"He is… what?" I muttered after I stopped coughing. Ivan had his right hand resting on the small of my back in case I decided to faint because I might very well do that. "Evan…"

I felt sick, my head was spinning and I broke out in cold sweat. Fainting seemed like a good option at that moment.

Ivan was looking at me with worry in his eyes but I wasn't sure whether he was worried about me or what he was going to tell the Darkling if I passed out. The second option seemed more likely.

"Should I… Do you want me to get a Healer?" he asked. I shook my head as I closed my eyes and tried to steady my breathing.

"Just… Take me to him. Please."

Ivan nodded and took my left arm as we walked towards the Grand Entrance –he didn't want me to fall down since my legs were shaking, I was clearly in shock. But, I mean, Evan had shown up in the Little fucking Palace –I had every right to be shocked! When I thought I was finally over him, I had finally left him in the past; he came here!

As if I didn't have a lot to worry about already.

I went weak in the knees the moment I saw Evan's familiar face. If Ivan hadn't been holding me from my arm, I would certainly have fallen onto the ground. The Heartrender held me in my place and we stood still for a moment before I nodded at him and we continued walking.

His platinum blonde hair was reaching his shoulders, normally he always wore it in a men's bun but today, he had let his hair down. He had grown a stubbly beard since I had been gone and it gave a stronger look to this face. His pale blue eyes shone when he saw me.

"Valkyrja, kjæreste mi!"

My heart literally melted the moment I heard him calling me kjæreste mi, which was how people referred to their significant other in Fjerda. I could feel my eyes brimming with tears and I gulped to swallow the lump in my throat.

Two Corporalki were waiting on either side of Evan and they held him from his arms in his place when he tried to run towards me. Evan tried to shake them free but he was not strong enough. Then, he began to swear in Fjerdan. "Fy faen! Get off me!" he spoke in Ravkan with his strong, Fjerdan accent.

I turned my head to Ivan, "Ivan, please tell them to let Evan go!" I was begging the Heartrender. "He means no harm, Ivan, please!"

Ivan thought for a while before motioning at the Corporalki with his hand. The moment they let Evan go, I saw some platinum blonde hair running towards me and in the blink of an eye I found myself between Evan's arms.

He pressed me against his chest as he buried his head in my raven hair, his familiar scent was surrounding me. It was when I lost the fight against my tears and I immediately began to sob like a little girl.

"Takk Djel av pe ven fin."

[Translation: "Thank Djel you're fine." (Djel = the Fjerdan God of Life)]

"No Fjerdan," Ivan spoke with a warning tone. "You'll talk in Ravkan."

Evan sent him a glare as we stepped back. He wiped away my tears, "I don't like seeing you cry, kjære mi." he told me, which caused me to cry even more.

"E… Evan," I said between sobs. "How did you find me here?"

Ivan handed me a tissue and I wiped away the tears and the mucus on my face. "Well, everyone knows where a Grisha would go to save her life." Evan responded, then he eyed me from head to foot. "Why are you wearing black?"

I shook my head, "What I wear does not matter," I muttered. "Why are you here?"

The broken expression appearing on Evan's face caused my lower lip to tremble slightly but I took a deep breath not to burst into tears once again. "I had to see you, Val." Evan responded as he ran his fingers through his blonde hair. "Everything happened so fast –one morning I woke up and you were gone!"

"They still call me a Drüsje, don't they?" I asked with a cold tone, only to earn a small nod from Evan. "Then you probably know the story."

"I don't believe what people tell," he said and held my hands with his. His touch was warm, just like it had always been. "I don't believe that you're like him, Val. You… You can't be!"

He was talking about the Darkling.

Evan's eyes widened when I pulled my hands away from his with a cold look in my jade-green eyes. "You speak of it as if he is carrying a curse, Evan." I said and took a step back. "What does it matter if I'm a Shadow Summoner? Do you see me as an abomination as well?"

He was visibly taken aback by my words and I knew I was breaking his heart but if he shared the wicked mindset of all the other people in Fjerda, then he deserved to have his heart broken.

"What happened to you?" Evan asked with a low voice, he was looking at me as if I was a stranger. "What did they do to you? This isn't my Valkyrja."

"I changed, Evan." I responded. Even though I was dying on the inside, I somehow managed to keep a strong expression on the outside. "I discovered who I really was and what has been lying within me for all these years. I am a Shadow Summoner and my power is an integral part of me."

An uneasy silence dominated the atmosphere for a while before Evan took out a dark purple journal from his bag. A frown appeared on my face when he handed it to me. "Here, this is yours." he spoke with a weak tone and the sadness inside his pale blue eyes was causing tears to form in my eyes once again. "I don't know what really happened but… your mother visited me in my dreams a while ago. She asked me to bring you this."

My jade-green eyes widened with shock as I took the journal from Evan's hands. "She told you?" I repeated his words and he simply nodded. "So does it mean that…"

Evan didn't let me finish my words. "Yes, it used to belong to your mother –I found it buried under the oak tree where we used to meet." he spoke with a bitter voice. "She told me that it was time you knew but I don't know what it is –I didn't read the journal."

I took a deep breath and blinked a few times to send back the tears forming in my eyes. "Thank you, Evan." I whispered at him. "You came all this way only to bring me an old journal."

He turned his eyes away, "I was actually hoping you'd return home with me," he said. "But now I see that you are not going to leave this place."

I made my lips into a thin line as I shook my head, tears were rolling down my cheeks once again. "This is my home, Evan. They… They'll kill me if I ever return to Fjerda. My father will kill me. He… He called me a Drüsje."

Evan's pale blue eyes were shining with tears as well. "Is this a goodbye?" his voice cracked while he spoke. I knew I'd start sobbing if I opened my mouth, so I simply nodded. Pressing his lips to each other, Evan took a step towards me. With a hesitant manner, he raised his right hand to caress my cheek and that was when I couldn't hold the sobs inside. "This cannot be the end, Val."

"But it has to be, Evan." I whispered as I placed my left hand on top of his right one. "My destiny lies here, in Ravka and my place is with the Grisha. Nothing can change this –not even love."

I felt like I could no longer bear the aching of my heart when Evan's lips closed on top of mine. Our tears mixed as we kissed and I couldn't tell whether it was his tears or mine that caused the salt I tasted on Evan's lips. His left hand was tangled in my raven hair as he pulled me closer from my waist with his right hand. My both hands were wrapped around his neck and I parted my lips to let him slide his tongue into my mouth.

I didn't know for how long we kissed but when we stepped back, the Corporalki held Evan from his arms and literally dragged him outside. Evan shouted his last words in Fjerdan, which caused me to fall to my knees as I began to sob loudly.

"Jer elsker peg, Valkyrja!"

[Translation: "I love you, Valkyrja!"]

Ivan held me gently from my upper arm and helped me to my feet without uttering any words. I let him lead me into the Little Palace but I was not able to silence my sobs so I ended up freeing myself from Ivan's hold kind of forcefully and then I literally ran to my room. I didn't even realise that I stormed past the Darkling.

The Darkling sent a questioning look at Ivan, who was climbing the stairs. A few minutes later, the two heard the slamming of a door. "What happened?" the Darkling asked with an arched brow.

Ivan pursed his lips, "We witnessed a break-up and a farewell in the grounds –it was quite touching, moi soverennyi." he responded. "But I need to say –she's absolutely devastated."

The Darkling nodded, "It hurts to let the past die but it's the only way to become who she's meant to be." he said, his eyes were on the white doors that led to Valkyrja's room. "She'll be alright, she's a strong woman."

"There's something else, moi soverennyi." Ivan spoke, causing the Darkling to turn his slate-grey eyes to the Heartrender. "The Fjerdan gave her a journal, which apparently belongs to Lillian Grønborg."

He raised an eyebrow as he tilted his head to the side. "So she has her mother's journal?" he asked, only to earn a nod from Ivan. "Now, that's unexpected –I didn't want her to learn the darkest secrets of her family before she achieved reaching for her power. This might create a problem."

"Do you want me to get rid of the journal, moi soverennyi?"

The Darkling shook his head. "No, Ivan," he said as he cast a last look at the white door before walking down the stairs. "That journal will be the only thing she'll want to hang on to right now –taking it away from her will only hurt her more."

[Time Skip]

I had no idea how long my crying jag lasted but the whole time I simply sat on the floor with my back against the white doors of my room. I wrapped my arms around my legs and buried my head between my knees as I cried in that position.

Everything happening around me was becoming just too much for me to handle. It had already been damn hard for me to adjust to my new life in the Little Palace and I still felt like an outsider mainly because I couldn't reach my powers. Hence, an important someone from my past showing up here wasn't really much of a help.

On the contrary, Evan's visit only made everything worse.

I had never thought I'd see him ever again so I wasn't ready to say goodbye to him for the very last time. In fact, I believed it would have been better for me if I hadn't seen him at all. I was happier lying to myself about having forgotten him; however, the moment I saw him standing in front of me, the hard truth hit me.

I could never be really over him unless we cut our bonds for good.

Despite the ache of my broken heart, I also felt some kind of relief for this time, I was finally free from my past. I was sad to leave Evan and everything I loved about him behind but I also knew that our ways had been parted the moment I found out that I was a Shadow Summoner. Nothing could be the same between us because we belonged to two entirely different worlds –carrying his love with me would only weigh me down.

The awareness of that was what finally calmed me down. Taking a deep breath, I stood up and went to the bathroom to wash my face, which was a mess of tears and mucus. My jade-green eyes were bloodshot and my nose was red, my reflection on the mirror looked absolutely awful.

I took off my black kefta after washing my face and hung it neatly inside the wardrobe, then I also took off the white shirt and wore a simple t-shirt instead –I needed to relax and I couldn't do that while I had formal clothes on myself.

Taking a deep breath, I sat down onto one of the armchairs and with shaking hands, I opened the first page of my mother's journal. I didn't know what awaited me in the yellow, old pages of the journal but curiosity always got the better of me. As I read the neat handwriting of my mother, hours began to pass but I wasn't really aware of the time. I felt shocked, horrified, lost and most importantly, illuminated.

However, the truth about my mother and her ancestors made my blood run cold every time it crept into my mind.

They were Necromancers. The Grønborg bloodline was the most awfully powerful line that bore the practitioners of Svartkonst, which stood for Necromancy in Fjerdan.

My mother, Lillian Grønborg, didn't provide much description of the Svartkonst in her journal since she had rejected the practice at a quite young age, which caused my grandmother to put a curse on my mother –on her own daughter.

Saints, there was something terribly wrong with that family.

At the age of twenty, my mother fell in love with a Fjerdan merchant –who happened to be my father –and the two got married the following year. My grandmother was totally against this marriage since my father's family were known for supporting the Drüskelle and if my father somehow discovered the dark secrets of my mother's family, they were all doomed.

However, this didn't stop my mother.

The two, my mother and my father, loved each other deeply but there was a huge problem in their marriage that was causing fights to arise –my mother could not fall pregnant. It was because of the curse my grandmother had put on her, so my mother spent countless days and nights praying the Saints to be blessed with a child.

When she was twenty-three, the Saints answered her prayers and she fell pregnant with me.

At first both my mother and my father were unbelievably happy; however, as time passed, my mother grew weaker and weaker. Soon, she figured out that it was because of me and that the Saints were going to take her life so that I could come to life. Seeing my mother fading away day by day ruined my father as well.

A few days before giving birth to me, my mother had a strange dream; in which she saw the Little Palace, the darkening of the sun right before an eclipse, the Shadow Fold and a crying baby. When she woke up, she noted down these images from her dream and eventually she drew the conclusion that what she saw was a vision rather than a dream.

A vision about her unborn child.

Of course, it didn't take my mother long before understanding the meaning behind that vision –the baby growing inside her was a Shadow Summoner, which also carried Grønborg blood within its veins. A Shadow Summoner from the bloodline of the most powerful Svartkonst practitioners.

That was when she decided to leave behind a journal for me so that I could understand why that power resided within me when the time was right. She believed that the reason why I was a Shadow Summoner was my Grønborg descendance, the curse my grandmother had put on my mother and the fact that the Saints had played a huge role in my existence.

In the end, I found out that the Darkling had been right all along. There was something special about me and it was written inside the old pages of this purple journal. I wasn't just a Shadow Summoner. The blood of all the previous Svartkonst practitioners was flowing through my veins.

I was a Grisha and a Necromancer.

The moment of truth has arrived DU DU DUNN!!!

So I suppose none of you have guessed this, right? I'm dying to know your opinion so let me know in the reviews!!!