Disclaimer: I don't own the Grisha Trilogy and its characters – it belongs to Leigh Bardugo. I do not own the Shadow & Bone TV series, which was developed by Eric Heisserer for Netflix and based on Leigh Bardugo's books. Any recognisable dialogue is from the books or TV show – some lines may be included verbatim, others in an amended form.

The Edge of Seventeen

The King could not be anything but pleased about what Alina had done in the Fold.

Still, she knew he had been grumbling about the fact that it was only one thin corridor, conveniently forgetting that the corridor was far more than anyone else had done in the four hundred years the Fold had existed.

There had also been something of an argument between the King and the Darkling over the Fold's extension over the dry docks in Novokribirsk. The Darkling had easily defended himself, though. He had said nothing of it being a decision made in advance (because then the King could have claimed he should have been informed). Instead, he had explained his actions in terms of a last-minute reaction to intelligence that General Zlatan and his men had cleared the civilians and were preparing to ambush the skiff when it arrived, which was, for the most part, the truth.

Alina had worried momentarily that there might be trouble over events in the Fold, but of course she should have known that the Darkling would be able to persuade the King to see things his way.

It wouldn't work forever – it had been an awesome display of strength and the King never did like to see others wielding great power – but it would keep things stable for the moment.

Every day for a week after the trip the Queen sent Alina invitations to tea that she couldn't find a way to refuse, no matter how much she wanted to.

The room was full of nobles that she despised. The men often tried to get her alone, some thinking it would be a story to tell if they managed to defile a saint, others hoping she might be able to help them gain further power. It was lucky her oprichniki were always around, entirely ignoring the Queen's insistence that "of course the little Sun Summoner will be safe with me."

The women considered her a foreign curiosity who couldn't understand them at all. Half of them regularly forgot that she spoke perfect Ravkan, choosing instead to talk to her in loud (and terrible) Shu. They fawned over her even while most of what they said was a litany of backhanded compliments and they seemed to think she was too stupid to realise how rude they were being.

Thankfully, the Queen eventually became bored of Alina's presence, and irritated by how her guests were more interested in speaking with the Sun Summoner than with her, and the invitations abruptly stopped.

In most respects, life continued much as it had before the trip to the Fold. Alina studied and practiced with her power, often more with the Darkling now than with Baghra.

The old woman seemed reluctantly impressed by the corridor Alina had created through the Fold, although she remained generally pessimistic about the state of Ravka in general.

Baghra would always be Baghra, it seemed.

The Apparat made even more attempts to slip into the Little Palace and speak with Alina, but she was too well guarded for him to get close and Alina never attended services at Os Alta Cathedral. The Darkling's spies said that the Apparat continued to call her Sankta Alina, telling his congregation that she would save them from the darkness.

"A very obvious metaphor," Genya snorted, "everyone knows the Apparat is terrified of the Darkling. He's probably hoping you'll strike him down with your holy light."

"Well, he'll have to get used to disappointment," Alina rolled her eyes, "the Apparat creeps me out. If I somehow managed to get rid of both the Shadow Fold and the Darkling, I bet he'd have me sacrificed on an altar 'for the good of the people' as soon as he was sure he'd got what he wanted."

"The King's not very happy with him," Genya confided, "he thinks there should be more mentions of his own majesty, benevolence and wisdom, rather than constant sermons about the Sun Summoner."

"I wouldn't have thought he'd want the Apparat to lie so blatantly to the people," Alina wore a faux-innocent expression.

Her friend laughed, "you know the King, he's always had an inflated sense of his own importance. The man is entirely out of touch with the common people, which will of course work to our advantage."

Talk about the royal family was generally fairly seditious in the Little Palace, respect being feigned only in the common areas where there might conceivably be Grand Palace spies lurking around.

For all their treasonous talk, though, Alina still didn't know exactly what the Darkling was planning. It was obvious there was going to be a coup at some point, but beyond that no one seemed willing to give her any details.

She assumed they wanted her to be able to plead ignorance for the moment. It was also true that she didn't actually have any training in espionage – it was difficult enough for her to be polite to the royal family on the rare occasions when she met them.

For the moment, she was content to let things stay as they were. She was curious, obviously, and often tempted to just incessantly question everyone until someone gave her an answer. However, she was fairly certain the Darkling would fill her in when it was necessary, and she didn't want to accidentally mess up any of the plans already in place.

She also knew Genya would eventually be getting her own revenge on the King, and Alina would be devastated if she ruined that for her best friend.

And if she occasionally distracted herself by visualising being able to burn the King, Queen, Prince Vasily and the Apparat to a crisp, well … everyone was entitled to daydream sometimes.

Alina was bored.

When the Darkling had invited her to spend a few hours in the War Room, she had thought it would be more interesting. Instead, he had handed her a six-hundred-page book which explained (in excruciating detail) the tax system used in Ravka and promptly begun to ignore her in favour of a pile of reports on his desk.

The road to equality with the Darkling was not, as it turned out, just based on increasing her power levels. It also included a move towards an equal share in the frankly ridiculous amount of paperwork the General of the Second Army had to deal with, as well as an understanding that she would eventually join in with more of the Darkling's meetings, perhaps even attending in his place when he was away from the Little Palace.

Of all the things eight-year-old Alina had thought she would be studying when she discovered she was Grisha, the Ravkan tax system was not one of them.

She was just wishing for a distraction when there was a knock on the door and an oprichnik announced Alina's favourite Heartrender.

"Fedyor!" she exclaimed happily, "when did you get back?"

"Just a few minutes ago," he said, "I thought I'd make my report before I went to my room."

He paused and looked at the Darkling, "I can come back later, if now is not convenient."

"Now will be fine," the Darkling told him, shooting Alina a look that said she should pay attention to Fedyor's report.

Alina tried not to smile at the trust he was placing in her by allowing her to stay. Plus, she could have a break from her reading – taxes really were incredibly dull.

"As we feared," Fedyor explained, "Nina was ambushed and captured by a group of Drüskelle operating in Novokribirsk. My team and I were too late to intercept them in the city, but we managed to ascertain they had left on a ship bound for Fjerda with a number of prisoners. Unfortunately, they sailed straight into a storm that destroyed their ship."

Alina gasped. The Darkling looked furious.

"I cannot confirm what happened to any of the others on board," Fedyor added quickly, "but we managed to trace Nina and one of the Drüskelle to Arkesk."

"And where is Nina now?" the Darkling asked, "did you manage to extract her from Arkesk."

Fedyor looked a little nervous now, "I'm afraid, moi soverennyi, that things did not go quite to plan."

What the Heartrender explained then seemed almost crazy to Alina. A Grisha and a Drüskelle working together, becoming friends, possibly even lovers, if Fedyor's observations were correct. And then a stand-off with a group of Kerch men that Fedyor had needed to step away from, lest he draw Ravka into another war.

"She swore he had changed," Fedyor told them, "that they had saved each other."

"The Drüskelle do not change," the Darkling fumed, "they are certainly not to be trusted."

"He was young, though," Alina countered, "perhaps he saw the error of his ways?"

The Darkling shook his head, "what was Nina thinking? She should have returned to Little Palace with you, Fedyor, and brought the Drüskelle for interrogation and execution. By all rights, she is a traitor to the Grisha."

Alina could see the words pained him. The Grisha were his people and it took a great deal for him to consider casting one of them away, especially since she knew Nina was one of his favourites.

Fedyor looked stricken. Nina was a good friend of his and the idea of her being branded a traitor clearly upset him.

"She is in Ketterdam now?" asked Alina.

Fedyor nodded, "she went with the Kerch men, outed the Drüskelle as a slaver and herself as a victim willing to testify. They'll put him in Hellgate while they wait to arrange a trial."

"She cared about him, but condemned him to prison," Alina mused, "the only way she could think to save him from being brought to the Little Palace?"

"We do not deal kindly with Drüskelle," the Darkling told her, a vicious glint in his eyes, "Nina is well aware of this."

"Couldn't someone go to Ketterdam?" she asked, "get more details, see if there is any chance the Drüskelle really has changed. Surely it would be worth a little trouble – Nina is one of your best spies and she could be of use in Ketterdam."

Now, Fedyor seemed hopeful. The Darkling, on the other hand, looked like he was preparing to disagree with her.

"Please," she said quickly, "surely we don't want to lose members of the Second Army unnecessarily."

The Darkling sighed, "very well. Fedyor, take a week here at the Little Palace to rest and catch up on your reports and then you can take a team to Ketterdam to see if Nina can adequately explain herself."

Fedyor tried to hide his smile, "of course, moi soverennyi."

"Fedyor," the Darkling added, looking serious, "I still expect you to do your duty if Nina is unable to give a satisfactory reason for her conduct."

The smile faded off the Heartrender's face, "yes, moi soverennyi."

He bowed his head and left the room, probably to go in search of Ivan.

"Thank you," Alina said quietly, once it was just her and the Darkling left in the room.

"Don't thank me just yet," he warned her, "Nina will have a lot of explaining to do. And back to your reading, Alina, there is still a good hour before dinner."

She sighed, wondering why she had ever thought it was a good idea to want to become involved in the governance of Ravka before she was even seventeen years old. Still, she went back to the text, knowing full well that the Darkling liked to quiz her out of the blue and would give her a horribly disappointed look if she failed to answer his questions.

She crossed her fingers as she read, though, hoping Fedyor's upcoming journey to Ketterdam would have a positive outcome.

Alina woke with a start.

This was the third night in a row of uneasy sleep.

Odd dreams were plaguing her. Nothing concrete, just a stormy sea, a flash of silvery scales, a rush of power.

The sea whip Rusalye.

Was she having an actual vision of another of Morozova's amplifiers? Or were her dreams simply being influenced by a topic that was always on her mind?

Morozova's Stag had been so obviously other. Sentient in a way other beings were not, ancient and powerful in its own right.

She didn't know whether the same was true for the sea whip, if it was also involved in the making at the heart of the world, or if it was just a long-lived beast Morozova had chosen and which had entered folklore simply due to its long life and constant presence in the True Sea.

It was too early for deep thoughts, however. Her mind was fuzzy with sleep and her bed was so comfortable.

She lay her head back on her pillow and her eyes fluttered shut.

Alina was asleep again in minutes and this slumber was blissfully free of dreams.

Alina came back to consciousness slowly, sitting up to find Ivan in front of her, tapping his foot impatiently.

"I thought you'd be better than this," the surly Heartrender said, "Fedyor seemed to think you'd made progress, but maybe he was just being optimistic."

"You're not supposed to actually knock me out," she growled at him, "just make me lightheaded so I can practice concentrating while dealing with distractions."

Ivan shrugged carelessly, "my mistake."

The gleam in his eyes suggested it had been in no way an accident. He was definitely grumpy about Fedyor's absence and taking it out on everyone else (she'd heard all about the group of students he'd reduced to tears four days previously, and the Grand Palace guards he'd terrified only yesterday).

Irritated, Alina shot a beam of light at his kefta, hot enough that the edges of the garment began to smoke.

Ivan twisted his hands viciously and the beam vanished as Alina became distracted by his iron grip on her heart.

"You are a menace, Starkov."

"So are you," she retorted, glad when her oprichniki came into view and Ivan dropped his hands, releasing his hold on her heart.

Alina got to her feet, slightly unsteady but determined not to show it, "so … same time tomorrow?"

"Get out of my sight, Starkov."

Well, that wasn't actually a no.

Alina was in a lesson with Baghra when Fedyor returned from Ketterdam.

It was only when she went to dinner that she spotted him sitting next to Ivan, looking tired but pleased.

She rushed over to him, "how did it go?" she asked eagerly.

Ivan looked irritated to have his meal interrupted but Fedyor smiled at her, "the Darkling still needs to look through her full report, but I think it's going to be ok."

"Oh, that's wonderful, Fedyor."

"Yes," he nodded, "I can't say I understand her attraction – he doesn't seem her type at all – but she was adamant that she loved him. More than waffles, she told me, which certainly tells me she's serious."

Alina gaped at him. She'd only met Nina in person once but that was enough to realise that the older girl had a love affair with waffles that some of the more literary Grisha students had in fact immortalised in some hilarious poetry.

Alina sat down and ate two bread rolls at top speed before she rushed away in the direction of the War Room, hoping to find the Darkling and discover if he had made a decision about Nina.

The two oprichniki guarding the door opened it for her immediately and her own oprichniki stationed themselves against the opposite wall to wait for her.

"Alina," the Darkling said, knowing it was her without even looking up, "I expect you've come about Nina. Did you at least finish your dinner before you came here?"

"I ate," she replied, a little defensively.

"A full meal?"

"Well …"

"Patience is a virtue, solntse," he reminded her.

Not one Alina was currently possessed of, however, "have you decided?"

He shot her a severe look, "I am very tempted to let you sit there and wait another half an hour. There's no use in a Sun Summoner who does damage to herself by not eating properly."

"Please," she said, "I just want to know what the report says."

"Why so eager?" he asked her, "you've only met Nina once, if I remember correctly."

"Well, she's Fedyor's friend," Alina replied, "so I want her to be ok."

The Darkling tilted his head and regarded her curiously, as if he couldn't quite understand her. He did that occasionally – she suspected he sometimes struggled to comprehend the strength of her feelings for things he considered trivial.

"Besides," she added, "Nina is cool. She ate twenty-five waffles in one sitting, you know."

He snorted slightly, "I've been reliably informed it was actually twenty-four."

Alina waved her hand in a slightly dismissive manner. Details weren't important to her. The image of Nina polishing off that twenty-fifth (twenty-fourth) waffle, with a pile of empty, syrupy plates next to her, would live on in Alina's memory. Nina Zenik was a legend for her abilities as a spy, but her achievements in that area were only known by Alina through stories – she had seen the devouring of the waffles with her own amazed eyes.

"Nina will remain in Ketterdam for the time being. She's joined up with a gang of thieves – the Dregs – in her attempt to liberate her Drüskelle from prison and, whatever else that group might be, they are well placed in the city's underworld. It should give us an edge in identifying Grisha who might have been kidnapped or indentured."

Alina was a little tempted to gloat – after all, she had been right that Nina was better left alive and unharmed – but she didn't think the Darkling would accept any teasing at the moment.

"Thank you for telling me."

She was sincere in her words. Really, he would have been within his rights to keep her in the dark. Alina wasn't really familiar with his spy network and had no real reason to get involved in Nina's case. Still, he had listened to her, though she thought he probably would have sent Fedyor to investigate further even without her intervention (he knew, probably more than anyone, what an asset Nina was).

"Well, you are persistent," he said with a miniscule, wry smile, "now go and eat some proper dinner, unless you want to help me with these requisition forms?"

"You know what, I really am quite hungry now," she replied hurriedly, "and I've never been able to work well on an empty stomach, so I'd be absolutely no use."

The Darkling only hummed, clearly amused, "alright. I'll see you tomorrow, Alina."

Alina hurried away, determined to escape any mention of requisition forms. She didn't have much experience with them, but the one time the Darkling had tricked her into helping him had been the longest and most boring five hours of her life, and that included the time she'd spent reading about the Ravkan tax system.

Saints, politics was one thing but she really had no idea how the Darkling dealt with so much paperwork.

Her seventeenth birthday happened to fall on a day when there were no lessons, so Alina celebrated by sleeping in and enjoying a late breakfast with Genya made up of pastries and fruit that the Tailor had brought over from the Grand Palace.

There was the usual pile of presents by her bed from her friends, as well as an absolutely hideous gown from the Queen.

"That thing should be shredded and burned," Genya insisted, grimacing at the garish pattern.

Alina agreed wholeheartedly, but remarked that it was probably best to wear it once, so the Queen wouldn't be offended, and then consign it to the back of her wardrobe, never to see the light of day again.

"It just hurts my soul a little bit to think of you having to put that thing on," her friend sighed.

"Well, it's marginally better than the perfume Crown Prince Vasily sent," Alina told her, holding out the little bottle for Genya to smell, "it's absolutely disgusting."

The Tailor's expression showed her displeasure with the smell, but she looked a little concerned too, "Alina … Vasily, he hasn't sent you a Birthday present before, has he?"

Alina shook her head. The Queen sent things sometimes, and they were usually hideous, but she'd never received anything from Vasily.

"Just … be careful," Genya warned her, "if you happen to see him in the gardens or the Grand Palace, make sure your oprichniki are close by. Vasily … well, I've heard he's very much his father's son."

Alina grimaced, both disgusted and angry, "Saints, I'm starting to think we should just evacuate the servants, grab the jewels and gold to sell and then burn the Grand Palace to the ground."

"Don't tempt me," her best friend muttered seriously.

Talking about hypothetical treason and uprisings really was a fun way to spend a morning.

-x-x-x-

Alina ate dinner with the Darkling that evening. She knew he was usually served the same food that everyone else had in the dining room, but he tended to order fancier meals on the rare occasions that Alina dined with him and she always appreciated the variety (and the lack of herring).

Today there was chicken kiev and then apple cake. Alina noted with some amusement that the slice of cake on the Darkling's plate was twice as large as her own – for someone who was so careful to hide his sweet tooth in public, he made it abundantly obvious in private.

He wasn't often around for her birthday. This current residence was, she thought, the longest continuous period of time that the Darkling had been at the Little Palace since she had arrived there.

Normally, he would have headed back to either the Shu Han or Fjerda front, but with their demonstration in the Fold still fresh in everyone's minds, the fighting had calmed down considerably and there were very few border skirmishes at the moment.

He interrogated her about her lessons as they ate. They were far less structured now, since she and her classmates were focusing more on self-study in their areas of interest and many of them were sent on brief assignments quite regularly.

"And have you finished the text on the taxation system yet?" he asked her, "there's one on agriculture I think it would be useful for you to look through."

"I haven't got through the last hundred pages," she admitted, "I keep falling asleep whenever I attempt it."

He gave her a disappointed frown that was somehow worse than anger.

"I'll finish it in the next few days," she promised.

It would probably bore her to tears, but she wanted the Darkling to know she was taking her studies seriously.

He nodded, satisfied, and during dessert he asked her about how her drawing was going. He still had the sketch she had done a few years previously framed on his wall. All she could see when she looked at it were her errors, the parts of his face that she hadn't got quite right, but he had seemed oddly touched to receive it and had never taken it down.

When the plates were cleared away, the Darkling handed her a present wrapped in a black and gold patterned piece of silk.

It was a pretty wooden box with the image of a sun etched onto the lid. Inside, sitting on a velvet cushion, was a beautiful pendant.

Alina lifted it out to admire the design. A blazing golden sun on one side and the sun in eclipse on the other.

"Two sides of the same coin," the Darkling told her, "it seemed appropriate."

He plucked it out of her hands and gestured for her to lift her hair up.

His fingertips grazed her bare skin as he fastened the pendant around her neck.

She felt the usual spark of power and surety that his touch always brought, but there was something else too, something that made her cheeks warm and her stomach swoop.

"Thank you," she said, trying to sound normal as he stepped back, "I love it."

"I'm glad, solntse," he smiled, expression soft in a way she rarely saw.

"I better go," she muttered, embarrassed and nervous for some reason she couldn't quite figure out.

"Goodnight, Alina," he said as she stood and moved towards the door, "enjoy the last hour or two of your Birthday."

She ducked out of the room, pink-cheeked and trying to hide it.

Something was starting to change. And Alina didn't know if she was excited or terrified about it.

Everything that had happened with Nina recently had made Alina think about how easy it could be to subdue even a powerful Grisha once their hand movements were limited.

It was one thing when it was rope that might be maneuvered and wiggled out of, but the Drüskelle, as well as an increasing number of other opportunists and gangs, used tight-fitting metal handcuffs that were nearly impossible to escape from without help.

Nina was one of the most powerful Heartrenders in the Second Army, but she hadn't been able to do anything at all once the restraints had been put on. The storm was a disaster, but it had probably been the only reason she had escaped alive.

Alina hated the idea of being helpless. If there was a way to use her power even without the use of her hands, then she wanted to find it.

She scoured the texts in both the main library and the Darkling's private one, but she couldn't find anything concrete.

Centuries ago, Grisha hadn't been nearly as specialised, often using different branches of the Small Science. The formalisation of the orders when the Little Palace was built meant that every student focused on a specific area, leading to Grisha who were perhaps more limited in the scope of their skills, but certainly more powerful in their chosen order.

More important, however, was that the focus on hand movements had increased over time. There was always an element of them, but the few surviving accounts she could find from before the creation of the Fold suggested that the Small Science could be used in some capacity without hand gestures.

Alina thought about speaking with the Darkling to get a first-hand account of the situation a few centuries previously, but something held her back. She wanted to try by herself for the moment – as had been the case when she was practicing with her invisibility, she was keen to have something to show before she went to the Darkling. She wouldn't hesitate to use him as a resource at some point, but she thought it was important for her to achieve things on her own rather than seeking his guidance for everything.

Start simple, that was her plan.

She didn't even bother trying to restrain her hands to begin with. Instead, she simply sat cross-legged on her bed, with her hands firmly at her side, and tried to glow.

If she could at least call her power without moving her hands, even if she couldn't wield it, then she would be happy.

She tried to feel for her power. She tried to make herself feel as if she was under attack, to see if it might come forth as a defence mechanism. She tried to imagine herself glowing. None of it worked.

Eventually she settled down to meditate. She didn't join Botkin very often, but she tried to keep in practice.

Calm. Peace. Serenity. Feel the light, imagine its warmth, its glow.

She took a breath, then another. In and out. In and out.

And there it was, the spark of power inside her, the awareness that always felt so close whenever the Darkling amplified her power.

Alina opened her eyes and looked into the mirror opposite her.

She was glowing. It was faint, but still a definite glow.

She smiled.

Thanks for reading. Hope you enjoyed it.

I'm going away next week so I'm not sure how much time I'll have for writing. I may get the next chapter out next Friday, but it may not be finished so I may end up skipping a week or posting a few days late.