AN: A little note—I'm from now on using the proper Russian surnames (Starkova for Alina, Morozov for Aleksander) because it's been bothering me. On a similar note, I'm calling the king the tsar, because that's what he is? Just personal preference.
She drew her robe closer around herself as she withdrew into the window-seat in her room at the Grand Palace. It was not so warm as the blue and gold kefta lay discarded on the floor, stained with soot and the blood of the two men she loved. She couldn't bear to look at it or touch it long enough to take it to the correct bin for washing. Her stomach lurched when she caught it from the corners of her vision.
She focused instead on the starless night outside. It was as if the sky itself was mourning what had happened in Ravka on this day, shaming her for what she had done. The moon had hung its head in the clouds, refusing to shine on Os Alta.
I'm sorry, she wanted to whisper into the glass and the night, as she'd whispered too many times into his shoulders. He'd accepted her apologies, forgiven her even for doing what was unforgivable. She'd killed him for the power in his bones, for her own selfish ambition. The one thing she thought she was incapable of—and when it came to it, she did it just like that. No hesitation or remorse.
That girl felt like a whole other world, a demon who had briefly possessed Alina's body. Was it the amplifiers removed or the guilt that made who she was yesterday so incomprehensible to her now?
She jumped at the knock at the door.
"Come in." She sat up, tugging at her nightgown and the like so that she might be more modest for whomever her late night visitor was. She glanced at the gilded clock—it was nearly midnight.
In walked Nikolai, carrying a candelabra.
"Thought you might be up." He smiled. "Mind sharing a nightcap with me?"
Alina frowned at the unusual request, but nodded. His voice was as if in a fog, far away from the edges of her perception. And yet she knew he would be more of a distraction from the pangs of her heart than the darkness outside she could no longer repel.
She followed him down the darkened hallways of the Grand Palace like a ghost. It reminded her of how she and Mal had wandered the halls of Keramzin. They'd been little ghosts then, too.
Eventually, Nikolai stopped right before a gilded panel and felt for something. With a click, a hidden latch released, revealing a hidden parlor.
"Ladies and saints first."
Alina scowled, then stepped through the threshold. The warmth of the blazing fire washed through her like a bath, like the ray of the sun, like her light once had.
The parlor was well-furnished, with a soft rug in a design Alina recognized as being from the Wandering Isle and a painting of a ship hanging over the mantle. There were bookshelves with gilded books upon them, and several matching garnet armchairs that beckoned her to come and sit.
Nikolai closed the latched wall behind them and smiled as he approached a handsomely-carved cabinet. He pulled out cups and a kettle made by Durasts to heat tea more quickly—and a bottle of vodka.
"We're spiking these then?" Alina raised her eyebrows.
"It's a little more fun this way." Nikolai hesitated. "And it keeps my conscience at bay, I find. I figure yours probably needs some spirits to chase it away, too."
Right.
Alina nodded, clutching fistfuls of her robe. Genya would scold her for wrinkling the fabric. Luckily, Genya was at the Little Palace and wasn't there to tell her what she thought of any of this. Not that she would be able to stand hearing from Genya. Or anybody really.
Especially Mal.
She looked up as Nikolai pressed a silver teacup into her hands.
"I noticed you weren't with your tracker." He said it a little too casually. "I thought you two would be celebrating. It's not everyday that someone comes back from the dead, after all."
Alina struggled to swallow. There was a stinging at her eyes. She was looking ahead, not at Nikolai but past him, and yet was looking at nothing at all really. "I know that. He's lucky."
"That doesn't answer the question." Nikolai tilted his head as he peered into the depths of his cup. "Why aren't you with him, Starkova?"
Alina hesitated—but when she met his eyes, she knew she couldn't lie to him. "He deserves someone better by his side."
"Someone better?" Nikolai raised his eyebrows.
"Someone who didn't kill him for power." Alina shook her head. She looked to her hands, cupped around the silver teacup. They began to shake as she realized: those hands had committed murder. Those hands had killed her best friend, the one person who stood by her for everything, just for the magic in his bones.
She'd spared the stag—that was the last time she felt like she was in her real mind. She understood mercy, she knew compassion. And yet, once that amplifier had been fused around her neck, mercy became the last thing on her mind.
She'd tried to fight it with the serpent, but Baghra had been right. After that second amplifier, it was over for her humanity. As hard as she had tried to fight it, as she'd tried to keep her own heart, the amplifiers and their corrosive ambitious greed had won in the end.
Nikolai swiftly caught her teacup before it could hit the marble floor or spill on the rug.
"I thought he forgave you."
"He did." Alina closed her eyes, curling her hands into fists. "But that only makes it worse, Nikolai. I—I can't forgive myself. I can't just run off and live happily ever after with him. I'll never be able to forget it, lying beside him, or seeing him smile—and to know I killed him for power. I crossed a line I never would have, before. . ."
Nikolai nodded, although there was something sad in his eyes. "What will you do now, then?"
Alina paused—for so long, each day had been a matter of survival, just making it to the next sunrise. It had been like that in the war against the Darkling, her time at the Little Palace, her service in the army, and the years at Keramzin. There was little choice, other than to keep moving forward.
As a result, she'd become passive, doing only what she had to do and never daring to dream of anything.
Except when she'd gotten the amplifiers.
Then again, that wasn't really a dream—that was ambition, and in a way, it had been forced upon her by circumstance and the amplifiers.
What did she want?
"Whatever it is, I'd gladly grant it to our savior." He hid his mouth quickly by taking a sip from his own cup.
It reminded Alina of all of the fairytales Ana Kuya told her and the other children at Keramzin. After some heroine like Vasilisa or Nadya or Karina would be clever and brave, she would be met with by a prince and granted a boon of her choice, a reward or all of her suffering.
Now the tsar stood in front of her, offering to help her go where she wanted, do what she wanted.
Her heart fluttered in her chest. How long had she hoped to see the world, when she saw the maps on the walls of the orphanage's classrooms, when she practiced making her own as a cartographer in the army?
Then, her fear and guilt clamped around it, surrounding it in shadows, making a cage for that heart just as it had for her power for so long.
She didn't deserve it. She never deserved her power, and she would never deserve a happy ending.
"I have a few suggestions, if you like," Nikolai continued, merry as ever. "The Volkvolny could take you anywhere you liked—-perhaps to Kerch, or the Wandering Isle, or beyond. You could have Keramzin, become the duchess, since Duke Keramsov died in the Darkling's little rampage."
He paused, just as the firelight caught the forgotten emerald sitting on Alina's finger.
"And of course, my offer when I gave you that ring still stands." He was strangely quiet, solemn. She looked up at him, unsure of what she was seeing, his face half cast in shadow. It called to the shadow-monster he had been turned to. It was a reminder of how she had failed him, too. He had also sacrificed himself for her.
So had the Darkling, in a way, in the end.
Was it wrong, that she believed he was right, at least in part? She'd seen what happened in Kerch, and had known what Fjerda and her mother's country had done to Grisha. Ravka was the best kingdom to live in, if one was Grisha—and yet, there was still so much more that could be done for them.
Ivan had been right—the Darkling was the only one who had tried to do anything about it. And he had done so much good with the bad, the Little Palace and the Fold.
She shook her head slightly to clear it—Aleksander was just another failure, another she'd failed to save.
What had the amplifiers made of her?
She met Nikolai's eyes, choosing her words carefully. She'd felt the most herself, even under the influence of the amplifiers, when she was sparring with Nikolai. He'd brought her back to life, back to herself, just for a few moments.
"I thought you only wanted to marry me because I was their sankta, their Sol Koroleva."
"There is a political benefit to that," Nikolai admitted. "And you still are their saint, the loss of your power was your martyrdom."
"It was my penance."
Nikolai blinked. She expected perhaps judgement, or worse, Mal's pity.
But instead, there was only empathy.
"We've both made mistakes, Alina." He paused. "This is our chance to make it all right. Ravka, the Grisha, all of it. We can right the wrongs of all of our predecessors."
She glanced to the fire. She could do what the Darkling had wanted to do, but right this time.
This could be her atonement.
For the first time since she'd finally awoken from her cursed corruption beneath the amplifiers, for the first time since she'd killed two of the three men she loved, she felt a fire in her heart. It was like seeing the firebird again, like summoning that light to herself once again.
His hand was open, offered to her.
She met his eyes with a fiery determination, one that he shared as she clasped his hand.
"Yes."