To her surprise, the ruins of a fort loomed in the middle of the Fold. The volcras had nests atop the towers, and screeched loudly when she turned on the light in her palm brighter, revealing the ruins fully. They flew away, and Alina stared, in awe, at the place.
In her walk, she had found nothing: no ruins of houses, no plants, and, obviously, no living beings. To have an entire structure standing there - maybe it was proof Sankta Luda's story was real. Maybe she was a princess and a Grisha, and maybe the grief was -
"What are you doing?" A weary voice asked behind her, with the accent of Ancient Ravkan in it dragging the words, and Alina whipped back to find a man in all black, looking tired and monstrous. He was taller than her by a head, his dark scars running in thin rivulets all over his skin, starting at his fully black eyes, like trails of tears made of shadows. He had two large wings that definitely were twice her height, leathery things full of holes, and in his clawed hands, he held an old-looking book close to his chest. He had a braid of long hair over his shoulder, giving Alina the impression of a hermit.
The Black Heretic, she was sure: no one else could survive in this inhospitable place. What the fuck, how was he still alive? Alina knew Grishas lived long lives, but at least six hundred years was too much, even for a Grisha!
"I'm the bride?" Alina replied, feeling stupid. He sighed, passing his clawed hand through his hair.
"Oh, good. And a Sun Summoner. Are you going to be the exploding kind, or the boring kind?" He asked, and Alina huffed. "Just don't destroy this place, right? I've got a lot of rare books."
"I want to be here as much as you do." Alina shot back, and he offered her a dry laugh. "Look. Are you…?"
He looked up, squinted at the nests atop the towers. The volcras made louder noises.
"The Black Heretic, yes, and if you don't want the volcras to do a suicide attack on you, I recommend dimming the light and following me." Alina huffed, but did as told, dimming the lights until she could see his outline, and following him inside the ruins. He entered through a hole, rather than doors, walking through what had been, possibly, the entrance to the fort, grey bleak stone and the remnants of beds.
He ignored it, going deeper inside, wings pressed closely together as if in anticipation, and finding an entrance downstairs, a set of stairs sculpted in stones Alina descended carefully, noticing how worn they were - and then, a moment after, realizing it was where he always stepped, all those centuries. Chills ran down her spine.
They descended for what felt like an eternity, the stairs curving downwards until the steps stopped and revealed a large cave, illuminated by candles: a library, shelves covering every available wall, sprawling and chilly if it weren't for her thick kefta. There were shelves forming separate spaces, the books as privacy curtains. Candles illuminated the walls and were positioned at every table, but pools of darkness still existed, giving the place the eerie appearance of a haunted house.
It was, she supposed.
"Welcome to my humble abode." He said, in a conversational tone of voice as he shrugged off his coat, putting it on top of a chair, revealing a patched shirt, and Alina looked at him as he sprawled his wings again. "I'll be tending to the vegetable garden now, but I'm sure there's a bed somewhere where you can stay."
He started walking, and Alina followed him, befuddled. What?
"You're going to let me? Just like that?" She asked, and he chortled, the two entering a tunnel, hidden between two shelves.
"I may be exiled here, bride, but sometimes the other girls found me. Most of them were half-dead, but the ones that weren't made good conversationalists, until they inevitably went mad and got themselves killed. They told me things, like the fact everyone thinks a bride is dead as soon as she steps in."
Alina stared at his face, earnest and bored, as if he was merely reciting from a book, ancient facts he'd learned as a schoolboy and that had stuck around his mind, like he hadn't created the thing that had maimed and killed so many people.
"And you let them die?" They ducked under a passageway, his wings barely making the cut. "Just like that?"
He looked at her then, confusion in obsidian eyes.
"You think I like it?" A pause that told Alina more than she would like to know. He waved away her thoughts with a clawed hand. "Of course not. The Fold induces madness. I survive because I'm more Fold than human, at this point."
A turn to the left, and Alina, seeing light at the end of the tunnel, wondered if she was already suffering from Fold-induced madness, but no: they entered a large cave, and a small sun was gyrating, slowly, in the ceiling. Alina stared at it, baffled, and he helpfully put his holey wing in front of her eyes before Alina blinded herself.
She looked down, and it was a vegetable garden, truly: rows upon rows of leaves, green and healthy, with a corner dedicated to rusted farm implements, another corner a pickling station that was pristine. There was a little opening to the side of it, and Alina would bet that there'd be shelves upon shelves of conserves. There was the babbling of a creek somewhere near, almost drowning her in the noise as she found it, distant, but she soon located it: it was small, maybe a person's width, but deep enough for someone to dip a bucket into it and not touch the bottom, before disappearing into a hole of the wall. An underwater river? In the middle of the Fold? There were no rivers that disappeared into the underground, but then, again, it was hard to know: this part of the map was particularly uncharted.
How did he have access to all this? Alina was sure there'd be rumours abound if anything that looked like him ever stepped out of the Fold.
"A Sun Summoner came and talked to me. He made this so I'd stop looking more monstrous. Also, vegetables. Surviving on volcra meat isn't… Ideal." A pause, and he picked up a bucket to pick his vegetables, which was such an oddity Alina felt like she was following him mechanically. Volcra meat? "Since then, I've been asking any Sun Summoner that happens to come across to feed it a little bit more. If you could, by the way, it'd be nice."
He picked a carrot from the soil, and Alina stared at him in silence. There were a hundred and one thoughts racing through her head; she plucked the first one to speak, as he went through his vegetables with the peace of mind of a man who hadn't been hiding himself inside his own creation for more than half a millennia.
"And while you're here playing at being a farmer, haven't you tried to, I don't know, undo what you did?" Alina asked, putting a hand on his wrist, covered by the patched shirt. His skin was mildly cold, as if the lack of a natural sun had made him unable to hold onto warmth. He looked at her hand, then at her eyes, baffled by the touch. "The Fold is a problem."
"Don't they teach Grishas about merzost anymore?" He asked, gently untangling himself from her. "Saints know I've tried. I can't undo it. All I can do is make it darker."
Alina saw red. So many supernovas, so many lives spent to clear a little patch of land.
"So Sun Summoners should kill themselves for you?" Alina spat, and he did not express any emotion.
"I've never said that. Sun Summoners are always so dense." He sighed, and Alina gritted her teeth. She could blind him, make sure he never saw the light ever again, as blind as a volcra. All she needed to do was to concentrate the sun in his eyes, burn his retinas off until - "Somewhere in this library, there's a solution to merzost, but I'm only one man. One who's been trying everything and only getting more poisoned."
She stared at him. She'd seen carvings of the Black Heretic, idealized looks for him, and in those, he looked… Well, human. The man in front of her looked like the Black Heretic's son with a volcra, generations removed from normalcy.
"So what you're saying is that you need help?" His cheeks flushed a slight scarlet, and he did not answer. "No one ever heard you? All those Sun Summoners…"
"Do you think anyone else wants to be stuck in here for, foreseeably, eternity? Non-Grisha go insane, and Sun Summoners all think they've got this mission to die for Ravka." He shot back, giving her an eyeroll. Alina conceded the point. "I'll do it myself."
"I will help, then." He almost dropped the bucket, and his eyes stared at her. At least, Alina thought they did: it was hard to know. "I'm presumed dead. No one knew I was a Grisha, so it isn't expected that I'll clear out the Fold."
A pause from him, his fingers on the leaves of what she presumed were potatoes, the Black Heretic clearly deep in thought for a moment.
Had no one really stayed? She could understand why - volcra meat? -, but if there was a solution to the Fold, then staying made sense.
Besides, it wasn't like Alina had anywhere to return to, anyway. Might as well stay in the only place she could, where people wouldn't look at her and see the bride of the Fold, alive and well.
He gave her a tiny little smile. Alina ordered her heart to stop suddenly hammering in her chest fruitlessly. He was handsome, she'd give him that, but he was also the monstrous creator of the Fold.
She excused herself from him and went upstairs after she fed the small sun in the cave, watching as it shone brighter, before turning her back. She wandered aimlessly through the shelves - accidentally finding the place where he nested, a tall pile of threadbare blankets and old keftas just like hers, with the lining all gone; Alina fled, rather than stay and count the number of girls that had died and now were just blankets for him to lie on. Had he buried them in the sands of the fold? Had they left their coats behind? Had they…
No. She wouldn't think. She refused to.
Alina found a little corner with a few pillows and took off her kefta, laying it on the floor to protect her from the chill, and then slowly undoing the braid Genya had done in her hair, seemingly a lifetime ago - but it had been barely a few hours, if that. She was still alive, albeit inside the Fold's confine.
She needed to find a solution to it. No more girls after her would come; Alina refused to take on the role the Black Heretic had taken, of mere watcher and spectator.
The Fold would end on her terms, or not at all.
Somehow, Alina had fallen asleep; she was woken up by him gently nudging her awake, and Alina, raising bleary eyes, found the Black Heretic masking a look of concern in his black eyes.
"Dinner is ready. It's not much, but it's what's available." He said, softly, and Alina rose to her feet, stretching for a moment, and he started walking away, as if wanting to give her privacy. Alina cleaned her cheek of the saliva discreetly.
"No mystery meat?" She asked, following him, and he gave her a chuckle.
"It's not a mystery if it's the only one available. But no, no meat. I've decided that I can spare it today." He replied, nonchalant, and Alina blinked quickly. Okay. The Black Heretic ate volcra meat normally. That was… Something. "Oh, please. Don't make that face. I haven't eaten volcra meat more than once in a century or so."
Well, that was a relief. Alina pretended to not hear him chuckling about her sagging shoulders. The Black Heretic - a figure that was the childhood monster of every kid and the fear of everyone with common sense - had a sense of humor, which was bizarre.
"Did you have a name?" She blurted out, and his black eyes looked at her. "I mean, your mother couldn't possibly have named you Black Heretic. That's a prophecy in the making."
He did not reply, silence filling her ears for a moment as they walked through half-rotten rugs. The smell of food grew closer, appetizing for Alina, whose last meal had been dinner.
"I had a name, once. I don't know if I am worthy of it anymore." He replied, quietly, and Alina nodded. "It's Aleksander."
Aleksander: a name as common as dirt. She was almost sure there were at least five Aleksanders in the cartographers alone, and the number of them in Ravka was dizzyingly high.
"Alina." She offered, and he nodded. "A pleasure to meet you. May we end the Fold quickly."
There was a dry laugh from Aleksander - Saints, to put a name to the Black Heretic felt… Well, heretical.
"I have been doing this for more time than most, and I haven't." He replied. The kitchen appeared: a hastily made oven with what was clearly the fort's loose bricks, an iron pot with something bubbling inside it, a table with two mismatched chairs, and plates with wooden bowls atop that had seen better days. There was a set of spoons that were well cared for, but clearly old, by their sides, and no napkins were in sight.
He scratched the back of his neck when he caught Alina staring at it. Shame, perhaps?
"It probably does not match your standards of… Whatever dinner looks like this far into the future, but it's an old recipe." He said, and he looked so much like a shy boy Alina couldn't help but laugh.
"Dinner is dinner, no matter what." Alina replied, going to grab the bowl so she could serve herself, but he tutted, snagging it from her hands, serving her a bowl full of pleasant-smelling stew. He slid it in front of her, and it looked lovely. There were roughly chopped pieces of vegetables in it, and it looked more appetizing than any meal she'd eaten in her time as the bride.
"I'm afraid spices have run out in the first century, but salt is… Somewhat plentiful." The bowl was slightly scratched by claws on the side; wear and tear, perhaps, or Aleksander, during the time he didn't know how to manage his claws yet?
"What isn't available in this place? You've got the sun, vegetables, meat, salt…" she trailed off, watching as he served himself and sat down, wings smushed against his back, in front of her. He ate first, as if trying to prove to Alina the food wasn't poisoned.
If he poisoned his own food, then he had more problems than previously thought.
"People?" He offered, and Alina conceded, eating a spoonful of stew herself. It tasted warm, comforting, and Alina barely realized she was crying until he looked alarmed. "Is it that bad? I'm afraid that…"
She shook her head, and his mouth quietened, silence filling the air as Alina dried her tears on her sleeves. His black eyes stayed away - he made sure she knew that because his entire head was looking in a completely different direction than Alina was, eating in silence.
"Sorry." She said, after the tears stopped. "I didn't think I'd ever eat another meal in my life, so it's kind of… Overwhelming? I thought I'd be, you know, a meal for the volcras."
He nodded, and looked at her, quiet contemplation in his posture.
"You're safe now, Alina." He said her name gently, and Alina smiled just the tiniest bit at him.
Alina, after helping him clean the remains of dinner (the stew was kept bubbling in a low fire, for food safety reasons Alina could guess at), she dragged herself to her corner, trying to find comfort in her kefta like she'd had before. The ground, though, seemed too cold suddenly, the shelves full of books seemed precariously stacked, as if they, after six centuries, would rot in the middle of the night and fall atop her. Therefore, Alina stared, uselessly, at the ceiling, watching as candlelight slowly disappeared from the surroundings.
She had several questions, most of them related to the day-to-day upkeep of the household, but he probably had this down to an art, after centuries.
Saints, the loneliness of it all: of being the only person inside the Fold, of every visitor a dead person in the making. How had he not gone insane? Alina doubted she would survive this long alone. She had been lucky to have Mal - and now, she could only hope he was alright.
"Can't sleep?" He asked, stepping around her to reach the candle. "I'm sure it must be a lot."
"Kind of. How do you still have candles?" She put her hands behind her head, and from her inverted point of view, his face looked like he was giving her a smile.
"Wax is reusable. The wicks come from cloth." The keftas with the lining missing, Alina realized in a flash. "I may be a Shadow Summoner, but that does not mean I enjoy reading in the dark."
That was fair. He blew the candle away, and the world was bathed in darkness. Alina lit up a little ball of light, and his shoulders sagged in relief at not having to guess where she was, probably.
"Sleep well, Alina." He said, and Alina smiled at him. He stepped into the darkness, and Alina vanquished her little light.
"You too, if you do that." Her answer was a chuckle in the darkness, and Alina curled into herself.
She woke up covered in a kefta that wasn't her own, and the light of the candle was already on, a brave little thing staving away the dark. Alina cracked her neck, stretched, and then sent a wave of light through the library, illuminating all corners of it. Motes of dust fell from the ceiling, and in full light, the library was even more well-conservated than she previously thought, as if the Fold had kept it frozen in time.
A gasp from somewhere north. Alina, swallowing a yawn, trudged towards where she guessed Aleksander was, and found him with his back ramrod straight, looking around as if surprised. In front of him, a table piled up with old books, the leather covers in a few cracked, others smushed together as if they'd spent the centuries like this, untouched by him.
"I figured I should help." Alina said, and his black eyes looked at her. Yeah, he didn't have a defined iris: pools of pitch black greeted her, widened in surprise. "Sorry you had to light every candle."
He waved her concern off, and Alina sat down by his side. He was reading something in what looked like pre-Fold Ravkan, and she could decipher the scrawling, if barely: it was the script of a madman, no sense or reason in it, lines mixing into one another and creating one garbled mess.
He noticed her interest.
"These are Morozova's diaries." He said quietly, and it was Alina's turn to sit ramrod straight.
"As in, the Saint?" She asked, staring from Aleksander to the thin paper.
"Yes. He studied many of the Grisha mysteries, so I figure if anyone knows how to undo merzost, it's him."
Alina looked at him. He looked back, waiting for questions like a professor.
"What's merzost?" He groaned at her question, and Alina huffed. "Look, I've already told you I'm not one of those educated Grisha. I don't know what it is. All I know is that you used some dark power to create the Fold."
Aleksander took a deep breath.
"Okay. From the beginning, I suppose."
He taught her what merzost was, what he did (she did not ask about Sankta Luda. It felt rude to ask about it; what if it was true? What face would she even do?) to create the Fold, and what to look for in the diaries of Iliya Morozova. Alina was a mediocre student, back when she was in high school, but she was still good enough to read through several ancient books and hopefully find an answer.
There was a routine to her days, acquired easily after a month or two: wake up, turn on the lights - he had been delighted at the wax saving, she bet, or maybe at the prospect of sunlight outside his garden -, and then go find Aleksander, who was already up and doing something to the fort's upkeep: repairing shelves so they'd stay up, making sure the stocks were full, putting up bowls for rain water to fall through, patching a hole. Alina would help him, usually by shining further light, and then the two would tend to the vegetable garden.
"I still don't know how you made all this." She said, fascinated, and he rose his black eyes to her. "I mean, the first Sun Summoner only appeared, what, thirty years after the Fold's creation? No way vegetables survived that long."
"Oh, they didn't." He said, analyzing the leaves of a carrot plant. "The first Sun Summoner was kind enough to bring them to me, so I've been very careful with seed preservation and the like."
Alina stared at the plants, smiled briefly.
"I feel bad for not bringing anything useful with me, then." Alina replied, and he gave her a rueful smile.
He was rather handsome, even though he was clearly a monster. How had he looked before it all? She squinted her eyes, tried to imagine his skin clear of merzost, hands without claws, eyes of a mysterious color. Black, maybe; it'd be fitting of someone titled the Black Heretic.
For a single, shining moment, Alina envied Sankta Luda and all the other Sun Summoners who'd seen him before merzost set in; then, blinking rapidly, Alina tried to guess where that feeling had come from.
"I'd rather have your company than new food." He said, and Alina felt herself blushing.
"I'm glad, then." Was all she managed, and they did not say anything else.
After tending to the garden, Alina and Aleksander made lunch - usually just adding ingredients to the ever-bubbling stew on the stove. Aleksander went out, sometimes, to bring in wood - long ago, the Fold had been a forest, he'd explained, and over the course of centuries he'd cleared it out and kept it in a deeper cave, continuously rationing it (and with a slightly embarrassment to his face, he'd mentioned that maybe, once in a while, he went outside the borders of the Fold at night to cut wood; Alina thought of a few of Ravka's cryptids, and decided to not bring it up).
After lunch, there'd be a reading session, reading through Iliya Morozova's writings until their eyes burned, until words swam in front of her eyes, butterflies of black ink.
If Alina fell asleep on the table, exhausted, she'd always wake up to his black fur cape on her shoulders, and Alina would hide her face in her arms so he, still reading, wouldn't see her burning cheeks.
One diary had a map. He peeked at them curiously for a moment, and Alina stared at the different borders. Ravka still kept its shape, but only roughly.
"Have you ever been outside of Ravka?" She asked, finger tracing the line of the ancient Fjerda-Ravka border - Ravka had lost a bit of its northern territory to them in the current era -, and he made a curious noise. "I haven't. I heard Ketterdam is a lovely place, but that might just be the tourism ads."
"The Ketterdam I knew must differ from the one you did, then." He shuddered, and Alina looked at him. "It's good if you have money. If you haven't, well, might as well not go."
"So you have been outside!" Alina replied, and he chuckled, closing his diary, as if sensing they would not be any more productive.
"I have visited many places. I've seen the Shu temples and the Fjerdan palaces. Novyi Zem is one of the more peaceful places I've been." A pause, as if Aleksander was going through his memories. "Great sweets. I miss them."
Alina's eyes sparkled.
"The Black Heretic has a sweet tooth?" Laughter bubbled in her voice, and he grinned at her. "Oh, I wouldn't have expected that. You don't look the type. You know, Shadow Summoner and all."
"Alina, just because I look like a volcra hybrid, does not mean I don't crave sweets." A soft sigh from Aleksander. "I wish I could go outside. There was this bakery in Ketterdam that produced a wonderful sweet little tart. I wonder if it still stands."
She put her hand atop his, and smiled, gaining a curious look from him - but he did not move his hand away, so Alina was still doing well. Probably.
"When we end the Fold, I'll take you to eat sweets, wherever you want." He offered a little smile to her.
"Why, that's a promise, then. Better go back to reading, huh?" He said, gently, and Alina nodded, going back to the diaries.
Maybe she loved him, but - wasn't that too soon? Alina wouldn't know, and part of her also did not want to know.