Redemption: Ruin and Rising alternate ending

Part 2

I tossed several coins onto the wooden counter and collected the bundle of sticks from the shop keep. With my arms full, I made my way out of the little store and onto the wide dirt street. The air was sweet with jurda. Pollen clung to every surface. It swirled around my feet as I walked down the road, back towards the sea.

The Darkling—Aleksander—waited for me. He leaned against a fence post, his face clear with disdain and his arms laden with food. I stalked past him, silent, and he kept pace a few steps behind me.

It was difficult not to call him that. The Darkling. He had no authority now, no power. He still acted like he had it though, always looking down on the townspeople and talking down to me. He was angry all the time, and when he wasn't angry, he was depressed. It was difficult to say which was worse.

We walked down the path in silence, him quietly seething, me contemplating what he'd destroy next in a fit of rage. Usually it was plates. Maybe he could be useful and destroy some logs with an axe.

Our house came into view, a tidy cabin on a hill overlooking the ocean. It was only a house, not a home; home had died on the Fold with a knife in his chest. I opened the door and set the kindling down in a basket next to the fireplace. He dropped his bags with a thump and stomped into his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. I heard chairs crashing and tables bumping. It would be quiet when we ate dinner and then went to sleep.

He never had nightmares. He never cared enough about what he's done to have them. But I know he mourned the loss of his powers, that he dreamt of having them and woke powerless. I could hear him crying through the wall when he thought I was still asleep.

But I never slept anymore, because I did have nightmares. I dreamt of the Fold, being lost in the darkness and hearing Mal's voice, Mal crying, the sound the knife made as I drove it into Mal's heart. Sometimes I was running through the halls of the Little Palace, the Darkling chasing me with darkness spilling from his hands and nichevo'ya at his side. He laughed at me when I stumbled, and sometimes he caught me, holding me in his arms and whispering in my ear, pressing kisses above the collar at my throat. Those were the worst. So most nights, I didn't sleep.

Aleksander emerged from his room when the soup began to boil. I saw an overturned chair, one leg splintered halfway up, before he closed his door. I stirred the pot, conscious as he moved behind me, but he only set the small table. He laid bread and cheese out, fresh from the market. I ladled soup into our bowls.

We ate in silence, like always. There was hardly any conversation between us. When we did speak, it ended in yelling. I ate quickly, like always, and broke the loaf in half to take with me. I walked down the hill to the ocean, sand between my toes and salt in my face. I stopped at the edge of the water, waves lapping at my toes. I kicked off my shoes and stepped farther in so that the water came to my ankles. I loved to watch the dying sun behind me play with the waves, light and color washing over the water. I held my hands out, feeling the warmth and letting myself smile. The last of the light turned red, then vanished. I watched the stars come out, one by one, and the moon rose out of the ocean.

I stayed like this for hours sometimes, thinking of Mal and when we had first seen the ocean, together in Ravka. When we were children, we dreamed of owning a farm. Now, I dreamed of him here beside me, his hand in mine, and I tried not to think of the blood on my hands.

Without Mal, without my power, I felt like I was going mad. It didn't help that the Darkling was always near, both in my sleep and my waking world. Why had I chosen to protect him? What drove me to beg Nikolai not to execute him? I wasn't an optimistic girl anymore, thinking I could change him. But I was a fool. I still saw the boy in him, the one molded by a world that killed Grisha, raised by a mother who taught him to harden his heart. And wasn't I the same? Created by a war-torn world, the ghosts of parents numbing me. If our positions were reversed, would I have become just like him? I didn't think so, but I remembered the way it felt to wear one of Morozova's amplifiers, two amplifiers, and how I hungered after the third. I only stopped when I learned it was Mal. What would I have done if it had been someone else, some other boy? Would I even hesitate? Or would I plunge the knife into him with ease, never once regretting the blood I spilled?

And if the Darkling had been in my place? Raised in a home, surrounded by familiar faces, fed and secure. He might have been a decent man then.

But it was foolish to think that way. What was done was done.