The Darkness That Binds Us

Chapter 14: The Sickness

That was the last time i saw the darkling. As soon as we arrived back at the little palace that night, a messenger informed us the Ferjdan delegation had pulled out of dinner; I was swiftly locked in my room and the darkling was rushed off to his cabinet to discuss 'defence concerns' regarding Ravka's new western front. By the time i woke up in the morning, he was gone.

No one would tell me what was happening or why he left, all i could decipher was that there was some sort of breach near Ulensk and a skirmish had broken out. However, plans for my arranged marriage where still going on full-steam-ahead, with tailors and fabricators studying every inch of my body for the dress that i would wear to my coronation, wedding and overall worst day of my life.

The darkling had assigned Theodore to over see my upkeep and, after assessing security concerns, he determined the best course of action was to lock me in my chambers under constant 24-hour surveillance.

A few days later, a two-week snow storm arrived in Os alta. Snowing the little palace and freezing every window on it's northern face shut with ice. Temperatures dropped to 20 degree below, turning the cities streets into a blizzard-ravaged wasteland.

The sickness came on the second week. I woke up one day; head pounding, body shaking, everything aching and it never stopped.

Just like some sort of terrible withdrawal, it kept getting worse. Every day, Corporalki visited me but nothing they did worked. All the medicine they gave me just seemed to make me weaker. Grisha weren't supposed to get sick but this was a illness like none i'd ever experienced before and it drained all the little willingness i had left to live out of me.

I stayed in bed and lost all tract of time. Servants came with food, but i couldn't eat any of it, and when i didn't, they told Theodore.

The next time the heartrender came himself. He didn't even attempt talk to me, he just ordered Oprichniki to pin me and the next thing i know Materialki are forcing a tube down my throat. It is as horrible as is sounds. I try to beg them to stop, but i gag on the vile liquids being pumped into my mouth and when i throw up, they go again, and agian and agian...

A few of the darkling's most-favoured female Oprichniki came in to wash me, but i refused. So they called in the rest of maids in and i still fought. They dragged me to the bath, kicking and screaming with all the pathetic energy i had left. Hands Forced me under the water. I'm not sure why, but I bite one of them out of raw spite. A maid starts crying and then one of the Oprichniki drives something sharp into my neck, which i realised must of been a syringe of some sort, because after that i stop fighting and i am completely calm.

All my thoughts float way from me. I vaguely remember hearing his voice again, as he starts combing though my matted hair. "Alina..." i don't remember what he says but i do remember thinking -in the darkest, deepest, depths of my narcotize trance- that it was a good dream.

The only good dream. In sleep the nightmares intensify beyond anything else i have ever experience before. Mal is always there behind my eyes, but it is the boy with a hundred names that dominates my mind.

The dream plays back to back. There are more parts to it now too, i can't recall them all but there is a new girl now, with mouse-brown hair and a scar across her palm, which she rubs sometimes when she gets nervous.

She has the most beautiful look on her face, slightly lost, slightly confused but -for the briefest of moments- when she starts glowing, it's the look of true happiness that lights up the world and just touching her feels like tasting sunlight -until the darkness arrives, and then all the light and all the joy melts away and freezes into pure terror...

So i can't sleep, but i can't stay wake either leaving me to just exist. Forever in limbo, on the edge of where nightmares and reality blur.

At some point -i don't know when- lighting strikes me across the chest with an agony so intense i double over and start riving on the bed screaming. A sharp, searing, tingling sensation, which dulls into yet another layer of will-breaking pain.

Immediately after that, a new part of the dream arrives, one with a lone black ridder lying in a frozen forest, snow swirling around him, black cape splayed out over the Ice, hooded features cast in shadow, but beneath that is the boy with one-hundred names, older, colder, face twisted in a thousand agonies.

Aleksander.

I jump awake, sweating in fear. Not his fear though, my fear for him and it is the thought of that that terrifies me all the more...