Zoya Nazyalensky Imagines

There's a Side to You

You know what they say about Zoya Nazyalensky: temptress, cruel, spiteful, far too powerful for her own good. You know what they say about you: fiery, quick to rise to a challenge, going somewhere no one else can see. You know this, and you'd tack on one last description of yourself: far too weak for her own good. This weakness doesn't come about by your powers, of course, it comes about by your heart. Namely, the foolish weakness that only arrives when you've fallen far too deeply in love with someone who is only used to looking out for themselves.

After everything, though, you find that you still cannot fault Zoya for playing her hand the way she did. Life is a gamble, not a crusade, and you know from firsthand experience that Grisha rarely get to be polite and kind. You were a monster from the moment you were born, hunted even before that, and so was she. Pity and politeness were never your skills to hone.

There is a certain loneliness about being the best of your kind. You feel it, after spending too much time alone, practicing your craft of fire starting and sparking. Zoya feels it, when she is able to use her gifts as a Squaller to change the very air around her. You've seen her bend the air so she can hear conversations happening on the other side of the Little Palace, just as she's seen you maintain massive infernos for hours. Both are tasks that would be impossible for anyone else, but not for either of you. Maybe that's why you two turned to each other in the end- the loneliness was so great that you'd force yourself to love anyone, even someone who should probably be your rival.

That's how the Little Palace works, isn't it? The Grisha branches are pitted against each other, with Corporalki and Etherealki supposedly bitter rivals. You sit apart from each other at meals, train separately on the grounds, draw up your brightly colored kefta as if the markedly different hues will protect you from each other. This animosity is supposed to linger even amongst the finer divisions of your facet of the Small Science. After all, who would have suspected that a Squaller and an Inferni would ever get along?

You had met Zoya when you were alone. You could only repeat the same basic drills so many times- produce a thin channel of flame, light a match, then a candle, then a bonfire. You can make tongues of fire lick up the sides of houses without causing a single straw to ignite, and you can burn down entire cities in the time it takes you to exhale slightly. On longer weeks, when you have less patience than you should, you slip away from class, pretending that you're going to go practice elsewhere. You do, sometimes, but mainly you just sit and watch the rest of the Grisha at work.

Zoya, it seemed, had gone through the same process as you. Just when you felt completely separated from everyone, even the rest of your Squallers, she appeared beside you. She walked up casually, as if it were no matter to find two Grisha lingering in the woods when they should be practicing their craft, and held out her hand to you. There was no real need for introductions, as the two of you already knew each other, but it was a formality, and a nice one at that.

You had taken her hand, and taken it again and again as the weeks wore on. Suddenly, you looked for her at meals, walked with her to training sessions, spoke every word that could possibly rise to your tongue or stayed together in silence for hours. Every option seemed perfect. You didn't think you could possibly get enough of her.

It was only a matter of time before you fell in love with Zoya, wasn't it? She was just so right for you. Your heart fell away from you, and she was there to claim it. In the middle of all the darkness, both real in the Shadow Fold and purely fictitious in the fiercely jealous aura of Os Alta, she was there to kiss your lips and save you. There was your own special kind of safety in her arms, and it felt real. Was it not?

But you were no fairytale maiden, no long-sung hero or knight. There were no garlands of flowers to be hung, no epic poems to be read in your honor. Life goes on, and it breaks countless hearts with it. When the wheels roll on, churning up dust, they will crush your legs if you stand too close. With Zoya, you made yourself believe that you wouldn't have to move, that you could stay in that sunny afterthought with her forever.