That question sat on her tongue almost every moment of her youth. Put a gun in someone's hand and you'll find a murderer, but put a gun in a soldier's hand and you'll see a patriot willing to die for their country. Propaganda was funny like that. Generals sat back and watched as Death's glinting scythe came down on their sacrificial lambs again and again, puffing their chest and calling it honor. Yet, If honor was the fading glint of life in a child soldier's eyes then damn the word and let it scorch Ravka to its rotting core. But that would be assuming the country wasn't spoiled already.
Kryia Sokolov happened to be one of the ill-fated citizens torn in two by Ravka's wars. Raised under the nose of the Second Army, she was a Fabrikator with a taste for never knowing the feeling of seizing her own choices. At age 9, she was taken from the Little Palace prematurely and introduced to the rebel faction of Grisha desperate to see the Darkling fall to his knees. Bezprizorniki, they called themselves. It stemmed from the ancient Ravkan word for the orphans, outcasts and refugees left with nothing but the clothes on their back; the ones abandoned by society. They did not adorn pretty colours but they wore soot on their skin like war paint. Their clothes were not bulletproof but they had their own saints that could catch every shot. They were not an army but they were a people, not bound by power but by the insatiable need to feel linked by destiny - and destiny was whatever they willed so.
But there was something new in Ravka - perhaps something worse than the Darkling. Sankta Alina, Sol Koroleva: the Sun Summoner, and the one who has come to save them all. The Bezprizorniki wanted her little spark flattened into the dirt before it could set the world ablaze and there was nothing Kryia Sokolov loved more than playing in the hands of idolatry.
𝑪𝑯𝑨𝑹𝑨𝑪𝑻𝑬𝑹𝑺
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