Chapter Four
The Darkling

"I have to show you something."

I turned to see Alina standing at the door of the cell. She looked a bit more like herself, her color a little better. Or maybe it was the particular shade of red of her dress against her skin that helped.

"What could you possibly have to show me?" I asked warily. I still felt the sting of her slap across my face, even if I deserved it.

She stopped only an inch from the iron bars, ignoring my tone. She gestured impatiently for me to get up. Curious about what she could possibly be doing down in the dungeon, I unfolded myself from the chair, dropped the book of Fjerdan myths on the table, and stepped toward her expectantly. To my surprise, she reached through the bars. "I'll need your hand."

An odd request, but I extended my left arm toward her.

Alina hesitated for a moment but then clasped her hand around my wrist. Nothing happened at first. I saw her frown in concentration, a slight furrow appearing between her brows.

And her hand started to glow.

I looked up at her questioningly, but she wouldn't meet my eyes. "When I slapped you… the contact with your skin… I called the light."

"Is this… all?" I asked gently.

"I… I don't know," she whispered.

I clasped her wrist in turn, so we were linked together. "Try," I encouraged.

We both stared at our hands. At first, nothing happened. Then I felt a warmth spread over my fingers and watched as the glow from her fingers intensified. It beaded up on her fingertips like droplets of water until beams of light streaming from her fingers wrapped around my wrist. She was panting when she released the light.

"Now you try," she urged softly.

I experimentally dug down into the empty well where my power had once lived. To my surprise, it was not empty as I'd found it over and over through the past days. It wasn't the ocean I was used to, but it was there. Wispy shadows bled from my fingers to the floor.

I looked into her eyes. "The link between us. The merzost."

She nodded slowly.

"I suppose we aren't so useless after all." I said it in jest, but it was in bad taste for two people suffering as we were. She dropped my hand and stepped back. Instantly, that small spring of power ran dry once again, and I was bereft.

"What does this mean?" she whispered, wrapping her arms around herself.

"I suspect it means that whatever power it is we tied to each other still exists, even if you obliterated the rest of it," I speculated.

"I didn't obliterate it," she protested. "I… gave it to others who needed it more."

I snorted. "Was it as you intended?"

She was silent for a moment, regarding me carefully. "If the power is there… even if it's buried… can it be amplified?"

A tiny bubble of hope blossomed. "Yes. If power is there, it can be amplified. That is how they work."

"Then perhaps…" Her voice trailed off, but I could hear her hope.

"It's a pity we wasted Morozova's amplifiers," I observed. "They would likely have been enough to restore one of us to power, possibly even both of us given our… connection."

Alina looked stricken. "Wasted? When I killed… when I used the third amplifier, it allowed everyone to tear down the fold. I did not waste them."

"And yet here we stand, all but powerless," I reminded her. "A waste."

She was angry now. "If you'd helped me tear down the Shadow Fold instead of trying to turn it into a weapon, we would both be happily summoning light and dark."

I inclined my head in acknowledgment. "And Ravka would be as weak as it is now."

"Without your war, the Second Army wouldn't be in shambles. We would be united! And Mal-" Her voice cut off with a choked sob.

"I am sorry about the tracker," I told her, surprising myself by actually meaning it. I had endured and inflicted an infinite amount of pain through my centuries. I was all but immune to the suffering of others. And yet seeing her tears, her fair skin turned sallow and dull, the deep shadows under her eyes… It bothered me.

"You're not sorry," she accused. "If you'd had your way, you'd have fed him to the volcra after you put the collar on me!"

"If I had, we would both still have our powers," I said wistfully. "You were a goddess of power and light. I suppose I would have always wondered about the third amplifier… gone after every firebird and powerful creature."

She looked disgusted. "Is that all I am to you? A conduit for power?"

"No."

She stared but said nothing.

"Would you sacrifice him again if you had known this would happen?" I wondered.

"No… Yes… I don't-how can you ask me that?" Her eyes welled with tears, spilling onto her cheeks. She sniffled and did her best to collect herself. "Sacrificing Mal saved Ravka. But if I'd known… if I'd known I'd lose Mal and my power… I'm not… I hate you."

She turned away, her shoulders shaking. I stepped closer, wrapping my hands around the bars. I wanted… something. And it made me weak.

"I wanted… still want… what is best for Ravka," I told her carefully. "Might you consider that in all my years of life, I might have a better idea of what that means than you?"

"What you want is what is best for you," she shot back, her back still turned. "We both know that the only thing you needed from me was a safe passage through the Fold and perhaps a little assistance with the volcra. You didn't need me to turn it into a weapon."

She was more perceptive than I had given her credit for. Involuntarily, I reached through the bars to touch her hair, wondering if the feathery strands of her long white hair were as soft as they looked. She stiffened as my fingers lifted the lock of hair, the strands like silk in my fingers.

"We've both lost everything," I reminded her.

The delicate strands slipped through my fingers as she sank to the ground with a sob, burying her face in her hands, her back pressing into the bars. I knelt, reaching through the bars to clasp her gaunt shoulder. Where my thumb touched the bare skin of her neck glowed palely, almost like silver moonlight.

She yanked herself away so fast I was left reeling, but she immediately turned and snatched both of my hands through the bars. At first, our clasped hands just gave off a swirled aura of light and shadow. I could feel the faint stirring of my power. Then, she slowly guided our hands to face palm up, stacked on top of each other.

Fascinated, I watched her face. The little furrow I'd seen between her brows so many times appeared. When she'd first come to the Little Palace, she'd struggled to access her power. When I had touched her that first time in my tent to amplify her power, I had felt it welling to the surface, even as she'd stubbornly tamped them down. When I'd pressed the tip of my knife into the tender flesh of her arm, the supernova of power that had burst forth had been intoxicating. I hadn't understood why it had been so difficult for her to summon the light under mother's tutelage when it had practically exploded under my fingertips. I'd watched her from the shadows far more than she knew. For months, that tiny line would form between her brows as she worked to summon even the tiniest ball of light. When she'd finally let go-finally embraced what could be instead of what she'd once hoped for-those lines had gone away.

As she concentrated on our hands, I had the odd urge to smooth it away.

Then I felt it.

It was a gentle tug, nothing like when she'd ripped the shadow soldiers from my body in her effort to destroy us both. This was like a hand guiding me in my deepest soul.

I saw her eyes change, the deep brown wells filling with wonder. I followed her gaze to our hands. An orb had formed, but it wasn't the blinding sun I'd seen her produce dozens of times. Instead, a small ball of swirled light and shadow slowly rotated. I felt that gentle tug and watched as the ball slowly grew from the size of a chestnut to an apple. It kept expanding, encasing our hands. Tentatively, I poured my own call into the slowly swelling orb, clasping our hands together, and I watched as the globe quickly expanded until we were encased in a dome of swirling shadow and sunlight.

Alina looked around in wonder before capturing my gaze. Her hands gripped mine tighter. I had a flash of what I'd once envisioned for us: an unstoppable union of night and day, our powers joined and amplifying each other, lives irrevocably intertwined.

I flexed tentatively against our dome, pushing against the swirling shadows. I could not snuff out the light as I'd once been able to, but I had almost as much control of Alina's light as I'd once had of my shadows. I pushed against the shadows, molding them around the strands of light until…

Alina gazed in awe at the dome around us, our own personal starry sky. Her gaze met mine, a collision of warm brown and stony gray, and I felt our combined power pulse, the stars twinkling.

In the pale starlight, I quietly observed her. She'd never had arresting beauty like Genya but even now, her skin still pale and sallow, her features dry and colorless, something was captivating about her.

Mine.

The thought came unbidden but wasn't entirely unwelcome. I'd thought of her that way before, a mix of desperate possession and… something else. Something I'd always been afraid to name because it made me weak. It made me hurt. And as someone effectively immortal, hurt lingered for me in a way it didn't for others.

Under our starlit sky, I felt something I hadn't let myself feel since Alina had run from me over and over again: hope. Hope for a future, hope for power, hope for no longer being alone, even hope for-

I would not let myself think it. If nothing else, this was a chance to have the smallest scrap of my power back-even if it was bound to another.

"This is what we are together," I told her softly.

She gazed at me, her brown eyes soft.

"We were always meant for this. Light and dark together. Balance."

Her face was luminous. Beautiful.

"You were meant to be mine."

With that, she wrenched her hands away, the dome shattering into glittering fragments around us. Alina stood, looking down on me with fury in her gaze.

"Never," she hissed. She whirled away and all but sprinted up the stone steps and past the guards.

And hope fled.

Dealing with all of the advisors and officials in Kribirsk after discovering the Sun Summoner was incredibly tedious. Many seemed determined to find fault in me that she had not been found as a child, that the Shadow Fold still cut off West Ravka when there was a Sun Summoner in our midst. It was indeed a mystery, one that would likely require Alina's assistance to solve. Questioning the Senior Cartographer yielded little information.

"How old is she?" I demanded

"I am not sure… she joined us last year so I suppose seventeen," the Cartographer informed me.

"Where is she from?"

"She and the tracker are from the orphanage in Keramzin."

"What is the tracker to her?" I wasn't sure why, but I needed to know.

"How should I know? I don't know everything about all my assistants. I suppose they are friends."

"Has she shown any unusual abilities before this?" I queried.

"Her drawings are above average, I suppose, though I doubt she'll be making a career as a fine artist any time soon. Losing her and Alexei in one blow…"

"That is not what I mean," I retorted.

"Don't you think I would have reported it if she had summoned the sun? I want the fold gone as much as the next person."

A lie. No one wanted it gone as much as I did, even if the Fold did have its uses.

It took more than a day to meet with my advisors and lieutenants to establish orders in my absence. I had not planned to return to the Little Palace for another three weeks yet, but this discovery merited a personal visit to the king. I dictated which regiments would head north to battle Fjerda and which would move south to guard against the Shu. Zoya was perturbed that I designated her platoon of Etherealki to take their turn on the Fold, driving and defending the King's skiffs for two weeks. But, like any good soldier, she would do her duty.

Blessedly, I could travel much faster on horseback with a group of riders than a company of soldiers and a carriage could. My stallion Prizrak was swift and sure, cantering easily down the Vy. With any luck, I would catch them by nightfall.

I'd been riding for nearly a day when a sudden blinding feeling of wrongness struck me. I spurred Prizrak into a gallop, a sense of dread settling in my gut. My soldiers did not question it and spurred their horses on with me.

As we galloped through the valleys winding through the hills, we came upon a violent scene. The coach was stopped in front of a fallen tree with the guards engaged in skirmishes with Fjerdans.

Cold fury knotted in my gut as I slid from the saddle, darkness gathering in my palms. With a clap of my hands, the Fjerdans were blinded, and my men cut them down quickly where they stood. Before I could look for Alina, I heard her.

"I'm here!"

A Fjerdan was on top of her, knife to her throat. He looked utterly terrified. Good. He should have been.

"Nej!" The Fjerdan raised his knife above Alina's heart as I gathered the shadows. "I don't need to see to put my knife in her heart."

Many say anger is like fire, burning hot and red. I have found this statement to be false. My fury is more like ice, cold and sharp, but just as capable of burning you in its own way. The ice built in my veins when I spoke to him. "You must realise you're surrounded." And I will kill you where you stand in an instant. I dropped my hands and edged closer as he frantically searched for his comrades.

"No closer!" he shrieked, realizing he was utterly alone.

"Give her to me and I'll let you scurry back to your king," I offered.

The bearded man had the audacity to giggle. "Oh no, oh no. I don't think so. The Darkling doesn't spare lives." He wasn't wrong. Sunlight glinted off the knife as he turned to Alina. "He will not have you. He will not have the witch. He will not have this power too. Skirden Fjerda!"

His knife was fast, but I was far swifter, my arms slashing through the air and the Cut cracking like thunder. I was running before he even hit the ground.

Alina's mouth opened in a silent scream as his lower half collapsed on top of her, and she scrambled away. When she found her voice, she emitted a terrified shriek, trembling like a leaf and staring at the corpse. There was a line of blood spattered across her face, adding to the gore.

I knelt between her and the would-be killer. "Look at me," I told her, as gently as I could.

She would be a powerful Grisha someday, but at that moment, Alina was just a terrified girl, her blood-splattered face ashen. "What… what did you do to him?"

"What I had to do. Can you stand?"

She nodded her assent, but I assisted her to her feet anyway. As her eyes shifted once again to the fallen Fjerdan, I grabbed her chin and gently turned her face. "At me."

At her nod, I led her slowly down the hill, eyes trained on hers, ready to catch her if she collapsed. As we approached my soldiers, I gave the command. "Clear the road. I need twenty riders."

"The girl?" Ivan queried.

"Rides with me," I informed him. Anyone who wanted her would go through me.

I instructed the soldiers in clearing the road, giving Alina the chance to calm herself. I wondered if she was more scared of the Fjerdans or what I had done. I had made a mistake in assuming there would be safety in the openness of the Vy, but killing the Fjerdan had not been an error.

You're a monster.

It wasn't the first time I'd had the thought, but it still hurt. I'd given myself little time to contemplate what a Sun Summoner could mean for me as a person… as a man. I wouldn't let myself think that way yet. But I did not want Alina to fear me; I did not want her to know me as a monster.

"A decoy," I told her as she watched the empty but guarded coach roll down the Vy. "We'll take the southern trails. It's what we should have done in the first place."

"So you do make mistakes," she said.

I paused as I pulled on my riding gloves. More than you will ever know.

"Of course I make mistakes. Just not often." I smiled softly, raising my hood. I offered her my hand.

Her hesitation hurt more than it should have.

You're a monster.

"I did what I had to, Alina." And I had.

At my words, she seemed to steel herself and allowed me to help her into the saddle, my hands moving to her slim waist to boost her onto Prizrak's high back before mounting myself.

With her back pressed into my chest, I could feel it when she started to tremble as we trotted away, my riders gathering around us.

"You're shaking," I observed, unsure what to do.

"I'm not used to people trying to kill me."

"Really? I hardly notice anymore," I jested.

She turned slightly in my arms to look at my face. "And I did just see a man get sliced in half." She was trying to be strong, but she was still shaking.

Keeping the horse steady, I shifted the reins and peeled away one of my gloves. If nothing else, I could offer her the comfort of my power. I threaded my hand into her hair at the nape of her neck, gently amplifying the power that welled beneath the surface of her skin. At the brush of bare skin, I felt her light rush up to meet mine, a sense of calm flooding me. I felt her relax against my chest as I spurred Prizrak into a canter. She slept tucked in my arms until we stopped to make camp for the night.

For the next five days, I left her alone. She was not a very good rider, but so long as she could stay in the saddle, we would make better time if she had her own mount. I put her on an unflappable chestnut gelding and kept a watchful eye from a distance. By the fifth night, I could see her growing weariness as she slid from her mount's back to make her way to a nearby stream. Two of my oprichniki made to follow her, but I stayed them with a raised hand. She seemed troubled as she squatted by the stream, but then a faint smile crossed her features. It was the first time I had seen her smile, and it was nearly as transformative as the bright sunlight she had brought forth in the Grisha tent.

"What are you smiling at?"

Startled, she turned and stared as I crouched beside her to splash away the grime from the road.

"Well?" I prompted.

"Myself," she admitted.

"Are you that funny?"

"I'm hilarious."

I studied her, sensing sarcasm. I had the sense she had not had much cause for humor in her life. If she'd spent all these years suppressing her power, she would have been a sickly child. It showed in her physical appearance. I imagined she was still in disbelief.

"I'm not Grisha," she blurted.

Or perhaps outright denial. "The evidence suggests otherwise. What makes you so certain?"

"Look at me!" she demanded, gesturing to her skinny form.

"I'm looking."

"Do I look like a Grisha to you?" she asked.

I shook my head at her. She was being ridiculous. "You don't understand at all." I made to walk back up the hill.

"Are you going to explain it to me?"

"Not right now, no." This conversation would be better had with full bellies in the plush comfort of the Little Palace than on an abandoned farm after fleeing an attack. There were things I wasn't yet sure how to explain. When, exactly, did one confess to being the eternally hated Black Heretic? The weight of the future of Ravka already rested on her scrawny shoulders. Could I ask her to bear the weight of my sins as well?

Later, as we sat around the fire, I felt her gaze rest on me. I wondered what she was thinking when she flushed pink. I sat beside her, offering her the flask of kvas. She accepted though I wondered why after seeing her grimace at taking a sip.

"Thank you," she said, coughing and handing the flask back. There were a dozen questions in her eyes.

I took a fortifying sip. "All right. Ask me."

The whir of emotions crossing her face was almost amusing. "How old are you?"

Of all the questions to ask first. I tried to dodge. "I don't know exactly." I honestly didn't.

"How can you not know?" she asked.

I shrugged. "How old are you exactly?"

I felt a bit bad at her sour look. I had forgotten about her status as an orphan. "Well, then, roughly how old are you?" she questioned. She was nothing if not persistent.

"Why do you want to know?" I countered.

"Because I've heard stories about you since I was a child, but you don't look much older than I am," she replied. If only she knew.

"What kind of stories?"

"The usual kind," she answered testily. "If you don't want to answer me, just say so."

"I don't want to answer you." I don't want to lie to you.

"Oh."

I sighed. What was one little lie in the centuries we'd spend together? Of all the things I had lied about-would probably lie about in the future-this would be the most forgivable. "One hundred twenty. Give or take." At least since the last time I'd been reborn.

"What? That's impossible."

Sometimes I wished it were. "When a fire burns, it uses up the wood. It devours it, leaving only ash. Grisha power doesn't work that way."

"How does it work?" she queried, following my gaze into the flames.

"Using our powers makes us stronger. It feeds us instead of consuming us. Most Grisha live long lives."

"But not one hundred and twenty years."

"No," I told her. "The length of a Grisha's life is proportional to his or her power. The greater the power, the longer the life. And when that power is amplified…" An idea nudged at the back of my mind.

"And you're a living amplifier. Like Ivan's bear."

"Like Ivan's bear," I repeated. So she had been listening to the other Grisha.

"But that means-"

"That my bones or a few of my teeth would make another Grisha very powerful." They'd have to survive it first.

"Well, that's completely creepy. Doesn't that worry you a little bit?"

"No. Now you answer my question. What kind of stories were you told?" This whole line of conversation was uncomfortable.

"Well…" she began. "Our teachers told us that you strengthened the Second Army by gathering Grisha from outside of Ravka."

True enough. "I didn't have to gather them. They came to me. Other countries don't treat their Grisha so well as Ravka. The Fjerdans burn us as witches, and the Kerch sell us as slaves. The Shu Han carve us up seeking the source of our power." It made me angry to think of it. "What else?"

"They said you were the strongest Darkling in generations."

"I didn't ask for your flattery."

I watched as she fiddled with the cuff of the red kefta she wore. I had a sudden vision of her clad majestically in black.

"Well… there was an old serf who worked on the estate…" Her voice trailed off.

"Go on. Tell me." I'd heard it all before.

"He… he said that Darklings are born without souls. That only something truly evil could have created the Shadow Fold." She blanched when she caught my furious expression. "But Ana Kuya sent him packing and told us it was all peasant superstition."

I heaved a sigh. "I doubt that serf is the only one who believes that."

She said nothing in return. How could I explain this to her? Baring the whole truth would indeed send her running. A half-truth, then. "My great-great-great-grandfather was the Black Heretic, the Darkling who created the Shadow Fold. It was a mistake, an experiment born of his greed, maybe his evil. I don't know. But every Darkling since then has tried to undo the damage he did to our country, and I'm no different." I'd been trying for centuries. I turned to her. "I've spent my life searching for a way to make things right. You're the first glimmer of hope I've had in a long time." At last, a total truth.

"Me?" she asked, disbelief coloring her tone.

"The world is changing, Alina," I told her. "Muskets and rifles are just the beginning. I've seen the weapons they're developing in Kerch and Fjerda. The age of Grisha power is coming to an end." I feared this greatly. If we weren't of use, would our lives be valued at all?

"But… but what about the First Army? They have rifles. They have weapons."

"Where do you think their rifles come from? Their ammunition? Every time we cross the Fold, we lose lives. A divided Ravka won't survive the new age. We need our ports. We need our harbors. And only you can give them back to us."

"How? How am I supposed to do that?" she pleaded.

"By helping me destroy the Shadow Fold." By curing my sins.

"You're crazy. This is all crazy," she told me, shaking her head. She was folding into herself and staring at the sky through the fractured ceiling of the barn. "What about the thing you did? To the Fjerdan?" she asked at last.

That, at least, I could explain, though I could not meet her eyes. "It's called the Cut. It requires great power and great focus; it's something few Grisha could do." I paused, risking a glance. I had the urge to wrap my arm around her shoulder as she attempted to rub warmth back into her arms. "If I had cut him down with a sword, would that make it any better?"

She considered this. "I don't know."

Her response hurt more than I would care to admit. I couldn't help what I was, couldn't help that she was afraid. Before she could ask anything else that would require me to lie, I stood and walked away, leaving her staring into the flames.

You're a monster.

The chapter title is from "The Moment I Knew" by Taylor Swift.

So much angst. So. Much. Angst. I flirted with having them reverse powers; this would probably be more in line with Bardugo's hint of them exchanging a shadow of their abilities, but alas, I can't let go of the visual of the white-haired sun summoner and dark shadow summoner. Do you think I should have gone for it? Reviews are greatly appreciated :)