Baddie Alina and slightly better Darkling?
What if Alina and stayed the night of the winter fete instead of running away? What if she had chosen the Darkling over Mal? What if the Malina ship sank fast and the Darklina ship sailed?
All these charact...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I had finished getting ready, and it was time to make my appearance. As I walked into the room, the nobles, delegates, and ambassadors made way for me, slightly bowing their heads as I walked past them. Walking up to the thrones where the king and queen sat, the king said, "General."
"Moi tsar. Moya tsaritsa. I do hope you're both enjoying the festivities." I bowed slightly. The last part was not sincere at all, but neither of them noticed.
King Pyotr said, "I must confess, I'm not bored." Queen Tatiana looked at me with an air of superiority and spoke. "I quite like it. There's always been a certain..." She twirled her hair around one finger and looked up, searching for the right word, "quaintness about the Little Palace." She giggled.
I despised both of them. The king was fat and boring and had no ambition at all, except when it came to how many girls or drinks (or preferably both at the same time) he could get in one night. The queen thought she was better than everyone else just because she had Genya to help her with her appearance, which is why I specifically told Genya to help with Alina, not that she needed it. The queen was also not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and that was the nicest way of putting it. If you knocked on her head, there would probably be an echo. I was pretty sure her head was made up of bones, mush, and air. If she had anything else up there, saints help me, I would walk around the Little Palace clucking like a chicken and telling everyone I was the Queen of Fjerda.
Miserable, I glanced at the couple sitting on the thrones before looking for a way to escape. Shocked, I saw Alina making her way toward me.
She was gorgeous.
Her hair was pinned at the base of her neck and she had on the kefta I had the Fabrikators make for her. Never in all my long, long years had I ever seen someone as radiant as Alina. She was the perfect Sun Summoner - she was bright and lovable and beautiful and her smile was as warm as the sun. Her blonde hair shone and her blue eyes sparkled and her tanned skin glowed. Her hips swayed and her lips parted slightly as she went on her tiptoes to look around the room. Finally, her eyes found mine, and she smiled gently at me. She weaved her way through the crowded room toward me.
She could have been the sun because of how much I depended on her. Let me be poetic here for just a second. The earth needs the sun like I need Alina. Without the sun, everything would wither up and die. I need Alina because, with her, I'm human again. Without her, every last trace of humanity in me would shrivel up and disappear.
Striding toward her, already telling myself to get my act together, I said, "You were supposed to enter accompanied by palace guards." Mentally smacking myself, I tried to backpedal. "You look lovely, by the way."
"You looked like you needed saving."
Her words sent a chill through my body and I had to keep myself from grabbing her and taking her to the nearest unoccupied room and making it so that no other man would ever be able to touch her again without her thinking of me.
