You Must Know The Darkness To Appreciate The Light

🔆🌙 Chapter 10 🔆🌙

TW: Blood, angst I guess?

Darkling POV

Blood was everywhere.

Alina's blood. It was warm and dark and coating my hands as I pressed them to her wounds to try to slow the bleeding. Ivan, thought not a Healer, had done his best to stop the flow. He rode along side me now, keeping her heart in the delicate balance between slowing it and stopping it.

My mind was reeling with unanswered questions. How was Alina here? Why was she here? Why was she wearing the uniform of my personal guard? Why did she look like a complete stranger? Thoughts swirled through my head like a Squaller wind as our horses thundered over the ridge, down the rocky mountain and across the open plains towards the camp that had been set up near the front. The few oprichniki that survived followed behind us, a handful of Grisha with them, bloodied and wounded. I had taken down many Fjerdans on my own, but the ambush had still drastically cut our numbers.

"Sir?" Ivan's hand was extended. "Her pulse is getting weaker. I don't know if she'll make it." I looked down at her, unconscience and clutched against me. Her skin was pale and clammy, her breathing shallow and her lips tinged blue from blood loss. Over my long life, I had seen and brought about death countless times, in many different ways, and I knew the signs; life was slipping away from Alina.

I dug my spurs into my stallions sides, galloping at breakneck speed towards the distant shapes of tents on the horizon.

If Alina died, everything I had worked for, everything I had waited, fought, and bled for would be gone. I had spent centuries biding my time for her, someone with her abilities. Who knew how long it would be before another Sun Summoner was discovered, if ever? No. I wouldn't give up that easily, and neither would she.

We sped into camp in a cloud of dust, ignoring the welcoming party and riding straight to red Corporalki tent. I slid off my horse, carrying Alina into the tent, Ivan following me. Inside was gloomy and dimly lit by lanterns hanging from the beams overhead, an Inferni sat on the only cot in the room as a young Healer girl stood over him, working on his grotesquely broken hand.

They both jumped to attention when they saw me and I pushed past them, laying Alina down on the cot the Inferni had vacated. "Help her." I didn't need to add what would happen if she failed.

The Healer nodded, worrying her lip as she began her work, having Ivan keep Alina's pulse steady as she stopped the bleeding. 
I stood over them with my arms crossed, watching them work at saving her life, taking in for the first time amongst the confusion Alina's face. She must have enlisted the help of a Tailor to change as much as she had.

Her face was sharper and had a hollow, gaunt look to it, her skin was tan and freckled, her hair short and brown as mud, but she was still Alina no doubt. She looked like she had in the days before she had learned to summon properly. The days of another dim tent, a crowd of bloodied and wounded soldiers both Grisha and Okatzats'ya, a scared girl, the cold blade of my knife slicing her arm. "I guess you only look like a mouse." I had said to her.

The Healer began to open Alina's shirt to heal the wound at her shoulder and I excused myself, stepping outside into the weak sunlight. My hands were still caked with dried blood and it was on the front of my kefta, staining it an even deeper black, I need to clean up and change my clothes. As I walked towards my tent, a young oprichnik stepped in front of me. "Please, General Kirigan, sir, is Sasha alright?"

My eyes narrowed and I glared at him, taking in his dusty, dirty uniform specked with blood and messy strawberry blonde hair. Most of my oprichniki were respectful and didn't speak to me. "Who?"