Ash and Dusk

Chapter 31

Darkling's POV

Shards of glass were flying everywhere, filling the air with sharp fragments stained with droplets of blood. I hunched over instinctively, protecting my head with my hands while only half-feeling the metal of the crown digging into my skin.

Soon, screams of battle began filling the room. The Grisha from before were no longer separated in two, but now forming one large, chaotic crowd throughout the whole room and around me. Unintentionally, of course. Alina was pushed farther away from me than moments ago in the mass of people, light already in her palms.

I could tell she was holding back. She was only neutralizing the enemy using blinding and heat, but not a single Cut in sight. Her face was heavy with concentration and her slight, deliberate hesitance only told me that she would not attack until she got an answer for all of this.

The enemy wasn't thinking the same. They were also Grisha, but not wearing their signalizing colours or keftas, the only hint being the clashing of powers that was rattling the room. When the first of ours fell irremediably to the ground, Alina was quick to notice.

And to stop it all, even for just a few seconds.

I could only watch as she clapped her hands together, a blazing white filling every sight and bit of space. I might have been the only person who could have escaped the blinding if my powers weren't still banished away from me, held tightly around Alina's finger. As they will probably remain, even with the prince now free.

Being useless wasn't exactly suiting me well.

When the light dissipated and the room came back into focus in dots of white, Alina vanished. I watched as she became invisible in a fraction of a second. I waited, battle still raging around me, for her to appear somewhere in the room again, but she never did.

That's when I quickly turned toward the two large doors at the end of the hall to catch a last movement before they were closed.

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Alina's POV

What in the Saints' names was happening?

I hurried through the entrance hall at the maximum speed I was capable of without running, heading for the front of the palace. I felt only partly bad for leaving the Grisha to fight by themselves, even if the enemy was the least to say... unusual. They were Grisha as well, that was clear. But there was something different, almost wrong about them.

They could do more than their powers should allow. In the battle, I saw a Squaller (or what I supposed it was one) putting his hand in another's person chest, while twisting whatever was inside. After the soldier fell, the enemy Grisha paused, looking into the distance with unseeing eyes. It seemed as if he was lost in a world he didn't recognize. In the time the Squaller didn't move, he had been knocked down.

I left because I needed answers.

And because I knew I would get them right from Jan Van Eck's mouth.

The letter I received only moments ago through one of those half-dead Grishas was already burning to a crisp in my fist. It only said one thing: to go meet him outside the Grand Palace. Alone.

As if I needed any help.

As soon as I opened the doors, I was met by Van Eck's barely contained ugly grin. He was standing at the end of the marble stairs, surrounded by what I supposed it was his guard squad and dressed in an attire of exaggerated elegance for the long trip he took these days. If he was here so early it meant that he left Ketterdam a few hours, maybe a day difference from our departure. It also meant that he was eager to get revenge on me.