The truth of that word hung between us. We stood there, in the darkness of the woods, and I felt the shard in my heart shift. I knew what it would leave behind when the pain was gone: loneliness, nothingness, a deep fissure that would not mend, the desperate edge of the abyss I had once glimpsed in the Darkling’s eyes.
“Let’s go,” Mal said at last.
“Where?”
“Back to the Little Palace. I’m not going to just leave you in the woods. ”
We walked up the hill in silence and entered the palace through the Darkling’s chambers. The common room was blessedly empty.
At the door to my room, I turned to Mal.
“I see him,” I said. “I see the Darkling. In the library. In the chapel. That time on the Fold when the Hummingbird nearly crashed. In my room, the night you tried to kiss me. ”
He stared at me.
“I don’t know if they’re visions or visitations. I didn’t tell you because I think I might be going mad. And because I think you’re already a little afraid of me. ”
Mal opened his mouth, closed it, tried again. Even then, I hoped he might deny it. Instead, he turned his back on me. He crossed to the guards’ quarters, stopping only to snatch a bottle of kvas from the table, and softly shut the door behind him.
I got ready for bed and eased between the sheets, but the night was too warm. I kicked them into a tangle at my feet. I lay on my back gazing up at the obsidian dome marked by constellations. I wanted to bang on Mal’s door, tell him I was sorry, that I’d made a terrible mess of things, that we should have marched into Os Alta that first day hand in hand. But would it have mattered in the end?
There is no ordinary life for people like you and me.
No ordinary life. Just battle and fear and mysterious crackling jolts that rocked us back on our heels. I’d spent so many years wishing to be the kind of girl that Mal could want. Maybe that wasn’t possible anymore.
There are no others like us, Alina. And there never will be.
When the tears came, they burned hot and angry. I turned my face into my pillow so that no one would hear me cry. I wept, and when there was nothing left, I fell into a troubled sleep.
* * *
“ALINA. ”
I woke to the soft brush of Mal’s lips on mine, the barest touch to my temple, my eyelids, my brow. The light from the guttering flame on my bedside table glinted off his brown hair as he bent to kiss the curve of my throat.
For a moment, I hesitated, confused, not quite awake, then I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him closer. I didn’t care that we’d fought, that he’d kissed Zoya, that he’d walked away from me, that everything felt so impossible. The only thing that mattered was that he’d changed his mind. He’d come back, and I wasn’t alone.
“I missed you, Mal,” I murmured against his ear. “I missed you so much. ”
My arms glided up his back and twined around his neck. He kissed me again, and I sighed into the welcome press of his mouth. I felt his weight slide over me and ran my hands over the hard muscles of his arms. If Mal was still with me, if he could still love me, then there was hope. My heart was pounding in my chest as warmth spread through me. There was no sound but our breathing and the shift of our bodies together. He was kissing my throat, my collarbone, drinking my skin. I shivered and pressed closer to him.
This was what I wanted, wasn’t it? To find some way to heal the breach between us? Still, a sliver of panic cut through me. I needed to see his face, to know we were all right. I cupped his head with my hands, tilting his chin, and as my gaze met his, I shrank back in terror.
I looked into Mal’s eyes—his familiar blue eyes that I knew even better than my own. Except they weren’t blue. In the dying lamplight, they glimmered quartz gray.
He smiled then, a cold, clever smile like none I’d ever seen on his lips.
“I missed you too, Alina. ” That voice. Cool and smooth as glass.
Mal’s features melted into shadow and then formed again like a face from the mist. Pale, beautiful, that thick shock of black hair, the perfect sweep of jaw.
The Darkling rested one gentle hand on my cheek. “Soon,” he whispered.
I screamed. He broke into shadows and vanished.
I scrambled out of bed, clutching my arms around myself. My skin was crawling, my body quaking with terror and the memory of desire. I expected Tamar or Tolya to come bursting through the door. Already, I had a lie on my lips.
“Nightmare,” I would say. And the word would come out steady, convincing, despite the rattling of my heart in my chest and the new scream I felt building in my throat.
But the room stayed silent. No one came. I stood shaking in the near dark.
I took a shallow, trembling breath. Then another.
When my legs felt steady enough, I pulled on my robe and peeked into the common room. It was empty.