Exile |The Darkling|

Chapter 1: Homeland

There were mornings where everything felt like a cruel joke.

For the past three weeks, you had woken up hours before dawn had even thought of breaking. The late hours of the evening sky darkening the room into an unimaginable void of black that even his summons couldn't create it. But then the small light of the moon broke through the drawn curtains—their missed meeting allowing a break from the unending night.

In the moonlight, you felt alone, even if you weren't. It was quiet. A silence overwhelming because the noise inside was never ending. The constant thoughts of her, of him, of everything changing daily, and the cracks in the pavement beginning to deepen. The darkness allowed for that to happen.

And then sometime between the moon descending from the top of the window to the floor, the sun replaced it ascending. It began in small lines, each early ray of sun filling in the fissures of the floor, a reflection on the adjacent wall, and then on the canopy of the bed. The black canopy, as blistering as night, had somehow been invaded by the sun. And every morning since her arrival, the sun traced the lines of stitching that was slowly unraveling due to hundreds of years of unrestored weathering.

The universe was screaming. The signs were everywhere except spoken word yet there was no major effort to make a change.

The sun would rise, you wouldn't sleep, and the man next to you would awake to the same face he had for centuries—pretending everything is fine when it's not. His pride and power was more important. It had grown more important. A tremendous mistake, yes, but power clouded judgement and power meant the world to him.

All it took was the discovery of the one who could summon the sun and world flipped on its axis.

Cruelty came in the forms of routine. Before her discovery, there was a consistent script of how all of Ravka functioned, how it saw you as a leader and how it saw him as a General but now there was hope. There was an undeniable shift in energy from the lowest slums of citizens to the King himself because there was a way out of the mess The Fold had created. But of course, none of them knew of his true intentions; the despotic mind of the one who could destroy them all kept everyone as a pawn.

Alina Starkov could give Aleksander what he wanted, not you. You knew too much. After all, what use was someone who could summon stars when the one who could capture the sun in her hands was far more powerful?

That is what the early morning sun reminded you of everyday. A constant reminder that the facade you both put on every day to play face when hundreds of years of history was thrown away because of some girl. A girl.

"Think any louder and you'll wake the whole damn palace." Aleksander's voice was deep with sleep as the sun began to wake him too.

The man was far more careless in his slumber. His hair disheveled, one hand above the silken pillow while the other rested below it, but never disoriented enough to not know what was going on around him. There were seconds where you debated to answer, tell him to fuck off or smother him with your own pillow, except you couldn't muster a word. It always seemed to end in that result. You weren't scared to tell him how it is, how you feel—but your fuse was growing short and you didn't want the palace to go up in flames because you couldn't control yourself.

Instead, you sat up facing away from him, feeling his eyes on your bare back as the sheets pooled around your body. Those eyes—as forsaken as his soul—were a trap. They consumed you and all of his worst qualities, ambushing any semblance of dignity you had left. So you couldn't look at him. Not now, not in a moment, not if you could help it. You rose out of bed, slipping on hand-sewn vestment before escaping his eyes in the washroom.

Inside the grand washroom was a vanity so ornately carved it was the epitome of perfection. The mirror was weathered and coarse but the chestnut was marbled with finite foibles that made the imperfect seem impeccable. The vanity was one of the last pieces of that was salvaged at the creation of The Fold. It had seen it all. The wood was engrained with the secrets of centuries. And the reflection it had seen everyday was once again staring back at it from the wide chase that had once been tucked underneath it. You, again, and the tired reflection of a Grisha that was slowly ticking to an explosion.