bring it up now: like it was violating some unspoken pact, even though she hated secrets and unspoken things with a vengeance.

When Alina tried to pull her hand back, Aleksander held it fast. “Fine then, Alina. If I have hit my head, and I am delusional, then nothing I say now matters. It cannot hurt either of us. There are no real consequences. So shall I state it plainly, in a way that you will have no choice but to understand?”

“Oh, no, that’s ok, actually," Alina replied, weakly, "Thank you for checking in with me, but I probably don't need to hear it. I really think we should-”

“All my life, I have been the only thing I know capable of protecting the Grisha. From war, from torture and torment, from the cruel machinations of men who will always fear that which they do not understand and cannot ever hope to possess." Aleksander said. “I was the most powerful being alive, and I alone saw the long, painful curve of our history. Only I knew enough, and cared enough, to protect them."

Alina found herself watching his face in profile, thinking how perfect and remote he looked as he spoke these grand words, like an artistic rendition of the man he thought himself to be. Then he turned and stared at her, suddenly and undeniably real, and arresting in an entirely different way, his gaze pinning her fast in place.

"Now, however, I have you. You, who have abilities I could never comprehend. You, who outclass me, by far. You are the most powerful being on this continent. You are the greatest tool that’s ever presented itself for changing the balance of power in Ravka, and for forging something meaningful for the Grisha’s security and their future.”

“So,” Alina said uncertainly, “...you just want me for my power?”

This sounded much more like something he would say.

Aleksander continued as if she hadn’t interrupted him, with only a small sardonic glance to reprimand her for doing so, “you are also kind. And clever, in a way that looks foolish - but with enough power behind it, comes back round to brave. You care about people. You will do whatever you can to save them, whatever the cost. Do you not see, Alina, what that means? All I have ever wanted, in this never ending war, is an ally. Someone I could trust, to understand what I fight for, to fight for it as well, with your whole being. To know what is right, and do it, without complaint, in the name of the Grisha.”

“You don’t even know what is right.” she accused.

“And that would certainly prove to be a problem, if I had any hope of ever overruling you,” he replied, with a logical simplicity that frankly scared her. “Once, I hoped to control you, but now that route is closed to me, and if I do anything you dislike, you could end me with a single blow. Ivan tells me to kill you, but I have no idea how. I cannot claim you by force. I have very little hope of swaying you over to my side.”

“...I don’t understand where this is going.”

“Luckily, you are much more soft-hearted than I, and open for compromise. Our plan with Lantsov was watertight - I made it so, with your help. It turns out, it did not fail because of either of us-”

“- It was the fault of pretty shirtless man.” She finished for him.

Aleksander frowned at her, and she clarified. “The Captain. Or, the man behind the Captain’s face.”

“Because of Nikolai Lantsov,” he agreed, valiantly rescuing the conversation. “A factor neither of us could’ve accounted for.”

“I think we should start editing his reports, too,” she added. “I think he would be amenable.”

Aleksander nodded, "regardless, we work well together. It is… easier, when you agree to work with me. On many levels.”

“But I’m not going to work with you,” she reminded him, “or agree with you. Not when it comes to the Fold.”

“I know, which is why I am no longer wasting my effort to ask.”

“You cannot sway me from my purpose,” she asserted, more for her benefit, than his.

“As you have proven, your purpose can change,” Aleksander replied, placid as a frozen lake. “You don’t even know for certain what it is yet.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s going to change. Not in the way you want it to.”

“What if it doesn’t have to change at all?" he said. "I used to think you were selfish. I think, on some level, you still are. Everything you have done, you have done out of kindness, and compassion, yes. But also, out of a desire for love. To be loved, by the Grisha, by the people of Ravka. Am I wrong? I do not think I am. What if that is your purpose? To be loved?”

Alina was going to melt inside her skin. “That feels like… a stretch,” she said.

In truth, it felt like he knew exactly what she wanted to hear, which is why she couldn’t trust it for even a second.

Aleksander shrugged, almost conceding.

“I am used to making the language of a deal work out in my favour,” he admitted. “I have had my many dreams and ambitions, that I brought to completion by adjusting them for the reality before me. Rather than possess you, or control you, instead all I can hope, is that one day, when you make your own decisions, you will let me counsel you. As your friend,” he told her, his voice soft and for her ears alone. “As more than that, if you would let me. All I have to hold on to is that one day my battles might become your battles, that you will want to help the Grisha because you want to help me.”

“I already want to help the Grisha,” Alina said, unthinkingly.

“I know you do,” he said, with another soft smile. “But I suppose I can’t help being a little selfish, as well.”

Alina wasn’t aware that she was leaning closer into him, as she looked down at the coverlet draped hastily over his lap by Ivan when he’d been laid out in his sickbed, and tried to puzzle through the meaning in his words.

“You’re saying that you’re… pleased that I didn’t kill you, because it means you’re winning,” she said. “You’re saying that you want to manipulate me into doing what you want, exactly like before. And one day, if you have your way, I won’t notice it anymore, because it will be what I want to do as well. I... I knew it! I knew you were only being nice so that I would like you again! That isn’t love!”

“Isn’t it?” Aleksander murmured, looking down at their hands once more, in a manner that was almost condescending, because he was so certain. “I want your power, Alina. I’m not going to pretend I don’t, not when it could save the lives of everyone I hold dear. But I also want you. The power, and the person. Is that not convenient?”

“I - what?”

“Why do you think I’ve stopped fighting it?” Aleksander asked her. His other free hand was now tracing her wrist, the fine filigree of veins just above her pulse point, and then he tugged her in gently, reeling her towards him like a fish hooked on a line.

“Why do you think I no longer feel the need to lie, to you, or to myself? What purpose does it serve me, to deny myself what I want any longer? I want you to love me. I want you to fight for me. I want you to be mine. But I know now that I cannot force you. So the only option left to me is to offer the same in return, and hope it is enough, when you have no reason whatsoever to pay me any mind.”

By now, his voice was nearly a whisper, ghosting the shell of her ear and taking her treacherous heart back to the night of the Winter Fete almost immediately. “And you know, the more I think about it, the less of a hardship it seems. You are the greatest ally I could ever persuade to my cause... and I find myself wanting to be very persuasive.”

That final promise was murmured low, at a pitch that settled deep in the base of Alina’s spine. His breath and the softest brush of his eyelash caught against her cheek, for they were now very close. She hadn’t dared look back up at him, but still she’d let herself be pulled in, until they were curved towards each other in the small, silent space. It was like feeling a gravity she hadn’t the strength to fight.

And still, the current flowed from her to him through their entwined hands, and she didn’t know if he knew to notice. Aleksander must know what being amplified felt like, but she wasn’t sure if he would understand the how, and the why.

But maybe... he already did. Maybe that was the only reason he was saying such silly things in the first place. How else had he chose to confess this to her now, when she was at her most vulnerable, her heart open to him and sharing with him everything she was?

What if the Rusalye was right? What if entrusting him with her heart cost her everything?

...Could she even stop herself, if it did?

No wonder the Darkling felt no fear. He had all but won.

“Aleksander-” she whispered, hating that she sounded fearful.

“Hush, now, Alina,” he murmured, and for a second she trembled, as he reached out a hand and tucked a strand of sodden, salt-stiff hair behind her ear, still sodden from the ocean the Rusalye had churned to foam. He traced the tip of her ear, then the curve of her cheek, with a single finger. “I do not need my answer, just yet. Not here, in these damp clothes, in the same breath as you mourn the loss of your kin. In this tiny, freezing cabin on this lurching ship, in this sad, single cot. It hardly seems appropriate. I can wait.”

With that hand on her cheek, he guided her face to look at him once more, and Alina thought she could die, right that second, with the way her heart hammered and her other heart sang. She thought she had understood what it was to fall, but it was different when you were not human, when you did not have a body to feel the pain of landing. Now all she had was fragility, and fear, and yet it was so honey sweet that she wasn’t sure it was fear at all. If she closed her eyes right now, she thought she may even be able to lean into it, and it wouldn’t feel like falling in the slightest.

Aleksander’s gaze darted around her face, drinking in her expression. It was that same calibrating, calculating way of his, yet it was also unspeakably tender. Like he had to know every inch of it, in order to understand the equation before him. As if her face was a verse he now knew by heart.

After a quick assessment, he nodded once, to himself, as if he had confirmed something. “I am more than happy to wait,” he repeated, with a low smile, that made Alina's stomach drop in a very mortal way. “Especially now that I know my plan is working. I confess, that is something of a relief.”

Alina wanted to argue, but when she opened her mouth she found it was too dry to form words.

“Did you know you’re still glowing, moya solnishka?” he asked her, in a frustratingly conversational tone. “You look quite beautiful. I could watch you for hours.”

“...I’m not the sun,” she said, stupidly. “You know that.”

“And yet, my entire life now revolves around you.”

What a line. She should’ve thrown him overboard.

“Alright, that’s it!” Alina snapped, “I’m taking my hand back now!”

She tugged it out of his grip and met little resistance. Instead, Aleksander watched her flustered demeanour with blatant amusement. And indeed, the entire cabin dimmed to five shades darker, as she closed up her heart and tucked it away tightly in her chest,. If he wasn’t fully healed, then it was his own fault, wasn’t it? For saying such foolish things, that sounded like they came straight out of a novel, just as Alina had all but convinced herself she knew what was reality and what was fiction for someone like her.

“You were amplifying me,” the Darkling observed, as she scooched the single wooden chair back with an unpleasant screech across the quarterdeck floorboards. She moved until she hit the wall, which was probably overkill, and yet her chest was heaving.

“You had hollowed out the very heart of your power, and needed amplifying,” she replied grudgingly, folding her arms and fighting the urge to check if her palms were sweaty. “That’s what would’ve killed you, not the exertion.”

She knew he was processing this assertion, because he went very, very still, hiding all of the emotions it triggered within him. There was only a momentary panic in his eyes: without her, he would have been without any power, whatsoever. Without the hand of the Making, or even that dark and double edged aid in merzost.

“And amplifying is something you can choose to do, at will,” he said, carefully, as she presented him with yet another puzzle to be solved.

It was this sentence that changed... everything. Because Alina suddenly realised that Aleksander had not noticed at all what her touch was doing to him, and that he had not guessed the significance of her heart or the stakes he could earn when holding it, not in the slightest.

Which meant everything he’d said before had not been driven by any predatory motivation to get quite literally, under her skin.

“I don’t want to talk about this with you,” she said honestly.

“You did it before, up on the deck,” he told her.

“I… did?” For a second she thought he meant talking, and then realised he was back to amplification. But that still didn't make sense, because she didn't remember making the choice to do that, either.

“It’s the only reason I could summon around you at all,” Aleksander said. “Last time, it felt as if it would’ve been impossible. There was nothing there for me to reach for, at all. But when you - forgive me if I’m wrong - spoke to me? All I heard was noise, this high pitched ringing. And then you amplified me. You gave me the power to protect the two of you, you and the Rusalye. I didn’t understand... and I still don't. You didn’t even touch me. How is that possible?”

Well, to be honest, to me your kinds of distance are very relative-

Alina elected, instead, for silence. And Aleks noticed her do it, with a frown.

“You are illogical,” he said, but despite his expression, it sounded almost complimentary. A frustration that had turned to something ravenous.

“It just doesn’t seem to me to be information you should know,” she replied, guardedly.

He watched her, curled up protectively as if she could keep the secret inside her by force, and sighed, “I understand why you do not trust me, Alina.”

“And yet, trust is what you ask of me, anyway?”

He smiled, and spread his hands. “One day, at least. I did say I want to know everything about you."

"Oh, so you do just want to recover Morozova's secrets?" She accused, a little spitefully. The Rusalye's memories of kind smiles and warm blankets were suddenly fresh in her mind, along with a thrill of self-preservation, and a mouthful of iron. "Fitting, for his grandson."

Aleksander froze up, for a second, tensing at this new knowledge of him, flung at his face. Alina supposed he'd hoped to have one secret left to keep. For a second he looked almost ashamed, and then he retracted back into that hard shell of indifference. Even Alina felt bad for bringing it up, and immediately regretted it. It seemed like a pointlessly awkward thing to level against a person, given that she had known for weeks. She had long since put two and two together, and hadn't thought much of it or seen it as worth mentioning, given that he was helping her regardless.

"I am not my family, and certainly not my grandfather," he replied, in a cold voice, before he carefully, and deliberately, forced himself to thaw. "But I know I still need to prove that to you. If you never told me, I would still love you regardless. Yet... isn’t that what love is? Trusting someone else with one’s secrets, and vulnerabilities?”

“No, it sounds like manipulation again,” she told him, a little petulantly. “Like you’re trying to find a way to stop me.”

“Forgive me, it seems like I have forgotten a little of the particulars. Hopefully we can both learn and relearn them, together.”

Alina glared at him silently. Why couldn't she provoke him? He looked entirely unruffled, but then, he’d long trained himself so that he always did. She thought she'd hurt him again, bringing up his ties to Morozova, and yet still he didn't try to fight her. And without any of the heat that made him hateful, she found that that was that injury was the one she now wanted to apologise for. After she'd told him she couldn't be sorry about nearly causing his death.

There is nothing you could teach me about love, she thought, willing it to be true.

But surely it was true? They were so entirely different from each other. And her love was a different beast to his: easily earned and openly given, not tucked away in secret then wielded ruthlessly like a weapon against a select few. Alina saw love as a blanket that could hold everyone. Not an arrow trained on a single target, destined to fell it, bear it down twitching and gasping to the ground.

And so long as Aleksander didn’t understand that - so long as he didn’t know he already had her love, because it seemed she gave it away without thought, as easy as breathing - it would all be ok.

All was not yet lost, Alina told herself.

Chapter Text

Nikolai Lantsov was charismatic, kind, and very pretty indeed. Alina thought it grossly unfair, that all the good looking Ravkan men she knew were turning out to be silver-tongued, manipulative liars.

He had been halfway between Sturmhond and his true self when his real ship, the Hummingbird, arrived at the side of their boat. It was less than half the size of their current vessel, with far more metal involved, and looked a little like it could break in a strong wind.

Nikolai’s hair was a strange, brassy yellow, still threaded through with Sturmhond’s orange as the effects of his tailoring slowly faded. His nose looked, to put it diplomatically, uncomfortable.

“Right, well!” he said, grin plastered on his in-between face as he turned to Alina. “Your carriage, my lady. So glad we get to continue this lovely acquaintance in closer quarters.”

She couldn’t work out if the fear plain in his eyes was for her, or for Aleksander, silent and brooding by her side. The Darkling had completely recovered from his injury, in the twenty-four hours it had taken the second ship to arrive, but he was taciturn and distrusting in a way that made Alina wonder if he was still feeling under the weather. Or maybe just processing his vulnerability. Whatever the reason, he was glaring at the world like it had done something to offend him.

“It’s very… small,” Alina said, uncertainly.

She held out her hand on the side that wasn’t Aleksander, and waited for Lantsov to help her across the bridge between the two vessels. Nikolai was ever the quick study, and hastily handed her up over the railing.

“Men love it, when you make such observations,” the Prince joked, but his laughter was slightly hollow sounding, and his hands were shaking. “But I promise, unlike those that came before me, I am one hundred percent truthful when I tell you it has abilities that more than make up for its size.”

Aleksander scoffed, then stepped directly into the shadow of the mast. By the time Alina had reached the other end of the connecting bridge, he was there, stepping around the edge of the Hummingbird’s wheelhouse, hand outstretched to help her down again onto the bow. Alina glared at him, as she wobbled and had no choice but to take it. His own morose expression evaporated as soon their skin touched, and he smiled back at her with all the brightness of the sun, completely unconcerned.

Alina had not yet given Aleksander an answer to his declaration of love. But given that he had decided for them both that his every breath was evidence of her thawing heart, he acted as if he already knew what that answer would be.

There was only a handful of them on this new vessel: the Grisha that had joined them for the voyage north, Lantsov, Tolya, and his sister. By the time they’d all gotten on board, however, it was already feeling a little cramped.

“We’ll share a cabin, if we need to double up,” Zoya muttered to Alina, glaring at Lantsov as she said it and looking prickly. Alina nodded quickly, telling herself it was relief she felt as Aleksander’s eyes bored into the side of her neck from across the deck.

“Ladies and gentlemen, hostages, darklings, and stars,” Nikolai announced, “if you could assume your places below deck for take off, and refrain from killing me until we reach Ravka, that would be grand! Given that I’m the only person alive currently who can pilot this vessel.”

“Take off?” said Zoya, as they were herded into the wheelhouse and down into the quarterdeck below.

“Pilot?” said Aleksander.

Alina accepted the ushering without utterance nor complaint. She went invisible instead, ducking into one of the open doorways as everyone was funnelled through the corridors. Then she snuck her way back out onto the deck. Tolya was at the helm, but Nikolai was stood in the open air on the starboard side, looking out onto the ocean. Without him realising it, he and Alina were side by side when he raised his hand in a signal, and the Hummingbird moved back from the abandoned whaler and its remaining skeleton crew and then-

-Rose into air.

“Oh my goodness!” Alina shrieked, dropping her invisibility. She craned her head over the guard rail, watching in delight as water sloughed off the gleaming silver carapace of the hull, emerging from beneath the ocean.

“Sweet holy fucking Saints!” Lantsov cursed, startling and scrambling away at the sight of her, “what the fuck are you-”

“It can fly!?” she demanded, ignoring him. “There’s ships that can do that? They can travel in the sky? Like a bird?!”

“Well, actually, this is my invention, and it's a prototype,” he said. “Which is why you really should be below deck-”

“Are you kidding me?” she said. “This is amazing!”

Nikolai watched her, blinking owlishly. Alina ignored him, leaning on tiptoe over the rails as they rose higher and higher. They left the other ship behind, cresting through the damp mist of low hanging fog and cloud. Alina took a deep breath of ice cold air, deep in her lungs, that smelt a little more like home.

“Oh my goodness, if the floor wasn’t so hard, I could sleep out here! I’m closer to my sisters! You invented this?” when Nikolai nodded dumbly in the face of her enthusiasm, she beamed, “it’s wonderful! I love it! You must be so clever, to have thought of it! You clearly have a beautiful mind!”

Nikolai smiled back this time, a little dazed. When she asked him to explain how it worked, she had the friend she’d made in Sturmhond returned to her - not simply a frightened servant with a very elaborate mask.

Nikolai was, in fact, an incredibly useful friend to have. His captain’s quarters were even fancier, in this sleek, strange craft, and his brain worked like a nicer, less murderous version of Aleksander’s. Both meant he was useful, in the meetings Alina now forced him to host, where he helped them to augment their plans for scamming concessions for the Grisha out of the King.

It was a wonderfully efficient system. When Alina wanted something done, she simply raised it with Nikolai. He would automatically agree with her on all moral grounds, then niggle out the flaws in the idea, using that brain of his to turn it into something that sounded intelligent.

And then Aleksander, who had likely been watching the two of them interact in his usual brooding silence up until this point, would suddenly open his mouth. And whatever he said would wind falling down on Alina’s side of the argument they otherwise would’ve had, had not both been placated by Nikolai’s clever mind.

Sometimes, if it was a thing Alina really wanted to pass unanimously, she would casually place her hand on Nikolai’s arm mid-discussion. This sped everything up immensely - as Nikolai Lantsov was not immune to flattery, and it took very little for Aleksander Morozova to be driven mad with jealousy.

“Oh goodness, wouldn’t things be so much easier if you were the King?” Alina exclaimed, at the end of their second day of planning. She patted Nikolai’s arm. “You’re just so nice and agreeable.”

She’d meant it as a joke. She had no true experience of the King, bar that one time he’d allowed the both of them to be outmanoeuvred by Aleksander. Though vexing, and a little insulting, it was not enough a case on which to propose insurrection, in a country where she was still little more than a tourist.

Which was why she felt strangely worried, and not a little flattered, when she saw the idea hook and take root in Aleksander’s mind. His expression lost its annoyance, and became suddenly thoughtful. He examined Nikolai briefly, like a variable in an experiment.

Nikolai saw it too, if his high pitched, strained laughter was anything to go by.

“And pretty to look at, don’t forget,” he added, sounding a little ill. “Vasily has that awful inbred forehead going on, but luckily my own blood was diluted back down to handsome. The joys of being the second son, no?”

His emphasis was both reminder, and reprimand.

“You are friend to the Grisha,” Aleksander observed, with dangerous indifference.

“My Grisha friends are ones that have done everything in their power to avoid ever stepping into the Little Palace,” was Nikolai’s terse reply. “Grisha, I have learned, are not a monolith, and I am only friendly with some.”

“Interesting, that after days of concessions to save your hide,” Aleksander said, “the matter of my people is one of the places in which you display a spine.”

His voice held a modicum of respect, and Nikolai did not look happy about it.

By the end of the week, they were almost back to land and Nikolai had chartered their course to a safe, discrete landing site in Ryevost, avoiding Zlatan’s troops and the perils of the Fold itself. Aleksander had used his contacts to amass all records of the Firebird there at a Grisha safehouse, for them to peruse just a stone’s throw from the capital without the King’s interference. And the three of them had drafted and sent their list of demands for the King. It was actually their first set of demands, without any of the concessions they’d made the second time round, because - Alina argued - there’d been nothing wrong with their original list, except that Lantsov had known her ‘kidnapping’ to be a lie.

This time, it was sent along with a missive from Nikolai. He claimed that not only was Alina now thoroughly and distressingly captive, but that he was also being held hostage with her, forced to pilot them to their next amplifier.

This was, Alina reasoned, the truth. Having both a Saint and a Prince in custody had to mean something. And Aleksander was an evil mastermind, even if kidnapping wasn’t currently on his to-do list. The Darkling had made that observation himself, as they stamped his seal on the final draft of their ransom.

“I’m used to playing the villain, solnishka,” he smirked, smudging a crust of wax from the edge his signet ring. “I still am one, remember?”

Alina had glared at him, too tired to argue anymore, after all their hours and days of haggling. She had no idea how to articulate what she was actually feeling: that she was already bored of being cast in the role of idiot damsel, and silently, childishly wishing she could somehow claim more credit for this entire scheme.

“Well!” said Nikolai, pulling himself up to his full height and cracking out his spine. “That’s more than enough work, I should think. I don’t know how you manage all this scheming, Darkling, it is unspeakably tedious, even when one’s life is on the line. Precisely why I stay far away from court politics, and mostly spend my time stabbing things. We shall have a feast tonight, to celebrate the end of this depressing little project.”

“With wine?” Alina prompted, her tiredness immediately falling away.

“And music,” Nikolai grinned rakishly. Alina felt herself smiling back. He was indeed so much more handsome now, all golden edges and bright, honey gold eyes.

“And dancing!” she said, barely unable to contain her glee. “If there is music, there must be dancing. I haven’t danced yet and this is absolutely-”

“A crime that must be rectified, as soon as possible. Of course dearest, I quite agree,” Nikolai finished for her, in perfect understanding. “You must sample all the pleasures this world has to offer. Is that not the reason you fell to earth, oh lady star?... Which reminds me-”

He ducked away from the table, over to the door that led to what Alina had learnt, from snooping, was a really quite ludicrously sized walk-in closet. The Hummingbird was in fact very small, and she and Zoya had ended up bunked together. But she thought you could have gotten another bedroom - maybe two - out of the space taken up by Nikolai Lantsov’s wardrobe.

A series of sounds and curses emerged from the closet. Alina cast a confused glance at Aleksander, who shrugged.

“You said something,” came a muffled voice, from the interior. “About utilitarian clothing, and ballgowns. Now, I am nothing if not a gracious host, and I also don’t want you to erase me from the face of the earth any time soon. Zoya has told me - or rather, she has told Tamar, given that she is still not speaking to me - that you are rather susceptible to bribery. And so-”

Nikolai emerged, hair skewed into a new artful disarray from the one it had been in before. In his hands was a large velvet suit carrier. It was densely packed at the bottom, like a lot of fabric had to be stuffed in at the feet end. In fact, there was so much material involved, that a wodge of sparkly tulle was caught in the seams of the bag.

Alina couldn’t fight a gasp, as he handed it to her, and it was heavy enough to send her stumbling back a step.

“I had an opera singer staying here, once,” Nikolai explained, “I was madly in love with her, and was trying to communicate as much with all my wit, and immense wealth. That foolish folly of youth is behind me, and she is long gone. But she left behind half the clothes I bought for her, and given that my youth is not as far gone as some others on board,” This with a meaningful glance at Aleksander, then back to Alina, “they are not yet moth eaten. You are very small, so they will likely fit you. I think this is the one that would suit you best.”

Alina felt like she was fizzing. She could barely contain her excitement. In fact, she was rather embarrassed to say, her hands started to sparkle. Her shine leaked out of the edges.

The last time this had happened, she’d been able to wax lyrical about it: the pride she’d felt at the Winter Fete, the satisfaction of finally feeling like the beacon of hope she was being told to be. This time, it was simply at the mere thought of wearing her first dress.

Oh dear, that surely made her look shallow.

But she found she didn’t really care, as she started dancing from foot to foot, grinning like a fool. She glanced towards Aleksander, a little guilty but unable to help herself. His face as he observed this all unfold was utterly unreadable, which meant he was probably a little annoyed by her behaviour, or maybe Nikolai’s. It was hard to say.

But her face clearly wasn’t hard to read at all. Aleksander took one look at her, frowned, then said:

“Wait until you are back in your room, Alina, for the love of all the Saints.” His voice was terse. “Do not get naked in Lantsov’s quarters, I absolutely forbid it.”

“...I would’ve been invisible,” Alina pouted.

Aleksander had a face, and heart of stone, as he replied, “That would not really have helped matters, would it?”

Alina chose to ignore this comment. “I really, really like it,” she said, turning back to Nikolai, who was looking slightly bemused by this exchange, and not a little flustered. “The dress.”

“You haven’t even seen it yet,” he pointed out.

“It doesn’t matter. It is my first dress, and it is a gift freely given, and so I love it,” she said, clutching it to her chest.

She felt bad saying that, with Aleksander in the room, considering that she was at this moment wearing her kefta - her blue one, for she hadn’t worn black since the Winter Fete. But though kefta were very intricately crafted, they were not, in her opinion, pretty. Or maybe they were - but not in the frivolous, frilly way she wanted. And she still wasn’t entirely convinced that either blue or black had been the right colour for her complexion.

She wasn’t sure why thinking any these things made her feel bad. Aleksander had dressed her up for his own benefit, not hers. So the kefta wasn’t even really a gift, if you thought about it for long enough.

“I am incredibly susceptible to bribery!” she announced to the room.

The pronouncement was mostly to soothe Aleksander’s ego. She didn’t want him thinking she was glowing for Nikolai, and not the dress.

“I am going to go put this on, immediately,” she added, to both men.

As she crashed out of the door, she saw Nikolai start to back up, putting as much space between himself and Aleksander in the small room as possible.

"Look, don’t murder me just yet, General. If I had any ulterior motives, do you think I’d be attempting them with you just… standing there?! I don’t have a death wish, I am merely appeasing the smiley powder keg! You’ll be thanking me later, I promise! On multiple counts-!”

The dress was burnished gold.

It was a full formal ballgown, all thick, luscious taffeta and bright, frothy sparkling mesh. With a bead encrusted bodice, a skirt that went on for days in impractical directions, slit to the thigh on one side in a way that she knew would make Laoise jealous. So low cut it left her shoulders bare. It had been weeks since Alina had seen her shoulders, all wrapped up and buttoned to the chin in military-grade fabric. She had, she thought, excellent collarbones. It was about time they were appreciated, and on show.

“I love it,” she said, with all the solemnity of an oath. “I could’ve been feeling like this from day one. I’m never taking this off, ever.”

Zoya looked unconvinced, from where she’d had to squish into her cot to make room for all those days-long skirts. “Well,” she replied, “I guess that’s one way to lose a sainthood.”

“Look at me!” Alina said, gesturing at the little, plate sized mirror above their sink and fighting down the urge to shine again, because the silver would clash with all the gold, “I’m just so… fucking pretty!”

“You’re going to get drunk, and spill wine all over yourself, is what’s going to happen,” Zoya said, lying back with crossed, booted feet, and staring at the ceiling of their cabin. “And we can only pray that that’s the most foolish decision you make tonight.”

Alina thought this was rather mean of Zoya to say, but at the same time, she thought she understood. Zoya was an incredibly practical person, and not in the least bit frivolous. A party on an airship was not the way to her heart, and that also meant that no one had ever thought to offer her one. When she stood in a room menacingly, very few people handed her a dress as a result. Which was a shame, Alina thought, as most girls probably liked being given pretty things, even if they missed the mark a little. At least, if they were from the right people.

And this dress… was a gift from Nikolai.

Alina wondered how bad form it was to be spending her every day with the two men she happened to know Zoya fancied. She wasn’t sure how she could naturally bring up in conversation that the Second Prince was simply scared to death of her.

“Oh, well,” she sighed, “let’s go to dinner!”

“What?” Zoya said, as Alina turned to the door, “wait!”

Alina paused, hand posed on the doorknob. “What is it?”

“You can’t go out in a dress like that, and not do anything with your hair,” Zoya grumbled, sitting up straight again, and shaking her head. She gestured to where it hung loose and unbrushed around Alina’s bare shoulders. “You should… I dunno. Put it up, or something.”

“...But Genya isn’t here to do it for me, and I don't know how.”

“Saints preserve me,” Zoya said, tsking like a grandmother. “Then come the fuck here, you big baby.”

Alina emerged from the wheelhouse still barefaced, but with her hair plaited in a neat and orderly crown around her head. It was enough to make her feel like a queen.

The Hummingbird was too small for a celebration to be held in the cabins. Instead, Nikolai ordered for his table to be brought up above deck, gleefully scattering papers on the floor and replacing them with silverware and crockery. A handful of people were already scattered around, reluctantly indulging their captain and Alina’s fancy. Above them was a clear, cloudless night sky. It would’ve been as dark as the Fold itself, if not for the tapestry of stars, glittering in the otherwise black void of sky and ocean.

It was to this audience that Alina presented herself first, pushing past Zoya and ignoring the mortal bodies that turned in their direction. She ran to the edge of the deck. When she reached the starboard railing, she spread out her skirts with a grin, and span three times in places until she was left dizzy. She wobbled in a poor curtsy, then looked up in the direction of her constellation.

“Look at me! What do you think?!” she said up to her sisters, a slight sparkle on her skin as she tilted her chin up to the heavens. "Am I not monstrously pretty?"

You look tired, little spark, said Signy.

Her sister’s voice was full of concern. Alina didn’t flinch, exactly, but she felt her light gutter as her shoulders slumped out of her careful posture.

It was true that she hadn't been sleeping. Since the Rusalye had added his tumultuous bloodlust to the mix of emotions and memory that dwelled within her, the nightmares had gotten worse. They’d become animalistically incoherent, fragmented images thrashing around in her mind like a frightened beast, catching all her edges with its wild floundering. Dreams that left her tasting blood at the back of her throat when she jolted awake in her sweat drenched sheets.

Your purpose is weighing heavy on you, dear heart, said her eldest sister, sounding equally worried.

Yours is not the easiest pilgrimage. But then, the right thing is rarely ever easy to do, murmured Maradi.

Alina bristled a little, unprepared for scrutiny, particularly from those who truly understood her. “I meant… the dress,” she muttered, but it sounded weak to her own ears.

The dress is lovely, sister, said Laoise. But she did not sound jealous at all. Only sad - which was far, far worse.

“...Is something the matter?”

Alina startled and glanced to her right, to see Aleksander now walking over to her on silent feet. In his usual dark clothes, he blended into the night around him as easily as a shadow. As her smattering of shine dulled out, the pale shape of his face also dimmed, only to be warmed in turn by the golden glow of the ship's torches, leaving him warm and more human, rather than gaunt in the starkness of her own light.

He stopped a few feet short of her, like he didn’t dare get close enough to touch.

“Oh,” she said, turning towards him. “I was just talking to my sisters, showing them my-”

She gestured downwards at her outfit. His eyes followed. Then she had to swallow quickly: his gaze held weight, trailing stickily down her body like treacle.

Eventually, she rallied to continue in a white lie: “but they’ve chosen instead to be glum worrywarts. All it earned was an interrogation from my elders.”

“Have you done something they don’t approve of?” Aleksander asked, lightly. “That’s a shame. You look beautiful, Alina.”

The sincerity of his face made her chest feel funny, a mixture of mortal pain and her true body’s magnetism all at once. Alina felt an itch at the back of her head, like she was being watched, and flushed as she cast a quick glance once more skyward, to see her sisters twinkling and watching on.

They didn’t say anything. They didn’t need to. She knew she was being obvious.

When she looked back at Aleksander, she saw that he’d watched her exchange with her family, even if he had not understood it.

“Are they badmouthing me?” he asked, with an easy grin that no doubt hid his discomfort at a conversation he could never hope to follow. “I can’t help but think things could get very awkward, if they’re going to be watching all night.”

They’ve been watching us the whole time, Alina wanted to point out, but even she realised this was the kind of thing that would make most people uncomfortable. Secrets and shame had no real place amongst her kin, which was why it had hurt so much to learn them here.

“Why, what’s happening tonight that could make things awkward?” she asked instead, doing her best to sound innocent.

“In that dress?” Aleksander replied, smile widening. “Anything, and everything your heart desires, I imagine.”

Hmmmm, how much of a dealbreaker is him being evil, again? Laoise said, pitching her commentary all the way down to earth for Alina’s benefit.

She shouldn’t trust him, Ulla harrumphed. Look at him, talking about hearts. He’s dangerous.

He certainly is! But these things rarely have anything to do with trust, sister, replied Laoise, with a smirk in her voice. I can think of a few other words…

By the Making, look at his face, said Signy.

Oh, don’t worry, I’m looking-

Not his handsomeness, his expression, Signy corrected Laoise with a sigh. I really don’t think that he wants to hurt her-

Alina rubbed the back of her neck uncomfortably, as their prattle carried on in the background, and she found herself - after all her weeks of strange near-homesickness - suddenly needing to tune it out. Aleksander raised an eyebrow, but was otherwise a picture of patience.

“They are calling you an incorrigible flirt, and reminding me you are a terrible man,” Alina lied.

“After I spoke barely ten words? Well. My power to fell stars with single sentences has been remarkably uncooperative of late, so I’ll take that as a compliment,” he replied. “Your sisters sound charming. Please pass on my regards to Sankta Maradi - I am of course in her debt.”

“She wasn’t actually Grisha, remember?”

“But she helped to establish the Grisha as a staple within the Ravkan church,” he responded with ease. “Stories like hers were one of the first tools I was able to utilise, when integrating my people into Ravkan society. A priceless gift, however unintentionally given, and one for which I am eternally grateful.”

“Oh. I see,” Alina said weakly. She hated that he knew a way to her heart was through her family.

“But though she has my endless respect, I would still say that she is remiss in not complimenting you for your appearance. It seems Lantsov has gotten something right. I was a fool to put you in black, when the most beautiful thing I’ve seen is you now, in gold. You are a vision, tonight, moya solnishka.”

“You said that already.” Alina said. Bare shoulders made blushing painfully obvious, she was frustrated to note.

“And yet, your glow still hasn’t returned,” he sighed, “which means it could stand repeating, a few hundred times over.”

See? He’s trying to make her shine! He must be trying to get to the heart of her! Ulla’s voice, guarded and defensive. He’s Morozova’s heir, and the Black Heretic-

Oh, please, Laoise retorted. He’s also just… a man. You should’ve seen all the ways people tried to get me to glow! Some of them turned it into a competition-

Maybe she should go for the boy, the one who got her the dress? Signy muttered, she always wanted a Prince.

Well, I mean, that ship has sailed-

Wasn't he was gay?

Enough! Alina thought, her shine flaring quickly to show that she meant it, as she blocked out her family’s running commentary on her love life.

Aleksander’s eyebrows climbed towards his hairline at her momentary brightness, and she realised that he thought it was in response to his words. Bollocks. Well, it wasn’t like the words weren’t nice, even if the joy they gave her triggered fear in equal measure.

“It, um, doesn’t really work like that,” she said awkwardly, rubbing her neck again. “My shine can mean a lot of different things -”

“But it is at its brightest, when you are happy,” he finished for her. “I think that’s enough reason to want it back, don’t you?”

Alina didn’t bother arguing. Of course he knew that about her.

“Aleks, shut up,” Alina said, weakly. “I’m just… um, going to go thank Nikolai, for the dress.”

“That’s actually why I came over,” Aleksander replied, smiling at her use of the nickname. He waved in the direction of the front of the boat. “I was sent to tell you food was ready to be served, but it seems I got distracted. This way-”

And when she turned towards the bow of the ship, following his gesture, Aleksander stepped in behind her and placed his other hand right at the centre of her bared back. For a second, it was like he was the one made of starlight, his fingers a scorching brand all across the taut skin over her spine.

Alina knew the touch must be deliberate, for it to be in the exact place to make her feel it like a gunshot. But the Darkling was a picture of unconcern as he led her over to the table. He waited for her to sit, hand still resting between her shoulderblades as she wrestled with her acres of heavy skirts. She felt brief pressure as his knuckles stroked the notches of her spine gently, once.

And then his hand dropped from her. Without looking in her direction, he took the seat next to her. As if the entire thing had been accidental.

Fuck him, Alina seethed.

Though she was dressed like a queen, the others were in their everyday clothes, and the meal was simple as well, cooling quickly in the night air. It was having it here, amongst her true family and all the other stars in the sky, that made it truly special.

When Nikolai passed the wine down the table, Alina shook her head.

“Not partaking?” Aleksander asked, leaning in towards her on his elbow. “I thought this was a celebration.”

“You’re not drinking,” Alina pointed out. As always, Aleksander was nursing one or two cups enough to make it look like he’d had five, and watching everyone else get tipsier and tipsier like he was searching for strategic insight.

“Well, someone has to be able to walk straight when you need escorting to your bed,” he smirked.

“I couldn’t agree more,” she said primly, passing the wine further down the table with pointed calm.

Placing a hand on the back of her chair, Aleksander leant in to murmur in her ear, “scared of what might happen, if you let yourself go?”

Alina was, and she hated that it was so obvious.

“You remember what I said about my sisters, and lightweights?” she said instead. She pointed upwards. “There are numerous ways I could make myself look like a fool, and very few of them involve you.”

Nikolai had promised her music. After dinner, a strange metal contraption was brought above deck, not sleek and silver like the ship, but old, blackened brass. It had a handle, and when it was turned a belt with small dots, notched like teeth, sounded out notes like the clumsy plonking of a harpsichord. One of Nikolai’s crew members had a fiddle stored in their cabin. Another came forward and sang. Her words were Zemeni, but Alina knew all languages, and so she couldn’t help but smile when she realised the lyrics were a retelling of ‘The Too Clever Fox’, her constellation's namesake.

“Might I have this first dance?” asked Nikolai, gallantly, standing upright and grand as if he was stepping into some role in his own fairy tale.

It was only then, that it occurred to Alina that she had no idea of any of the steps. Like many things she’d dreamed she’d do when she fell to earth, she had been so whisked up in the wonderfully romantic image of her dancing at a ball, that she’d never bothered to learn the practicalities

Four clumsy boxsteps, a giggly promenade, three reverse turns and six spins later, she thought she had the hang of it, even though she was dizzy. The practicalities taken care of, the music started up again.

When the Second Prince dipped Alina, she felt - rather than saw - Aleksander tense up. It was the dead of night, but she was pretty certain the sky somehow got darker.

“I don’t suppose now is a useful or polite time to remind you that the Darkling is one of the most dangerous men in all the kingdom?” Nikolai murmured conversationally, as they executed a cross body turn with only a small amount of difficulty.

Alina snorted. “I think I know that better than you.”

You have no idea, she thought, wondering how her friend would feel if he knew the Black Heretic was on board his vessel.

“And besides,” she added, “you’re the one dipping me.”

“I think turnabout is fair play, after you’ve been dangling me like bait all week - and don’t think I haven’t noticed,” the Second Prince replied. “But you know, I wasn’t referring to the fact that he’s fantasising about killing me violently in seven different ways as we speak. I am, in actuality, opening a dialogue about how he isn’t acting on those urges.”

“What do you mean?”

“Time once was, Kirigan would dispatch anyone who displeased him or got in the way of something he wanted. Without a single qualm, or night of sleep lost. At least, if you trust the rumours.”

“He wouldn’t dare,” Alina hastened to reassure him. “Not while I’m here. He knows how I feel about murder, particularly of my friends. I certainly wouldn’t flirt with you, if I thought you were actually in any danger.”

“And that’s exactly the thing I wanted to talk to you about!” Nikolai said delightedly, “now, I haven’t been at court in a good few years. But I know, for a certainty, who’s name they still don’t dare to utter in the halls. I know who my father fears most, who his advisors scramble to outmatch. I know who he would wish to exile, if only he had the power to do so. Not that it’s hard to guess. Everyone in Ravka knows. The Black General is the only military commander who features as a villain in children’s stories, after all.”

Alina tensed, and that made her dancing worse. But Nikolai simply smiled at her, and adjusted them, as he continued, “I also know that, if my father saw Kirigan now, thoroughly domesticated and trailing after you like a kicked puppy, he would offer you your weight in gold. Anything you wanted, just for your promise to keep the Black General in line.”

“I don’t have any power over Aleksander. He is not mine to command, or ‘keep in line’.”

“Yes, ’Aleksander’. Fascinating!” Nikolai muttered. “You know, I hate to reduce a woman to simply her relationships with men - I want it on record that I’m aware you’re incredibly powerful, and I’m in awe of your immense strength. I’m so glad we’re friends, otherwise I think I’d be in a state of permanent cardiac arrest. But truly, Alina, do you understand what you are doing, without lifting a finger or annihilating anything with all your terrifying radiance? What you have done, simply by existing?”

“...What have I done?”

“You have Kirigan in hand! You’ve neutralised him. A problem that kept my father awake at night, that Fjerda has dumped half its country’s funds into, and Shu Han has been throwing assassins like nobody’s business! Who knew that all it took was a pretty girl who could squash him like a bug.”

“Those people are enemies of the Grisha, not Aleksander.”

“Oh please,” Nikolai scoffed. “Yes, a minority of Fjerdans are Djel-happy extremists, and the Shu’s new Queen is the bloodthirsty sort. I’m not going to pretend hostilities will end overnight. But you know what makes ending hostilities overnight a damn sight easier? Not having an evil genius riling them up at every fucking turn by being an ominous, murderous fuck.”

Alina’s mouth opened to defend Aleksander, and then she closed it. After all, hadn’t she said all that to him, herself, the night at the Winter Fete? She wasn’t exactly sure why her first instinct was to leap to his defence - he was, in fact, ‘an ominous, murderous fuck’.

Nikolai was still talking, “You could probably leave the Fold, honestly, and you’d still be doing the country an immense and impossible service-”

“I’m not leaving the Fold,” Alina replied angrily.

“Yes, well, that’s heroes for you, or maybe just stars,” Nikolai said with a shrug. “All I wanted to say is, whatever you are doing, you should keep it up. The last few days, the Darkling has been a joy to work with. There’s an alternate version of our lives - well, my life, at least - where he simply did just kidnap the both of us to get his way, rather than pantomiming it. But as it stands, I have only feared for my life a handful of times, and that’s with you treating me like a piece of meat directly in his eyeline. I know you’re new here, and you’re an incredibly trusting person, so it probably hasn’t occurred to you the power you wield. A Kirigan without the extremism - one who can still protect his people, but is open to compromise? Ravka just got a hell of a lot easier to govern. As a patriot, I would be remiss not to point this out.”

Alina didn’t have the heart to point out to Nikolai that she was pretty certain ‘centrist' Kirigan was hatching a plot to dispatch half the royal line of succession and put him on the throne. But given that she would never let Aleks execute such a plan, she thought she got the boy’s drift.

After she let herself be spun again, she said. “You’re telling me I should stay with him, to keep him manageable, and stop him from doing anything too evil?”

“Well, I mean... yes. But I’m sure you can do more than just stay with him, to keep that short leash nice and secure-”

Alina gave Nikolai a very significant look, and he stopped speaking, swallowing a little nervously.

“Obviously I wouldn’t even think to suggest it, if it wasn’t for the… you know…” he clarified, as he rallied enough to give her a significant look of his own. “The fact that that’s clearly what you want to do anyway.”

“No, I don’t!” Alina said hotly, blushing all the way to the roots of her hair.

“Yes, well, I’d believe you, if it wasn’t for the fact you’ve spent several weeks in my company, and haven’t tried to ravish me,” Nikolai sighed. “This very rarely happens in my life, when a woman is single and unattached. That, coupled with the fact that you keep making moony-faced expressions at each other like you’re in some soppy play, has led me to some rather obvious conclusions.”

“Maybe I just don’t find you that attractive,” Alina retorted. “You are, in fact, extremely annoying.”

“Please, darling, we were all in that room when I was shirtless. I think you find me attractive enough,” Nikolai replied easily. “But the fact remains, you’ve been shamelessly hitting on me solely to get his attention. I’m not saying I don’t cast extreme aspersions on your judgement. But if it’s for the good of the realm, your terrible taste is a cross I am willing to bear-”

“I could burn you where you stand,” Alina noted, matching the Prince’s congenial tone.

“Ah, struck a nerve, have I?” he replied - though she did feel his palms get a little clammier, where they were clasped in a dancer’s hold. “All I mean to offer, my lady star, is some friendly advice. If you are holding back because Kirigan is, as I have just noted, one of the most dangerous men on this earth, and this leads to some moral quandary on your part - please don’t. It might actually be more dangerous for everyone in Ravka if you don’t commit, at this point.”

“...Do you realise how that sounds, Lantsov?”

“Oh, Saints. I mean, if you were dithering on the grounds that he’s a sullen, brooding misery, or a manipulative bastard, or the fact that he’s older than you-”

“-He’s not older than me! Do you know how old stars are-"

"But if you're holding off because you have any lingering guilt or shame about being attracted to a cruel megalomaniac," Nikolai continued, "my honest advice is, ‘please don’t’. Being around you seems to make him substantially less terrible. And it’s not like Kirigan can manipulate you - this is, of course, where we circle back around to your many lovely and wonderful qualities, not least amongst them the fact that you're ten times as powerful as he is.”

“You’re saying I should seduce Aleksander, for Ravka?” Alina muttered, unable to believe her own ears.

“Woman, weren't you going to be seducing him anyway?” Nikolai muttered back, equally flustered, “why else have you been feeling me up all week?”

The music stopped, and the two of them broke apart. Alina let go of Nikolai eagerly, and stepped back, feeling a little like she wanted to crawl out of her skin and burn them all up there and then, to spare herself the embarrassment.

It wasn’t even all the logical flaws in Nikolai’s argument that frustrated her: the fact Nikolai didn’t know that the Fold and Aleksander were one and the same, or that he didn’t understand what his proposal would result in, if Aleksander loved her then lost her, or - even worse - loved her enough to ever truly possess her heart.

It was the fact that he felt the need to discuss it in public, with compassion in his eyes, in full view of all her sisters, who also were not saying anything to intervene-

By the fucking sky and stars, does everyone already know I’m in love with him? Alina thought wretchedly.

“Just think on it,” Nikolai said, bending over her outstretched hand but not pressing his lips to her knuckles, “I would never ask you to do anything you do not already want for yourself. But you might be the best thing that has happened to my country in recent history, my lady star.”

“You might want to focus less on taming the Darkling, and more on taming me,” Alina pointed out.

“Well, I don’t need to tame you, do I?” Nikolai said with a wink. “ Unfortunately for you, you are already a lovely person.”

And then Zoya took his place, for a dance in which she was awkward, oddly ungainly, and ramrod straight, and so Alina tripped over her own feet a lot more. Then it was Tolya, where one of his steps equalled two of hers. She stopped, breathless, and realised that with what little space they had on deck, there were only two or three couples per dance, with many waiting at the sidelines. People were going to keep endlessly entertaining her, which was very kind and lovely of them-

Except, in that romantic and impossible image in her mind, she was only really dancing with one person.

Aleksander was leaning with his elbow on the starboard railing. Strangely, he didn’t look elsewhere when she spotted him, or out over the side of the ship as if he’d been staring out into the night. No, he made no attempt whatsoever to hide that he’d been watching her dance - that his eyes had clearly been on her, in her dress, the entire time.

She broke away as the song ended, and stepped out of the circle before another could step in and claim her. His gaze continued to stay on her, as she crossed the short distance towards him.

“Do you… want to dance?” Alina said.

The question felt foolish as she extended her hand. The way Aleksander was looking at her, she knew for certain he’d do anything she asked. Everything and anything your heart desires, he’d said.

He took her hand, and moved away from the railing, straightening to his full height as he took a step closer. “You would let me?” he murmured, looking down at her.

Alina raised an eyebrow. “That’s laying it on a bit thick, don’t you think?”

“I don’t take anything for granted,” he replied with full sincerity. “Not anymore.”

“It’s just a dance, Aleksander,” she scoffed, more for her own benefit than his. “And you say I read too many books.”

He was silent, though he interlaced their fingers as she pulled him away from the railing and out into the centre of the deck. Alina’s words had been mostly to convince herself, and fuck her but it really hadn’t worked. It wasn't helped by the fact that everyone went quiet for a small second, the singer’s voice faltering at the Black General’s presence before they found their tune again. There was no way to pass the dance off as the same as all the others, just a silly flight of fancy: Alina’s skin started to itch at the feel of everyone watching them, the weight of expectation behind it. And the press of the crew’s gaze was nothing compared to the silent audience of her sisters. She would hide nothing from them, but nor could she: they knew her better than anyone in this world.

Alina felt like they were teetering on the edge of something. Aleksander had to know it too. Didn't he?

But when she looked up at him, he just gave her a small smile, oddly comforting.

“I am going to step on your toes,” Alina warned him.

“I think I will probably live,” he replied. When he put his arms around her, it was suddenly like there was no one else on the ship at all.

Not in the way that it happened in romance books, where the heat of a moment shared caused everything else to fade away to nothing - although it was a little like that, Alina supposed, suddenly aware of all the corners and edges of her body where they became pressed up against his, much closer than she had been with Nikolai, she was certain. But more like, in taking the lead, he’d suddenly leant her all that quiet, assured confidence he wore like a shield: spread it across the both of them like a shelter from the rain.

“Head up, solnishka,” he murmured. And unlike the Second Prince, he reeled her in so close that they were not looking into each other's faces, but instead stood cheek to cheek. Those words trickled down her spine like honey, and she felt the slight rasp of three-day-old stubble just lightly graze the side of her face.

“You must really want to lose those toes,” she noted, with as much bravado as she could muster. Aleksander was charitable enough to give her a laugh. They were so close it went through the both of them.

He began to lead her to the next song. Alina hadn’t noticed it start.

And then, they were dancing.

Nothing happened. The earth didn’t shatter. The sea didn’t rise. No lightning lanced out of the sky to strike Alina down, in a grand act of the Making’s will. No one said anything cruel, like the Queen Of Ravka had done, her eyes shrewd in ways that made Alina feel like she was caught in some trap she couldn’t see, or should know something she didn’t.

None of the revelations her books described happened either: her heart didn’t seize. She didn’t hold onto her breath without realising. The planets didn’t suddenly align. Nothing slotted into place in Alina’s universe to tell her whether she was making the right decision - that this time it was real, and she wasn’t just a fool all over again.

What did happen was that she stepped on Aleksander’s feet before the singer had even finished her first verse. He let out a soft huff of breath after he span her carefully but then she overcompensated, accidentally clipping him in the side with her elbow as she went half a turn more than was expected.

“I’m seeing now the pros and cons of all those self-defence classes you never attended,” he said, as he rearranged them both to neatness, just as close as before. From then, he manoeuvred her with more force, but it was so effortlessly graceful that she couldn’t even work out what he was doing to make her move so fluidly. He was a very good dancer. She realised that when he turned her, he did so in a way that deliberately made all her skirts fan out around her in a wide arc. She was pretty certain he did it precisely because of the way it made her feel: happy, pretty, perfect. She couldn’t keep herself from smiling each time it happened, and she knew he must feel the way her cheeks dimpled against the side of his jaw. They were just so close.

The scant space between their bodies heated, and that made her back feel cold, gooseflesh pricking her shoulders. Alina could feel his breath ghosting along the exposed nape of her neck, which made it worse. Her chin was nestled against the curve of his collar and he smelt so good there, enough to make her want to bury her face into his shoulder and close her eyes against the world.

“Oh,” Aleksander said - barely even a word, more of a soft sound, that was half smug and half awed.

He didn’t take a step out of place, but she felt his body tense reflexively, his hands pulling her ever so slightly closer to him.

And that was when Alina realised she was glowing.

Damnit. She did close her eyes then, scrunching them tightly shut like a child in a nightmare, pressing her forehead into his shoulder so hard that she could feel the indent of his collarbone somewhere under stiff fabric. The Rusalye had been right to be worried: she had all the self preservation of a fish beaching itself on land and offering itself up for dinner.

“I thought I would have to talk,” Aleksander offered. “I was trying to conjure the right compliment. Running everything through my head, scripting the perfect thing to say. You’ve never gifted me so long a silence, but you were making it a little hard to think. Should I be flattered, or does this mean you only want me for my body and my pretty face?”

“Can we just pretend it's not happening?” she muttered.

“Why?” Aleksander asked. “There’s nothing wrong with you being yourself, Alina. And this is a lot less painful than the last time it happened.”

“Don’t assume this means anything.” she said. Which was an obvious lie, as all her lies were.

Aleksander sighed. “When we met, you were the last person I’d ever imagine understanding shame.”

“It wasn’t in my repertoire until I came down here,” she said. Until you taught me she reminded herself.

The music was still going, but the singer sounded forced. She could imagine the other couples - Nikolai and Tamar, Zoya and a deckhand - glancing in her direction. It shouldn’t have meant anything, all those eyes on her. But Aleksander was the one who’d taught her to look for them, and to expect sharpened knives tucked behind their owners' backs.

She felt it all, churning in her gut. But when she peeled back an eyelid and peeked down at her arm, it was still glowing. Maybe that was because it didn’t feel all bad. That new, human part of her, the part that was fragile, was terrified. The rest of her was still star, and it struggled to remember how things that felt good could hurt. That churn in her gut was excitement and fear in equal measure - exactly what she’d gotten drunk on when she'd kissed him, all those weeks ago.

She wasn’t shrinking against Aleksander, she was pressing into him - chasing that feeling, willing the rest of the world away so that all the consequences for enjoying it would disappear too.

“Beautiful,” Aleksander whispered into her hair. Like he finally understood her fire, and was stoking it.

Alina’s glow rose a little higher, her traitorous heart proving him right.

They danced to three more songs, but by then Alina realised she was the one who would have to get them to stop. Aleksander wouldn’t be letting her go any time soon.

She could’ve danced all night, but that part of her was the part that was selfish, and still believed in stories. To her more astute eyes, the veneer of the evening hadn’t necessarily dulled, it had just become visible. This entire dinner had been staged by Nikolai for her benefit. And she was realising now that this was exactly where the Second Prince had wanted her ending up: happy, and in Aleksander’s arms - the star a little less destructive, the General appeased. He’d said as much, hadn’t he?

She could see this for what it was now: Nikolai’s life and Ravka’s security ensured in one fell swoop, all through a little cheap stagecraft and a simple music box. And a dress, not so freely given, after all.

Fucking Ravkan men. Liars and manipulators, all of them. The bastards.

Alina wished that seeing the trap, the intricacies of the machination, would stop her from falling into it. But the truth was that knowing it was a setup didn’t cheapen anything - it was perfect. If you squinted and pretended humans weren’t monsters, Nikolai had still just given her a gift, in the name of friendship. When she broke away from Aleksander, she pulled back and saw he’d only just realised it too. There was a small furrow between his brows, a recollection of himself that came with a quick glance around deck like he was being hunted. Like he’d been trapped as well, only - for maybe the first time - it hadn’t occurred to him until it was too late. He hadn’t even noticed.

Huh, she thought. So you weren’t in on it.

If she’d had any doubts as to Nikolai’s motivations for this little gathering, they were lost when she saw how quickly things were suddenly cleared away. It was like watching a set change on a play, cycling through the scenes quickly enough to get the two main characters into close confines once more. The table disappeared below deck as if by magic, and the two people who’d lugged it down there didn’t re-emerge. Neither did those who took the chairs. The singer had three more songs, then pleaded tiredness.

Would they have kept singing, until either Aleks or her had had the courage to finally ask the other for what they truly wanted?

People started disappearing, fleeing like - Alina smiled a little to herself - like rats off a sinking ship. Were they scared of the two of them together? She knew it to be a hell of a gamble, more than Nikolai could ever fathom in his quick play at court politics. Soon there was only a smattering of people left staring at the stars, and half of them were glancing at Aleksander and Alina, now stood on opposite side of the deck (Alina’s choice, to spite the both of them - who did they think she was? She was done being an easy mark, even if in this case she was a willing one).

“I’m going to be sleeping in our room,” Zoya informed her quietly, hand on her shoulder. Alina didn’t know if she meant it as advice, or as a warning.

“Me too, I think,” she smirked. Whatever happened, she didn’t think she was fucking Aleksander tonight, in this teensy-weensy boat with its shoebox rooms, and paper thin walls.

Then, she said the lie they were all waiting for, loud enough for her voice to carry just a few extra feet: “I just need to say goodnight to my sisters first.”

She struck up a conversation with Signy and Laoise - they nearly had you, little spark - and was unsurprised that when her consciousness drifted back to earth it was only her and Aleksander left out on the deck. Nikolai flashed her an unrepentant wink, as his golden head ducked under the doorframe and disappeared into the wheelhouse. The Grisha that manned the main sail had judiciously decided to join him, and conduct the rest of her shift from the warmth of the back window, giving them the closest thing to utter privacy.

“That boy is cleverer than he looks. I either need to kill him, or get him on the throne immediately,” Aleksander said. He saw his cue as clearly as she did, sliding in next to her elbow, the corner of his lip curling up as the benign shine under her skin fluttered slightly in response to his presence.

“You’ll do neither,” Alina reprimanded, with a frown.

“Are you certain?” the Darkling asked her, “maybe this is one of those nice moments where doing the right thing coincides with doing exactly what you want. Perhaps he’s the best person for the job.”

“If he is, then the Making will ensure he ends up where he needs to be,” she replied.

Aleksander regarded her for a second. “You honestly believe that, don’t you?”

Alina shrugged, “I’m a star, Aleksander. Most of my life has been spent watching everything play out from a distance. You learn that whatever happens was always meant to happen. I’m not like you, I don’t meddle.”

Aleksander scoffed.

“I don’t!” she said, hitting him on the arm.

“No, you’re the very picture of objective detachment. You just fall to earth and barrel into the middle of a political minefield, claim to be Ravka’s saviour-”

“I thought that was what I was supposed to be! That’s what everyone kept telling me!” she replied. “And look at how it played out, I’ve already been corrected. The Making helps us find the right path, regardless of what we think we want.”

Aleksander was silent for a second, before saying, “in that version of events, that means the Fold was always meant to happen.”

“Oh no, you bastard, don’t you dare,” Alina said, but her voice was teasing and almost affectionate at how he tried to twist the very fabric of the world to suit his needs. It was his way, after all. “Destiny isn’t a convenient catch-all excuse that absolves everyone of all accountability-”

“-Only for you then, solnishka?”

“You and I both know that what you did was merzost,” Alina said, ignoring his chiding. “You went outside of the bounds of destiny, there. That was you taking the reins for yourself, for a moment, and look what it cost you. You probably felt yourself cross the line as it happened, so don’t bother pretending. Whatever falls out from that point on is just course correction.”

“So, it was my destiny to die that day? Shot down for the very crime of my existence, after watching my lover suffer the same?”

“Probably,” Alina shrugged.

“I suppose that is ‘what mortals do’,” he threw back at her. But he didn’t sound angry either. In fact, the tension was leaking out of him. It was one of their first friendly conversations as immortals, together.

“But I have to admit, there’s a certain amount of neatness to it,” Alina said, glancing over at him with a smile. “If you hadn’t made the Fold, I would never have fallen into it. And you’d never have dragged me to the Little Palace. You wouldn’t have become scared of me enough to act, and I wouldn’t have been led to Morozova’s amplifiers by one of Morozova’s own line. That sounds like a rebalancing of the scales, to me.”

Aleks was silent for a minute, before he said quietly, “I wanted to be the one who told you.”

“Told me what?”

“That I was Morozova’s grandson,” he said. “I wanted to give you that secret. I thought if I admitted to that one final sin, it would get you to trust me. But of course you already knew.”

They were both silent. There was no point saying, but you still hadn’t gotten round to telling me, had you? It was just another version of him hiding things, treating the truth as knowledge that could be bartered with, waiting for the right moment to drop it so that it could give him the best advantage. It served him right, honestly.

“It doesn’t matter to me who your grandfather was,” she said, and willed it to be truthful. She knew Aleksander was not Ilya Morozova. No matter what the Rusalye feared he might do with her heart, and what her nightmares told her.

“Unfortunately, it matters to me, quite a lot,” he replied, in a voice filled with darkness. The haunted look that crossed his face was fleeting, but Alina didn’t think it was something that could be faked.

She placed her hand over his on the railing, phosphorescent fingertips gentle, to draw him back to himself.

“There's no need to think of it as shame - that’s just that balance I was talking about,” she told him. “Even you have some sense of what needs to be done. What is right.”

“You know, I always thought we were to be two halves of a whole,” Aleksander admitted. “It was just a story, really - the Sun Summoner. I had plans in place for capturing them, but part of it felt like a fairy story, even to me. It was just so… seductive, the idea of an equal. After all those years shouting into a void, I used to dream of finally hearing the echo get flung back. Like calling to like.”

The look they shared then over their clasped hands was full of understanding. She was the closest thing he was ever getting to an equal - unless he went back to waiting on his prophecy - but they both knew they were not alike at all. They would remain strangely alien to one another, with a gap between them that it would hurt to breach. His dark eyes were fleetingly sad, as Alina supposed he mourned the girl he thought he’d get.

But Alina was still glowing.

“When I see an equal,” she told him, “I think we’ll both know.”

And then she leaned in, replaced her right hand with her left where they covered his fingers, and rested the other hand on his shoulder. All so slowly, slow enough that she could pretend she was being cautious and careful, this time. When really, it was all so she could feel the way he stilled under her touch. Savour the way his eyes followed her, tracked her movement, focused in on her mouth as she crept in closer: the most beautiful part of her face.

Alina kissed the Darkling once, quiet and soft and secret. Not an ounce of liquor in her veins. With all her sisters watching on.

That first kiss in the War Room had been like falling into a script. She'd wilfully placed herself into a scene from one of her books, in which the characters were interchangeable enough that it felt easy to slip straight into the exact role she wanted. That night, it had been about the choreography, not the people enacting it: they could’ve been anyone and the feelings would no doubt have been the same, or so she had thought back then.

Last time, he had moved her like he owned her. Held her, like she was already his. Now, Alina swore she felt Aleksander tremble as she pressed in closer, hand resting gently at his throat with enough pressure to feel it bob in a swallow. Maybe he was still scared she would burn.

This time, Alina's kiss was mercy. His response was benediction.

She thought the word supplicant, felt it lance through her, sweet and sugar heavy all the way to her teeth.

She had been playing at being human then. But she wasn’t human, she was a star. And finally, he knew it.

What transpired was not formulaic, simple, or neat. Instead, it was uniquely theirs.

Chapter Text

Malyen Oretsev’s expression as he opened the door was exactly what Aleksander had expected. Bemused, and a little scared to find the Shadow Summoner on his doorstep.

Then his gaze shifted to Alina by his side - the one who’d actually knocked, her hand still raised mid-air. Everything was wiped away like a slate, in favour of pure, unfettered confusion.

Alina was wearing another ballgown. The ground in Keramzin was wet enough from the week’s rain that the hem of this newest confection was already an inch stained in mud. She’d stolen all of the dresses out of Nikolai’s closet, to the deprivation of pretty opera singers worldwide. Sometimes, she walked around the house in them, and she always insisted on wearing them for anything important.

As Aleksander had told her, in this particular situation, it didn’t help. He’d tried to patiently explain that rose gold might not precisely set the tone for the conversation she planned to have with Oretsev. Alina had listened to his advice, insofar as she’d selected something in dark forest green instead.

“Fasten me in?” she’d requested, standing in the middle of his bedroom with the gown sagging around her shoulders and the long row of buttons at her spine all undone, smiling impishly.

Looking at her, that feeling had hit him, a little like stupidity and a lot like selfishness: everything that was supposed to get him killed.

And now, they were here. In days once passed - easier, simpler days - he would’ve just kidnapped the boy and had him brought to the Little Palace.

But now, they made house calls.

The time in Ryevost had been pleasantly domestic for all of one week, before frustration had set in. The Sea Whip had been easy to locate, for all its myths focused on a mess of shipwrecks and lost sailors in the desolate wastes of the Bone Road. In comparison, stories of the Firebird were universal to every culture but Kerch, meaning it could be everywhere and anywhere, sourceless and impossible to find.

Folklorists and researchers were expensive - Aleksander hired them anyway. He had once entertained mild dreams of being a scholar, in the early days, in a period of history where an education - paid for or bartered for with promises to the Church - was still the one guaranteed way to raise a man from one station to another. But now, as he read stories and books and accounts alongside all the paperwork he’d managed to relocate to the traders’ mansion that served as a Second Army safehouse, he found he really wasn’t very good at it. It was a different kind of inaction: it wasn’t lying in wait, all the steps in place. The finger poised and waiting for the right moment to tip the dominos, and watch them fall out in a neat line. This was bumbling darkly through a forest, hoping to find a sign that the entire endeavour wasn’t fruitless, with no fucking guarantees whatsoever, and no fucking insurance for if things went wrong.

This time, they really were chasing after a fairy tale.

Sometimes, when Aleksander lay awake at night, far from his rooms in the Little Palace and everything he had to trust others to tell him second-hand, he told himself it was all just canny investment. It was ok to be far away from the war effort, and the many pots he’d left boiling. He was securing the weapon of a lifetime.

It was, of course, a lie - the stupid kind, the kind that didn’t work, that people told themselves to try and soothe the anxieties that plagued them. He wasn’t doing this because he hoped it would one day change Alina’s mind.

It was because it made her happy, and because he got to be with her while he did it. Nothing more, nothing less.

When he woke up early and slipped out into the town in civilian clothes to buy pastries, fresh coffees, all the sugar- and flavour-filled things that made her smile, he wondered: is this strategy? When he took her for walks by the Sokol River in the evening, and the copper tones of sunset threaded her hair deep with red. When she sat next to him on the couch in their borrowed living room, deliberately close, turning in her seat to place her feet in his lap as she read her own book, to disgusted noises from Zoya in the other room. When he handed her Second Army missives to read through, a deliberate sharing of his secrets, he thought, does this mean I get to live? often followed by the traitorous, does it matter?

He desired her power, and he desired her. Aleksander did not think these two things could be separated… were they not in fact one and the same? Alina had told him it wasn’t really love, but he thought it was, for him. He would never have sacrificed all his plans in the name of a foolish tryst with someone who was useless to him, no matter who they were, what they looked like, or how much he longed for them. What he had felt for Luda had been real, he was certain of it - and yet, even he’d admit he’d only ever noticed her because of what he thought she was: someone who could help him survive, who he’d hoped would survive with him.

Half the things he loved about Alina only came from knowing her in her entirety. By definition, that meant also understanding that she could annihilate everyone in a single breath, if she ever felt like it.

Aleksander just wished the whole thing didn’t leave him feeling so… stupid.

“This is pointless,” Zoya said, skimming over the latest reports from the expert on Sankta Vasilka at the University of Ketterdam. “They have as much information as we do, they just make it last ten pages. If we find it, this woman’s grant is gone - what motivation does she have to help us?”

“Oh, didn’t you read her letter?” Alina said. “She’s so enthusiastic! She believes in the advancement of knowledge for knowledge’s own sake… and also, I promised her one of its feathers to study.”

Aleksander looked at her over the top of his own book, “won’t the beast disappear the moment you free the star from its body?”

Alina pinked up all over. “It’s a lot easier to lie in writing.”

“We’re chasing after nothing,” Zoya grumbled petulantly, “we’ve got fuck all.”

Aleksander couldn’t help but agree with her. He would have a more fulfilling time banging his head against a wall - at least in that endeavour, one could measure one’s progress.

Alina seemed to notice something stormy in his expression, for suddenly she was crowding in next to him, the honey scent of her hair from her new soap filling his nose. “But isn’t it fun?” she said, in that determinedly happy way of hers. “The books are still so interesting. Listen to this-”

And then, she spoke softly in Suli, reading what sounded like poetry from the book in her lap. Aleksander’s Suli had been getting lots of practice, eavesdropping in on her gossip with Zoya, but he had to admit he wasn’t really paying attention. Instead, he was trying to avoid tensing up as she rested her cheek gently on his shoulder, the words coming out of her mouth velvet-sweet and lovely.

As always, her presence so close to him made his heart pound. Mortifying, if he was honest. He might as well walk into the Fold and let the Volcra take him now.

“Disgusting,” Zoya noted, when she was finished.

Alina pouted, “really? I think it’s pretty.”

“What does it mean, solnishka?” Aleksander asked.

“‘Out of my deeper heart a bird rose and flew skywards’,” Alina quoted, smiling at him as he steeled himself for a display of weakness, and began lightly stroking her hair. “‘Higher and higher did it rise, yet larger and larger did it grow/At first it was but like a swallow, then a lark, then an eagle, then as vast as a spring cloud/ and then it filled the starry heavens./ Yet it left not my heart.’”

“Relevant. But in this context?” Zoya said, gesturing between them on the sofa, “disgusting.”

Aleksander glanced over at her, trying to muster some dignity. “I remember when my seniority used to mean something to you.”

Zoya smirked, letting the sentence hang until all the threat drained out from it and left it instead holding too many implications of their time together. Alina glanced between them, mercifully ignorant to all innuendo - the only time Aleksander would be grateful for it.

“Don’t threaten my best friend,” she reprimanded him once, taking her head off his shoulder to glare at him. Aleksander hated how immediately his hackles lowered, until she settled back into place once more.

For everything that Alina’s books said, time did not stop when a person fell in love. Nor did the world outside, and its tedious politics. He had gotten Genya to suggest to the King that he institute a tailored double walking around and playing Darkling in the Little Palace, but Aleksander was certain someone outside of Lantsov’s inner circle of cowards would realise sooner or later that he was absent from court and try to do something stupid. There were murmurings from Zlatan, now that word of the Conductor’s execution for treason had reached Novokribirsk.

Meanwhile, Fjerdan worshippers were burning effigies of Alina in the hope it would earn their god’s favour. There were rumours of a drug, Shu-made, arising in both Shu-Han and in Ketterdam, that apparently modified Grisha in the same breath that it turned them to mindless addicts.

He sent out some groups of Inferni, three to the Fold and two to Shu-Han, and had them set off explosions that could, conceivably, be starfire. He got his spies on the western coast to tell tales of a dragon slaughtered, bones and scales picked clean. He briefly imagined shaving Nikolai’s head and sending the King a box of the hair, to get the bastard to just make the concessions he was inevitably going to give in to. But that was admittedly on a night when he was very, very tired - and there was no way that boy was parting a single hair on that vain head of his, anyway.

Aleksander kept his plates spinning, and he tried not to think about how much easier they would be to handle, if he was in his home, reminding people what it meant to fear him.

Four weeks into this tedious and glacial investigation, Nikolai burst through the doors, filled with the kind of righteous fury only heroes could hold.

“Darkling, what the fuck are you playing at?” the Prince demanded, because apparently he’d left his self-preservation at the door as well. “I thought we had a deal.”

They did. Nikolai was allowed to keep playing at his double-life as Sturmhond, so long as he also used his skyship to act as Aleksander’s personal postal service, and checked in at Ryevost every week for updates on their kidnapping. The King was being bull-headedly slow in replying to the news that his son was in mortal danger - it was enough to give credence to those doubts of legitimacy, if Aleksander was honest. But given that the King was also probably realising that this war was going to eventually collapse messily in on itself without the Darkling at court, Aleksander was pretty certain he was going to give in eventually - not just for the sake of his son, but to get all three of them back when he realised the First Army wasn’t worth shit in comparison to the Grisha under the Black General’s command.

“What are you talking about?” Aleksander frowned, “sit down like a civilised person, and don’t just bark at me like a dog.”

“My father,” Nikolai said angrily, brandishing the day’s newspaper at him. “He’s sick. People are saying he’s been poisoned.”

This was when Aleksander realised love had made him an idiot. He had never given Genya the order.

It seemed he’d been gone long enough, for her to decide she didn’t need it.

Luckily, panic served him well in this capacity - that of extreme denial. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he said.

“Oh don’t give me that,” Nikolai ground out angrily, his young face all anger at a world that had not yet swept the shelter of privilege from over his head. “You claim you’re still running everything in Os Alta - you think I believe you’d miss this? Either you ordered it, or you saw it coming and let it happen-”

Yes, you would really fucking hope so, Aleksander thought. If only I wasn’t trying to become a better person for the first time in half a millenia.

“-And you mention putting me on the throne at least twice an hour-”

“You think I attempted to murder your father, for you?” Aleksander crossed his arms, raised an eyebrow. “Normally, I ask a man to buy me dinner first, before I commit treason.”

“Do you think this is funny?” Nikolai yelled, voice hitting a higher note of pure panic. Poor boy - it seemed he did love his father, after all.

“Why are you shouting, Nikolai? What’s wrong?” Alina said, walking barefoot into the room. Aleksander tried to ignore everything pretty about her, from her damp, scented hair fresh from her bath to the four buttons open at her shirt collar. He failed. This was exactly why everything was going to hell in a handbasket.

“My father is sick,” Nikolai said, looking wretched, and Alina made a comforting noise immediately, because that was the person she was. “Someone poisoned him. And either Kirigan did it himself, or he let it happen - otherwise, what’s the use of a Darkling at all?”

“Oh, Nikolai,” Alina said, sounding sad. She walked over and gave the boy a crushing hug, and Aleksander tried to keep his jealousy off his face when she moved back, stroking soothing circles on the boy's back. “I’m so sorry that your father is ill, but why would Aleksander hurt him? We’re so close to getting his agreement, it would be frustrating to start over. And he knows I would never, ever forgive him if he murdered anyone, or hurt you.”

Aleksander hated how much the second part of her argument persuaded Nikolai, moreso than the first. It spoke exactly of how the Second Lantsov had decided that Alina was the leash that kept him domesticated - and Aleksander was starting to fear that he was right.

Alina turned to him, oblivious and honest. “Do you know anything, Aleksander?” she said, “Is there anything you can do to help?”

Help? The look on her face made Aleksander want to punch his way through a wall.

“I’m not sure who the poisoner could be,” he lied. “Obviously, Nikolai, your father has his fair share of enemies - Zlatan chief amongst them, but with several world leaders in close succession behind. I confess, I wasn’t aware that it was happening - and you must know how much it pains me to admit that-” he said, seeing Nikolai’s thunderous expression. “I don’t like it anymore than you do, that something slipped through without me noticing, but I’m not in the Little Palace. It was bound to happen eventually - your father relies on me for everything, and is not the master of intrigue he likes to think he is. I’ll make enquiries - I’ll have the Corporalniki run diagnostics on the substance-”

I’ll remind Genya Safin who is in charge.

Aleksander noticed Alina was looking at him strangely. For a second, he was worried that she had seen through his lie, but then she glanced back at Nikolai, and nodded with an encouraging smile. “You see,” she said. “Aleksander wouldn’t hurt him.”

“It did seem like an odd play. The paper says the Apparat is taking over things in the King’s stead,” Nikolai said numbly, placated but still grieving. “Good luck getting concessions out of him.”

“Well fuck,” Aleksander said, with sincerity. “Well. There you go then - why the fuck would I let that bloated edifice of a man have an inch more power than he deserves?”

“You going back to Court to fight him on it?” Nikolai challenged. “Maybe even attempt to keep my father alive, if the mood takes you?”

I should. Aleksander thought.

But all he could do was look at Alina, and Nikolai sighed heavily, as if that was an answer.

“I’ll stay here, and help you with your Firebird problem,” the Second Prince said. He let out a heavy sigh, and squeezed Alina’s shoulder, “We need to get him back to Court, my lady star, and apparently he’s not going without you.”

Once Lantsov was gone from the room, Alina looked back towards Aleksander. The smile slipped from her face, which was the first indication to him to panic. She padded silently over and took a seat next to him on the sofa, this time all prim and proper, hands clasped in her lap, and a foot of distance between the two of them.

“You were lying before, I think,” she whispered softly, turning her wide dark eyes on him. They were sorrowful, and as guarded as she could get. “Not about all of it - it does scare you, that you didn’t know the King was ill. But I think you know who did it. You were lying.”

Aleksander tensed up, fear hitting him like a gut punch. How did she know? How did she always know? But then, she’d never been stupid, had she? He’d just wilfully hoped she was. He was the only person who was vulnerable in this situation, and every time it closed in on him it felt like mortality - like an inevitable trap.

Alina saw that as well, a small, disappointed frown settling around her mouth and turning her eyes down. She saw his fear for the confirmation it was: once again, he had lied to her, and he had been caught.

Shit, he thought. Shit.

“It’s Genya,” he muttered, leaning forward so that no one else could hear. “Genya must have done it - she’s the only person with motive, and access. All his food is tasted, she’s the only one with other means. I didn’t give the order, but I didn’t want to give Nikolai her name, because then she would be caught, and she would be executed for treason. She’s one of my greatest assets, and she’s your friend. We must protect our own.”

Alina turned to him, looked him full in the face, and it felt like her eyes were seeing all the way to his soul.

“That’s a lie as well, isn’t it?” she said, after a second, and Aleksander wished he could just go back six months, before ever meeting her. Find a nice, quiet Sun Summoner at the testing age. Destroy the Fold himself, just so that it wouldn’t fucking hurt this much, to be always failing, and always be so scared. “Not all of it, again. But it’s not the full picture. Why does Genya have motive and access? How do you know that? What reason would she have to poison the King? Why would it ever be on your order, in the first place?”

Aleksander couldn’t answer. Anything he said would make her hate him.

Alina waited patiently, almost like he was child refusing to admit to some wrongdoing - and maybe he was, to her, he thought, with that dizzying vertigo that came whenever he thought about exactly who he was talking to.

When all he gave her was silence, she sighed, and said: “I see. Well, at least you are not lying to me. I suppose that is a kind of progress.”

She got up. He fought the urge to reach out and stop her.

“You are right about one thing,” she said quietly, looking down at him. She reached out to touch his face, but her hand dropped before it reached him. “Genya is my friend. I don’t want her to die. She’s a good person - I must trust that whatever her reason for hurting the King, it was a good one. Please stop her from killing him, and I won’t tell Nikolai who did the poisoning.”

“Solnishka-”

“I know, Aleks,” she said sadly. “I know that this is you, trying.”

She didn’t sleep in his room for weeks after.

Before that point, he’d managed to coax her into his bed most nights. Sometimes, she was the one to lead him there, by their clasped hands.

The first time they were together, Alina had asked him not to touch her. He had honoured her wishes, sat on the edge of the bed, fighting to keep his hands at his sides and fisted in the sheets while she straddled his lap and unwrapped him like a present, skimming her fingertips gently across his jaw and all along the planes of his body, as she tested out all the theories her novels had given her and learned exactly how he worked. Her curiosity for him was something he had wanted, more than anything, to match. It had been like exquisite torture, watching her move above him and conduct her investigations with a sincere and studious expression, a furrow marring her brows. She placed kisses on his skin until she had every one of his weak points exposed, her mouth drawing him into vulnerability with the same edge of pain of if he’d been flayed. Eventually, she was schooled to precision. Alina had looked at him like he was an exam she wanted to get full marks in, and that look had turned more and more tender and then more and more hungry with every single sound he’d made.

Another night, and this time he had been allowed to hold her, stretched along her perfect, slender body and pressing her back into the dark sheets with her legs crossed at his back, pulling him closer. Her hair had been spread all around her face, like a dark halo. And she had started glowing. She’d seemed as surprised by it as he did, at first, a fleeting look of worry. But then Aleksander thought he must have imagined it, because seeing his own expression, she had laughed - what do you think stars are supposed to do? - and then she had flipped them and kissed his face all over, sloppily, with adoration. She'd sucked a line of bruises all along his neck, dark as roses on his pale skin. But Aleksander couldn’t laugh with her, couldn’t dislodge the awe from his chest: she was beautiful. She was otherworldly.

She was the closest he would ever come to being mortal, which was the closest he came to feeling alive.

Now, the empty, hollow side of the bed - her side - just made him angry, which made his work worse, which made him angry all over again. The Firebird research seemed like pointless, frivolous timewasting, while his management of the Court felt dangerously lacking. Genya backed down when he threatened to hand her over to Nikolai, but then for Alina’s sake he promised to get her out of the Little Palace and at the frontlines within a month, in such a way that prevented anyone from connecting the dots. With Lantsov in recovery but still ailing, the Apparat started gobbling up power like a rabid wolf descending on a carcass, and negotiations for Grisha treatment had to start all over again, because that was the kind of fucking bastard the Apparat was. Aleksander couldn’t kill him either, not without Alina’s permission. And yet he didn’t dare ask - not without an extensive dossier of all the man’s misdeeds to help his case (which he had Ivan start compiling, once he got the man to return to the Little Palace - the one person he could definitely, definitely trust).

Aleksander knew he was rapidly descending into something approaching disorder. But if he left Ryevost now, after they had argued, Alina would hate him all over again. She would walk to the Fold and end his life without a second thought. Aleksander had to stay, and he had to prove his worth. He had to make her love him, the way he loved her.

For self-preservation, if nothing else.

Nights became sleepless - what was the point of sleeping, if Alina wasn’t sleeping there next to him? He burned through all the books he could, organised search parties of local Grisha testers living in the locations that recurred throughout the source material with the frequency of a motif. They came back with nothing. Zoya joined him at the table, so did Nikolai, both of their faces just as solemn as his. When they saw the mountainous stacks of paper Aleksander had, compared to theirs - all of the Little Palace administration, all the intelligence on Shu Han, Genya’s proposed transfer and promotion to Corporalnik, the proof he needed for the Apparat’s assassination - they looked… almost pitying.

“Yes, not so easy, is it? Running an ailing country plagued on all sides when your father can’t rule for shit? How do you think we have survived all these years? I am the thing keeping us afloat - do you still think me the villain now?” Aleksander said to Lantsov one night, when he was exhausted, and in a terrible mood, and Alina had gone for a long walk without him and could be getting spat on for her Shu appearance by ignorant bigots for all he knew.

That was just over a fortnight after Genya had tried killing the King - and failed, obviously, because she’d made the attempt without him there to plan it. For the next few nights, Zoya had made the kind of decision that had earned her the rapidity of her Second Army promotions, and taken the Princeling out of the house in the evening so that Aleksander didn’t have to deal with them underfoot. They were the ones taking walks along the Sokol now, stumbling home drunk from taverns after last call, stealing looks that they seemed to believe people didn’t notice.

Alina was still not talking to him. No, she was talking to him, which was worse - polite, companionable, professional conversation, informative, impersonal, and concise, with a reserve he hated to see in her. A reserve he knew he had cultivated, and caused.

It was late one of those nights - so late that Aleksander had begun to wonder if Nazyalensky had finally taken pity on the boy, and just bought them a night together in a hotel - when Alina found the Firebird.

Aleksander was working alone at the dining room table, candles burned down to stubs and eyes smarting with the strain. He heard a soft rustle of clothing, and a sound of careful footsteps on the stairs, and suddenly Alina was there.

She hurt to look at, beautiful and fragile, with her hair in dark and smoky disarray around her face. It was like he was seeing her that night in the war room, all over again - his eyes caught the same dips of shadow in her clavicles, only now he knew exactly how her skin tasted when his mouth was on her, what it was like to latch on with teeth. She didn’t have nightgowns here, as in the Little Palace, so instead she just wore a large shirt - one of his, Aleksander noted, which was like rolling his heart in broken glass. It stopped around her thighs, so that her long, sculpted legs and slightly ungainly knees were all bared. In the dark, her eyes looked a little hollow, but then she stepped into the light and Aleksander saw it hadn’t been a trick of the shadows at all. She was just that tired, her face was that haunted. She looked vulnerable.

“I think I know where the third amplifier is,” she told him, inching forward.

“You do?” he asked her, softly as if he might scare her away. “How?”

“I, um - I had a dream.”

“...A dream?”

Alina sighed, raked her hand through her long dark hair, and took a seat on the other side of the table. Her face looked exhausted - but he hadn’t thought anything of it. They were all exhausted, and frustrated: the house had been tense for days on end.

“I get nightmares,” she told him, quietly. “Memories of the other stars - the ones Morozova killed. When my people communicate with each other, we share a lot of ourselves, and I promised I’d take them with me, when they died. So I just- and every night I-”

Certain things made sense now: moments when Aleksander had been roused from sleep to half-consciousness to find Alina burrowing in closer against his side, holding onto him almost with determination, skin on skin. He had always put an arm around her, tried his best to murmur something comforting, hoping it was just sleepy neediness. Or - he feared - restlessness: did the nights ever make her long for her home?

Now he understood she’d maybe been trying to banish something terrible from her mind.

As he processed this, she continued. “The last few weeks,” she glanced up at him guiltily, as he supplied the while we’ve both been sleeping alone, “I thought maybe - if I didn’t have anything else to do, I mean - I could… dig deeper? Not try to wake myself, as often. Look for clues.”

Aleksander’s posture shifted, as he thought about what memories Alina must be revisiting to gather her intel. He felt the shadows in the room darken. Alina looked at him, then away, tugging hair behind her ear just for something to do.

“Are you ok?” he murmured lowly. He gripped the edge of the table, aching with the urge to close the distance and hold her.

“Oh yeah, I’m fine!” Alina said with false brightness, a lie as bad as every other one she’d told. “It’s just a dream, it’s not real! Well, it was for them, but not for me, so it’s really nothin-”

“Alina,” Aleksander said through gritted teeth.

Her eyes were shiny, and he watched as she blinked back tears.

“So anyway,” she pressed on, barreling through, “I was back there, in the dream - the Rusalye’s perspective, this time, when he was tied down. After his sister was - but before he - well. And in the flashes of some of the previous dreams, I’ve seen Baghra. She hides at the edges, watching her father work through the curtains. At least, I think it’s Baghra. Her hair is all dark and curly, and you have the same eyes-”

So, it had been his mother who’d exposed his secrets at the Winter Fete. By this point Aleksander had guessed as much, with Morozova and he so easily linked in Alina’s mind. But it was strange to have confirmation, long after he’d have the ability to seek retribution.

Alina seemed to have the same thought, faltering slightly before continuing. “But you see, Aleksander, this time - this time, there was another girl?”

“Another girl?”

“She spoke to the Rusalye, when - when Morozova was out of the room. She asked him if he wanted water. She asked the other star, too, the youngest sibling? She was scared, and she was young, younger than Baghra. Her colouring was slightly different, not so pale, like the two of you, but her eyes- Aleksander, did your mother ever mention you having an aunt? Her sister? Family is something we recognise, intrinsically, and the Rusalye was sure-”

“I…” Aleksander frowned, took a deep breath as he steeled himself for secrets long left buried, and said, “yes. But the girl died, before I was ever born. That was what Morozova was martyred for, solnishka - he brought her back from the dead, only for her to die again. She was bound in chains, right along with him. My mother always brought up the story, whenever she needed me to understand the importance of secrecy. She said that her family lacked discretion, and that was the reason they were all dead. It was always just… just us. I never even knew my father.”

“Oh, good. I checked with my eldest sister, but she did not watch Ilya, it seems - she was too afraid. But - but this girl was alive, in the Rusalye’s memories, Aleksander, so she was around for the stars being butchered,” Alina said, “the Rusalye kept lingering on her - I’ve even had dreams when he thinks of her, her and his sister, when he’s in dragon form. He dredged the beaches, thinking of her, kept close to land until people started trying to hunt him off - that must be because of the chains! And if that’s the case, how exactly do you think she was bought back? None of Ilya’s magics were him: they were all merzost, and the corpses of my people.”

“I thought-” Aleksander swallowed, “my mother was already born, solnishka - our line was already so powerful that mortality had become meaningless-”

“And that’s the merzost,” Alina said impatiently. “But merzost doesn’t give life, it only takes. It gives the illusion of giving - it has to come from somewhere. If Morozova had raised her with merzost, either she’d have come back eight kinds of wrong, or that’d be what would’ve killed him, there and then - those are the kinds of prices you’d have to pay.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” he said, carefully.

“But you know what would give life?” Alina said. Her expression was shuttered. “What would be powerful enough to raise someone? With the price already paid?”

Aleksander sighed, then scrubbed his face with his hand, feeling dirty, and exhausted. “A star.”

“A star,” Alina said quietly.

“The Firebird was never an amplifier,” Aleksander said. “No wonder the last few decades have been fucking useless, and no moreso than these last few months. The third amplifier was made, and then it perished. It-”

“The sea wouldn’t kill me, Aleks,” Alina interrupted. Aleksander froze. “The cold doesn’t matter, remember? And we don’t need to breathe. Maybe your aunt could’ve melted the chains, if she knew how to burn hot enough. Maybe the final sister showed her. If my life was entwined with someone else’s, but they had nothing to do with the ‘how’ of it, it’s what I would do. I wouldn’t want her to die just because her father did something terrible. That’s not her fault. And I think that, with help, she could survive.”

“...You think we’re looking for a person.”

“No,” Alina said. “To be honest, I already know it. Because you see,” she leaned forward, “I was thinking. About how it felt, in my head, when I sensed the stag. When I was looking for the Rusalye. The first time I felt that, it wasn’t when we were in Tsibeya. It was the night of the Winter Fete - that boy, the sad one, the one who was in your office.”

“I… what… the tracker?” Aleksander frowned, “Saints, what was his name? Oretsev?”

“When I watched him leave, there was this… this hook, right here,” Alina pointed to the base of her neck. “It’s the same feeling as with all the other victims. And when I was in this dream, I swore there was something… I only realised after. The girl - your aunt - she looked like him. I mean, that’s stupid, because mortals don’t work that way, there’s like a bunch of generations between then and now. But if you, Baghra and Ilya all have your eyes, then maybe-”

A slight ringing filled Aleksander’s head. He had never seen his grandfather. He hadn’t known he’d had his eyes. The only way Alina would know - the only way she could see Ilya Morozova’s face - was in memories of her people’s mutilation.

…Was that what she saw, whenever she looked at him? Aleksander felt sick for a second, dizzy.

“I think it’s that boy,” Alina was saying, “Oretsev. And if it is him, then-”

“Then we have his address on file,” Aleksander replied, automatically and without thought. “We gave him his reward - he split it three ways, but he ended up using his portion as a downpayment for a property, I believe.”

He expected to feel relief. If not at an end, then it was a lead: a conceivable one, something tangible, there and ready for him to pursue. They were out of that wood that had been giving him a headache.

But for all that he’d hated his time here, the moment the chance it could all be over appeared, he was suddenly hit with a wish that it would last longer. Here, with her. In the quiet comfort of this house. Even if she was angry with him, at least she was closeby.

And she just looked so… sad. This knowledge had cost her, and again he had no way to help her share the price.

“These nightmares,” he said, “they hurt you. They must.”

“Morozova’s victims were the ones to hurt,” she replied stubbornly. “None of my pain is real.”

“I have carried the burden of a people for centuries, Alina. Even if you are not the one to take the blows, to feel them and know them is painful,” he reached out, and touched her hand, just a gentle brush of his thumb across her knuckles. “You learn to withstand it all, the good and the bad. The struggle makes the victory taste sweeter. But I have also learned to numb myself to the hardest times, and I don’t think you could ever stop yourself from feeling. You wouldn’t be yourself, if you did.”

Her eyes were shimmering again, brimming with unshed tears as she looked down at the tabletop like she was concentrating on it.

“But… it’s my purpose,” she said, and her voice faltered at the end, a little wet and wretched. She blinked, and the tears fell. “I - I can’t be selfish. I can’t just let them be forgotten.”

“Oh, Alinochka,” Aleksander sighed, heart breaking. He got up, and moved around the table. He got on his knees in front of her, knelt between her parted legs, and held her close as she began to cry. He stroked soothing circles down her back - he wasn’t quite sure how to comfort, but that was what she had done to Nikolai, so maybe it was what she wanted, as well. The side of his shirt turned damp where her forehead rested in the curve of his neck.

“It is not your purpose to suffer, solnishka,” he said into her hair. “That is no one’s purpose, and equating sadness with nobility has served no one, ever, in this life.”

“But what if it’s what the Making needs from me?” she whispered. “What if that's why I’m here?”

“Then fuck the Making,” he replied, viciously. She laughed, and his hold on her tightened, “no, I mean it. I already broke it once. Not saying I’d advise it - but for you, I think we can break it again. Or at least, ignore it for a little while. You are more important.”

She giggled in a way that ended in a sniffle, and the hands that had clung to his shirt front looped round his neck, pulling him in even closer. Aleksander went, closing his eyes and falling into the feel of her. This is what is right, he thought - neither of them could fight it, and why should they? They were matched. They were balanced. He’d never known home, but he thought she felt the closest to it. He’d meant every word that he said, even if she hoped he was joking.

The embrace ended. When she pulled back, Alina was red-faced and a little snotty - though Aleksander had a sneaking suspicion his shirt had taken the brunt of it. She moved a hand to cradle his face. Aleksander felt his eyes flutter shut again briefly at the sensation, as she stroked his cheek.

“You’re tired, as well,” she said quietly. “You’ve worked so hard for me.”

“Yes, for you,” he replied, covering her hand with his own. “Never think me selfless, Alina. I did this for you. I always fight for what I want.”

“...I love you,” she whispered. Aleksander stilled, there on his knees in front of her. Time seemed to stop, and he knew she felt it too. Or maybe it just showed in his face, how much her honesty floored him. She could’ve stabbed him there, ripped his heart straight out of his chest, and he would’ve thanked her.

Instead she smiled, a little wistfully, “I wish you were a better man, but I don’t think it works that way. I think maybe... you won.”

“Alina-”

The hand on his face moved so that her thumb traced the corner of his mouth, the curve of his top lip. Underneath her touch, he was silenced.

He’d already said it, anyway. This was the first moment the words had ever left her mouth, but he said it all the time. Usually in the dark, with his face buried in her neck and sweat cooling on their skin. And always when they were alone, so that no one else knew the brutality of his weakness.

“I’m going to be able to get back to sleep. Not alone,” Alina confessed to him. She leaned in close, raked her other hand through his hair, deep enough to feel her nails press against his scalp, before she cupped the nape of his neck and pressed their foreheads together. Her eyes fluttered shut, lashes still wet with the sheen of tears. “Can you leave whatever terrible things you need to do, and come upstairs with me?”

As always, Aleksander wondered why the fuck she thought she even needed to ask. Even in a world where he wanted to, he couldn't say no - not to her.

“Hello!” Alina said, at Malyen Oretsev’s face. “Lovely to meet you. My name is Alina Starkov - you might know me as the Sun Summoner, but actually I’m the sixth star of the Koja Constellation. Can I come in?”

And then, she ducked under the tall boy’s arm, where it was outstretched and propping on the door frame, entering the house without waiting for an answer. Or rather - the Home. After tracing Second then First Army financial records, Aleksander had found himself briefly wondering what possessed a man in his early twenties to purchase an orphanage.

Oretsev’s face was the standard mixture of pole-axed and confused that came with anyone’s first conversation with Alina. When he met Aleksander’s eyes, as if wanting confirmation that she was real, Aleksander gave him the standardly chilly, cordial smile he gave all strangers - equal mixture of charismatic and intimidating, the kind of expectant that didn’t foresee being denied. The boy sighed, and dropped his arm. “Come in, I guess.”

Aleksander followed him in, but did not sit with Alina where she had spread her voluminous skirts over a nearby couch, instead electing to stand by the window, the view of the road outside a little warped and stained grey with dust. They had a contingent of four guards watching from the perimeter, but Aleksander wasn’t going to intrust the safety of either of them to anyone other than himself. Besides - it wasn’t his conversation to have.

Oretsev was busying himself in a quiet, monosyllabic way, offering them tea while pretending not to be frightened. His hair had grown out a little from the military cut used to keep lice at bay, though he kept utilitarian and short. He had a slight limp, but Aleksander supposed his heartrenders were unable to fix everything that had transpired after a foolhardy boy decided to make a weeks-long walk back into Ravka after sustaining a severe injury.

It was strange, Aleksander thought as he looked out of the window, to be back in Keramzin. Where it all started.

Alina had already popped into the townhall and thoroughly traumatised the Mayor all over again.

He kept his eyes on that street, as Alina began to talk to Oretsev, explaining the reason for her coming. She told him everything: of Morozova, and Aleksander’s aunt (though his name was not mentioned), and her descendent, Aleksander’s cousin, found in a census of conducted by the lord of Udova. He was the first of a line that Aleksander’s researchers - the ones that worked in concert with his testers - had traced all the way to Malyen. And she explained a little of her own kin, and of the two siblings Morozova had killed and turned into beasts that might as well have been objects, and the third who'd been used to bring a woman back to life.

Aleksander only tensed up once, when she reached out and held Oretsev’s hand. “I know this must be a lot to take in,” she told the boy sympathetically, “I have proof - I’m used to people not believing in me.”

“No, I…” Oretsev trailed off, “I believe you.”

“You do?!”

“I can’t explain it,” the boy said, “but when I - when I saw the stag. There was something there… it was like it knew me. I’ve thought I had just been turned - the hunger and the grief and the cold. But that moment… it’s stuck with me, in a way I couldn’t describe. The beast, it just looked so… sad. And I’ve been having these - these dreams -”

“Oh no. You have nightmares too?!”

“Not nightmares, exactly,” Oretsev clarified. “But there was this girl. She looked a little like you, only not really at all, now I think about it - it’s almost like there’s two of her? One with tanned skin, the other pale as a cloud. She’s stood on a beach, by the ocean. She’s talking to someone, but the other person isn’t there. Only, she’s definitely not talking to herself…”

“That might be the star, the final sibling, inside of her,” Alina explained.

“Well, you see, that’s the thing. I’ve been hearing the other voice: the one who answers. In the daytime, while I'm awake,” the boy dropped her hand, scrubbed his own through his hair with a tired sigh. “Honestly, I kind of thought I was going mad.”

“You can talk to her? That would mean she’s with you now,” Alina frowned. “I guess that makes sense. I did feel something, the last time we met.”

“It comes in flashes,” he explained. “Emotions, more than words. She seems… she treats me like family. She doesn’t like me sad, and she doesn’t want me to be alone. It’s like she’s here to protect me.”

“I see. I could try speaking with her, if you like? If she’s really there.”

Malyen shifted awkwardly in his seat. “...If you’d like.”

Alina closed her eyes, a small furrow of concentration forming on her brow. A couple of seconds later, and she gasped as a connection formed.

“Oh,” she said, surprised. “...She’s happy. She’s small, and barely there, and her voice is very, very quiet, like a drop in the ocean. But she’s… content.”

The star that dwelled inside Oretsev and his ancestors had not been bound to beasts that never died, losing parts of themselves along the way as instinct took over rationality. Instead, she had grown alongside another, sharing the world with each of them in turn and watching them live and love and explore, go through pain and hardship but also happiness and joy in equal measure. Never alone. The trauma of her murder had faded into a tapestry of other memories, though she missed her siblings with a deep ache of longing that, when Alina spoke it out loud for her, made Malyen clutch at his own chest.

“Saints,” he murmured.

“You can feel that?” Alina asked him.

“Fucking hard not to,” Malyen admitted.

“...She says, she’s sorry that she hurt you just then - she didn’t mean to.”

“That’s ok,” Malyen said, a faint smile twisting the corner of his mouth, “she’s allowed to feel things, if she needs to. Tell her that for me.”

Then, the boy tensed, as if he heard a response.

“Huh,” he said. “I guess… I love you too. I mean, like a sister, or a guardian - like a Saint, maybe? Feels weird to say… but you’re the one who saved me from the Fjerdans, didn’t you?”

Aleksander watched on, as the two of them - the two of them, for it seemed Oretsev was also fluent in the language that would always escape him - spoke to a voice he couldn’t hear, to a person he couldn’t see. It was like watching a conversation through that dirty, fogged window - separating him off from whatever was happening on the other side, muffled and distant.

“I don’t know what to do, here,” Alina admitted, once the conversation - entirely silent, and entirely without him - had concluded. “With the others, I’ve freed them, but I would hate to see you explode, and honestly? She doesn’t seem to want to be freed. She’s so faint now, and though she lingers, she’s had a good and long life, and she’s gotten to watch her whole family grow. She says…” she glanced at Aleksander, for of course this reported speech was now only for his benefit, out of pity: “she’d rather end up in the ground, than return to the sky. This world is her home now.”

“I think I like having her with me,” Oretsev said. “Not that I knew she was there until a few months ago. But it’s… comforting. As long as she knows when I need some privacy, but then, if she’s been stealthing through my entire family-”

“Stars have no concept of secrets, which often means we’re weirdly discrete,” said Alina, with an incredibly ill-founded confidence that meant Malyen took this lie for a certainty. “However…” she bit her lip. “It might not always be comforting, now that she's fully awake again. I’m glad I got to deliver you her final messages from her siblings but… I’ve been having horrible dreams. This family, they went through a lot of pain. It’s a lot for a person to bear.”

“Then… I guess we bear it together - all three of us - don’t we?” said Malyen, looking over at her. “Didn’t you say that the stars share things? This connection, I guess it makes us kin. If I’m also here, you’re not having to hold onto that burden alone. I know we’re strangers, but it’s probably nice to have someone who understands.”

“I… suppose that’s true,” Alina said, sneaking a glance back at him, "and I can be that, for you, if you'd like. I can introduce you to the sky, if you ever want to meet any more stars."

At her words, Aleksander felt a jealousy burn in his chest, so hot and vitriolic it left a bitter taste in his throat. Like bile, or blood. If he opened his mouth, he was certain that the roiling black cloud of the Fold would leave it all over again, enveloping all of them and erasing this moment the two of them shared, that he could never hope to be a part of.

He stayed silent.

His love was an ugly, monstrous thing, it seemed - no matter how well he hid it from her.

“Well, that’s anticlimactic,” Alina huffed to the darkening sky, as they walked away from Maylen’s home hand-in-hand. “I thought we’d be here for weeks, trying to work out how to separate them.”

“But… she’s happy?” Aleksander asked, carefully. He had only what he was able to deduce from watching the silence.

“She’s… old, and well-lived,” Alina sighed. “As her bloodline dilutes, she gets weaker - apparently, she’s been sleeping for the last few generations, barely even there. Malyen meeting the Stag woke her back up, made her remember herself. But she has centuries of memories, and unlike the others, they’re good. She was trapped, yes, but unlike her siblings the vessel she was trapped in never denied her her selfhood. She’s been many people, and she’s been everywhere all over the world - sometimes as a passenger, other times as a collaborator. Unlike the others, she still got to be a part of a family. So, yes, she is happy, but mostly just… doesn’t feel cheated, or lonely, I guess.”

“I’m glad.”

“Me, too!” she said, “and Malyen seems nice. She’ll look out for him, and then maybe she’ll go to sleep again. I don't think she'll be very much bother, like a kind of... doting aunt? I’ll check in on him, make sure he doesn’t have any second thoughts. But I guess if she’s always been there, it might not feel like an invasion of privacy.”

Aleksander should’ve been pleased by this confirmation that Alina was still thinking of her future here in Ravka, even though her purpose was seemingly concluded.

But of course, thinking about that for too long brought up the looming presence that shadowed their conversation: that of the Fold she planned to destroy. He saw Alina think it, too, almost like his own realisation triggered hers. They were slightly awkward for a second, and he had to stop her from asking if they would once again be enemies.

“...I wonder why she wasn’t immortal, like the others,” Aleksander wondered out loud. "I mean, she's my mother's sister, surely-"

Alina was silent, for a long moment - and it was a moment that told him she knew exactly why, but didn’t want to say it.

“Maybe she didn’t want to be,” she said quietly. “Maybe she made the choice for the power to protect the longevity of her line, instead.”

Aleksander wondered, briefly, if this was a lie. It sounded vague enough, but Alina’s tells were not present enough to signal it as obviously untrue. It was frustrating: he knew he had no right to demand honesty from her when he wasn’t always capable of giving her the same, but he still wanted it, nonetheless.

“Or maybe your grandad should’ve just had the foresight to make a female sea dragon, as well,” Alina joked. “Then they could’ve all had a family line.”

Aleksander had hired them rooms at the local inn, the closest thing this small town hotel had to a suite, anticipating several days of at least persuading Oretsev of the star dwelling within him. He certainly hadn’t expected it to all be solved in a single afternoon. Nor had he let himself think past that point, to the return to Court and the mess the Apparat had left all over his nice, neatly ordered plans, or of what he would do when Alina told him that, even though she loved him, she still wanted to go to the Unsea.

Would he try and stop her? He couldn’t: surely she would kill him.

Though he had finally won the words from her, Aleksander was not sure whether love was enough to still Alina's hand. If he actually had the power to hurt her, he still couldn’t say with full honesty whether what he felt would be enough to stop him. Self-preservation was simply too ingrained in what he had left of a soul. It had been his impulse for far too long, that he already had to fight it at every turn. It was almost nice to have the responsibility taken out of his hands, so that he never had to ask himself whether he was capable of the awful things he’d once had planned out for her.

Even if she didn't kill him outright, their peace couldn't last long if the Fold was still her goal. Now, it felt to him like this might be the only night they had left, together.

Aleksander could tell she felt it too. Her hand was gripping his too tightly, her laugh was too high so as to almost be forced as they entered the threshold of the inn. She wanted him to not be thinking of it, either, so she took wine but refused dinner, and as the sky turned to ink outside she pulled him to their rooms with urgency, with both hands.

“I love you,” Alina told him when they were alone. Forceful, like it was a truth she willed upon the world. Like the words themselves were merzost, forbidden and wrong, and yet strong enough to bend and break the Making itself.

And then she stripped him of his shirt, and tugged his face down to hers with both hands. Kissed him like she had a point to prove, like she was grasping at something and gripping hold of it with force.

Of the two of them, Aleksander was the more skilled and accomplished liar. Nor could he deny Alina anything her heart truly desired. So while she gave him sloppy, angry kisses that held teeth and tasted just enough of salt to make you wonder if she was crying, he turned them into the falsehood she wanted for them both. He gentled her motions, stroked her face and every curve of her body until she softened and stopped fighting whatever battle waged in her mind. He stopped her from thinking at all - he let her pretend, and gave her the gift of his pretended ignorance.

You’re not contemplating what it will mean to kill me, he thought, as he pushed her hair to one side and scattered kisses down the slim nape of her neck, the pointed indentations of her spine, all the while unfastening the buttons of her pointless, beautiful gown.

I can make you stay with me, like this, forever. As he lay her gently down in the cotton sheets and wished desperately they were the silk of his home. He got her to place her hands above her head, gently whispered for her to hold them there, and then kissed his way all down her body to the juncture of her thighs.

Another deception: that this was for her, to coax out pleasure that would help erase her worry and her burdens and leave her mind like blank canvas. When really, he was memorising every moment, like a prisoner with his last feast. He savoured every single detail, her sounds and her head thrown back. When she finally disobeyed him, as he had known she would, she tightened her hands in his hair, not to cling but to comfort, carding her hand through even as she thrashed.

This is enough, he lied for the both of them, as he cradled her in his lap and she squirmed until he was seated inside her. And for moment, it was. She started glowing again, and so long as he buried his face in the crook of her shoulder, shut his eyes and avoided looking at the open sorrow plain in her face, he could make the lie real. Was that not what he had always done?

Alina still shone in the dark long after they finished. Like opal - like bone - the light spilling through his fingers wherever he held her. When their heartbeats finally quieted, she looked up at him from where she was nestled against his chest, and the light climbed higher for a second, bright enough for him to raise a hand to shield his eyes rather than squint. Then, it quieted, and dulled away, leaving them in darkness. It took Aleksander a moment for his vision to adjust, and a few seconds later when he made out Alina’s face from the shadows, it was just as an emotion was leaving it.

He couldn’t tell what that emotion was, but he could see what replaced it: a resolve, and a certainty. Aleksander’s heart thundered in his chest, because he already knew he had lost her.

Did he try to stop her now? Capture her, or kill her? If he tried, failed, and she burned him up now, in her arms… wasn’t that a better way to go?

“Aleksander, do you trust me?” Alina said to him, in the darkness, hand resting gently on his face.

“Yes,” Aleksander lied. “I trust you.”

He kissed her again, to make it as real as he could. That kiss became another round of sex, gentle and gasping and tender beneath the shadows.

But for hours afterwards, Aleksander couldn’t sleep. Listening to the sound of her slow, slumbering breaths, watching the way Alina slept draped across him without a single doubt or moment of distrust, he wondered if it was better to attack her now, when she was vulnerable and unsuspecting. Even if he wrapped her in bonds while sleeping, she could burn through them exactly as she had warned him she could, all those months ago. So her death was the only choice he had left. If she woke up, her retribution would be swift, violent and radiant. But he thought he maybe had time to shape the Cut just right, and that split second was all that was needed to ensure he never had to face his fate.

He finally drifted off when he realised it didn’t matter. Even if there was a small chance attacking her would work, he didn’t want to do it. He couldn’t hurt her.

So this is love, the Black Heretic thought bitterly, as he shut his eyes and relinquished control.

The next morning, he woke up to find her side of the bed empty.

Alina had already left for the Fold.

Chapter Text

When Alina had walked to Keramzin from the Fold barefoot, it had taken her just over two days - that had been when she didn’t understand that she could stop walking, lie down, and rest. Now, she understood how both limbs and roads worked. She rode a stolen Second Army horse until its coat was covered in a froth of sweat like seafoam, and then switched it out at a Second Army waystation, then repeated that process twice more. She had left in the early hours of the morning: she reached the frontline camp by midday.

She hadn’t slept. For a while, she was afraid that Aleksander wouldn’t either, feeling him tense and resistant underneath her body. It had been hard work snuggling up against a man carved out of stone - did he honestly think that was how he slept, like a corpse ossified by time?

Alina wished she could’ve said the delay in her own plans worried her - in truth, she’d welcomed the excuse not to act. She stayed in that moment for as long as she could, plastered against him and hearing his heartbeat; steady, slow, and sure underneath her cheek. She wondered if, while he was awake, he was doing what she did when they were alone, just the two of them: testing the boundaries of this feeling like a tender bruise, wondering if it was painful enough to be real. Once he finally drifted off to sleep, she had extricated herself from his arms - leaden in a way he didn’t know how to feign, because he never let himself go, never let his guard drop when he was conscious.

Looking down at him, unarmed and unshielded, she had felt herself start to glow again, illuminating him in soft light so she could see the graceful sweep of each collarbone, and every dark eyelash.

Alina stroked a hand through his soft hair, ran a thumb along the sharp rasp of his unshaven jaw. Unthinking in sleep, he had turned his head into her palm. His face was lax, unlined and young without the burden of worry he’d decided age was. He looked human, in a way that would probably mortify him. Beautiful.

Then she had left, before her shine got too strong and woke him.

Alina had never been to the frontlines, and the unfortunate reality made her hate Aleksander’s crime more, even if she was too selfish to muster any hatred for the man. The bleak, grey wastes of the Fold’s border, churning with dust that seemed to line even her teeth, was understaffed, undermanned, and underfed. Over half the people there were unspeakably young, their faces grimset with determination or hollowed out with apathy. This meant that Alina blended in well, in her shirt and trousers stolen from Aleksander’s suitcases - plain, albeit probably worth more than everyone else’s clothes combined, judging by the quality of the seams. But though a few First Army recruits raised their eyebrows at her tailoring, and more than a few spat curses about Shu Han at her back, they otherwise let her pass through unmolested. No one knew what the Star Saint looked like, it seemed. In the church’s propaganda posters and the friezes propped up by tent entrances, and icons that now seemed to be carried by some soldiers, Sankta Alina was a tall, imposing figure. With dark hair but conveniently indeterminate features, a black kefta, and a crown.

The real Alina walked through the camp basically unnoticed, the tent canvas and lifeless dirt all blurring into one. The only splashes of colour heralded the presence of the Second Army, the gem tones of their keftas seeming almost indulgent in comparison to the drab brown of First Army military fatigues.

Why doesn’t everyone get bulletproof armour? Alina found herself wondering for the first time, surely the First Army face more bullets than we do?

She would ask Aleksander about it, after.

Then, she crested the dune that heralded the edge of the border camp, and in front of her was the Shadow Fold.

The inkblot. That’s what they’d called it, when they watched from the sky. Alina hadn’t really understood that name: yes, from above it looked small, but it had never looked incidental, the way spilt ink might. Instead, it looked like a wound, a never-healing scar, a scab to constantly pick at. Like someone - Aleksander, she supposed - had cut through the flesh of the world, with precision and intent.

Now, however, she understood. The tower of dark, miasmic cloud rose up so high it stretched out of view. That meant it was easier to think of that void as ink, in order for her mind, ever so used to cosmic distances, to make sense of it. Actually, it wasn’t the distances that her mind struggled to comprehend: it was the innate sense of wrongness, like when she had encountered the butchered stars. A buzzing in the back of her brain. It set her teeth on edge. Merzost came off this wound in waves.

It might look like the shadows churned and eddied like water - as if it was just ink dropped in a glass and swirled - but that was the matter of the universe, bleeding. Each strike of lightning was the Making trying to fix itself, and failing.

She stared at it for a second, and all at once her sleepiness from the long ride hit her, almost as if the Fold rendered her something closer to mortal. She was strong, but so was this - whatever it was.

“...Alina?”

Alina looked to her left. She did not initially recognise the person stood their, due to their crimson kefta. Then she blinked, and realised that the sole person to take note of her in this sea of desperate people was none other than Genya Safin, who had snuck up while she was contemplating her next move.

“What are you doing here?” Alina said, not very intelligently, and a little blunt. She told herself her rudeness was due to lack of sleep, but that wasn't really true. It may not be the friendliest of greetings, but then, Alina was not certain this woman was still her friend.

The tailor looked different: still beautiful, with the quality of a porcelain doll, but her copper hair was no longer in its orderly ringlets. Now it was neat and utilitarian, tied back from her face and giving her a more severe look. For a second, Alina thought she looked tired - then she realised it wasn’t that at all. Genya actually looked healthy, bare-faced with a strong, determined edge to her jaw. She just also wasn’t smiling: that placid, cordial face that she had so often worn in the Little Palace. It seemed that there had been another mask that Alina hadn’t noticed, discarded now that it was no longer needed.

“I was transferred here,” Genya said, “a month ago. Kirigan has me managing his intelligence on West Ravka, everything that comes in through the supply lines…” a worried glance around, “he’s not here, is he?”

“No,” Alina said. Not yet.

Alina knew that the only way she was going to get Aleksander out here, to the Fold, was if she got there first. She could’ve stayed with him, in the comforting darkness of that hotel room, and asked him to join her on the journey the next morning. But deep down she knew that would never have worked. So long as Aleksander had a choice, when it came to this, he would likely always choose the selfish one. He would’ve found an excuse not to accompany her; he would’ve tried to find ways to dissuade her, or tempt her down different paths, with a promise that the Fold could wait. He might even have tried to stop her by force. There was no way he made this trip willingly - that just wasn’t the man he was, and it would be foolish to pretend otherwise.

But now she was here, all she had to do was wait. He would follow, eventually.

Genya followed her eyeline to the Fold, and swallowed nervously. “So, you’re… um. Doing it, then?”

“What I came here to do?” Alina asked. “Yes.”

“And he’s… letting you? Just go in? Or… or… whatever it is you need to do? Do you need to go inside, to um, well…?”

“Eventually.” Alina said, to all of it.

“Right…” Genya said, obviously disbelieving. “...Are you sure? That you… um… you won’t just… die?”

Alina glanced over at Genya. "If Aleksander assigned you as his intelligence officer here… he must have told you that I am actually a star, yes? I know you weren’t with us in Tsibeya, but surely you know it must’ve taken a lot for him to actually believe me? You can’t claim you're more of a sceptic than Aleksander Moroz- General Kirigan.”

Genya cleared her throat, nervously glancing around, before vomiting out words in a rush: “look, Alina, I’d love for you to be capable of what it is you want to do, but there’s just so much you don’t understand. I don’t know exactly what you know. But I remember those ruined windows the night after the Winter Fete, so I’m pretty certain you know some of it. Whatever has made you angry enough to come here, hold onto it, because I promise you the truth is far worse, and you should fear this man. If he’s coming after you, you should go into the Fold now. It is the only thing he’s afraid of, and even that void is better than the punishment he will rain down for disobedience-”

Alina turned to look at her, but Genya kept talking: “It feels stupid to say this so late, but the General is not the man he wanted you to think he is. I know he’s been helping you with the… Saints, he said it was family? the last few months, but he’s been telling everyone he’s kidnapped you. He’s been trying to get concessions out of the King, do you know they’re saying he took Nikolai Lantsov hostage and then killed him when his demands weren’t met? I’m pretty certain he didn’t do anything so extreme, but then, no one has seen Nikolai since-”

Since you poisoned his father and he decided to lock himself up in a house with us?

“-If you believe Aleksander to be capable of such things, why are you here, serving him?” Alina chose to say instead.

Genya blinked, stopping short. “Well, Alina. It’s because of such things, that I don’t really have much of a choice.”

There was a tense silence, until Alina realised it was her mistake that had caused it.

“Oh! I must sound like I’m judging you!” she said, embarrassed, “I’m not. I just… I think I’ve just realised. I thought of us as friends, but I… really don’t know anything about you.”

Genya eyed her warily, but didn’t seem willing to contradict or elaborate on this new truth. In fact, she looked very uncomfortable, and it was like she didn’t want to be here, talking to Alina at all. She must have been told to be nice to me, Alina realised, with a sinking stomach: it had all been another lie. Another lie, now she thought of it, that had probably been orchestrated by Aleksander.

And yet, Genya was here, talking to her anyway. The quiet, distrustful woman in front of her was the real Genya, who thought Alina was a childish fool, and still cared enough to try and intervene.

She reached over, and took Genya’s hand. “Don’t worry about Aleksander,” she said. “I know he's done some very awful things, more than even you’re probably aware of. But after this that will be… managed.”

“...You’re killing him?” Genya hissed, looking terrified. Then, she gasped, “Is he already dead? Is that how you’re here?”

“Oh, stars, I hope not,” Alina said. “I mean, as always: not unless he forces my hand.”

“Oh,” Genya dropped her hand. Panic gave way to immediate resignation. “So you’ve just decided you’re the one to fix him. How convenient… for him.”

“I mean, I’m hoping that severing his connection to the Fold will do a lot to lift that depression he’s always in, but-”

“Whatever he’s promised you, however he’s said he’s changed, it’s a lie. If you’ve snuck out here on your own… you do realise he’s a manipulative bastard, yes?”

“And you do realise I’m not actually stupid?” Alina replied, raising an eyebrow. “Which is exactly why I’ve snuck out here on my own. Trust me, I’ve got him in hand.”

Genya scoffed. Alina sighed, “look, a lot has changed since we last spoke-”

Genya let out a bitter laugh, “you have no idea, little star.”

“I’m not a fool, and I know everything about Aleksander. Everything,” Alina continued. “I’m not saying I’m proud of who I must be, to be able to love him, in spite of it all. I would love to say this is all a manipulation, and take away all my responsibility for things being this way. But unfortunately, it isn’t. This is my choice, as well as his. The only way what I’m about to do works is if that’s true.”

“Oh, Alina-”

“Don’t pity me,” Alina snorted, “my debt to the Making is almost paid, and I’m not the one who dies if this all goes wrong. But please, trust me when I say that - if the Fold disappears? You’ll have no need to ever fear Aleksander, ever again.”

Something pained flitted across Genya’s newly impassive face. “You're not the one that decides that, little star,” she replied with a flat voice. “You can’t truly know everything he’s done, if that’s what you ask me to place my trust in.”

“Maybe that's true. Then…” Alina bit her lip, “promise me that when I walk out of this in one piece, we’ll talk?”

Genya gave her a long look, then nodded. Alina wanted to hug her, but she didn’t think she knew this woman well enough to do so.

At a loss of what else to say or do, she started walking towards the Fold.

“Alina?” Alina turned, to see Genya with her arms crossed protectively, calling out across the wind, “I’m sorry I lied to you.”

“Whatever your lies were, I’m sorry I believed you,” Alina replied. Her voice rose above the dust-storm. “I think we should try being friends all over again!”

Alina waited on the border of the Fold. Occasionally, when she got bored, she placed her hand into the Unsea. It would disappear into the darkness as if severed. A chill would rise up her arm, and then it would go numb, until she withdrew, flexing her fingers until the feeling came back. It was a horrible fucking feeling. It was an affront to the Making itself. How did Aleksander not feel shame, at the malicious impropriety that just radiated off this ugly rend in the universe?

The next time she heard her name called, she didn’t need to turn - but she did anyway.

“Alina?” Aleksander was walking across the sand towards her. “Alina!”

It was midafternoon - sooner than she’d hoped for, as she was worried it would take him at least a day to gain the resolve to follow her here. The Darkling stopped short when she turned, his chest heaving like he’d run some kind of marathon. But he hadn’t run anywhere, (he was walking, dramatically, as always) - he was just that scared. The panic was plain in his features. Behind them, at the border of the camp, a crowd was forming, of Grisha and First Army alike - and so he hadn’t hidden it, even from them.

“You’re not -” he gasped as he caught his breath. “I thought you’d be -”

“I was waiting for you,” Alina told him, calmly.

“Me?” Aleksander said, “Alina… love, you really shouldn’t have sacrificed your headstart. Surely, you know, now, that I’ve got to do what I can to stop you -”

“-I’m not going in there alone.”

He blinked, then looked to the Fold and swallowed when he realised what she meant. “Alina…”

“I knew that the only way to get you here was to force you to come,” she said. “If I’d stayed and asked politely, we’d have had a lovely conversation, and you would have been lying through your teeth at me the whole time. You never would have had the courage to do this, if I didn’t force your hand. If it didn’t mean losing everything, including me.”

Aleksander pulled his eyes away from the void he had created, to look back at her. His dark eyes were wide and a little wild.

“Alina, you know I can’t,” he said, his voice already taking on a pleading edge. “You can’t just ask me to walk to my death with you. Surely you haven’t been that cruel, all along.”

“Does that sound like something I would do? I thought you said you trusted me?”

“Even - even if I-I wanted to, I can’t, I just can’t,” he said, with more force, as if that would shroud the fact he was scrambling. “The Volcra - the moment I step in, they seek me out. They’ll rip me to shreds-”

“Yes, well, the Making does, as always, demand balance,” Alina replied patiently. “Luckily for you, you’ll be with me. I can keep you safe from them.”

“Alina, surely you know that I have to fight this - please, don’t make me hurt you.”

“You couldn’t hurt me even if you wanted to,” she retorted. “And you don’t want to, do you? You’d have used the Cut on me while my back was turned, if that was truly your plan. So stop making excuses, and stalling for time. The longer we’re out here, the more you’ll work yourself into state.”

“You can’t make me go in there. I can’t.”

“So you’ve said. Why not?” she demanded.

“Because - because I-”

“Because you’re afraid?” She finished for him. “Good. Proof you have a heart, after all.”

That response surprised him - she supposed that for her, she sounded cruel.

“That’s not fair,” he said wretchedly. “You can’t say that, after everything- you know I love you. But even so, you can’t ask this of me. Even a good person couldn’t do this. It’s not wrong to not want to die.”

“Aleksander,” she interrupted. “This is fair, it’s just not easy. I get that you’re terrified, but you don’t have my sympathy. The only thing you’re afraid of here is your own mistakes, and those won’t go away by us arguing about them out here.”

Alina held out her hand to him. “If you love me, come fix them with me.”

Aleksander looked down at her hand in disbelief. For a second she thought he would laugh, or scoff, or maybe just attack her. But then he blinked, and she was surprised to see that his eyes were wet, as if he was fighting tears.

“Alina,” he said, gaze moving back up to her face. His voice was almost reedy, trembling with terror and remorse. “I’m sorry, but I’m really not the man you think I am.”

“Aleksander,” she replied, frustrated, holding out her hand more emphatically, “I know that, but you can fucking try. Are you just going to try to fight me on this, and lose, or are you going to trust me?”

Aleksander swallowed, again. He looked to the Fold, then back at her - flayed of his mask, all of his controlled veneer gone. He looked like the scared young man who had created this abomination, but Alina wasn't certain if that’s who he still was, deep down. Alina waited instead for whatever move he was going to make: the gestures of a Summoning to try and kill her, or something approaching contrition.

After a long, silent moment, Aleksander reached out to her. The Black Heretic’s hands were trembling as he intertwined their fingers, and he looked almost betrayed by himself as he did it.

“Good,” Alina said, squeezing once in what was probably some very lacklustre reassurance. “I need you to navigate.”

Then, she tugged him into the Fold by their joined hands.

Stepping into the Unsea was like plunging underwater - all the sound from outside was immediately muted, and that terrible, cold feeling washed over her like an icy lake. Her breath came tight, for a second, until Alina forced herself to relax. It was pitch dark, except for the pale shadow of bone-white dirt underfoot. The only thing she could hear was Aleksander’s harsh, rapid breathing at her side, and the occasional rumble in the distance. He sounded like he was a hunted animal, suddenly aware of the things that chased him, body buckling under the realisation he was trapped.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he whispered, as if the darkness somehow made it easier to confess to such an obvious secret.

“You already are,” Alina whispered back, and then pulled him forward. The quicker they got away from the edge, the better: far less chance of doubts, or second thoughts.

“I need you to take me to the heart,” she told him. Aleksander nodded once, looking sick, before he forced himself to walk a step ahead of her with something approaching purpose.

They travelled in silence, initially. And though Alina’s heart ached to watch the man walking at her side, tight-jawed and pained as he faced down his fears for her, she did not let herself shine. Better to not attract attention before it was necessary.

She started shivering, fifteen minutes in. Twenty minutes, and Alina hugged her arms around herself, embarrassed by the entirely new sensation of chattering teeth. It made her feel foolish, to be the only source of sound in this otherwise near silent void. She hadn’t seen anything wrong with entering the Fold in only her shirt and trousers, not even bothering with a jacket. It hadn’t even occurred to her that there would be a need for bringing anything more. This was the first time in her mortal life that she ever had felt truly, truly cold.

Aleksander glanced over at her, still not daring to speak. A moment later, he dropped her hand and began removing his kefta and cloak, pausing to drape both around her shoulders.

“Oh, really, you don’t need to-” Alina said, weakly. Even as she protested, she was already pushing her arms into the long sleeves and tugging both layers around her shoulders more tightly, more than grateful for the residual warmth they held from his body.

Aleksander managed a smirk, but it was a watery, diluted version of his usual condescending confidence.

“Now that I’m entirely without armour,” he murmured, reclaiming her hand, “please protect me, should any of the Fold’s creatures decide to kill me on my walk to my execution.”

As if summoned, that was the moment one of the Volcra emerged from the darkness, ripping through it with a shriek.

The strange, leathery, eyeless creature descended on them. Alina only had the time to gasp as Aleksander dropped her hand. He tried to push her to the side, forcing her behind him, even though that was exactly the kind of service he’d just requested of her in jest.

“Don’t be an idiot!” she reprimanded, and then pushed him out of the way.

She flung up both her hands, and light erupted from her in a fountain. After all her effort to dampen it on the walk so far, it was almost a relief to unleash it. She just thought of Aleksander, of her seeing him so truly afraid, and still capable of reaching out to her, and walking to what he thought was his death- silently, hand-in-hand, by her side-

The light churned brighter, and the Volcra screamed, reaching a new and higher pitch with the pain. It spiralled away, skin sizzling and smoking. Alina felt guilt - whoever this person was, it wasn’t their fault they’d been caught up in the price exacted by merzost. Even as it turned in the air and made to dive on them mindlessly once more, she didn’t actually want to hurt it.

“Stop,” Alina said, with both her voices. Her light jumped, and changed in clarity, from the gold of summoned starlight to the glow of her true heart.

The Volcra didn’t listen. She supposed it was too much to hope it would work first time.

She saw Aleksander fling something at it - the Cut. Only in the Fold, his Shadows weren’t so much summoned, as they were moulded from the very essence of this place. It looked more like a distortion in the fabric of the world. Whatever it was, the shadow blade sheared off a wing, and the beast was downed, going off-kilter and plunging face first into the sand at speed.

Aleksander was already drawing on the shadows to summon again, and finish it. A quick glance at him told her that this place wasn’t debilitating for him the same way it was for her. Though clearly afraid, his eyes glittered like onyx, and the shadows jumped readily into his hands-

“Stop,” Alina told him, placing her own glowing hand on his arm and interrupting the ritual of his casting. Aleksander startled, and looked at her. The shadows of the Fold stilled between his palms.

“We’re here to settle debts, not gain more,” she reminded him. “Give me a second. I want to try something.”

Alina walked over to the Volcra. The beast was scrabbling in the dirt, bleeding something black and viscous onto the ground from the wound it had sustained. The Cut had taken out a wing, and half the meat of a gaunt shoulder. When her light hit the side of its emaciated frame, it hissed in pain, and tried to shuffle desperately away on its hands and knees.

“I’m here to end it,” Alina told it, quietly. “This is my purpose.”

The person trapped inside this beast wasn’t a star, so it couldn’t understand her. But what it could feel, she hoped, was the wave of emotion that she tried to impart with her words: the final peace the Stag and the Sea Whip had known, the contentment of the star that dwelled within Malyen. The feeling of knowing rest, and a quiet fading away.

After a few seconds, the Volcra stilled, except for its twitching muscles and pained panting. Alina could tell it had understood.

“I’m sorry I can’t give you more,” she told it. She placed a hand on its side. Both of them flinched, as did Aleksander, who had followed her and stood behind, at a distance.

Then, she burned the creature away, out of existence. Like the Fold itself, its dry skin caught like paper, and it was alight in bright flame within seconds.

When all that was left was a smouldering, gold silhouette that stung her eyes, and flecks of still-glowing embers on the breeze, Alina turned back to the Darkling. Aleksander was blinking a lot, ridding his eyes of the same after images as he readjusted once again to the darkness. He looked ill.

“This is your plan?” he demanded. When she nodded, he continued, “for every single one of them we encounter? Why torture us both like that? Why torture yourself? It’s like you invite pain.”

“Believe me,” she replied coldly, “it is far worse for them.”

That silenced him. Good.

“I am hoping this is the kinder solution. When the Fold is gone, they will no longer have a home,” Alina said. “I told you this wasn’t going to be easy. Are you going to lash out at me every time it is hard?”

Aleksander glared at her, jaw clenching. Alina patiently watched him fight every one of his instincts.

She held out her hand. He took it, and they continued, with him still in the lead.

The journey was long and arduous. Even with his cloak and kefta, Alina began to feel chilled to the bone, a phrase she’d only read about but now understood. Next to her, Aleksander was seemingly unbothered - it was his creation, after all.

She kept her glow up, if only to reassure herself that it was still there.

“We could’ve taken a skiff,” Aleksander muttered, only once, after he’d stalled them for a few seconds in order to change course. He seemed to have an internal compass that allowed him to orient himself in the darkness, and they could both tell he had said it mostly just for the sake of pointing it out. Alina didn’t even bother replying - the walk made no difference to her, and if they’d gone for a skiff, the very act of planning would’ve made Aleksander all the more likely to bolt.

They kept walking.

Every time they encountered one of the Volcra, Alina offered the creature a choice. Each one of them made the same decision. The only moment of concern came when three descended on them at once, and Aleksander chose again to sever their wings. But once the first creature had heard Alina’s pitch and acquiesced to her touch, the other two came forward, heads bowed towards her form. Eager, as she was, in this wretched, forsaken place, for it all to end.

They kept walking.

Alina felt a little hungry, but she could push her human needs to the side when needed. The deeper and deeper they went into the Fold, the more Aleksander looked like he had just feasted - albeit, to the point of feeling sick, as that pinched quality of queasiness never left his face. Alina thought it was still only a measure of hours they had been here, because he didn’t complain about his legs aching - or maybe, again, the Fold was sustaining him well enough to erase any tiredness that might otherwise arise.

Without the day and night cycle, Alina felt like she was a star weightless in the sky again. Then the ground would rasp underfoot, or there would be a rumble of thunder far off in the distance, ruining the illusion.

They kept walking.

Aleksander’s grip on her hand tightened, and Alina knew they had gotten closer to the heart of the Fold. A thicket of Volcra descended, as if they had somehow breached an inner sanctum.

In the end, Alina could not offer them all the choice she wanted to - Aleksander killed four of them with a shout after one got close enough to bite down on his shoulder. When it was over, she pushed through the ash of bodies dancing on the breeze like glowing fireflies, and fell down on her knees beside him. His shirt was torn and sodden all down one side - when she placed her hand against the wound, he cried out and snapped his teeth on the sound like a caged dog. Her hand came away dark with the same, tar-black blood that the Volcra bled.

“Are you ok?” Alina asked him.

Aleksander barked out a laugh, high and hysterical.

“I would say, I have been better.”

Alina inspected the bitemark with a frown. It was deep, but it didn’t seem to have struck anything vital. “I don’t think it will kill you.”

“No, Saints forbid,” Aleksander said, a little sarcastic and a lot manic. He gritted his teeth, and pulled himself up to standing with a long, agonised groan. “Come, solnishka. Let’s keep going. The only thing that has the privilege of being the death of me, it seems, is you.”

And they kept walking, straight into the heart of the Fold.

They kept having to fight off more Volcra, so Alina didn’t realise where they were, at first. Then, as the last golden outline cleared, she saw the ruins: half empty buildings, eroded by time and sand and merzost’s decay until they were hollowed out like egg-shells, barely recognisable ghosts of walls and rooms illuminated by her glow in the otherwise churning dark.

The skeletons of this village were familiar. Sure enough, they soon came across buildings that were not eroded, but smashed and scattered by an impact, and then they reached a strange, glassy crater, now half buried under a layer of pale sand like ash.

This was where she had landed.

The Making, it seemed, was not subtle.

Aleksander hadn’t noticed it. “How are you not tired?” he was asking, brushing a glowing mote of volcra off his shirt. “I know that you’re not Grisha, but surely there must be a limit to your power. We’ve been here for hours… Saints. Maybe even days. And you just keep burning.”

Alina didn’t reply. She knew exactly what was sustaining her, and it was endless - at least, that’s what she was counting on, and what would see the both of them through this, if the Making willed it so.

He didn’t comment on the fact that he was clearly fine, as well. He looked more youthful and energetic than ever. There was a devastating quality to his beauty, when he was surrounded by darkness, and Alina thought it wasn’t the darkness alone making him look so perfect, now that they’d reached the twisted, corrupted centre of his power.

“This is it, isn’t it?” Alina said, “the heart of the Fold.”

She pulled him to a stop at the rim of the crater. He looked down into it, frowning as if he was trying to make sense of how exactly it had gotten here. There was an almost laughable quality to his expression, as if he wanted to say ‘this wasn’t here before’. Like someone had left shoes in the wrong place in his house, or moved the neatly ordered papers on his desk. Only this wasn’t his home, this was his crime against the world, the government of Ravka, and the Making itself. And Alina had made a mess of it.

She let out a high-pitched giggle, unable to help herself. She smothered it hastily with a hand.

“Sorry,” she said when he cast a worried look at her, “I think I might be more tired than I thought.”

“...Yes,” he said, “this is the centre of the Fold.”

“It was a village once,” Alina said, looking at him for confirmation. “At least, that’s what I thought, when I-”

“When you fell,” Aleksander finished for her, looking out across the hundred-foot expanse of glass. “And landed here.”

Alina shrugged. There was no use denying it, or what it meant. “I hate to say I told you so but... I think we found my purpose.”

Aleksander was silent, but for once his face wasn’t unreadable. He looked blatantly terrified, and at a loss for what to do.

He could attack her, of course - this would be the point, Alina thought, where he was at his strongest. Where his tie to merzost was most keenly felt and he had the most chance of succeeding, albeit at the cost of more of his soul.

But he didn’t drop her hand, in order to cast. He seemed frozen in time. It was like he didn’t trust what he would do, if he moved even an inch.

“It’s ok to be afraid,” Alina told him gently. He glanced up at her, rabbit quick and prey-like.

“Please,” he whispered. “Please… if you have to kill me-”

He pulled her in by their joined hands. Roughly, so that their bodies collided artlessly, and he buried his hand deep into her hair at the base of her skull and kissed her. His movements half-feral, deep and searching like he was looking for an answer for how he’d gotten here, how she’d somehow bewitched him to follow her all this way.

Alina kissed him back, caressing his cheek gently and doing her best to avoid his mangled arm, even as he seemed not to heed it. He let out a pained sound anyway after she settled for resting her hand on his waist - it seemed she'd gotten her angle wrong, or that she was already too close to avoid causing him harm. When she tried to pull back, he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her even closer, not letting her move away from him. His hand snaked to the base of her spine through the folds of his own kefta, pulling her shirt hem out from her breeches and placing his hand on the bare skin of her lower back, pressing her even closer still until no space remained. She braced herself against his shoulder without meaning to, and his breath left him in a single whoosh. His shirt was damp and sticky with blood. Still he kissed her, through the pain. She tried to make this into something kinder, but his mouth was desperate, and it was almost like he wanted it to hurt.

She kissed him until it was something softer, anyway. It took a long time, as it meant waiting until the fight had left him. She moved her bloodstained hands to cradle his jaw. Where he had bitten her lips, she soothed. She stroked her hand through his hair, down his shuddering spine.

Didn’t he know that she had done nothing to get him here? It had all been him. That was the point.

He had gotten them both here. And his penance was almost over.

“Why would I kill you, Aleks?” she whispered, breaking their swollen, bruised kiss, but keeping him close enough so that the breath they took in its aftermath was shared. “I love you.”

“But I-” he was panting heavily, and though this should be where he was strongest, she thought this might be the first time that she saw him truly without his armour. “The Fold - you’re going to-”

“Do you love me?” she asked him.

“Of course I do.” He let out a shaky laugh. “How could I be here, if I didn’t?”

“Do you trust me?”

“...I don’t think I have much of a choice.”

“There is always a choice. Do you trust me, my love?”

“...Saints preserve me, I’m trying.”

“I love you,” she told him, for this was what would preserve him - not any act of Saints, or of the Making, which was an unthinking, unfeeling, and cruel judge.

She sealed her words with another kiss, soft and slightly off-centre, in the corner of his mouth. Then, she brought her lips to his ear, standing on her tiptoes.

“Close your eyes,” she whispered.

For a second, he was still, and then she felt his lashes brush her cheek, as he acquiesced. He was trembling.

“I’ve decided what my purpose is,” Alina told Aleksander, wrapping both arms around him and holding him as close as she could. “I’m here to save you.”

Alina opened her heart fully, and she let herself shine.

An indeterminate amount of time later, Alina felt the shadows of the Fold and the weeping discharge from the wound dealt by merzost slough of her. It was a little like taking a scalding bath after an illness, feeling the grime - both physical and spiritual - get washed away. Though she had not fought with fists and feet - and still never would, as far as she was concerned - she felt a little of what it would be, she imagined, to drag herself off a battlefield. It had taken all of her strength, and all of the love inside her, to erase the Fold from existence.

Her mortal body was leaden and unfamiliar, after a time spent once more as herself. Like Ilya Morozova and his daughter, when they were wrapped in chains.

Above, the sky was a pale cool violet, the colour of a week-long faded bruise. It seemed that they had passed at least one day and a night inside the Unsea, for the east was touched with the soft, blush pink of dawn.

In Alina’s arms, Aleksander was shuddering. For all Alina’s exhaustion, the Black Heretic was the one who had actually been purged. At some point, they had fallen to their knees together in the dirt. All his lovely black clothing was covered in a ghostly film of white dust. He was wracked with pain, his head buried in her shoulder, no doubt feeling the withdrawal of merzost and the loss of power that came with it. Merzost was easy, merzost was nice, once you suppressed and willingly forgot the initial pain of what you had done.

Ripping it away, however? That was bound to sting. But she had a feeling the newfound vulnerability was what hurt Aleksander the most.

Alina brought her tired arms tighter around him and hugged him closer. She loved him, as best she could, and both of them felt it when his life started coming back into him. It was like draining a cup of poison (Alina drinking it, herself) and then refilling it with water from the clearest spring.

His breathing started to even out. They were pressed together, so she felt it when his heart started to beat in time with her own.

“Oh good,” Alina said, with a breathy giggle. “You do love me. Thank goodness for that. You’re such a good liar, I was really worried for a second.”

Aleksander let out a choked, incoherent sound, and Alina shushed him, rubbing a circle in his back.

“It’s ok,” she murmured, “it’s ok. Give it just a little bit more time.”

Stars, her heart felt bruised. But that was the point, wasn’t it? Love was pain. Not always - but when it was new, and when it was messy. When it was bridging a gap thought unbreachable, or bringing down walls that had been meticulously crafted to keep it out.

When it was facing darkness.

The Rusalye had told her heart was strong. But Alina thought - in that selfish part of her that, perhaps, Aleksander might like - that her heart might be the strongest of all her kin.

Or, at the very least, it can love the most, she thought smugly, smoothing back Aleksander’s hair.

At the thought of him - stood next to her, walking into the centre of the place he feared most, leading her to the fate he thought he was destined for, pained and afraid and facing his every flaw, not reaching for the instinct to hurt that had driven him for so long, at feeling anger and cowardice and hatred and self-loathing and still persevering - her heart stuttered, and she started glowing again. Weakly. Just a little shine.

She could hardly expect to do more. Not right now, when she was finally, blissfully tired, and sharing her heart with another.

At the thought of him - a wave of emotion came over her. Tender, proud, relieved. Unspeakably fond - but luckily, Alina didn’t always need to speak. Aleksander had not thought he was capable, but he had done it anyway. For her.

At this idea, her love spilled out of her like ink bleeding on a canvas, and it crested over, escaped the confines of her body, until it encountered and mixed with something else. A sense of pain, a sense of shock, and then - calm, solace. The consolation of being in her arms, in these final moments. Where death feels so welcoming, it’s almost warm. He had always been afraid, but actually, it wasn’t so bad. It was one of the first things he had not faced alone.

At least when I die, she will remember me, and then she will tell the whole sky. Someone to mourn me, and no grave for them to desecrate -

“Oh,” Alina said, “good. It really is working.”

Surprise -

- It wasn’t hers.

Alina snorted. She shook Aleksander’s shoulder, the one that the volcra had bitten, and she didn’t do it gently. The wound was long gone, scabbed over and healed, mostly just because she'd felt like showing off.

“I’m afraid I’m not going to let you play dead for long, even if you do feel like shit,” she told him, affectionately. “I’ve just destroyed the Fold - who knows who will be coming here, and when? I’m afraid that mortality isn’t yet for you, young man. That self-preservation of yours needs to come back, right about now.”

A feeling in the back of her mind: a hook, a high-pitched whine that finessed itself slowly down to a harmony. A hand, reaching out, and touching something very, very intimate, and very much not human. Alina shivered.

“Well, now I know you can walk,” she said with a grin, and gave Aleksander a big, loud, smacking kiss on the side of his temple where it was buried against her shoulder. Accompanying it, she made the exact same gesture back, along the tether that now bound the two of them together.

The Darkling jolted backwards, breaking out of her embrace. It seemed his limbs were still a little weakened, because he went sprawling, nearly overbalancing until Alina put her hand on his arm to anchor him. His hair was all over the place, stuck up in all directions like a scarecrow. That was not the Fold-destroying, but the kissing that had preceded it.

Still, he looked ragged. Like he’d fought a bear, and lost. His dark eyes were wide and confused, and if you looked closely in them - when you were as tangled with him as Alina was, right that second - she could see that they were no longer black, but just a shade lighter: a deep, deep earthen brown.

It suits you, she told him. And it did - the black had always been beautiful, and yes, also very hot, in the more heated moments they watched her. But brown added a little bit of warmth to his face. It made him look almost human.

Aleksander blinked as he heard her, and understood that she was talking about his eyes. He didn’t like that they had changed colour, and immediately, with the edge of paranoia that Alina supposed she would have to get used to, he worried what that might mean. With a panicked look, he opened his palm and immediately tried to summon.

After a second, a wisp of shadow bloomed between his fingers. It came easily to him, although Alina couldn’t help but let out a little noise of protest.

Aleksander heard the reprimand underlying it, unspoken, and looked up at her, awe-struck and afraid.

“You’ll probably need a day or two, to recover, to do that on your own,” she explained in a tight voice. It wasn’t that he had lost his power, or that she was going to be the one fuelling it forever. But she had just bought him back to life, and her heart was currently trying to restore everything merzost had taken away.

He could’ve given her, say… a minute, and she said as much, silently.

“...Sorry,” he said, quietly, in a rasp.

It seemed he could not speak in their other language yet, but that also meant he did not have any control over what precisely Alina overheard. A flood of emotion crashed into her: disbelief, fear, amazement, more fear, but underneath all of that was this love, that he fought at every turn, and Saints, what has she done to me-?

Alina was briefly stunned. She had known that Aleksander’s stiff, guarded demeanour was a front to hide whatever emotions he was actually feeling. But she found herself completely unprepared for how much had been going on, underneath the surface.

Stars, she told him, no wonder you’re so fucking grumpy all the time. Don’t you get tired of keeping that all hidden away inside?

“I-” Aleksander rubbed his temple, leaving a sweaty streak of grey dirt, “...what is this? What did you do?”

I saved your life, idiot.

Who knew how quickly his body would age, if she hadn’t stepped in to share her heart and give him the immortality he still so feared to lose?

“I think,” Alina said, reaching out and rubbing that smudge away, “that I found - or not so much found as made - an equal.”

Aleksander looked up at her, awed and - as the tether told her - so filled with love and hope that it scared him.

Alina leant forward across the sand and kissed him once, on that slightly open, stunned mouth. Aleksander didn’t move to deepen it, though she could certainly feel the part of him that wanted to, and so, placated for now, she shifted back.

“It’s not a perfect solution,” she told him, sending some reassurance down their bond. “It gives you all the things you want: power, long life, me, but it will come at a price. Particularly in the beginning, when I’m learning how to keep my heart in two places, and you don’t understand how stars speak. We might learn things about each other that we maybe don’t want to know. But I think it will get better with practice, and with time.”

“But then… why…?”

Why did my grandfather kill them all, if you can do all this while living? his mind finished for him.

“I’m not sure,” Alina told him honestly. “Maybe he didn’t earn any of the stars’ trust, and I’m also guessing he didn’t love them, or they him by the end, which is a pretty important caveat. But honestly? I would hazard that he probably never fucking took the time even to ask. He probably just trusted his own theories and his own views of the world, and didn’t bother thinking that there was another way to do things. He took the shortcut, the easy route, and he used merzost.”

Shame, along the bond, and a surprising amount of exhausted hatred for himself. Then, a wave of embarrassment, because Alina must’ve not hidden her expression very well, and so Aleks knew she’d felt it all, too. She reached out, and placed her hand over his, pretending otherwise that nothing had happened.

“His daughter knew it,” Alina continued. “The star offered your aunt immortality, once they had been together for years, and knew each other, inside and out. But she didn’t want it - not for herself. She asked the star to stay immortal, and use it to look after her family instead. When she was dying, she carved the star out of herself, and gave it to his son. It was pretty messy, that first time round, but after that they really finessed the practice. I think the woman who gave up Malyen just kissed him on the forehead, a family tradition… but then, she didn’t know what she had given up in doing so, and then she walked into the Fold.”

Alina felt briefly sad for a second, remembering the memory unbidden, and she saw it hit Aleksander too. His hold tightened on her hand.

“But seeing how she did it helped me refine my technique a little,” Alina said, with a weak smile. “Sorry, it’s still a little messy - that’s from me wanting to have my cake and eat it, have both of us together side-by-side - but I think we’ll be ok.”

“Ok?” Aleksander said, his voice warm and choked with emotion, “Alina, this is… I was ready for death. I never thought I could- and-”

A wave of longing - of loneliness - of being shut out - of never having her, even when he was holding her- even when they were -

Stars, Alina thought, blushing. She’d had no clue he wanted more than what they already had together, which she’d frankly thought was pretty fucking good.

“Please, you weren’t ready for death,” she sighed, this time having enough presence of mind to pretend she wasn’t hearing everything he felt about her. She shoved his shoulder again, “you were shitting yourself. I can’t believe you thought I’d kill you!”

“It’s not like I don’t deserve it.”

“Yes, well, I couldn’t help but think that would all be a little too easy,” Alina told him breezily. “I helped with your debts to the Making, and that’s my pilgrimage all sorted. But we still have a country to salvage, I believe.”

She hauled herself to her feet with a groan - stars, but mortal bodies were unwieldy, ungainly things. Spines were awful, and everything was in pain. Alina bent down, over Aleksander, her hair falling in a horrible, damp, dirty matt down one side of her face. He looked up at her like she was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

By now, the horizon was leaking gold.

“You know,” Alina said, taking his hand to haul him up to his feet as well. “I’m getting bored of dresses. I’m thinking that I’d like you to make me a kefta. It cannot be black though, I cannot abide looking dour. Something pretty, and shiny, and warm.”

Through her shared heart, she sent him the wave of emotion that lay behind the words. She watched his initial discomfort as, as her new mirror, he sent a tide of feeling back almost unconsciously. It was in his nature to try and fight it, to hold back and keep it locked tight, but that wasn’t what they were now.

And besides, she had already seen him at his worse, and - she reminded him now, without words - she hadn’t turned away from that, either.

She felt his fear, and then there was shame on its wake, for feeling it. He wanted to want her, in all parts of himself, including the ugly, unspoken bits that wanted her gone from his life and no longer his weakness. The part that saw her like a target on his back, a knife pressed into his side, ready to bleed him dry. Alina squeezed his hand tighter, willing him to understand that it didn’t matter: what was there between them was for them, and them alone.

Aleksander would get used to it. He’d just let himself become so certain that immortality was a lifetime of punishment, of sadness spent entirely alone.

Alina hauled him to his feet, both of them groaning, and together, they walked out of the valley that had once been the Unsea.

...Epilogue

There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart's Desire. Unfortunately for him, he was not a romantic, nor was he raised one. Thus, he misunderstood what exactly it was his heart wanted.

He remained deaf, dumb, and blind to his heart for a very long time, fearing anything that made him vulnerable, and valuing only what made him strong. And so, that young man grew to be a jaded, immortal sorcerer, with power he clung to like a lover, believing it was his destiny - at least, he needed it so strongly he didn’t think it could be anything but.

Like all stories, the sorcerer had a curse: one that manifested not as a briar of thorns or a single flower wilting with the change of seasons, but as a plain of shadow that moved with currents and squalls like the sea. The sorcerer thought that was his heart, given that its beat was what kept him alive. It was bloodstained, and weighed down by the deaths at his hand - for this was what hearts are, surely? The root of all of one’s guilt, and all of one’s power.

Luckily, that sorcerer met a star, whose heart was big enough for both of them. It had to be, given that it was also big enough to hold court with her sisters, and an entire galaxy.

The star broke the sorcerer’s curse. She didn’t give him much of a say in the matter, but luckily she was beautiful enough that they’d already reached true love by that point without either of them noticing, and this tended to make curse-breaking far less messy, overall.

Love, sincerely felt and freely given, was the kind of magic that everyone could somehow survive.

The sorcerer and his star bride never ruled - at least, that’s what the history books say. As to whether they stood by the throne, of a King they were very close friends with and got drunk with at least one night a week, is a little more up for debate.

As to whether anyone feared them - the star who burned brightest when hand-in-hand with the man who commanded the night, whose power her own shine fed until he could conjure monsters from the dark - that is a certainty, and one that certainly bent the histories now written in a particularly obvious direction.

At least, in any obvious direction the star approved. It was her heart that helped the sorcerer to live long beyond his mortal lifespan, after all. If he ever became a man she couldn’t love, he would lose his eternal youth and longevity. He would be left with only the power the Making had given him, never again knowing the strength he had when he fought by her side.

This is perhaps the kind of clause that makes people doubt the veracity of the ‘true love’ that underpins this tale. It might even sound a little bit like a curse, itself.

Luckily, the sorcerer was no hero, and so this was not unjust punishment for a life lived virtuously. Instead, he turned out to be exactly the kind of man who could appreciate the ingenuity, and irony, of a near perfect prison, in the shape of an absolutely perfect bride.

They did-not-rule for nearly eighty years. Then they travelled for a century after that, once they had both assured - through all their not-ruling - that it was safe for Grisha to walk anywhere on the earth, unburdened and unbothered. Security assured, they could finally go to all the places the star had wanted to see, when she first fell.

But by then, other stars were getting restless. Not only had the purpose of his star bride’s pilgrimage long since concluded, the sorcerer was starting to worry that he’d fulfilled his own purpose, as well. Not just his Heart’s Desire, but every desire he’d picked up along the way.

He still feared that one day the Grisha would be hated again, for his paranoia was a centuries’ long habit, and hard to shift. But by that point, Queen Zoya had had children, who’d had children of their own. And the sorcerer’s own heirs - the unexpected continuation of the Morozova line, a dream he’d never dared let himself hold - were perhaps the only people he actually trusted to do the job as well as he had. Better, if he was honest, because they’d inherited his mind but also their mother’s heart: both literally, and figuratively.

The sorcerer’s star bride never told him how she planned to get home. In another tale, this might be the secret that led to a vow transgressed: a secret, uncovered; a room, unlocked; a nakedness, revealed. But the sorcerer was so desperate for her never to leave him, that he never, ever asked.

Sometimes, towards the end of that latter century, he’d wake up at night to find her side of the bed empty. He would worry she had already left him - but of course he was still young, and he was still breathing. So instead, he would raise his head from the pillow and find her in her nightclothes looking out of the open window, speaking silently with her family.

He thought they were just conversations, a symptom of her encroaching and increasingly clear homesickness. He found out later that what he thought was quiet communion was instead in-depth strategising: the star and her family were theorising, negotiating, and forging a covenant with those all across the dark expanse of sky.

Because though lots of stars fell, no one had ever bought anyone back with them before.

It would certainly be a cruel judgement, on stars as a people, to say that no one else had ever wanted to. We are sure that there are other cases, but none that end in anything but tragedy: mortals simply weren’t easy fodder for celestial transmogrification.

But he isn’t mortal. He never was, the star said, and he is as much a part of my heart now as I am. I don’t think I’ll shine anywhere near as brightly without him.

Perhaps there were trials the sorcerer had to undertake, to prove his worthiness - three-score, like all good stories demand. Perhaps the ritual required him to go under the knife, as Ilya Morozova’s victims had done - a true balancing of the Making at the Heart of the World, and all crimes committed against it.

Or maybe - of course - it simply didn’t work. Maybe that story is too neat, even for the balance book of the Making. Maybe the star left, and the sorcerer grew old, finally facing the mortality he had long evaded with composure and acceptance, now that he had succeeded in all of his goals, and was satisfied with his work.

We cannot say for certain. All we do know, as we look up to the sky now, is that Koja doesn’t have a right ear. Some say he never did. In modern versions of the story, the Too Clever Fox is sometimes One-Eared Koja - it’s only when you dredge through the archives, that you begin to realise that this is a detail that has changed over time.

And to the left of the constellation, is a star that seemingly stands alone, shining so bright that it has become the lodestone by which most ships navigate. You can always be certain you will find its face in the night sky.

If you were to go to the Spinning Wheel observatory (derelict once again, alas, even after the Commander of the Second Army, the Star Saint, ordered it be reopened with the Queen’s money), and you somehow managed to revive the five stories high, intricate and rusted skeleton of the telescope the sorcerer commissioned for his bride, you could position the lenses and focus in on that star.

It is only under extreme magnification - the kind that can only be achieved by the glass of a master Fabrikator - that you realise that the corona of that single, bright star is actually the combined shine of two. So close together, that their separation is indistinguishable to the naked eye. No one, not even a star it seems, can burn that strongly alone.

Make of that what you will, I suppose.