Beautiful and Broken

11.

It was one of the rare afternoons when Fedyor and Ivan weren't busy. We were killing time in a rarely frequented deposit, aided by some bottles of kvas, Ravka's most preferred alcoholic beverage. They were entertaining me with army stories, and it worked surprisingly well, until I've remembered the one army story I wanted to hear more details on.

"What happened that day when the General got stranded in the Fold?" I had to stop calling him Aleksander in front of them, I could tell it made them uncomfortable.

Seeing Fedyor's face, I instantly regretted asking.

"Has he never told you?", Ivan asked grimly.

"He did. But I've been taught to always look for more sides of a story."

Ivan frowned. He looked at Fedyor, but he nodded solemnly. They both had friends who never returned from the Fold that day.

"So we embarked on his fancy skiff, dark sails and all, filled with ambassadors and other birds, complete with the Sun Summoner and her pet tracker boy. It was obvious that he was gonna put on a show. We were all thinking something in the terms of making the girl fry some volcra. The girl was summoning light, it was actually decent, no critter dared to come near. I remember they dressed her all up for the occasion, I was standing right next to her and thinking about useless things like why do you need so many hairpins if nobody's gonna see them in the dark?"

"Alina", Fedyor interrupted. "Her name is Alina, why don't you ever call her so?"

"Cause she's no friend of mine, after what she did to us that day."

Alina. Aleksander thought I was the Sun Summoner when he first met me.

"And then when we almost reach the other end, at Novokribirsk, he whispers something to her, and she clearly starts objecting. And then he grabs her wrist, and starts drawing on her power, you couldn't see it, but you could feel it happening if you're a Grisha, and the Fold just gets bigger, it's near the outpost, then the guards start running, then it's eating up the streets, the houses, the people. It made you wanna kill something and puke at the same time. And then this tracker boy does something, and hell brakes lose on the skiff, and the girl just jumps off and runs away, she leaves us all in the dark for the monsters, and the Inferni are trying to do something about it, and then the General got behind them and yelled at us to run, and he will hold them off. Guess that was when he first summoned nichevoya, none of us knows, cause we didn't look back."

Ivan took a long sip of his kvas.

"But then we had to get through Novokribirsk, or what was Novokribirsk, to get out of the Fold. And we had to look at it all, you didn't dare not to look, those people deserved that much from all of us. There were hundreds of them dead, grandmas, children, it didn't matter. But the worst of it was that they weren't staying dead. They were changing as we passed by. They were turning into volcra."

All of us kept silently staring at the ground for what seemed like an eternity. How could they accept it just like that? Was this what military discipline was all about? Your General just murders a whole town in cold blood, and you just keep obeying his orders as if nothing happened? And what was he thinking not telling me? He must have known sooner or later somebody will. But would I have come here with him if I knew? Would he have me so smug in his lair, with no door to walk out of that's not guarded by his people? Bastard. Murderer. Monster. And me dumb as a monkey for trusting him. Because I did start to trust him somewhere along the road – pity that I only realized it when that trust was shattered.

I hid in my room, trying to put myself together, trying to calm down. I left a note for the Darkling, cancelling today's magic lesson for whatever reason. My primary instincts kicked in, I couldn't think about anything else but getting out of here, as quickly as possible. It felt as if the walls were closing in on me, I was trapped, I was suffocating. I tried to consider my options. The only door which wasn't guarded was the one only accessible through his room, and he kept it locked anyway. That meant outsmarting the guards. Maybe I could tell them I am going to research something, if they don't have orders to stop me, they might believe it. If I have to use magic on them, the Darkling will be on me in seconds, and even if I can stand against him, I can't stand against him and dozens of Grisha.