The Darkness That Binds Us

Chapter 5: The Ring

I drink my tea in silence. The darkling sits back down at the foot of my bed. I can feel him fixing me with one of those cold, evaluative looks -no doubt searching for the sentence that will twist the knife of shame in my chest the deepest.

I take another long sip from the steaming cup, Mal's bone-ring chinking against the side. I speak.

"Is this your idea of some barbaric punishment?" I thrust out the ring.

"It's a reminder," he corrects sharply.

"Right." I laugh, but there is no joy in it. "I bet you enjoyed welding him to me for eternity? it must have been very cathartic for you, slaughtering the last shred of family i had left."

"Alina," he sighed, " need i reminded you, that amplifier's need to be joined to the grisha in order to-"

"-You make it sound as if you didn't have a choice."

"I didn't." He falters, "Morazova's amplifiers have to go together, it's-"

"I don't give a damn about IIyal's stupid, power-up, trio! He wasn't just an amplifier! He was my friend -and i loved him! Of all the people how could you not understand that?" My voice echo's into the darkness.

"Alina..." He trails off, for once i have been the one to twist the knife. But instead of feeling the upper-hand, part of me feels like i'm betraying myself. I feel bad for hurting the darkling's feelings, i realise. For one hysterical moment, I wonder if this bond runs deeper than just our powers. Whatever this feeling is, i do not like it one bit.

Quiet settles over us again.

Eventually, a distracting question rises in the back of my mind, "Why a ring?" I say, finally slicing the silence in half. As soon as the question passes across my lips the answer comes to me. oh no.

I freeze again.

"Alina-"

"NO!" I blurt.

"The arrangements have already been made, I-"

"-I am not marrying you."

"Alina please-"

"-I am never marrying you!" My voice trembles with revulsion.

"Well, I'm sorry offend your personal whims," he cuts, " but this isn't about you or me, this is about politics. The binding of 'Stankta Alina' to general of the second army will-"

"-secure your reign as king." I interject sharply.

"Stabilise the people of Ravka." He parries my blow.

I scoff. "Tell that to the fold!"

"We don't live in a fairy-tale Alina," the darkling cautions, an edge menace creeping to his tone. 

"I don't care, i not going to marry yo-"

"No?" his voice booms threw the darkness, "would you rather have the Lanstov pup take your hand, let him leash you like some prized hunting-dog for the pleasure of his subjects? Is that it? Or perhaps you'd prefer to be the apparats puppet?-"

"-I am nobody's puppet!"

"Please Alina, " he spits, "you're a seventeen-year-old saint who shoots sun-beams from her fingers. You're figure head whether you like it or not. If i do not claim you, someone else surely will. Grisha like us will always be puppets in power-hungry people's eyes. So what other political marriage would you have preferred?"

I go quiet. This time it is the darkling's turn to reach his own conclusions. "Oh, Alina..." his voice drops away to breath. He grazes his knuckle across my cheek. The touch crackles with the power i long for. "What did the tracker promise you?"