Her Balance | Nikolai x Reader x Darkling

~ Chapter 11 ~

Let's get into it.

First Person - Y/n

When Baghra fastened her bony hand around my wrist, I realized instantly that she was an amplifier like the Darkling. I felt the same surety flood through me, and sunlight erupted through the room, shimmering over the stone walls of Baghra's hut. But when she released me and told me to call the power on my own, I was hopeless. She chided me, urged me, even hit me once with her stick.

"What am I supposed to do with a girl who can't call her own power?" she growled at me after four times of doing the same thing. "Even children can do this."

"Yeah, well, I didn't know I could do this till a few weeks ago," I mumbled angrily. 

"You're holding it back, or something is holding it back," she snapped, and she slid her hand around my wrist again. 

I felt that thing inside me rising up, struggling to break the surface, but as I reached for it, the darkness pushed it away. It wanted to reign, and there was no stopping it. 

Baghra's call echoed through me again, but instead, it called for something else. It called for the darkness, and with no real capability to stop it, the little hut exploded in darkness, shadows looming in every corner. 

I pulled my hand out of Baghra's grasp ordering the shadows to disperse and go back towards the corners. 

"They said you're a Sun Summoner?" said Baghra looking shocked. "How are you able to bend shadows?"

"Why did you call to them?" I asked angrily. "You're supposed to help me train the light!"

"Something was holding you down, I called to it, to try and extinguish it. I didn't expect it to be shadows. Do you know what you are?"

"According to the Darkling, I'm an Eclipse Summoner. Someone who can summon light and shadow, I don't know how."

"How long have you know about the shadows?"

"Since I was a toddler."

"You said you were tested."

"I made sure nothing happened."

"Who knows?"

"Three other people in my life."

Baghra just stared at me, for what reasons, I could not determine but eventually, she waved me away with a shoo of her hand and I ran out of the hut. 

As I ran out, I realized that I had broken the Darkling's instructions on making sure no one ever found out about what I really was. 

He had to expect that your instructor would find out, I told myself but it didn't combat the growing fear of what might happen if he found out. 

The day did not improve. I spent the rest of the morning at the library, where I was given a stack of books on Grisha theory and history and informed that this was just a fraction of my reading list. 

At lunch, I looked for Genya, but she was nowhere to be found. I sat down at the Summoners' table and was quickly swarmed by Etherealki.

I picked at my plate as Marie and Nadia prodded me with questions about my first lesson, where my room was, if I wanted to go with them to the banya that night. 

I wasn't in the mood to talk, and once they realized that, they turned away to other summoners to chat. While I suffered from Baghra, the other Grisha were studying advanced theory, languages, military strategy.

I would give anything to study military strategy and languages. They were fun things to learn, things that I knew how to do. 

Apparently, this was all to prepare for when they left the Little Palace next summer. Most of them would travel to the Fold or to the northern or southern front to assume command positions in the Second Army.