i.

The boy is fourteen.

Intellectually, he knows this. He knows down to the day exactly how long it has been since Alina left him. It would have been the hour, but she had snuck away in the night, leaving him to wake up confused and alone.

But the only time Alina has allowed him to see the boy had been when he was an infant, and she had insisted on cradling it all the time. That had stopped once the boy could walk, or around that time, and he had been grateful.

He only tugs on their tether to see his wife. Any shadowy shape in the background is at best, an unnecessary distraction. At worst, it is the thing that tore them apart. Again.

So knowing that the boy is fourteen, and seeing the slight form that is very clearly not an infant, are two very different things.

ii.

He feels the shadows, of course. He is ancient, too deeply connected to Ravka and the dark places within it not to feel a new shadow staining the land.

His first instinct is to tear a new army from his soul and neutralise the threat. It subsides, however, cool logic eating away at the emotion almost immediately. The nichevo'ya are a cudgel - effective, against an opponent weakened by terror, but blunt. The weight of centuries have ensured that terror is no longer a useful tool when it comes to Alina.

It makes for an interesting marriage. At least, it had, until she had left to construct a new weapon against him.

He does leave, eventually. But he does it on horseback, alone, after arranging appropriate measures for the caretaking of the country.

That grates on him. It's necessary, but he has seen what Ravka had become without him - him and Alina - at its helm. Toleave it for even as short a time as he expects this to take, sits uneasily with him.

He considers reaching out to Alina again, pointing this out to her. But she has clamped down on their connection again. Not severed it, of course. Even Alina isn't that cruel. But when he feels along the tether that ties them together, he hits a brick wall before he gets to her. He could have smashed through it without trouble, but…

His wife might not be that cruel. It does not mean she has no cruelty in her at all. The past fourteen years and more have proven that, just as she has proven that the wellbeing of Ravka does not mean as much to her as it does to him.

When he sees her again, he will remind her.

iii.

The boy sulks.

It's pathetic, he thinks, and wonders if he has perhaps overestimated Alina's ability to control this situation. His wife has a tendency to cloud his thoughts at the best of times, after all, and the centuries have done nothing to change that.

Possibly, in focusing on what she had done, he has given her too much credit for what she was doing. Tracking them silently through the woods, he notes the sickly pallor to the boy's skin, the dark circles that speak of illness and a lack of sleep.

And a lack of power.

Surprise pricks at him over that, too. He isn't stupid. The power is there; he follows the thrum of it through the very air. But after what Alina had done to herself, so many years ago now, he finds it difficult to imagine that she would require her boy to suppress his own powers. Put off as he might be with the whole concept, he's still aware that she...cares for the boy. Hiding abilities, he understands. Cutting them off completely, he never will.

The hole in his heart that had once held his mother gnaws itself a little wider, and he feels his jaw flex, teeth aching with sudden pressure. Those are memories he neither needs nor wants, and he can't help but mark another transgression against Alina for bringing them up.

That might be a little irrational, but after being abandoned by this woman for the umpteenth time, he feels that he's entitled to some emotion.

iv.

"You should have told me."

It takes him a week at least to hunt them down (a disgustingly simple endeavour, after spending so many years searching fruitlessly). An additional two days are spent following them, gathering information. In that time, the boy does little and speaks less. Not much is learned about him, except that he is sullen, ungrateful, and clearly has no appreciation for the woman who is his mother.

"Which part, zvyozdochka?"

His lip curls at the nickname, even as he sees the boy's jaw tighten. He does not notice the similarities in their facial structure.

"I told you-"

"I know."

The curl twists into a smirk at the cool tone to her voice. It is the voice of a woman who does not back down. Ever. He is achingly familiar with that one.

"I know," she continues, "what you told me. But as we have agreed that I am still your mother, no matter the colour of my hair, I will call you what I wish. It is a mother's prerogative."

A mother.

The word seems almost alien to him. There is only one thing that comes to mind when he thinks of it, and he has no wish to think of it. Looking at Alina now, in person finally, instead of the shade he has hunted for years, he sees his wife. He does not see a mother.

He does not want to.

v.

At first, he is pleased that Alina does not seem to notice his presence. It would hinder his information gathering, after all, if she picked up on it. It would force them to some sort of conclusion, and he hasn't entirely decided on his course of action as of yet.

But a day passes, two, and he begins to wonder. Why hasn't she noticed him? She has clamped down on their connection, yes, the first and foremost indicator of his presence. But she had done that so he wouldn't find her. Shouldn't she then be hyper-aware of the possibility that he would?

Why isn't she waiting for him?

Once his mind leads him down the path, it isn't too difficult to find the answer. For a brief second, naked hatred flickers through him as he stares at the boy, although he can only see the back of his head. His wife focusses on the face in moments, instants, careful not to seem like she is staring herself. Careful not to seem as though all of her formidable attention is narrowed on the boy.

But he knows her tells, has them engraved into his very being. Perhaps she can succeed in lying to him on occasion, but she does not realise he is there, and so feels no reason to hide them. She is consumed by the boy in front of her, this ignorant, idiot nobody, who doesn't deserve the massive power that has been graced him by sheer luck alone.

He almost reveals himself, puts an end to it there. Alina does not forgive, and she does not forget. He will have to endure more years without her, no doubt, until she wears herself down to nothing. But if he endures them alone, so will she. And so she will return to him in the end, as she always does.

He had a mother, once. Now, there is only Alina. And it is only fair that Alina has only him.

vi.

But then she speaks.

vii.

"I kept you ignorant," she says softly. "So ignorant, I'm not sure how to explain to you what you want to know. If I'm honest, Isaak, I don't want to tell you. I want to run with you and keep going until we reach some part of the world that he - that Ravka has not touched."

There are no such places. Ravka is not the whole world, but there is no place over the centuries that they have not touched. He notes the way she does not say 'they', though, and his fingers twitch.

"Was it a test?" The boy's voice is small. Pathetic, like the rest of him. "Was I supposed to do something? Prove that I was worthy of - of being - whatever it is you wanted me to be?"

Alina leans forward without hesitation, calloused fingers cupping the boy's cheeks. "You are everything I wanted you to be."

That pricks his interest. Because there has to be a reason, after all. Why, after hundreds of years, Alina would have allowed this to happen. She had wanted something, and now that she has allowed the boy to manifest his powers, that something must be realised.

"What does that mean?" the boy whispers.

"It means you are kind, Isaak. Thoughtful. You aren't afraid to defend yourself, but you don't needlessly provoke others, either." Her thumb moves over his cheek, and she sighs. "And you are without ambition."

Without…?

The boy snorts. "That's not something most mothers hope for in their children, mama."

"Most children do not have your father."

A picture begins to form in his mind, separate and distinct from the assumptions he has long held about the birth of this child. He has to resist the urge to tug on the tether binding him to his wife, to check with her, to demand answers from her. He has demanded answers from her since she left him, and to no avail.

So he stays where he is, and listens.

"My father," the boy echoes. "The...king."

Alina draws her hand away. She inhabits the silence between them; the boy might not be able to tell, but he can sense her every deliberation, the weight she lends to every moment as she considers it, considers her words, considers at what precise point she ought to open her mouth.

And he knows what it is she will say next. His own mouth opens, a protest forming on his lips despite himself, but she has timed it perfectly.

"His name," she says heavily, "is Aleksander Morozova."

viii.

There's no staying hidden after that. Aleksander doesn't even stop to think about it, unfolding his body from the shadows and stepping out into the clearing they have made camp in.

The boy, unsurprisingly deaf to his movements, doesn't even turn around.

"That name was not yours to give," he tells her, and the evening air draws tighter around them all.

From the corner of his gaze, he can see the boy start violently, but he pays it no mind. He has eyes only for his wife, sitting calm and cross-legged in a peasant's dress, with her hands in her lap. Beautiful, despite everything.

"I grew tired of waiting for you to join us," she says simply, and anyone else might have thought her unafraid. But Aleksander can see the defiant lift to her jaw, the way her eyes flicker to her son. "And here I thought that what's yours is mine."

He steps around her, not touching her. Not yet. Some of the darkness clings to him as he circles her, taking in every inch of what he has not seen in too long.

"Can a man consider a woman his wife if she leaves him for nearly fifteen years?"

"The paper doesn't dissolve because it isn't within my reach."

He chuckles, low and amused. Despite the circumstances, despite everything, he is glad to be here. To be so close again. There is still the matter of the boy to be dealt with, but Aleksander ignores that for now, indulging himself with a light touch. His fingers brush against the pallor of her cheek, and he doesn't imagine the faint way she leans into it, even as her fingers curl in her lap. Power surges between them, ancient and familiar.

"Ours was not just a paper marriage," he reminds her.

Fingers curl around his wrist, tugging it away. But she does not let go of it, so he considers it a victory. "Aleksander."

Her eyes flicker again to the boy, and he feels that abrupt surge of hatred rush through him again, It has been centuries since she cared enough about anyone else to give it away like that. He feels her fingernails dig into soft flesh as the emotion hits her, feels her own wave of terror rise up to meet it.

"What?" He pitches his voice caring, concerned, even as he steps deliberately between the boy and her line of sight. "Afraid that he'll see you as you really are, Alina?"

"Stop it!"

Aleksander doesn't even glance over his shoulder at the boy. He can see it without looking; no doubt there will be hands clenched into fists and flashing brown eyes, a jaw lifted in the same way as the woman before him.

Aleksander doesn't need the reminder. He tosses his free hand out lazily, a thread of shadow snaking towards the boy. And that is when Alina moves.

ix.

He's missed this. The light flares bright between them, enough to blind him, but he has never needed to see to know where she is. Curious to know what she will do, he lets her pull him off balance, compliant.

The faint breeze caused by an arm swinging down makes his eyebrows raise, even as he feels the surge of her power drawing on him. Her Cut devastates a swath of forest before them, not incidentally severing the thread of shadow that had been reaching for the boy.

"I knew you would misunderstand," she snarls. He expects her to stop then, but she doesn't; her next Cut gives him enough time to wrest his arm from her grip, but only just. The heat of it as it flies past him is enough to sting.

"You've had fifteen years to explain," he points out, and feels a sneer crack across his face at the sight of her pushing the boy behind her. He hears the boom of his own power before he even realises that he has clapped his hands together.

"Isaak, run."

His wife's face is drawn, but flushed. The white of her hair floats in a halo around her from the sheer force of the heat wisping off her body. The boy remains behind her, and Aleksander does not bother checking for his reaction.

Alina in the grip of her power is an all-consuming sort of sight.

"Mama, no. No, I won't leave you here with him!"

Brave and stupid. The son of an Alina from another age, another universe in which she never joined him, in which-

The word tracker drifts across his mind, and Aleksander brings his arm down in a sharp Cut.

The world turns white around them, and he laughs as the very fabric of his shadows dissipate into nothing before the Cut reaches them.

"Does it feel good, Alina?" he calls, satisfaction in his voice. "Feeling it running through your veins again, singing in your nerves, all of that power? Yours and mine. Everything you gave up for this scrap of child, back in the palm of your hand."

"Isaak, if you love me, you will run." Alina's chest rises and falls, and they aren't touching but he can feel her fear from this distance. Disgust and loathing make something slick stir in the pit of his soul, something long untouched, but not forgotten.

"But-"

"They do not call me Sol Koroleva for nothing, zvyozdochka, now go!"

He has heard that roar before. From his Alina, on battlefields, when facing whole armies. But there had been no fear then, either.

This is new, and Aleksander decides that he hates it.

He has grown used to not being her villain.

x.

The boy runs. One does not refuse the Sun Queen.

xi.

Aleksander thinks for a moment of giving chase. But he has not yet reached a decision on what to do about the boy, so he leaves it for the time being.

Well, for that reason, and for the fact that Alina brings both of her arms down this time, two Cuts covering the boy's retreat.

"What's the matter, Alina?" he croons, his body avoiding one, a fist of his power coming up to smother the other. "Is his training not complete? Did that accident the other day ruin your plans for him?"

"Not in the way you're thinking." Bright bursts of light explode around his head. "He's not your replacement, Aleksander."

He shuts his eyes against the light and feels for her instead, retaliating with his own twisting of shadows. It doesn't blind, but disorients; he plays on the imagination, on the fear of what might be hiding in the dark. And inside him, he feels the stirring of merzost for the first time in an age.

He has to win, after all. Has to show her that she was wrong to leave him, wrong to turn their lives inside out like this. Wrong to have a son, with his face and his power.

"Then why leave?" he counters, and Cuts again. "Why hide, why spend so many years ensuring I could not see him to know what he looks like? My own son."

"Don't say that like it means anything to you." Her own hands clap together, and a wave of heat billows towards him. He feels the sweat break out on his forehead and ignores it, wraps the fast falling night around himself like a cloak for protection. "And don't treat me like an idiot. We both know that if I had stayed, if you had acknowledged him, Ravka's heir would have had an accident within the first few months of life."

He sneers, and his own wave for blackness roils towards her, seeking, consuming. He will eat her heat, her light, take every part of her back into himself until they are together again, until she is a part of him once more. "Children are such fragile creatures."

The succession of Cuts that tear through even this blanket of shadows takes him by surprise. They were playing before, but there is no provision in her manoeuvres now for his escape. She expects him to defend himself or die trying, and for a half second he considers backing down.

But only half a second.

"I suppressed his power!" Her voice cracks over the whoosh of her offensive, sharp pants punctuating her words. "I know you've been watching us. Tell me you see a threat to your power when you see him, and I will know you're lying. He isn't trained, he has no dreams of being greater than what he is-"

The snarl splits his face before he can control it. He can hear his blood surge in his ears, the power in his veins, and the scratch of old claws digging into ancient wounds. There is no stopping it now, and he doesn't want to. Aleksander tears into his very soul and rips out a soldier of pure darkness.

"What he is is already greater than any other human has a right to be." The nichevo'ya erupt from him in a cloud of blackness, and he thrusts them towards her blindly. If he can't make her see with love, then he will do it with pain.

And then he really is blind, as a deafening screech pulls the very air into pieces. The pull of Alina's power echoes inside him, and then her soldiers of light spill from her fingers, forming a line of defence between her and the nichevo'ya.

The skittering, clacking sound of his summons combines with the hum of hers, filling the silence between them until there is no silence, but a cacophony.

"I knew a girl," he says, and his voice is low, and it carries across the distance anyway, "who wasn't trained, and had no dreams of greatness. Not until the right person found her, and taught her to imagine something more."

"Isaak isn't me," she replies. Just as quiet, just as careful. "And he is not you, and I am not Baghra. I haven't whispered words of power into his ear at night, I haven't told him he is destined to lead, I haven't promised him the world. He will only have a reason to overthrow you if you give him one."

A humourless smile stole his face. "Alina." Just her name, chiding, as though she is seventeen again and him still ancient. "Do you think I will not?"

It's in his nature.

"And even," he continues, because this is a battle of words as much as wills and power, "if I refrained? If I let him be, and if he found no fault in me to follow in your footsteps for, what kind of life would he have? You had seventeen years of being alone, Alina. I can assure you, it was nothing compared to centuries. You think you have suffered, in your long life so far, but you have not known true pain. Not like I did. Not like he will."

His shadows against her light cast crazed patterns throughout the clearing, and they dance over her face, making her features impossible to read. Even for him.

But Aleksander doesn't need to see his wife's face to know her nature. She loves too much, whether the recipients of her love deserve it or not. It's one of the few things she has proven him wrong about, in time; he had thought it would take her eighty, maybe ninety years to lose that tendency.

Yet here they are. He presses on, digging his fingers into that weakness and prying it open, pouring in an age of pain that he will never allow her to have. They have done terrible things to each other, over the years, but Aleksander will not leave Alina Starkov alone.

"There are no others like us," he whispers to her. "But we, at least, have each other. He will have no one. It's a fate worse than death, Alina. Don't leave him to it."

For a moment, nothing happens. But Aleksander waits, confident, because she has to see. She has to.

Finally, she lifts a hand, clenches it. The soldiers of light dissipate, and Aleksander draws the nichevo'ya back into him with a sigh of relief, smiling. It's instinct to step towards her, to cross the distance between them, but her arm doesn't come down.

Aleksander stops short. The glow of a Cut wobbles along the edge of her hand, not yet released. His wife's chin lifts in that defiant way of hers, as she sets it against her own throat.

xii.

"I am not Baghra," she says evenly. "But we have some things in common. I am not afraid to die for my son. And you will swear to me that you will let him live his life - however long and painful that may end up being - or I will return you to the agony of solitude here and now."

xiii.

He stops.

xiv.

"Alina-"

Her name chokes him. He reaches for her, not with his power but with his hand, desperate to pull hers away. But she steps back, out of his reach, and for some reason he can't force himself to follow.

It's the look in her eyes. No one can turn brown into a cold colour like his wife, and yet this is new even for her. He could cut himself on that gaze.

"Madraya?"

Alina closes her eyes, as if shielding herself against some attack. The boy steps back into view; after a moment, steps between his mother and the Darkling.

"What did you do to her?" he demands. "Why is she doing that?"

The boy's fists are clenched, and yes, there is the chin lifting. But in the wavering light cast by Alina's power, Aleksander can see that the eyes spitting fire at him are not brown after all.

"I asked you to leave, Isaak," Alina says softly, and there is something broken in her voice, something that Aleksander does not understand.

"The noises stopped. I was worried." The boy twists his head, looking over his shoulder like he doesn't realise just how dangerous turning his back on the Darkling is. "It's okay, mama. I'll make him stop. I don't know how, but I will."

Alina's eyes open again, but it is Aleksander she looks at, not her son. Their gazes meet over the boy's head, and he can see that her hand doesn't tremble even a hair's breadth.

I will return you to the agony of eternal solitude.

"I swear it," he says abruptly, and even he can't tell if the disgust in his voice is directed at her, or himself, or the boy in between them. "Put your hand down, Alina, I swear it."

Her hand stays where it is, long enough to make a fine tip on her point. And then finally, finally, she lets it drop, and Aleksander remembers how to breathe.

His oath is tested almost immediately as the boy launches himself at him with a low cry, but Alina lunges after her son, catching him around the waist.

"Remember what I told you about getting into fights," she says fiercely, even as he struggles to escape her.

One gangly arm flies out, gesturing at the clearing. Idly, Aleksander looks around, noting that the devastation is about typical for a fight between him and his wife. "You don't think that this counts as hitting first!?"

"He did not hit you first," Alina points out, holding tightly. "And I am safe, zvyozdochka. I can assure you that, no matter what you have seen here tonight, I have always been completely safe."

She's right, Aleksander thinks bitterly. And it's not because she had been unwilling to carry out her threat. He can feel her resolve as certainly as he feels his own power; if he harms the boy, she will leave him, and it will be permanent this time.

No, she is safe because he will not bear that. And so she can wring whatever promise she likes out of him with ten words, and remain that way.

The boy relaxes in inches, until he finally relaxes enough that Alina feels she can let him go. Rather than launching himself at Aleksander again, he turns and throws himself at his mother, clinging tightly to her. Alina's arms come up almost immediately, and her grasp on the boy is just as tight, just as desperate.

"You have," the boy mutters, as Aleksander slips silently back into the shadows, "a terrible taste in men."

xv.

It takes three months for his wife to return to Os Alta.

Aleksander sits in his study, sprawled in his chair, watching the candle on his desk sputter in the breeze from the open window. A nearby clock tells him that he may as well stay up the rest of the night, for how much is left of it.

The door creaks open, sending the light skittering wildly around the room. There is only one person it could possibly be, but Aleksander does not turn around. Just in case it is, just in case it is not.

"I missed this," the Queen sighs, and the sound of a travelling cloak crumpling to the floor whispers towards him.

"You could have had this whenever you wanted," Aleksander reminds his desk, and bitterness lines every letter of his words.

"Are you going to waste my homecoming rehashing conversation we've already had, Aleksander?" Light fingers run over his shoulder, down over his chest, and he catches the glitter of the seawhip's scales even in this dim light.

Slowly, half-convinced this is still just a visitation, he reaches up to wrap her fingers with his. There is a faint pause from both of them, and then she squeezes his hand.

His chair hits the floor as he stands, dragging her towards him, crushing her body flush against his. And she has the temerity to smirk at him, even as her free hand wraps around his waist, keeping him close.

"The boy?" he asks, and he hates that he has to ask about this child of theirs, that he must open his life with Alina to this interloper.

And yet. He still asks, because there is some small part of him that can't deny curiosity, even as the rest of him insists on apathy.

"Installed in the Little Palace, with the rest of the students." Her fingers trace idle patterns on the small of his back, like she has been gone a few weeks, instead of a short lifetime. "He wants to remain anonymous, for the time being."

Aleksander snorts. "And how does he plan to do that? It's not as though he is some common Tidemaker."

The smirk doesn't go away, even as his wife extricates her wrist from his grasp so she can lay her fingers on his cheek. "Ask him yourself."

His lip curls automatically, but then her mouth is there to distract him, the kiss harsh and demanding. He doesn't hesitate in picking her up, tugging her legs around his hips. The candle sputters out as it hits the ground along with the rest of whatever was on his desk; he's sure it was important, but he would gladly watch it burn if it got him closer to his wife even a second sooner.

The hard edge of the wood presses against his thighs as he sets her down on it, as he revels in her low chuckle, the taste of her, the feel. Their clothes join her cloak on the ground as he reminds her, in excruciating detail, of just what else she missed.

He'll have to deal with the boy at some point. But later.

Much later.

And that's that! I hope this chapter answered any questions y'all had, and i doubly hoped that you enjoyed it c: Thanks for reading!