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At first, Aleksander thinks it’s a dream. Or more accurately, a hallucination. After all, he’s gone hundreds of years without losing his grip on sanity thus far, despite some significant provocations. It could be said he’s overdue. But the feel of a small hand he knows to be Alina’s brushing against his in the middle of the hall is too precious for him to want to deny it, even if it’s a product of his own fatigued mind.
“Moy tsar?” Ivan asks as Aleksander stops dead in front of him and looks around the brightly-lit hall of the Little Palace with the ferocity and dedication of a hound catching a scent. The note of concern in his ever-stoic second-in-command’s voice is unusual enough to startle Aleksander out of his sudden reverie, and his gaze darts to the other man’s with an edge of desperation, hoping against reason for some confirmation that this connection wasn’t entirely imagined.
Ivan returns his look with a single raised eyebrow, silently questioning if there’s some security concern he should be made aware of. Aleksander draws himself back together, straightening his shoulders as he takes one last look around the hall. Nothing appears any different than any other day since his reign began.
“I thought I felt something,” he says dismissively, resuming their walk. Ivan shows no interest in pressing the matter. Meanwhile, Aleksander’s hand buzzes with sensation by his side, the feel of Alina’s ethereal touch imprinted into his skin. He flexes his fingers, stretching and curling them, but the feeling doesn’t go away. He’s not sure it ever truly will. Nor does he want it to.
He controls himself better the next time it happens. He’s holding court, attending to the various concerns of the Ravkans under his rule, though he refuses to use the same throne room as the Lanstovs. His court in the Little Palace is smaller, but with the wars on both Ravka’s borders stalled into stalemates after his demonstration at Novokribirsk and then Nichevo'ya brought onto the battlefield, he has time to attend to the actual needs of the people. He’ll pass more of these tasks to ministers eventually, but cleaning up the Lanstovs’ mess occupies most of his time for now.
He listens to details of food distribution and crop allocation and when an invisible hand lands on his shoulder, he controls his instinct to snatch at it. Instead, he slowly turns his head, confirming that no one stands beside him. Ivan is on his other side, and others crowd around the room, but the area just behind his left shoulder is empty. The clear impression of delicate fingers curved over his shoulder remains. He can sense her presence, even if he can’t see it, and he subtly sends his shadows creeping out from his feet to investigate. Nothing concrete, but the sense of her remains.
Ivan clears his throat, and Aleksander is abruptly aware that the discussion around him has paused, leaving a waiting silence. He sits straighter. “Explain again the problem,” he instructs, with all the authority of a general accustomed to being heard, and the discussion resumes. The hand disappears from his shoulder, and he barely resists rubbing the spot to ease the new ache.
He doesn’t become accustomed to these fleeting touches, but they happen with increasing frequency as time passes. He takes meals with his Grisha, and an arm brushes against his, as if she’s taken a seat next to him at the table. He watches the Grishenka laugh as they chase each other around the gardens, careless and free, and a hand tucks into the crook of his elbow. He rides out into the city and a body presses to his back, behind him on his horse. The reality of her presence grows stronger every time, and with it come glimpses like memories: an unrelenting sun over a barren field, an empty table, night creeping over a small window.
The sense of Alina never fully leaves him, a constant tug on his soul like the thread that ties their souls together is pulled to its limit. He can’t be sure if it’s his imagination or if he truly catches hints of her life beyond Os Alta, wherever she’s fled to. He’d managed to think of her less than constantly some time after he’d let her leave with her little friend, but now that ability is lost to him entirely. If he is losing his mind after all these centuries, it’s only fitting that his sun summoner is the one to drive him out of it.
Beyond the feel of his other half across their tether, Aleksander struggles with the itch under his skin that tells him to go to her, to bring her back from whatever ends of the world she’s hiding in. Her place is here, in the home he’s made for them and their kind, he knows that down to the heart that calls for her every moment. It wars with his certainty that if he does chase her down and drag her back, it will only be to lose her once again. Not forever, but he refuses to do anything he knows will extend their separation. He has time and patience to spare, though Alina tries them both to their limit.
He wakes in the morning to a hand brushing over his mussed hair, and he can’t keep from grabbing at it, trying to capture the intangible, but all he finds is a lingering warmth. Frustration gnaws at him from the inside, like merzost eating at his better self, but with a clenched jaw, he drags back the shadows climbing up the walls.
Time is on his side, he reminds himself. She’s young, and he can’t begrudge her the time spent with a boy who has so little of it. Not quite true. He can, but he tries not to, allowing her the mistakes of youth and letting experience teach her the things she refuses to hear from him. In the meantime, he’ll cling to what scraps he can get. His own experience has taught him those are better than nothing.
The hand slipped into his during long meetings loses its warmth, and he tries to discreetly rub heat back into it and not break entirely when he still doesn’t know where she’s gone. He hasn’t caught any glimpses across the tether for some time, and he can’t say whether she’s keeping them from him, or something else is at play. He doesn’t know if she’s seen anything in return, but there’s nothing in the Little Palace or his life that should surprise her. He sits with his officers around the table in the war room, and a too slight weight settles in his lap, legs hanging over his, back pressed against his chest. He hardly dares breathe for fear of disturbing her, but he goes about the usual formalities and subsequent discussion as if his world hasn’t narrowed to the ghost of a girl observing him from the seat she’s claimed.
A debate breaks out over whether crews are needed more urgently for the roads to the south or the ports to the west, and Aleksander lets his hand slip below the table to rest on the thighs on top of his. Tight muscles shift under too thin cloth, and his breath catches, but then she settles, legs spread a little wider, pressing into his touch, and a hand that’s there but not lands over his. Her fingers fit the gaps between his, and he stares through the shadows at the way they interlock, hers only there when he draws on the tether, until she pinches his other side, and he realizes he’s been staring at his lap far too long.
He doesn’t stand even when the meeting ends, using the pretense of going through reports to bid his officers good day from his chair. She stands first, and his hand tightens around the ghost of hers, clinging to a phantom.
“Alina,” he begs, and he swears she hesitates before her form fades.
The days pass, one tumbling after another, a blur of stiff nods and small battles as he does his best not to raze the land in its entirety as he attempts to drag an entire country kicking and screaming into civilization. He finds his rooms late every night, when the shadows fill the halls, taking the few hours of rest he can scrape together. He returns to an empty bed each time, but he’s not always alone.
He strips to his drawers, carefully hanging his precious kefta with its weight of responsibility to those who recognize its meaning. Moonlight falls through the window and over his sheets, highlighting strange dips and shadows in the mattress as he pulls them back. He gives no indication he’s noticed, as if approaching a doe that might startle if he approaches her head-on. He lays down and pulls the sheets back over himself, stretching out under their cool weight. He lets his eyes slip closed. A warm body curls against his, tentative at first, then knowing, as he lets her find her place.
She takes what she wants, and he lets her have everything. With his eyes closed, he feels small warm hands slide from his stomach up to his shoulders, her little fingers testing his body along the way. He does his best not to squirm under the teasing touch, but even he can’t help the way his muscles twitch as she lingers on his chest. It’s been centuries since he let himself give over control to another so completely, and though his well-honed instincts scream at the surrender, there’s a freedom in it as well.
Alina must know by now the blade she wields as she finds his most vulnerable points, and neither of them can deny that she’s struck true for them before. A part of him still expects a knife when her hand curls around his neck, and when her soft lips find the delicate skin instead, some coiled tension inside him breaks, leaving sweet relief. Unexpected tears burn at his eyes and he swallows, tasting their salt in the back of his throat.
His lips part as he draws in a shuddering breath. His body arches, pushing up to seek her weight over him, and he can’t keep his hands from reaching out to curve around her back, searching out the warmth and strange reality of her in the long distance between them. She presses into his touch, rocking her hips against him from where she’s settled over his stomach.
“Aleksander.” His true name, precious and only hers, whispered into his shadows. His hands tighten on her, wishing he could keep her here, even if it means they never leave this moment.
He gives her her own name back, stretching up to press it into her lips. It tastes sweet on her, and he tilts his head, searching for more. Her hands trace the lines of his face, sinking into his hair, clutching at his neck and shoulders and back, and every part she touches feels more real than it has before. She draws him out of the half-life of dusk and into her light, warm and thriving in a way he barely remembers.
He wants to do the same for her, to give her small body and too-prominent bones all the safety and abundance he’s painstakingly won for his people. He hates that she can still slip away from him, to a place he cannot follow, where she can be cold and hungry and he can’t stand between her and the world trying to strip her down. All he has is these moments where the hallowed rightness of their connection overrules everything else, and she uses the tether stretching through the heart of the world to touch him. As if nothing else matters.
The night melts away between them, and he happily sacrifices every precious hour of sleep for one more spent with her. When she at last disappears under the first rays of the sun streaming through his window, she leaves a ghost of a kiss on his mouth and her warmth lingering on his skin. He stares out past the horizon, willing the day to give her back to him. His plea remains unanswered for now, and with his skin still buzzing with her touch, he readies for another morning.
He finds himself alone less and less now. He walks down the hall, flanked by Ivan and Fedyor just behind him, and out of the corner of his eye, a familiar figure walks by his side. He checks on the Grishenka when he can, and he watches her face as she sees them testing the beginnings of their powers. He slips out to the gardens between meetings, as if being out in the sun will bring him closer to her, and her warmth covers him when he sits on a cold stone bench. She leans over to inspect a flower, and he swears he’ll have an entire greenhouse made just for her if she’ll smile like that again.
He leans over the table in the war room, shuffling through stacks of paper from every corner of the realm, and senses the moment her form fades from his chair that she’s claimed as her own. Even with her gone, he still feels her, the tether reeled tight, as if he could reach across and catch her.
“Our strategy will have to change soon,” he murmurs as he looks over the reports from the city. “She’s coming.”
“Sir?” Ivan asks, frowning. It’s become a habit of his lately, thoroughly dissatisfied with the way his sovereign has taken to staring at empty air with something approaching a smile. Aleksander knows he’s lucky the man hasn’t broken yet, but his patience and loyalty have their limits. Thankfully, neither of them will have to wait much longer.
“We have work to do, and not much time,” Aleksander says as he straightens. He taps his finger on the table, mind running quickly through what will be needed.
Ivan stands to attention. “Of course.” Aleksander notices the tension that still tightens his shoulders and his lips curve. He’ll see soon, along with the rest of Ravka.
She chooses her entrance with all the subtlety he’s come to expect from her. He sits up in the middle of hearing petitions, the throne room fading against the pull of the tether on every one of his senses. He doesn’t need to see her to be sure.
“She’s here.” He says it aloud and the entire throne room quiets and looks at him. Expressions of fear, uncertainty, doubt greet him, but it hardly matters. He stands.
Out in the hall, pounding boots rapidly approach, their rhythm uneven and rushed instead of their usual trained cadence. Nobles and officials draw back around him, sensing danger. He holds his ground.
With a squad of Oprichniki chasing behind her, Alina emerges in the entrance to the throne room, looking every bit as elegant in her worn peasant’s clothes as she had when the court had first seen her in their colors, his and hers. Dirt smudges her features, and she looks as if she’s slept as much lately as he has. All that pales to the way she glows, her power unable to be contained. It washes over him like a warm bath at the end of the long day, and he relaxes into it, the tension of months melting away now that she’s here.
He feels something familiar and yet new about her, and he realizes she hasn’t spent all that time away wasting with her farm boy. The way her power wraps around her: she’s seen deeper into the heart of knowledge than she had before, and he itches to hear what she’s learned. For now, she walks slowly across the throne room, her eyes locked on him. He holds out a hand to her.
“Moya Tsaritsa,” he says, his voice low for her but meant for the entire court to hear. They should know who they’re greeting.
A flurry of whispers breaks out, but none of it matters as Alina reaches him and rests her hand in his. Her light sinks deep beneath his skin, until he thinks he might glow as well, like the moon reflecting her light. He leads her the few steps to the throne, not the gilded monstrosity of the old kings, but a place of authority still. She smiles at him as she sits, and his heart misses its next beat. In lieu of bending her back over the throne, he brushes his lips over her knuckles and catches the hitch of her breath as their eyes never leave each others’. They have many promises to fulfill. For now, he gives her this one.
He seats her on the throne and takes his place beside her, facing the room.
“Your queen,” he announces, his voice reaching far beyond those watching now. “The Sun Summoner, Alina Starkov.”
Unsaid but still heard are his words the last time he presented her: And she will bring liberation to us all.
Alina lifts her chin and surveys the room, taking in every person there. Aleksander sees the tentative hope on the faces of their Grisha, the reverence of the Otkazat'sya. None of them can look away.
“Thank you for waiting,” Alina says, voice even and assured. “Now let’s begin.”