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Her fingers are still wet with Mal’s blood when she brings down the Fold.
She is drained, she is in pain, but there is one more thing that must be done.
There’s a shuffle behind her and she turns to see him stumbling towards her, dark eyes wide with disbelief. His features look thin enough to snap, as though with every scrap of banished darkness, he himself is being diminished.
“What have you done?” he heaves, hands trembling as he takes hold of her face.
“I have done what I must,” she replies, eyes lifeless.
The empty pit where her power should be has left her hollow.
He senses it.
“No, no, no,” he shakes his head and grips her face tighter. Tight enough that it would hurt if she could feel anything beyond that profound, horrible nothing.
She can see the moment his sanity leaves him. She watches it happen with deadened eyes.
“No,” he keeps muttering, “No, no, no, no, no - you were meant to be my- you were meant to be like me…I,... I can’t be alone, I can’t, I can’t.”
Shadows sputter and fail around him, as though trying to comfort him, but he is too far gone to answer to the call of his power now.
The Darkling falls to his knees. Alina doesn’t think he’s ever done such a thing before.
When she slowly drops in front of him, he doesn’t meet her eyes, only looks dazedly into the distance, crushed under the reality that he is, and will forever be, completely alone in the world.
She cannot tell him otherwise.
Alina slowly leans forward to rest her forehead against his, and his eyes flicker momentarily but remain unseeing.
“I can end it,” she whispers, “If you want.”
His eyes flicker again and focus on hers. She can tell he hardly knows who or what she is anymore, but he focuses on the colour of her eyes as though they are the only real thing left.
He nods.
She gingerly cradles the nape of his neck, slides the Grisha steel from her sleeve and drives it into his heart.
The sigh he releases is warm on her face before he collapses backwards, the momentum of his fall pulling her over him.
He’s looking up at where the Fold has receded. “Blue sky,” he murmurs, wonderingly.
She nods without taking her eyes away from his face.
“Alina,” he coughs, and dark red blood dribbles over his lips. He looks back at her then, and his brow creases minutely. Not without considerable effort, he raises a hand and she feels his fingers lightly brush her cheeks. They come away wet.
Tears.
Something in the corner of his mouth twitches, “Someone to mourn me.”
How can an empty pit still break in half? The wistfulness in his eyes wrenches a sob from her throat.
His hand falls back against his chest, the muscles that had held it up sapped of energy. Her fingers seek his automatically, and she doesn’t care that his hand is cold, she grabs it anyway. She takes in his features, his nose, his mouth, his dark ebony hair, but it is his eyes that she holds onto. As she holds onto his body with hers, so does her soul latch on to his across the space between them, digging in tight.
As if to say, I have been waiting for you.
As if to promise, I would find you again.
He tries to speak, but has to cough up a river of blood to get the words out. So much blood. His face is pale in the daylight.
“Once more...” he manages, “Speak my name - once more.”
He is ancient. He has lived a hundred lives. But in this moment she can see him - the brilliant, beautiful boy blessed with too much power, burdened by eternity.
“Aleksander,” she whispers, pressing their foreheads together again, “Aleks, Aleksander.”
Tears glisten as they roll down her face onto his, mixing with his own.
“Aleksander.”
It’s almost a plea now.
“Don’t let me be alone,” he murmurs.
And then he’s dead.
Alina feels it as her soul splits, and the agonising snap as her very being recoils on itself, as though released from a tether. It’s suffocating. Alone. Now, she is… alone. She has centuries of existence ahead of her and all she can see is… Nothing. She can’t see anything beyond this point, beyond this pain. The emptiness drowns her, and she thinks if she had the capacity, she might have screamed.
She lies her face in the crook of Aleksander’s neck and breathes in the familiar scent. He’s already cooling, the skin of his neck holding onto only the faintest of flushes. The prod of something rigid digging against her collarbone pushes her back to uncover the silver dagger, still protruding from his chest.
You don’t have to be alone, it seems to say.
It’s an easy decision, really, to yank the knife from his chest and drive it into her own neck. Quick. Simple.
An end.
She pulls it out just as fast and lies herself down on his chest. She clutches him for as long as her arms have sensation, and her last awareness is her memory of his dark eyes before she follows him into the night.
***
The people of Ravka cry in sorrow and triumph as they mourn the Sun Saint as she burns. They cry for the tragic tale of the Martyr, of how she drove the shadows from the world and brought her people absolution.
The bards sing tales of the beautiful sun queen. Of her moonlight hair and fearless will. Of how she was found cradling the body of the shadow king, bathed in the blood of her enemies. How her tears had purged his lost soul and saved him from damnation. How their hands had been so firmly entwined that not even the strongest soldier could pry their fingers apart. And how they were burned together, two halves of a whole, reuniting their ill-fated souls in the world beyond.
In time, they forget. The story becomes a fairy tale, and children dream of a golden queen dancing with her night king in a garden of light, and the children pray that if the Gods are good, they will take them there when their own time comes too.
The fairytale fades into obscurity.
Until only the earth where their ashes once lay remembers how Sankta Alina’s last words had been only one. One word. One name. Again and again and again.
***
Standing on the edge of a crowded road, Alina looks down onto the rolling fields and abandoned farms of the Tula Valley and gets her first glimpse of the Shadow Fold. Her regiment is two weeks’ march from the military encampment at Poliznaya and the autumn sun is warm overhead, but she shivers in her coat as she eyes the haze that lies like a dirty smudge on the horizon.
There is a strange sensation in the back of her mind - almost like deja vu - and she furrows her brow, trying to pinpoint the feeling. It scuttles away before she can put a finger on it.
A heavy shoulder slams into her from behind, knocking her out of her reverie. She stumbles and nearly pitches face-first into the muddy road.
“Hey!” shouts the soldier. “Watch yourself!”
“Why don’t you watch your fat feet?” she snaps, and takes some satisfaction from the surprise that comes over his broad face. People, particularly big men carrying big rifles, don’t expect a lip from a scrawny thing like her. They always look a bit dazed when they get it.
The soldier gets over the novelty quickly and gives her a dirty look as he adjusts the pack on his back, then disappears into the caravan of horses, men, carts, and wagons streaming over the crest of the hill and into the valley below.
Alina quickens her steps, trying to peer over the crowd. She’d lost sight of the yellow flag of the surveyors’ cart hours ago, and she knows she is far behind.
As she walks, she takes in the green and gold smells of the autumn wood, the soft breeze at her back. They are on the Vy, and she ponders the history of the road as she trundles down the path.
She’s soon joined by Mal and gets pulled into the routine back and forth of their youth. Her heart aches for how he has drifted away from her. She’s caught up in her thoughts when she's nearly crushed by a black carriage that storms down the road. For a moment, she is so preoccupied with that twinge of something… familiar… in her chest, that she doesn't see when a dark-haired Grisha smiles at Mal from one of the subsequent carriages.
It's not hard to push the feeling to the back of her mind, as anxious as she is about crossing the Fold tomorrow. She chats with Alexei in the cartographer's tent and he gives her his first drawing to cover for her tardiness. She's restless well into the following morning, dreading every step as she boards the skiff that will take her into the shadows.
When the volcra start picking people off, she stands helpless, weak and frail, unable to move for fear she will be torn to pieces with the rest of them. She covers Mal's body with her own and as the volcra's talons dig into her shoulder, she thinks she sees a white flash of light before she loses consciousness.
***
They’re dragging her.
She has no idea where they’re taking her, or what she did. She’s desperately running through the events in her head, her brain chaotic and fuzzy. They’d… been on the skiff and the volkra had attacked, Alexei had been taken and Mal had been stabbed - wait - attacked by the volcra… Her train of thought fizzles out as she realises where she is being dragged. The great, black tent that was the Grisha headquarters looms high over them, flags of blue, red, purple fluttering in the autumn breeze, and black highest of them all.
Alina fixates on that black flag as the Corporalnik from the skiff confer with the oprichniki guarding the tent. One of the guards disappears inside. That feeling again… there’s something she’s forgotten… something that’s just…
The guard reappears and ushers them in. The soldiers holding her release their grasp on her arms, and she rubs some feeling back into them. Rifles jab into her back in a clear message to keep moving.
For a moment, all her fear is eclipsed by the beauty of the tent’s décor. Cascades of bronze silk catching the glimmering candlelight from the sparkling chandeliers, the floors covered in rich rugs and furs. Along the walls, shimmering silken partitions separate compartments where the Grisha cluster in their vibrant kefta, talking and lounging and playing chess.
They all look up curiously as Alina is ushered in.
She can’t help but feel overwhelmingly self-conscious in this place. A place too fine for a ghost of Keramzin, for a First Army cartographer. She spots Mal and the rest of the crew from the skiff, standing in one corner, looking bruised and injured but alive.
The soldiers walk her down the length of the long carpeted aisle to where a figure sits, wreathed in shadows beneath a black pavilion.
The intensity of that familiar feeling is so strong, she stops walking a few feet away from the foot of the dais. The room is all but silent by the time the soldiers step back from her. She gets the overwhelming impression that whatever is up on that dais is the reason she is here. But she knows very well who that figure is, doesn't she? The problem is, the title wants to morph into another name when it forms in her mind.
Colonel Raevsky, who had escorted her, steps forward. “Moi soverenyi, this is the girl, her name is -”
“Alina,” a cool voice murmurs, bewildered.
Heads turn and Alina’s head snaps up as the Darkling rises from his seat and emerges from the pavilion in all his dark glory. The look on his face… His face.
Alina draws in a sharp breath when it comes over her. There is a glossiness about his eyes as he descends the steps. He stops when he is a few feet away, as though he is holding himself back, searching her face.
She stares at the man before her. All power and darkness, sharp angles and piercing eyes. Tall and graceful, ancient and far too young. Looking at her with recognition.
As though he knows her very soul.
“Aleksander?” she whispers.
The relief in his exhale is felt throughout the tent and with it, the memories click into place. How…?
She barely has time to think on it because his approaching figure is blurry with her tears, and the rest of the world disappears as he strides forward and takes her face in his hands with unparalleled tenderness.
“Is that you, Aleks?” she’s crying in earnest now.
"My Alina," he breathes.
It feels like living all over again.
He gently touches his forehead to hers and she ignores the murmur that runs through the room when she wraps her arms around his shoulders. The open vulnerability in his face is jarring, and there’s something else too - something suspiciously like hope.
He gives a vague nod, as though he’s already forgotten her question and then tilts her chin to claim her mouth with his own in a searing kiss.
She clings to him, to the feeling of him alive, and breathing, and feeling herself alive and breathing, right back at the beginning as though no time has passed, lost in one another until she has no end and no beginning and her soul is just an endless rhythm of you you you.
I know you.
He breaks the kiss all too soon, aware of their audience, and soothes her hair back from her forehead. His eyes are dry, but the kiss he places adoringly on the end of her nose says it all:
This time, there will be an ‘us’.