XXIV / You are Icarus

THE NEXT MORNING, Vera has to force herself to peel her body out of her bed, exhaustion weighing her down like stones in her body. But she also knows that by the morning hours of this day, the Grisha will all know about the new war council dictations and will have chosen their representatives for each Order– and they'll be gearing up to storm Alina's chambers to give voice to their complaints. And she's not going to miss that. She has to be there, to stand at Alina's side. And if just to get a good idea of the climate towards Alina's changes, and who exactly is on what stance.

When Vera enters the Domed Hall, tugging her red hair over her shoulder after binding it into a loose braid falling down her back, she hears the angry voices even before she steps inside. They're, as expected, mostly from the Corporalki. The conversations of a few Summoners fade for a brief moment before they start up again, more incessant. Vera isn't sure whether or not she imagines the eyes on her, they weight of them following her through the hall and towards the nearest cluster of Etheralnik to find who the Summoner's had chosen to represent them.

Without much protest, Stigg hands her over a paper, his eyes on her with a sort of nervous attentiveness, almost expectant. Vera has no idea what to make of it.

As she raises the paper, she finds Zoya watching her, her face an unreadable mask before she reads over the paper. Once, twice.

Vera blinks. Her mouth dries up. Then, her eyebrows draw together as she looks up, finding most of the Summoners have moved their attention onto her.

"What's this?" She hisses under her breath to no-one in particular, but still expects an answer.

"What it looks like," Zoya replies, her deep blue eyes undeterred by Vera's reaction.

Vera almost gapes at her, trying to keep her jaw from dropping and closing soundlessly like a gaping fish before she blinks again. "But– what–"

"Congratulations," Zoya says, but her attention is already back halfway on Sergei, who'd been chosen to represent the Corporalki in the war council. Whose voice is also the loudest in the Domed Hall.

Vera's stammering protests fall silent. For the first time in her life, Zoya Nazyalensky witnesses Vera Alekson gobsmacked. She can't say she doesn't enjoy the sight.

"I don't understand," Vera says finally, but it's a lie. She read the words on the paper. She registered them, understood them. Her brain is just having trouble getting the message.

Zoya and her elected to be the representatives for the Summoners.

Zoya, she gets, but her?

She'd come into Os Alta preparing herself for an execution, came into the Little Palace expecting the Grisha to shun her, to not even look at her again. And they'd... chosen her to be a representative on the war council. It makes no sense.

She's not even supposed to be here.

She's supposed to be in Novyi Zem or on the Wandering Isles, far away from any population whatsoever.

Vera's eyes drop from Zoya back to the paper in her hands, half expecting the words to be different, for it all to be some sort of cruel fever dream. But it's still the same. Zoya Nazyalensky and Vera Alekson written down in a scrawny sort of writing, like they're pressed together on the lines, barely any space between them but still clearly readable. It's a familiar handwriting to her, but she can't quite make out whose.

Vera wets her lips unconsciously, trying to resist the urge to fidget or nibble on her lower lip as she turns it over and over in her mind. Why? She wants to shout into the room. Why of all Summoners would you want me?

But she doesn't. Because now, she carries the weight of all Etherealki on her shoulders. Or at least, half of it.

"I will not stand by and accept this!" Sergei's voice rises and Vera watches him as he pushes past the group of Corporalki around him and marches straight for the doors leading to the chambers the Darkling had occupied once, Fedyor following him as he does.

Across the other Summoners, Zoya meets her eyes again, already rising from her seat to follow Sergei and Fedyor and Vera knows. She knows even without having to ask her what she is doing. If the Corporalki demand more power and influence amongst the council and thus the Grisha, so must they.

She makes her way past the other and down into the hallways leading to the Darkling's former chambers– to Alina's chambers, now.

It feels odd that they're Alina's residence now. Vera has only ever been in the war council room to plan any possible missions, but due to her age, she'd only really been included rather recently before Alina came along in comparison to other Grisha who'd been at the Darkling's side for much longer than her. Grisha like Ivan.

By the time Vera catches up with the rest of the Grisha, the three have reached the twins, engaging everyone in loud arguments and Vera blows out a breath, watching them with intent eyes as Tolya's eyes darken in annoyance.

Over Sergei's form, Tolya gives Vera a look as if to tell her you take care of these squawking idiots, but Vera doesn't have this kind of power over the Grisha.

Then again, they did chose her to be one of six to represent the Second Army...

Behind the twins, the door into Alina's bedroom opens and a moment later, Vera hears her voice over the argument. "What's going on?" Alina asks, mustering them through the gap between Tamar and Tolya. She sounds confused, but mostly tired and Vera would bet good money that they just woke her from some much-needed rest.

Sergei's attention zeroes in on Alina and he makes a step forward, clutching the paper in his hand like it has personally insulted him.

Immediately, Tamar steps into his path, but Alina stops her. "It's all right. What's the problem?"

"This is unacceptable!" Sergei waves the paper with the sunburst seal in Alina's face.

"He's right. The Corporalki are the Grisha's first line of defense. We're the most experienced in military affairs and should be more fairly represented," Fedyor adds and Vera gives him a flat side-look. The Heartrender only shrugs in a someone's gonna bring it up motion.

Vera huffs. "At least we Summoners have experience fighting in the dark with monsters coming to get you, considering that we supply the majority of Grisha in the Fold crossings. Besides, you can't seriously expect that your line of sight won't be compromised in some form or another since we're fighting an army of monsters created by a Shadow Summoner. One could argue that that makes the Etheralki even more important than the Corporalki In a fight since we're not limited to our sense of sight."

Sergeis sends her a glower over his shoulder. "I'd hardly say those two things are the same."

"You're right," Vera smiles back at him brightly. "The volcra would actually die at some point. The nichevo'ya won't."

"She's right. We're just as valuable to the war effort," Zoya says, pushing her shoulders back a little, before turning her eyes on Alina. "If there are going to be three Corporalki on the council, then there should be three Summoners, too."

Vera tries her best not to be sidetracked by the reality that Zoya had just agreed with her– that Zoya and her are a team– as the other three break out into an argument again.

Alina holds up her hand, looking entirely done with her morning already, and the hallway quiets down. "There will be two Grisha from each Order, no more, no less."

Sergei's nostrils flare. "But–"

"The Darkling has changed. If we have any hope of beating him, we need to change too. Two Grisha from each Order and the Orders will no longer sit separately. You'll sit together, eat together, and fight together." Alina goes on, ignoring Sergei. "And the Fabrikators will starts combat training this week."

Vera's lips twitch. She agreed with the changes. She knew that once they'd get their heads out of their asses, so would most Grisha. The Second Army would thrive under the changes. They'd been held back, caged into the confines of their Orders, of the rules the Darkling had given them. She never had been able to figure out why – after all, he'd sought to make the Grisha as strong as possible, but had stinted their growth by keeping the Orders separate. By encouraging the forming of their individual elites and rivalries. By keeping a third of his soldiers from actually pulling weight on the battlefield.

Alina musters them all for a moment. "I can see you're thrilled," She announces with a sigh before making her way to the breakfast tray covered with dishes. Alina face contorts into a grimace at the right of the rye and herring awaiting her on one of the plates.

"But... but it's always been this way," Sergei protests.

Vera snorts. "And the traditions are always good?"

"You can't just overturn hundreds of years of tradition!"

"I bet that's what the Fjerdans say about hunting us down like animals as well, you–"

"Are we going to argue about this as well?" Alina cuts them off, exasperation in her voice. "We're at war with an ancient power beyond reckoning, and you want to squabble about who sits next to you at lunch?"

"That's not the point," Zoya begins. "There's an order to things, a way of doing them that–"

"Are you likening me to a Fjerdan?" Sergei asks, his voice shriller than usual and Vera's eyes narrow to slits on him.

"Careful with you words, Heartrender."

"It's not about the Fjerdans," Zoya says with an exasperated sigh.

"Then what did she mean?" Sergei demands.

"I believe I meant that you're a –"

Alina slams the cover back on the dish with a loud clang and they fall silent. "That's the way we're doing it. No more Corporalki snobbery. No more Etherealki cliques. And no more herring." She stares at the four of them and when nobody protests, Alina waves her hand. "Now go. I want to eat my breakfast in peace."

After a moment, the other three Grisha shuffle out of the room and back to the Domed Hall while Vera remains rooted to the spot, refusing to be send away like a insolent child.

Alina's eyes narrow on Vera as if to decide what she should do about that.

Vera narrows her eyes right back as if to dare her to try.

"Nicely done," Nikolai's voice says from behind Vera and she nearly jumps out of her skin at his sudden presence, barely managing not to flinch at the sound. She'd not even noticed he was here. "Today shall be forever remembered as the date of the Great Herring Decree," he continues as he saunters into the room, closing the door behind him. "Not the smoothest delivery, thought."

"I don't have your gift for amused and aloof," Alina grumbles as she sits down to begin her breakfast. "But grouchy seems to be working for me."

A servant enters then, carrying two plates with a cup each and, to Vera's surprise, she finds that instead of both being filled with tea as she'd expected, one of the cups is with coffee. Vera frowns softly. She knows that most Grisha prefer the sweeter taste of tea to the bitter brew, but she'd acquired a taste for it during recent years.

Before anyone else has the chance to take the up, Vera closes the distance between herself and the table Alina is seated at with a few short strides, snatching the cup into her hands and cradling it almost lovingly. She doesn't even bother to consider that it might've been intended for someone else. Like Nikolai, who might've asked one of the servants for something to drink on his way over.

At her back, the corner of Nikolai's lips twitch into the ghost of a grin at the sight before he joins them and pulls out a chair, sitting down in it. "You're really not going to eat these?" He asks Alina, busy already piling the fish on a second plate in front of him.

"Revolting," Alina shudders a little.

"You don't survive at sea if you can't stomach fish."

"Don't play poor sailor with me. I ate on your ship, remember? Sturmhond's chef was hardly serving salt cod and hardtack."

Nikolai lets out a long sigh. "I wish I could have brought Burgos with me. The court kitchens seem to feel that a meal isn't complete if it isn't swimming in butter,"

"Only a prince would complain about too much butter."

"Hm," He pulls his eyebrows together, a thoughtful expression on his face before he parts his stomach and Vera forces herself to look away, to not look at the stomach she was pressed against only two nights ago, tucked into the curves of Nikolai's body like she belonged there. When she doesn't. "Maybe a royal gut would lend me more authority."

Alina makes a choking sound before she begins to laugh and the sound is like ice stabbing into Vera's heart again and again.

It's so easy to look at them and imagine them a month, a year, a decade, married and ruling together and happy.

Alina isn't who I want to be my queen.

She'd watched so many arranged marriages play out in her life, during her childhood. As a young girl, Vera had decided that the strongest foundation for love in those matches was friendship. Alina didn't love Nikolai now, but it would be easy for her to down the road.

Alina deserved to be happy.

And Nikolai would make Alina happy. Vera knows it without a doubt.

Vera sets down the cup of coffee back on the tray before she gives them a bow. "If you'll excuse me, there's things I need to attend to," she says and Alina's laughter trails off a little, but there's still that same light, careless expression on her face.

What do you want, Vera?

She doesn't look at Nikolai, can't bring herself to, but still, Vera says, "Moi tsarevich."

She says it because she needs to remind herself. Of his title, of her situation. Of who he wants to be one day.

Of who she can never be at his side.

Vera turns and leaves Alina's room.

━━━━━

Baghra's hut is just as miserable as she remembers, Vera discovers when she enters some time later, the servant boy leading her through the doorstep and she quickly shuts it behind her before the old woman gets the chance to bark at her.

He'd told her that Baghra didn't want any visitors, but Vera had simply given him a flat look and replied that she'd had absolutely no intentions of staying any longer than she needed to. Baghra hadn't objected and so the boy had shrugged and lead her inside.

The old Grisha was stirring over something in her head, anger basically radiating off her and it makes Vera wonder what exactly had put her into this mood. Certainly not her, although Vera did have a history of leaving her like this after their lessons.

Or maybe that's just what Baghra is like nowadays. Whatever price she had paid for aiding Alina in her escape from the Darkling, it must've been steep. Before they'd left for the north of Ravka, it'd been said that Baghra had taken ill and wasn't well enough to take on any students, but now Vera think it must've just been a ruse to hide whatever the Darkling did. Whatever price she had paid for crossing her son.

"Aren't you even going to look at me?" Vera grounds out, an edge in her voice that speaks of her nerves more than anything. It's an angry, writhing thing and it makes her want to attack, rather than show weakness.

Baghra grunts something out that might be a disregarding snort before giving Vera what would've been a glare– if Baghra still had any eyes.

For a split second, Vera's breath hitches at the sight, the shock and horror mingling with the dread of the sight. Baghra looked old, defeated. Hopeless. She didn't just lose her sight. Whatever had kept her going before, it was gone now.

Something cold and foreboding trickles down her spine at a thought bubbling up in Vera, and she tries her best to ignore it. But here, in the oppressing heat of Baghra's hut, she finds she cannot quite push it away the way she'd been able to every other time. She'd betrayed the Darkling, too. She'd helped Alina escape, had killed his Grisha. Had known of Nikolai's true identity and hadn't warned him of it that morning.

If that was what he did to his mother, what would he do to her?

"Is that better for you?" Baghra's voice is just as prickly as her own – attack before weakness, Vera thinks with a jolt. They'd always been this way, push and pull and take some more. Maybe that was why she'd gotten along better with Baghra than a lot of the other Grisha she'd taught.

"Yes." Vera replies. "It's the polite thing to do."

Baghra lets out a croaking laugh, like it's a foreign movement. "Polite," she barks like the word is venomous. "You're one to speak of politeness."

She had a point, but Vera chooses to ignore that. Instead, she gives the boy a nod, nudging him gently and waits until he is outside, the door closed behind him before she turns back to Baghra and scrutinizes her for a moment. Her old teacher has already turned back to the fire, looking like she is watching the flames from mere memory.

"You look horrible," she says because someone has to. She doubts anyone else would give Baghra a piece of their mind.

"I wouldn't know."

Vera blows out a long breath.

"What are you doing here, girl?" Baghra demands, not bothering to turn into her direction.

"I wanted to check on you," Vera says defensively, feeling like a stupid fool for saying the words. But she'd needed to come. She had to.

Baghra grunts.

Apparently, Vera's idiocy wasn't even worth a scathing reply.

"What do you want?" Baghra says after a long moment and Vera's throat bobs.

"Alina told me you send her away to stop him from going down a path he wouldn't be able to come back from. You knew what he was, what he was capable of, but you still wanted to save him. You still cared for him. Care for him." It's not a question.

"So the little saint told you?" Baghra grunts and Vera shrugs before remembering she won't be able to see the movement anymore.

"She did," Vera says into the silence. "She told me everything about that night and what you told her," She hesitates for a moment. "And that you're his mother."

"Hmpf."

"I don't think there's any going back for him now," Vera says softly because she needs to say it. For herself or for Baghra, she isn't sure. Maybe she says it for both of them.

Baghra doesn't reply but Vera forces herself to move on. "I hate him," she chokes the words out, her voice brittle around the edges. "But I don't know how to hate him all the same. I don't know how to stop caring for him."

She'd devoted herself to the Darkling wholly. He'd earned her loyalty, her trust, her power by saving her. He'd been the first person to ever safe her when she needed it. She needed him and he'd come for her, even then.

In her seat at the fire, Baghra's entire body has gone still and Vera knows she is listening to every syllable.

"He's a monster," Vera makes herself say. "But he saved me, too. He took my brother from me, but he saved me. I hate him, but I don't all the same. I don't know how to just hate him." And I hate myself for it, she wants to say. I hate myself for it so much, I can't stand the sight of my reflection in the mirror. It makes me sick to even look at it.

Baghra sniffs. "If what the little saint has told me is true, if he has used merzost, then he might as well be lost already." She says but there's a sort of grief in her voice Vera can't quite place. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking.

"He is," Vera replies even as something in her chants out into the universe, to the Darkling come back, come back, come back.

"And so is the little saint if she continues the road she's on." Baghra adds and Vera's throat bobs.

"She won't." Vera says fiercely, desperately. "I won't let her."

Because she doesn't think she can lose anyone else. She lost the one person she's counted on to be an eternal, uneavering presence at her side. The one thing that had felt larger than life itself.

And now, he was just another monster lurking in the dark from the stories told to little girls.

Baghra laughs and it's like there's a switch pulled in her. Like something fragile has finally snapped in two. "It's already too late for the two of them now!" She barks. "Like calls to like, little girl. You know power better than anyone else in that useless, golden castle."

I don't want to, Vera wants to say. I don't know these things by choice.

But what does it matter now?

"Now get out." Baghra says, waving her stick at the room and Vera thinks it might be to the direction of the door.

"Baghra-"

"I said get out! I'm tired of all these visitors today," Baghra snaps and for once, Vera doesn't have her fire to meet the words, the tone.

She feels like that little girl again, standing in front of a pyre. She feels like that little girl again, and there's a man filled with anger in her house wanting to bend her to his own will and plans. Wanting to raise her into submission and numb smiles.

Vera doesn't say another thing as she rises from her seat, leaving Baghra behind in her hut. Staring at a fire she cannot see anymore.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

lowkey hating this chapter but it's necessary so here we go ig

also i just finished my reread/relistening of my ruin and rising audiobook and i'm not ready to write the rest of witching hour ok 🥲 but also at the same time super excited for the future of this little triology skfjsl