𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐬 ⎜𝘬. 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘬𝘬𝘦𝘳 ━━ on hold

xxii. 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘰𝘭𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵

She looks up and there he stands. 

Aleksander Kirigan. 

Coming back to the ground, Dara coughs out any blockage from her airways, standing so roughly the stool rolls back to the edge of the tent. Aleksander places his hands up cautiously in surrender, taking only two steps forward as to be a couple feet away from the small table.

"It is the table you had used to paint figures...with your brother I presume?"

Dara furrows her brows, the white brows she shares with her mother. She slowly moves her neck as for her eyes to stare down at the table again. It registers after Aleksander's words. Percy and her had spent their days in her room drawing all over the small round table their father had made them for a joint holiday. 

Bending down, Dara tucks under the table to find the same compartments Dalton had carved for his children to store their materials; paper, ink, and colors of all sorts. She stands back to her feet, gripping herself onto...well, she would prefer to use the term reality but it all seems to distorted to use that word. 

Hence why she allows her to use another word; insanity. 

"You're...dead..."

Aleksander tilts his head lightly to the other side, his eyes deep into the ones Dara has, "are you sure of it? Did you see where my chest no longer moved?"

Dara struggles to breathe. Every time she tries to exhale the breath gets lodged into her throat for a fraction before she is able to fully and properly exhale. Yet, this happens in laboring forms meaning she truly never exhales as needed since she intakes more. 

"Mal spoke of your death⏤"

"The tracker? Tell me, Ms. Leovolt, you are from Ketterdam, correct?"

Dara does not respond, trying her best to feel her fingers once more. 

"I have meet Mr. Brekker. I assume, you under his cane, that he would try to teach you wise to survive such cobblestone. What is it, that rule haunting you all?"

The wonderer, moving her feet, tripping over them, almost down until she sits on the other end of the table right where the other stool sits with no comfort. Dara is looking down at the drawings, the books, the parchment⏤ it is all from her home. The drawings are of Percy and her's. The books are those which hung from her walls. The parchment is of her father's study in which he used mathematics to build the correct portions of any furniture her mother wished to have. 

They all come from the small cottage where she had watched her mother and brother's chest no longer move due to the hands of her father...who's chest moved too fast in such a short span.

Where her chest moved too fast. 

The rule: if you wish to have something done then it must be you who does it for no one else could ever get it correctly as you hoped. 

It was a rule Kaz had taught her, a quick rule that she had to memorize in only hours. Word for word. Letter by letter. If she had not, if Kaz Brekker had tested her and she so much as failed he would tell her to leave with no room for any words left. With no room for any chances left. 

Mal had told those while on their ship to Ketterdam that the Darkling no longer breathed any air the rest of the Ravka⏤ the rest of the world breathed. His past had made sure to take care of him once and for all, his screams fading as Mal made it to the skiff in one piece where Sankta Alina could finally smile peacefully to know that her love had not perished at such hands of her equal.