Time Can Heal (But This Won't) A Darkling Series

Chapter Six: Another Farewell

This is how it goes: during the day, you train and play your part. During the night, you slip out under the cover of darkness to the forest, where you use your magic again and again. Sometimes Baghra is there, sometimes she is not. The first time you practiced your spells was electrifying, like the first drop of water after centuries spent toiling in the desert. You don't think you could willingly hide it away again.

You're careful now, more careful than you were before. You have no more meetings with the Darkling, no collisions where he seems more unsettled than composed, where his eyes rove over your face like he can see traces of your past life in every tilt of your head or question on your lips. In the end, he is disappointed, and so are you. If you didn't know better, you'd say you wanted to be caught.

If you can't reveal yourself, you can at least use your spells once more. Inky emerald chokes out the trees, dances over miles and miles of land until you're sure that you could engulf the entire city of Os Alta, cover the golden spires of the Grand Palace and the wooden carvings of the Little Palace as you wished. Let his tribute to Hecari return to you, let all that you had built crumble into ruin once more. If you wanted to, you could drown out the entire city. Sometimes, when you stand by Baghra and she watches your near destruction, you think that she would let you do it. She might want to watch all traces of her son's legacy fall just as much as you do.

In the end, you always reel it back to you, watching the viridian magic pour like oil back over the rocks and stones to return to you, homeward bound once more. There will always be a time when you have to don the hood once more, to call up the charade of oprichnik and First Army cartographer to hide who you are. You have no doubt in your mind that this will not last forever, that you'll be found out either by some slip of your hand or some discovery of his. Regardless, you have a duty to hold out as long as you can, both to protect Alina and yourself.

Baghra has spoken to you about the need to train Alina to defend herself, about how the Darkling may be close to finding Morozova's stag and garnering a new pawn in his relentless push to have Ravka borne anew for the Grisha. There's no question of a Sun Summoner's role in remaking the world in shadow, and so you must do your best to protect her. You're coincidentally there whenever the Darkling approaches her, and Baghra makes sure to teach Alina as much as she can before your time runs out. Between the two of you, it's barely enough, but it will have to do. The hourglass has been upended, and there's only so much sand left before it all falls down once more.

Your duty is to protect Alina and by extension Ravka, you know that. However, you would be lying to say that it was easy for you. The Darkling's best weapons are his words, and Alina is falling victim to them just like you had all those years ago. You can see it in her eyes, when he appears to walk with her through the grounds. You can see it in the gold that seems to gild her tongue whenever she speaks his name.

It is truly his name that she speaks now: Aleksander. He told her his name. You had been unable to hide your shock when she casually referred to him as such, unable to hide the widening of your eyes and the twist in your heart. How long had you been with him before he gave you his name, offered it up as a reluctant secret? He told it to her within a week, as if it was nothing at all.

The same goes with his color. You had been escorting Alina to training with Botkin, and she had been tugging irritably at her sleeves, saying something about how kefta could be so difficult to run and fight in. You hadn't entirely been able to disagree, but then she'd added something else. "I don't think Aleksander likes it either. He gave me a black kefta at first, but I had them change it to blue. I don't need any more reasons to stand out. I'm practically a pariah as it is."

You had flinched twice, at the mention of his name and then at the color. Alina had raised her eyebrows. "Why does everyone have that same reaction? I'm supposed to be a summoner, so I should wear blue. I didn't think it would be that much of an issue." You force a laugh to your lips, although it feels harder to maintain than even the hardest of your spells. "Maybe we all thought you'd like the extra thrill of the color. I mean, arriving in a blaze of attempted murder and Sun Summoning isn't enough, why not pepper in the fact that you're wearing the Darkling's color?"