Her Balance | Nikolai x Reader x Darkling

~ Chapter 5 ~

Hello lovelies!!!

Let's get into it.

First Person - Y/n

Sankt Ilya stood barefoot on the shore of a dark sea. He wore the ragged remnants of a purple robe, his arms outstretched, his palms turned upward. His face had the blissful, placid expression Saints always seemed to wear in paintings, usually before they were murdered in some horrific way.

Around his neck, he wore an iron collar that had once been connected to the heavy fetters around his wrists by thick chains. Now the chains hung broken by his sides.

Behind Sankt Ilya, a sinuous white serpent splashed in the waves. A white stag lay at his feet, gazing out at us with dark, steady eyes.

But neither of these creatures held our attention. Mountains crowded the background behind the Saint's left shoulder, and there, barely visible in the distance, a bird circled a towering stone arch.

Alina's finger traced its long tailfeathers, rendered in white and the same pale gold that illuminated Sankt Ilya's halo.

"It can't be," Alina whispered. "The stag was real. So was the sea whip. But this...this can't be."

She was right. The firebird didn't belong to one story, but to a thousand. It was at the heart of every Ravkan myth, the inspiration for countless plays and ballads, novels and operas.

Ravka's borders were said to have been sketched by the firebird's flight. Its rivers ran with the firebird's tears. Its capital was said to have been founded where a firebird's feather fell to earth.

The bird that my father had turned into, it was rumored to have been the firebird.

"Sankt Ilya," Mal said.

"Ilya Morozova," I said.

"A Grisha Saint?" asked Alina.

I touched the tip of my finger to the page, to the collar, to the two fetters on Morozova's wrists.

"Three amplifiers. Three creatures," I stated, "And we have two of them."

Mal gave his head a firm shake, probably trying to clear away the haze of wine. Abruptly, he took the book out of my hands and shut it. For a second, I thought he might throw it into the sea, but then he handed it back to me.

"What are we supposed to do with this?" he said. He sounded almost angry.

I'd thought about that all afternoon, all evening, and I could feel the urge to want to touch the scales again. That drive for power, the one I felt with the Darkling at my side.

"Mal, Sturmhond has Fabrikators in his crew. He thinks I should use the scales...and I think he might be right."

Mal's head snapped around and asked, "What?"

"The stag's power isn't enough. Not to fight the Darkling. Not to destroy the Fold."

"And your answer is a second amplifier?"

"For now."

"For now...Saints," he swore. "You want all three. You want to hunt the firebird."

"Look, the Darkling will hunt it either way," I replied not caring how selfish I sounded, "It's in the illustration, and don't you dare say it's just a picture. Because it's not. Nothing in this book is just a picture, I am the daughter and granddaughter of two of the most powerful Saints ever written about."

"Then why do you need the amplifiers?" asked Mal, "if that much power flows through you, why do you need them."

He was right. If I really was who Baghra and Genya had said I was, did I really need the amplifiers? The Darkling wouldn't exist if not for my ancestors, so my power without any of the amplifiers had to be enough.