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Every one hundred years, a Sun Summoner is born.
No.
Every one hundred years, the Sun Summoner is born.
Usually she’s Alina, not always, but usually. Once she was Lin. Once she was so much younger than him, barely a shadow of a child, and she was never called anything but Linka, Alinochka, Solnyshko—
It starts when Aleksander is fourteen years old, and he meets a Shu family down at the southern border.
They’re kind to him and his mama. Offer them a roof over their heads, a warm meal, a fire in a hearth, a playmate for Aleksander, even if she is four years younger.
He calls her Alina, until they get familiar. Familiar enough she calls him moya ten’ , Ravkan syllables still foreign enough on her tongue that she stumbles with it every time, familiar enough that he corrects her to say she is the one who shadows him.
Her family moves further south, back into Shu Han, when the tsar threatens to begin conscripting men from the outer villages to fight the war in the north. Aleksander feels like a piece of his soul leaves with Alina.
Their last night together, three years after their meeting, far longer than any time he and his mama have spent anywhere, Alina shows him her light under the covers of his bed when she had snuck in to say goodbye. Not any light. The sun. His equal.
She kisses him, a kiss goodbye, and he knows that is when their souls tied together. It must be.
He never sees her again.
Well, he does. But she isn’t his Alina.
It’s just over a hundred years later. He isn’t aging.
Grisha prosecution is at an all time high. Children torn from their mothers in the night and stoned or burned. Mothers and fathers branded so they can’t pass on their Grisha sickness.
Aleksander tells the tsar he will fight his war for him in exchange for the protection of Grisha.
The tsar accepts.
He forms an army of Grisha. Trains them to fight. Meets a girl that looks like a ghost. Avoids her.
She isn’t happy with that.
Aren’t you supposed to be our leader? She had asked, eyes blazing. More woman than girl. What he thinks Alina would look like if he had followed their family south like he begged his mother to do. Why don’t you ever talk to me directly? You treat me like dung on your boot—
He tells her. That she looks like someone he lost.
Alina is silent. She shows him her Inferni abilities, the ones claimed to be too weak to be of any help, the reason why she’s stuck in the infirmary wrapping wounds when they don’t have enough Healers. Which they never do, of course.
And it’s light. Not any light. The sun.
She is his Alina. Born again. He won’t argue with fate, won’t chide the Saints for a gift.
They get close. Closer than they were able to before. Another kiss, with more that follow it. And even more follow that. His Alina, returned to him.
Aleksander asks her to marry him, once the fighting is over. When Grisha are given the protection they were promised. Alina accepts. Their souls further intertwine. Sometimes he feels her emotions. Sometimes she hears his heartbeat.
The tsar betrays them. Catches them off guard at a safe house once they won the war as they had promised. He watches his soulmate die.
The Tear he creates, the abomination that rends Ravka in two, is the least of what he had wanted to do.
He fakes his death.
Returns forty years later as a new man, promising to be twice the man the previous Darkling was.
That’s who he is now. The Darkling. A slur, spat at him by otkazat’sya who think they’re better. The title of a protector, to little Grishenka in the Little Palace’s nursery. He endures it for that. The way chubby little hands reach up when he visits the school and he’s bombarded with a chorus of Darkling! Darkling!
He has peace, for a while. He bows to the tsar, bows under him, bows and bows and lowers himself like a dog to keep his people safe. In the eyes of every Grisha, he sees those he failed to save.
Practices his Shu with the Shu children that come through. Making them feel at home while he allows himself the reminder of her.
And that’s how it is for another sixty years.
A girl comes through to the Little Palace. A woman. A prisoner of war. A traitor to Shu Han. Led the Second Army right into the backside of a Shu army camp. A clean take out, not a single Grisha casualty. A claimed Ravkan motive, a grandmother she cared for that is now passed and the Grisha blood that flows through this woman’s veins. Still, they are fearful enough of her that she wears chains.
He can hear the way her heart pounds in her chest despite the cool look on her face. Adrenaline pushing and pushing her to act as her features settle into a mask of indifference at her situation.
Her face is one he never wanted to see again.
Her name is Lin, this time.
And this time, he does not thank the Saints. It’s starting to feel like a cruel joke. They are cold to each other, even when he orders her chains off, even when he has her given a bed and food and clothing and a place in the Second Army with a full pardon.
Everyone avoids them when they are in a room together, the way they tear into each other like they’re old enemies forced to get along. He knows she’s the Sun Summoner and she knows it, too. She thinks that’s why he hates her, but she also doesn’t care.
Aleksander is telling her off, for what he doesn’t even remember, and she slaps him.
They fuck for hours.
That Alina, Lin, he keeps for three decades, thinking the Saints finally took pity on them. They argue incessantly. They fuck like they hate each other. They marry not long after the first time they sleep together, to the shock of the entire Little Palace.
He loves her more than anything. He loves her with the force that he loved his first Alina, his little shadow, and the ghost he loved after her.
Lin joins him at the warfront. She always does. She kills like she loves it, and she does. Drüskelle aren’t seen on the Ravkan side of the border for years because of the slaughter Lin lays on them.
She tells him one night, laying on a makeshift bed at the warfront, sweaty from sex, that her father was a general. She had a knife in her hand before she could walk, and was trained to take over from him.
The title went to her cousin instead, and she decided he should burn for it. The true reasoning behind the camp she led the Grisha to ambush all those years ago, not a Ravkan grandmother.
Well, the grandmother was still real. But Lin laughs far too long when Aleksander brings it up for that to have been even a minor reason.
She is not as soft as the first Alina, nor is she as cautious as the second. Lin is something else entirely, and he is proud to call her his wife.
They go south that summer, reports of Grisha being kidnapped along the border.
Her cousin is there. He was not dead. Nor had he forgotten.
They lose half their Grisha.
Aleksander loses Lin.
He feels it when she dies. The arrow through her throat through his.
It’s worse when he feels nothing of her at all.
He comes back to consciousness five years later, his grief buried, his Grisha happy. They only remember the massacre on its anniversary.
Next time, he’ll have Alina or Lin or whoever before anyone else does. He manages to pinpoint Lin’s birthday to the summer solstice. Fifty years after her passing, he begins checking census records.
Lin, Alina, Alya, Alonya, anything.
Another five years pass. Nothing.
But.
He missed a village. Nestled between Shu Han and Ravka, in a little valley in those wild mountains.
He brings a small party, only a Heartrender and a Squaller. They disguise themselves, and go to the village, to the house of where Namdakov, Pyotr, lives with his daughter, Namdakova, Alina.
Their census form was filled out seven years prior. Alina’s mother had died in childbirth, and Pyotr returned to his home village to raise his daughter with his parents.
Aleksander knocks on the door.
A sallow looking Shu man answers. His voice is soft, sad. Eyes even moreso.
They say they work for a local school, looking for interested parents with children around schooling age.
Pyotr’s face drops.
Not here, I’m sorry. I had…
Aleksander’s heart breaks.
He invites them in for tea. For the trouble of coming all the way out to see him.
Shows them a little painting he had done of his daughter by a local artist when they had returned. She’s four in the painting, chubby cheeks and smiling. The craftsmanship may not be what one would see from a capital like Ketterdam, but it does its job.
It’s her. A little lock of her hair is suspended in between the painting and the glass of the frame.
She got sick out of nowhere. Said food tasted like ash. Then tea. No healer could find out what was wrong. My only child, all I had left of my wife, and she just… wasted away until she was skin and bone. A chest sickness came through last winter. She was too weak. My little sun, to nothing but ash. Forgive me, it’s still so fresh.
A year. He was late by a year.
If he had been more careful, checked older maps for smaller villages, then Alina would be with him, Alina would be safe in the Little Palace, Alina wouldn’t be—
Aleksander thanks Pyotr for his hospitality.
They leave to return back to Os Alta.
They’re ambushed on the way, Shu army recognizing Grisha from a mile away.
No one goes through that mountain pass anymore. They say the soil still fills with the blood of the soldiers when it rains.
He fakes his death again.
Returns twenty years later after living in the dark, reading nothing but Grisha theory and folktales. Lets his facial hair grow out a bit. Cuts his hair into something a little more modern.
Decides on an amplifier for Alina the next time he finds her. And he will. To strengthen her. No illness or army will be able to kill her, not if he has a say. And he does.
He lets her come to him. It worked well with Lin. Maybe he’ll be lucky again.
This tsar is particularly cruel and equally lazy. Never aiding any war effort, but when he does, it’s suggesting something as wicked as they simply should temporarily stick village children into already-full orphanages so their mothers can go to war.
He’ll have to protect his Sun Summoner from his ideas when Aleksander gets her back.
Against his deepest curiosity, he does not check the census. Does not join his Testers. Lets her come to him.
The hundred year point was seventeen years ago.
Every group of children they bring in, he scans for her. Nothing yet. That’s alright. She’ll come. He can feel her, on the other end of their bond. He had forgotten about it after Lin. The absence had been too much, so he had pushed it down. He dug it back up after Alina Namdakova. Never again will his grief cloud his judgement.
Stupidly, he can’t wait to meet her. As if he’s not met her thrice before. The room that was Lin’s is redone, all his wife’s trinkets moved into his own.
Gets her things Lin hated. Nice dresses. Pretty nightgowns. Jewels and trinkets. He feels like he knows her. Like their bond is strong enough already that he knows what she needs.
Aleksander travels to the Fold to witness the launch of David’s newest creation, a better, faster skiff. He has his best Squaller at the mast, a girl with hair too dark for him to look at for too long without feeling a ghost over his shoulder.
And it is fast, he’ll give David that.
Fast enough that when a burst of sunlight shoots out of the Fold, they’re back at the dry docks in a matter of minutes, nearly crashing into the crowd with the speed of the vessel.
Aleksander goes to his tent, telling the First Army captain nearest him that he wants whatever First Army soldier that lit up the Fold in his tent yesterday.
His palms sweat with excitement. Anticipation. Fear.
He wonders if he should smother her. If he should collar her, keep her on a leash. Lock her up in a high tower somewhere. Away from eyes, away from hands, a key only for him.
He waits in his tent until a ghost of a girl is brought in front of him, eaten away by the Wasting.
Still. It’s her.
“Come closer.”
She takes a step. Uneasy. Nervous. He imagines how he might look.
Like a strange boy her parents brought in to stay with them. A general who ignores her. A general who hates her until he loves her. A man comforting a father.
“Closer.”
Her eyes widen, just slightly. Then she does as he says.
“Well?”
She frowns. She looks like his ghost when she does that. The one he created the Fold for.
“Well what?” she pauses, “sir.”
Definitely that Alina. He forces down a fond smile.
“What are you?”
“Alina Starkov, Assistant Cartographer, Royal Corps of Surveyors. They’re all gone, and it’s my fault.” she’s out of breath from forcing her words out as fast as she can get them, panic setting in, thinking she’s in trouble, “that’s why I’m here, isn’t it?”
So it’s Starkov, this time. A Ravkan father where last time it had been a Ravkan mother.
He holds up a hand to stop her.
“Answer the question.” he forces his voice flat, not comforting like he wants to make it, “ what are you.”
“A mapmaker, Sa— sir.”
His Grisha laugh. Aleksander forces down a surge of rage, that they would laugh at his soulmate, at his Alina—
“Quiet.” he orders.
They do, immediately. Alina blinks in confusion.
He wants to go to her. Comfort the little girl who slept next to him when it would thunder. Comfort the wife bleeding out. Comfort the ghost he tore the world in half for. The one he never met.
“Is it true?” Aleksander asks, he doesn’t bother asking any of his Grisha to confirm. He knows this face. He knows it better than his own. “Can you summon light?”
She doesn’t answer. She’s shy this time. All she does is shake her head.
He shakes his, too. As if he would ever believe that. Like her blood isn’t calling to his, like her sunlight isn’t screaming to be let out. Like he doesn’t feel her heart beating in his ears.
Aleksander thinks about asking her when she was tested, but he knows she wasn’t. If she had been, he would’ve been raising her directly under him for the past decade and a half.
“Well,” he begins to walk towards her, moves the claw ring given to him by Lin from his pinky to his thumb, “let us just make certain.”
She begins to breathe shallowly, panicked, rabbit caught in a trap. His Alina has no idea just how wanted and loved she is, that this is all for show, for his Grisha.
“Lift up your sleeve,” Aleksander tells her gently, his shadows pooling around them, so quick to summon when they know their equal is so close by.
“What’s happening?” she asks, weary. More than that, terrified.
“Your sleeve,” he repeats, lowering his voice just for her, for his girl, his ghost, his wife, the one he missed. “Please.”
Alina begins to cry, pushing her sleeve up to her elbow. He takes her wrist, and pushes her sleeve further up to her shoulder. The amplification in him sings at the touch of his soulmate.
Her face shifts, and she meets his eyes firmly, even as she continues to cry. There she is.
Aleksander smirks, and presses his ring into the crook of her elbow.
Light fills the tent, bright, nearly blinding, buttery and warm.
He had told Lin once, just as he had told Alina when he was a child, and Alina another hundred years after that, that the specific colour of sunlight she has is his favourite. That hasn’t changed.
She looks beautiful like this.
Everyone looks at the light, but he looks at her. She looks at him, too. An awed half smile starts to form on her lips, and he can’t help but to mirror it.
After nearly two hundred years, he finally has her back.
The light fades, and the tent is silent. Alina stares up at him in wonder, trying to catch her breath.
“Sasha?” she whispers.
His heart stops for a moment.
He thinks about the room he has set up for her, the one that once was his wife’s. He thinks about the door between it and his own he had boarded up for the next Sun Summoner’s comfort.
Alina reaches for him, pulling herself closer to him with a hand wrapped around the wrist of his clawed hand.
Maybe he should’ve never boarded up that door.
“Ready a carriage,” Aleksander tells the oprichniki, not bothering to look at them, “we leave in ten.”
He’ll have her home. He’ll have her safe. He nearly lost her again but this was the last time.
Alina clings to him as his Grisha file out of the tent, off to do their work or ready for departure.
When it’s empty, when they’re alone, he finally speaks to her.
“It’s alright, Alina. I have you back, you’re safe now.”
She looks up at him, wide-eyed, glassy gaze and sniffling softly, hand moving to clutch at his kefta, “I don’t understand.”
“It’s alright,” Aleksander repeats, “I’ll take care of you.”
“No,” Alina shakes her head, “how do I know you? How have we met before?”
He rubs her shoulder soothingly, “I’ll explain on the way.”
The carriage is ready in only seven minutes, even if the horses are displeased at being put back to work when they just arrived three hours prior. Alina is bundled in before him wrapped in one of his spare keftas for safety. Aleksander is just outside of the carriage, briefing Ivan on what needs to be wrapped up in Kribirsk before his second follows behind them, when he hears Alina’s name being called.
He looks up, and sees an injured First Army soldier limping towards them.
Aleksander climbs up into the carriage, and firmly shuts the door behind him. With a quick double tap to the roof, they’re off.
Whatever otkazat’sya it is that’s looking for Alina doesn’t matter. They don’t matter, because they will never have the same eternity with Alina that he does.
He lets them ride in silence for a while, letting her mentally work through the discovery of her powers and the upending of her life. It gives him time to firmly remind himself that this isn’t his wife, this isn’t his ghost, and this isn’t his shadow.
Alina is looking at him with interest when he finally looks to her, and she’s kneading her hands anxiously in her lap. He almost reaches over the gap between the two benches to comfort her, but decides against it. He doesn’t want to scare her off.
“Well?” she asks, “do you know why… why I know you? And why you know me?”
“We’ve met before.”
Alina scrunches up her face, “no, we haven’t–”
He holds up a hand to stop her, and she does.
“I’ve met you three times before, but not in this life.” Aleksander explains, “this will sound odd, but you’ll have to take my word for it.”
She shifts in her seat, crossing her arms and furrowing her brows, but she doesn’t protest.
“Every hundred years,” Aleksander says slowly, not rudely, just trying not to scare her, “I meet someone with the ability to summon the sun. They die, then another is born.”
“So…” Alina shifts, “you meet other Sun Summoners?”
“I meet you. You were Alina three times and Lin once.”
Despite the dim of the carriage, he sees the blood drain from her face.
“Oh.”
She swallows.
“I dream about you.”
It’s Aleksander’s turn to be taken aback.
“You do?”
“Mhm,” Alina nods, breaking eye contact to look at her hands, “when I was small, I was convinced I would marry you one day, because I always dreamt we were husband and wife.” She cracks a small smile, one that warms his soul to see, “I got told off so badly for that. Mal— my friend that I grew up with— convinced me to hide when the Testers came to Keramzin. I figured that if I had gotten punished for saying I’d marry you, then the matron would tell the Testers, then you’d kick me out.”
Alina shakes her head, picking at her nails.
“It was stupid.”
Aleksander is in awe of her.
“No, you were afraid. A child.” then, “what else do you remember?”
She shifts again, “well, I had this dream a lot that— wait, remember?”
Ah. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that.
“We were married once.”
“Just once?”
Oh, how he missed her.
“Nearly twice.”
“Nearly.” she sits up, spark in her eye that feels so much like the one he ripped Ravka in two for, “did I dump you?”
“You died.”
“Oh.” her face falls, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Aleksander tells her, “you’re here now.”
“I suppose so. There’s no point in me apologizing for dying, is there?”
He smirks, and she dissolves into giggles.
“It’s…” Alina searches his face for something, “It’s Aleksander, isn’t it? Sasha?”
“You remember.”
“You told me when I was a child. In a dream, that is. I suppose it was the time we were married?”
“Perhaps.” he says, “do you remember what we were doing?”
She flushes, “I do, only because I had asked the matron what married people do that requires them to have no clothes on and she wacked my palms half a dozen times with a spoon.”
“Her name, or yours, I suppose, was Lin.” Aleksander tells her, fidgeting with his ring, “I had her the longest. We were married for three decades.”
“I’m sorry,” Alina says again, and he has to fix this conversation so she stops apologizing when he finally has her after nearly two hundred years.
“Don’t apologize. You’re back, that’s all that matters.”
She frowns and shakes her head, “I’m not her, and I’m not the other Alinas you knew.”
“I know.”
“So why did you bring me here?”
“Something keeps bringing us together. I want you in the Little Palace, where it’s safe. Whether I have you as a partner, as a friend, or simply another Grisha, it does not matter.” he reaches across the gap, puts his hand over hers where they knead anxiously in her lap, “having you safe is enough.”
She links their hands together.
“I have this recurring dream, the only one I’ve had more than once,” Alina murmurs, leaning closer to him, voice so soft he almost can’t hear it over the rumble of the carriage, “you’re young, and we’re under a– I think a blanket? And I showed you my… my light. And I kissed you, and felt something pass into me. I don’t know what it was, but–”
“You remember that?”
Alina flushes, “it’s the clearest dream I’ve ever had. Even when I don’t dream of you, it’s never that clear.”
Aleksander always says stupid things to Alina. Lin once said he’d probably stuck his foot in his mouth before he ever learned to walk.
“Do you believe in soulmates?”