IX / What I Have Learned About Sisterhood

Even from her tent in the camp just a mere few minutes of walking away from the Fold, Vera can see the noose around Ravka's neck tightening.

They'd been welcomed by a large group of Grisha and whatever doubt Vera had still harbored in her heart had died that moment. None of them knew what had happened. That Alina hadn't gone after the Stag of her own volition with them and had returned of her free will but that the Darkling had forced the collar on her. That he'd made Alina's light his slave.

If any of them noticed the hollow look in Alina's eyes, the way she'd lost weight or how she was guarded like a prisoner and not like a valuable member of the Second Army, none seemed to add it together.

Vera lets out a harsh breath and sits up on the ground, the knife she'd been turning over and over in her hand coming to a sudden stop. She'd had that stupid, cursed knife on her ever since the oprichnik dragging Alina to the horses had chucked it from her leg and into the snow in Tsibeya.

And Vera, like a fool, had picked it up and carried it all the way here.

She lets out a bitter, cold laugh. She was a fool and idiot and a traitor to everything she believed in because when she thought of their crossing tomorrow, she didn't feel excited or elated like all the other Grisha. She felt nothing but bone-deep weariness.

Tomorrow, the Darkling would destroy the Fold and after all the years Ravka had suffered under it, for how many lives it had taken all means should be just. Vera shouldn't care how they achieved the destruction of the Fold.

But she did.

After a short eternity, Vera rises from the ground and pushes the flaps of her tent away, walking outside. What she really needed right now was to talk to someone she trusted, to Fedyor, to reason away her doubts. To tell her what a part of her knew and diminish what that other part of her thought of.

But would he? A small voice in her mind asks as she walks through the camp. After a moment, Genya's amber eyes meet her pale-blue ones.

Vera hadn't talked to Genya since the Tailor arrived in Kribirsk. She had not made a comment about the red kefta with blue embroidery that had, at last, replaced the white-and-gold kefta she'd been forced to don for so long.

When Vera had first arrived in the Little Palace that kefta had taken her breath away. White and gold were the colors of the royal family in Fjerda and Vera had believed Genya to be an extraordinary Grisha when she'd seen them on her, too. Only later she realized that Genya was extraordinary in her gift, but not in the way Vera had initially thought. That, in Ravka, the colors were not worn by royalty but their servants.

To her credit, Genya doesn't turn her back on Vera and walks away when the Inferni makes her way to her. Instead, she slightly draws up an eyebrow, interest piqued. "Yes, Vera?"

Vera stops in front of her. She hates herself for the weakness but before she can stop herself the first words spill from her lips. "Have you seen her?"

Genya doesn't ask who she means. "I have." She says slowly.

"And?" Vera asks when Genya doesn't elaborate.

"And she's as you'd expect."

Vera had known the question was redundant, of course Alina would feel like shit after what the Darkling had done to her, had taken from her, but she had still hoped that Genya would have some more insight into Alina's current state. After all, they'd been so much closer than Vera and Alina had ever been.

But, then again, Vera wasn't stupid enough to believe anything but that Genya had played a central role in the king's illness and the Apparat's rise to power. Maybe she'd even been the one to do it herself, whatever it was. Vera couldn't blame her. She never knew anything for sure about what the king had done to Genya, but the rumors were enough to know he deserved it. The queen, too, Vera thought. She wasn't exactly more likeable than her husband.

And yet, Vera didn't think that the Apparat was more suitable to rule Ravka.

But who else? The king's sons, when the elder one was out somewhere in his summer residence playing with racing horses and getting drunk and the other Vera hadn't seen in four years? Or would the Darkling himself relieve the Apparat of his duties when they returned to Os Alta?

After all, who would stand against the man who'd just destroyed the Fold? Even if it had been Alina who should've gotten all the praise and not the man who'd committed an unthinkable atrocity so intrusive that no other Grisha before had done it?

He'd taken, stolen Alina's very core from her without her permission. Against her will. Even when she begged him not to.

It had been that moment, in while David had melted the antler pieces into a collar that could never be taken off again that Vera started to understand why Alina had run. And why she had not confided in them.

"Vera?" She can hear the unsure tone in Genya's voice, can see the way she draws her eyebrows together just barely.

She turns her eyes back to her, and as she does they snag on two people moving a distance behind Genya. Ivan and... a figure covered in a brown cloak and hood. Hidden.

Despite being unable to see her face, or her blue-and-golden kefta, or anything else but that cloak, Ver knows without the hint of a doubt that it is Alina.

Vera narrows her eyes as Ivan leads Alina away from the camp and toward the direction for the prison. Where Mal is held.

"Thank you, Genya." Vera says absently as the two disappear into the darkness, walking past Genya and after the two of them. Making sure to keep a good distance to Ivan and Alina to not rise and suspicions by onlookers or the Heartrender himself, Vera follows them.

She ignores the hostile looks of the First Army soldiers as the walks through the camp. Those looks had always followed the Grisha, but now that the Apparat was in power and most of them thought that they had something to do with it, it had gotten worse. And it would continue to grow worse until they destroyed the Fold.

That was the silver lining for them all.

For the Grisha in the Little Palace, all over Ravka. For everyone. Without the Fold, they, at last could be in Ravka without the guild, without the blame and without the death and fear and hate and prejudices looming over them. And at last, they might be free.

When Ivan leaves the guards after a moment of hushed conversation, to take up a position nearby no doubt, Vera moves to the entrance of the prison. The guards before the prison draw their eyebrows up at her.

"What's your business in the prison?" One of them asks, surprise in his voice. Vera suspects they never have quite as much traffic in the prison as they have tonight.

Vera's piercing eyes slit to them. "I don't think that's any of your business." Vera says without blinking. She outranked a lot of Grisha and she outranked those guards, too. Pride and strength and power were things that life had taught her long before she ever set foot in the Little Palace and met the Ravka's court.

She has no interest in making conversation with them.

The guards bristle at her words, anger flashing in their eyes but she doesn't move. Instead, she lets her glacier eyes meet those of the guards of the left and then the one on the right. "I have matters to discuss with your prisoner."

They shift, uncomfortably. "There's already someone in there," one begins but cuts off when Vera's gaze lands on him. He swallows.

"It won't take long." Vera says like she needs to placate them. Like they have any say over her.

Exchanging a look, they slowly step aside and Vera enters the prison. Her head held high.

There is a sole, occupied cell inside the prison, two figures hunched on either side of the bars, one inside and one outside. Mal and Alina jerk upright, turning around as her footsteps echo through the prison.

When she steps into their line of sight, Alina goes still, her eyes wary when she recognizes Vera in the soft flicker of the torches.

"What are you doing here?" There's so much distrust in her voice that it feels like taking a knife to the gut.

Vera deserves all of it and more.

"I came to check on you," she says and feels like a stupid fool. Those words mean nothing when the collar is staring back at her from Alina's throat. When her tracker is in a cell.

Alina stiffens, silent.

The tracker looks between them, and at last says to her, "You must be Vera."

Alina sends him a sharp glance at the words and Vera turns to the boy. She wasn't sure what to make of the words. She also wasn't sure what exactly the tracker was thinking. But she doubted he harboured any warm and fuzzy emotions towards her.

"I am." Vera says after a moment.

Mal nods, sending Alina an unreadable look. Vera has no idea what to make of that either.

It's about then that it hits Vera just exactly how much of a stupid idea this was. Had she really expected Alina to be happy to see her? After what she'd let happen to her? To talk to her when she intruded on what might be her last hours with her oldest friend?

Angry at herself for her foolishness, for letting her emotions cloud her judgement and becoming a weakness, for letting anyone else in in the first place when she knows better, Vera turns away.

"Wait," Alina says softly and Vera stops.

Slowly, she turns her head back to them.

Alina watches her in the flickering light, and for the first something else than the distrust and distance is in her eyes. Something that feels like hope to Vera.

Before she can stop her foolish heart, it skips a beat.

"Did you know?" Alina whispers into the silence.

Vera's throat bobs. She means the collar. Whether Vera had known that the Darkling wanted to put the collar on her and make her his puppet. "No." Vera admits, her voice hoarse.

"I..." Vera breaks off. She stares out into the dark for a long time before she continues.

"He saved me." Her own voice sounds foreign to her. "And I don't just mean that because he's the leader of the Grisha and I came from a country that would've killed me if I hadn't made my way to Ravka. I mean that he saved me that night when he found me. I would've frozen to death that night otherwise."

Next to her, Alina watches her in silence. Vera gives her a small, helpless shrug. "I guess it's a dept I've been paying off ever since."

"I understand," Alina says softly.

But does she? Vera wonders.

"I forgive you, too," Alina whispers and Vera takes a step back, surprised. She hadn't expected it. Who else had Alina forgiven for the crimes they had commited against her? David? The other Grisha?

But Vera stays quiet. Alina might've said she forgave her, but the words left a bitter aftertaste in her mouth. Vera wonders if she will ever be able to forgive herself.

When she had been nine, only weeks after she discovered her powers, she had seen one of the pyres. That had been when she had realized that she would never be safe in her own home. Under her father. Under the king of Fjerda, and the Drüskelle.

She never meant to trade one tyrant for another.