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lambicpentametre · 2 years

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The Once and Future Queen (10: for beatrice)

ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34581256/chapters/88764679

Aleksander learns the consequences of turning away from Alina.

She appears to him whenever he tugs on their tether. It’s a blessing and a curse of her near-constant state of unconsciousness. He knows, intellectually, that she must bear some scars or wounds from what David does to her, but whenever she appears to him, she’s healthy and hale, an idealized representation of the woman she was on her way to becoming when she ran away from him.

The woman he was in love with.

Is in love with. Will be in love with for the rest of his damned days.

Author’s note: This fic is tagged Dead Dove: Do Not Eat. This chapter contains references to implied/referenced rape/sexual assault. Please take care of yourself while you read.

Chapter 10: for beatrice

“For Beatrice—you will always be in my mind, in my heart and in your grave.” - Lemony Snicket

The problem with wanting is that it makes us weak.

He’d once told that to Svetlana, right before he took her to bed the first time. The poor girl took it to mean that he wanted her, and in the moment he supposes he did; he wanted her to serve her purpose. He wanted Svetlana to believe him, to desire him, to marry him, because it would be the fastest way to the throne.

He pushes his emotions down and puts a ring on her finger, crowns her with his grandfather’s stag, names her Queen of Ravka. None of it tempers the desire that seeped deep into his bones, into his very soul, for Alina. It will be messy when the time comes for Alina to rise to her place at his side, but there’s a fire inside that burns away at a little piece of him each day that Alina is not with him, and this is the quickest way to achieve his goal.

Svetlana lost the game before she even started playing. She was less of a player than a pawn in his plans. She is little more than collateral damage, not when he knows that Alina is his true equal; when it’s been proven to him time and again, from their first meeting to all of the times he saw her through the tether that bound him to Alina, and not his wife.

He tells himself he wants Svetlana, because without her, there would be no way for him to ensure the future of the Grisha. And he so desperately wants to keep his Grisha safe, to see them as more than a standing army for the crown, with the true Sun Queen of Ravka beside him.

The problem with wanting is that it makes us weak.

Aleksander has kept himself closed off from the world for centuries. In a single afternoon, Alina Starkov manages to undo it all. He wears his heart on his sleeve for her and her alone; that anyone could ever think otherwise is unfathomable, made worse by the fact that Alina could not see it herself. But he made his life out of lies, and the world is so small-minded. They all believe him when he says that he loves Svetlana, that he wants to marry her, and they think he means it.

It would be easier for them all if he preferred Svetlana. Better, even.

But for all the regret and frustration and heartache, the only person he has ever loved is Alina.

///

Ivan brings Mal to his study with extreme force and prejudice and all but throws the boy at his desk. Although he is a dutiful oprichnik and talented tracker, Malyen Oretsev asks too many questions of his superiors. Mostly he asks about Alina Starkov, and Aleksander has ordered Ivan never to answer.

He’s on Ivan’s last nerve.

So when Aleksander proposes a transfer, Ivan all but skips out of the room to go and retrieve Corporal Oretsev and finally wash his hands of the boy.

If only Aleksander could do the same.

“Mal,” he greets as the boy stands back up. “So lovely to see you.”

“Moi tsar,” he says, dipping his head into a bow.

“Ivan says you’ve been asking questions about Miss Starkov,” Aleksander opens.

He can see the boy hesitate. “I grew up with her, moi tsar,” he begins with uncertainty. “I am concerned for her, the state that she was in when I found her—”

Aleksander waves his hand and Mal stops speaking. “Alina Starkov is no longer your concern,” he says. “Your concern is your duty, and Ivan has had enough of you. You’ll be transferred to another patrol.”

“Moi tsar?”

“Ivan has discussed some of his personal concerns with me, you see,” he says. He loves it when Mal squirms. “So we decided to reward you, Corporal Oretsev. You’ll be a captain of the guard now. New responsibilities, new rotations, new hours. You won’t answer directly to Ivan.” You won’t have access to Ivan, to ask him questions about Alina Starkov, remains unsaid.

“Where am I going?”

“Why, to the newly established Queensguard, Captain Oretsev.”

They stare at each other; Aleksander lounges in his chair as Mal clenches his fists. It’s a plum gig that comes with a promotion and a pay raise, and Mal will likely never see combat again, but they both know Aleksander has just condemned Mal to days standing outside of the bedroom of a woman who never leaves. And if she does not leave her room, he cannot venture away either.

He cannot seek out Alina.

“Enjoy your time with my wife, captain,” Aleksander says as he dismisses him. “Your first rotation begins tonight.”

It’s a funny thought. From what he’s read in Alina’s letters to Mal and vice versa, Svetlana would have been the type of girl Malyen Oretsev would have tumbled given half the chance, a lifetime ago.

They’ve all changed since Alina ran away.

///

The queen has one of her rare good days. They are fewer now since Alina returned to him. His wife is a good Fjerdan girl raised by an upstanding family, and before she was Ravkan royalty, she was a Fjerdan noble with one job: to give her husband a large family.

She all but begs him to come to her bed that night, and he’s not one to pass up the opportunity to work out all of the frustration of the past year. He smirks at Mal, who is posted at the entrance to his wife’s suite and will undoubtedly hear Svetlana’s pathetic cries, wanting the boy to know exactly what it is he’s here to do, to suffer with him in bearing the knowledge that it isn’t Alina behind those doors. For all his faults, Malyen Oretsev acknowledges what few others do: Aleksander crowned and married the wrong woman, and he shames her every time he sleeps with the woman he calls wife.

When Svetlana starts to moan for him, he flips her on her stomach and presses her face into the pillows, all so he won’t have to hear her say his name. He brushes off her pleas that she wants to see him, that it isn’t proper. He ignores her sobs that his grandfather’s collar is digging into her skin, that it hurts, that she won’t get pregnant if he lies with her like this. He doesn’t care. He closes his eyes and blocks out the sound of his wife’s voice, imagining it is another woman—another sun summoner—beneath him, mewling and panting as he fucks into her.

///

She may have the crown now, but he knows the true prize Svetlana wants is his heart. He cannot give it to her when he has already given it away, not when the woman who holds it lies in a cold cell beneath his feet.

He feels no pity for his wife. Her days are numbered, and there’s no point in coddling her when she’s so close to the end of her life.

He tells no one of this part of his plan; premeditated murder of one’s wife is generally frowned upon. He’d had nebulous ideas of how to kill her once his ascension to the throne was complete, but he’d put them on hold when Alina ran away.

But it is Alina who gives him the perfect opportunity to rid himself of his wife without sullying his hands.

David Kostyk is popularly considered the most well-read scholar of amplifier theory in the Little Palace, but he suspects that David knows otherwise. He wouldn’t have given David access to his personal journals, to Morozova’s journals, if he didn’t think it was a possibility. David is still young, though, and wants to believe the best of him. He doesn’t ask questions when the orders come down. There is no Durast he trusts more than David, no other person who will get him the results he needs.

Aleksander knows what the outcome will be, but David doesn’t need to know that. David doesn’t ask the right questions or see the big picture, not like Aleksander does. The answers are all in front of him, if he considers it closely. It’s fairly obvious.

Alina chose the stag, and the stag chose Alina. The stag’s amplifier belongs to Alina, no matter if she bears it or not. Its power is hers to wield.

He assigns Alina a lab deep beneath the Little Palace, where no one in living memory (save for his) has ventured, and pushes her to the absolute limit of what her body should be able to stand, further than the Grisha who survived the laboratories in Shu Han, further than he wants to admit… but his wife still lives.

Each week, David reports that Alina withstands the tests, that her light remains unmatched, that he cannot seem to divorce Alina from the stag. Each week, David withdraws further into himself.

Aleksander knows he should feel pity for the brilliant boy he watched grow up, but he’s too old and jaded for that. He’s watched too many of his Grisha die to stop for the soul of one of the countless boys he raised, not when Alina is just out of his reach.

He orders David to test any and all amplifiers he can for compatibility, a particularly brutal exam by all accounts, and Alina is forced to be awake for it all. There’s no doubt in his mind that she must hate him by now, but he welcomes it. As long as she hates him, she still feels something for him.

Maybe she will give him what he wants.

That night, she says his name for the first time, and he could cry at how sinfully beautiful it sounds when she says it.

He never expected that it would sound so much like a curse, but he can’t help but preen every time his name falls from her lips. She indulges him, too; after that, she calls him Aleksander whenever she sees him. Even though it’s full of all her rage and hatred, it’s still the most wonderful thing he’s ever heard.

He still wants more.

///

The woman he was in love with.

Is in love with. Will be in love with for the rest of his damned days.

“You’re a very powerful man, Aleksander,” she taunts him one day. She vaults herself up onto the war table in front of him, crossing her legs. He can feel the heat of her body, so close to him.

“I am the tsar, milaya,” he responds. He’ll always prolong it however he can, anything to keep her with him for just a second longer.

She leans towards him, her hair brushing against his knees, and gives him a wicked smile devoid of any warmth.

“Then why haven’t you killed me yet?”

Her eyes light up when his breath hitches and shadows darken the room. He pushes away from the table and stands, turning away from her. How could she say things like that to him? The one person he would die for, and she believes he could ever kill her.

“What could you possibly gain from me, Aleksander? What more power could I give you that you do not already have?” she asks, imploring.

“I’m tired, Aleksander. Please. I don’t want this anymore.”

It breaks his heart to see her like this. He steps back towards her, his hand cupping her cheek. “You must think me more powerful than I am, Alinochka. I didn’t want this either, but some things are out of even my control.”

Alina stares back at him, confused at the truth he has laid before her. The girl she was when he first brought her to Os Alta is still there inside her, but she’s hidden under layers of scar tissue that will take years to heal. All because he failed her. He feels so much like the little boy in the story he spun for her all those months ago by the wishing well. In the next moment, she’s gone.

///

He keeps Alina away from the sun, away from the crowds, away from the Grisha who might question his methods.

David tells him that Alina’s wasting sickness is starting to set back in and requests a Healer to help her body recover. The wounds are not healing properly, and she’s looking worse every day.

He denies the request. David asks him to at least think about it, to come see the state that Alina is in, if he would just see her—

He throws David out of the war room, shadows slamming the door shut behind him.

He cannot bear to think of Alina. He will not look at her.

If he sees her, he’s scared he’ll shatter into pieces she will never be able to put back together.

///

Weeks pass, and David’s progress stalls. The queen is lethargic and continues to deteriorate, but the Healers tell him it’s more from wasting sickness than anything else. Alina remains gaunt, according to David’s reports, and she’s not improving despite all indications that she should be.

So when Genya wakes him up in the night, he assumes that David has caught a break, that Alina is getting stronger, that his wife is getting weaker. Anything but what news she comes to tell him.

He’d fallen asleep at his desk, pouring over agricultural reports, and he wishes she’d let him sleep through to the morning before she told him. At least he would have had one more night’s rest before he had to face the harsh reality she drags him into.

But at least it’s Genya and not Ivan, because Genya softens the blow in a delicate way that Ivan never would have.

He’s not proud of himself for it, but he cries when she tells him. He sobs like the boy he once was, alone in a dark forest, before he doomed the country with his own hubris, before he fell in love, before he squandered the only chance he had at happiness in his life.

Genya, ever composed and unwavering, says nothing as he breaks down, shadows pouring out of him in a cold rush. She says nothing when he falls to his knees, unable to support himself as the world falls out beneath him and crumbles. She says nothing as he screams his throat raw, loud enough to wake the dead.

Fate is a cruel bitch who has it out for him.

If he’d been kinder to his wife, if he hadn’t picked the wrong girl, if he’d let her go when he should have, if if if, he might have gotten what he wanted. He can hear his mother laughing all the way from her hut.

Headstones are not Grisha tradition, but damn it all to hell. He tells Genya to commision one with the date, but no name.

They had never discussed children. He didn’t bear and bleed the child, so it’s not his place to name him, and he won’t force his wife to name a child she never knew she had. Fedyor, Genya tells him, is already taking care of locating a coffin small enough for the tiny baby. She thinks it was about four months along.

It’s been weeks since he last spent the entire night with his wife, but he sits a candlelight vigil at her side. She doesn’t wake at all.

When Alina appears to him, it takes everything in him not to weep at the sight of her. He’s so tired, and lonely, and ready for this nightmare to end. Whatever Alina wants of him, she can have. Anything to end his torment. He says her name, he plays the game, he gives it all.

How could she know what he was going through? There was no way for her to distinguish between the life forces of the tether, and he knows in his heart that he’ll forgive her, that he’s already forgiven her, but then…

“She’ll never give you what you want.”

It’s a slap to the face. He was so close to getting the one thing his heart had desired for centuries, and even though he knows she is ignorant to his suffering, to his wife’s condition, to the funeral he has to plan in the morning, he blames Alina. He made her suffer, and she turned it on him.

He knows that it’s impossible, but he’s too raw to care.

He says the only thing he can think of to say, and it scares him how much he means it.

“I loathe you, Alina Starkov.”

///

Everything is a damn crisis.

He barely has time to mourn the loss of the only child he’s ever sired before he’s dragged away from his wife’s bedside and into the war room. Mal Oretsev stands at parade rest in front of the table, grimy and tired and smelling of the sea.

Mal tosses a silken drawstring sack on the table, disdain evident.

“I did what you told me. Tell me where Alina is,” he says. Aleksander picks up the bag, and sure enough, there are seven pearly scales inside.

“I don’t answer to you,” Aleksander says, slipping the bag into his pocket. “Or have you forgotten your place, Captain Oretsev?”

Mal seethes, his temper flaring. “You would not have found her without me,” Mal says, stepping forward. “I have done everything you asked, now tell me where she is.”

Aleksander says nothing but flicks his wrists to summon his shadows. They swirl around Mal’s ankles, biting cold, but Mal does not flinch.

“Where is Alina?” he repeats.

“Ivan was right, you are an insolent little shit,” Aleksander says. The shadows grip at Mal tightly, forcing him to sit in the chair that comes rushing up behind him. “Such a one track mind. Stubborn, like her, but you must have learned it from somewhere. I don’t like rewarding subordinates for their bad behavior, but I know Alina, and if you’re anything like her…” he smiles darkly to himself. He can feel Mal’s rising panic. “Well, I wouldn’t want to add to Ivan’s workload. You’re more trouble than you’re worth, so I’ll tell you what will happen.

“You’ll stand watch for the queen, my wife, as you’re instructed. You won’t ask inane questions about Alina Starkov of your betters. If you do, then I might be better inclined to tell you about her condition. It isn’t becoming for the captain of the queensguard to be so concerned about a woman who isn’t his charge.”

“You made her my problem—”

“That is the Queen of Ravka you speak of!” Aleksander thunders. He doesn’t particularly care how Mal treats his wife, but he’s angry. He’s angry and tired and he wants Alina, and there is nothing he can do about it but yell at Malyen Oretsev.

Mal shrinks back but holds his gaze. “Where is Alina?” he asks again.

“In the safest building in the world, Captain. Here, in the Little Palace, in my care, as she always should have been,” he says. “Where else would she be?”

Aleksander leaves the room and ignores Mal’s protests. There are many more priorities on his list than reassuring a lowly orphan.

///

He only stopped for a moment to present David with the sea whip’s scales and send him off on his new assignment, but she woke up in his absence.

It’s the first time he’s seen her physical body since he found her. She’s angles and edges where she should be soft curves, and her eyes are hollow and full of fear and hatred.

As always, she’s asking questions and raising Ivan’s hackles. Ivan would clearly like nothing better than to send her to sleep, but it’s been months since he’s physically been in the same space as her, and he can’t resist it. He goes to her side and whispers lies in her ear, anything to make her feel the same heartache that he does.

He motions for Fedyor and Ivan, and she begins to panic, scrambling to grab something. He presses a kiss to her forehead and reassures her that everything will be okay, because it will. He would never let her come to any harm under his watch. He holds her as she falls asleep.

“Moi tsar,” Fedyor begins, once Alina is surely unconscious. He sounds uncertain in a way he hasn’t since he was a green boy on his first assignment. “What are our orders?”

Aleksander doesn’t look away from Alina, carefully tucking her hair behind her ear. “Is she—” he begins, but the words catch in his throat. “Tell me if she’s with child.”

Fedyor and Ivan know what happened last night. They know that there is a tiny coffin, no bigger than a jewelry box, waiting for Aleksander in a secluded cell in the basement; they couldn’t place the baby in the morgue without gossip spreading around the Little Palace like wildfire.

“Did Kostyk…” Fedyor trails off.

“No.”

“Then how would—”

Ivan stops Fedyor mid-sentence. “It would be best if you stepped away from her, moi tsar,” Ivan says, raising his hands to wield the Small Science.

Aleksander knows he’s grasping at straws, but he needs this. He needs to know if, by some miracle from the Saints that have long since abandoned him, there’s a sliver of a chance that he might still have a child. So he does as Ivan says, and he stands from Alina’s bedside.

Ivan and Fedyor stand at the foot of Alina’s cot for ten long, silent minutes, and when they turn to each other, Aleksander knows what they found.

“Again,” he orders.

“Moi tsar,” Fedyor says.

“Again.”

They raise their hands again, concentrating on Alina’s prone form. Fifteen more minutes go by, and again Fedyor looks to Ivan as he shakes his head.

“Again.”

Fedyor starts to say something, but one look from Ivan stops him. They raise their hands in tandem, wielding the Small Science in a synchronized movement. He and Alina could’ve had that, if only she hadn’t run. He would’ve given her anything she wanted if she’d only stayed at his side.

“Nothing, moi tsar,” Fedyor reports.

“Again.”

“No,” Ivan says. Aleksander looks up.

“What did you say?”

“No,” Ivan says. “Not again. It will not change the outcome. Nothing will change. I’m sorry, moi tsar, but your child is dead.”

“No,” he cries, falling limply to his knees at Alina’s side. “Please, no.”

“You must acknowledge what is true, moi tsar,” Ivan says, coming to kneel beside him. “You lost this child, but your wife is young yet. You may have another child.”

“I wanted him,” Aleksander whispers. “I wanted him so much.”

“The queen is young and fertile, and she longs for you,” Ivan says, standing. “It won’t be hard to conceive again.”

“She won’t,” he responds with absolute certainty. Ivan furrows his brow, but he doesn’t ask. Aleksander knows that Svetlana will never fall with child again. Not by him.

In the long centuries he’s been alive, only Svetlana was able to conceive a child with him. No matter how hard he tried, no matter if his partner was Grisha or otkazat’sya, his seed never took. Perhaps it was only that he needed to lay with a sun summoner, that only the sun made human would be able to bear a child of the shadows. And now that he knows it’s possible for him, that he could have a child, he knows he will never lay with his wife again.

The only child he wants, the only child he can imagine himself having in the future, is Alina’s.

Aleksander looks up at her sleeping face. She’s almost ethereal, like an angel out of a story in her slumber. He brushes his knuckles against her cheek.

“Moi tsar, shall I wake her up?” Fedyor asks. Aleksander stands, straightening his kefta. They’re all tired after last night, and Fedyor looks like he is dead on his feet.

Aleksander clears his throat and nods. Fedyor crosses his hands and moves to rouse Alina, but nothing happens. Fedyor cocks his head and tries again, but nothing. He turns to Ivan, who silently comes to stand at his side. They try again together, but Alina does not so much as whimper.

Fedyor dashes from the room to fetch Genya, and they try again, and again, and again. They’re three of the most powerful corporalki alive, and they can’t wake her.

He feels the dread begin to set in. “Is she awake?” he asks, even though he knows the answer.

Fedyor looks at him with pity. He shakes his head. “No, moi tsar. She won’t wake up. I don’t know if she can.”

///

Genya goes to find David, coaxing him out of his lab and away from the sea whip’s scales. Later, she says that David was sick when she told him Alina would not wake. He faints when he sees Alina’s unconscious body. When he comes to, the story comes spilling out of him, and all of Aleksander’s theories are confirmed.

Alina is bound to the stag. No other Grisha would ever be able to bear its amplifier the way Alina was meant to. The stag’s amplifier feeds into her, providing her with the power and strength she needed to stay alive when she was on the run and again when David put her under the knife. The amplifier does not distinguish between its own power and Svetlana’s, up to and including Svetlana’s life. It’s the price she pays for wearing an amplifier that does not belong to her. There is no way to separate Alina from the stag without possibly creating an abomination of light that would rival the Fold, not that he would want to.

For once in his life, David does not struggle to find his words. He sits with his back straight and looks at Aleksander directly when he reveals he’s known his true identity for months.

So that was how Alina knew.

David holds his head high as he tells Aleksander the consequences of killing the stag. The ring which represents his marriage to Svetlana, his union with her, ties him instead to Alina. He could take it off—David advises him that it may be better if he does—but he finds the very idea abhorrent.

It’s ironic, really; Svetlana had begged him for weeks in the early days of their marriage to wear the wedding ring she had made for him. She all but swooned when he had a ring made for himself out of the very same antlers that collared her. Even knowing that his ring opens him up to a situation that may result in Alina’s death, Svetlana’s death, his death, or any combination thereof, he still can’t find it in himself to take it off.

Not when it eternally binds him to Alina.

///

The Healers inform him that afternoon that his wife will not wake up. Fedyor is at his side when he’s told, and he sees Fedyor’s brow nearly shoot into his hairline out of the corner of his eye. They both know it must be more than coincidence, but there’s nothing to be done.

Svetlana’s unconsciousness doesn’t hurt him at all. It couldn’t be further from the pain he felt in his heart when Fedyor told him Alina would not wake, but he still pities Svetlana.

He’s sure that she didn’t know she was pregnant. But she won’t wake, so he can’t tell her. She won’t be present for the funeral of their child.

///

It takes two weeks for the headstone to be completed.

It’s the first time he’s left Alina without someone to stand guard at her side since she fell asleep. He doesn’t want to leave her alone, but he knows he must do this. He’ll never be able to forgive himself if he doesn’t go.

Genya has always had an eye for fine things, and the resting place she chooses for his son is one of the finest on the grounds of the Little Palace. An immature cherry tree is just a few yards away, far enough that it won’t disturb his son’s grave but close enough that it might provide shade once it’s fully grown.

His son will be able to see the blossoms every spring.

The grave is small, but he supposes it’s fitting. A small grave for a small babe. The headstone is made of dark grey granite. The date the boy died is carved in the stone, but there is no name. At the bottom is his symbol, the sun in eclipse: the only acknowledgment that this grave belongs to his son.

Only three people are aware that Svetlana bore and bled his son: Genya, who informed him on that horrible night; Fedyor, who made the small coffin that his son was buried in; and Ivan, who was with Svetlana when the bleeding began.

No one else knows about the funeral he is attending but the three people standing at his side as he lowers his son’s coffin into the ground. He even sends his oprichniki away, wanting to have as much privacy as he can while he mourns the child he never held.

He stands at the foot of the smallest grave he’s ever dug long after they leave him. He stays through the night until the next dawn.

It’s the first time he doesn’t think about how terrified he is of the dark.

#DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT #grishaverse #shadow and bone #aleksander morozova #alina starkov #alina x aleksander #darklina #genya safin #ivan kaminsky #ivan no last name #fedyor kaminsky #david kostyk #mal oretsev #second best cinematic universe #the once and future queen #publish or perish

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