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“What have you done?” Alina whispers, horrified, as she stares at the wreck that was once an orphanage.
Aleksander’s hand is tight around her wrist, ensuring that she can see everything through their tether, although she is unable to interfere.
“I warned you, my Alina.”
“You monster!” she shrieks, struggling in his grasp, trying to scratch her nails down his smug face, “you killed them.”
“Did I?” he asks, cool and collected, amused rather than concerned by the anger inside her that burns hotter than the flames his Inferni used to scorch the orphanage and nearby meadow.
She freezes at his words and he takes advantage of her surprise to tighten his hold, spinning her around so she is forced to face him.
“Where are they?” Alina demands, hope sparking inside her at the chance that the orphanage occupants may still be alive.
He laughs, condescending and cutting, “do you really think I will simply tell you. After all the trouble you’ve caused me, you’ll have to make amends – perhaps then I may be inclined to indulge your questions.”
“I’ll find them without you,” she snaps, “I will take the Fold down and then I will destroy you.”
“Such bold words, little saint. But can you follow through?”
Alina calls the sun, the whole area around them lighting up like it is a bright summer noon rather than a hazy dusk.
“You are magnificent, my Alina,” he acknowledges with a fondness that disarms her, “but you do not know war, not as I do. Stop this foolishness. Come and join me, and together we will usher Ravka into a new age.”
“I will never join you, Darkling. I’d rather –”
“Ah, ah,” his hand clamps over her mouth, “let’s not say anything we’ll regret, hmm.”
Alina’s response is to bite down on his hand, relishing his muffled curse.
However, her sense of triumph does not last long.
“Do you really think,” he murmurs, soft and deadly as he handles her as if she is an unruly kitten, one large hand on her neck and the other wrapping like an iron band around her waist, “that anything will truly change with your Lantsov prince on the throne? He is more intelligent than our late, unlamented tsar, I will admit, but that’s hardly a difficult bar to surpass. He foolishly believes that destroying the Fold will solve all his problems rather than just increasing them. And her relies too much on the support of the nobility, too weak to stand on his own two feet, what with all those nasty rumours about his parentage – why do you think he is so desperate to have you by his side?”
“If he’s using me then it’s nothing worse than what you want to do yourself.”
Aleksander snorts, “I want an equal, a partner. We are two sides of the same coin, my Alina. After all, like calls to like, and you are the only person who could rule by my side. Nikolai Lantsov, however, desires only a pretty ornament to glow on command and make him appear strong. He may not be the lecher that the old tsar was, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be much better as a ruler.”
“It’s not like that,” she insists, even though deep down she fears it is.
“You cannot trust him, Alina. He does not have enough power, nor does he have the inclination or the strength of will to do what is necessary for Ravka. Soon enough, he will fall – I will hunt him and his toy soldiers and they will not be able to stand against me.”
“No,” she shakes her head, hands glowing.
“Yes,” he nods, almost pitying, “your alliance will crumble from within. How long will Fedyor stay when Ivan stands by my side? Will those Grisha who follow you really be able to face mine – men and women who have taught and cared for them, fought with them on the front lines? And when will your tracker admit he fears your power and flee in search of a dull, ordinary life?”
Aleksander’s eyes are dark, glittering with fervour, terrifying and entrancing at the same time.
“I will do what I must, my Alina. I will strip away all that you know, all that you love, until you have no shelter but me.”
The bleak harshness of his words is somehow tempered by the tender way he now touches her cheek and the gentle press of his lips on her forehead.
Does he love me? she wonders, is this what love is for one as ancient as him – devouring and monstrous devotion?
“Tell me where you are, Alina,” he croons, lips brushing the shell of her ear, “I can be merciful with your friends, if you accept your rightful place at my side.”
She doubts that Aleksander’s idea of mercy matches her own.
But if she refuses him …
She can imagine how his cold fury might sweep across the country, destroying every obstacle in its path.
It is not truly surrender, if she goes to him. It is strategy, buying time, keeping her friends safe from his wrath.
It is inevitable, her traitorous mind whispers.
“You might make me a better man, my Alina,” he offers.
“And you might make me a monster,” she counters.
He appeals to the hungriest part of her soul, after all, the orphan who wants, who craves a true home, who finds it hard to resist Aleksander’s level of devotion.
Alina looks back at the smouldering ruins of her first home, a reminder of the cruelty the man in front of her is capable of.
“Will you let me see the children?”
His smile is a wide, satisfied thing and his teeth flash in the dying light. He knows he has her.
“Of course, little saint. My Sankta Alina, patron of orphans and lost causes.”
He says it affectionately, but there is a little sting there too, a reminder that he dismisses the fight against him as a lost cause.
“I will not bow to you,” Alina glares at him, “I will never stop fighting to keep all Ravkans safe, not just the Grisha. And the Fold –”
“The Fold is no simple issue, Alina,” he chides, “its destruction is not a fix-all. Once you understand all the ramifications, only then will we discuss it.”
Alina moves to argue, but she sees something in his eyes that makes her pause. Old pain and grief, a sense of knowing that can only come over a long life full of loss.
She’s always been so focused on how centuries alive might have stripped him of his humanity that she never thought about how many people he will have watched die – he had hinted at it once, told her with glistening eyes of the good soldiers and friends he had buried.
The words slip out of her mouth almost without her meaning them to.
The name of a small village, one she’ll be able to get to quickly enough if she sneaks off with a horse, but far enough away from their base that her friends should manage to flee before Aleksander gets there.
After all, he’s offered his mercy, but she can’t imagine that some of them will want to take it.
Alina wonders whether they will ever forgive her.
There is no time for regrets, though. Too much blood has already been shed and Alina will do her very best to bring peace.
His hold loosens on her now, and when he kisses her it feels for a moment like the morning of the Winter Fete all over again.
Butterflies in her belly, a thrilling surge of lust, a sense of coming home.
They can’t go back to that, she knows, not after everything that has happened.
Still, perhaps there can be hope for the future.