Chapter Text
For three days he had tracked the mythical beast and not for the first time did Aleksander feel as if he was, quite literally, following in the footsteps of his fabled grandfather. llya Morozova, the greatest Grisha who had ever lived. Sankta llya of the chains. IIya who had allowed a bunch of primitive, powerless otkazat'sya bind and throw him over a bridge into furious waters that ran white with foam and fury. All for the terrible crime of retrieving his daughter from death.
That was the part that Aleksander could never understand. ‘All that power,’ he thought. ‘All that weakness.’ He may have Ilya’s blood but he would never carry that defect. A hundred years of living had made it clear that only the strong survived. They were revered, feared and left the bones of the weak in their wake.
He stepped to the start of the clearing, soundless on the snow. Behind, shadows brushed away the prints of his boots, leaving no trace that anyone living had ever come this way. It was winter and the snow-covered ground before him glittered like a spun cloak of silver, as though strewn with stardust by the huge moon above that hung low like a lantern, that swallowed all the glimmer of the stars. And at the edges as always, hung the shadows, ever-ready, eternal. Like himself.
And on the other side of the clearing that was rimmed with trees which had seen more years than himself, stepped the unicorn into the open. It was whiter than the moon and stars and snow, as old as the bones of this land, ageless and ancient in a way that he was. Its spiralled horn gleamed like an ascending sun still cradled by dawn. Even standing perfectly still, it was more alive than any galloping beast, its presence large as a mountain. He could feel the fire of life pulsing in its veins even from where he stood; its tasted like power, like something he knew intimately. ‘Like calls to like.’ The thought touched Aleksander like a caress, sent a shiver from the crown of his head to the base of his spine.
That deadly horn lowered as the unicorn issued a challenge, its elegant cloven hoof pawing at the ground. Its tail was longer than the old drawings portrayed and Aleksander knew it was a weapon too, one that he suspected could whip against a man’s bones and shatter them. Unicorn hooves were rumoured to be able to strike stone and break it. And that horn... His dark grey eyes burned with their own fire as he stepped out of the shadows to meet his prey. That horn was going to be his amplifier, tied to his body forever, bound to his power. With it, he would change the world. He would save all Grisha.
But first, he would have to slay a legend.
He was ready.
Suddenly the clearing was bright enough to dazzle even the sun itself. Instinctively, Aleksander threw up his hands to shield his eyes, to protect himself.
Light burned down in fiery arcs. And Shadow rose to meet it.
That night, the people of the Tula Valley stood at their windows with fearful mutters and wringing hands. The air sizzled and flared, the sky strobed white as though the sun had come crashing down and then black, as if Night had come furiously to contend with its rival Day for supremacy. The ground shook with tremors, the earth itself twisting and shivering with the onslaught of power. Vases collapsed, pots and pans shook free from their hooks and clattered to the floor, mothers rocked their crying infants and toddlers with trembling arms as fathers prayed. And then at last, at long, long last, it was over. The valley became quiet.
The unicorn lay dead at his feet, the dark pools of its eyes locked in an eternal gaze that even now seemed to pierce him. Just as its horn had pierced his hand, the centre of his palm to be precise. Aleksander cursed, biting back pain as he strove to staunch the bleeding, blood running freely over his knuckles, falling onto the snow like rubies carelessly thrown. Ripping a swath of cloth from his sleeve, he bound the wound, groaning softly because it still hurt. More so than any physical wound he had ever suffered in his long years. It ran deep just like the unseen wounds he nursed; those never seemed to heal and in some ways, had never stopped bleeding. Heat touched his eyes and Aleksander Morozova, the man who had been a boy who had at some point sworn never to cry, raised a hand to his face and drew them back, staring in uncomprehending wonder at the wetness on his fingertips.
Tears.
He smelled the salt of them in the air. He felt the riot blooming in his heart, a storm whose wings could not be clipped, that threatened wreck from out of the ruin of his years. The father he never knew. The friends he could never have. The contempt of the rejected, those who could never taste and know the wonder that came from touching the making at the heart of the world. The terrible hunger of his kind who craved his bones and teeth for the strength they would give.
Was he poisoned? Confused, he lifted his trembling hand, staring at the blood-soaked material and then down at the bloodstained horn, so luminous even in death. Now he had to raise the beast again. And then vanquish it once more. After that, he would have his army. He would have a family, all the Grisha in Ravka and beyond. Any who would come to shelter beneath his wing. For once they would not have to run and hide. His shadows would illuminate them for all the world to see.
He could do all that. If he could just stop this bloody shaking and shivering that had him in its grip. Gasping back the sob clawing at his throat, he knelt, placed one hand on the forelock of the dead legend just beneath its horn and then placed the other over its still heart. He knew what to do. He had studied the books, had pried apart their riddles, had read the lines unwritten and buried within those visible on pages. He had coaxed his mother, that formidable figure whose love and approval he craved almost above all else, had endured her barbs and stinging rebukes and rejections for bits of information that confirmed his hypotheses.
And now this moment he had dreamed of and breathed into existence was here. He would not lose it. The unicorn was still warm to the touch, like a fire hidden behind a screen. Sucking in a hard breath between clenched teeth, Aleksander closed his eyes, began forming the words on his lips. He began pulling at the fabric that went into the making of the heart of the world, unravelling a thread to take for his own.
Later, he would look back and realise that this was the moment where he should have stopped. Such a ritual could only be carried out by a steady mind clear in its purpose, a heart untroubled as a lighthouse on a seacoast. Instead, inside, he was coming unmoored, the pieces of who he was surfacing, his buried histories rising from their graves to tug at him. Desire. Disappointment. Weakness. Wanting. So much wanting. An ocean of it in which to drown.
Aleksander’s eyes flew open. He was on fire though his flesh remained unburned. Desperately he wrenched his hands away from the carcass of the beast, fell back on his haunches in the wet bitter cold and saw the shadows writhing wildly around him, flailing like waves dashed by wind against rocks. He looked down at himself and saw light racing beneath his skin.
“No!” He stumbled to his feet, tearing at his flesh. “No!”
Power speared him, a giant fist that came crushing down and he knew in that moment it was too much, it was much too much. He had opened the forbidden door and stepped through. He had called on something he thought he understood and now it was here. He had taken it in his hands only to find it was like trying to hold the oceans in his arms. He was going to explode. He was going to die.
Something was growing in him, something beyond and within all at once. He wanted to call for his mother, to tell her he loved her, that he was sorry.
His head fell back, his spine arched in a curve no human body was made for, arms spread wide apart, fingers splayed, caught in a windstorm of his own making. The air smelled so sharp, so clear, so strange. Light and shadow rushed through his vision, blinding him. Beneath his feet rolled the great wide world and all the beating hearts and silent dead it contained.
This was not how it was supposed to be. This was not how he was supposed to leave this world, not without carving his name into history, not without being remembered. Without being loved.
Aleksander screamed as power, more power than he had ever known came into him, came through him. He screamed in the throes of agony and ecstasy, his body bending beneath a force it was compelled to funnel. It drowned his bones and flesh, gushed from his skin, clawed its way out from his back, the wings of the storm inside him brought to life.
There was a tremendous crack, like thunder all around.
It was the last thing he heard. Then he was lost, adrift in the dark, the cold kiss of snow on his cheek, the taste of blood in his mouth.