You Must Know The Darkness To Appreciate The Light

🔆🌙 Chapter 21 🔆🌙

The Darkling clamped his hand over my mouth, muffling my cry. I tried to free myself but his grip was strong and unrelenting. "Hush now, Alina."

I grabbed his hand and pulled it away. "Let us go!"

He loosened his grip without letting me go, and nodded to one of the Grisha surrounding us. The Inferni kicked Mal in his stomach, knocking him to the ground where he continued to kick him around.

I screamed again and the Darkling smirked. "Every time you scream or struggle, your tracker gets it worse." He leaned in and whispered in my ear. "I told my Grisha that he is responsible for taking their Sun Summoner away, and they will hold back."

That took the wind out of my sails and I stopped struggling. He motioned for a Heartrender to watch me as he stood and walked slowly over to Mal, each step in the dirt echoing with sickening anticipation.

Mal, for his part, didn't shy away as the Darkling crouched down next to him, grey eyes staring into his blue ones. "So you thought you would come to Alina's rescue?"

Mal said nothing, just returned his glare.

"Just whisk her away, be her knight in shining armor?" His hand shot out and grabbed a fistful of Mal's brown curls, yanking him up and dragging him away, but not before turning back to smile an evil grin at me.

I tried to jump at him but the Heartrender dropped my pulse, stopping me in my tracks. I groaned as the Darkling continued to drag Mal away towards the trees.

"We're going to have some fun."

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"No."

I raised my chin high despite my trembling. "I won't do it."

The Darkling's steel gaze pinned me in place. In his hand he held a large hunting knife, Mal's knife, the blade gleaming silver in the sunlight and the smooth wooden handle pointed towards me to grasp. "Take it, Alina."

I shook my head again. I would not harm Mal. I would have knocked the knife out of his hand but my wrists were bound in Grisha cuffs.

"As you wish." He shrugged and flipped the knife, caught it by the handle and slowly, steadily, walked towards Mal, who was strung by his hands and hanging from a tree branch. "Tell me, Alina," The Darkling stood behind Mal, tapping the blade against his pale hand, "Should I punish your tracker?"

"No! Don't you dare touch him, or I'll-"

"Or you'll what?" He tilted his head. "Punch me? Blind me like you did Ivan? Cut me in half?"

I clenched my fists and rattled my chains. I'll drive a knife into your throat. Or put a gun against his back and shoot him through the heart. Or maybe I'd put one of Genya's poisons in his cup. All the horrible but practical choices for how I would kill him ran through my head as I tried to remain calm.

He held the knife up, twisting it around, sunlight reflecting off the blade. "Maybe I'll track down your precious bastard prince and your little friends and start with them. Miss Safin is still at the Palace..."

"No! You leave her alone, she had nothing to do with this! You leave them all alone!" I struggled against my captors, a Squaller and a Heartrender. Genya and Nikolai alone had suffered enough at his hand already, I wouldn't let them be harmed again.

The Darkling grinned. "That's what I thought." He raised the knife to Mal's neck.

"No! Mal! Oh, Saints, no!" I was going to watch him die, his throat cut open right in front of me. I wanted to close my eyes, to look away, but I couldn't. I needed to see, for Mal's sake.