Chapter Text
She is free.
In the unfathomable darkness of the Fold, Alina feels the Darkling’s grip over her power slip and fall away, like water over polished stone. It was always within her, the key to freedom. All she needed was a moment, a desperate scramble, to finally understand the Stag’s black, silent stare. The stare of acceptance. Of power being relinquished.
The small knife driven through the Darkling’s palm only assures her freedom stays true.
Now, he owns nothing of her. She is her own master.
“The Stag chose me,” she says to him, taking the fabrikated collar into herself. The amplifier fuses with her collarbones, the sharp jutting edges evening out against her skin. It no longer feels like a weight pressing over her neck, but a natural extension of herself, no different from a limb.
Newfound power ripples out of her body, a blinding beam of light that grows and grows to shield the sandskiff from incoming volcra. She does not know if all amplifiers work the way the Stag’s does for her, but the ease in which her body accepts the fixed antlers surprises the Darkling—and she refuses to call him Aleksander. Not here, after everything.
The Darkling tears the knife free of his palm with a hard wince. So, he is not impervious to pain.
“You chose to betray our people,” he says, heavy with resentment, “I was trying to save us.”
For a brief second, she believes him. He wears anger and betrayal well enough for her to think it genuine. And maybe it is. Maybe, in his mind, this is betrayal, when it was him who first betrayed her trust.
But before she can piece together her thoughts, a hand, tense with dark power, lifts up against her.
Nothing happens as Mal throws himself against the Darking’s side.
They both fall over the skiff’s side, disappearing into the Fold.
“Mal!”
She struggles to see over the edge, but the rope at her feet keeps her locked in place.
The knife. She could still use the knife. It is small, but deathly sharp. It might just cut through the thick rope in time to save her tracker, her Mal, too stubborn and hard-headed to realize that he’s jumped into a mismatched fight with someone like the Darkling, powerful even wounded.
Mal won’t last long against him, if he still lives.
She hopes.
No time wasted, she dives to where the blade glitters over the wooden deck, a bit too far for her to reach without straining first to a crawl. Luck is on her side that the tips of her fingers draw it near, her palm gripping the handle with strength. Immediately, she goes to work cutting the rope.
A familiar voice shouts in pain, distantly. She hears the thunderclap of the Cut. Her heart pounds in her ears as she doubles her efforts to break free.
But before she can, an invisible hand grips the inside of her chest, and she chokes on air.
Ivan. The Heartrender is still loyal to his general, even after everything they’ve witnessed. After Novokribirsk was swallowed by the Fold at the general’s whim.
Her heart threatens to burst, blood vessels unravel, veins struggle under pressure. She can’t fight a Heartrender. She can barely breathe through the blood gathering in her nose.
The shadow of the Fold snuffs her light.
Two shots ring out and the grip, thank all the Saints, loosens completely. She gasps, lightheaded, sight swimming. Everything is dark. Her hand blindly finds the knife and cuts the last of the rope anchoring her to the skiff.
Without a second thought, Alina vaults the handrail into the blackness.
Sand meets her faster than expected, and she grunts at the impact, palms scraping against a coarse, colorless surface. Still, her vision swims, but when she calls the sun, the sun answers, without hesitance. A fat beam of light streaks from her hands and wards off an approaching volcra.
The screech it replies with hurts her ears. She can hear it sizzle in the light.
“Alina!”
Her ears ring. Unable to concentrate, the world plummets into darkness again, the sudden burst of light dissipating.
“Alina!”
She takes a second more to realize part of the ringing noise is the sandskiff moving again. Moving away.
“What...?” Alina scrambles to standing. The voice calling for her is strained. It’s Mal, still alive, stumbling near to help her up.
He looks badly hurt himself, arms hugging his side, blood sticking to his chin. But not so bad to be close to death’s door, to her relief. Neither does the Darkling, though he clutches his bleeding hand to his chest and struggles to stand as well.
Without light, a swarm of volcra circle them. They seem to be ignoring the skiff for easier prey.
Though it aches to summon, she wills a sphere of pure white around all three of them. The power of the Stag is great, but in her state, it is the most she can do. It is not enough to follow the skiff, with Mal starting to slump on her frame.
“Alina,” calls the Darkling, and a part of her recoils at how pained he sounds. It doesn’t sound right coming from him, the unflinching, immortal leader of the Second Army. It sounds human, and she hates it. “Your new allies have abandoned you. Your tracker,” he sneers, “is useless to you here, in my creation.”
Her anger peaks. “Your creation will eat us both. It does not discriminate between master and food.”
He does not correct her foolish words of rebellion. Despite his threat, she speaks the truth and they know it. The volcra flock to them like flies now, keeping a wide berth only because of the bright sphere covering them, and only barely. A few dare to touch inside the barrier, like wolves nipping at a trapped deer’s heels to send it into a panic.
“What will you do then, Sun Summoner? Save yourself and chase after the fleeing skiff? You cannot summon light while carrying the tracker. You’re as doomed as I am.”
Another truth, one she cannot refute.
Her light falters for a moment, pain radiating out of her arms. It is all a hungry volcra needs to take advantage of the opening and extend its snarled claws to her.
She does not feel them sink into her arm. The Darkling claps his hands together in time and the volcra splits in two from a Cut, not unlike the first time she ever saw it, slicing through a Fjerdan witch hunter like butter.
The force of summoning leaves his hands shaking, though, and the Darkling’s face forms a harsh grimace. He cannot make a second Cut. He cannot defend himself, alone.
Alina returns them the light shield a split second after, but she won't be able hold it for long. Mal’s weight settles over her more and more, and it strains her to support. He’s faint, possibly from blood loss, or whatever came out of the fight he had with the Darkling moments ago.
She hears Mal murmur, “Not the meadow,” into her ear, almost delirious.
“Not the meadow,” she agrees. No more death.
Alone, they all die.
Alina makes a decision.
“Carry him.”
The Darkling looks at her like she’s surprised her once more, this time with a rare touch of incredulity.
“I’ll hold the light,” she explains, “and you carry him.”
“You must be joking.”
She grits her teeth, blood showing from her gums. Choosing to focus on maintaining the barrier, Mal collapses on the ground. “You’re right. I cannot save us all, so unless you want to discover what being eaten alive by volcra feels like, carry him.”
Slowly, she raises her arms and gathers her power, the Stag bellowing from inside her bones. Her chest starts to burn from the inside, and she withstands it, all to stretch the light in a tunnel. It is far smaller than what the Darkling had done through her, but enough to keep the volcra a cautious distance away.
The Darkling meets her gaze.
Whatever he sees in her, he slips closer.
“All for an otkazat'sya,” he whispers, angry, disappointed. Relenting.
His good arm jerks Mal up by an armpit.
Alina closes her eyes, the fresh, hard edge of her expression shattering.
“Follow,” she tells him, as she starts to walk down the illuminated path, arms stiff in position.
She focuses everything on keeping the tunnel's shape. It could have been a dozen paces or a hundred, but eventually her stomach lurches and the world dips three degrees to the side.
Her nose drips a copper smell. The tunnel shrinks.
“Alina, you cannot save him.” She takes another step, even as her vision blurs. She hears the ocean—or maybe that’s blood rushing through her head—and speeds towards it. “I will not let him be your death—”
“Just move, damn you.”
She does not know which way they are moving, if it is deeper into the Fold, or to the land dock side of Novokribirsk. All she knows is that if she stops moving, Mal will die. She cannot go for long, but it only needs to be long enough. Close enough. To safety, somewhere, anywhere where the Fold's monsters will not tear him apart should she cave in on herself.
She doesn’t know why she trusts that the Darkling has not abandoned Mal behind them. Something in her, still that naive, frightened girl just learning to be Grisha, hopes.
Through the haze creeping over her eyes, her hope is answered.
The Fold still stretches on eternally before them, but there, a few paces ahead, is another sandskiff. Older probably, and smaller. But its hull is undamaged, against all odds.
It will have to do.
With voiced effort, she winds the tunnel down into a sphere again. The Darkling takes the first step climbing the sand-covered deck, Mal a worrying dead weight on his arm.
He drops him on the deck without preamble.
Even weak, Alina snarls, “The least you could do is be gentle with him.”
“The least I could have done was be sure that he still breathed before I carried a corpse around, and he does.”
Despite herself, anger ebbs at the unintentional reassurance. “Oh, Saints.”
“Yes,” the Darkling mutters unhappily, lifting a narrow, metal gate from the deck. It should lead into the skiff’s bowels, down to the undamaged hull side. “Now get inside, before your efforts turn in vain.”
She has not been able to keep track of the volcra during the walk, but she hears them now. The larger swarm is gone, but they haven’t stopped following.
“Mal first.”
“If you insist,” the Darkling says with the narrowing of his quartz eyes, taking up Mal again. His anger is so palpable, but he does not drop Mal carelessly into the unknown darkness of the hull. Instead he takes the steps, disappearing into the sandskiff, the shadows welcoming him back from Alina's stubborn light.
She is left alone on the surface. The gate sits open for her to cross next.
One step, and her whole body seizes up, pain bowing her to her knees.
The barrier of light vanishes.
“Alina!”
She cannot see. She cannot move. The volcra above cry in unison.
Something cold blankets her, the darkness becoming even deeper than before. A cough gets trapped inside her chest, and she grimaces at the coppery taste that sticks to her throat. But though she feels the cough, it does not reverberate in her ears. Am I losing consciousness? Is this death?
The cold thing drags her to an opening. She feels herself become weightless, floating, before the hard surface of the skiff’s inner hull greets her ribs unkindly.
The gate closes with a metal creak. Volcra screech as darkness covers the skiff utterly, and the few that landed too close to the gate scratch blindly where no such opening exists.
Large wings beat against wood for a long minute, confused that the shadows have forbidden them this prey.
Above her, she catches the Darkling curl his hands in concentration. Keeping the sandskiff hidden. The image of him swims across her vision and she wants to laugh, thinking that shadows might be what save her and Mal after all.
She cannot force a chuckle into existence, not without her lungs hating her.
The world truly fades to black then as she passes out.