Notes: Uff da, so it's been a break! Sorry for the wait! This life is the canon timeline, and it'll be two (short) parts :3 enjoy!
o.
The brighter the star, the faster it burns, the quicker it dies.
The darker the night, the colder it seems, the lonelier it feels.
Stars that die quickly are born slowly, with century after century spent collecting what is needed to reignite. To shine.
Lonely nights are born quickly and die slowly, with century after century spent losing what is needed to remember. To love.
But sometimes in the dark, in the loneliness, there are mothers.
And mothers do not lose as easily.
The Third Life: Old Women (part one)
i.
The knife scraped across the stone at an angle, effortlessly sliding through the potato in a neat, even slice.
"You're angry with me."
Her hand pauses, for only a moment, before she continues cutting, "I am never angry with you."
Silence. But she feels his stare on her, expectant. The water in the kettle over the tile oven begins to steam. She chops the rest of the potato, pushing it to the side along with the onions and carrots. And hears his sigh, slow and measured.
"Then you think I'm wrong."
Her mouth twitches. That, she can never claim against. But as her thin hand wipes the flat of her knife against her old kefta, the smile dies. Because what does it mean, if he is right? For she made sure he never became a fool.
"What I think matters little," she lifts the tray, and walks slowly to the kettle, where she shovels the vegetables into the water, "As a decision's already been reached," the water sloshes from one edge to another, and she moves to sit across from him, "It's of no use."
From his chair, he folds one leg over the other. Always prepared for a throne, this one, "You'll train her."
She snorts, folding her hands under her chin and staring into the flames, "Oh I will, will I?"
His lip quirks, in a boyish way she has not seen for some time now, "You must be at least a little curious."
"I am too old for curious."
He straightens, a hand reaching out to stir the soup, "Excitement, then."
"And far too old for that."
They sit in silence. The vegetables cook.
When he speaks again, his voice is softer, "Madraya."
She takes a breath. And feels a headache blossoming above the bridge of her nose, along with a sour note in her stomach she knows is not from the earlier herring.
But, because dinner is going to burn if they continue this tiring discussion, she relents, "…Your stray gets one day. If she's not entirely useless, I'll give her two."
"Thank you."
Baghra frowns as she pours soup into two bowls, "I have no interest in coddling. If she's weak, she goes."
Her son takes the food when she offers it, "I think…" he pauses, contemplating his words, "She may surprise you."
She feels her eyes narrow as he begins to eat from her cheap, clay bowl. No doubt they have porcelain and crystal at the Little Palace, but his evening has found him here. And his stare is far away, face set in an expression she knows all too well.
"Surprise is even worse than excitement," Baghra mutters, but he does not acknowledge hearing it.
Instead, Aleksander continues to look into nothing. The soup tastes like chalk on her tongue.
The stray is late. And let all the heat out because she is incapable of closing a door. She is also entirely formed of elbows and knees—the wind would knock her over. Or a breeze, summoned by one of the Squaller children playing tag.
But Baghra knows she did not raise her son to be a fool. So she grabs the stray's wrist-
"Will you see her again tomorrow?"
Baghra hears the smirk in his voice, and her lips purse "She's weak."
"She is a Sun Summoner."
"The sun is summoned every morning. Today it was just in a room."
Aleksander arches his brows, "You haven't answered."
Her fingers tighten on her cane. And Baghra thinks carefully about her response. They have heard rumors, of course, about the existence of Sun Summoners. But the rumors seem so distant now. Lost to eternity, like so many other things.
But the girl has power. It's uncontrolled and useless, but still power. And Baghra knows her son. She knows who will seek to train the girl if Baghra does not. A sharpened knife is only good in steady hands, and she has had her concerns in that area for some time now.
She wets her dry lips, "I could see her for a hundred tomorrows. If she can't call her own power, the girl's worthless and there's no remedy for it."
Her son takes a sip of the bitter tea she's made, remaining quiet. Baghra does not like her son quiet with her. He is quiet with his soldiers. He is quiet with servants. He is quiet with the people he expects to fill silence in order to please him. It dawns on her, with no small amount of irritation, that he is waiting for her to explain herself.
She will not. Baghra instead turns back to her book. She feels Aleksander's eyes trained intensely on her, but she ignores them. Once he realizes that she is not going to indulge him, he speaks in a voice level barely above a whisper.
"She called it when I touched her."
Something crawls across her mind at the words, a clinging, intangible sort of snag like walking through cobwebs: madraya I swear it was different, this time. Her power was like ours-
And then it's gone. Baghra frowns at the words on the page, troubled. But makes an effort at scoffing, "Congratulations. You now have a lead weight shackled to your ankle."
Aleksander takes another sip of tea, and comes to a realization, "…You amplified her."
"I did nothing of the sort."
"You saw her power."
Baghra's lips press tighter together.
Her son gives a ghost of a smirk, placing the cup on the saucer without a sound, and stands, "I will make the arrangements."
"For what."
"Her training."
"I haven't agreed to train her."
Aleksander stands, taking a few quiet steps until he is beside where she sits. He hunches, just a little, in order to bring his finger underneath the line she is reading.
In theory, mental resistance may impede physical performance in the conjuring of small sciences…
"A Corporalki text, I assume?"
Baghra clenches her jaw. She did not raise her son to be a fool.
"Mother," he whispers, and she does not like his tone. She does not like that he is imposing this broken tool onto her for whetting. Something, cold and abstract but settled, knows that this girl is going to be a problem before she is a solution, "Admit your curiosity."
She snaps the book shut, he pulls his fingers back at the last second. She looks up, dark eyes meeting gray ones with little warmth exchanged between them.
"You should have left her in the army," she hisses.
His brows furrow, "She's nothing to Ravka in the army."
And her boy needs his Ravka, doesn't he? Needs his own army.
"She would have been happier with nothing."
"And you believe the happiness of one girl outweighs the good of the country?"
"No. But my good is also not your good."
Her son's fingers tighten into a fist where they still rest on the table, "I've been waiting for this. For her."
She leans back in her seat, her hands resting on her knees, "And now you're rewarded. With a summoner who can't summon. "
"You'll show her."
"And if I won't?"
Their stares connect again. And the expression on her son's face is strange and familiar all at once. One of Aleksander's fingers tap the cover of the book.
"You'll show her," he repeats coldly, leaving her hut without another word.
It's not until much later that Baghra realizes where she has seen the look on her son's face before. It was there a long time ago, in the basement of an old house belonging to two sisters, a mother, and their father: on a man who held the damning and compelling emotion of curiosity in far higher esteem than he held anything else.
ii.
If the girl sighs one more time Baghra will ship her off in a crate to Fjerda herself.
"It's not working," the girl grumbles from her spot in the middle of Baghra's hut, legs and arms contorted in meditative positions adopted from a Shu Han practice. The exercises are courtesy of a tome Botkin borrowed her some months ago.
It's not supposed to work. Fool girl should have realized that by now.
"That's because you're meant to be silent," Baghra snarls, fingers furiously working at a torn seam in one of her cloaks as the girl continues to remain twisted like some ridiculous Sulli pastry and tea leaves boil in the kettle.
It's a physical act, for the girl to bite back her tongue. Baghra watches it with some amusement, clearly obedience is not a bone in this fool's body. The girl sends her a look of acid, before closing her eyes and trying to level out her breathing.
Baghra lets her suffer for a few minutes, before she whacks the back of the girl's knee with her cane, "Up!" She barks, moving to the kettle.
"You just said-"
Baghra ignores her, pouring the hot liquid into a small, earthen cup and jutting it under her nose, "Drink this."
"What?"
"Are you deaf as well as useless? Drink the tea."
"What is tea going to do?"
"What is your question going to do?"
The girl grumbles something under her breath, but she grabs the tea and downs it. She goes chalk-pale at the taste (which is quite a feat, considering she looks sicker than a barefoot urchin in Tsibeya), and sends her an accusatory look.
"Was that poison?"
Close enough. Baghra had to boil vinegar to clean out her kettle.
"It was a lesson. Now back into sitting in the folded flower."
The accusation in her stare doesn't fade, but the girl obeys and manages to pull herself into the twists and turns and strange locations for elbows once more. She takes a breath, and Baghra stares at her with calculating eyes as the girl attempts to pull from something that doesn't want to break free.
…If the girl's worth anything, she'll figure out the point of all this soon enough.
It is two weeks and thirteen failed lessons with the girl before her son attempts to contact her once more. Baghra is elbow-deep in the soil outside of her hut, relishing the sharp smells from her herb garden as she weeds and prunes, back hunched over and the comforting ache of labor in her shoulders, when his lapdog arrives.
The Corporalki, who is handsome and powerful and all those other qualities that make for a wreck of a person, does not bow when he approaches her. He does not press his fist to his chest. And irritation flares once more as she tries to find the name that belongs to this one, one of her many, many interchangeable students who are also handsome and powerful.
"The Darkling wishes to speak to you," he says it like it's a foregone conclusion, a small smirk on his lips at having given an order. It's a little power play no doubt. Petty vengeance from when she had him as a student.
The name clicks into place. Ivan. There's always an Ivan.
Baghra ignores him, pulling on the stem of a spoiled lavender plant.
And the smirk falls way to a scowl. How easy it is, to control the emotions of children.
"It's urgent," he says, with just a hint of a snarl.
"It can't be that urgent," she pulls harder on the stem, "If you're the one to summon me."
The plant uproots, spraying flecks of dirt that land on his pristine, red kefta. A clot of mud hits him straight in the chest. The scowl deepens. She can practically hear the boy grind his teeth to the gums.
"…I will let the Darkling know not to expect you," he bites, before turning sharply on his heel and stalking out as quickly as he had stormed in.
Baghra moves on to her rosemary. She is old and irrelevant, but she is no one's servant.
The girl is halfway through another drink of boiled vinegar before she throws it angrily in Baghra's sink, "It's disgusting and it's not working." The girl's eyes are level with Baghra's own, as if daring her to challenge it.
Baghra fights the urge to smile. Instead, her grizzled frown remains in place, "…Four more meditation exercises, and then I think we've gotten as much use out of you as we can today."
"Still avoiding the Palace."
She's not surprised to see him there, reclined in her favorite reading chair, not looking up from one of the numerous books she has lining her shelves. It's one thing they've always shared, her and her son. The appreciation for stillness and solitude that comes with reading.
"Still having your Corporalki deliver messages."
The corners of Aleksander's lips tighten in a secretive smile. He turns a page, "We need to talk."
"Then speak."
He exhales, long and slow and patient, before he sets the book face-down on his lap, "The Apparat is going to be an inconvenience."
"To what?"
Aleksander sends her a chastising look, as though the question shouldn't be necessary and she insults him by asking it, "I need Alina ready. Soon."
It takes her a moment to realize that Alina is the girl, the fool. That the Sun Summoner and redeemer of Aleksander's Ravka now has a person attached to it, as far as her son is concerned.
"So she has a name."
Aleksander stills, just for a moment. And Baghra feels that indeterminate snag once more (her name is Alina, he writes, just like before), as he takes a second longer than necessary to work through his own thoughts.
"You've been giving her tea instead of real training." He finally accuses, soft and dangerous.
Baghra shrugs, "Her problem isn't anything I can fix."
He straightens in his seat, the book begins to slide the floor but he catches it with a deft hand and puts it on the end table, "…then you know what's stopping her."
Baghra works her thoughts around in her mind a few times. Wondering how it is best to proceed in this area that grows increasingly like a minefield. She understands her son's desire for what the girl represents. She does not think he has thought it entirely through in his zeal for that power. People are not concepts, they are fallible and foolish and Baghra worries he is putting too much weight on the shoulders of a girl who can barely hold herself up.
"I have a suspicion," she finally allows.
"And that is."
"She's not ready," Baghra says flatly, moving to the opposite side of the seating area in her hut, "to be what she is, instead of who she is."
Her son digests the statement for a few moments, before he scowls. Baghra is taken aback as what can only be anger crosses his features, eyes flashing and fingers tightening on the armchairs. It has been some time since she has seen the emotion so blatant in him when he is not speaking of the King.
"You're saying she refuses to let go of Keramzin."
"I'm saying nothing. Only speculating."
"…there's a boy," he finally says, the ire fading out of his tone just as easily as it arrived. It does nothing to settle Baghra, "An easy enough problem to be remedied."
She shoots him a dark look. But she knows enough about Aleksander to understand what lines are acceptable for him to cross, and so says nothing. Instead, she feels the undeniable sensation of a migraine forming between her eyes.
"And what are you going to do, when she is what she is?" She asks pointedly, "Give her a black kefta? Give her a throne? Keep her your soldier like one of your Corporalki?" Baghra shakes her head, "She's a child. A few months ago she was drawing maps and you would have her herald a kingdom? Lead an army?"
"She is not like the Corporalki," he says tensely, but she can tell, better than most, that her questions have troubled him, "They are building altars to her, in the south."
Baghra snorts, "Altars are built to lots of things undeserving of them, as you know."
"Yes. But the people already adore her."
Something twists in Baghra. And she feels her words come off her tongue as dry as paper, "…what are you planning."
He smiles, a real smile, and she feels the press of memory upon her at the expression: a boy, the same age but much younger, standing before her and telling her a story about the firebird. She doesn't know where the image comes from, but it hits her hard and fierce and she can only sense that something is about to go completely, irrevocably, wrong.
"I'm going to borrow this," is all he says, lifting the book which is too far away for her to make out the title. Aleksander takes a few steps closer to her, kisses her dryly on the cheek, "Please continue your training with Alina."
He goes for the door. And Baghra glares at the walls of her windowless hut.
"Before you go."
He stops.
She doesn't turn away from the shadows, as she watches them curl and twist in the dark corners of what she has called home for far too long. Baghra takes a breath.
"There are limits. To what can be shared," she closes her eyes, "To what should be shared."
He hesitates for only a moment, before she hears the door to her hut open.
"Goodnight, mother."
And swing close. Leaving her alone in the dark.
When she realizes what's missing from her shelf, her blood runs cold like ice.
iii.
"I didn't raise a fool," she spits as soon as he opens the door to her hut.
"Of course not," he agrees calmly, entering her tile kitchen. His visit is earlier than usual, and also right before the girl is to arrive for practice. She does not think it's a coincidence.
"Because only a fool would take that journal."
"You noticed."
"Only a bigger fool wouldn't."
"You're overreacting," he continues, undisturbed as he leans against the counter from her, arms folding gracefully across his chest.
"There's nothing to them," she lies, angrily and quickly, "Just a mad man's ramblings."
He follows her with his eyes, watching her expression closely, "Then there's no harm in me looking for them."
"And how are you going to look for what doesn't exist?"
"…By making rabbits out of rocks."
She frowns, not understanding the cryptic statement or appreciating it, "Speak plainly."
His lips twitch, "I have a tracker."
The words are out before she can speak them, poisonous, "Did you learn anything from the first time you decided to listen to Morozova?"
It takes him a moment to realize what she's referring to. When he does, she again sees that foreign animation dance across his features, the strange, palpable swell of anger that emerges from him. The cracks in the mask he has been wearing for so long she sometimes forgets there's a boy underneath it.
"I am out of time to waste. She needs an amplifier."
I'm going to bring her an amplifier. The thought hits her like a pebble bouncing against cave walls, muted but echoing all the same.
"We have nothing but time," Baghra snaps.
"No. It needs to be done soon," he runs a hand through his hair, an old gesture that stirs something forgotten in her, "I've waited. I've waited-!"
"Then wait longer," her words are harsh, almost cutting. But she doesn't care. She remembers what happened after Kribirsk in a way her son does not. She remembers Ilya Morozova in a way he never could. She remembers it, like a faded tattoo just beneath the skin: a faded picture but with the clear, visceral memory of pain.
"She's an opportunity I can't afford to let slip away."
"She's a Sun Summoner."
"I'm aware."
"And you want to give her an amplifier? Morozova's amplifier?" She shakes her head, looking up because she can't stomach her rage long enough to meet his gaze, "For what? The Fold?"
He tenses at the word. But she sees his fingers curl into a fist, "No, for Ravka."
"I didn't raise a fool-!" she swears again.
He frowns, anger still curling around him like smoke, and only raises a finger. "Someone's coming," he bites out.
The door opens.
And there stands the Sun Summoner.
Baghra watches, as the girl lets the heat out of her hut and stares at Aleksander in a way that only makes the migraine return stronger.
"The boy thinks to get you an amplifier," she says slowly, watching the girl like a hawk, "What do you think of that, girl?"
The girl wears her soul on her face. It's not a compliment. And Baghra sees her expression morph from confusion, to disbelief, and finally to delight.
"I think it's brilliant!"
Of course she does. Because she's young, and naïve, and weak. And how can power sound like anything but joy when one has only been deprived of it their entire life?
Aleksander takes the girl out of her hut for a walk, and Baghra watches them, their bodies close enough for her to realize what kind of game her son has been playing with the newest Grisha. The girl blushes when she comes back to Baghra's hut for training.
Baghra closes her eyes.
It's time for a different approach.
She sees whatever fight the girl had leave. That hint of defiance, that hint of real strength she saw when the girl threw the vinegar water in the sink, retreats like a serpent from the frost. The arrogance hangs like a halo over her, the conviction and privilege that having an amplifier promised to her has afforded.
And it infuriates her. Because, as her son had promised, they are now out of time.
The girl doesn't know Morozova. She does not know that anything from him is not a gift. And Baghra is certain it is more for her son's sake than hers that she stops the antlers from ever hanging around her neck.
The only way for that to happen is to make the girl powerful in her own right. To get that challenge back. To prove to Aleksander that the amplifiers are not necessary for whatever plot he is foolishly implementing without restraint.
"You're not even trying anymore!" Baghra growls, when the girl half-heartedly enters a meditative position.
The girl only shrugs.
Her son does not visit. Or return the book he wrongfully borrowed.
Baghra watches as the time goes. As the girl waits for the magical deer to take her problems away. As her son waits for news from soldiers stationed in Tsibeya. As the students she mentors complain about the cold air, the bitter chill from the lake. As heat continues to get let out of her hut by children with the inability to close a door.
She sees the Sun Summoner fade. She sees someone settle into complacency, and she can't make her realize that she's damning them all with it.
She wants the girl who threw tea. She does not want this shell who sits in a finely embroidered kefta and sulks.
Baghra gets her wish, suddenly and jarringly. She's not sure what has driven the girl back to her anger, her rage. But she watches, one day in her hut, as the girl lets go of something (someone) that was holding her back, as light washes out from her like a wave.
It's not enough.
She just wanted it, for once, to be enough.
iv.
"You never come to the palace," her son says, from his place behind his desk.
"You've been avoiding me since the girl's display at the lake."
He looks at her with mildly repressed annoyance, but something else. Something uncomfortable. And Baghra wonders, despite herself, what foolishness happened after the girl and Aleksander walked away from her hut that night. And who would be paying for it.
"I've been avoiding a war on two fronts. I am occupied."
"You are making excuses," Baghra looks around his quarters. At the dark paneling of the walls, reminiscent of a thick forest. Of the ceilings that look like the night sky. It's a sentimentality of his, one she can't punish him for.
"Why are you here."
She sighs, "You are going through with this foolishness."
"Yes."
"And if I told you she would grow into her own strength, without it?"
His gaze darts up as he folds a letter neatly into thirds, "It wouldn't matter."
"You know it binds her to you."
Something sparks in his expression then. Something… close enough to wistful. That seems at home with the walls painted like trees and ceilings resembling the night skies. "I'm aware."
Baghra takes a deep, steadying breath. Before she nods. And leaves without another word.
She has contacts in Sulli. It seems she will have to make use of them. She does not deny her son much, but she is capable of it when it is for his own good.
She plans. Aleksander will be leaving shortly after the Winter Fete to return to the front lines and run the Grisha campaigns. His absence, and the absence of his oprichniki will be the best time to have her leave the palace.
She can only hope that the girl isn't as foolish as she seems to be. But if she is, Baghra is perfectly capable of following through with sending her in a crate to Fjerda.
The night of the Winter Fete arrives without any major incident. It is one of the few events where Baghra is extended an invitation to the Grand Palace, to greet the court nobility as something of a trivial novelty. It's an opulent waste of talent and resources. And she expects it to be a bore.
She does not expect a memory, cold and painful and raw, to become a reality.
v.
The night passes uneventfully. The students and full-fledged Grisha alike dither like children playing dress-up, going from noble to noble and dancing waltz after waltz in their kefta. Drinking too much champagne, more than likely enough to remind the older ones that they are not in the very home of the man who sends so many of them to their deaths on a weekly basis.
Baghra has no desire for parties. Less desire for dances. She does, however, have a penchant for making people uncomfortable. And no one is as unsettled as nobles when she saunters through the halls—she even overhears one whisper that damnable rumor about her having rooster feet. Baghra is there long enough for a glass of champagne and an appearance for the King's sake before she prepares to leave as quickly as she arrived—she is unimpressed with the little display her students are providing for the court's benefit.
She stops, however, when she sees her son move towards the stairs of the platform. With a girl on his arm. A girl in a black kefta.
She would scoff at the clear demonstration of territory Aleksander has made if the circumstances were not so dire. If that invisible, tugging snag had left her at any point following the girl's arrival to Os Alta. But it hadn't, and the matching black left no room for amusement. Only foreboding. Only this intrinsic, unvoiced sensation that something was not right with her presence.
Baghra moves towards the pillars, hidden in shadows. And watches, out of curiosity if anything. She listens, as the orchestra begins the opening notes and rolls her eyes before downing the rest of her champagne, stare traveling and focusing on where her son stands beside the girl.
Aleksander is…smiling. He is smiling and it is the same, cryptic smile he gave when Baghra asked him of his plans. Her fingers tighten on the flute in her hand.
He claps his hands together, and the boom echoes throughout the hall. Baghra is the only one who does not jump or startle at the sudden darkness. She keeps her stare trained coolly.
Waiting.
A beam of golden light pierces the darkness. Hits the mirrors. The nobles gasp, like the marionettes they are on the Darkling's stage.
But then, something changes. Something shifts.
(He lays on the bale of hay, staring at a glove in his hand. She doesn't know where he's lost the other one, but she notices that the remaining one holds a new design—what looks like a golden eclipse, embroidered into the fabric.
"Madraya?"
"Yes."
"Maybe we should stay longer in the valley."
She scowls, "Why."
He mimics the expression, though fueled more by confusion than anything, "…I don't know yet.")
The ribbons of light disappear from the room, plunging them back into darkness.
("Where were you?!" she demands when he comes back to their room at the inn. It is late enough that the sun is peeking out from the tree line, and she brings her hands to the sides of his face, tilting his head and looking for injuries.
He shakes free of her grip with an exasperation befitting of a seventeen year old, "I was. Out."
She uncoils, feeling her chest unconstrict as her worst fears are put aside for petty annoyances, "With the girl."
"Her name's Alina.")
And then the light expands and bursts: a glowing halo encompassing both the figures on the stage. Figures that look like they belong together.
("She's a Sun Summoner."
Baghra's hands stop from skinning the rabbit, "Don't be foolish."
"I'm not. She-"
"Don't. Be foolish, Aleksander." )
Her son stretched out his hand, black tendrils of shadow uncurling from his palm to integrate with the girl—Alina's-own summoned light. Dancing, twirling. Balancing. The grip Baghra has on the flute goes lax.
(He's gone one morning. And while she doesn't initially panic—he has been spending far too much time with the embroiderer lately—she later finds the note and fear, real fear, hits her:
I am going to get the Firebird. )
She sees Aleksander whisper something to her.
(He isn't the same, after the valley. He is quieter. Sullen. He has killed that butcher boy, pushed him off the cliff right after the girl fell off of it first, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that he is withdrawing from her, that he is going off more and more on his own.
He talks about trying to see the world on his own. And, because she thinks it will ultimately be good for him to fend for himself, to see other valleys, she reluctantly lets him and packs her own things for Kerch.)
The court applauds, raucous noises that reverberate throughout the ballroom.
("They say there's rebellion in Ravka," the mercenary she is beating at cards grumbles, as he places more gold on the counter, "The Grisha are making their own army, can you believe that?"
Baghra's hands still on the table, "Where in Ravka?"
"Uh. Kribirsk, I think.")
The room explodes in golden light, blinding and painful and Baghra's glass drops to the floor as the performance ends.
(He looks out the window of their carriage, his fists resting on his knees. And, if the valley had not ruined him enough, whatever happened in the bowels of Kribirsk has put him beyond repair.
"She killed herself," he whispers, a croak. A confession.
Baghra doesn't know what to say to that. She knows, too much, about watching irreplaceable people die because of impulsive decisions.
Aleksander turns, facing her and she is surprised to see pain, real pain, eternal pain, etched into the furrow of his brow. The clench of the jaw. There is something broken and voided in her son now. Something lost in that gaping void he has created in his foolishness.
"She had whatever she wanted from me. It wasn't enough," he looks out the window again, "It didn't matter."
Baghra shakes her head, "What happened goes beyond the girl-"
"Her name was Alina," he watches, as the gates of Os Alta come into view, "And you're right," his eyes drift to the spires of the Grand Palace, his voice heavy with dark promise, "It did. And it will.")
And he has her hand, dragging her through the crowd as she struggles to keep up. Invisible in the shadows, if his mother did not know where to look. And she sees that desperation, she hears that name in her head, over and over and over again.
Alina.
The girl is…
Baghra remembers. She remembers Sun Summoners. She remembers the effects they have on her son. And she does not know how this has happened, how this has repeated again, but merzost has damned the all in so many ways that she knows not to argue against it.
…and she also knows that she cannot wait until after the Fete.
She knows that Alina needs to leave Os Alta tonight. And she thinks she knows how she can convince her, if any shred of that girl from the valley remains in the orphan from Keramzin.
When Baghra goes to the Little Palace, when Baghra tells the Sun Summoner the truth and leads her out of Os Alta with only a solitary candle for light, she calls her by her name for the first time. When she's finally out of sight, she collapses against the wall and takes deep, staggering breaths.
And hopes she has avoided ruin.
v.
It does not take long for the Ivan to find her in her hut. An hour, maybe.
"Get up," he says, and he does not smirk or bow.
Baghra looks at him flatly, "You don't command me, boy."
"The Darkling will see you."
"Will he now?"
"Yes."
The Corporalki grabs her by her arm, and Baghra allows herself to be led.
She is surprised when the Corporalki leads her to the rooms she was in not even two hours ago. The Sun Summoner's rooms. Alina's rooms. And she feels a dark, grim sort of amusement when Ivan opens the door and her son is already waiting inside.
Your dark prince did come to you tonight after all, you foolish, foolish girl.
Aleksander does not look at her, he only paces the expanse of the bedroom, stopping when he gets to the girl's vanity. His fingers trail over the golden pins as a thoughtful frown crosses his face.
"Leave us," he commands the Ivan, who bows and drops Baghra as if she is hot coals. Who shuts the door behind him.
Baghra is not afraid of her son. She has never been afraid of her son. But something in his stance, in the way he does not look away from the hairpins, gives her pause.
"Do you know whose room this is?" He asks, though they both know the answer.
Baghra snorts, "I told you not to patronize me, boy."
Slowly, he nods, taking a pin in his hand and tucking it into his kefta—still the silk one from the Fete. He walks to Alina's wardrobe, clasping his arms behind his back, "...Alina was not seen after the celebration."
Baghra stays silent, as Aleksander drops his arms. As his fingers drift over the kefta the Sun Summoner left behind on hangers. As he counts them.
"She did not pack her things."
She sees it again. That look, from so very long ago. That ancient, desperate madness swimming in quiet currents underneath Aleksander's calm exterior.
"So I imagine her decision to flee the Little Palace was…impromptu."
"I don't control what your pet Sun Summoner does."
His fingers still on a navy blue kefta, curl into a fist. He still has not faced her.
"Of course you don't," his eyes narrow. She sees his nostrils flare as he takes a deep breath, "I am. Disappointed, madraya."
And because she already knows, already understands what will come to pass, she does not try to make amends, "So am I, Aleksander."
He closes his eyes.
"I have waited so long. And I did not expect betrayal from you, of all people," the Darkling swallows. But his voice is even. His hands don't shake, "You may have cost me something I can't replace."
He turns, and his gaze meet hers. He stares straight into her, does not break the connection between their eyes.
"It seems only fair that I return the favor."
Baghra is not afraid of her son.
She is not afraid of the dark.
They are now all she has.
