You Must Know The Darkness To Appreciate The Light

🔆🌙Chapter 1🌙🔆

I stood alone, shaking and heart beating rapidly out of fear.
It would be a miracle if I didn't die of a stress attack before what ever they had planned for me happened.

The ambush had happened so quickly the battle was over before it began. We were unprepared. So many of my loyal soldiers were dead, and my friends...Well, I had no idea what had become of them.

A heartrender had dropped my pulse, and the last I saw before unconsciousness was Zoya, blood running down her face, summoning lightning, Nikolai standing back to back with her, pistols blazing, Tamar and Tolya charging, silver blades flashing, before everything went black.

When woke, I found I had been brought to Os Alta, and now was apparently in a sitting room somewhere in the Grand Palace. I dimly recognized it as the same sitting room in which I had met the Queen, Tatiana Lantsov, when I had first come to the city, when my powers were first discovered. I remembered it better as the same room where the Darkling had kissed me passionately,  the night of the Winter Fete long ago, before Baghra had come for me and told me the truth, saving me from the palace and the Darkling.

The Darkling. I had heard rumors that he was alive and back in power. I had refused to believe it. No one could have made it out of the absolute hell hole that was left in the wake of our battle in the chapel.

As if on cue, summoned by my mere thoughts, the door behind me creaked open. Ana Kuya's words rang through my head. 'Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.'

I knew who it was even before the cool, smooth as glass voice spoke.

"Well. It looks like our little Sun Summoner is has returned to our humble palace."
I didn't speak, I didn't look at him. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of seeing the fear that was inevitability written on my face.

The last time I had seen the Darkling, he had been buried under a dusty pile of plaster and rubble, blood pouring from his nose and seizing, on the edge of leaving this world and entering the next. I had hoped to have killed him, but had obviously failed yet again. I wondered if he had dabbled in Merzost to save his own life. No one could have survived that otherwise.

I could hear him slowly approaching me, could see out of the corner of my eye his black boots standing out against the pale rose carpet. He stood still behind me, so close I could feel his warm breath tickling the hair at the nape of my neck.

I shuddered as his cool, slender fingers brushed across my neck where the Morozova's Stag antlers rested as a collar at the base of my throat. He dragged his fingers over my shoulder, the nichevo'ya bite was that covered by my shirt throbbed underneath. I might have been mistaken, but as his hand rested there, it briefly felt through the tether like he was regret for leaving that irreversible bite.

He wasn't remorseful for long. "Come back to show us how powerful you are? Or perhaps, to grace us with your wisdom, sankta?" I stared at the floor and said nothing, focusing on controlling my panicked breathing. I could feel him standing behind me, watching, waiting silently.

When he got no response, he continued speaking. "No biting remarks? No berating me or telling me how much of a monster I am? No 'I hate you so much and can't wait to kill you' spiels?" He sighed. "I'll have to say, I'm disappointed. Not the greeting I was expecting, since you have a habit of going big instead of going home. Bringing a whole church down on someone really makes a statement.  I was quite looking forward to that, our usual conversations.
"I brought the church down on you and apparently you still didn't get the point."
"And which point would that be?"
"That I hate you wish you were dead. And I'd hardly call our meetings conversations." He had crossed over to my side now, and I didn't miss the playful glint in his eyes.