— the darkling & darklina ruin and rising quotes thread:

first credits to morganaOanagrom for the beautiful fan art

“The Darkling doesn’t deal kindly with traitors.”

“I closed my eyes, felt the collar at my throat, the scales at my wrist, the presence of my power inside me like the beat of my heart. I felt the wound at my shoulder, the dark knot of scars made by the Darkling’s nichevo’ya. It had strengthened the bond between us.”

“I had used that connection against him and almost destroyed both of us in the process. I was foolish to test it now. Still, I was tempted.”

“If the Darkling had access to that power, why shouldn’t I? It was a chance to glean information, to understand the way the bond between us functioned.”

“I hated the Darkling for what he’d done to Baghra and Genya, but was I so different?”

“With that admission came the barest tremor—a vibration moving over the connection between us, an answering echo at the other end of an invisible tether. 'You called to me, and I answered.' I felt myself drawn upward, out of myself, speeding toward him.”

“I knew the moment the Darkling saw me. His self-control was so great that no one near him would have noticed the fleeting look of shock that passed over his perfect features. But I saw his gray eyes widen, his chest lock as his breath caught.”

“His fingers clenched the arms of his chair—no, his throne. Then he relaxed, nodding along to whatever the person before him was saying.”

“He’d fought for that throne, endured hundreds of years of battle and servitude to claim it. I had to admit it suited him well. ”

“Some petty part of me had hoped I’d find him weakened, his black hair turned to white like mine. But whatever damage I’d done to him that night in the chapel, he’d recovered better than I had.”

“He was already moving down the stairs, his gaze fastened on me. My heart clenched, and a single clear word reverberated in my mind: run. I’d been mad to attempt this, to seek him out. But I didn’t move. I didn’t release the tether.”

“He stopped before me, his eyes studying my face. What did he see there? He had come to me unscarred in my visions. Did he see me healthy and whole, my hair brown, my eyes bright? Or did he see the little mushroom girl, pale and gray, battered by our fight in the chapel?”

“If only I’d known you’d prove such an apt pupil.” His voice was genuinely admiring, almost surprised. To my horror, I found that pathetic orphaned part of me taking pleasure in his praise.

“Why come to me now?” he asked. “Has it taken you this long to recover from our skirmish?”

If that had been a mere skirmish, then we really were lost.

“I didn’t expect compliments.”

“No?”

“I left you buried beneath a pile of rubble.”

“And if I told you I respect your ruthlessness?”

“I don’t think I’d believe you.”

The barest smile touched his lips. “An apt pupil,” he repeated.

“Why waste my anger on you when the fault is mine? I should have anticipated another betrayal from you, one more mad grasp at some kind of childish ideal. But I seem to be a victim of my own wishes where you are concerned.”

“What have you come here for, Alina?”

I answered him honestly. “I wanted to see you.”

“There are two thrones on that dais. You could see me anytime you liked.”

“You’re offering me a crown? After I tried to kill you?”

“I might have done the same.”

“I doubt it.”

“Not to save that motley of traitors and fanatics, no. But I understand the desire to remain free.”

“And still you tried to make me a slave.”

“I sought Morozova’s amplifiers for you, Alina, that we might rule as equals.”

“You tried to take my power for your own.”

“After you ran from me. After you chose—” He stopped, shrugged. “We would have ruled as equals in time.”

“I felt that pull, the longing ... Even now, after everything he’d done, I wanted to believe the Darkling, to find some way to forgive him.”

“I wanted to believe anything so that I wouldn’t have to face the future alone. 'The problem with wanting is that it makes us weak.' A laugh escaped me before I thought better of it.”

“Do you think it would be any different with your tracker beside you? With that Lantsov pup?”

“Yes.”

“Because you would be the strong one?”

“Because they’re better men than you.”

“You might make me a better man.”
“And you might make me a monster.”

“I’ve never understood this taste for otkazat’sya. Is it because you thought you were one of them for so long?”

“I had a taste for you, once.” His head snapped up. He hadn’t expected that. Saints, it was satisfying.

“Why haven’t you visited me? In all these long months? There was barely a day at the Little Palace when you didn’t come to me, when I didn’t see you in some shadowed corner. I thought I was going mad.”

“I think you’re afraid.”

“How comforting that must be for you.”

“I think you fear this thing that binds us.”

“I am ancient, Alina. I know things about power that you can barely guess at.”

“But it’s not just power, is it?”

“I took another step. He stilled. Our bodies were almost touching now. I reached up and cupped his cheek with my hand. This time the flash of confusion on his face was impossible to miss. His only movement the steady rise and fall of his chest. Then, he let his eyes close.”

“It’s true. You are stronger, wiser, infinite in experience.” I leaned forward and whispered, my lips brushing the shell of his ear. “But I am an apt pupil.”

His eyes flew open. I caught the briefest glimpse of rage in his gray gaze before I severed the connection.

“I had practice in one more power that had only belonged to him. And I’d enjoyed it.”

“I might not be a threat, but I could become one. I wouldn’t let him beat me before I’d had a chance to give him the fight he deserved.”

“You’ll sacrifice another ancient life for the sake of your own power. The thought doesn’t bother you as much as it should, does it, girl?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Have you no care for what there is to lose? For the damage you may cause?”

“I do. But I’m out of options, and even if I weren’t—”

“You would seek it just the same.”

“I won’t deny it. I want the firebird. I want the amplifiers’ combined power.”

“Abomination against abomination.”

“He’d once told me he had far more practice with eternity. How many lives had the Darkling taken? How many lives had he lived? Maybe after all this time, life and death looked different to him—small and unmysterious, something to be used.”

“I could never be sure if I’d done it deliberately, or if it was an accident, my bruised heart plucking at that invisible tether. Maybe I was just too tired to resist his pull. I found myself in a blurry room, staring at the Darkling.”

“He was sitting on the edge of a table, his shirt crumpled into a ball at his knee, his arms raised above his head as the vague shape of a Corporalnik Healer came in and out of focus, tending to a bloody gash in the Darkling’s side.”

“I tried not to notice the way he looked—his mussed hair, the shadowed ridges of his bare chest.”

“He seemed so human, just a boy wounded in battle, or maybe sparring. Not a boy, I reminded myself, a monster who has lived hundreds of years and taken hundreds of lives.”

“There’s something I’ve been wondering,” he said. No greeting, no preamble.

I waited.

“The night that Baghra told you what I intended, the night you fled the Little Palace, did you hesitate?”

“Yes.”

“In the days after you left, did you ever think of coming back?”

“I did,” I admitted.

“But you chose not to.”

“I knew I should go. I should at least have stayed silent, but I was so weary, and it felt so easy to be here with him.”

“You lied to me. You deceived me. You … drew me in.” Seduced me, made me want you, made me question my own heart.

“I needed your loyalty, Alina. I needed you bound to me by more than duty or fear.”

“There are rumors that your Lantsov prince has been sighted.”

“Where?”

He glanced up, his lips curling in a slight smile. “Do you like him?”

“Does it matter?”

“It’s harder when you like them. You mourn them more.”

“How many had he mourned? Had there been friends? A wife? Had he ever let anyone get that close?”

“Tell me, Alina,” said the Darkling. “Has he claimed you yet?”

“Claimed me? Like a peninsula?”

“No blushes. No averted eyes. How you’ve changed. What about your faithful tracker? Will he sleep curled at the foot of your throne?”

“You came to me wearing Mal’s face that night in your chambers. Was it because you knew I would turn you away?”

His fingers tightened on the table’s edge, but then he shrugged. “He was the one you longed for. Do you still?”

“No.”

“An apt pupil, but a terrible liar.”

“Why do you have such disdain for otkazat’sya?”

“Not disdain. Understanding.”

“They’re not all fools and weaklings.”

“What they are is predictable.”

“The people would love you for a time. But what would they think when their good king aged and died while his witch of a wife remained young? When all those who remember your sacrifices are dust in the ground, how long do you think it will take for their children to turn on you?”

“You never considered it, did you?” said the Darkling. “You live in a single moment. I live in a thousand.”

“In a flash, his hand snaked out and seized my wrist. The room came into sudden focus. He yanked me close, wedging me between his knees. His other hand pressed to the small of my back, his strong fingers splayed over the curve of my spine.”

“You were meant to be my balance, Alina. You are the only person in the world who might rule with me, who might keep my power in check.”

“And who will balance me?” The words emerged before I thought better of them, giving raw voice to a thought that haunted me. “What if I’m no better than you? What if instead of stopping you, I’m just another avalanche?”

“He studied me for a long moment. He had always watched me this way, as if I were an equation that didn’t quite tally.”

“I want you to know my name. The name I was given, not the title I took for myself. Will you have it, Alina?”

I didn’t have to stand here in the Darkling’s arms. I could vanish from his grip, but I didn’t want to go. Despite everything, I wanted this.

“Yes.”

“Aleksander.”

A little laugh escaped me. He arched a brow, a smile tugging at his lips. “What?”

“It’s just so … common.” Such an ordinary name, held by kings and peasants alike.

His smile deepened and he cocked his head to the side. It almost hurt to see him this way.

“Will you say it?” he asked.

I hesitated, feeling danger crowd in on me.

“Aleksander,” I whispered.

His grin faded, and his gray eyes seemed to flicker.

“Again,” he said.

“Aleksander.”

“He leaned in. I felt his breath against my neck, then the press of his mouth against my skin just above the collar, almost a sigh ... He held me tighter. His hand went to the nape of my neck, long fingers twining in my hair, easing my head back. I closed my eyes.”

“Let me,” he murmured against my throat. His heel hooked around my leg, bringing me closer. I felt the heat of his tongue, the flex of hard muscle beneath bare skin as he guided my hands around his waist. “It isn’t real,” he said. “Let me.”

“I felt that rush of hunger, the steady, longing beat of desire that neither of us wanted, but that gripped us anyway.”

“We were alone in the world, unique. We were bound together and always would be.”

“And it didn’t matter. I couldn’t forget what he’d done, and I wouldn’t forgive what he was: a murderer. A monster. A man who had tortured my friends and slaughtered the people I’d tried to protect.”

“I grow weary of this game, Alina.”

“Weary? You’ve toyed with me at every turn. You haven’t tired of the game. You’re just sorry I’m not so easily played.”

“Clever Alina. The apt pupil. I’m glad you came tonight.”

“I’m going to enter the Fold.”

“Go ahead. The volcra deserve another piece of you.”
“They will not have it.”

“You hope to find their appetites changed? Or is this just more madness?”

“I am not mad. Ask David what secrets he left for me to discover at the palace.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“I will enter the Fold, Alina, and I will show West Ravka what I can do, even without the Sun Summoner. And when I have crushed Lantsov’s only ally, I will hunt you like an animal. You will find no sanctuary. You will have no peace.”

“Fly back home to your otkazat’sya. Hold him tight. The rules of this game are about to change.”

“The Darkling and I are … connected. We probably always will be.”

“You told me once that you hoped for redemption for your son. This may be my last chance to stop him.”

“Ah, so you hope to save my son now? How forgiving of you.”

“His true name is Aleksander. And if he takes this step, he’ll be lost forever. We may all be.”

“That name…” Baghra leaned back in her chair. “Only he could have told you.”

“I’ll tell you a story—one I used to tell a little boy with dark hair, a silent boy who rarely laughed, who listened more closely than I realized. A boy who had a name and not a title.”

“She was otkazat’sya, and though she loved him, she did not understand him.”

I thought of the way the Darkling talked about otkazat’sya, the predictions he’d made about Mal and the way I’d be treated by Ravka’s people. Had he learned those lessons from Baghra?

“I should tell you that he loved her too. At least, I think he did. But it was never enough to make him stop his work. It couldn’t temper the need that drove him. This is the curse of Grisha power.“

“The Darkling is the last of Morozova’s line.”

“We saw the way our people lived, the way they were mistrusted, the lives they were forced to eke out in secrecy and fear. He vowed that we would someday have a safe place, that Grisha power would be something to be valued and coveted, something our country would treasure.”

“We would be Ravkans, not just Grisha. That dream was the seed of the Second Army. A good dream.”

“I gave him his pride. I burdened him with ambition, but the worst thing I did was try to protect him. You must understand, even our own kind shunned us, feared the strangeness of our power.”

“I taught him that he had no equal, that he was destined to bow to no man. I wanted him to be hard, to be strong. I taught him to rely on no one. That love—fragile and fickle and raw— was nothing compared to power. He was a brilliant boy. He learned too well.”

“If Morozova survived, what became of him?”

“He probably took his own life. It’s the way most Grisha of great power die.”

I sat back, stunned. “Why?”

“Do you think I never contemplated it? That my son didn’t? Lovers age. Children die. Kingdoms rise and fall, and we go on”

“Shall I spare him, Alina?” said the Darkling.

“Leave him alone!”

“He betrayed you to the first oprichnik he could find. I wonder, will you offer him mercy or justice?”

“He betrayed me first, Alina. He remained in Os Alta when he should have come to my side. He sat on your council, plotted against me. He told me everything. So,” said the Darkling, “the decision is mine. And I’m afraid that I choose justice.”

“Here we are again, Alina. Your army against mine. Do you think your soldiers will fare any better this time?”

“Nikolai!”

“Ah, the pirate prince. I have regretted many of the things I’ve had to do in this war,” said the Darkling. “This is not one of them.”

“Hungry?” the Darkling asked. “I wonder which one of your friends you’ll eat first.”

“I’d warned Nikolai of the Darkling’s vengeance, but even I couldn’t have foreseen the elegance of this, the perfect cruelty. Nikolai had made a fool of the Darkling, and now the Darkling had taken my noble prince and made him into a monster. Death would have been too kind.”

“Fight me!” I screamed. “Let’s end this now! Here!”

“Fight you, Alina? There is no fight to be had.”

The Darkling’s face was livid. “I should have known I’d find you cloistered with the enemy. Go back inside,” he ordered. “My soldiers will not harm you.”

“I will not fight you,” the Darkling said.

“Then strike me down.”

“You know I won’t.”

“It’s true. That’s why I still have hope.”

“My hut. My fire. That sounds a pleasant thing,” she said. “But I find the dark is the same wherever I am.”

“You earned those eyes,” he said coldly, but I heard the hurt there too.

“I did,” she said with a sigh. “And more.”

“Know that I loved you,” she said to the Darkling. “Know that it was not enough.”

In a single movement, she shoved herself up on the wall, she tipped forward and vanished over the ledge, trailing the nichevo’ya behind her in tangled skeins of darkness.

“No!” the Darkling roared. He dove after her, the wings of his soldiers beating with his fury.

“Would he stop to grieve for his mother? Dashed on the rocks, would there be enough of her left to bury?”

“The Darkling, the look on his face as his mother had disappeared beneath the clouds. How could he be so cruel and still so human?”

“I felt it then, the vibration along that invisible tether. I pushed away from it. I would not go to the Darkling now. I wouldn’t go to him ever again. But still, I knew wherever he was, he was grieving.”

“I thought of the dream the Darkling had once had, that we might be Ravkans and not just Grisha. He’d tried to make a safe place for our kind, maybe the only one in the world. I understand the desire to remain free.”

“The Darkling’s faith in me had been an intoxicating thing. I wanted that certainty, the knowledge that everything would be dealt with, that someone was in control.”

“I’m not like them. I’m not like anyone.” I hesitated then added, “Except him.”

“You’re nothing like the Darkling.”

“I am, even if you don’t want to see it.”

“Tell me something. Would the Darkling ever have forgiven Genya? Or Tolya and Tamar? Or Zoya? Or me?”

“It’s different for us,” I said. “Harder to trust.”

“I was standing before him, the room a blur around me. He turned to me, his beautiful face coming into focus. He was leaning against a scorched mantel. Its outline was sickeningly familiar. His gray eyes were empty, haunted. Was it Baghra’s death that had left him this way?”

“Come,” the Darkling said softly. “I want you to see.” I let him take my hand and place it in the crook of his arm.

“I’ve been here for days,” he said, leading me through the wreckage, over the piles of debris, through what had once been the entry hall, “waiting for you.”

“She was, I think, the closest thing you had to a mother,” murmured the Darkling.

He knelt before me. He took me by the wrists, pulling my hands free from my face.

“Alina.”

“Why? Why would you do this? How can you do this? Don’t you feel any of it?”

“I have lived a long life, rich in grief. My tears are long since spent. If I still felt as you do, if I ached as you do, I could not have borne this eternity.”

“Where are you, Alina? I felt sure you would come to me when I moved against West Ravka. I thought your conscience would demand it. I could only hope that this would draw you out.”

“In case you get any thoughts of attack rather than surrender. In five days, I will return to the Unsea, and you will come to me—you & the tracker—or I will drive the Fold all the way to West Ravka’s coast, and I will march those children, one by one, to the mercy of the volcra.”

“I have waited hundreds of years for this moment, for your power, for this chance. I have earned it with loss and with struggle. I will have it, Alina. Whatever the cost.”

“There will be nothing left,” I whispered.

“No,” he said gently as he folded me in his arms. He pressed a kiss to the top of my hair. “I will strip away all that you know, all that you love, until you have no shelter but me.”

“It was sneaky, even cowardly, but the Darkling and I had left honor behind long ago. He’d been in my head, waged war on my heart. I wasn’t interested in a fair fight.”

“I understood it better too, the need that had driven the Darkling to try to re-create Morozova’s experiments, a legacy he felt was his.”

“What it might have been like if the Examiners had discovered your power?”

What kind of person might I have been? Would I have become friends with Genya or seen her as a servant? Would I have had Zoya’s confidence? Her easy arrogance? What would the Darkling have been to me?

“My thoughts turned to him. I tested the tether that bound us. Hunger quaked through me with palpable force. He was eager, ready to unleash the power of the Fold, ready for a fight. I felt it too. I let it echo back to him, that rush of anticipation: I am coming for you.”

“It was something no other Grisha understood, and in the end, it was what bound the Darkling and me most closely—not our powers, not the strangeness of them, not that we were both aberrations, if not abominations. It was our knowledge of the forbidden, our desire for more.”

“Did you think I would come to meet you unprepared, Alina? Did you think I would not sacrifice an entire fleet of skiffs to this cause?”

“There you are,” he said in his cool, cut-glass voice. “Hello, Alina.”

“Where are the students?”

“They aren’t here.”

“What did you do to them?”

“They’re safe and sound back in Kribirsk. Probably having their lunch. I knew the threat would be enough. Did you really believe I would endanger Grisha children when we’ve lost so many?”

“I’d thought he was capable of anything. He wanted me to believe, I realized. When he’d shown me Botkin’s and Ana Kuya’s corpses. He’d wanted me to believe in his ruthlessness. Then I remembered his words from so long ago: Make me your villain.”

“I know what you thought, what you’ve always thought of me. It’s so much easier that way, isn’t it? To puff yourself up with your own righteousness.”

“Where is the boy? I have my Summoner. I want my tracker too.”

“I won’t let him be used. Not as leverage. Not as anything.”

“On your back, the faithful dying around you, and yet you remain defiant.”

“The Darkling shoved the fabric of my coat aside, his hands sliding down my body. My heart sank as his fingers closed over the first pack of blasting powder. He pulled it from my pocket, then quickly located the second.”

“I can feel your intent as you feel mine, Alina. Your hopeless resolve, your martyr ’s determination. I recognize it now.”

The Darkling shook his head. “It may well take me another lifetime to break you, Alina, but I will put my mind to the task.”

“No,” he said, bewildered, shaking his head. “No. This isn’t— What have you done?”

His hands went to my throat. “No,” he whispered.

Only then did I realize the collar had fallen away. It lay in pieces beside Mal’s body. My wrist was bare; the fetter had broken too.

“This isn’t right,” he said, and in his voice I heard desperation, a new and unfamiliar anguish. His fingers skimmed my neck, cupped my face. I felt no surge of surety. No light stirred within me to answer his call. His gray eyes searched mine—confused, nearly frightened.

“You were meant to be like me. You were meant … You’re nothing now.” He dropped his hands. I saw the realization strike him. He was truly alone. And he always would be.

“I saw the emptiness enter his eyes, felt the yawning void inside him stretch wider, an infinite wasteland. The calm left him, all that cool certainty. He cried out in his rage. He spread his arms wide, calling the darkness.”

“I knew there was no bottom to the Darkling’s pain. He would just keep falling and falling.”

“Mercy. Had I ever really understood it? Had I actually believed I knew what it was to suffer? To forgive? Mercy, I thought. For the stag, for the Darkling, for us all.”

With one swift movement I drove the shadow-wrapped blade deep into the Darkling’s heart. He made a soft sound, little more than an exhalation. He looked down at the hilt protruding from his chest, then back up at me. He frowned, took a step, tottered slightly. He righted himself.

A single laugh burst from his lips, and a fine spray of blood settled over his chin. “Like this?”

“Blue sky,” he said. I looked. In the distance I saw it, a pale glimmer, almost completely obscured by the black mist of the Fold.

“Alina,” he breathed.

I knelt beside him.

“Alina,” the Darkling repeated, his fingers seeking mine. I was surprised to find fresh tears filling my eyes.

“He reached up and brushed his knuckles over the wetness on my cheek. The smallest smile touched his bloodstained lips. “Someone to mourn me.” He dropped his hand, as if the weight were too much.”

“No grave,” he gasped, his hand tightening on mine, “for them to desecrate.”

“All right,” I said. The tears came harder. There will be nothing left.

He shuddered. His eyelids drooped.

“Once more,” he said. “Speak my name once more.”

He was ancient, I knew that. But in this moment he was just a boy—brilliant, blessed with too much power, burdened by eternity.

“Aleksander.”

“Don’t let me be alone,” he murmured. And then he was gone.

“The Darkling’s body was wrapped in the blue robes of one of his fallen Inferni. I’d made him a promise, and I intended to keep it.”

Even the shred of darkness I’d commanded had abandoned me. That power had belonged to the Darkling, and it had left this world with him.

“I feel empty.”

“For all his crimes, the Darkling had loved Ravka, and he’d wanted its love in return.”

“The Darkling is gone, and so is the Sun Summoner.”

“The Darkling lay in his black kefta. Who had tended him? I wondered, feeling an ache rise in my throat. Who had combed his dark hair back so neatly from his forehead? Who had folded his graceful hands on his chest?”

No one knew his name to curse or extol, so I spoke it softly, beneath my breath.

“Aleksander,” I whispered. A boy’s name, given up. Almost forgotten.