i.

"You're a queen now, and you still can't ask for a different color," Genya laughed, voice brittle as she took in Alina dressed in her black silk.

As always, Alina was unable to meet her friend's eyes, as if she had betrayed everything that Genya had sacrificed for by reuniting with the Darkling. When she was able to look at the other woman, for the briefest of seconds, she saw nothing but pity and concern. She wondered if those just weren't the emotions she was feeling in those seconds that their eyes met.

What kind of queen, what kind of star, was she if she couldn't even look at her friend.

Genya still wore red - she had earned it, after all. The Darkling had looked at her and David coolly when they had returned, following his missive that they would be pardoned. Misha had followed them, Oncat draped over his shoulder, but the Darkling had not noticed him.

Why would he?

She wore red, her face immaculate except for the eyepatch where her eye once was, a patchwork of scars scrawled over her skin. She had held her head up when she faced the Darkling, Alina scarcely breathing.

They had been welcome back. He had agreed, after all.

"I could ask for it," Alina told Genya, picking at the gold threads in her sleeve with a bit of unease. She was wearing the Darkling's colors, yes, but it wasn't because of their marriage. It wasn't because she was his queen; it was because she was in mourning.

"Will you?"

Alina moved restlessly, the muscles in her legs aching. She was tired of sitting, and she was tired of standing endlessly, too. She was tired of the taut smiles and the demonstrations and of the Fold that still stood and of the bones that wrapped around her wrist like an anchor.

Mostly, she was tired that didn't seem to be tired at all. Light continued to flood her body, splashing a soft glow on the floor and elongating Genya's shadow as she paced.

"You're driving me crazy, Alina, will you stop?"

For the first time in the few months that her friend had returned, Genya touched her. Her fingers wrapped firmly around Alina's wrist, forcing her to stop. She didn't make a sound, but her lips formed a silent exclamation. How good it felt to have someone else's hands on her other than the Darkling.

"Sorry. I'm nervous," she confessed.

Genya arched an eyebrow, as though she didn't quite believe her. "Nervous? I have never seen anyone so confident before. Besides me. And Zoya."

At Zoya's name, Alina's mouth tugged into a frown. Strange how much she missed her when she was suddenly gone. "She probably hates me now."

"Probably," Genya agreed. "You were meant to set us free." Her voice dropped to a whisper now, and she stepped in closer so that it was only Alina that could hear her. "You weren't meant to become his queen, Alina."

Alina clenched her jaw. "I couldn't find another way, Genya. He has done terrible things, but so does everyone in war. Did we think we could kill him and then somehow prevent the Fjerdans and the Shu from invading us? What of the vacancy on the throne if we couldn't save Nikolai?"

"So rule with him."

Even as Alina said it, she knew there was something wrong about the words. She knew there was something wrong with the Darkling, too. He was a monster, a beast with the body of a man. She loved him, though. She loved him, and she hated him, and she needed him. There was no way she could explain that sort of feeling, the welling up of "like calls to like". Genya could never understand what it was to be what Alina had become with three amplifiers. She couldn't even be sure that the Darkling did, but he was the closest she could come to.

And if she could find a way to temper him, to quell the loneliness all these years had brought him, she had to try. In that sort of salvation, she believe that she could get him to see things her way.

"Plenty of people will follow him, through fear and desperation. And because they think he will save them."

"And they'll follow you because you're a living saint." Genya brushed her fingers through Alina's loose hair, a stark white strand curling under her expert touch. She sighed happily at the sight. "For someone who didn't want to accept an emerald and the alliance of a prince, you have certainly found your way into political structure."

She scowled, but not in anger. Distaste, mostly. How had she come to that point, or had it always been the Darkling tugging her along? No. She was adept at her own political machinations, and as she had once told him, she was an apt pupil.

"You have to trust me, Genya," she murmured, taking her friend's hand between her own and holding it tightly. "I am still the same Alina."

There was that bitter laugh again. "That Alina, the one who entered the Fold to kill the Darkling? She's the one who died that day, right along with Mal."

ii.

They were gathered in the war room, seated at a table that once held Mal and Nikolai and Zoya and now held the Darkling and his men instead. Alina sat next to him, and she took solace in his strength, in his ability to lead.

She snuck a glance at him, drinking in his profile, the way his brow would furrow at things he didn't like to hear, at the arch when he was intrigued. Mostly, she drank up the way his slate eyes found hers every now and then, as if he were drinking her in as well.

Strange, she thought, to be so attracted to someone she found she hated most of the time.

Strange, really, to not hate him as much as he deserved to be hated, too.

"What do you think, Alina?"

His voice cut through one of his underling's mid-speech. The whole room felt like a vacuum of silence. It was all she could do to not react in surprise. That would be a weakness, and she couldn't present herself as weak in front of this crowd of vultures.

In front of the Darkling.

Still, she was not prepared for the question. Alina felt more like a pet, a prop, than she did a leader in the army. But she had led the Second Army very briefly before she had helped the Darkling scurry into the hole left by the remnants of the Lantsov family. Not well, she thought, and not without help of the very people who now gathered an army of their own.

Her gut twisted, a streak of hot anger and nerves flitting through her.

"We need the First Army," she finally said, unable to stand the pressure of every pair of eyes boring into her.

The twitch in the corner of the Darkling's mouth told her that her answer was the wrong one, and that in itself made her feel like she was making the right decision.

"Why do you think so?" a man named Gregor asked, folding his hands on the table and leaning forward with a barely contained sneer. His kefta was red as blood, and for a moment, Alina thought that she could see Mal's staining her hands again. Her heart hammered in her chest.

She tilted her chin up so that she could level a cold gaze at him, trying to emulate Zoya as much as she could. He was insignificant. Fodder. He could die as easily as Ivan had. "Ravka is not solely for Grisha. The people are just that: people. Some of us were born from otkazat'sya, some of us have them as family. They deserve the right to fight for Ravka."

She turned to look at the Darkling now, pinning him down with her stare. He was blank in return. "Make them the Second Army. Promote the Grisha to the First. We cannot have peace in Ravka if we ostracize."

He frowned now. It was clear he didn't agree with her, in the tension that radiated between them.

Alina wouldn't be moved on the matter.

"I agree," Genya spoke up from the opposite side of the table. She wore a hard smile, lounging back in her seat as if she had no cared. Alina could see the tense lines of her body, however. "Even otkazat'sya can defeat Grisha, and they outnumber us."

If Alina could have laughed in this instance, she would have.

Genya spun it in a way that even the Darkling looked interested.

iii.

He slammed her hard into the wall of the library, nearly knocking the breath out of her. His gaze was hot, terrifying. He could have scorched her alive if he wanted to, she thought.

The Darkling settled for constricting the light in the room, his shadowed hand pinning the wrist with Mal's bones to the wall. "What do you think you are doing?"

"I was going to read, but I guess now that it was the wrong idea." She tried to keep her voice light, teasing. She was a star, bright and terrible, but sometimes she was still a young girl in awe of a horrible man.

"I meant with your suggestion, Alina." His breath tickled her cheek. "You would have me taint the army with them again? After all that I worked for? That we achieved?"

There was a maddening light in his eyes, and she ached. She ached for the little boy he must have been and for the man he was, so blinded by his prejudice and coldness for those not like him.

"Haven't you already taken what you wanted? The throne is yours. Ravka is yours. You wanted to save this country and keep the Grisha from becoming obsolete? You have. But there is more to Ravka than Grisha, and we both know it," she told him. This was something she wouldn't back down from. He could have Ravka and the army and Mal's bones wrapped in shadows. He could have her. But he couldn't take the truth from her.

He was quiet for a moment, fingers so tight around her wrist, she worried that he might be able to break her amplifier. "Do I have you?"

The question stunned her. Now that they were mostly alone, she allowed herself to show her surprise. It was in the widening of her eyes, in the tilt of her opinion of him, in the reduction of the white-hot anger that threatened to spill from her fingertips. "You didn't take me."

"No," he responded in a soft voice. "I didn't take you."

"Aleksander."

A visible shudder ran through his body, and his mouth hovered over hers. She wanted to cringe back in revulsion. A queen who didn't touch her king. What a mockery of marriage. But she wanted to, that other part of her whispered. She wanted him to kiss her and slip his hands under her clothes.

She wanted to forget the way that Mal had felt against her body so that the crushing loneliness of his loss didn't threaten to overwhelm her any longer. She was an immortal with the depth of a girl.

"Say my name again," he demanded from her.

"Will you kiss me?" Alina had to know.

"Say my name again, and I will kiss you wherever you please," the Darkling compromised.

"Aleksander."

His mouth was hard and demanding against hers, all desperation and teeth and a pounding need that swept over her from his touch. Like called to like, she remembered, as he pressed his body into the lines of hers.

iv.

In a public declaration for all of Os Alta to hear, with notice spreading like wildfire throughout Ravka, the Darkling let it be known that now and forever more, Grisha would be part of the First Army. They would be the salvation of Ravka, the first line of offense against her enemies.

Unease whispered behind closed doors and shuttered windows.

The Second Army was little more than a body of militarized corpses, the people said.

Alina closed her eyes to said words, wishing that people understood war was death.

v.

Sometimes, she would spot Nikolai in the distance. Always nearby, but never close. He hadn't come close to her since before Mal's death. Even as the months ticked by, there he remained. He was a gargoyle, a demonic shape shadowing her.

Today, he sat perched on the roof of the palace, so still that he really could have been a statue. She stopped, watching him as he watched her. She ached to call out to him, to ask him to come back to her.

Maybe he hated her, she wondered. Maybe he was her punishment for Mal's death, for failing to free him from his form, for taking the throne without him. He had wanted to make her his queen, and she had denied him that, hadn't she?

Alina knew, in her heart, that she would have never become his queen.

She finally lifted her hand. It was a wave, barely, some sort of friendly gesture to let him know that she was still here. His lifted as well, mirroring her.

Genya finally got up to her, breath puffing out in the cold air as she panted. "I thought I spotted you. What are you- Oh."

Following her gaze, Genya spotted Nikolai as well. There was a sharp stab of worry that he would flee now, but he didn't. Genya rested her fingertips against her scarred face as she watched the former prince.

"He hangs around sometimes," was all that Alina could manage to say.

Her friend nodded. "He's here for you."

Alina gave a sharp shake of her head. "Os Alta is his home. Why wouldn't he be here?"

"Alina, you can be so very dense sometimes, and I say that as being married to David," Genya said.

Turning back to look at Nikolai, she wondered why he would stick around for her. She wasn't worth it. Unless…

"If it's because of me, it's because I might be the only one who can change him back."

But she couldn't. Not without the Darkling knowing. Not without him killing Nikolai.

It was difficult, but Alina turned her back on the hulking shadow on the roof, walking down a different path and forcing Genya to chase her again.

"Are you?" she finally asked when they were back inside.

The warmth of the Little Palace sunk into her bones as she slowly unwrapped the scarf from around her neck. How could she begin to answer that question? What could she tell Genya that wouldn't make her sound heartless?

"I need to study magic more," she muttered under breath, looking just beyond Genya's shoulder.

She could feel her friend's stare on her, evaluating. "Well, where do we start?" Her voice was shaky, as if she couldn't be sure why she was volunteering for mervost.

Alina gave a crooked smile. "Maybe David would know."