Summary: There is truth in dreams, but especially in nightmares – James Patterson. Dark dreams haunt Alina's nights, but there are worse things than darkness.
Alina is dreaming. She knows she is, but it's a vague sort of knowledge; hazy, ephemeral and oblique, it slips through her ghostly fingers like mist. Above her the sun is bright in the sky, powerful and triumphant. For a time it feels like she's floating, half heard words whispering to her on the wind. She sees mountains covered in pristine, unblemished snow, tall trees dusted white, and then tracks. Tracks leading away from the hill where she is hovering, embraced in warm light, and she feels it again, the sensation that she's missing something, something important - something she needs to find.
Before she can find it, however, she is off. Off across the wilds of Ravka. A pulling sensation dragging her across the world, faster and faster until it feels like she is racing the beams of light surrounding her. A joyous, wonderful race, that stops as suddenly as it started. It's unfamiliar this place, the forest dense, dark and unwelcoming so it takes a moment for her to see him: but there he is, standing tall and handsome on the steps of a ruin, his face shrouded in darkness, his tone cutting and colder than the snowy mountains she has just seen. It makes her invisible heart ache to see him like this, his distress clear to her in the harshness of his features and the iciness of his voice. He's like a wounded animal, lashing out in fear and pain at whatever is around him and she feels a desperate desire to comfort him, to wrap her arms around him and soothe the fury she can see in the shadows flaring around his still body.
There are men - soldiers - with weapons drawn, shouts she cannot understand and then blood, so much blood, that the forest floor grows slick with it. The world spins again and the sun disappears, plunging Alina into a dark abyss. Through the dark she hears familiar screeches and the terrifying flap of wings, then she feels it, pain - so much pain that it saturates the air, cloying, choking, suffocating her, and with crushing certainty she knows where she is. The Fold.
The whispers are louder here, but still she can't understand the words, only the knowledge that she ought to, that she should, that it is vital she understands.
The dark of the Fold is roiling around her, and she watches in mute horror as the bodies of the fallen men change before her, transforming into something grotesque and unnatural.
For a second the words are clearer: "Make them suffer. Make them fear. Betrayed. They betrayed us. Show them. Show them. Make them feel our pain. Make them regret." The words are nonsensical, strange, and yet she feels their power as the world around her changes… as they make it change.
Grief, overpowering grief, sorrow and pain, but under it all is a burning thirst for vengeance; a desperate need to avenge a betrayal greater than words can convey. She feels it all singing through her bones, phantom eyes stinging against the onslaught, and in the centre is the man shrouded in swirling shadows, his head thrown back as he screams his agony to a cruel and thankless universe.
Above The Fold, the sun is different - weaker as its rays try and fail to permeate the dense blackness now beneath it. She can feel it's pain, feels it's fear and despair as it calls out to its mate, it's other half, but there is no answer, only a void and the knowledge that something vital is broken, that a line has been crossed.
With a sharp breath, Alina's eyes snap open, her heart pounding as if she had just run ten miles. The morning light is streaming through her window, warming her with its gentle touch. Even as she tries to hold on to it, the dream starts fading, the images slipping through her fingers like water. Half remembered words floating around her mind: "In the beginning there was only light and darkness…" The words resonate with her like this is something just out of reach that she ought to remember, a connection she ought to be able to make.
Sitting up, Alina looks around the welcome sight of the Vezda suite. It's been two days since she was released from the infirmary - two long days of mostly silence and rest, but it's a welcome change to be back in the soft blue and cream tones of the Vezda suite and away from the harsh sterile glare of endless white that characterizes the infirmary. Even better though is the privacy, here she has the quiet and solitude she wants, away from well-meaning prying eyes and the constant undercurrent of fear and worry.
There's a strain in the air that's new, a sense of loss, of change, but Alina doesn't know whether it's the Little Palace that's changed… or her. Here in the Vezda suite she has time to think, to ruminate on the events of the last few weeks and she mulls over her mother's parting words.
"Who do you want to be, my Alinochka?" Her mama had asked her when she had first voiced her fears a few days before, this feeling she has that she's losing herself, becoming subsumed beneath an identity and responsibilities she doesn't want. The older woman had looked at her with unusual sternness, "don't think about other people think; it doesn't matter what they want or expect you to be. What matters is you. Only you can decide who you are."
It's a simple question, but one with a complicated answer - an answer she still isn't sure of.
Who is she?
She knows how most people see her, what people want her to be: Sankta, martyr, saviour. They want her to do six impossible things before breakfast, no matter the cost to her or her conscience. They want her to right wrongs, fix what's broken and repair their shattered country. People, even the Grisha here in the Little Palace have taken to calling her Sankta - to them she is Alina no longer, but something bigger, something almost divine. Alina the girl is of no use or interest to them - all they care about is the Sun Summoner.
Only a handful of people still use her name. It's a dehumanizing experience, disorientating and distancing. It makes her heart hurt to think of what it must have been like for Aleksander all these years; addressed only by his rank or his semi pejorative title, Darkling - a name given in condemnation of his amazing abilities, not in celebration. She's long known on some level that Aleksander isn't viewed as human – or perhaps, something more than human – but now she has first hand experience of how alienating such a distinction is, how isolating it is and what a weight the expectations such an identity creates.
It feels like she's being erased, fading like the dream that woke her, her identity - who she is – is being taken from her and replaced by what others want.
Worse than that knowledge though is the horror of what her powers can do. It was bad enough when she found out she was the Sun Summoner, her powers then had been a hazy thing overshadowed by the new reality she had been thrust into and the heavy weight of expectations that had been thrust onto her unprepared shoulders. Now it's worse, now she's starting to know what she can do. She's heard the whispers in the ward, the panic about what's happened to Zoya, of what it means.
What she did to the other girl sits like a stone in her stomach, a suffocating weight that traps her and holds her prisoner. She hates it - hates what she did, hates what she can do, even as a part of her is triumphant and feels vindicated and victorious. She shouldn't have this power, it's too great to be given to anyone person. But what fills her heart with dread is Aleksander's reaction; the fear she could see in his eyes, though he tried to hide it from her. He's scared of her. Aleksander - her oldest, dearest friend - is scared of her, of what she can do; of what she did to the Squaller.
It's a sobering, horrifying, terrifying thought. It's the type of thought that can suffocate a person, drown them in a pit of despair and misery. She hates it, but it's also a start - a catalyst for something much bigger - a realization that feels like it's been a long time coming.
"Who do you want to be, Alinochka?" Her mother's question swims around her head.
She knows who she was: Alina Starkov, beloved only child of Anton and Mei-Xing Starkov, loyal friend, dutiful daughter, and an excellent army medic. The question is - who does she want to be going forwards. She knows that the Tsar wants a weapon; that the people of Ravka are crying out for a saviour; that the Grisha are looking for a hero, one who can end the war and cement their hard fought position in Ravka. She knows that Aleksander wants a solution to fix a mistake made centuries ago.
But who does she want to be?
A ball of light glides over her fingers, the trick calming her nerves as she sits and thinks.
Zoya thought her weak, that was why she said what she did, why she thought she could get away with such casual cruelty. It's a hard thing to accept, but Alina sees it now - she has been weak. Weak. Passive. A human sized doll to be dressed up and displayed as others want.
The ball grows bigger as her agitation increases, light spilling from her cupped hands. She isn't a weak person, that's not who her wonderful, extraordinary mother had raised her to be. She'd found her strength in the First Army, but it's like she's forgotten that person, has gone back to accepting the lack of respect as once again her lot in life.
She isn't weak, but she has allowed herself to be seen as feeble, pathetic, malleable. How can Aleksander trust her when she can't even trust herself. It's a realization that galvanizes her, fabrikator steel flooding her veins.
But it isn't just her mother's words that echo around her mind, alongside them is the advice Baghra gave her in their last lesson, as yet again Alina failed to do more than summon stinging sparks.
"Stop trying to be something you're not," Baghra had snapped, her normal bad temper morphing into something that looked like real vexation. "You'll never learn the control you need if you insist on being something that you're not."
"And what's that?" she had replied in a deliberately surly voice while she nursed her bruised leg.
"Ordinary!" even the thump of Baghra's stick sounds agitated. "You're not ordinary, and it's about time, girl, that you stop pretending that you are. You aren't an Otkazat'sya – or even a normal Grisha – you are the Sun Summoner. You should own your power, your identity, not hide from it. Until you stop running from yourself you will always be weak."
She hadn't wanted to accept the words at the time, but now they chase themselves in circles around her mind and she knows that the old woman is right. She has been hiding, pretending, in the vain hope that this nightmare would all go away. She's never liked attention, has never been comfortable in crowds and suddenly, with no warning, she found herself front and centre stage, cast in a role that she had never dreamed of playing. Her way of coping with her new found fame had been to hide, to step back, to make herself seem as normal, as unthreatening as possible.
Hindsight is a relentless mistress, and she can see the folly, the stupidity of her actions. She hadn't wanted to be the Sun Summoner but that is who she is. She is the Sun Saint and all that that entails, but that doesn't mean she isn't Alina too.
Part of her hates what she did to the other girl, but she also cannot regret it. It was wrong of Zoya to act as she did. Wrong of her to break the rules, wrong of her to use the gifts the Saints gave her to bully and overpower someone she thought was weaker than herself. Vulnerability should inspire compassion and protection, not a desire to dominate and destroy, especially in Grisha. It's a lesson the Squaller desperately needs to learn – and learn she will, the sun has seen to that. No, she can't – won't – regret it, but she does mourn the cost. The terror and dread in Aleksander's eyes is a steep price to pay and one that haunts her.
Who does she want to be? She wants to be Alina. The Alina who was strong and independent. The Alina who was loyal and fierce in her defence of what's right. The Alina who was no one's weapon or martyr. The Alina who made Aleksander's eyes light up in joy, not fear. That Is who she wants to be - who she needs to be again.
There's no denying this latest twist scares her, but as she considers what it means to be a suppressor Baghra's words about balance come back to her, and she understands what the old woman had been trying to tell her. Her job – her most important role – is to be Aleksander's equal, his balance. Alone, the powers of a god could corrupt even the purest and best intentioned soul. Together they are a balance, a control, a check for the other.
She sees again the man in The Fold, wrapped in shadows screaming in anger and despair as devastation is wreaked around him. How easy it would be for one with their abilities to cause such harm, for who could challenge them, who could stop them if they needed to be stopped? Alone they may be close invincible, together they are each other's vulnerability, but together they are also something greater: a matched pair – opposite and equal. Each a support and a counterbalance to the other – a true partnership.
There's so much uncertainty in this new life she has been thrust into. So much she doesn't know, so many unanswered questions, so much doubt around her oldest friend and yet… Nature's balance. It's a reassuring thought. She might not know Aleksander's plans, or how much to trust him, but this she does know - where she might not trust herself with this new ability she can trust Aleksander, he will not let her hurt others nor abuse such power. It's a start, a stable point she can fix her eyes on while all about her is adrift on a sea of doubt.
Closing her fist the light vanishes, satisfaction flowing through her at the new ease with which the sun answers her call. She's done.
Done with being meek and passive.
Done with hiding.
Done with exhausting herself trying to live up to other people's expectations.
She is done. Its time embrace the sun and be who she has always been and always will be: Alina Starkov.