My name is Adela Kirigan.
Born and raised in Ravka, my life has been defined by the four walls and the expansive grounds of the Little Palace. Ever since I was younger, I spent all of my time there.
You may be wondering why my name sounds so familiar. It's because my twin brother is Aleksander Kirigan, otherwise known to most as the Darkling. He leads Ravka's Second Army, the only army fully powered by Grisha soldiers that Ravka has. I've been around young Grisha in training my whole life. The Little Palace is where they get sent if they are found to have Grisha powers by the examiners.
But I've never been allowed to train with the Grisha. Why? Why can't a girl like me do much of anything in Ravka? It's because I'm basically a pampered princess in the Palace. Unlike my brother, who leads armies, keeps peace and order in Ravka and travels all over the place, I sit in my spacious room, ride all over the grounds of the Palace on my trusty white pony, and basically order servants around, who always get me what I want, when I want. I attend dinner parties with the king and queen of Ravka, and have evening gossip sessions by firelight with my dear friend, Genya Safin, a Tailor Grisha and mine and the queen's personal stylist for dinner parties, but...
I want more.
I've always dreamed of the Sun Summoner ever since I was a child, coming to save Ravka, to liberate Ravka's divided people from the scourge of the Shadow Fold. An expansive black wasteland that once used to be part of Ravka before the Black Heretic formed the Shadow Fold and cut off one half of Ravka from the other, sending this world into chaos. I was taught about the Saints of Ravka since I was a child, and the legend of Ilya Morozova drove my older brother mad with the quest to find Morozova's stag, to make his power unimaginable. I never got to use my powers much, but after watching the Grisha training from my window, I observed what they were learning and trained myself into doing the same. Especially the summoners, who belonged in the Etherealki order of Grisha. I could pick them out during the sessions because they always wore blue keftas (the large, heavy coats that every Grisha in the Second Army wore), with different embroidery on them. They mostly had red and silver embroidered on theirs. Not very many have gold, which is what summoners like my brother and I would wear, and the Sun Summoner when he/she comes to Ravka.
From time to time, my brother would even train me himself. He was never really there, though, mostly trying to bring order to Ravka and continuing to build the Second Army. So I'd just keep on teaching myself, and hopefully I'd make something of myself, something more than a princess. And little did I know, my life was about to change.
But, this is where my story begins.
And so, too, does the story of one Alina Starkov.