Alina’s relationship with her powers, pt. 5
Ruin and Rising- Chapter 2
Alina waits for specific conditions to even attempt to summon.
She has a ready-made excuse as for why it doesn't work.
She's never been one to persist.
She still views her powers as something separate from her.
“It isn’t something separate from you,” Baghra snapped. “It isn’t an animal that shies away from you or chooses whether or not to come when you call it. Do you ask your heart to beat or your lungs to breathe? Your power serves you because that is its purpose, because it cannot help but serve you.”
Shadow and Bone- Chapter 13
That's failing in basics of Grisha teaching. Her mindset is of the very same girl, who couldn't summon, because she "Isn't Grisha.".
It was time to let go. That day on the Shadow Fold, Mal had saved my life, and I had saved his. Maybe that was meant to be the end of us.
The thought filled me with grief, grief for the dreams we’d shared, for the love I’d felt, for the hopeful girl I would never be again. That grief flooded through me, dissolving a knot that I hadn’t even known was there. I closed my eyes, feeling tears slide down my cheeks, and I reached out to the thing within me that I’d kept hidden for so long. I’m sorry, I whispered to it.
I’m sorry I left you so long in the dark.
I’m sorry, but I’m ready now.
I called and the light answered. I felt it rushing toward me from every direction, skimming over the lake, skittering over the golden domes of the Little Palace, under the door and through the walls of Baghra’s cottage. I felt it everywhere. I opened my hands and the light bloomed right through me, filling the room, illuminating the stone walls, the old tile oven, and every angle of Baghra’s strange face. It surrounded me, blazing with heat, more powerful and more pure than ever before because it was all mine. I wanted to laugh, to sing, to shout. At last, there was something that belonged wholly and completely to me.
Shadow and Bone- Chapter 12
Alina forgot the Light is her, not the sun on the sky or amplifiers on her body. Since her summoning depends on her will, her powers act accordingly.
Alina is great in self-gaslighting and guilt-tripping. She did something terribly awful- using the unnatural merzost-, therefore punishment has to follow. And what is the one thing making her feel only good? What could her subconscious easily take away?
Looking at the end of her story and her appearance in RoW- even if her powers were only temporarily exhausted, or could be regained somehow, she will never wield them again.
“I didn’t sacrifice my power. It was taken from me because I fell prey to the same greed that drove you. I paid the price for tampering with merzost. Just as you once did.”
Rule of Wolves- Chapter 14
pt. 1, pt. 2, pt. 3, pt. 4, pt. 6
