Figuring out how to summon on demand had an effect on everything, or at least that was what it felt like to Alina. She wasn't spending every waking moment feeling lesser than every other Grisha at the Little Palace. Even if that was her only relief, Alina would have been happy.

In fact, the mental release was far from the only change that she noticed about herself. The lively flush to her face that she had seen in the mirror did not fade into oblivion. She was able to fall asleep without staring at the canopy above her for hours. Her stamina - though not yet her abilities - during both hand-to-hand and summoning sessions was drastically improved. Alina even scrounged some free time between lessons and dinnertime once or twice a week to take Zarya out in the paddock and found that maintaining her form was easier, too.

Oh, and to say nothing of how food actually managed to taste good now! Alina still couldn't get past the taste of herring every night, but she was much more appreciative of the delicate pastries and rations of sugar that Genya snuck from the Grand Palace. There was a definite curve still to how much Alina liked kvas at the beginning versus the end of the night, but even the liquor seemed less muted and boring to her now that she wasn't splitting herself in half.

The only downside, Alina decided, was that she was going to have to figure out how to avoid telling Kirigan that he had been right after all. She really didn't know how she had been living before, pushing aside her abilities and her identity as a Grisha out of fear.

There were still times when she would catch herself running her thumb along a non-existent curve on her palm. Of course, that had been how she had lived before - reliant on one person who no longer cared about her enough to pick up a pen and page. The wound still hurt. Alina suspected that it would for a long time, at least until she maybe one day dragged him to explain just exactly what the hell was more important than letting her know that he was still alive in the First Army.

For now however Alina had her lessons to work on. Just being able to call the light wasn't the same as mastering it. She was expected to learn to split it, to multiply the little motes, to cast an arc wider than she was tall and push for more every day.

"I'm surprised that they aren't talking about getting you an amplifier," Nadia commented one evening as they lounged by the lake shore. The banya had been overtaken by a gaggle of Materialki tonight and smelled far more sulfurous than usual, so Alina and her friends had ended up in a loose collection around a small fire that Marie had re-lit from that day's Inferni practice. It was just the three of them this time; Genya had been unable to escape from her responsibilities with some unexpected dignitaries showing up after the first freeze.

Alina was threading a small orb of light between her fingers in an exercise that Baghra had claimed would be exponentially more helpful in learning control. Even just practicing summoning at night was a challenge in and of itself. She could sometimes pull from the waning sunset if it was close enough to dusk; but otherwise Alina was left trying to wrap her brain around calling the moonlight which was a bit like trying to draw with her left hand. Not impossible, but painstaking and horrendously wobbly.

"They, who?" Alina asked.

Nadia gestured widely with one palm towards the Little Palace. "They. The war council. Kirigan's favorites."

"They're not his favorites," Marie protested. "Otherwise Zoya wouldn't be such a pain in the ass."

"Yes, she would be," Alina laughed. Even she knew that, and she'd only known Zoya for a grand total of an hour at best. Her ribs twinged in phantom pain whenever she thought about the stuck-up Squaller.

Nadia pursed her lips as she considered once again. Then she shrugged. "Well, maybe they're his favorites, and maybe they're just a bunch of really stuck up Corporalki and Etherialki. Either way, I can't believe none of them have prodded him to think about getting the Sun Summoner an amplifier," she said.

It was Alina's turn to frown. "Who says that I would even need an amplifier? No one knows what a Sun Summoner is capable of," Alina protested. Her pride burned along with the tips of her ears. She pulled her cloak up tighter around her throat; it had taken a bit to get used to wearing the black item out casually, but the soft fur and warm wool made up for the nerves that had finally faded. She didn't feel like quite the impostor among the Grisha now, either, so it felt… good to have something special. Even if she wasn't quite used to embracing that.

"It's gotta be kind of like the Shadow Summoners, right?" Marie suggested.

"Then Kirigan definitely would know if she does or doesn't need one."

"Maybe that's what's been keeping the general out of the palace lately."

"Finding an amplifier? I doubt it. I'm sure that the Corporalki or Materialki would be able to handle that on their own. Besides, why not just let her use him? He's an amplifier."

"Nadia! " Marie gasped. "That's not- You don't just say that!"

Alina shifted on the ground while the others continued to discuss the ethics and levels of appropriateness of using the Black General like fuel to her summoning. She had been so focused on being able to summon, she hadn't considered if what she ended up being capable of might not be enough. Or at least, that concern had dipped in the euphoria of being able to summon. She grimaced at the tiny marble of light rolling between her knuckles. A few minutes ago it had been exciting to have it there. Now it felt like her - not enough.

"Either way," Marie said firmly to conclude the argument, "I'm sure that if Alina needed an amplifier, it would be something that she would know about."

"And I don't," Alina grumbled. That seemed enough to button up the conversation, and thankfully neither young woman asked her to elaborate on which part of Marie's assertion she was referring to. Alina excused herself from the fire to head back to the Little Palace. Marie and Nadia begged her to stay for a little while longer. She blamed it on the cold getting to her, but she barely felt the nighttime chill through her cloak. In reality Alina just wanted to get away from the sinking feeling that the amplifier conversation had brought on.

Just as she started up the path from the lake shore Alina had to pause. Marie was waving her back. Alina nearly rolled her eyes until she noticed the folded square of paper in her hand which was bright in the firelight. "I completely forgot. This was stuck on the mail that I got earlier this week. Right on the seal. You would think that the mail sorters would be used to that kind of mistake," Marie said, laughing all the while. She didn't notice Alina's sharp inhale or the way that she turned over the letter to find her name scrawled on the outside.

It wasn't neat and precise. The paper was heavily crumpled despite having been pressed flat in the mail carrier bags. The letter was decidedly not Grisha fine stationery. When she lifted it to her nose, she swore she could almost smell the familiar scent of kerosene and iron ink.

Alina barely remembered thanking Marie, and she definitely didn't say goodbye again when she started back up the path once more. She was of one mind until she got back to her rooms. Her hand trembled, and she had to fumble to light the lamp on her dressing table. She couldn't have summoned a firefly's amount of light if she wanted to right now.

Unfolding the page, Alina practically gasped with happiness when she saw the whole page in Mal's unquestionable scrawl. Then she started to read and her feet might as well have dropped out from under her. She slumped into her chair, her head shaking with every line.

Alina,

I'm not sure why I'm bothering any more to send these, but I suppose that I should try one last time. I say last like I'm not going to try again the next time that we're back across the border. Then again, that assumes we'll make it back.

Saints, why do these always start in such a bad place now? Why don't you write ba. The text cut off and was scratched out, but Alina could make out some of it still.

Where are you, Alina? Still in the Little Palace or have they whisked you to some other hideaway to keep from the Fjerdens? We'll be seeing plenty of them out on the Permafrost. Maybe I'll ask them if I get the chance. Seems these days that the enemy knows more about what the Grisha are up to than actual Ravkans.

I keep thinking about that day on the Fold, the last time that we saw each other. How we didn't know that would be the last time. When those Grisha took you away to the Black General and then in the carriage - I wonder if I should have stopped them. I think I just kept hoping they had made a mistake and you'd be back with us in the Army. How could you be Grisha? Every time there are new recruits I look for you.

Would you come back to the First Army, if you could? Do you miss me it at all? Again some of his writing was scratched out.

Would you cross the permafrost with us, looking for that stag of yours? That's where we're going. Some fool's errand searching for Morozova's herd. Like the storybooks. Like those crazy drawings you would do, and Ana Kuya would scream about because you weren't practicing elevation or whatever. We got sent a sketch a few days ago, and I swear it looked just like yours.

So we're going, me and Dubrov and Mikhael and that's it. Small, discrete, stealthy. Yeah, you heard me right. We're calling Mikhael stealthy now. That's how desperate the Army's gotten.

There was an annotation in the margin in a different hand than Mal's. Alina assumed it was Mikhael. No more desperate than usual, Oretsev. And you're one to talk with those snores.

She skimmed over the rest of the page that didn't register as anything other than more voiced frustrations, over Mal's bitter goodbye that once again meandered around whether or not he was going to want to or even be able to send another again. Her heart was leaden in her stomach.

At least let me know you're safe if you care at all, he finished with. While that was a sucker punch on its own, it was nothing compared to the slap to the face of his signature.

Malyen Oretsev, Tracker, Second Class.

Alina blinked back the tears that had risen along with her fury. If you care at all. Malyen. Like he wasn't the most important person to her for as long as she could remember. Like she hadn't held herself back for long enough waiting for him to respond.

She had to stand up and pace back and forth in the space between her dressing table and the bed. Sitting still wasn't allowing her to get the restless energy that had bubbled up underneath her skin to escape. Twisting her hands, Alina found herself glaring at the damned letter each time that she passed by it.

All this time waiting and hoping for word from him and now Alina felt like she might throttle Mal the next time that she saw him. It would have been better to never have received the thing. It would have been better to truly have stopped hoping for a response. She might have moved on from needing only Mal, but she certainly felt the fresh wound in her chest from this being the way that he thought of her.

Maybe she hadn't moved on at all, or maybe she hadn't fully closed that door regardless of all her intention to do so. Closing her eyes, Alina swallowed hard. She was reading a lot into one single letter. Yet it was all that she had. She threw herself back onto the chair and once again pressed the letter flat underneath her palms.

I'm not sure why I'm bothering any more to send these. How many had Mal sent? Where were they?

How could you be Grisha? Betrayal, hurt, and fear were all that Alina could read from this. Mal never had a kind word to say about the Grisha they interacted with in the First Army. Or before, really.

Do you miss me at all? Alina could read past the scribbled corrections where Mal had tried to overwrite his previous words. Each line was sharp and harsh in how it struck through his words. That somehow hurt the most, that he was angry in writing the page in her hands. No matter how confused or lost Alina had felt when she wrote to him, she never was angry. Bored, frustrated, mentally exhausted - absolutely. But never had she taken it out on him.

Alina ran her thumb over his signature, bitter as it clearly was. If you care at all. That's all that she had been able to do for the past months - care about where she had come from.

"I was trying, Mal," Alina murmured as though it might carry over the distance between Os Alta right to her oldest friend's ears. Wetness dripped down onto the page and threatened to smudge his words worse than Mal's handwriting already had. Alina pushed the letter roughly forward and buried her face in her arms so that she could let out the sobs that were fighting the cage of her ribs.

"I was."

Alina was awake before the dawn's feather-soft light even touched her windowsill never mind reached her pillow. She laid on her downy mattress among the sheets and covers which were mussed only from her constant tossing and turning last night. There hadn't been any sleep to be found for the Sun Summoner.

She was on her side now, eyes tracking the slow journey that the sunlight made from the windows to the little bench against the wall to the dark carpet that kept the stone floor's chill at bay to the edge of her bed's frame. When the light crept onto the mattress, Alina pulled her hand back to her chest as though the sun's touch would scald her.

Alina closed her eyes and swallowed back a fresh wave of tears as she felt the dawn creep further along. The early winter sun was weak. Regardless, she winced when it played across her.

Of course she could feel it. She was the Sun Summoner. Grisha.

She hadn't feared it any longer, when she had placed her trust in Genya to wipe away the scar from her palm or Kirigan to bring her own power back to the surface from where she had shoved it aside. But reading Mal's not-so-thinly-veiled distrust had brought her right back to the girl she had been before crossing into the Fold. The girl who flinched when she walked by the Grisha training camps and who scratched her palm bloody when the examiners returned every summer in Keramzin even well after her own test.

The servants knocked for Alina. She curled further into the covers, hiding from them and the fully risen morning sun. After a third and final knock, they departed. The one advantage of having worn down the grouchy otkazat'sya women with her stubbornness previously.

She would not be so lucky with her other attendant. Alina heard the sharp rapping of knuckles against the wood that certainly did not belong to the Little Palace staff. Next came her name along with further insinuation that maybe next time she should just let Marie drink herself under the table by herself.

Alina threw off the covers and stormed to the door in a righteous rage that she knew had been Genya's intention, albeit for a different cause. Regardless, she let it carry her as she snapped the locks open and tore the door open to glare at Genya.

"What do you want?" Alina snarled.

The venom in her words caught Genya off guard. The Tailor physically stepped back, blinking. "You hadn't come down for breakfast. I was worried," she answered plainly.

"I'm alive." Alina's response was flat. She kept one hand on the edge of the door and did not make space for Genya to pass by. Genya's eyes roved over Alina's form, taking in all the inadequacies and problems, to be certain. "Anything else?"

"You're going to be late."

"That's not your problem."

"Alina, what has gotten into you?" Genya was peering now at her with bewilderment. She inched closer and reached out with a hand to fix Alina's flyaway bed head. Alina's flinch and renewed glare stopped her before Genya could touch her.

It was all that Alina could see; the ways that Genya only focused on tweaking and nudging and perfecting what people saw from herself and from her alleged friends. "I don't get why you care. We both know that you're just pretending," Alina snapped.

Genya's hand slowly dropped back to her side. Her expression shifted to the determined, unrelenting one that she had used on the very first day that Alina had met the young woman. "We're talking about this inside. So that no one says something they might regret out of doors," Genya said in a low voice.

Breaking from her glare to look down the hall, Alina spied the forms of several Grisha and Little Palace servants alike loitering with their attention on their argument. She opened her mouth to protest; this conversation could happen wherever Alina damn well pleased. But Genya had a palm on the door and had more force in her shove than Alina had expected. The hand that gripped Alina's elbow had a vice grip. "Thank you, Alina," Genya called out deliberately before kicking the door shut behind them.

Alina yanked her arm free even as she stormed away from the doorway. If Genya wouldn't take no for an answer then at very least Alina wasn't going to stand being manhandled around, dammit. She had had enough of that already. Wasn't she supposed to be important? It seemed that hardly mattered when Alina thought it should.

"Saints help me. What's gotten into you? What is your problem?" Genya pressed.

"It's not what's gotten into me. It's what I figured out about you," Alina retorted. She yanked open her drawer to retrieve Mal's letter. At some point last night she had decided that tucking it away would be helpful. It hadn't been, not at least in a way that had helped her to sleep or clear her head. "That you're a liar and far too good at doing that with a smile on your face."

Alina slapped the letter down on the little tea table that Genya usually laid her kit out on. Then she backed up and slammed the dressing table drawer shut for good measure. It was cathartic but not enough to ease the trembling of her hands. After a night of guilt and self-doubt, facing down the person that surely had to be responsible had pushed Alina right past calm, controlled confrontation into anger.

Genya made her way to the table, her head held high even as she picked up the letter and read through its contents. She didn't so much as have a tremble to her lips as she folded it again along its creases and once more met Alina's gaze.

"Well?" Alina snapped.

"You seem to have already rendered your judgement," Genya replied. Her voice was cool, clipped. Worse yet, she had her hands lightly clasped in front of her. Ever the perfect servant. "What point is there to try and say anything further?"

It was Alina who blinked first. Even in her anger she was caught more strongly by her surprise. "You're not even going to try to defend yourself? How could you do this to me, Genya? I thought of you as my friend. All the while you were, what, tearing up my letters? Intercepting his? And patting my hand, telling me to take it as a sign to let go?" Alina fumed.

"You knew that he was alright," Alina added. Her voice nearly broke, but she balled her hands into tight fists and rallied. The sharp bite of her nails against her palms grounded her. "You had the evidence right there and you just… you let me think that he had left me behind in that tent in Kribirsk. And I want to know why."

"I never told you to let go. I told you that I couldn't give you any answers. You didn't believe me," Genya replied.

A laugh burst from Alina's chest. It was sharp and biting, bitter like the taste that had sat in her mouth. "You were fine enough commenting about how a Grisha and an otkazat'sya didn't have the worst chances in the world as a love match. That's hardly refusing to answer."

"I told you flat out I could not give you the answers you wanted," Genya insisted.

Alina was already shaking her head. "Is that how you sleep at night? Hiding behind wordplay because one time you told me that you couldn't answer me. And I was intended to guess that meant you were hiding this-" she pointed at the letter between them "-and all of the others from me?"

Genya shook out her hair and straightened her shoulders. Her hands moved from the inoffensive clasped position to mirror Alina's, fists at her side. She looked more the soldier rather than the servant she had been playing. "My allegiance is with the Second Army first, before everything. It has to be. I'm a Grisha without a color. I do what I'm asked, for the good of us all," she hissed. "That's how I sleep at night."

"You were supposed to be my friend." It was painful to say. Alina could not even take comfort in how her words hit Genya like a physical blow. The young woman flinched, weathered the strike, and forced herself to once again meet Alina's hurt expression.

"I'm not sorry that I did what I had to. What I was asked to do. We needed a Sun Summoner who was Grisha, not a First Army cartographer waiting for some boy to pay attention to her," Genya admitted. "I took comfort in knowing that he was alright. That at least I could do - I always made sure that I knew he was alright. For you."

That was the final twist of the knife. Alina turned away and leaned heavily on the windowsill. She gripped the stone underneath her hands, grounding herself with the feeling. Her legs were going to give out from under her at any moment. "Don't," Alina warned. "Don't say anything else."

She regretted having asked Genya anything at all. She regretted going to the bonfire with Marie and Nadia. She regretted having ever trusted a single one of these Grisha who only saw one thing they needed from the Sun Summoner and damn the rest of Alina Starkov.

"I am sorry that I cannot be fully sorry, Alina," Genya said.

Alina refused to stop staring at the rising sun until she heard the door open and shut once more behind her. Then she stared for a while longer, uncertain just what in the world she was supposed to do now.