CHAPTER FOUR
for the cynic

Two days later, Lyssa is sitting alone in her classroom in the late afternoon, tapping her fingers against the wood of the table she's sitting at restlessly. She sends a glance at the clock. Already she is regretting the entire idea altogether.

Really, what had she been thinking when she agreed to have a chat with Mikhail Aleksev?

The gentle knock on her door pulls her out of her thoughts and Lyssa stills, looking up.

"Come in." She calls out after a heartbeat of hesitation.

Mikhail is one of the older children in his class. Yet, the boy who puts his head into her classroom looks younger than his nineteen years.

Lyssa points at the chair on the other side of her table. "Please, sit down, Mr. Aleksev."

The boy gives her an unsure glance as he walks through the room, sitting down. "Please, just call me Mikhail." His eyes widen at her. "Ma'am."

Despite herself, a small smile threatens to tug on the corners of her lips. "I've been told you want to become a great Healer, Mikhail."

The boy shrugs. "I guess."

Lyssa leans back in her seat, her eyes trained on him. "Why?"

He blinks. "Excuse me?"

"There must be a reason for that wish. Or why you want to be my student. What is it?"

He is silent for a minute, his eyes pulled together in a thoughtful frown. "I suppose I don't want to be a great Healer, strictly." He says at last. "I just want to help people the best way I can."

"And what makes you think being my student can do that?"

A surprised look spreads across his face. "Because your blood transfusions are pretty much revolutionary." He replies, a small giddy smile on his face as he continues. "You've been able to modify the already existing technique enough to increase the success rate by so much! It's really unbelievable. And people have told me that you are also able to do it so much faster than even Zasha Vikhrov and she is a legend..."

He trails off when he sees Lyssa's look, coughing awkwardly. "I guess," he says after a moment. "I just think it's incredible what you've been able to do with it. It has saved a lot of lives. And that really just what I want."

A dark look crosses over his face. "So many lives have already been lost to the fighting. I just want to do the best I can to stop as many as possible from following them."

Lyssa musters the boy once more. She is quiet for such a long time that he starts to fidget slightly under her scrutinizing look. At last, she lets out a soft breath and leans back again. "It's a long and hard road. Trial and error and even once you have mastered the theory there still will be unsuccessful ones."

She gives him a sharp look. "No matter how many lives you might save you will always loose more. Always."

A bit of the boy's giddy excitement wanes at the heaviness in her voice.

"And once you have successfully mastered transfusions, it will push up your rank. You will be called to more dangerous missions. When you are attacked, your Healers and the other Grisha will die to protect you." She continues. "And you will have to take responsibility. You will be the one who choses who gets to live and who you have to let die. That will be your burden to bear and nobody else's."

Better to let the boy know that it wasn't all flowers and sunshine and glory. That the truth of war, of being a Healer was blood and dirt and pain. And death. So much death.

"Many Corporalki do not want this burden. And that's not cowardice or fear or weakness. This kind of responsibly is a weight you always carry around. And you need to choose carefully whether or not you want to have it because once you have it you never lose it again."

She rises from her chair. "Take time to think about it, sleep on it. And if you are still sure you want to go down this road, come find me on Monday." She adds as she walks around the table and past him.

He sends her a confused look. "To do what?"

Lyssa gives him a last look. "To see if I can imagine it, too." She replies as she walks through the door and into the hallway.

She's barely made it out of the school when another Corporalki teacher, a Heartrender named Andrey a few years her senior reaches her.

Only by looking at his face, she knows something has happened. Something she will not like at all. She draws her eyebrows together when Andrey stops beside her. "What's wrong?"

He sends her a glance, clearly uncomfortable. "Listen I..." He frowns at himself. "I wouldn't come to you with this kind of question but I..."

"What?" Lyssa asks, unsure of where this is going. Of what might've put that look into the eyes of a weathered Heartrender.

"It's about Nina Zenik. She's one of my students. She's in her last year."

Dread pools in her stomach. "What about her?"

He gives her another one of those looks. Those looks that tell her he knows exactly that she will not like any of what he has to say. A look that tells her, he needs to say the words regardless.

"Kirigan talked to me about her. He wants her to act as a spy with the Conductor. I know it's not my place and I would not otherwise but..." He wrings his hands, a desperate sort of pleading in his eyes.

Lyssa barely notices it over the ringing of his words in her ears.

"She hasn't even graduated yet." He adds quietly.

Of course. Of course, Andrey would come to her with it. Lyssa presses her eyes closed for a moment. Andrey and her both were part of the teacher who supported a longer education and later draft into the Second Army.

And Lyssa must've been the only person Andrey could think of who might've had some sort of sway in the situation.

"I..." Andrey says, breaking off again.

Lyssa at last looks back at him. A desolate sort of hollowness in her heart. Or maybe it's not hollowness or grief but rage. She doesn't know. She can't think around that shard in her chest twisting again and again and again until she cannot breathe. Until her heart clenches with the anger seeping out of it.

"I'll talk to him." She chokes out as she brushes past him.

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By the time she reaches the council room the meeting was held in, Lyssa can barely see past the blinding fury boiling in her veins. Normally, she would let him speak first. Explain his side of it. But any other issue isn't this. This is different. And she knows, deep down, that Andrey is right. She knows Aleksander too well to believe anything else.

Maybe it's that part that makes it so much worse.

With a jerking motion, Lyssa hammers the knuckles of her right fist against the door of one of the more official council rooms than the one connected to his bedroom twice. The loud knock echoes through the hallway and the voices behind the door fall silent. Lyssa pushes the door open, walking inside.

"We're in the..." Aleksander says as he looks up to the door and stops when he sees the look on her face. "What happened?"

"Is it true?" Lyssa asks as she makes her way to him and Ivan standing in front of the table in the middle of the room, ignoring his question.

He draws his eyebrows together just barely as she walks up to him. "Is what true?"

"Nina Zenik."

He sends Ivan a look at the name. Lyssa stops in her tracks, her heart clenching. "So, it is true."

She'd known. She had known and still, the realization hurt.

"Lyssa, let's talk about this when we're done here."

"No." Lyssa replies angrily. "I won't just turn and leave. Not when it comes to this."

"Lyssa..."

"You can't seriously be considering sending Nina Zenik into the field as a spy!" Lyssa snaps.

Ivan lets out a long sigh behind her. She doesn't spare him a single glance, her eyes fixed on Aleksander in front of her.

"It's been getting worse with the Conductor. We need more intel on him to stop him from smuggling Grisha through the Fold. And we need to find out how he does it." He says, his dark eyes watching her. "Nina Zenik isn't just one of the most promising young Heartrenders in the Little Palace, she's also taken a lot of classes that make her the perfect candidate for this."

"Nina Zenik is also a child. She isn't even finished with her advanced classes!"

"She will by the time she leaves."

"And you want to send her out there with no backup, nobody else? She has no experience outside the life in the Little Palace and that's nearly as deadly as missing education and you know it."

"She's a soldier, Lyssa. Same as any of us."

Lyssa's fingers curl into fists in a desperate attempt to leash the red, hot fury lashing through her. To not let it lash out on him in her rage. To not say anything she knows she will regret when the boiling in her blood dies down. "This soldier you're talking about isn't even finished with school yet. You are considering sending children into our war."

"They are Grisha. It is their war, too."

"They are children!"

Ivan lets out a snort. "And this is precisely why it is Heartrenders and not Healers that sit among the leaders of the Second Army." He points out from where he stands, giving Lyssa a look of utter annoyance.

Lyssa turns around to him, her eyes flashing. "Excuse me?"

Right now, she is seriously considering showing Ivan just how much damage a Healer can do if he does not shut up and let her talk without sighing or commenting in that condensing tone of his every two seconds.

"Enough." Aleksander says, watching them. "It will be Nina who decides whether or not she will go."

He walks to her, putting a hand on her arm, his eyes finding hers. "We'll talk about it later." He says again.

She can see in his eyes that she will get nowhere with him until she does exactly that.

Lyssa's nostrils flare. "Fine." She grits out before she steps away from his touch and leaves the room.

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Lyssa is seriously considering just throwing over one of the chairs as she paces. Or better yet, a table. Or just scream until her throat is raw and she's less certain she'll explode on Aleksander the moment he enters his room.

Because, in this very moment, there is a good chance she just might do exactly that.

She stops when she hears heavy footfalls draw closer and stop in front of the door. A moment later, the door opens and he steps inside.

Almost immediately, his eyes find her as he closes the door behind. He pulls his black kefta off as he walks over to her, tossing it over one of the chairs. "Lyssa..."

"Don't," Lyssa says quietly. "Don't talk to me like I am some sort of animal that needs soothing."

"I'm not." He says in that same tone.

Lyssa's jaw clenches slightly, but she doesn't say anything as he walks over to her. Only when he is at her side does he stop.

"I know you're not happy about it, but it really is the best option." He says and Lyssa pays just about enough attention to hear that he actually means it. He really believes what he is saying and it makes the entire thing so much worse.

"Of course I don't like it." Lyssa says, trying to keep her voice civil. "Who would like this?"

He lets out a small breath as he walks past her and pours two glasses of clear liquor. Taking one for himself, he holds the other out to Lyssa.

When Lyssa doesn't move, he makes his eyes soften a smidgen. "Please."

Lyssa doesn't take the glass. Instead she tilts her chin up, waiting. After another moment, he sets the glass down next to him.

He takes a sip from his own glass. "I know it goes against your principles," he slowly says. "And with your personal history..."

It's the wrong thing to say. Lyssa's eyes flash dangerously. "This has nothing to do with my personal history." She says sharply. Choking out the words through the pain in her heart.

He falls silent for a heartbeat.

"We are at war." He eventually says. "With the Fold, with the Shu, with the Fjerdans. Every day Grisha lives are lost. In war, those principles are luxuries we cannot always afford."

She doesn't even know if it is pain or anger or grief coursing through her veins, or all of it. It makes her want to break things. It makes her want to paint the world red.

Lyssa walks over to him until they are so close she could easily reach out and touch him. Instead, she takes the glass he had offered to her and empties it in one go. He watches her and she isn't foolish enough to let herself believe that there's even the smallest detail he misses in this moment.

At last, Lyssa looks up and meets his eyes as she puts the empty glass back on the table. "One day the Fold will come down, for better or for worse, and it will change everything for the Grisha. And that day, it will be those luxuries that decide whether or not Grisha will still be worth having a place in Ravka."

She doesn't look back at as she walks out of the room, leaving him standing there.