Chapter Three: Poison

A/N: So, long time no update. This is a bit of a "filler" chapter, though it does have some Irina/Darkling interaction, along with a little more on what Irina's been up to. If you've read the books, you might just be able to guess who "Kay" actually is ;)

6 months earlier

"You need a break."

Kay stared down at Irina with a pinch in his brow. It had been several months now since she had started training with him. Kay was, by his own admission, a Shu Han mercenary who had retired peacefully up near the Fjerdan border. She'd heard about the Durast on the road after she'd fled Os Alta. Irina was almost certain that Kay wasn't his real name, but she wasn't one to question it.

"I'm fine." Irina's dismissive voice came in a rasp as she eased herself out of bed, limbs trembling and her whole body covered in a light sheen of sweat. When she picked up the mirror she kept on the dressing table, she couldn't help but grimace. She looked like shit, her eyes feverish and her skin clammy and almost ashen in colour.

"You are not fine." Kay folded his arms and scowled at Irina's stubbornness, though that had been what had endeared her to him in the first place. "Look at you. You're a mess."

"I don't need to be coddled," Irina snapped, tossing the mirror back down with a clack, "If that's what I wanted, I would have stayed in Os Alta."

"Is that what this is about?" Kay demanded. When Irina reached out for the cup in his hand, he held it over her head. "Proving yourself to your parents, your brothers? You push yourself to the brink of exhaustion, and one day you will push yourself too far."

"I'm not trying to prove anything," Irina retorted, but she knew that Kay was right, and that was what prickled under her skin. Since she had discovered what she was, since Kay had begun training her, she didn't just want to be another Grisha. The fact that she had Durast and Alkemi abilities was something, but if she didn't hone them, she would just be the princess who fled north for nothing.

"Stubborn as a mule," Kay muttered under his breath.

"But fortunately, far better looking." Irina held her hand out for the cup. "If I don't keep doing this, then what's the point?"

"Alright." Kay relented and handed her the cup. "But this is a stronger dose than usual. Bear that in mind."

"Upping the dosage is the point," Irina said, raising the cup to her lips and chugging it down. It tasted vile, leaving a sour residue on her tongue, but what did she expect? She eased herself back into a sitting position on the bed, knowing exactly how this was about to play out.

"Foolish child." Kay shook his head slowly. "One day, you will go too far, and it will be the death of you."

Irina's fingers curled around the sheets as pain seared through her body. "Maybe, but it isn't today."

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for Kay, she had no more breath to waste on words. Agony coursed through her veins as the foul liquid she'd consumed took hold. Maybe she should be used to it by now, but for a girl who'd never experienced pain in her life, it was excruciating. As it burned through her like a raging inferno, Irina curled forward and screamed—

Irina woke with a choked gasp bursting from her lips. She kicked the blankets off, irritated when they tangled around her legs. Her heart was hammering against her ribcage, and she sucked in a deep breath and thought about what Kay would say about controlling her breathing. She inhaled sharply, reaching beside the bed for her glass of water. Water with a little something extra. No one else in this goddamn place was about to question what she was drinking.

Setting the glass down, Irina got to her feet and shrugged on her silk robe, padding out of her bedroom and into the corridor. She'd forsaken her chambers at the Grand Palace for rooms in the Little Palace, as though that could possibly make her fit in more with the other Grisha. She didn't think they'd ever respect her or see her as one of their own. To them, she was just the spoiled princess.

"Can't sleep?" The voice made Irina spin around to see the Darkling. He moved so silently that she hadn't even realised he was there. Stifling her surprise, she lifted her chin and shook her head.

"Just adjusting to my new role. It's a bit different."

"Svetlana tells me that you're doing terribly."

Irina rolled her eyes and refrained from smiling. Of course that's what Svetlana would have told him, because she didn't like Irina, and because Irina had put on quite the show of doing terribly. How easy it was sometimes, to push the pieces where she wanted them to go.

"Yes, well, I don't think Svetlana thinks very highly of me."

"I also think she's wrong." The Darkling's smile broadened. "It seems a little too odd, that a woman who went and trained in secret is actually a shocking Materialki."

Irina's smile didn't fade, but it grew thin. How was it that she had almost everyone else fooled, but when it came to the Darkling, it was like he could see right through her? Now that he put it so simply, she was surprised that the other Grisha hadn't also picked up on her apparent ineptitude being precisely what it was: a facade.

"Perhaps I was a bad pupil."

"Oh, but I don't think that's the case." The Darkling stepped forward, and Irina tilted her chin up to look him in the eye. "I think you're hiding exactly how powerful you are. I've heard Vasily's rants. A Grisha Queen...that's what he's afraid you'll become."

"Well, that's highly unlikely," Irina drawled, flipping her blonde hair nonchalantly over her shoulder, "Since there's both him and Nikolai before me in the line of succession. Besides, people can have power without crowns."

"Indeed they can," the Darkling mused softly. For a few moments, a peaceful silence stretched between the pair of them, and then he spoke again. "Who trained you, up near the Fjerdan border? The Fjerdans hunt Grisha, and almost all of the Ravkan Grisha are in the Little Palace."

"Well, he wasn't Fjerdan or Ravkan," Irina responded, a prickle of unease racing up her spine at the question. Kay had been reluctant to take her in, to foster her abilities. She wasn't going to sell him out to the Darkling, especially considering the nature in which she'd been trained was hardly traditional. Or ethical, some might argue.

"So enigmatic." A smile graced the Darkling's lips, but his dark eyes remained cool. Irina, who had learned from a young age to read people, could tell that he wasn't pleased. She gave an answering smile, just as pretty, just as fake.

"Maybe one day, I'll talk more about him."

"I'm just hoping that you'll demonstrate more of your potential with the other Grisha." The Darkling arched an eyebrow. "You don't have to hide from them."

Irina laughed mirthlessly. "To them, I'm still Princess Irina Lantsov. I'm barely Grisha."

"Don't you think they'd respect you more if you were honest with them?" The Darkling's gaze raked over Irina, from the top of her blonde curls, down her silk robe, to her bare feet. She shivered, unsure if it was out of dread or desire. "If you keep showing people what you think they want to see, instead of what you really are, how can you expect them to think better of you?"

Irina supposed he was right, though she hated him for it. She had spent so many years cultivating the perfect mask, only for him to tell her that she would do well in removing it. What about him? Who was he really, behind the mask?

"If you insist, Aleksander."

His eyes gleamed. "I like it when you call me that. Aleksander."

Was he flirting with her? "Well...it's your name."

He just chuckled, the sound making warmth flare in her cheeks. "Goodnight, Irina."

Watching him disappear into the shadows, Irina released the tense set of her shoulders and walked back down the hall and into her room, closing and locking the door behind her. She tilted back her head and sighed deeply, before striding over to the dressing table to one of the few luxuries she'd allowed herself to bring down from the Grand Palace.

Irina opened the jewellery box that Kay had given her, watching as the clockwork ballerina twirled to the mechanical music. They'd worked on making the box together, and though Irina despised sentimentality, it had warmed her heart when he'd given it to her as a parting gift when she announced that she was to return to Os Alta. Saints, she missed Kay. He was one of the few people she could be herself around, that she didn't have to hold back with.

Sighing deeply, Irina slammed the jewellery box closed and shrugged off her silk robe with more irritation than was probably necessary. Crawling back under the blankets, she condemned herself to a restless sleep, full of clockwork ballerinas and older men with dark eyes and even darker smiles.

Unfortunately, being a Grisha did not excuse Irina from her royal duties, which included dining with her family at least once a week. She took a bath after her arduous day, forsaking her purple kefta for a cream dress and making the trip up to the Grand Palace to have dinner with her parents and Vasily. Her older brother's surly attitude seemed to have lessened of late, if only slightly. Irina surveyed him closely as she took her glass of wine from the royal taster.

For some reason, her parents seemed to have it in their heads that Irina needed even more protection now that she was Grisha, a notion she found absurd. The taster gave her a nervous smile, and Irina took a deep gulp of wine and focused on her meal.

"How is training with the rest of the Second Army?" Pyotr asked. These days, Irina could barely stand to look at her father without seeing Genya. The beautiful red-haired girl was more frequently seen at the Grand Palace than with her fellow Grisha, and she could not forgive her father for the reasons why.

"I'm making progress."

"So are you training to be an Alkemi or a Durast?" Vasily questioned, his tone almost aggressive. Nonetheless, Irina bestowed a sweet smile upon him.

"Both, dear brother. I have the talent, why not utilise it?" She shrugged her slim shoulders. She didn't expect Vasily to understand anything about being Grisha. Her older brother liked drinks and women more than anything else. Saints, how she missed Nikolai. She wished her twin could have been with her, to make this transition more bearable.

The royal taster coughed and rubbed his throat, making all four members of the family look to him with varying degrees of trepidation. It was only when he coughed again, spitting out blood, that Tatiana screamed and the guards came racing in. Irina stared down at the young man with a growing sense of horror. He had been assigned to her alone, meaning that someone had tried to poison her.

The royal taster was on the ground, coughing up blood. He'd had a mere sip of Irina's wine. She'd consumed the whole glass. Vasily stared between the convulsing royal taster and his younger sister, whose eyes were wide with horror but who hadn't even reacted to the poisoned wine. If he didn't look so appalled, she might even have assumed he'd been the culprit.

"What are you?" he asked, voice scarcely above a whisper.

A single tear slipped down Irina's cheek, and she quickly wiped it away. She would mourn the poor taster later, in private, on her own terms. Here, in front of her shocked family, she was not the girl who cried over dead tasters. She was something else. Something strong, and perhaps, something terrifying. In response to Vasily's question, she lifted her chin and fixed a look of steel upon him.

"Powerful."

Someone had tried to poison Irina, and yet she wasn't certain if they had wanted her dead...or wanted to prove a point.