i.

Alina's new rooms changed things.

Maybe it was because she had been so unused to people looking at her before, that she was so attuned to them now. Alina imagined that if people looked at you all the time, you'd start to get used to it - and it occurred to her uneasily that in the future, that might happen to her as well.

But it hadn't happened yet, so when the eager desire to get to know her shifted into something more calculating, cautious, she noticed. People no longer fell over themselves trying to sit next to her, but instead took their time, communicating amongst themselves with a strange mixture of whispers and Significant Looks.

Slowly, Alina started to realise that a hierarchy was forming. Instead of being first in first served, she noticed that the people sitting nearest to her in class settled, like a pool of water after something large and unnatural is tossed into it. There was a boy, Sergei, who simultaneously tried to assert his superiority while deferring to her, and a girl called Marie, who seemed to take Alina's natural reticence as a challenge, chattering a little nervously at her throughout the day.

Actually, both of them seemed nervous, a strange glint in gazes that they threw at her a little too often to be natural. It took her a couple of days to realise that they were both seeking praise, and waiting to be dismissed, teetering on the edge of wanting to please – wanting to please her.

There was a part of Alina that liked that, although it was still overshadowed by her earlier uneasiness. Still, that uneasiness might have started to ebb, especially as she began to slowly respond to the overtures of her fellow students, if not for the fact that even Genya's attitude was starting to change.

She was definitely trying to remain warm, but Alina wasn't stupid. She could sense a wall between them now that hadn't been there before, a careful distance that the girl was constructing. She didn't shy away when Alina took her arm, but she had stopped offering it herself, and she outright refused to come and visit Alina in her new rooms. She'd been in and out of Alina's neat little room in the dormitory, but apparently the Little Palace was beyond her.

And the teasing stopped. Genya had always been kind, but now that was all she was. It was only when Alina realised that the other girl hadn't called her smelly in about a week, that she also realised she'd barely thought about Mal in that time period.

Instantly, guilt swamped her. Between classes and the other students and worrying about Genya's new aloofness, there hadn't been a lot time to focus on how much she missed him, but that - that wasn't the point. Not thinking about missing him was like saying she didn't missed him, and there was still that quiet ache in her chest that said she very much did.

Except, it was quiet now. Alina gnawed at her lower lip, flopping back on the giant, golden bed in her quarters to stare at the ceiling. The night sky was splashed across it, exactly as it would appear if there had been no roof at all.

Well. Not exactly - it was only the afternoon. But when evening fell, it did feel a little like being outside. Alina groaned, her thoughts still flitting around like annoying, buzzing flies. Focus!

Did Mal miss her? She was sure he had to. They'd been each other's sanctuaries, and a couple of months in Os Alta couldn't change that. Of course, that only made her feel worse. How awful would it be, if he showed up some day and she didn't recognise him? Didn't even remember him?

But he's not a Grisha, a silent, smirking thought pointed out. How is he going to make it here if he's normal? Powerless? They don't just let orphans waltz on into the Little Palace because you miss them.

The oprichniki aren't Grisha, she argued back, wincing as it occurred to her that she was fighting with herself. Maybe that was why Genya had started pulling away. Because she was going crazy.

But the thought of the oprichniki stuck in her head, and after a moment or two, Alina shot back up again. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she hopped down, pushing through the door into her receiving room, and then through the entrance to her quarters. Two oprichnik guards stood there, etched in black and gold, although she thought they were different ones than had been there the last time she had looked.

"Excuse me," she said. One of them started, and then blinked down at her.

"Did you need something, moi - uh, moi—"

He didn't know what to call her, Alina realised. "Alina is fine," she said quickly, saving him the trouble of stumbling around for a title she definitely didn't need or deserve.

He looked a little green at the thought of using her given name, but swallowed and nodded. "Can I help you?"

Her head bobbed seriously. "I was wondering where you got your gloves from."

"My gloves? Are you cold?"

"No, I just wanted a pair. It's important, I promise."

There was a beat of silence, before his face softened out of surprise and into kindness. Quickly, he shucked off his own gloves and held them out to her. "Here, m - Alina. If it is important, take these."

A protest rose up in her throat, only to die there. It was important. And surely he wouldn't have offered them if it was a big deal? Thus reassured, she flashed him a quick smile and reached up, taking the gloves gratefully.

"Thank you! This will be very helpful." On a flash of inspiration, she added, "What's your name? I can tell the Darkling you were so kind."

Whiteness chased away the remnants of green in his face. He must, Alina thought, be very pale.

"Erik, miss," he said after a beat.

"Alina."

"Yes, miss."

ii.

The gloves went into the bottom drawer of her dresser, once she'd dumped out everything that was already in there. It was a lonely looking place when she finished, the accessories tucked forlornly into one corner, but Alina promised herself it wouldn't stay that way.

That was how bits and pieces of Os Alta started to make their way into her bedroom. She acquired a full set of cutlery over four separate nights, and while she couldn't manage a proper plate, she did pilfer a delicately painted porcelain cup and saucer. After she popped her head out another day and ask another oprichnik where she might get a hat like hers, Alina found that scraps of the black and gold uniform started to make their way into her receiving room, until eventually she had a full set.

She spent a good hour trying to make the boots fit in the drawer without taking up too much space. No doubt the uniform would be a wrinkled mess when the time came to pull it out again, but Alina wasn't really focussing on that. She didn't think Mal would, either

(She asked for extra hot chocolate when the servants bought her dinner tray, and carefully parcelled it out to the guards).

They were small, silly things mostly – but that was sort of the point. Orphans learned how to take things nobody would miss all that much. The drawer was a record of her time in the Little Palace, and something like insurance.

If she had all of these things ready and waiting for him, to tell him about and share, she wouldn't forget him.

iii.

The Darkling, when he returned, brought with him a set of intricately painted nesting dolls. There had been some at Keramzin, she could remember that, but those had been worn, the faces rubbed away by years and years of being handled by sticky little fingers.

These were new, and they were all hers. Not used to receiving gifts, Alina stuttered out something like a thank you, which he immediately waved away.

"You'll find I spent much of my time away from the Little Palace. If I don't bring you gifts, how will I know you will remember me?"

Alina stilled. She couldn't quite recognise the flash of emotion that flared through her, but she didn't like it. Concern, maybe? Worry?

She wasn't doing anything wrong by saving things for Mal. But she still didn't want the Darkling to know.

"I don't think—" she said, realising she'd been quiet for a moment too long. She began to unstack the dolls, piecing them together again and lining them up on his long, dark table. They were Grisha, alternating red and blue and purple. "I don't think that anyone has ever forgotten you."

His gaze fell upon her, and for a second, Alina felt like she was being observed by a total stranger. This was not the quiet, easy-going man who had been chuckling at her comments and seeing to her comforts. Those grey eyes pinned her in place, and she squirmed a little, not liking it.

That seemed to snap him out of it. He blinked, and the stranger was gone, the Darkling she had come to know in some small way back in his place.

"You've been sleeping well?" he asked, as though nothing had happened.

"…mostly," she said, eyeing him suspiciously. He bore her stare with good grace, and there was no hint of that cool steel that had just about run her through.

"And if I were to ask your guards, would they say the same thing?"

"I didn't know, you put them there." There was a sullen huff to her tone that Alina didn't care about. He'd unsettled her, and she was going to make sure he knew that that wasn't okay.

"Ah." Good humour laced that quiet voice. "I've offended you."

"You were creepy."

"I was?" Two dark eyebrows flew upwards. "Well, if you say so, that must be true. After being on the road so long, I couldn't be tired, or distracted, or hungry…"

It hadn't felt like a tired look to Alina, but then, she'd never seen him any of those things either. The Darkling did have a strange face, it was true – beautiful, of course, but how often did you call a man beautiful? It was strange. Maybe it made strange hungry faces, too.

"If you're hungry, we can have cake," she announced.

"Then I suppose I am hungry."

He asked her about her classes, and she skimmed over the material, focussing instead on the new behaviour of her fellow students. The Darkling didn't seem all that surprised, and he didn't exactly offer helpful advice, either.

"It's the way of the world, solnyshko," he told her with a simple shrug of one shoulder. "They have realised that you aren't simply some curiosity I've picked up, but a Grisha with real power. They are starting to treat you seriously."

"But I haven't done anything." And she didn't think that explained Genya, who had never treated her like a curiosity.

"But now they know you can. Watch them, carefully. You can learn as much from the people around you as from your lessons, if you pay attention." There was a pause. "You haven't shown them what you can do."

It wasn't a question. Alina supposed it didn't need to be – he definitely would have heard if she'd been flashing her light powers around. She looked down at her dolls, and fidgeted a little.

"I wasn't sure if…I was allowed to. And it's not like I can do anything impressive, anyway."

"Allowed to?" He seemed taken aback by that. "Your power is yours, solnyshko. If you want to use it, use it. As for impressive, the smallest flicker from your fingertips is already more impressive than the entire Second Army."

Ravka's saviour. She felt like she was missing something, but there was no putting her finger on it. Alina might have been getting used to the strangeness of her new life, but she was still only young. Figuring out what any adult wanted was hard, much less this one.

Later, she stacked up the dolls again and set them on top of her dresser. All except the smallest, whole one. That, she tucked into one of the gloves in her bottom drawer, and refused to feel bad about.

iv.

Zoya sat next to her at lunch.

Genya was still on Alina's other side, of course, although there was more of a gap between them than there had been in past weeks. Alina tried to tell herself it didn't bother her.

Zoya had taken the place of the same boy she'd fought with, all those weeks ago. It took Alina a second, but she saw the cleverness in that - Ivan was nearly fourteen now, closer to graduating than anyone else whose name she had been able to remember. If he pressed the matter of sitting next to Alina, Zoya would be able to shrug it off as a much older student taking precedence, rather than Alina showing favour to anyone.

Ivan had sat next to her yesterday. He hadn't said much, and Alina honestly preferred that, but Zoya had never sat next to her before. She still wasn't used to the politics of this place, but it was simple mathematics to understand that giving one person a seat two days in a row while rejecting someone who had never sat by her was a sign of favouritism. Whether she actually meant that or not.

So when Zoya sat down, Alina did nothing. Ivan scowled, but it was directed at the beautiful girl in blue, not her. Internally, she breathed a sigh of relief. Ivan might not have been a Corporalnik yet, but that didn't mean he didn't have the skills of a Heartrender.

Zoya shook her hair back over her shoulders, giving a bright smile that bypassed her eyes entirely. "I thought I would save you from a morning of being grunted at."

"Who's going to save us from you?" Genya murmured, and Alina stifled a giggle. She hadn't heard the girl say anything that could be considered 'sharp' in weeks.

A cool gaze flickered over to Genya, assessing. Alina had seen that look on other people what felt like a thousand times since she had befriended the other girl, and prepared herself to get her hackles up when the inevitable dismissive glance away came.

But it didn't. Zoya simply titled her head to one side, stacking her plate with food. "If you are afraid of me, Genya, you may leave. You wouldn't be the first."

It should have sounded ridiculous coming from so small a person. But Zoya made it sound as threatening as anything Alina had ever heard an actual Grisha say - which of course only had Genya lifting her chin stubbornly.

"The day a walrus like you makes me afraid of anything is the day I leave the Little Palace and never come back."

There was a moment of silence. Neither girl said anything, but the atmosphere was suddenly oppressive. Alina held her breath, afraid that if she shifted even a centimetre, something would explode. Zoya's eyes dipped to the white of Genya's clothes, but Genya's jaw only tightened further. Another beat passed, and then Zoya turned back to her breakfast, like nothing had happened.

And maybe nothing had. But the tremble in Genya's hand as she gripped her knife tighter implied otherwise.

"I thought," Zoya said, "that I would offer my services as tutor. Obviously I don't know what you can do, but you are taking a heavier load of Etherealki-based classes. I'm the best in my year, and better than most people above me."

Alina's eyebrows shot up. It was arrogant, maybe, but the other girl wasn't bragging. Rather, she spoke with the self-assured tone of someone who knew that every word she was saying was true. Genya's tremor made her want to say no outright, made her want to turn her back on the other girl and tease her friend, ease the tension. But there was a curiosity in her too, something that wanted to sink its claws into the situation and dig a little deeper.

Watch them, carefully. You can learn as much from the people around you as your lessons, if you pay attention.

She resisted the urge to press her face into her breakfast and leave it there. This was all so exhausting. Wasn't it just supposed to be school? Why did it matter who got to sit next to her? Why did Zoya - who she was pretty sure would never have approached her if she had been wearing some other colour - want to tutor her? Why did she have to weigh all of these things up as though she were choosing to send someone to their death?

Power, Alina decided, was overrated.

"Why do you want to?" she asked. Other than that first encounter, they hadn't exchanged a word. She definitely didn't think the other girl had any interest in helping her out of the goodness of her heart.

Zoya sniffed, chewing and swallowing before she deigned to reply.

"I'm not going to embarrass either of us by pretending it doesn't have anything to do with who you are. And I'm not going to pretend to be all nice and sappy to get on your good side." She didn't glance at Genya, be she didn't have to. "I think we can help each other. That's it."

Not so long ago, she would have turned to Genya to get her opinion, or even just a smile of encouragement. Now, though, she simply turned the idea over in her head. It wasn't only classes Zoya could help her with. The girl had a confidence that even Genya couldn't match, an innate belief that she was always right.

Alina wanted that. Little mouse, Grigori had called her, and he had been right. The Darkling himself had separated her from everyone else in Ravka, marked her out as special, but what had she done to claim that? Had nightmares and been moved away from the others to stop them from waking up?

She hadn't even displayed her real power to them, too caught up in her thoughts and worries to think about proving herself.

"Fine," she said, spooning some extra sugar onto her porridge. She'd eaten half of it already, but it still tasted bland. "Then let's help each other."

First off, I just want to thank everyone who has taken the time to review and favourite/alert the story so far! The feedback is great, and I super appreciate it. I do want to note, though, that I work full time and have other projects/hobbies that aren't this particular fic - I'm updating as fast as I can, I promise, and you don't need to worry about me abandoning the story because there's more than a three day gap between chapters.

Anyway, thank you again, and I hope you liked this latest chapter c: