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Alina stands amid the unraveling darkness. Sunlight pierces through the shadows, revealing the chaos all around. The shrieking volcra, and the new Sun Summoners. The colorless sand at her feet is stained red, with either the Darkling’s blood, or Mal’s. She can’t quite tell. The amplifiers lay useless and broken on the ground.
She has lost all but the sliver of shadows at her command. On a desperate wretched whim she takes the knife again and carves into the Darkling’s body. The slick warmth of his blood coats her hands, and for a fleeting moment, she feels a surge—a flare of power so intense it makes her gasp. Shadows unfurl around them, and then ebb and die just as quickly.
She tries again, reaching for her own power, but there seems to be none left.
She takes David aside before they put the Darkling on a pyre. “David,” she says, half in a daze. “I need your opinion.”
He frowns, fidgeting with the sleeves of his kefta in discomfort. “Yes?”
“I want an amplifier. Do you think that’s possible?”
“Do you have power to be amplified?” he asks quietly. Everyone has already heard of the loss of her light.
She nods, but does not show him. Everyone already knows she lost her sun summoning, but in the chaos of the Shadow Fold’s destruction and the Darkling’s death, that one brief moment where she called the darkness instead must have been overlooked. David seems confused but he takes her word for it.
“Ordinarily Grisha only take one amplifier. You’ve had three, but they’ve all been destroyed. I don’t see why you couldn’t claim another one now.”
She surprises herself with a wave of grief, remembering the Darkling’s pale, still body. “I don’t want to wear bones,” she says helplessly. “Not his bones. Not… not human bones. I wish there was another way.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t have to,” he muses. “If we save the ashes, I could take it to the workshops. All it would take is to purify and isolate the carbon, and carefully apply pressure—”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t see why you couldn’t have the remains made into a diamond, and have that be your amplifier.”
“Oh.”
“It’s a theory I’ve wanted to test before, but haven’t had the opportunity.”
“Fine,” she says, squeezing her eyes shut. “Do that.”
“It might take some time,” he warns.
Alina carries the weight of it with her. The amplifier that is hers, that she has claimed but not yet used. It follows her, as ever present as her grief, as her aimlessness. Who is she if she is not the Sun Summoner? If she does not have Mal by her side?
She watches the Darkling burn on a pyre and she swallows back her tears.
She accepts Nikolai’s renewed offer of marriage. No one seems more surprised than Nikolai.
“Really?” he asks. “I always knew you’d come around, it’s really the only reasonable decision. But are you sure?”
“Why not?” she says, and her smile is just a little bitter and tearful. “I might as well.”
He watches her carefully. “That’s… one way to look at it.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, shaking her head. “You really might want to find someone better suited—”
“No,” he says too quickly, and then recovers some of his easy manner, and grins. “I want you.”
She lets him slip the Lantsov Emerald on her finger. She cannot quite bring herself to be happy, but she doesn’t mind when he lightly kisses her cheek.
“We can make something out of this,” he promises her. And she hopes that he’s right. She desperately hopes he is.
Months later, she is presented with a silver ring, set with a solitary black stone. “Black?”
To which David rattles off something about graphite and heat treatment that she doesn’t quite understand. “And… I did think it was appropriate,” he admits.
She slips the ring on her finger carefully. It unearths something in her. When she tries to summon, this time the shadows flock to her eagerly.
“It worked,” she breathes.
That night, she hears his cool voice in her head for the first time.
She thinks she is going mad at first. That it is grief or guilt that jolts her out of sleep.
Alina, her name echoes in her ears. What have you done to me?
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. But she’s not. Not really. At least this way she is still Grisha.
It’s odd to think that the Darkling is a possession of hers now. He’s simply a thing that belongs to her. Power that is hers to take. She doesn’t say this. But apparently she doesn’t need to, she can feel the vague answering recoil from him. And his fleeting thought, certainly not meant for her, that he had always known, from childhood, that this would be his fate.
There are mixed reactions to the news of her changed power. That the Sun Summoner is now a Darkling.
“I’d been hoping,” she tells Nikolai and the triumvirate in the war room, while she idly summons a ribbon of darkness to demonstrate, “that I could get my power back. But… but it seems unlikely now.”
The others had vaguely known of her intent for an amplifier. But none of them seemed to expect this.
“I suppose we could spin it,” Nikolai says, looking thoughtful. “He’s always been associated with power. The Apparat will have a fit, but nothing to be done about that.”
“Oh, hang the Apparat. Literally,” Zoya mutters.
“We should,” Alina says without thinking. “Charge him with treason. Dissolve the Priest Guard. It’s well overdue. Why keep him around for his influence if we know he’s going to use it against us?” Only after the words are out does she wonder if they were even her own. But the thought seems sound, the longer she thinks of it the harder it is to understand why they hadn’t done this in the first place.
The story is that her new power was the price of destroying the Shadow Fold. That she has taken its darkness upon herself.
Nikolai is reluctant to martyr the Apparat, especially when he is so useful at spreading such tales. So they hold off on any arrests for the time being. The Darkling mutters about it in her head, but Alina keeps his thoughts to herself. No one else needs to know about him. She hopes, somewhat naively, that if she ignores him, he may just fade away.
There are the many indignities of sharing a body, of undressing, and bathing. She refuses to let herself care.
She tries to ignore the whispered thoughts and feelings in her head. The Darkling’s resentful, angry presence, always there.
It is different from when she took the stag, or the sea whip… or Mal. There is a twinge of bitterness at that— why couldn’t it have been him instead? If she could pull anyone from death, why did it have to be the Darkling?
So he could look on while you marry your prince? The unwelcome thought comes, in the Darkling’s voice. I’m sure your tracker would have loved that.
Nikolai is Tsar now, she corrects. And feels his answering flare of bitterness.
Another Lantsov on the throne? Revolutionary. How much change and progress you’ve brought to your country.
She grits her teeth, refusing to reply. Instead she turns her attention back to Nikolai as they take a turn about the gardens, pretending at a courtship for the public eye. They have not announced their engagement yet— she’s asked to put it off— but it will not be a surprise once they do finally make it public.
Poor sobachka, all this effort he’s putting into charming you and you aren’t even listening.
I would if you’d stop distracting me, she thinks back furiously.
“Alina, are you alright?” Nikolai says finally, with some amusement. “You seem to be staring.”
”Yes,” she says quickly. “Yes, I’m perfectly fine.”
He arches a brow. “Well, if you’re so sure.”
He’s so cheerful, the Darkling complains. It’s uncanny.
I like that about him. She wonders what Nikolai would think if he knew. Would he still speak to her so comfortably? Would he still want to marry her at all?
When she’s distracted sometimes his thoughts will come to her as if they’re her own. A half remembered memory of Baghra. A recollection of the Little Palace while it was being built. His opinions on courtiers, and advisors, of her.
Her gaze will catch on her own reflection in the mirror. Sometimes in surprise, sometimes in longing. It’s a strange feeling.
She will lie alone in bed and feel the Darkling’s frustrations that they are stuck in the same body. And then his chagrin that she knows this.
“Why do you still want me?” she murmurs into the empty room.
What else is left to want?
She can sense him try to reach out through the tether. But it’s gone. It leads nowhere.
“Am I you now? Are you me?”
Nothing so simple.
She tries to spend less time alone, less time in her own head, with him and his bitterness and his memories threatening to swallow her up.
She spends more time with Nikolai. They breakfast together often, and she gets him to talk about the affairs of the country. For the first few months they had all meant to spare her these things. But she craves the distraction now, listening intently as she spoons an inordinate amount of sugar in her tea.
“Alina,” Nikolai says suddenly. “Is that herring and rye on your plate?”
She shrugs. “I’ve developed a taste for it.”
“Perhaps I should hastily scrawl up a peace treaty with Fjerda. It seems the impossible is within reach today.”
She rolls her eyes, but she does like his company. Conversation comes so easily to him, and he’s quick to draw her out of her thoughts and worries. There are always more worries of course, the building dread that she must tell him. That she must tell all of them.
Genya regularly prepares her for state events, and Alina finds she cannot meet her gaze. What would she think, if she knew?
The Darkling doesn’t answer, thankfully. But she can feel his disdain for being a source of shame in her. All I did, he says finally, once Genya is gone. I did for Ravka.
Sometimes she thinks of Mal. But it’s harder with the Darkling’s loathing tainting her grief. It hurts to feel his disgust herself, as if it were her own.
She’d rather not think of Mal at all.
Then we’re in agreement.
Sometimes she forgets to answer to her own name. Nikolai calls after her as she leaves the war room— she’s been spending more time there, she wants to spend more time there— and she doesn’t even realize. They plan finally to announce their engagement at a dinner the next evening. She dreads it a little bit, but can find no more excuses to put it off. Not without admitting the truth.
He falls in step beside her. “I know you’re simply so caught up in anticipation of our engagement that you cannot think of anything else,” he says lightly. “But I’d like to talk to you.”
Alina starts. “Oh, sorry. I wasn’t ignoring you.”
“The thought hadn’t even occurred to me.”
“But you’re right. We really should talk. I have something I need to tell you before we get married.”
Concern flickers over his face but he masks it quickly. “Of course, lead the way.”
She leads him to the receiving room in her private quarters, ignoring the Darkling’s irritation. This is a terrible idea, he warns her. She clenches her hands, trying to swallow her worries.
“Should I sit down for this?” Nikolai asks.
“Maybe. I don’t know if you’ll want to call things off. I wouldn’t blame you if you do.”
He frowns. “Well, now I admit to being mildly terrified. Don’t leave me in suspense.” He does not sit. In fact, he paces the length of the room .
Alina stands at the head of the table, resting her arms atop a chair back for support. She takes a deep breath. She stares at the two very different rings on each hand. “Something happened when I claimed this last amplifier.”
“What?”
She tells him about the Darkling’s voice in her head. How, at this point, she is very reasonably sure that it is him in truth, and not her imagination.
Nikolai is silent for a long moment, his face unreadable.
“Does that mean you know his secrets?”
“I… I guess so.”
What does he want with my secrets?
“Can he hide things from you?”
“No.”
He takes a deep breath. “So you have access to centuries’ worth of political experience. I thought you were going to tell me something terrible.”
She stares. “You don’t mind?”
“If it’s causing you difficulty then I am sorry for that. But from my personal perspective, this is a boon.”
“Okay,” she says, too surprised to know what to make of this. “As long as you know.”
That night, she sits alone in her room and tries to practice using this new power. It isn’t difficult. She watches the plumes of darkness twisting in the air according to her will. Her sunlight seems well and truly gone. A wave of mourning washes over her. She’s surprised that it is the Darkling’s. A memory flickers in her mind’s eye. Standing in the snowy clearing so long ago. She looks down on herself with the antler collar newly fastened around her neck. And as if in extension of her… his… will light had blossomed from her.
“No,” she hisses. “That was an awful moment. How can you look back on it with fondness?”
I had everything in that moment. She feels him try to take control of the shadows and she lets him. He guides her hands— their hands?— the movements, so much more fluid and dexterous. He’s had centuries to master what she’s clumsily trying to teach herself in secret.
The shadows move lazily at his command. She feels the cool ephemeral touch of them brush against her cheek. Licking against her throat. Unbuttoning her nightdress, tugging it out of the way.
Her hands move of their own accord over her body. She should put a stop to this— but why? It’s strange knowing that they are experiencing the exact same sensations together, that her desire is his desire. That it is stoking a shared flame when the shadows travel over her breasts when they move between her thighs. That he feels it too when they sink inside her, setting a steady rhythm.
Afterwards, his thoughts float to her again, almost idly. How did you break free? I never understood it.
“I spared the stag’s life. I showed it mercy. I think it wanted to give me its power.”
How trite.
The dinner and announcement goes without a hitch. Alina sits beside Nikolai at the head of the table, and tries not to wallow in guilt. She’s not very good at it. The Darkling seems to find this funny. Invite him to join us next time. I’m sure he’ll be amenable.
She suspects he might be right. But that doesn’t solve her complicated feelings. Or how heavy both rings feel on her finger. She clutches her wine glass tightly, gaze drifting to Nikolai as he charms the guests. When his hand briefly brushes hers under the table, she feels a confusing mix of comfort and guilt.
Still, she forces herself to smile and make polite conversation. Her attempts must be poor because finally, the Darkling sighs. Allow me.
She bristles with the suspicion of some sort of sabotage. But their thoughts are open to each other. She can feel just as clearly that he’s merely frustrated with how poorly she’s doing.
Fine, she thinks. But don’t try anything.
At her request, Nikolai has not told anyone else. But after each council meeting he quietly quizzes her— rather, the Darkling— about what he would do in Nikolai’s place.
She can hear him in the tone of her voice now. The cool edge, the subtleties in the inflections and cadence. It should perturb her, but she’s well past that.
Nikolai must notice too. He studies her face sometimes, and she wonders if he’s looking for hints of the Darkling there.
Or perhaps he’s simply taken by your charms.
She grits her teeth and ignores this, but that isn’t far from the truth either.
Nikolai hasn’t tried to kiss her. Or made any overt romantic overtures, but he doesn’t seem entirely unaffected by their public courtship. His gaze always seems to soften when he sees her, and when they talk, long into the night, he usually seems reluctant to leave.
She’s noticed also that, sometimes, if they walk side by side their shoulders will brush, because she has brushed by too close. In the evenings they spend alone, when she doesn’t pay attention, she will find herself leaning into him beside her. Or she might take his gloved hand in her own, without thinking, and let it rest on her lap.
It takes her leaning over to brush a stray lock of hair from his face for her to actually see the pattern.
Are we flirting with him? she demands.
The Darkling’s response is incredulous, You’re only realizing this now?
How was I supposed to know!
We have a king in hand. It would be foolish not to make use of this advantage.
Of course, she thinks acidly. But he’s right.
“If we cannot arrest the Apparat without pushback,” she tells Nikolai, over a private dinner. Just the three of them. “Then kill him. Quietly.”
“Really?”
“All it takes is one Heartrender.”
“If it would get out, it would look very bad.”
“Then we will be careful that it doesn’t get out. Who would guess? He’s an old man.” She smiles, half aware of the beguiling touch the Darkling adds to the expression. “Consider it my wedding present.”
She would, in any other circumstances, be perturbed by how increasingly difficult it is to draw a line between the Darkling’s emotions and her own. But his coldness eases and replaces her grief. He cares nothing for any of her worries. And it’s nice. She can admit that to herself.
He certainly has a mountain of his own despair, but she is just as unaffected by that.
A few weeks later, she gets the report back of her first successfully carried out assassination.
Congratulations, the Darkling says to her. And it’s so odd to feel his mix of satisfaction, and annoyance. His desire also to hurt her, or at least needle her, even if this is an outcome he had himself wanted. Are you pleased to be a murderer, Alina?
It’s hardly my first murder.
It certainly won’t be your last.
This does nearly get to her, or it feels like it should. She pauses for a moment, to take stock of herself, to consider this, and how little it bothers her. She wonders if it’s the Darkling’s coldness seeping into her, or if she has arrived at it herself.
No, she thinks. It won’t be.
Eventually their wedding day arrives. It is a lavish affair. The palace is decorated in opulent splendor, every surface gleaming with gold and crystal. The scent of roses and lilies fills the air, and the hall is filled with the murmur of nobles and dignitaries. Sol Koroleva they still call her, even though she is very much not the Sun Summoner anymore.
There is something… satisfying about the burning resentment the Darkling cannot hide from her. A wave of intense jealousy washes over him, and her by proxy, at the sight of Nikolai in full regalia. The crown atop his head.
Everything you’ve ever wanted, she thinks with relish. And the people love him.
Are you finished?
She herself has been carefully and elaborately dressed in heavy cloth of gold. Her hair strung with pale diamonds and emeralds to match her wedding ring. The black stone on her right hand clashes terribly, and she tries not to stare at it on her finger.
The guests cheer, the bells toll, and she smiles as Nikolai takes her hands, and they exchange their vows.
At night, they retire together to the Tsar’s quarters. There is no getting around it. They had agreed on this part before, that she would join him in his chambers after the festivities, to ensure appearances were kept.
But still Nikolai lingers by the door.
“Do you want an invitation to your own bedroom?” she teases. Her face hurts from smiling all evening, but she’s a little wine drunk and nearly happy. Perhaps it’s the Darkling’s roiling resentment and jealousy.
I’m not jealous, he insists.
And she laughs, taking Nikolai’s gloved hands and pulling him into the room with her.
She tilts her face up to his, kissing him softly, feeling him sigh against her lips. It’s been so long since she’s been kissed. It’s unfamiliar, but sweet.
Nikolai pulls away suddenly when they near the bed, putting ample distance between them. “Alina— wait… I want to make certain that you know that nothing needs to happen tonight,” he says, words coming out quickly.
She bites her lip on a smile, realizing he’s actually flustered. “What of heirs?”
“In time, certainly,” he continues. “But I would be perfectly happy with a marriage in name only, aside from… necessities like that in the future. But I also, I also wouldn’t be averse. But–”
“Come here.”
His eyes widen at the command in her tone, but he obeys, letting her pull him down to kiss him again.
“You talk too much."
He laughs under his breath. “That isn’t the first time I’ve been told that.” He brushes gloved knuckles over her cheek. Still the lightest, most hesitant gesture. “Do you have any previous experience?”
She can feel the Darkling’s indignation at that. He’s asking me, she replies. “Yes.” And she can feel his distaste again, at the flash of memory of the experience she does have. I could do without the knowledge of what it is to be under your precious tracker.
She fixes her attention back to Nikolai, who kisses her gently. “That simplifies things,” he says.
She reaches for his gloves, slides them off. Something surges in her at the sight of the scars– the Darkling’s satisfaction of having left a mark on him. She trails kisses over the dark patterns staining his hands, uncertain whose whim it is exactly, but it’s one she is happy to indulge. She takes a finger in her mouth and sucks. Nikolai makes a strangled sound at that.
The shadows in the room darken, gathering at her— their— command. She flicks her fingers without thinking, the Darkling guiding the movement, a thin tendril, honed sharp as a blade, slicing through Nikolai’s buttons in a fluid motion. They scatter to the floor, the polished gold glinting in the lamplight. She relishes his hissed intake of breath, the way his pupils dilate. He withdraws his hand— his finger leaves her mouth with a wet pop that seems to stir something in the Darkling— to twist it in her hair and kiss her hard.
Alina repeats the motion, unsure if it’s her own will behind it, or the Darkling’s, but that can be said for anything she does anymore. She slices through the rich fabric of Nikolai’s clothes, again, and again, feeling him gasp against her mouth each time, until it all falls away in shredded ruins on the floor.
She pulls away to get a better look at him, the faint red lines on his skin from where she cut too close. Ordinary pale scars, and then the ghosts of dark veins to match the ones on his hands. She traces over them lightly, feels the latent power still there, inside him. Her power. So easy to command. She draws on it, with a careless gesture. Nikolai gasps, falling to his knees.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” he breathes.
“Neither did I.”
She perches at the foot of the bed, watching him. Tension building with every moment. She takes his chin, tilts it up so that he must meet her gaze. She trails her hand down his throat, then from his chest to his navel, down to cup his ready erection.
“Do you like this?” she asks sweetly. Her hands move with a confidence and experience she certainly cannot lay claim to.
“Yes. Saints, yes.”
“Then show me.”
He gasps, clearly struggling to keep still.
“Louder, sobachka.”
And this time he moans openly, shuddering against the punishing rhythm they’ve set.
“Wait,” he gasps, “I’ll—”
But she shakes her head, shushing him. “Don’t worry, there’s plenty of time. I’m hardly finished with you.”
He spills his pleasure into her palm. She lifts her hand to his lips. “Clean it up.”
She watches him lick her fingers one by one, captivated by the sight. She has a real fondness for him, but the Darkling’s enjoyment of seeing him on his knees like this isn’t exactly good natured. But she feels the rush of that victorious feeling too, and frankly it only makes it a headier brew. Aleksander, she chides, only receiving a wash of mutinous feeling in response.
“Help me undress.”
Nikolai’s breath is still ragged when he reaches for her ankle, carefully undoing her slipper. He kisses her stockinged ankle, her calf. Reaching up to undo the fastening of the stockings, slipping each one down her leg.
He pushes her voluminous skirts up, kissing the soft skin of her thighs. Higher still. She can feel the Darkling’s indignant urge to pull away. But Alina ignores him this time. He’s dictated enough. She lets her head fall back and sighs relishing the feeling of his mouth on her lips. Teasing her, working her over expertly.
The Darkling hates this part. This feeling of abandon. The building pleasure he cannot control. In rebellion, she holds perfectly still, surrendering herself to it wholly.
In revenge, the Darkling twists her hands in Nikolai’s hair, pulling hard until he gasps in pain. “I think you got distracted, I’m still very dressed.”
He grins. “It seems I did. Let me make it up to you.”
She lets him lean up to kiss her, climbing up onto the bed beside her, reaching around her waist for the lacings of her dress. But then her shadows snake around his wrists and pull him back onto the bed. Pinning him down.
Alina smiles the Darkling’s aloof, half smile, merely a quirk of the lips. “I think I like this better.”