Taking power

Part 8 - Mountain Paths

Days passed after that in endless travel. Fifteen more sunsets and rises watched from the dark shade of the carriage.

He rode most of the way.

Alina was thankful for that at least. She didn't want to consider what had happened in the tavern, what he had said, what he was planning to do with her and Ravka. She was worried of course, terrified even, but truthfully she was just tired. Almost two years she had fought, travelled and bargained.

She wasn't Sankta Alina, she wasn't the darklings light bringer and she wasn't even Mal's anymore. She was Alina. She didn't have the strength to save the world again.

And going back to rebuild karamzin, maybe just in a little house on the edge of town, was starting to sound pretty nice. Somewhere she could get up to feed chickens in the morning, hang her washing out over the creek and then perhaps, if it was a dark enough evening, begin to understand the new dark power that was branded to her soul.

It would be somewhere she couldn't hurt anyone ever again.

The land had turned mountainous whilst she daydreamed. She didn't recognise any of the peaks and crags, nor the deep lakes hidden between rocky slopes. This place wasn't on any map. There wasn't even a road. Their party was navigating a thin, dusty path that led to nowhere. But this was the darkling, whose knowledge was ancient and whose boots had travelled endlessly further than hers. He would know just where they were and all of the roads that would lead home.

Home.

Where was home now? First it was her cot in the orphanage, then it was Mal, then briefly the little palace; him. That was all before she found her true home; in Genya's fussing, in Zoya's hard truths, in Nikolai's charms, and in Mal's comfortable simplicity.

'Merzost'

Zoya's face was whiter than her bright light. Shock, anger, and then, disgust. Beautiful Zoya, who hadn't liked her at first, maybe even hated her, but had never looked at her with such cold eyes, such unfamiliarity. It was like she had seen her for who she really was. She watched the moment when the last of her family cut her off. Her home had gone forever.

The memory was haunting her more than the dead ever would. All she had now was the darkling. He, at least, had never turned away. She felt comfortable in the darkness now. It wasn't home, but it was somewhere.

And she had mostly forgotten about her silent jailers. Their cold blank stares, and the unshakable clench on her heart, as if they were holding it in shackles, probably because, after a while, everything dulls.

Everything except him.

She knew he was riding just outside her window, the tether told her so, and so did mozorvas reunited amplifiers. They sang under her skin, pulling towards his power endlessly into the night.

It was the fifteenth night full of stars and darkness and light, watched by Alina in a daydream from the cover of the carriage. It was a sort of peace, to Alina at least, until it wasn't.

When the first cry was heard Alina did nothing. Because the tether did not change, her home was still gone in the wind. And she was stuck in her daydream.

When the second cry sounded, she moved.

She felt them both move.