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“And what’s he then that says I play the villain?
When this advice is free I give and honest,”
(Othello, 2.3.245–246)
The tracker hesitated in the doorway, uncertainty writ plain on his face as his shoulders shifted beneath his olive drab coat. “You promise? You’ll let me see Alina?”
He gave a curt nod. “Of course, I am a man of my word. Tomorrow, first thing. Then we will discuss the stag.”
The boy’s brow furrowed. An edge to his voice. “Tomorrow? What’s wrong with tonight?”
He held up a hand to silence him. “Corporal, you forget yourself,” he said warningly. With a gesture to the bright lights of the hall, the indistinct murmur of the crowd like waves on a shore underscored by the flurry of strings, he said, “As you can see, we are rather busy tonight with the festivities. You will spend the night, as our guest, and I give you my word you shall see Alina tomorrow.”
“Please ensure that Corporal Oretsev is comfortable this evening. One of the guest suites. Arrange for dinner to be sent to his room,” he instructed the awaiting oprichniki.
The offer was a generous one—he would not permit even the visiting dignitaries to overnight in the Little Palace after the fete—but one glance, a subtle gesture of his head, gave the guards further orders. The oprichniki would remain stationed outside his door all night to ensure he did not slip away or find his way to Alina sooner. They would make him comfortable, but comfort and liberality were not to be confused.
The tracker allowed himself to be escorted away. Satisfied, for the time being, with the terms of their agreement. Entrusting that he had bargained for something, that his information constituted any kind of leverage. He watched him go and watched longer after they had disappeared around the corner and out of sight.
Tomorrow, he promised. But for tonight, there were more important matters.
“Ivan. I’ll need you to take a brief excursion to the greenhouses.”
Alina stirred, rustling in a sleepy haze beneath the heavy pile of blankets wrapped around her shoulders. The bed was warm, her body still half adrift, a contented calm in each slow exhale. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so comfortable. She’d never slept so well.
She blinked her eyes open and sat upright with a gasp. This was not her bed. But after the initial jolt of unfamiliarity, she stretched and smiled as she looked around at the green-wallpapered room, gauzy light filtering through the curtain, papers and stacks of books strewn every which way—on the table, under the settee, on the floor at the foot of the bed from when he’d hastily cleared them away.
Though, the other side of the bed was empty, already neatly made and tucked at the corners while she’d slept on. She frowned at it and ran her hand over the indent on the pillow. The silk shifted against her bare body as she sat upright in bed and yawned mightily.
Aleksander appeared in the doorway—fully dressed, his hair neatly combed, a small smile on his lips, a cup of tea and saucer in hand. “Good morning. Refreshed?”
“Saints, how long did I sleep?” she yawned.
“Quite some time. It seemed you needed your rest.” His gaze flicked up and down, for just a moment. “I’m afraid I rather… wore you out,” he said delicately, a deeper quirk to his smile.
Alina laughed and glanced down at the blankets pooled around her, blushing. The images came to her in a rush.
The table. First, the table. His hands, everywhere. His hair beneath her fingertips. Her skirts around her waist, Aleksander on his knees, that first touch of his mouth—
He set the tea on the end table and perched delicately on the edge of the bed. “There’s cream, sugar, in the other room for you, if you require. I wasn’t sure how you…”
She beamed and reached past him, stretching into his space to grab the cup from the nightstand. She took a large gulp, eager to wash down the taste of sleep from her mouth. “It’s fine like this. No sugar in the First Army,” she explained between sips, alight and awake.
“Do you want me to fetch you some?” He was half off the bed, before Alina grabbed him by the sleeve and tugged him back down. She didn’t want him making a fuss on her account—or leaving, even for a second.
“Very well,” he said with a small chuckle. He reached—tentatively, almost nervous—to brush her loose hair back from her face. Her heart thrummed anew at the gesture. She grabbed his hand and planted a kiss into his palm; he melted immediately into her touch.
The second time, on the bed, on her back, legs locked around him, hands clinging to his bare shoulders, urging him on. His mouth on hers, on her jaw, on her neck, her collar, every part of her that he could touch. Her nails, his teeth, a frenzy of desperate movement.
“How long have you been up?” she asked, warm cup of tea in one hand, the warmth of Aleksander’s palm in the other. It had to be mid-morning already by the light streaming in through the window, but she had never even heard him stir.
“Since first light,” he answered. “I’m an accursed early riser.”
“You get up with the sun, is that it?” she said, then blushed at the innuendo. He laughed lightly and stroked his thumb against the curve of her ear.
She gulped down the rest of her tea and he took the cup and set it aside. “And you’d sleep the day away if you could. Ironic, isn’t it?”
Alina loved to watch his mouth, the small quirks, the little smiles, the brief flash of light in his eyes. Always on the verge of a true smile, a full smile. She wanted to pull it from him, to hear him laugh large and loud, to see a grin split his handsome face. She could do it, she knew.
“Maybe I want to stay in bed a while longer,” she said, tossing her hair back and raising her brow at him in teasing challenge.
The third time, he was on his knees again, his mouth too hot, too much, licking into her oversensitive skin. She twitched and thrashed, but moaned for more all the same. Locked her legs around the back of his head and yanked him in by the hair. When her back was arching and she was moments from seeing stars, he slid up behind her in bed, back-to-back, arms wrapped warm around her, murmuring praises and adulations into her ear with every thrust.
Hours before, Ravka had been on its knees chanting for Sankta Alina. But she had never been worshipped until that moment. She had never been so beloved.
“I would love nothing more,” he said. But the honey-soft of his voice, that warmth in his gaze, flickered. The hard lines of a General returning as he righted his posture, cleared his throat. “However, I’m afraid there’s a rather urgent matter I need to discuss with you. There was an incursion last night during the fete.”
The bubble of last night’s memories burst. He held her hands, studying them as he said, tight, pained, “Two Grisha were killed. Here. Within the Palace. I have one suspect in custody, caught fleeing the scene of the first death. You were the…” He swallowed, voice thick as tar. “You were the intended target.”
“What?” Alina gaped at him, fear curdling in her stomach, driving off the contended warmth. “What happened, who was killed, what—”
He squeezed her hand, folding them between his own, one atop the other. “There’s more. Someone else arrived, requesting to meet with you. Claiming to know you. The timing is far too suspicious and I believe this was a ruse to get closer to you. But I will need you to confirm the matter so we can ascertain if this person is, in fact, connected with the killings and proceed accordingly.”
“Who—?”
“We ought not waste any time. You’ll need to dress quickly.”
“Can it wait? I’m a little—” She swallowed and glanced down at the silhouette she made beneath his blanket. Last night’s sweat clung to her skin, the stickiness of them both between her legs. A quick glance in his mirror showed they’d made a mess of her carefully coiled hair. “I could use a moment to freshen up.”
“No time,” he said, a little too sharp, a bit too brusque. He glanced down and said, with soft precision, “I apologize. It has been a rather difficult morning.”
“Of course,” Alina said with a lurch of sympathy, guilty that she had slept through the whole ordeal, snoring away while he dealt with the fallout of an attack on the Little Palace. It made her sick to think there were Grisha dead because of her.
He disappeared momentarily into the war room, returning with her dress and her black kefta from last night. Carefully, he set both down onto his bed and turned away. “I will give you a moment’s privacy to dress.”
“That hardly seems to matter now,” she murmured as she climbed out from beneath the covers. “Nothing you haven’t seen…”
He glanced at her, away, then back, then away again. Manners clearly warring with his manhood. “All the same,” he said clearing his throat.
But then he stepped towards her—eyes never once leaving her face—and wrapped his arms around her back. The bumps and buckles of his kefta, of his many layers, pressed into her bare skin as he held her close. He cupped her cheek and pulled her up into a kiss. Alina wriggled onto her toes, her bare feet rendering her even shorter than usual against his boots, even smaller in his arms.
But she stopped thinking about all that as he kissed her, as his soft mouth pressed with urgent adoration into hers. Her kiss-swollen lips from last night reddened again as he held her, kissed her, poured himself into her. The heat pooled again—
He broke away suddenly and Alina gasped, wobbling to catch her balance.
“I am quite sorry to have to spoil the mood this morning with such bad news,” he said gravely. “I had rather hoped that we might spend more time together.”
“It’s not your fault,” Alina said, still a little dazed from the kiss.
“But still my responsibility,” he said, with a truthful solemnity.
But before she could offer any more condolences—apologies for sleeping in, for drawing trouble to their door—he met her eyes with a soft smile. “I promise to make it up to you. Tonight?”
Alina hurried to keep up with him, his long brisk strides outpacing hers two to one. It didn’t help that the shoes she’d worn last night had more of a heel than usual. She clicked along the parquet floors after the angry jangle of his spurs. What a loud pair they made, their urgent footsteps resonating.
She must have looked a sight, too, still wearing her formal kefta. Her carefully styled hair had been thoroughly mussed last night, now hastily pulled back into a loose coil that did little to hide how unbrushed it was. There were still pins lurking in there somewhere, stuck at odd angles, she could feel them. While her makeup had been Tailored on and couldn’t smudge, its color had noticeably begun to fade. All in all, she looked a great deal less regal than she had last night.
At least the collar was high enough to cover most of the marks around her neck, but she could not close it well enough to hide the deep red blooms on the front of her throat. Aleksander had paid particular attention to that part of her neck. Some small piece of her wondered if he’d known how it would show beneath her kefta—but she dismissed the thought. He had been far too preoccupied last night to give such careful considerations to anything.
Although she had taken a moment in his bathroom to rinse between her legs, she wouldn’t feel truly fresh until she had time for a proper bath. She could still feel it with every hurried step, every brush of her thighs. Their brisk pace wasn’t doing anything to help the wobble in her legs, either.
Aleksander stopped abruptly by a door and took her hands, rubbing his thumbs across her knuckles. Her heart swooped at the motion. “I will not leave you,” he said. It took Alina’s mind a moment to catch up, to realize he meant in the room. “If there is any threat, if I think for one second that this person means to harm you—”
She nodded, resolute. “It’ll be fine.”
He pushed open the door without dropping her hands.
Alina looked up from the bracket of the doorframe and his body against hers. Her heart lurched into her throat and she tore in the room.
“Mal!”
She ran towards him, carried aloft on a current of the warm comforts of home, about to fling her arms around his neck as she had imagined doing so many times since she’d come to the Little Palace—
—But then she remembered the silence. The letters never answered. The way she’d worried about him, worried something had happened, worried he was dead. Worried he didn’t care. Every morning she heard nothing from Genya, every time she waited for the servant to carry the post, every time she sat down to write yet another letter—the heavy hurt of all those disappointments crashed into her at once.
“What are you doing here?” she asked coldly, returning all the indifference of his months of silence.
Surprise flashed in Mal’s face—did she imagine hurt, too, or did she just want to see it?—but then anger, indignation. “I came here for you.”
She huffed and shifted her weight as he looked her up and down. Her legs brushed together and she wished she’d been a bit more diligent in her brief cleaning. Alina crossed her arms, trying to draw her kefta closed over her throat. The flush crept beneath her collar.
“Alina, you do not need to entertain this interloper,” Aleksander interjected. “As I said, he only claimed to know you—”
“No, no, I do. This is Mal, he’s my friend.”
Aleksander bowed his head with a flash of surprise buried quickly under his manners. “My most sincere apologies. You’ve never mentioned…”
“Never mentioned?” Mal’s laugh was incredulous, rough around the edges. A contrast to the smooth purr of Aleksander’s voice in her ear.
“No, I talk about you loads!” Alina protested. “To—to Genya, to my friends, Nadia, Marie, they know all about you—”
Mal jerked his chin at Aleksander, the disdain clear on his face. “But never to him?”
Alina blushed. “It… you never came up…”
He scoffed and looked her over, looked between them. “Yeah. I can see why not.”
“Oh, like you’re one to talk! The things you say about me—Your little friend from Keramzin, am I supposed to find that flattering?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“And what else didn’t you mean, Mal?” she accused. “All those cracks you used to make about Grisha? Being my friend, did you mean that, Mal?”
“That’s not fair!” Mal looked lost, confused—rare qualities both. Her heart tugged, longing to make it right.
But she had played those words over and over in her head. They used to tell such stories about Grisha in Keramzin—Did you hear they’re born with tails that have to be cut off? I heard they actually eat it—the ridiculous whisperings of children repeated only because they sounded like scandal, because it made them giggle with fright. Then, later, the derisive comments that wove through the First Army barracks, unanimous in their prevalence. Scary. Unnatural. Spoiled.
Hadn’t Mal said as much just before the fateful crossing? Had he ever spoken up when a soldier joked, What does a Fjerdan do when he gets cold in the winter? Grabs another Grisha from the woodshed, or had he laughed along with the rest of them? Back then, she didn’t think it meant anything, just jokes. But now? Had he meant them? Were those words meant for her?
“Are you scared of me now?” she accused. “Am I the new Grisha punchline in the barracks, that little Shu mapmaker, always knew there was something wrong with her?”
“What? No—You’re the one acting like you’re too good for me now!” Mal snapped. “Too busy being Grisha, having fancy parties, entertaining your guests. Too busy with him—”
She saw him look her over, look at her kefta, look at the man standing stoically behind her. The shame rushed through her—the shame of having desired, the shame that her appearance left little doubt to the imagination, the shame of having felt so wanted, so powerful, so right, all turned to scorn in Mal’s eyes. Dashed on the ground at his feet like a clay cup.
Aleksander, as he promised, stayed with her. Quiet, his hands folded, a hard look locked behind his eyes. Her very own shadow.
“Maybe I am too good for you!” Alina shouted. Hot bright heat flickered in her hands as the anger surged through her. “Maybe you’re just jealous! Jealous that I’m important for once and you’re not, that you’re not the only one who matters to me anymore!”
She couldn’t believe the words she was saying, but his silence had stung. She hadn’t been able to figure out which would be worse—if he wasn’t writing because he was hurt or killed, or if he’d been scared off by her power, disgusted by her, all the disdainful comments they’d traded about Grisha now taking new light.
“Right, well, I guess I came all this way for nothing then,” Mal huffed.
Aleksander did not even deign to address Mal directly. Instead, he inclined his head towards her and said, as though they were alone, “I will see him removed from the Palace and escort you personally back to your rooms. I’m sorry to have put you through this upsetting pretense.” The consonants caught hard in his mouth, but when his hand found hers and squeezed, it was soft, gentle.
“Are you out of your mind? Alina!” Mal yanked her back to attention. Her head whipped around, a deep flush on her face. It was too easy to forget about Mal whenever Aleksander looked at her. “Is this your glamorous life now? Is this what being a Saint is like?”
Alina stepped forward, fingers trailing out of Aleksander’s grasp, as her glare bore into Mal. Her friend. Her home. Her childhood. Had a little thing like her happiness been enough to turn it all to rot? Or had there always been a limit to what he could accept in her?
“Sorry to have wasted your precious time,” she spat, before the tears could well up. She would not give him the satisfaction. She would not give him any more aches from her chest, any more cracks in her heart, any more jagged pieces.
She turned on her heel without another word.
The black and gold of Alina’s kefta whipped around the corner, the force of her blazing in her wake. She was an infinite explosion, his Alina, alive with the heat of the sun in her skin. Blinding. The clouds that had hung on her upon her arrival had finally parted.
The tracker stared after her, frozen in place, mouth parted in shock. Ensnared in a trap he never knew he’d built. Too predictable.
“So,” he said, clapping his hands together to draw the boy’s attention. “The stag?”
“I’m not telling you anything,” he spat, coming back to himself.
The amicable expression flickered from his face, each syllable punctuated by a step towards him. “We had an agreement, did we not?”
He shook his head, searching for something in the space between them, in the emptiness. “No, hang on, you—Alina would never—” It was almost amusing to watch the wheels in the tracker’s head turn.
Or it would have been, if he had more patience. He cocked his head, feeling his lips twitch into a cold smile.
“I promised you could see Alina and you have, though it seems clear she has no desire to see you,” he said, savoring the words, the richness of them, the taste. It was not all he had savored of late. “Now, tell me where—exactly—you found the stag.”
“Let me talk to her again, she never answered any of my letters—” The boy’s voice cracked as he stared at the doorway like he could call Alina back, summoner her, with his gaze alone. Something clicked into place; he watched the thought take root and bloom. The slow shock of realization. “…You called me Mal. Last night, you said—”
He held up a silencing hand. “I am a man of my word. I have upheld my part of our agreement to let you see Alina in the morning—”
“Yeah, and what was wrong with last night?” Mal spat.
The smile that unfurled was genuine, if not warm. “As I told you, Alina was… otherwise engaged last night,” he said with possessive pride. He savored the blatant shock and disgust on the tracker’s face. As though he hadn’t known. Alina, still in her clothes from the night before, her hair a mess, his mark on her neck. He had seen the jealousy plain as day on the tracker’s face, they both had. But denial was a powerful drug, and all the more powerful in withdrawal.
“You did something—”
“I should say I have,” he smirked. On the table, on his bed, and they had hardly scratched the surface, so to speak, of all the Little Palace’s nooks and crannies. And when they ran out of places, the Grand Palace was close within reach.
“Alina could tell you all about the those many things I’ve done. Though I daresay it might make her blush to recount.”
With a surge of anger, the tracker lunged. But he raised a wall of shadow with one lazy hand and stepped out of his way with a sigh, as the boy plowed straight into a settee. His head whipped around, searching in the dark.
“Can’t find your mark?” he said from the opposite corner. “And here I thought you were supposed to be a tracker.” He let the shadows fall away, but he did not lower his guard. “Restrain yourself, Corporal Oretsev. If you uphold your end of the bargain, I will refrain from having you court martialed for this insubordination.”
The boy’s chin raised in defiance, his shoulders squared, but he said nothing, remembering his position. It would be unwise to pursue an attack on a General. Especially in light of recent events.
“Now,” he said, clasping his hands together. “Two Grisha were murdered last night. Would you care to tell me anything about that?”
A second wave of shock passed the boy’s face. “What?”
“Would you,” he repeated, more precisely, “care to tell me anything about that?”
“I don’t know anything,” Mal sputtered. “I came here with news about the stag, that’s all.”
“And yet,” he said with faint frown, “You have been unwilling to tell me any credible information, so how am I to believe you have any news at all? How do I know this was not some plot? Perhaps revenge, against Grisha, for taking your little friend away? How much did they pay you?”
“No, I would never—”
“That’s not what I heard just now.” He cocked his head, looking him over. Otkazat’sya were too predictable. Petty in their cruelty, jealous in their derision. He could set their common refrains to music, would it not be too discordant, a dissonant song bled into the soil. “It sounds as though you’ve been making remarks about Grisha to Alina for some time. Is it any wonder she does not trust you?”
The boy struggled to form words, still at war with his own disbelief and anger. “You did this,” he murmured at last.
They could debate the point, but what would be the use? The end result remained the same. The path a river charted was of little consequence when it poured into the same ocean. Instead, he pulled a shadow off the wall, calling it towards his fingertips. It wove across the back of his hands, a fluttering songbird, as he studied it.
“It seems you understand little of Grisha power. More’s the pity. We do not conjure from nothing.”
In the end, the tracker relented. There was little to be gained in his refusal, nothing more to be won. Between the walls of his war room, he lay the map flat against the wood where last night Alina had moaned his name, where she had twitched and fluttered around his tongue as he drank his fill of her.
“You said it was north of Chernast?” he asked, handing the tracker the charcoal. He wanted the taste of her again. The smell of her. The sharp tug of her delightful fingers in his hair.
Did he imagine the tracker’s eyes flicker towards the door to his bedroom, left ajar? Did he know they hadn’t even made it to his bed until later? The otzakat’sya stammered a moment when he answered, “Yeah—uh, no. I mean, it was more towards the east, closer to the Elbjen. If you cross into Fjerda, you’ve gone too far.”
“How did it react to your presence?”
How many times could he bring her to peak in one night? How great a debt of pleasure could he repay?
“Can I go now?” Mal asked, when after a long afternoon he had answered each question about the stag to his satisfaction.
His thoughts, as ever, lingered on Alina when he answered, “Yes. It seems we’re all in agreement that that would be best.”
The tracker would be gone from her life. The wound would be tender for a time, anger and hurt blending together until the rage and the pain were one and the same. But in time, of which she had in spades, it would no longer matter.
She would grow stronger without that boy. She could not learn to harness her power if she still harbored such attachment to an otkazat’sya who barely understood her worth. She could not be herself if she remained so caught in someone else, someone who did not know what was best for her.
He would make it up to her, tonight. And the night following. The next, and the next, and the next, on through eternity.
He was, after all, a man of his word.