.
.
"Make me your villain."
From that moment on, and right in front of Alina's eyes, he is the Darkling.
The Black Heretic. The Shadow Summoner.
(Everything they told her to fear. Everything they warned her of, and still, she would not believe it.)
Alina's throat clenches up a sobbing scream.
She cannot understand.
She cannot understand why he lied to her. For so long, for as long as they have known each other. If it was so important to control the Fold, to destroy the Volcra inside so they may cross without incident and keep Ravka safe from other's treachery… if it was all for them…
His long, woolen cloak noiselessly sweeps aside when the Darkling turns from her.
"No."
Alina whispers this, eerily calm, her hands curling into tightened fists at her sides.
"If you do this… you will not be anything to me," she says. "Ever again."
The Darkling's head slowly turns.
She can see it in his eyes. She can still see the faintest hint of moisture.
"What I am doing…" he says, quiet as the winds outside. "It is for Ravka… It is for the Grisha and to protect us."
Alina's upper lip sneers.
"It is selfish," she says, hissing out the words. "You want vengeance for a wrong you cannot right."
What bends inside the Darkling finally breaks apart.
He storms to her, his jaws opening wide, his teeth baring.
Alina lifts her chin high, unmoved.
"That was done onto me!" the Darkling yells, his voice thunderously loud and frantic. Beneath it, she senses the pain over each and every century he has lived. "We were hunted, Alina! We were hunted by the people whom raised you! People whom fed you and clothed you and taught you that the Grisha were not to be trusted! People whom would sooner kill us than respect any part of us!"
He shudders a little.
"People like Mal."
Alina releases a breath, scoffing.
"Mal did not wrong you by existing no more than the Grisha deserve to be harmed." One of her hands drifts to a stag's antler magically melded to her flesh and bone. "And yet, you still have me collared," Alina mutters, eyeing him. Her nostrils flare.
An aggravated laugh escapes him.
"You are a child…"
"Then you are a MURDERER!" Alina shouts, glaring at him through her tears.
"Yes," the Darkling murmurs. "I have killed. I have killed to save you and to save our people."
"And what of the innocent who lived in The Fold when you made it?"
She cannot understand.
A part of her believes the sense of remorse lining the Darkling's face. His own tears visibly glisten.
"I had not meant for…" he whispers, shutting his eyes.
Alina feels that tremor in his breath as if it may live in her own.
"But I suppose it matters not. You will not believe any truth I now speak, for fear of it being a lie. That was my doing." The Darkling reopens his eyes, appearing much more stern. "That is to be my burden to bear for wronging you," he mutters to her.
This time, she lets him walk off.
Both of Alina's hands linger over Morozova's Collar on her. Her mouth opens silently.
No…
"Aleksander!"
He hesitates, caught in the middle of Alina's heart-wrenching cry. She wants to sound stronger than she truly feels.
The tent's lace-curtains drops from his hold.
Alina has nothing left to give him but a soft tormented look, watching his own expression become grim. There are hundreds and hundreds of thoughts she wishes to voice. Ones of rage, ones of betrayal and ones of love so lamenting she fiercely quivers.
She keeps her hands hovering over her collar, turning herself, unable to look at him any longer.
Everything feels stifled. The air itself thickened in tension.
Aleksander…
Her heart howls.
Alina turns at the very last moment, desperate and needful of something familiar, when she hears his footsteps.
Aleksander looks down to her. He does not appear to know what he is doing no more than Alina does. His bare thumb presses harshly into Alina's cheek. He grips the side of her reddened face, tilting her up, tilting, tilting until a willing Alina meets him halfway on her toes.
Her wet eyelashes part.
Their mouths cover each other, slow and heated. Aleksander's empty hand touches the small of her back, holding her in… and…
It's different this time, she thinks.
Neither of them cried while Alina kissed him in his bedroom, or when Aleksander kissed her against the war-table.
She trusted him so completely once.
She desired everything there was to desire for him.
Alina wanted to find the morning with him, lying in his bed and half-dressed in his things, listening to him recite Alina's schedule with a grinning disdain. Feeling him trailing over her nakedness, slipping inside her and making Alina hot like a sun within.
His loving intentions… his loving deeds…
Aleksander's bottom lip drags on her when they re-lock lips. His beard prickles Alina's jaw.
She refuses to lower her hands, if not avoiding the warm and unnaturally pulsing magic from the stag's antlers.
It cannot be like this.
It cannot.
"I did not want this, Alina… not for us…"
He speaks and Alina fights down another sobbing scream, clenching her teeth until it pains her.
"You did not want us at all," she acknowledges.
Whether or not it is truth, or half-truths, Alina loathes it. She loathes it as much as she loathes his rueful expression.
"I did," Aleksander mumbles, smiling thinly, and blinking out the hot, gleaming moisture from his eye. Alina's chest thrums in anticipation. He clasps her nape, leaning down to gruffly kiss the top of Alina's head, holding his lips there. "I do," he breathes.
From outside the tent's entrance, Noya calls out.
As quickly as his nightmarish shadows… Aleksander vanishes. He takes all of Alina's hopes with him.
Alina crumbles onto the ground, kneeling.
Her mouth opens silently.
.
.