✵ SWEETER THAN HONEY ― nikolai lantsov ✵

Before

" Now that I'm grown,

I'm scared of ghosts,

Memories feel like weapons  "

―WHETHER IT BE her roots, her appearance, or her family, they did not define who she was.

Yes, Yi Liu Chen was both Shu and Suli from the honeyed colour of her eyes to the tilt of her eyelids to her bronzed skin to her beliefs. She grew up with multiple brothers and was constantly compared, expected to be graceful and beautiful by her mother, expected to be the greatest warrior in the Liu Chen family by her stepfather, never having met her true one. 

As it turned out, she was neither.

Yes, she was skillful. The silks she wore blinded her enemies with flourishes that were, indeed, as graceful as her mother would have liked. She fought with her fists and wielded only the weapons of her foes, never settling for a main set of gear. She was a marvelous Durast, despite always being underestimated for such a lowly ability.

But she was not beautiful in the slightest, or not to her mother's standards. She was not enough to be better than her brothers. Her eyelashes were short and wispy, her mother constantly called her Suli complexion too dark for her cruel standards, her footsteps were as loud as boots with bells strung onto them, her eyes did not carry an amber, Shu glow. Instead, her gaze was like paled honey, disgraceful to her mother's majestic fiery irises. So she ran.

She left on a ship to Ravka and never looked back.

Everywhere she went she could not avoid the subject of where she was from, of who her parents were. Ravkans looked down on her with disdain. They told her to return to where she came from and to never come back. They devalued her for simply being. She searched the entirety of Ravka for a place or a person who could have a regular conversation with her without noting how she spoke Ravkan.

In a world of ostriches who believed they were gorgeous, preening peacocks, Yi was tired of it. Tired of being treated as if she was less. It never seemed to matter that she was Grisha, a talented one, at that. All that mattered was that she was an innocent, kind girl who was 'Shu enough', and that was all it took to be in the King's favor.

That is, until the Darkling came along.

When the Shu girl just happens to get into his good graces and begins to see reason in his plans for a safe haven for Grisha, her interests begin to align with the Darkling's. Things became twice as effective with Yi's expertise, and soon they had Alina Starkov in their hands for the second time, certain she wouldn't slip from their grasp again.

But Yi was sunshine in a world of death and misery, despite being a Fabrikator. She was the warmth of summer and the crackling light within the fire.

And someone like her would only stay caged by the Darkling's lies for so long, especially when a too-clever fox just happened to enjoy dancing around her with the very key that would free her.