Chapter Text
For a moment he’d felt the disappointment when the girl spoke… but he’d swallowed the pill with a draught of bitter acceptance. She was pretty and probably smart—the saints had chosen her as his soulmate, after all—but she couldn’t share his life.
His first task had been to get her away before he said whatever was written on her arm. He didn’t want the captain and his lieutenants to realize.
And now… now he just felt a bit numb. It had come, the thing he hoped for, and it meant nothing.
If that wasn’t the motif of his life, what was?
...He may not care, but on the other hand, he didn’t exactly want his soulmate to die in the Fold the day after he met her.
That would be extremely depressing, even if it tied up several loose ends for him—like her knowing his true initials were not what was commonly believed.
So when he found out an inexplicable fire in the documents tent caused the entire cartography unit to be drafted for the crossing, he stepped in.
***
It was the work of a moment to send word to the First Army that the new skiff design required further inspection, so the crossing would have to be delayed.
The Corporal whom Alexander gave the message to simply blinked at this new, frustrating information he would have to convey to his superior. There was no direct insubordination, but Alexander could read the usual Otkazat’sya contempt in his eyes. Judgement of the typical Grisha arrogance in holding such exacting standards. Only Grisha would double check and triple check, not wanting to lose the life of a single precious witch. The First Army held no such standards.
Let them grumble. Their resentment and contempt was nothing new.
The irony, though, if only they knew - Alexander was not disrupting the crossing out of concern for Grisha, but rather a single, precious Otkazat’sya life.
Precious..?
Once he was alone in his tent again, Alexander pressed his hand over the words etched into his arm and shook his head.
Just a moment. Just a fleeting moment. Her life would be over one way or another, and then Alexander would have... What? The memory of a soulmate?
He could almost hear Luda's voice, but he banished it from his mind. Instead he kept feeling something like a cold plunge through the ice, the realization that his mother had been right - he wasn't like the other children; even other Grisha would want to kill him for his bones.
Alone. Alone. Alone. The same realization all over again, drumming through his entire body with every beat of his heart.
His... hope... for a different world... separating him even from his mother.
And now a widening gulf separated him from his imagined Sun Summoner, who would be... not a completion, not a missing half. Just Other. A rival. A tool.
A throat cleared outside his tent. Alexander straightened and prepared to summon his shadows. When he called for the person to enter, it was only Fedyor and Ivan who stepped in.
"Forgive us, sir," Fedyor spoke, "We just wanted to be certain that... nothing was amiss."
Alexander simply raised an eyebrow. Fedyor looked chagrined. Behind him, Ivan was scowling fiercely. When Alexander paid attention he could feel his heart beating slowly, skipping out of rhythm. Had they suspected an assassin..? Poison? He almost smiled. Just the poison of disappointment. But it did give him an idea.
"Nothing amiss. There is one thing you can do for me, though, Fedyor... There is a woman in the cartography unit. A young woman, half-Shu. It is a... small possibility... But I have had reports of a possible spy in the First Army. I doubt that this girl is anything unusual, but I would like to you keep track of her movements in the camp. Unobtrusively. Just to be sure."
Fedyor immediately nodded and left. Ivan gave him one long look and left as well.
Alexander stepped over to his desk and the piles of reports that awaited him there.
This was just a small delay.
A day or two at most.
For nothing. For a distraction.
A slight girl with dark hair, dark eyes. Intelligence and defiance in her eyes. A fitting match for him, perhaps, on a purely personal level. They could have had an... interlude together... if only she had arrived at a less complicated time.
Alexander sighed and forced himself to get back to the business of being a general.
***
The next day, the durast who examined the skiffs reported that one of the lamps was faulty. If she had not caught the defect, the light would have surely failed during the crossing, putting the entire expedition at risk.
The whole deployment with all its personnel and goods could have been lost to the darkness and the howling demons of the Fold.
She would have been lost. Snuffed out.
The cartographer. Alexander's soulmate.
Alina Starkov.
Alexander was certain that his expression hardly changed when the durast gave him her report, but his heart must have betrayed him, because Ivan glanced at him with a questioning look.
"Very good. Ivan, inform the First Army commander there will be further delays. I want a complete inspections of all the skiffs, with more durasts. If we missed something as simple as a lantern, there might be additional defects buried deeper in the construction. I will not abide such waste. And then arrange a meeting with the First Army command. If we're going to be here for a week or more, we might as well fan out and secure a wider area. And Ivan-" this as Ivan was already bowing in deference to his orders. "When you have time, find Fedyor and tell him I'll want his report."
Lost.
She could have been lost.
The whole damn crossing could have been lost.
And this wasn't typical First Army indifference but his own Grisha construction that was faulty.
His Grisha had a reputation for being pampered and well-equipped to a fault, and they had failed to live up to it. The more Alexander thought about it, the more he could feel a cold fury settling in his veins. There was little to be done for it - they would double the inspections before each crossing from now on.
After centuries in various armies, Alexander was used to ineptitude. He was used to having to change his plans. But it was the thoughtlessness that bothered him - Fold crossings were dangerous enough without such careless mistakes.
Dark eyes, dark hair. “Am I dismissed, sir, or do you want me to accompany you?”
The words that comprised his soulmark had been innocent, after all, a quizical sort of impatience on the young woman's brow, not quite insolence toward a superior but something leaning in that direction. Alexander had, over the past twenty years, occasionally imagined a warmer meaning to those words. In his deepest fantasies, it was the Sun Summoner herself, serving as a Grisha under his command, asking to accompany him into his bed, into his heart, into the very fabric of his life. It was fitting, that in this, as in every other aspect of his soulmate, Alexander was disappointed. His mother would laugh in his face if she knew.
Instead of the Sun Summoner, his soulmate was a skinny, Otkazat’sya cartographer. She wasn't even under his jurisdiction. Delaying the crossing had probably saved her life, but for what? Unless he wanted to claim her as a lover or a wife and expose her to all the danger and ridicule that an open attachment to the Darkling would entail, he would have, what, a week or two to be near her?
Dark eyes. Even tired and bored, there had been a spark in them. Even relieved to be rid of him, eager to reject the bond, turning her back on him with a flip of her messy braid and walking away from him without a second glance... Young, defiant scrap of a girl.
His.
And he had tossed her away.
Tossed her away to be consumed by his greatest shame, his greatest weapon - the Fold.
Fitting.
So fucking fitting.
But she hadn't died. Yet. The crossing hadn't happened. Alexander had a second chance.
To do... what?
He hadn't decided yet.
But he knew he couldn't just let her go.
***