Darklina + 33 😊❤️
“The General sent the Healers away, Sun Summoner,” Ivan announced.
Alina gleaned, from Ivan’s tone and his use of her Grisha title and the way his eyes flickered as he stared straight ahead and somewhere to the north of her left shoulder, that Ivan felt the General had made a colossal error and it had taken every bit of Ivan’s training to restrain himself from saying as much.
Which meant Aleksander was both injured and ill.
“Perhaps in an hour,” she said, knowing he would understand what she meant.
“Two,” he replied, familiar with the way she underestimated the duration of arguments and their resolution. This could be ascribed to her upbringing and his longer experience of a marriage.
She nodded, the inclination that of a queen to her subject. And a soldier to her sergeant.
Ivan withdrew silently.
Alina walked over to where Aleksander lay on a camp bed, his torn kefta folded beneath his head as a makeshift pillow. He was bare to the waist, except for where he’d been strapped, the handiwork of a Durast, not a Healer, someone who hadn’t grown up in the Little Palace but recalled the methods of the otkazat’sya.
“A fortnight I left you,” she said softly.
His eyes were closed but she knew he wasn’t asleep.
“Others had a greater need. I will not have my Grisha die because the Healers want to fuss over me,” he said, only opening his eyes at the end. “You look tired, umnaya.”
“I gathered it would be prudent to make haste,” she said.
“Ivan sent for you. He needn’t—”
“I disagree, Sasha. And Nikolai can manage without us,” she said, kneeling beside him.
“You left Nikolai in charge?” he said, starting to sit up. Struggling, his breath short, his lips parted.
Alina rested a hand on his chest to calm him. He was feverish but not in danger. Not yet.
“Hush. I left Genya. And Saints help me, your mother,” she said.
“I should trust you,” he said.
“Yes, that would be wise. What happened?” she asked.
“A catarrh, I didn’t bother about it, with everything going on, the talks broke down—” he said.
Alina looked at how tightly bound his chest was, how pale his cheeks.
“It went into your lungs and still you didn’t see a Healer,” she said.
“I did. I couldn’t spare the time they wanted, this needed seeing to,” he said, meaning the skirmish, the sudden battle, the Grisha he would always put before himself.
“You fought ill and got injured, yes?” Alina said.
“It was bad luck I took the hit to my ribs,” he said, trying to smile.
“Sasha—”
“It’s not so bad,” he said.
“I won’t let it be,” Alina replied, beginning to unwind the linen strips, revealing an extensive mottled bruising that reached down beneath where the rough wool blanket covered him from the waist onwards. She was not a Healer, but they’d discovered her command of the Sun, their mutual amplification, could work some similar magic.
“I don’t want you to exhaust yourself,” he said.
He already sounded stronger as she let the light move from her palms across his skin, closing her eyes briefly to send it within him, to the cracked, curved ribs and the strained muscle, the inflamed lungs. She thought of someone trying to hurt him and the light flared into warmth, terribly gentle but potent, and she heard him sigh in relief.
Alina opened her eyes to find him looking at her with a vast tenderness. She touched her fingers lightly to his ribs, watched as he breathed more easily. She bent her head and kissed where her fingers had just been, her lips soft against his skin, the caress without any seductive intent.
His dark eyes told her such a thing was impossible.
“Ana Kuya said this is where she was taken from, Ieva from Adem,” Alina said.
“That’s one story,” Aleksander replied.
“I didn’t understand, when I was a little girl. I thought it must have hurt, to have something taken. To be wrenched from where you belong,” she said.
“It’s only an old story, Alya, however much that would horrify your devout old harridan,” he said.
“It’s about being close, being matched,” she said.
“Ieva was not Adem’s amplifier,” Aleksander said.
He could be literal when it came to the Small Science. He’d studied it so long and she hadn’t. Sometimes that was to her benefit.
“I know. It’s a metaphor, Sasha. That’s why I still remember it,” Alina said.
“Then be close with me,” he said, shifting over on the camp bed. Alina looked at the space and considered.
“You’re tired, you said so before you Summoned, you’re more tired now and we both need the rest. I can breathe more easily now,” he coaxed.
“Only for a little while,” Alina said.
“Ivan said two hours. We’ll nap before the Healers get here. It will make him happy,” Aleksander said.
Alina chuckled.
“If it will please Ivan, then we must.”
