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The cabin that they found themselves in was a skeleton of its former self. A small one room thing that was clearly someone’s hunting lodge at some point in decades past. The walls had bowed with age and neglect and its roof was patched together with mismatched planks. At the center of it all stood a narrow single bed, sagging in the middle like a weary sigh and topped with a tattered scrap of quilt that looked like it would crumble upon touch.
Outside, a blizzard raged, snow had long piled up shutting them in with no escape.
Alina stood near the door, arms crossed, the faint golden glow of her power still simmering under her skin. She could feel the weight of the antler fused to her collarbone, the bone warm as if it carried its own pulse. The ache from its fusing and his successful attempt at pulling her power from her.
Across the room, Aleksander Morozova, the Darkling, watched her with that unreadable gaze, the one that made her feel both hunted and seen.
“You’re glaring at me as if I dragged you here,” he said, voice low, velvet over steel.
“You did,” she replied, refusing to look away. “This is your fault. You killed the stag. You bound us together. And now we’re stuck in this… shack. If you could call it that.”
His lips curved, not quite a smile. “I saved us from freezing to death. You’d prefer we take our chances with the snow?” She didn’t answer. The truth was, the cold outside was merciless, and the cabin—however miserable—was shelter. But she hated giving him the satisfaction of being right.
When the wind howled through the cracks, Aleksander moved to the bed and sat, his long coat spilling around him like a shadow. “There’s only one bed,” he said, as if she hadn’t noticed the very glaring elephant in the room. “We’ll have to share.”
Alina’s pulse stuttered. She told herself it was irritation, not the way his voice seemed to curl around her name even when he didn’t speak it. “I’ll take the floor.”
“You’ll wake stiff and half-frozen,” he said, leaning back on his hands. “And I can’t have my Sun Summoner in such a state. Not when the world is already trying to take you from me.”
She hated the way his words slid under her defenses, hated the way he said my as if it were a truth written in the Making. Hated how deep down she knew that it was true. Instead she glared his way, sharply replying to him, “You don’t own me.”
“No,” he said softly, “but I would keep you. Safe, sound and mine. If only you’d let me.”
The fire in the small hearth crackled, throwing light across his face. It caught in his eyes, turning them molten, and for a moment she saw not the general, not the manipulator, but the man—tired, relentless, and impossibly certain of her.
She sat on the far edge of the bed, careful not to touch him. The antler at her collarbone seemed to hum, and she wondered if it was his power she felt or her own.
“You think your silver tongue will work again like it did when I was blind to you,” she said, staring at the wall. “That if you’re close enough, that if you speak sweetly enough that I’ll forget what you’ve done.”
“I think,” he murmured, leaning just close enough for his breath to warm her ear, “that you care less about all of that than you want to admit. You are still intrigued by what we were becoming, by what we could still be if you’d just let your stubbornness go.”
Her heart betrayed her with a single, treacherous beat. She remembered the way he had looked at her when she walked in wearing his colors the night of the Fete, as if she were the only light in his endless night. How his gaze never left when she dazzled and awed royalty and nobility with her abilities. But she also remembered his mother dragging her down into the catacombs, spinning her tale and revealing the lies he had used to manipulate the heart of a young orphaned woman, desperate to finally belong to anything in this world.
“You want my power,” she whispered. “You wish to use me. You are no better than the Tsar and the Aparat.”
“Everything I’ve done, and yes, even the unforgivable things, was to survive. For my people. For a dream too old to kill.” he said, his voice thick with emotion. The kind one could not fake. “But you, Alina? No one and nothing prepared me for you. You have been that dream made real. You are the very sun that flows through your veins and I am so tired of living in the dark.”
The wind rattled the shutters, and the cabin seemed to shrink around them. She didn’t move away when his hand brushed hers, though she told herself it was only because the bed was too small.
They lay down eventually, the narrow mattress forcing them close. She kept her back to him, but the heat of his body seeped into her spine, and the steady rhythm of his breathing was maddeningly calm. She could feel the faint pull of the bond between them, the antlers’ magic threading through her veins like a second heartbeat.
“You think I’m a monster,” he said into her hair, the fire’s light dancing with the shadows along the walls.
“I know you are,” she replied, though her voice lacked the sharpness she intended.
“And yet,” he murmured, “you’re still here.”
She closed her eyes, willing herself not to answer, forcing her breath to remain steady even as her thoughts tangled into knots of defiance and longing, each memory and unspoken word pressing against her resolve like waves against a crumbling shore.
“I am.” She said finally, twisting her body so she could meet his eyes, the two of them wrapped in firelight and shadows. And her eyes closed as his hand came to rest at her collar, an unhappy sigh leaving him at the state that was left of her.
“I wish David had done something different. It was never meant to mar you this way.” she snorted at his words but said nothing else as she laid there, just savoring his touch. Which was cool against her heated flesh. “I’m so sorry, my Little Saint. None of this is what I wanted for you or for us.”
“I’m not ready to forgive you. However …”
“However?”
“I’m willing to listen.” She said, finally meeting his gaze once more, and as she did she watched as hope flickered across his expression before he quickly stifled it with that same cool one she was accustomed to. And when he leaned in to kiss her, Alina found herself giving in without resistance, sparking something new between them that stayed even when, days later, the Second Army found their General and a much more agreeable Sun Summoner at his side.