Chapter Text
In the darkest hours of the night they are born, screaming and slippery and each with a dark head of hair, and Baghra’s heart breaks for a moment, because if the chances of one being like her are slim, the chances of two… next to impossible.
She swallows back the tears. She has raised children before who were not like her, and they were all great in their own right. This time will be no different.
The boy she names Aleksander, entreating Fate to defend him even as she has called him defender. He is quiet and focuses on her when he should not, dark eyes intelligent even hours after birth.
The girl, born first, screams until her brother is placed next to her on Baghra’s breast, the fierce little thing. She latches onto a breast angrily, hand reaching out as if to reassure herself that her brother is still here, and Baghra does not know what to call her even as dark turns to day and the Healer tells them that they need to be gone before noon, else the otkazat’sya may become suspicious. She is used to this, after centuries of it, and nods to show she will be gone then; the Healer leaves them for a time.
It is bad luck for a child to begin her first journey without a name, and even if Baghra no longer believes in luck, the tradition still calls to her. No matter the names they might hide under later, they all have their true names, the ones that call to the world asking the world to call back.
She straps the children to her chest, her thumb idly curling around her daughter’s ear. Dark eyes blink up, not focused, but present, and for a moment Baghra feels the wheels of Fate turning, a flash of the gift her family has earned. Civilians, frightened, eyes turned up, a hard voice snapping commands – and then it is gone.
She names her daughter Kira. It is not a blessing.
Over the first decades of their fragile life, the twins have many names. Pascha and Ludo, Annika and Mila.
In her heart, Kira’s name never changes. She calls her little brother (“by a minute!”) Sasha more than she ever calls him Aleksander, because he is softer than that grand name, for now. He is the one who thinks it unfair they cannot be close with the children in town, the ones their madraya calls “abandoned.” He is the one who weeps, silently, whenever they must pack their things and flee, flee from a burning, from whispers, from sneers at the unwed woman who associates with grisha and never looks kindly at her neighbors.
Kira doesn’t weep. Kira rages, and to hear her mother tell it, this is how it has always gone between them. Her brother grieves their life, that they cannot be normal, that the otkazat’sya will not accept them; Kira dreams of burning them for once. She thinks maybe she will be an inferni instead of what their mother is, when she is little and doesn’t know better. She thinks maybe Sasha could help her, that he could find her the right targets and she could destroy them, free their people, take them somewhere else.
(“We should make a place to go, where no one hates us,” he says, late at night, and she likes the idea, but—
“And when the drüskelle come for us? We will need defenses, too, brother, or we’ll just make a bigger target for them.”
“You can make those. I bet you’d be good at it.” And her chest glows with pride at his utter faith in her.)
There is nowhere else, not yet. There is home, and home is the sanctuary, but they can’t stay there too long because everyone knows it belonged to Ilya Morozova, and their mother has been trying to outrun that name for hundreds of years.
There is nowhere else, and Kira learns better that she is no inferni when she is eight years old and her loving mother tosses a ball of shadow at her face. It is instinct, plain and simple, that shields her. The shadows disperse, tugging at something in her heart. It hurts to let them go, to let them fade. The grim look on her mother’s face hurts worse, though.
She was born first, walked first, spoke first, and this is no different. She is first, but Aleksander is quick behind, his own rage coming out now, his eyes dark and angry as shadows whip up around him. Their mother nods, barely, before starting them both training.
(There is only one time her brother is first in something, and that is an experience neither of them wish to repeat. She remembers the bodies, neatly severed, so small. She remembers their own people turning on her brother because of what they thought his bones would do for them. She remembers the screaming nightmares he had for weeks afterward, the first time she woke him a Cut coming for her face that she parted into dusty shadows.)
Kira considers what their mother told them, once, about their powers. Eternity. It’s too big for her mind to comprehend, not really. She knows her mother is hundreds of years old and still looks young, knows their father was grisha and probably still lives, might live a hundred years past when otkazat’sya would die. But she also knows grisha are no less vulnerable than otkazat’sya to violence, to pain, and ultimately, to death. Fjerda wants them dead, and she hears stories, sometimes, about Shu Han. Experiments. Torture. Death. That is their lot in this life.
Her brother grieves. Kira rages, and she thinks this a better use of her time. She studies the maps, the ever-shifting borders of the countries that don’t have convenient mountains or tsibeya to keep them mostly stable. Death, slavery, torture; that is what madraya fears most of all for them, though Kira thinks perhaps she ought to focus more on mothering and less on that, as she grows older. There is no safe place in the world, not unless they make it.
“Perhaps if we do some grand deed for a king, he will give us a title, land that we could turn into a better shelter,” her brother suggests. They are newly twenty, and she looks at his face that will be the same for centuries to come. He is handsome, she knows, just as she knows men call her beautiful, though she thinks he could do with a beard to distinguish himself. They are near identical, though she is shorter (to her irritation), both with strong features and dark eyes. His are less shuttered than hers, though, as they always have been.
(“Know this, girl,” madraya’s voice, whipcord snap and a cane at her ankle, years ago. “All women grow up faster than men, even immortals. That blood on your thighs does not make you a woman anymore than your breasts or your eyes, but to men it does, and the quicker you accept that, the better for everyone.”)
“And that king’s son? Grandson?” He looks hurt, and she sighs. “It isn’t a bad plan. We just… we need to consider every possibility.” She thinks perhaps she ought to marry a nobleman, but that is a plan she keeps in the back of her mind – most of them are pigs, and she’d really rather not start out a marriage with assassination plans already in place. She will, she just doesn’t want to. “What are the chances I could marry a prince, turn all Ravka into a haven?”
“The prince is a year old,” Aleksander points out. She waves that away. She’s going to outlive any husband or wife she takes, and as odd as it may seem now, twenty years is not a very long time to wait, in the span of an eternity. “You should be able to marry who you want to marry, not the person who gives us the most power.”
He’s so earnest, her brother.
“If it means we live, I want to marry the person who gives us the most power.”
He frowns at that.
“Something to keep in mind, at least.”
She doesn’t marry the prince, despite keeping an eye on him as he turns into a man. Oh, no doubt she could charm him and his court, but he’s wed to a woman from an island that until recently has been just a collection of countries, now calling itself Kerch and offering allies for marriage when he’s just sixteen, which stings. She thinks, then perhaps, his son…
But she meets Sonya before a son is born to the new king, and Sonya….
She is from the border lands, blue-eyed and brown-haired and kind. She is a durast, and she makes the most magnificent jewelry Kira has seen in her life. And the most magnificent chainmail, light and flexible but capable of taking blows that would otherwise kill. It is barely a moment, in her mind, and they are wed, with a cottage and a farm and commissions and students. Barely a moment, but they know each other half a decade before the wedding, and the first child they take in as theirs comes ten years after that.
Somehow, there is peace. A decade, two, four, and Sonya’s hair turns white, her still-capable hands wrinkle, and their sons grow into men, their daughter married with a child of her own on the way. Meanwhile Kira’s hair remains the black of night, and no matter how much she smiles, the wrinkles never form to prove it.
Materialki, then corporalki, then etherealki. In terms of power it varies, and a Heartrender is probably more dangerous than anyone but Kira and her brother, but everyone knows that in terms of lives lived, this is how it goes. The Small Science might glut Kira and her mother and her brother, but it barely gives more to her wife than it does to the otkazat’sya. They have seventy-two years together, in the end, and when Sonya goes into the grave, she takes part of Kira’s heart with her.
She’s over a century old, Kira is, and she still looks twenty. Her mother nears a millennium, and she looks barely more than forty.
“They are nothing more than dust, Kira,” her mother says, and for the first time in her long life Kira returns the violence that her mother subjected her and her brother to, an open-palmed slap across her face. It’s worth it just for the shock on her face.
“They are worth more than we ever can be!” she snaps, while Aleksander quietly putters with supper in the background, staying out of the way of the storm. “They don’t have immortality to make them complacent, so they live every moment as they should, they take advantage of every moment, and they might turn into dust, madraya, but what have we ever done to deserve this other than been born from a cursed bloodline? We aren’t better than them, any of them. If anything, we’re worse. Other families don’t have journals full of cruelty in their catacombs.” Or merzost.
Her mother doesn’t speak to her for eighty years after that, though her brother visits from time to time. It’s only when Aleksander does something apparently blisteringly stupid that she contacts Kira, a letter that her husband Erck calls “frigid” telling her to get him and to come home.
“I won’t be welcome at home, will I?” Erck asks her, grinning. They only married five years ago, after he lost his wife to a malignancy that even a Healer couldn’t treat. Things aren’t great for her people, but she thinks, perhaps, they’re getting better.
“An otkazat’sya in the Morozova home? I think my mother might expire on the spot.” She kisses him deeply. “On second thought…”
He pushes her away, grinning. His hair is steel gray, and she loves it. “No kinslaying for you, not even of your mother.”
“You ruin all my fun,” she says.
That’s not the last thing she says to him. If it were, she might have broken, later. No, what she says last to him is, “I might need to bring my brother here if he needs to hide. Set up the spare room for us?” And he nods, and his eyes are a brilliant green even in his age, and she kisses him one last time. “I love you.”
And that’s the last she ever sees their little cottage, which is nearly directly south of her family home. Just a few days’ travel on a horse.
Aleksander insists he didn’t do something stupid, of course, while they ride through the night to his partner’s home. “Not married. Yet,” he admits, grin in his voice. She rolls her eyes.
No, he just drowned a thousand men in their own shadows, breaking the morale of an entire army and making the current king – grandson of that prince she considered marrying? Great-grandson? She can’t keep track – feel emasculated. He also did something that by all accounts should be impossible, and he didn’t even do it using merzost, just his raw power and the terrain and a moonless night. It’s not something a Heartrender could do, but it is something she could do, if she weren’t too fussed about potential casualties on her own side. And now there’s a bounty on his head, and the grisha in the king’s court have had to flee. Progress is not a straight line, she thinks grimly, pulling up to the cottage. It’s lovely, if not something she ever thought her brother would appreciate. The woman inside is lovely as well, a Healer advisor to the king. Her name is Luda, and she’s perfect for Kira’s brother – they’re clearly both insane enough to pull the sort of stunts that get other people killed all the time.
Case in point: this would have gotten Luda killed, she knows, sending a silent Cut to the scout sneaking up on them. She regards his body dispassionately, then shoves Luda aside, looking through the window.
Her brother drowned a thousand men. She drowns… eight? She’s unsure, but Aleksander glares at her all the same.
“I was trying to negotiate!”
“They sent a scout in, Sasha, you were about to get at least one person killed.” She searches their leader and finds his orders. “Report back within twelve hours, Darkling – Darkling? That’s a shit name – in hand, Saints bless your way, Your Tsar, Anastas. So, I take it we’re killing a king?”
Aleksander is grim, reading the missive she hands to him. Luda is packing up her supplies, which shows practical priorities, at least.
“I don’t understand. I’ve done nothing wrong. I served him faithfully, won his war for him – this was not how I thought this would go.” His eyes have a glimmer of tears in them. She hates that she has to reach up to pat him on the shoulder, the tall bastard.
“Men aren’t like those games you love from across the sea, Sasha. They react to you, just as you react to them. Let’s talk about this war on the way to madraya, okay? She should have at least some words masquerading as advice to give us.”
If Luda is surprised she speaks so easily of war, she doesn’t show it, putting a blanket on the horse Aleksander rode. They make a beautiful pair, heading north through the night. She wonders how long it will take for them to marry, if they’ll have children. She wonders these things so she won’t think of how they all might well die tomorrow, if anyone with an ounce of tracking ability follows them.
Erck knows the risks. He was a soldier, once, knows that when it comes to these things, death is as likely a possibility as any other. Kira wears the mail Sonya made her so many years ago beneath her wool and leathers, but an arrow to the face would kill her the same as any otkazat’sya.
Their mother’s advice is to run, to leave this all behind, and Kira’s gut clenches that she doesn’t even acknowledge the rift between them. But that is her mother, never backing down, never giving away that something might be wrong. She probably still thinks she was in the right.
If their mother’s advice is cold, and unrealistic – there are armies out there, looking for Aleksander, for these surviving grisha who have earned the king’s wrath by merely being present for his shame – Aleksander’s suggestion is downright mad.
“What?” she says, at the same time her mother utters refusals. “You can’t be serious. Ilya killed himself with that… perversion.”
“The Small Science feeds us; merzost feeds on us. Your sister is right; my father could not control it, or himself. Only destruction awaits you on that path.”
It is bitter, agreeing with her mother, but Aleksander seems subdued. Perhaps they’ve talked him out of it.
“I’ll create cover, get us east; we can hide in the tsibeya if it comes to the worst. My husband is waiting for us, south of here; we can’t all stay there long, maybe a day, but he has army contacts.” Baghra needs to heal, she knows, but they don’t have time. Twelve hours for that party to return with her brother as a trophy – if she were the king, she would send them out first, then a second, larger party that could not as easily cover its tracks, but would be more likely to present overwhelming force, assuming the first party failed.
She hates being right. She meets her brother’s dark eyes as he comes up from the basement, and sudden dread curls in her stomach. Something is wrong, but he is moving too quickly, he is already at the door, and she hurries Luda and the rest together, to sneak out or to present a united front or something—
That’s what saves them, that the surviving grisha are near enough to her that she can see them. That she can shield them from the sudden pulse of sick crackling coursing through the sanctuary, tearing at old wounds and whispering to her. Come to us, be one with us, serve us, you are the dark as we are. It whispers and howls and begs and cajoles, but she has her shield up already, ripping apart merzost and providing temporary shelter to those around her. It is still tempting, still calling her.
She screams, hands forming the gesture automatically, and the Cut flies out of her shield, a symbolic as well as a literal severance. The voices stop, and she shakes her head, trying to make sense of the sudden sickly death reaching into the soil beneath her feet.
She staggers forward, and Luda stares at her, eyes wide.
“You’re bleeding,” she says, hand out, asking permission, and Kira nods. The pain in her back lessens, the old, reopened scars healing and vanishing. “What is this?”
“No time,” Kira says. She can’t hold this long. She needs – “Madraya!”
“I’ve got her!” comes Aleksander’s voice – thank Fate, thank the new Saints, thank whatever gods might exist, her brother is alive. He has a shield of darkness up as well, joining hers, and they march out the door.
She doesn’t understand it, what it could possibly be, what looks like night but does not feel like it. It is merzost, she knows that the way she knows her own soul, but it is wrong, like something ripped apart the world and left a gash behind. They walk out of it, and it seems like moments and eternity, but then they are in daylight once more, and still walking, almost running, due west.
She looks behind herself, and that is when she collapses.
A league high – at least – and stretching as far as she can see in either direction. It isn’t darkness. It is emptiness. It isn’t shadow, it is desolation. It isn’t night – it is death.
She is shaking. All of her is shaking, and Aleksander is holding her tight, and Baghra is sitting beside her, just as wide-eyed, and the grisha are staring, mouths agape, but she can think of none of that. She can only think of the tear in front of her, the tear that they have walked out of – the tear that ripped through the world, north to south.
“How far?” she asks. Her voice is barely a whisper. “How far does that go?”
One good thing that can be said of her brother, if it is the only good thing there is: he is brave.
“Down to the mountains, and up near the tsibeya,” he says, and his voice doesn’t even crack. “Twenty leagues at the longest. Two at the shortest.” His eyes are shining (wet with tears? With delight? She cannot say. Why can she not say?).
This has been true all their lives, and it is no less true now: Aleksander grieves. Kira rages. But this time, when she rages the world rages too, a cracking howling that accompanies her scream, as darkness shoots out of a Morozova for the second time this day. This darkness, however, is purely natural, Small Science instead of magic. Kira screams, and outside of their circle night blasts away the trees, underbrush, and all manner of small animals. She doesn’t know what else to do with the tear in her heart and soul but shove it out in her rage, in her power. It is worse with her brother holding her, the amplifier that he is.
And then it stops, and she is silent, for a time. Her silence lasts long enough for the others to grow worried as they make camp, as they set up for the evening. Aleksander will not look in her eyes. Good. He might be brave, but he is not stupid. She does not eat supper with them, eyes cast out at the world that her brother has made.
She stands when her mind is made up, and as one they all turn to her.
“The Darkling died this day,” she says, voice hard. She does not look at her brother. “Aleksander Morozova is dead, and any of you with sense will spread that tale far and wide. His shadows created that… fold of night, and whatever comes after that is simply the world making itself right. You will go west, and south, and across the sea, and you will spread that tale, and no other, else I will find you, and I will end you.” She meets pair after pair of eyes, dark and light, all terrified of her. They have seen what her family can do. Finally, she meets her brother’s eyes, and she sees remorse there, and for that she decides not to kill him in truth today. “Kinslayer,” she names him, and he flinches. “You have killed your brother by marriage, my husband, and you have killed your grand-nephews and grand-nieces, and their children, and you are a kinslayer thrice over for this crime, for you have killed your own sister’s heart. So your punishment must be three-fold.”
It is the old way, the way that even she barely remembers, but she knows it deep in her heart. It is right that she does this, that she gives him a punishment suited to his crime. And it must be her, she knows, looking at this assembly of shattered power; she is the only one who can.
“First, you will not hear your given name from my lips for a hundred years, for the years my husband had lived and could have lived. You have forfeited that name for that time and no longer. One hundred years and one day from now, you will meet me again, in this spot. If you do not… I will know you for a coward as well as a fool, and I will act accordingly.
“Second, you will leave Ravka at the earliest available day, and you will not return until it is time to meet me here. You will not see its shores, its trees, its mountains, until you must see me again. You may live that life with the one you love, or you may live it alone, but you will not do it in my country. Not until I give you leave to return, for your crime was against me.” She draws a breath, and it shakes. She has not cried, and she intends not to, not yet.
Perhaps not ever.
“And third, Kira Morozova?” her brother asks, and there is a finality to his voice. He has accepted his fate, exhaustion or grief or some greater plan buried in his eyes.
“And third,” and here she blazes with power, shadows in the glade whispering with her with a hint of the merzost that even she cannot escape. “Your crime against my husband, paid, your crime against me, paid, you will dedicate the life remaining to you to rectifying that, to destroying or at least to minimizing its hurts upon our people. For you are a kinslayer, thrice over, but you have also destroyed entire lineages this day, and nothing will bring them back; but one day, we may be able to give their bodies to the earth, and quiet restless spirits. That is my judgment, and it is final.”
And she walks away.