Chapter Text
Prologue.
The cell is dark, and damp, and cold. It’s probably a good thing Alina has never been afraid of the dark; or if she ever was, it was so long ago she no longer remembers. Even before the shadows became so inextricably connected with him (regardless of whether he was around to be controlling them or not, in her mind all shadows were a part of him to some degree) Alina found the darkness easy, cozy, almost… comforting. Being kept away from the sun for so long has weakened her to the point that she isn’t sure there’s any need for the shackle chaining her to the wall anymore. She’s become so weak… sickly so. Then again, it’s not like it’s the first time. She was sick for so many years while hiding her status as a Grisha (long enough that there came a time when she forgot she was hiding and convinced herself that she just wasn’t Grisha at all…).
So she’s in a dark, damp and cold cell, shackled to the wall and weak and sickly from being kept away from the sun. There’s not even a window in her cell, though she’s pretty sure she’s underground, so that might explain that. She wonders if the dungeon-like place might even be part of the White Cathedral, it’s not like she ever fully explored the place… What does it matter anyway? It’s not like she’s getting out any time soon, if ever.
The Darkling was right, and why is she even surprised by that? But no, if she’s honest with herself, there’s a part of her that was never surprised by it. She knows that many always saw her as a young, impressionable, naive little girl, but she’s far from that. Alina’s a half-Shu orphan who grew up in an orphanage that was utterly dependent for its existence on a Duke’s charity. An orphanage where half the children had lost their parents to Shu attacks on the border towns. How did people think she grew up, considering those things? But truth is, most people never stopped to think about such things, most people never saw beyond her status as the Sun Summoner; and before that, before she was ever known to be Grisha, she was always the Shu-girl, the orphan, the outsider, the waif nobody wanted…
Even the First Army didn’t want her. Military service is compulsory in Ravka; everyone, both men and women are expected to serve a minimum of three-to-five years, depending on their talents, position and specific circumstances at the time of their service (like, whether they happened to be actually fighting against Fjerda/Shu-Han or someone else at the time, or if there’s currently a lull in hostilities).
There are a few ways to avoid service, of course. Most noble heirs for example, rarely serve, and if they do, they’re never sent to the front (after all, what would their Houses do, if they were to lose the next lord?). Those who join the Church of the Saints don’t, either, unless it’s as medics or to bring the Faith to those serving. The last consideration are those too sickly or with a severe enough disability to keep them from passing Basic. The problem on that front is that, for orphans like Alina (and Mal, and so many others), the First Army is the only way for them to make something of their lives. Unless they’ve been especially lucky and been adopted, or at the very least apprenticed under someone with no one else to teach their particular trade or skill to, then the First Army is their one chance to earn some coin, enough to hopefully make a start on a life, either paying someone to teach them a trade or perhaps put a downpayment on a farm, a ship or something else, once they’re finished with their service (if they live that long); or in most girls’ cases, the money is usually used for a dowry.
The First Army did not want Alina. She was seen as too weak and sickly to be able to finish Basic. When she turned sixteen, she tried to sign-up, like her first friend Mal, and a few others, but she was rejected. It was Ana Kuya’s (the orphanage’s matron) idea that she ought to learn how to do something else; something that would be useful enough for the First Army to want her, but not something they’d need her on the frontlines for. Medicine would have been the most useful talent, but the orphanage’s budget was tight enough already, they did not have the kind of money needed to get someone to teach Alina to be a medic; so she turned to mapmaking instead. Between the inclement weather in some areas of Ravka, the subtle but not insignificant shift in the Shadow Fold every so often, and the constant armed conflicts (at times not just in the borders) lines and landscapes kept being redrawn, and the army always needed to have maps they could trust. Alina always had a knack for drawing, and by the time she turned eighteen she was so good the army couldn’t not take her. And thus she became a mapmaker.
Alina’s always known what it’s like to not fit in, to be different from everyone else. The orphanage wasn’t the only place where her Shu looks gave her trouble. The First Army was the same. Her looks, coupled with her sickly state, and the fact that despite this she was still clearly the most talented of them all made things harder than they could have been, had she been just like everyone else…
It’s one of the reasons she’d such a hard time, when she was found out to be Grisha, when she first came to the Little Palace. After growing up listening to all sorts of stories about Grisha, all the ways they were different, odd… almost unnatural… It didn’t make things easy for Alina. And of course then there was the fact that her being a Sun Summoner, rather than just any other sort of summoner, any other sort of Grisha, meant that she’d be hunted, probably for the rest of her life. Both by those who wanted her dead, and those who wanted her for themselves (back then she wasn’t actually sure which one might be worse, nowadays… well, she now knows death isn’t the worst fate).
Even when she could, somewhat, get over the fact that she was Grisha rather than otkazat’sya, there was the fact that even among Grisha she just didn’t fit. A part of her (a tiny, childish and half-terrified part) had wanted to believe that proving to be Grisha, being in the Little Palace, would mean that she’d finally have a home, a place where she could belong. But it wasn’t to be so. Even when she chose to wear Etherealki blue instead of the black the general offered her, there were always those quick to remind her that she wasn’t like everyone else. That she’d never fit…
The General scoffed at her not wanting to stand out, wanting to be like the others, but was it truly so wrong? Wanting to belong? To have a home?!
And then… then everything went so, so very wrong, in so many ways… When she stood face to face with Baghra, in those dark tunnels beneath the palaces, when the woman told her that General Kirigan (her almost lover!) was the Black Heretic, was a monster seeking to enslave her, and worst of all, that all his sweet words, his vulnerability before her, were nothing more than a lie, an act meant to draw her in, to chain her to him… Alina used to believe nothing could ever hurt more than that revelation. It was such a betrayal, what could possibly be worse than that…? A feeling that was only compounded when the Darkling went and put that collar on her, took control of her, of her light, her soul… Used her like she wasn’t a woman, merely a tool, a weapon (one that was used to kill so, so many)… What could possibly be worse than that?!
And then Alina was forced to go and rip out her own heart… for the good of Ravka! She might as well have plunged that Grisha steel through her own heart at the same time it went into his, for all the good it did her afterwards.
Thing is, as bad as things might have gotten throughout the war, regardless of all the yelling and the insults, of the way they so willingly attacked each other… Alina never actually imagined there ever being a day when Aleksandr just wouldn’t be there anymore. She knew he had to be stopped, and who else could possibly stop him but her, and yet… Somehow it never occurred to her what that meant. (She was always good at denial, wasn’t she? Even if it got her nowhere).
Alina killed Aleksandr… the Darkling. She killed the man who, despite all the bad he’d done, not just to Ravka as a whole, but to her, despite all that, he was still the man she loved more than anyone else in the world (more than she ever thought she loved Mal) with her whole heart and soul. And still she killed him, because if there was one thing that he taught her, and taught her well, it was that Grisha must be protected, and Ravka as a whole; and he was a threat to both.
The last betrayal… Alina couldn’t say she was surprised, not really. Regardless of whatever friendship and perhaps even… affection, Nikolai might have for her, his desire for a throne, for the throne he believed he was owed, would always be stronger. It didn’t even matter that he turned out not to be a Lantsov in the end, he was raised a prince, and even as a second son, he was raised to believe that the throne belonged to his family.
Alina wouldn’t have even minded his betrayal, if it had been about Ravka. Everything changed after she killed A… the Darkling. Or no, it wasn’t then. Or rather, things changed for her, in her mind and heart then, but people didn’t start acting differently until later, when Nikolai’s coronation was abruptly interrupted by a heartrender high on jurda parem. So many people died, Nikolai himself came dangerously close. And while that in and of itself would have been bad enough (it’s certainly lead to Grisha becoming feared and hated all over again… not that things ever were that different, hard as she tried); the real issue was the fact that when Alina managed to push past the tearing pain inside herself and created a Cut, it was one made out of shadows instead of light…
She knows most people haven’t trusted her since then. It’s not that Alina isn’t the Sun Summoner anymore, she is. But nowadays the shadows come to her just as easily as the light, sometimes even more so. She doesn’t know if the shadows are some sort of curse, the price she must pay for using Merzost to bring Mal back or… there’s a part of her that cannot help but wonder if perhaps these are His shadows, a part of her Aleksandr that he left with her, his way of keeping his promise to always be right by her side… There’s no way she could ever say that to anyone though, they’d either pity her, think her crazy, or be even more horrified by the whole thing than they already are. Then again, she’s not sure her situation can be any worse than it already is! (She’s been betrayed, put in a cell, cut off from everything and everyone, even the sun!)
When they first came for her, Alina was confused. The Apparat arrived at her rooms at the head of a dozen royal guards. He claimed that he was there to take her to the Church for a cleansing ritual, that she had been corrupted by the Darkling and her light needed to be purified. Alina didn’t think anything the Church could do would change her circumstances (and she didn’t want it to), but she still followed the Apparat. Things were already complicated enough, she didn’t want to do anything that might result in Grisha having more difficulties than they already did. It was until they started walking down the hallway that it occurred to her to wonder at the fact that there were a full dozen guards escorting. Why? What did they think she was going to do?!
At first Alina was taken to a Church, where she was kept locked in isolation day and night, except for the times when a dozen guards would escort her to service three times a day. She was made to wear nothing more than a coarse off-white robe and no shoes. She was also denied food often, and only given enough water to survive. When the thin skin of her feet (as strong as she might have become, since discovering she was Grisha, it’d take more than a year or two to erase the long-term damage the wasting sickness left on her body) tore and she started leaving bloody footprints on the Church’s floors, these were treated as signs of her penance, proof that she was ‘walking the path to her redemption’.
Alina made a point to never complain, to never ask for more than she was given. The Apparat spun it all to fit with his own narrative of course, and Alina just kept telling herself that she was doing it for the Grisha. That she endured all she did to protect them, the last thing she wanted was to give people even more reason to turn on Grisha.
Eventually there came a time when Alina could no longer walk, she could barely stand. By the time she was moved from the isolated room to that sunless dungeon she had no strength to resist. She was barely even aware. She only noticed the shackle on her when she opened her eyes and the darkness was so deep she couldn’t help but instinctively call on her light, she barely got the tiniest sphere, just enough to see herself and her surroundings.
She won’t lie (at least not to herself), there was a part of her that wondered if she would be tortured. Perhaps even used and abused in the ways she knew men enjoyed doing to girls. But that never happened. In fact, it was almost like people forgot she was there most of the time, or perhaps it was that so few knew she was there… She was given a little water every other day, and food only about once a week, always nothing more than stale bread. She was pretty sure that if it weren’t for what little access she still had to the shadows, she’d have died before long.
‘The little science feeds us’ is something she was taught in the Little Palace, and that seemed to be true enough. Away from the sun, and being so weak already, it didn’t take long before she fully lost the ability to call on the light. It’s still there, she can sense it deep inside her; but it’s almost like back when she’d just arrived at the Little Palace, before she learned to summon on her own, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t make it come. The shadows on the other hand… they come, and while they make little difference in the already near absolute darkness of her surroundings (the only thing keeping the smallest illumination being some kind of ore in the stones surrounding her that seems to make them almost glow, though very dimly. The shadows don’t seem to feed her much, whether that’s because they aren’t truly hers, or due to how little access she has to her abilities at all; but at least it’s enough to keep her from dying (some times, in her darker moments, she can’t help but wonder if that’s a good thing at all). It’s not that she wants to die, not really but… is she even living at all? Trapped in a dark hole, away from everything and everyone?
The Apparat does show up eventually bringing her news that shatter what little is left of her soul:
“You’re dead,” he informs her. “Officially. It was declared a fortnight ago. Sankta Alina, the Savior of Ravka, fought a battle against the curse the Darkling left upon her and while she was victorious, it came at a cost, that of her own life. It’s a tragedy, to be sure, but you should be proud of yourself girl, Ravka will remember you forever…”
No, they wouldn’t. They wouldn’t remember Alina Starkov, the Grisha, the once-mapmaker, the half-Shu orphan girl who tried so hard… No, all the people would remember would be Sol Koroleva… Alina remembers finding out that most of the Saints the Church talks about were in fact Grisha, good Grisha who used their skills to protect people, sometimes entire towns, and it cost them their lives. The stories always talk about their sacrifices, their tragic deaths… They’re never treated as real, as human, and certainly not as Grisha (the Church certainly wouldn’t be able to condemn Grisha as unnatural if they admitted most of their saints were such, could they?). Alina wonders how many of the so-called Saints did not die as the stories told, who might have survived their greatest works, only to be then killed by ungrateful otkazat’sya… She wonders why she even cares, it’s not like it makes a difference at all! She’s going to die, she’s as good as dead already, and no one will ever know, no one will ever care for Alina, and only remember Sol Koroleva.
The whole thing just makes Alina hate, more than she ever believed she could. She hates the Apparat, the slimy little man who all along wanted her to die, because saints are only good when they’re dead (one cannot make up a narrative about someone still alive, after all, as they might easily contradict any story told about them). She hates her so-called friends, who claimed to care so much for her, and yet they’ve all abandoned her (Genya, Zoya, Adrik, Nadia, Tamar, Inej, Mal...) every single one of them! And then there’s Nikolai…
The thing about Nikolai is that, if Alina still believed that he’s what’s best for Ravka, that he’s a good King, for Grisha and Non-Grisha both, that he’ll be fair to all the people… But she doesn’t believe that. She hasn’t believed that since even before she was taken to be ‘cleansed’. The only reason she stayed as long as she did was out of hope that she might still be able to protect her people, protect both Grisha and non-Grisha; because Alina knows, as bad a king as Nikolai might be for non-Grisha, he’s not doing much better for otkazat’sya in the end. Ravka is heading down a dark path, to ruin and chaos, and the man is next to useless, doing nowhere near enough to stop it!
If the Darkling were still around he’d have never allowed things to get as bad as they have. Hell, things weren’t as bad even with the previous Lantsovs in power (though again, that might have been because of the General…).
Alina just misses him, misses Kirigan, but more than that, she misses her Aleksandr so much… She cannot help but think that if she’d known then what she does now, things would have gone so very differently. She’d have never run away from him, would have given him a chance to tell her his side of things. But more importantly, she’d have tried so hard to make things work, to make him listen to her, as much as she listened to him, would have sought to have them compromise… She understands now that while the Fold might have been a terrible thing, it also served a purpose, in a way. She doesn’t know if she’d want it to stay indefinitely, but neither should it have been taken away so abruptly, and without a plan for securing the borders, for securing Ravka, for protecting Grisha, ensuring they’d have a future, a good one…
And beyond all that, beyond plans for war and peace, for Grisha in particular and Ravka as a whole. She misses her Aleksandr, misses the certainty that she didn’t have to be alone anymore… She’s so, so alone now…
xXx
Alina doesn’t see the attack coming. Things have gotten to the point where she seems to spend more time asleep than she does awake. And even the times when she’s awake she’s half-disconnected from reality, talking to herself (and wishing she were talking to him instead). Suddenly the door to her cell slams open and light comes pouring in, so bright and sharp Alina reacts instinctively, calling on shadows (calling on Aleksandr) to shield her. She thinks she might hear someone gasp, but before she can even think about trying to lower the shadows enough to look… someone’s taking over her body. She loses consciousness before she can so much as call out.
When she next wakes up things have changed, and not at the same time. She’s in a very different room this time, laying on an actual bed instead of an old cot. The room is dark, but not the dark of her old underground cell, but that of a room, one with actual windows; the darkness is caused by the fact that it seems to be the middle of the night. Also, someone’s clearly gone through the effort of washing her body and dressing her in a simple but very soft cotton nightdress. Even her hair is clean, shorter than it was before but still. Her feet are sore but healed. On the other hand, there are bars on the windows, and there’s a cuff of some sort around her wrist. She doesn’t even need to do a thing to know it’s meant to limit her summoning. Still, it’s an improvement. Also, there’s a glass and a pitcher of water, along with some bread that, while old clearly isn’t moldy, not even stale! There’s even a little fruit!
Knowing that it’ll be a mistake if she gorges herself after so long without solid food and barely even water, Alina pours a glass of water for herself and starts taking small sips of it. She considers trying the bread but her stomach rebels at the mere thought, so she takes tiny pieces of the fruit instead.
Her attention is drawn entirely away from the water and food when she feels a warmth at her core, in the distance she can see the sky beginning to grow lighter… dawn’s approaching.
It’s been such a long time since Alina’s seen the sun… She’s crying before she even realizes it.
The window of her room points east, and it looks like she’s in some sort of cabin either in the middle of nowhere, or near the edge of whatever town or village she’s in. Whichever the case, there’s nothing but a wide field that she can see outside, nothing to block her sight of the sun as it rises over some hills in the distance. Almost without thinking it, the moment the sun truly hits her, she summons, she doesn’t seek to create a sphere, or anything really, just letting a soft glow manifest around her.
She doesn’t realize she’s not alone anymore until the person speaks up:
“So you’re still the sun summoner then,”
Alina doesn’t flinch. While she’s surprised that someone entered the room without her noticing, she doesn’t see the point to being afraid. If this person, if any of the people involved in her rescue, wanted her dead, she’d be dead already.
“Yes,” she says simply, not turning around, she doesn’t want to look away from the sun just yet.
“And yet you can summon shadows as well,” the other person says.
“Yes,” she doesn’t bother trying to hide it, what would be the point?
“How?” the man demands sharply.
“I have no idea,” she answers with a shrug.
“Don’t lie to me!”
“I’m not lying. I have theories, but no way to prove or disprove any of them. Is it because I used Merzost to bring back my oldest friend? Is it because I killed him?” she doesn’t say his name out loud, she cannot. “Is it supposed to be a curse, like the Apparat claimed? Or is it just him trying to protect me even though I do not deserve it…?”
“Alina…”
“Hello Fedyor…”
It’s clear the heartrender wasn’t expecting her to say something like that, any of it. He has a hard time proceeding afterwards.
Alina learns what’s going on eventually. Fedyor is part of a new group. The Starless Order, they call it. They’re all Grisha who still believe in General Kirigan, who keep fighting to protect Grisha, like he would have wanted them to.
It’s not easy. Nikolai has apparently been trying to make some sort of deal with Shu-Han, promising to marry one of the Empress’s granddaughters, and the longer those negotiations go on, the worse things get on the southern border. And as if that weren’t enough, there’s the matter of Fjerda, who seems to take the Tsar’s intention to marry a Shu princess as an excuse to increase their own attacks on the north. And it’s not even just about kidnapping and killing Grisha and their families, but at least two villages and over half a dozen farms have been razed to the ground.
And what is the Tsar doing about it? Absolutely nothing. Alina wonders if he even knows (the more uncharitable part of her wonders if he even cares…).
It takes a little while, but eventually Alina learns that it’s no coincidence she was rescued. While not many believed the rumors that the sun summoner was trapped in a dark cell in the catacombs of the White Cathedral, a group of volunteers from the Order decided to take the chance. At first Alina thinks they expect her to fight with them, if not lead them. As it turns out, it’s not that at all…
“So you think these are actually his shadows, then?” she asks after the whole thing is explained to her, at the same time she summons a few shadows, playing with them in between her fingers.
“As you’ve already said, so do you,” Fedyor reminds her.
Yeah, she does. She used to consider it wishful thinking, and yet… she’d have never so much as considered the kind of implications the Order has.
“And you think that because of this, I can bring him back,” she continues.
She thinks about telling Fedyor how Aleksandr asked that there be nothing left of him, nothing others could use, either as amplifiers, or to bring him back. But at the same time, she can’t… because she knows Fedyor, she knows his loyalty is, always has been, and will always ultimately be to Kirigan, and if she tells him he didn’t wish to be brought back then… then he won’t do it, and Alina cannot handle existing as she does anymore!
“You have my sympathies for what comes next, when you realize that what you've done solves nothing. The world doesn't need a Saint to protect it. It needs a monster. And while I remain… Let me be your monster.”
“You think that after everything, I'd still stand by you?”
“There is no light without darkness. Without me, you have no counter, no balance. Let me carry the hatred of this world.”
“Hatred. Because of the choices you made.”
“Choices you too will make... in time.”
“I will never walk your path.”
“I know you believe that now. But soon… Soon you will have no equal. The years spent alone will grind you down, they will harden you. And who will be there to shield you from it? Who will be there to save you?”
She can almost hear the words still, inside her head, as if the whole exchange were happening in that very moment. Can almost see him, standing before her, bent yet unbroken. There’s so much she wishes she had known, had understood… That she had understood him. She never had the chance, never gave the both of them the chance. She was too naive, too trusting of the wrong people and later refusing to even listen no matter how hard he tried… She failed him, and she failed herself.
Truth is he was so strong, so much more than she’ll ever be. Standing tall, holding on, fighting for so long, all alone… She cannot do it.
“I’ll do it,” is all she says in the end.
xXx
It’s a rather simple ritual, though one with a lot of ingredients: a personal possession (his blade-ring), a representation of his House (one of his banners), one of his bloodline (one of Bagrah’s bones, given to Fedyor to serve as an amplifier), his blood (on some preserved bandages), the blade used to kill him, and what remains of the stag’s antler that was once grafted to the back of his hand. All those things are placed together in the middle of what will soon become a pyre. And then…
And then Alina steps in the middle of that circle, dressed in her old black kefta with gold embroidery and no shoes. She kneels in the middle of the pyre, before looking at Fedyor one last time, smiling at him and closing her eyes. She can hear the crackle as the fire begins. She knows there are inferni all around, ready to ensure that the pyre will continue burning no matter what, until everything is consumed. Alina makes herself think of nothing, not the Order, not the fire, not death, nothing but Aleksandr, and then she asks for his shadows to come.
She wonders if he’ll hate her when he learns what she’s done…