Her Balance | Nikolai x Reader x Darkling

~ Chapter 18 ~

Double :)

Let's get into it.

First Person - Y/n

I stood up as fast as I could looking at Tamar, pleading with my eyes for her to say she was joking.

"What?" asked Mal looking at Alina who was nodding.

"There are...there are rumors that he put it to the torch," said Alina.

"The students," I said, panic creeping in on me. "What happened to the students?"

"We don't know," said Tamar.

"That bastard," I said to myself closing my eyes and letting the pull bring me in.

"Y/n, don't-" was the last words I heard before I opened my eyes and I was standing before him.

The room was blurry around me, but I didn't care where I was or where he was. I just needed answers.

"At last," the Darkling said.

He turned to me, his beautiful face coming into focus. He was leaning against a scorched mantel. Its outline was sickeningly familiar.

His gray eyes were empty, haunted. Was it Baghra's death that had left him this way or some horrific crime he'd committed here?

"Tell me you didn't," I said angrily.

"Come," the Darkling said softly. "I want you to see."

I was trembling from anger, but I let him take my hand and place it in the crook of his arm. As he did, the blurriness of the vision cleared and the room came to life around me.

We were in what had been the sitting room at Keramzin. The ceiling was gone. I could see straight through the wreck of the second story. Where the attic should have been, there was only gray sky.

Strange, I thought stupidly. The sun is shining in Dva Stolba.

"I've been here for days," he said, leading me through the wreckage, "waiting for you."

The Darkling placed his hands on my shoulders and turned me slightly.

Everything in me seemed to fade away and I stood their horrified at the sight.

The oak I'd once climbed on a dare still stood, untouched by the fire that had taken Keramzin. Now its branches were full of bodies. The three Grisha instructors hung from the same thick limb, their kefta fluttering slightly in the wind—purple, red, and blue.

Beside them, Botkin's face was nearly black above the rope that had dug into his neck. He was covered in wounds. He'd died fighting before they'd strung him up.

Next to him was the only man I had ever known as a father, Commander Zakharov. His eyes were black and it didn't long for me to realize how he was killed.

Next to him, Ana Kuya swayed in her black dress, her heavy key ring at her waist, the toes of her button boots nearly scraping the ground.

"The two of them," murmured the Darkling, "The closest thing you had to parents."

I lost all composure and I angrily shoved him against the wall and held a blade of shadow to his neck and pressed it. It started a small stream of blood.

I was shocked, and he was too.

We had never been able to physically harm one another in these visions or whatever they were.

"Your mother was the closest thing I had to a mother," I snapped angrily, "Did she tell you? The reason why you never found me as a child, she kept me hidden! She protected me from you, the man who let his ego take over and created an abomination that took everything from me!"