Shadow and Bone - The child of shadow and light

Chapter 1

*Alinas POV* * A few weeks after the battle of the fold. *

I stood in the crowded crowd watching. a hood covering my white hair and most parts of my face. I watched as they put the sun summoner on the wooden altar, some people wore sad, mourning faces, and some were even crying and sobbing. All mourning their sun summoner, Alina Starkov.

But the woman on the wooden altar was not her. No - Genya had done an extraordinary job on the girl that had, had nearly the same height and body shape as me. She had changed the girl's face to look just like mine, and she had done the same with hers, Davids, as well as Mal's faces. All on people with a similar body as their own, just to make everything look extra convincing.  So no one would question what happened to the sun summoner and her closest friends.

But they all got quiet when he appeared, all dressed in black as usual. He walked to the sun summoners altar and lifted the white cloth, taking a look at Alina Starkov one last time before he grabbed the torch and set fire to the wood.

The Darkling Stepped back as the flames started to rise and burn stronger. There was no altar for her friends though, so what had happened to their 'bodies' I've no clue, perhaps were they buried somewhere in a small graveyard together with the rest of my fallen soldiers. My heart dropped at the thought. My soldiers - my friends who had believed in me, believed that I could kill the darling and free them from all this war, to heal Ravka. 

I turned around and walked away, I had seen enough. My feet didn't stop walking until I reached the shabby inn where we were currently staying at. The innkeeper greeted me with a bored look as I walked past him and climbed the stairs to the inn's guest rooms. I paused before our door and took a shaky breath before entering.

Genya, David, and Mal who sat by the table looked up at me before standing up and walking over to me. Or just Mal and Genya, David just looked at me shortly before returning to whatever book he was reading. "So - what happened? Did they fall for it?" Genya asked impatiently with a slightly shaky voice. "yes, he set fire to the altar himself". " I didn't see any other altars or bodies of other grishas. So I guess that they have buried your 'bodies' at some graveyard" "That's good, that's good" Genya whispered in relief as she walked over to David. Leaving me and Mal alone by the door.

"We should get going as soon as possible, we don't know if the trick really fooled him and I'm not sticking around to find out," Mal said. I just nodded before walking over to the bed where my bag lay and swung it over my shoulder.

We had already packed our bags before I went to the funeral. "Genya, David, let's go" Genya nodded before grabbing the book from David, which successfully made him come back to reality and 5 minutes later we walked out of the inn, paying the grumpy owner a few coins of what we had left. Saints, I felt bad but decided to ignore it as I was a nervous emotional mess and it was probably only my nerves messing with me.

Everything would be okay as soon as we left Os Alta and reached Ivets, where we would be staying while trying to earn enough money to board a ship to Novyi Zem. And then we would be free. free to live our lives however as we wished. It took us 5 days to reach Ivets as we had to take the longer route, avoiding the main road. We couldn't risk anyone recognizing us and risk having the darkling on our heel again. For if he were ever to find out that we - I were still alive then we would be done for. Everything we had planned would fall like a domino.  

*The first day in Ivets*

The first thing we did when we arrived around noon was looking for a place to stay. With the little money we had left we could not afford anything fancy nor too comfortable, but we succeeded in finding a, not too shabby inn that could at least provide with a roof over our heads. The room had two beds and a tiny bathroom. I didn't catch many details as I hurried to the bathroom, locked the door behind me, and got to work. When I unlocked the door and stepped into the bedroom/dining room, Genya looked me over before nodding in approval. "Not as good as I would've done it but it'll do." I had snatched a bottle of hair dye when we had passed the market on the way to the in. The shade looked to be somewhere between brown and black, I didn't really care as long as it wasn't white.