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Alina languishes, sequestered in the White Cathedral. The Healers repaired her cuts and her bruises, her punctured lung and her broken ribs, they painstakingly pulled her back from the precipice that so much merzost had nearly pushed her over. But so far underground, without even the faintest glimpses of the sun, her power still remains dormant.
Instead, she has a scrap of shadow to manipulate– something that would surely send the Apparat and his flock into apoplexy– and she has the heavy silence of the tether.
The Darkling has not come to see her. Perhaps it’s because she tried to kill them both the last time she’d seen him. Perhaps it’s because she succeeded. The Apparat may tell her that the Darkling’s forces rule Ravka, but who’s to say? He also tells his flock that she is a Saint, that her powers will deliver them from every woe the world has to offer. He speaks of miracles and triumphs. Meanwhile, she cannot summon enough power to match the flicker of a candle’s flame. The Darkling could very well be dead. But that thought isn’t one she considers for long though. More likely he is biding his time.
She’s never attempted to go to him herself. She hadn’t realized it might be possible. But, on a whim, stuck in her room for the night with nowhere else to go, and nothing to do, she closes her eyes, and reaches out.
When she opens them again, she stands in a dim room. The walls blur in a way that hurts her head, but she thinks it must be her– his– quarters. The colors, or the lack thereof, match. The massive bed with the silk hangings. Her gaze finally falls to him, where he lies still, and pale. For a moment she thinks he might be dead. But no, there is the steady rise and fall of his chest. He simply sleeps. Stranger still that he might lower himself to something so mundane.
She drifts closer, approaching the bedside, half afraid that this is some sort of trap, that he will seize her, aim the Cut, get his revenge somehow. But he only shifts the slightest bit, murmurs something under his breath that she wishes she could catch. He looks as thin and drawn as she feels. Still recovering perhaps. His breathing is shallow, the rise and fall of his chest weak and irregular.
It is strange to see him like this, anywhere near vulnerable.
Alina gazes down at him, frail, hurt. She nearly killed him. She wishes she had finished the job. If only Mal hadn’t dragged her away. The two of them would have been buried beneath the rubble of the chapel; it would’ve been their tomb, both of theirs. And she supposes he isn’t such bad company in repose.
Her hand lifts of its own accord. Before she can stop herself, her fingers brush his cheek, featherlight. The room suddenly snaps into sharp relief. The lit lamps, the detail of the blankets piled over him. Papers stacked on his writing table, reports, what looks like unopened correspondence, that perhaps he himself hasn’t been conscious yet to read. If this were real, it would only take three steps for her to go to them and pick them up, to sort through his secrets. She attempts it, but the moment her touch leaves him, the room blurs again, falling out of focus. She sighs in annoyance, turning back, her hand finding his face once more to be sure. And there. Clarity returns immediately. The full scope of his surroundings fall back into focus, as if he’s the anchor holding it all together. Not that there is much to see.
His skin is cool beneath her fingertips, but there is none of that usual rush. The certainty he fills her with as an amplifier. She is a little sorry for it.
How often has he watched her like this? How often has he seen her vulnerable in sleep or misery and been tempted to close his hands around her throat as she is now? She traces the sharp angle of his cheekbone, hollowed out by merzost, the shadows beneath his eyes. And those fine, silvery scars the volcra had given him. Or perhaps she had, when she left him to their mercy.
He stirs then, seeming caught between dreams and waking. She catches a glimpse of pale throat, and collarbone as the blankets shift. It’s so strange to see him like this, without his black kefta, his hair mussed. When his pale eyes open, they’re unfocused, hazy with sleep. She watches the flicker of recognition begin, the faint sharpening of his gaze.
“Alina.” His voice is hoarse, thick with sleep in a way she’s never heard it before.
She only shifts, ever so slightly and in a flash his hand closes around her wrist. There’s real fear in that movement, she realizes, with some relish.
“Are you here to finish what you started?” He asks her.
“I’m not really here.”
He drops his hand. This surprises her, but then she realizes it is exhaustion. Something twists in her chest at the thought.
“Then you came to see me weak.”
She brushes the hair from his forehead and he flinches. “Are you weak?”
“Are you?”
“I was.”
She can see the tension in the lines of his body, in how stiffly he holds himself. How it must pain him to be in this situation. To not have all the advantage. She leans down, pressing her lips to his cheek. She can hear the sharp intake of breath, can feel it stirring against her hair.
“Did you really think I would go with you?” she murmurs.
“You wanted it.”
Alina draws away, taking him in, in all his haggard loveliness. “I wanted an end to this.”
“The fleeing? The death and terror?” He sits up, though it must cost him— she knows that feeling well. The sheets fall away, revealing his bare chest. He looks even paler with the effort, though his eyes burn into hers. “You could put an end to that any time you like. Surrender.”
She swallows. “No.”
“You do want to. You can’t lie to me, Alina.”
“And yet you lie plenty.”
There is that mere suggestion of a smile playing at his lips again. She remembers it from that brief, so brief, time at the Little Palace, before the Fete, and before the collar.
“Only when I must,” he says.