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War is hell.
Aleksandr knows this better than any living person. He has waged war for almost as long as he has been alive, fighting for the rights of his people.
The Odarennyy had been few, their conclaves secret, their every action painted with fear of discovery. Aleksandr remembers well, drifting from community to community, an outcast even amongst them, hunted because of the amplification in his bones, the shadows that marked him other. He had been almost killed too many times to count when he had been younger.
But despite his mother’s whispered poison, how could he blame them, when they targeted him out of fear, out of necessity? Amplifiers were rare, living amplifiers of the Morozov line even rarer. The power his bones could have brought to an odarennyy able to claim them would have been immense, may have been able to save them and theirs.
For a time.
But Aleksandr is unique, even beyond his amplification, for he is eternal. Not immortal, not in the way of the gods, but after a point, he simply stopped aging. 700 years and counting, and he still looks to be a man of his mid-thirties, face as pretty as it has ever been.
He fought a man’s war to unify Ravka, to unite them all under Anastas’ banner, and was betrayed for it. His people slaughtered like pigs, his wife in all but name cut down in front of him. His grief, his anger, his despair, they caused him to make a terrible mistake, to unleash a hell beyond even his control.
And he has tried.
Centuries, he has tried to right his wrong, to fix the tear he has ripped right through the heart of his country. But the creatures inside, the Volcra, the immortal remains of Anastas’ men, oh do they hunger and hate. He cannot go near, not without drawing every single merzost-touched abomination to his side, and as formidable a fighter he is, he cannot slay what does not die.
Tsar after Tsar calls on him, tracks him down, issues their ultimatums. He learns to speak as they speak, double-tongued and meaningless. He learns how to move between their permissions and their demands, how to twist orders to his liking, how to manipulate and extort.
He rises from the Black Heretic, the nation’s most reviled odarennyy, to the Black General, the Lantsov’s most trusted advisor, the Starless Saint that sought only to make reparations for his costly mistake. Under his growing shadow, he nurtures his people, brings them to his side, raises them as soldiers in the Tsar’s armies and sends them out to kill or be killed.
It is a kindness. It is a cruelty. Better to die fighting, treasured for what they can do, than to die hunted like a rabid dog, drowned at birth for fear of what they might do.
If only his conscious could agree.
***
But War is Hell.
He fights, always.
The current Lantsov Tsar faces war on three fronts.
The Fjerdans to the North, who despise witches and despise Ravka in turn for the country’s thin tolerance. Their Drüskelle sneak into Ravka and hunt down the odarennyy, kill them outright or capture them to be burned alive in their disgusting trials.
The Shu to the South, who do not despise the odarennyy, but want to unlock their gifts, take them from those they see as unworthy and give them to their nobles, their warriors. The Shu, who also sneak into Ravka to hunt down the odarennyy, steal them away to their secret labs, experiment on and dissect them in their quest to find what makes them tick.
And Ravka itself, the West desiring to finally break out from the control of the East, to use the Fold as a border for their new country, backed by the Kerch, by the Shu, by Fjerda.
And the Tsar turns to his General, the most powerful odarennyy remaining in the world, to fix it.
But Aleksandr is one man. One man driven out to the horrors of war again and again and again.
***
He makes them pay.
Dearly.
Let off his metaphorical leash, he rips through Fjerdan armies until they pull back, offer the Tsar’s son a wife and a treaty.
It is a political play, one that changes nothing, really, for the Drüskelle still make their hunting forays into Ravka, but the attacks are less obvious, less brutal. Homes packed up in the dead of night, looking for all the world like families simply leaving.
Aleksandr knows, but cannot do anything, his hands tied by the very politics he uses to protect his people.
He loops around the boarders to West Ravka, Cuts through the rebellious leaders in a public display of power and installs the Tsar’s personally chosen sycophants. The silent people look up at him with eyes as dead inside as any corpse, hungry and tired and scared, aching for their families split apart by the draft the Tsar has enforced and the food they must give up feeding the East.
He walks away knowing that were he a good man, he would fight for their independence just as he was trying to fight for the odarennyy.
But he is not a good man.
He is an abomination, good only for the destruction he brings and the concessions he can wheedle out of those who hold his collar.
And then, he turns towards Shu Han.
***
Oh, but the Shu scare him.
He fights. What else can he do?
He fights, conscious that here there is no such thing as death, not for him. No, for him there only awaits a table in a lab, torn apart inch by inch as their scientists commit atrocities the few survivors he had talked to could only hint at, minds flinching back from the trauma of what they had experienced.
He fights, knowing that failure means his people will be thrown to the wolves that surround Ravka, that only his success in bringing Shu Han to its knees before his might will let him return to the Little Palace and the odarennyy he guards.
He fights and he fights and he fights, tearing down entire regiments, slaughtering thousands upon thousands of eerily similar young men.
It is only after the field is ankle deep in blood, bodies piled as far as the eye can see, the stench of death and decay and the horrid buzzing of the flies in the air, that a white flag is raised.
He collapses to his knees, panting, waiting. He is bone-tired, drained near-empty, and yet he is ready, still, a final Cut building in secret by his knees. He will kill himself before he lets them capture him.
But no one comes. Not for him. They start to gather the bodies of their dead, and to them, he is a non-entity.
Swallowing, he rises to his knees, turns, and walks away.
***
The peace-treaty talks are held in a large tent just beside the field, still stained red with blood. The Empress herself makes the journey down, even as the Tsar himself sends only a few advisors, none of noble rank.
Aleksandr watches as the woman steps daintily on the backs of servants that fling themselves eagerly before her to lay down to prevent the bloody mud from touching her robes.
Her tiger-gold eyes stare him down as the advisors list terms and payments and conditions. He does not look away, no matter how many pointed elbows he gets from the old man beside him.
“Leave us,” she finally says, and the room clears out immediately.
She studies him for a long moment more. “What will it take for you to leave our country, never to return?”
Aleksandr shakes his head. “I cannot promise that. I go where my Tsar wills me.”
She smiles, faintly. “For now.” She turns away, pours them tea. “My ancestors did the same. Bided their time, speaking the lies their rulers wished to hear, bending their knees to those they knew were unworthy. They waited, patient, unseen. Plans within plans, passed down for generations until the moment they struck. And now here I sit, Empress of a nation that once bowed only to men.”
Her smile grows teeth, eyes sparkling. “Tell me, Heretic, what will it take to make you leave this country?”
Aleksandr’s hand trembles as he sips his own tea. “The odarennyy,” he says. “Shut down your labs, send them to me.”
Her smile gentles. “Such a thing you ask. Not jewels, not brides. Not the backing of a political powerhouse to legitimize your claim when you take it.” She sips her tea. “Tell me, Heretic, tell me why. You claim them yours, but they are not. Most look upon you with fear and hatred, would rather see you dead than living.”
“I claim them all the same,” he says.
His hands do not tremble.
The Empress nods once.
***
He journeys home with the advisors the Tsar has sent, listening only half-heartedly to their whining and their threats.
He is bone-weary, tired in a way he has not been for years, centuries even. His dreams are filled with the dead and dying, with the screams and the cries of those he felled and those that mourned them. Past and present combine to a motley crew of terrors, leaving him brooding and surly during the day.
And then they are attacked by a regiment of Shu soldiers.
And even as tired as he is, he has been expecting this betrayal. Politics is a tricksy beast. The treaty is only good if there is proof that both parties signed – and he is a tempting prize on top of that.
He fights.
He fights even harder when he notices that these soldiers are not fighting to kill, but to capture.
The advisors die quickly, the soldiers die even quicker.
And then his heart slows, unnatural calm spreading through him, bringing him to his knees.
Heartrender.
Odarennyy.
He blinks up at the remaining soldiers edging closer. Twitches his finger.
A man stands before him, a snarl on his face, a hidden dagger in his sleeve.
The man suddenly growls, snapping his wrist in a practiced motion and the dagger flies out to settle in his hand. There is sudden shouting, a furious voice barking out an order too fast for Aleksandr to catch the words, but it does not matter.
He smiles, and despite the lethargy dragging his limbs down, he is still fast enough.
The man’s head rolls.
The dagger drops to the ground.
Aleksandr lets the dark consume him.
***
He wakes briefly, tied to a horse. Watches as they plod along slim paths, up and up and up into the mountains.
A touch to the back of his neck, and he slips under again.
***
Rouses deep in the night to the sight of a wooden ceiling. Soft scents of rosemary and sandalwood ebbing from a small burner placed next to him. He lies on a mat in a room bare of anything but himself and the burner.
His eyes focus on the dim spark of light until the sunlight creeps through the room.
Soft footsteps echo in the hallway beyond his room, a slim shadow, vague and indistinct. The footsteps disappear, and silence remains.
He counts the seconds. Watches the shadows move. An hour or so later, the footsteps come back, stop before his room. A soft thud, something being placed on the floor. The wall slides open.
A young woman kneeling on the floor stares at him, no expression on her face. She pauses as if surprised to see him awake, but then turns and picks up the tray, rising elegantly to her stockinged feet as she goes.
He watches her as she sets kneels again beside him. She empties her tray, placing each item neatly down in a row – pot of tea, empty cup, a covered bowl of what he assumes is food, a small bowl of water and a folded cloth. Then she rises to her feet again, and leaves, the wall-like door sliding shut again with a soft thud.
Whisper silent, every movement economized to be as swift as possible without betraying fear or unease, face empty of everything accept serenity.
He does not eat.
***
Aleksandr dreams that first week.
Driven to fever by both his expenditure of power and his refusal to eat or drink anything his captives give him, he falls into illness quickly.
He thinks he wakes himself on multiple occasions screaming, shadows flooding the room. But he is never truly lucid, cannot tell his waking moments from his dreams.
He is always screaming in his dreams.
But interspersed between his terrors there is a soft voice, humming as delicate hands pet his hair.
It is the first gentleness he has known since he had been a small child held tight to his mother’s bosom.
***
His fever breaks one night and he lays there on his pallet unable to control his shivering.
His throat hurts, his body aches, and for a long moment he thinks he would rather be dead than reduced to this.
Then the woman slips into his room, pulling him half into her lap, crooning wordlessly as she drapes a thick woolen blanket over his shivering form, slim hand gently carding through his hair.
“Sleep,” she says in words that sound Shu but that he cannot understand. “You are safe here in this house.”
***
When he next wakes, there is a little Shu child staring at him curiously, munching on what looks like skewered chicken.
Aleksandr stares back, taken by surprise.
Pounding footsteps echo on the floor outside his room, and then an older boy, exasperated, darts in, hauling up the small child. “Momma told you not to come here,” the boy snaps, but his hands are gentle even as he tugs him out. “We won’t get to play with Uncle if you’re caught.”
“Too late,” he hears. There is amusement in her voice. Soft footsteps pad closer. “Go wash up. Uncle will be available later. For now, he would like to speak with our guest.”
The children groan, but dart away.
She appears in his doorway, a bundle of cloth in her arms. “Fresh clothes,” she says, placing the bundle down by the door. “Please knock when you are ready.”
He does not understand her. When he makes no movement, she frowns lightly. “Do speak?” she asks in halting Ravkan.
“Where am I?” he asks instead.
She blinks. “Village. Uncle explain. You dress. Knock when done. Yes?”
Aleksandr nods. She nods back, bows her head, then leaves.
***
‘Uncle’ turns out to be a tall Shu man of indeterminate age with sharp gold eyes and a strangely predatory smile. Aleksandr dimly recalls him from the fight.
“Welcome to our humble village,” he says, bowing slightly. “You may call me Botkin. What is your name?”
Aleksandr does not bow back. “I didn’t have much of a choice. Why am I here?”
Botkin’s head tilts, his smile sharp. “It is considered of the utmost rudeness for one not to introduce themselves.”
“You know who I am. You went through quite a bit of trouble to capture me. Why am I here?”
Botkin shakes his head. “Curiosity. Fate. One or the other. You were not the one we sought, General, but you are the one we have nonetheless.”
He turns, as if to walk away.
“Why am I here?” Aleksandr demands again, sending his shadows out, slamming the man against the wall.
He immediately hears running footsteps, the sound of swords coming unsheathed. The guards are unneeded.
Botkin gestures with a single finger. Unnatural ease calms his racing heart, settles his anger, loosens his control. He falls to his knees, muscles feeling like mud. His shadows drift away like so much smoke.
It scares him. Never has he been this vulnerable.
But Botkin does not stop his heart. Does not let his men carve him to pieces. He simply smiles. “The rains have come to the mountains, General. Then the snows will follow. The roads will be washed out until the height of Summer. Until then, you are our Honored Guest.”
He bows again, deeper, then turns and leaves.
Aleksandr remains on the floor, mind racing in a body too languid to move.
***
They settle into something of a routine.
Botkin summons him at least once a week, to practice his Ravkan, supposedly. Aleksandr knows the common dialect of Shu spoken by the Imperial Court and used by the soldiers, but whatever these villagers speak is just different enough that he can only understand bits and pieces.
Botkin and he work out a deal – Botkin speaks in Ravkan, Aleksandr speaks in this new dialect of Shu as he begins to learn it.
Aleksandr slowly loses his reticence, his fear. Whatever the true reason Botkin brought him here, Aleksandr is mostly treated as a guest. The only sign of his captivity is the man that shadows him whenever he leaves the house of Botkin’s niece.
Time has no meaning here. Not in the way he is used to.
He wakes with the sun, listens to the people he finds himself living with as they start their day, eventually rises and joins them.
He still does not know their names, who they are, why they care for him – and they do care for him. He wakes in the evenings sometimes to her warm presence as she sings him Shu lullabies. She makes a point of ensuring he has food and fresh clothing and plans for him to be escorted when he grows restless with remaining cooped up in that bare little room.
But aside from that first clear morning, she does not talk to him, and she never touches him again.
He spends most of his time walking around the village, watching them with something like fascination. He watches as odarennyy work side-by-side their ordinary brethren, each working for the good of the whole village. There is no infighting, no hatred, no sneering tolerance.
Deep inside him, he begins to feel something strange blooming in place.
***
“Who was that last man I killed?” Aleksandr watches the man kneeling before the prayer-altar carefully, studying every twitch.
Botkin’s face remains serene, but there is a strange half-smile on his face as he turns away and kneels to resume his prayers. “My nephew-in-law, Malyen.”
“And the woman taking care of me?” He is growing in proficiency with their dialect, but he knows how to read people better than the words they speak anyway. Which the only reason he catches the slight breath of hesitation before Botkin answers.
“My niece, Li Na,” the man finally answers. There is something in the twist of his mouth, the furrow of his brow that hints of worry, of regret, of helpless frustration.
Aleksandr’s breath catches as he stares in horrified realization. “You put her husband’s murderer in her house?”
Botkin turns and looks at him, eyebrow raised. “This bothers you.” Not a question, just an observation. “It should not.” He cocks his head. “Watch Li Na,” he advises. “Come to me in a week’s time with your observations.”
***
Watching Li Na is no trouble.
And that is a large part of the problem.
He had minor pangs of guilt before - he has never been a great patient, and the horrors of war and the multiple massacres of his adopted people over the long years left him with more mental scars than he could reasonably ask anyone to deal with. Still, despite his nightmares, despite his violent waking fits, despite his snarling and his larger size and the times he must have accidentally hurt her, Li Na has been nothing but gracious and patient with him.
But now that he knows that he is the reason there is no man in the house to help her with the two young children, now that he knows he is the reason she struggles with the chores around the house, the hard labor of her little farm outside…. The minor guilt has bloomed into something deeper and more twisted.
Because he is attracted to her.
Well. What he is beginning to feel is beyond mere attraction, if he is honest with himself. And the longer he stays in this sleepy little village, the more he learns about these people, the more he begins to understand their ways and their language, the more he finds himself wanting to stay. Nestle himself into this woman’s house and little family and just never leave.
He hopes Botkin never finds out. Aleksandr is a formidable warrior, and the strongest odarennyy still living, but the older man would surely skin him alive if he knew the strange feelings Aleksandr is developing towards his only niece.
But Aleksandr watches Li Na all the same. Studies her silence, her reticence, the ways she flinches back from any touch but her children’s, the way she stills around loud, sudden sounds. He studies the way she stills when the children drop things, shoulders hunched as if expecting a blow that never comes.
He watches the children too - and quickly notices that her behavior is dimly echoed, but never displayed outside the house. And that does not make sense, because Li Na is gentle and patient, quick with kisses and soothing words even when they throw tantrums.
It paints an ugly picture to him, one he wants desperately not to be true, because he looks at this little family and does not understand how anyone could think of hurting them.
***
Li Na watches him, too.
Her dark brown eyes are constantly on him, studying every move he makes, watching with something almost like fascination when he practices with his shadows, fingers twitching as if she wants to touch.
When he is around her children, her gaze is especially intense, her frame tense as if she is prepared to throw herself in the way of any harm he may bring. He tries to reassure her that he would never harm a child. Still, she does not stop watching him when he plays with them. She instead takes the almost-perfect Zen-like facade of her uncle and perfects it - he can see nothing in her expression but serenity and mild interest.
When he wanders through the town, he sometimes sees her surrounded by older women, blushing as they cheerfully chatter at her. The women go silent when he gets close enough to hear them, gazes watchful and considering as he passes by.
Li Na watches him then, too, flush still high on her cheeks.
***
“What was Malyen like?” he asks Donghai, the man he learns was Malyen’s milk-brother. Donghai is his shadow when he leaves Li Na’s house, only disappearing when Botkin calls him for one of their conversations.
Donghai grimaces. “Mal was my brother, but he was an ass.” Shakes his head. “Too hard-headed to change his ways, no matter how hard Botkin rode his ass once he married into that family.”
And hadn’t that been a strange bit of culture shock, to learn that the women here did not belong to their menfolk the way Aleksandr had always been taught. Oh, sure, the country was ruled by women, but he had always been told that was the exception, not the rule.
But in this village, he learns that these people’s family structures were much more complex, and a lot of it had to do with familial status, tied almost always to the women. Li Na’s family owned this entire little village, and had for going on 900 years, and while Botkin was clearly the nominal head, that authority ended once he entered his niece’s home.
Aleksandr considered the mid-winter sky, drab and gray and with the hint of rain on the horizon. Thinks about the woman he lives with, the silent way she watches him and how it contrasts with the gentleness she sings to him in the night. “Did he…. Did he have a temper?”
Donghai is quiet. Too quiet. Aleksandr turns and looks at his guard. The man is tense, staring at the ground, his hand tight on the sword on his belt.
“Donghai?”
He shakes his head. When he looks back up at Aleksandr, there is something like guilt twisted around something fiercely protective. “I will not answer that.” His jaw flexes, and his fist tightens in the hilt. “But I will say that if I ever catch you raising your hand towards Li Na or her children, you will never have hands again, guest of our honored leader or no.”
And. Well. That really says it all, does it not?
Aleksandr does not offer any promises. He does not tell Donghai he would never strike out at a woman or a child, not willingly, not in anger over some perceived fault. Words were wind in the air. He merely nods once in acceptance of the man’s terms.
Donghai nods back and his hand relaxes on his hilt.
***
“Why did you allow them to stay together?” he asks of Botkin after he lists his observations and the conclusion he has drawn from them.
Botkin tilts his head. “Li Na is the head of her house. Not even I can override her word in her own house. And I was not alone in noticing her sudden bouts of illnesses, the way she began flinching back even from the women, the way she watched her children with an almost obsessive need to make sure they were safe. But she would stare down anyone who dared to suggest an unkind word against Malyen and coldly inform them nothing was wrong.”
He sighs. “Li Na is strong, and she was in love. Even when Malyen strayed, she would have moved all the Heavens to make him happy. Even if it made her sick, even if it meant she became a mere shadow of the vivacious girl I once knew.”
Aleksandr considers this. “Why did you put me in her care?”
“You are a strong warrior and a powerful tiāncái, but you are not a threat, not to her.” He smiles, and it is all teeth. “Li Na’s word is law in her house. If she slit your throat in your sleep, no one would blink twice.”
Aleksandr shakes his head. “I am no threat to her, that is true. But it is still cruelty to put the man that killed her husband in her house.”
“To you, it is.” Botkin studies him for a long moment. “Malyen approached you with intent to kill, despite my orders for capture only. You killed him to protect yourself. This is not murder. This is basic fact. It is instinctive to you: you will fight with every breath to survive.”
He stands, rests a hand on Aleksandr’s shoulder. “You should stay here and meditate. Contemplate the blossoms and think on this: Women are stronger than men would like to admit. They may bend and break beneath the cruelties of life, but they will always find the strength within to grow anew.”
He walks away. Aleksandr stays kneeling, looking over the grove of trees with the sweet pink blossoms fluttering in the wind.
Hears quietly stated: “I gave you to Li Na’s care because she needs stability to grow into the next version of herself, and you, General Morozov of Ravka, need something to be stable for.” A deep breath. “Do you know, your teachings to the tiāncái are flawed. Like calling to Like? No.” A long pause. “Yin and Yang, General. Night and Day, Woman and Man, Shadow and Light. Two sides, twin natures, opposite but equal in all things. This is truth. This is what is needed.”
Then there is nothing but silence.
***
Slowly but surely, he milks the villagers of what is expected from a man of a household, and quietly takes over those chores.
Li Na does not protest, but he often catches her staring at him with furrowed brows and bitten lips, hands folded and pressed firmly against her stomach, as if to soothe a sudden ache.
He wonders sometimes if it makes her sick to see her husband’s killer take over his position in her house, if she does not protest merely because Malyen had beaten any form of dissent out of her long ago. Such wonderings always make him sick to his own stomach, but he does not stop.
Cannot stop, if he is honest with himself.
The problem with watching Li Na, is that he is drawn even further into her orbit. He wants to please her, prove himself to her. He wants to wrap her in the softest of silks and the lay the world at her feet.
He wants to see her in a crown. On a throne.
The only thing that truly holds him back from making an absolute fool of himself is the knowledge that she is not odarennyy as far as he can tell, so she will fade and die in several decades at most, and he does not know if he could bear the weight of that future grief if he ever got a chance to have her.
He is also achingly aware that there are the children to consider. Both little boys are adorable, bouncing back from whatever trauma their father gave them easily now that the man no longer is around. They are mischievous and boisterous and energetic, and both look up to him with trusting gazes, pulling him laughing to the training yard where he is allowed to join in on learning the katas they practice.
He watches Li Na with the two boys, and aches to see her grow round and thick with his own child, impossible a dream though he knows it to be. Seven hundred years and not a single child of his own told him more than any examination that children would never be in his future. But…
But he watches Li Na with her boys and sometimes she will look up and catch him watching them and just stare, her dark eyes locked on his own until her children drag her away.
And he begins to wonder.
***
“Your nephews are rambunctious,” he tells Botkin, nursing a cup of tea. “And very sweet. I am glad they take after their mother.” He could only imagine Li Na’s heartbreak if her children took after their father.
“They do not,” Botkin says, eyes closed, sipping at his own tea. “Chu Hua was very disagreeable. Could not do a single thing without throwing a tantrum. The boys take after their father, Li Na’s twin brother.”
Aleksandr does not drop his tea, but it is a near-miss. “I apologize for the assumption. I heard them call her mother and thought…”
“She is their mother,” Botkin replies easily, waving off the apology. “The only one they will ever know. Li Na may not have birthed them, but they are hers all the same. They know the truth of things, and still chose to call her mother, as is only right.”
“And there were none with Malyen?” he asks, tentatively. Unsure of why he feels the need to press the issue, but hungry for the knowledge nonetheless.
At this, Botkin finally opens his eyes. Something like mirth glitters deep within. “It is believed by many,” he says slowly, carefully, “that one must first be a man to father children.”
***
Aleksandr watches Li Na, and thinks.
Talks with Botkin, and thinks.
Watches the moon from his window long after the rest of the house has settled into sleep, and thinks.
***
One early morning, he wakes to the sound of soft footfalls passing by his room. This is not the first time he has woken to the sound - Li Na is an absurdly early riser and he is a light sleeper at the best of times, an insomniac at the worst. This is the first time though that he rises and follows, using his shadows to help muffle his footsteps and hide him from searching eyes.
He follows her. He does not even know why, only knows that it feels like he needs to do so. So, he does.
She is dressed in a simple white robe, long black hair unbound, carrying a small basket containing soap and a clean sheet. He knows as soon as they reach the pool that he is prying into something that he should not be, for he has no right to watch her bathe unannounced, but….
But he does not turn away.
Cannot bring himself to turn his gaze away as she strips, baring creamy-gold skin to his coveting gaze. Cannot bring himself to look away as she tilts back her head and sighs as the sun crests over the horizon, lighting up the small pond, painting a vision of Li Na half-naked and haloed by sunlight.
Only…. Only it’s not a trick of the sunlight reflecting off the water.
Li Na is glowing. She is shimmering as if stars have ignited just below the surface of her skin, flexing her fingers and sending little star-specs of light in a strange pattern that twists and flexes and moves like a living and breathing entity.
Odarennyy.
Li Na is odarennyy.
And then, like a flame sparking into being, the corresponding thought breaks through his shock and completely blows his mind: Sun Summoner.
His breath catches, and he cannot stop himself from stepping forward, wreathed in shadow and darkness, eyes wide. He feels like a livewire has sparked within his blood, like his bones will rattle right out of his skin if he does not touch her, if he does not pour his shadows forth to gorge themselves on her light.
Li Na turns slowly in the water, and her sweet face is not shocked. She wears the same considering look the women of her village have worn since he had been installed in her household. Curious and contemplating, her head tilts and then she holds her hands out to him, beckoning him to join her.
Aleksandr needs no second invitation. He strips himself of the simple nightshirt he wears and goes to her.
***
Li Na is quiet as he lifts her into his arms, as he tilts her head back so that he can press a kiss to her soft lips, delighting in this first rush of skin-on-skin contact, of the surge of her power against his own, an intensity he has never known and did not know he missed until he is nearly sobbing with feeling of home that rocks through him at this first brush with his equal.
She shushes him, crooning softly. She pulls him closer with surprisingly strong arms entwined around his shoulders, lets him bear her scant weight, and presses soft kisses against his skin. She lets him rub his beard against her skin like an overgrown cat, gasping as his mouth follows, hands patient and calming as he shudders apart in her arms.
She moves with him when he guides them back towards the shoreline, lets him press her down into the soft earth, lets him press kisses down, down, down. She lets him shoulder between her pretty thighs, lets him spread her wide with his broad hands, meets his hungry gaze with eyes blown black by her own echoing hunger, the sunlight still shimmering from her every pore.
He licks into her, eyes fluttering closed at his first taste of her, hands tightening on her thighs, fingers pressing bruises, listening hungrily to every sigh and moan and sweet trill that escapes her mouth. Cannot keep his eyes closed, has to look at her, has to watch her writhe for him, has to watch the way the light dances with his shadows. Li Na falls apart so sweetly, body shuddering, eyes wide and surprised and hands tugging at his hair as she rides out her pleasure on his face, thighs locked tight around his ears and holding him in place. And then she is tugging him up and up, lapping at his mouth, tasting herself on his tongue.
A hot little hand wraps tight around his cock, and he damn near growls when the little minx mewls a needy little “In me,” against his mouth.
And how enthralling it is to slide home into her, to feel her inner walls fluttering against him, stretched brutally wide by the sheer size-difference between them, her little body pressed tight against his own, her fingers ripping furrows down his back as he presses as deep as he can, her legs wrapped tight around his waist, demanding and claiming. He rocks gently back and forth for a moment, not wanting to hurt her, never wanting to hurt her.
But she bites at his lips and clenches tight against him, and he is so gone, an animal, a beast, rutting into his claimed mate, growling and hissing, barely aware of the words muttered into her flesh, a garbled mixture of Ravkan and Shu and Old Ravkan, possessive and depraved and loving.
Buries himself so deep inside her that she will be leaking him for hours when he spends, panting against her as she sighs, body relaxing beneath him even as her arms legs wrapped tight around him, refusing to let him pull out or move off of her.
“Mine,” she sighs, pressing a soft kiss against his forehead, a gentle touch that is somehow more intimate than the feeling of softening in her slick cunt. “You are mine now.”
And he is.
***
They wash in the pond; hands exploring the bruises and marks they have left on each other’s bodies.
Li Na presses soft kisses against scars that litter his war-torn body, eyes half-lidded with slick satisfaction. He had not thought himself ashamed of them before, but he has also never allowed a lover to explore his body this way either, and it is disconcerting in a way he cannot explain. When he attempts to apologize for their brutal, ugly reminders that he is mortal despite his long age, she hums and presses another kiss against the scar right above his heart.
“You are a survivor,” she says. “You are a fighter. It does not matter if you win or lose. You live, and so you must fight for what you want. But you also need a resting place.” She looks up at him with her dark eyes, serious and steady. “I will be your home now, yes?”
“Yes,” he says, because she is.
***
Botkin does not flay him alive for laying hands on his beloved niece.
He merely smiles, smug and satisfied, smiling with too many teeth. “Remember, while she may have decided that you belong to her now, she will never belong to you.”
And Aleksandr, who wears his sun summoner’s nail marks down his back and her little teeth marks at the base of his throat, smiles back, smug and satiated. “Only a fool would dare claim ownership of the Sun.” he says in return.
Botkin drops his tea. “You know then.”
Aleksandr dips his head. “Is she why you caught me?”
Botkin hesitates, before he sighs and nods. “Do you know how old my niece is, General?”
“No.”
“She is in her forties.” Botkin stares at him. “Our village understands and accepts that the tiāncái are longer lived. The more powerful, the more gifted, the longer they go on. Li Na has never left this village. Not since the first Xu settled here nine hundred years ago has her line left. She does not know, as I know, that change will come. Even here. The Empress will not settle for less than complete domination of this country, and our numbers dwindle.”
“You want me to take her away from here? From her home, her people?”
“Li Na suppressed herself for many years because of Malyen, who never liked the tiāncái. She buried what she was deep, deep down. Made herself sick. So sick we almost lost her during a winter storm. I had to watch as she wasted away to nothing but skin and bones while that ignorant child ran loose amongst the village girls. All for the love of him.” Botkin sneers down at his tea.
“What are you - ”
“Li Na will only let go of that rigid control when she bathes now. She does not summon, not regularly, not well. Do you understand me General? Do you understand that if you do not take her, keep her, that your other half may not be here when you next come?”
Aleksandr stares at Botkin, horrified.
Botkin stares back at him, resolute.
***
Aleksandr returns to Li Na’s house, shaken.
A kind of static has formed within his head, a tight ball of unease in his gut.
His hands are shaking as he opens the door to his room. Shaking as he lights the incense. Shaking as he sits and stares out the window.
Soft footsteps sound behind him, beloved and familiar. A warm weight settles along his back, slim arms wrapping around his shoulders.
“What is wrong?” she asks him softly.
“I had a talk with your uncle today. It… was distressing.” More than, if he is honest, but how to put into words the fears Botkin had ignited with his simple comments? How to explain seven hundred years of loneliness and pain and the sudden, abject horror that he would be alone again? How to explain what he had been planning for decades before he knew she was even a possibility, how to justify it all?
She sighs, rubs her face against his back. “Uncle is a wise man, but sometimes I think his cleverness will be his undoing.” She pulls away, only to place herself in front of him. Cupping her hands in front of her, a little ball of light shimmers into being, radiating a soft heat that warms his chilled skin. She smiles softly. “He worries for me, too much. I am stronger than he knows. I know more than he thinks.”
She meets his eyes and there is a firm conviction in them. “You will take me and the boys with you when you leave this summer. You will take me to your Ravka, to your gifted. You will teach me what I need to know to stand as equal to you.”
“How are you so perfect?” he breathes.
Li Na laughs, the little ball of light winking out, her eyes crinkling with her mirth. “I could ask you the same,” she says between giggles. “Do you know the aunties have been selling you at auction to the young women in this village?” Her teasing grin is wide.
“What?” Is that what all of the secretive whispering has been about? Suddenly, Li Na’s blushing face and considering stares take on a new, more interesting meaning.
“Mmm.” She picks up one of his hands. “His hands,” she says in a faux-old-woman’s voice. “Strong and steady, nice and big. Nice and big all over,” she adds with an appreciative eye and touching of his shoulders. “Trim waist, no pouchy stomach, strong arms, long legs. Good warrior, well trained. Respectful of women, good with children.”
She has dropped the teasing smile and the fake voice, face flushing with a heat echoed in her eyes. Her hands cup his face, thumbs rubbing against his neatly trimmed beard. “You call to me,” she says, near crooning. “I can feel you no matter how far you are from me; I see your face in my dreams. I want you,” she breathes out just before she draws him down and kisses him.
He groans into the kiss, lets her pull him down as she falls back, settles over her.
Groans again when her slim legs spread wide and her hand tugs one of his down between her legs so that he can feel that she has gone bare beneath her skirt. “You are going to be the death of me,” he says as he drags his fingers across the swollen wet flesh, watching with delight as she shivers beneath the light touch.
“Mutual destruction,” she returns easily, hooking a leg around his waist, her hand going for his pants. Pulls him out and gives him a few swift pumps to get him ready for her. “And oh, what a way to go,” she hisses against his mouth before kissing him again.
***
He takes her.
She takes him.
Anytime one of them can find a quiet moment away from the children, away from the intrigued stares of the villagers, the knowing glint in Botkin’s eye, they are all over one another, hungry and wanting.
Quick and dirty, long and lingering, it does not seem to matter, for anything and everything is good and right.
She moves him into her bedroom almost immediately, unwilling to spend even a single night without his arms around her, even though he tries to keep that final distance due to his night terrors and general insomnia.
“I could hurt you,” he pleads against her mouth as she backs him into her room.
She laughs, her hands already sliding off his robe. “You would never.” Sure and determined and, to his surprise, utterly correct.
His shadows twine around her like a cat with a beloved owner, pressing against her skin, rubbing and stroking. But even on his darkest nights, waking from dreams that have often before left his room a wreck, his shadows do nothing more than cocoon around her, clinging to her the way he does.
He does not protest their cohabitation ever again.
***
Spring passes in a heated daze, consumed as he is by the taste and feel of her.
His most cherished memory is the first time they Summon together, the sight and feel of their powers entwining around them, neither overpowering the other, simply content to exist side-by-side.
Aleksandr teaches her everything he can think of, how to shape her Light and with skill and intent. Li Na in turn teaches him how to let loose and simply let his Shadows flow.
It is not until she stands in the midst of his shadows, a soft smile on her face as she twirls around with them, that he finally understands what she means when she says they are beautiful. No one, not even his own mother, has ever described what he could do as beautiful. Watching her carefree enjoyment of the most feared part of him undoes him, and he ends that session on his knees with his arms around her waist, crying into her stomach as she hums soothingly and pets his hair.
***
"You are not alone," she tells him deep in the night, hands braced against his chest as she rides him teasingly slow. Her eyes are dark pits of desire and affection, her face flushed as she takes him as deep as she can and grinds.
"You are mine now," she tells him as she lets him press bruises into her skin.
"I will never let you go," she tells him when he finally snaps and flips them, fucking into her like he will die if he doesn't.
He wants to crack her open and crawl into her, wants to carve out a spot just for him, wants to belong to her so completely that nothing will ever cleave them apart.
Li Na does not turn him away, not even when he whispers the most depraved imaginings in her ear.
She simply smiles at him, near glowing with her satisfaction.
***
Summer comes too swift, but it is not an ending, not like he once feared.
Instead, as he finally makes his way back to Ravka, the treaty bearing the Empress' seal in his satchel, his Sun Summoner at his side, two rambunctious children laughing in the wagon behind them, he finds that it is a beginning.
Aleksandr' future awaits him, bright in a way it has never been before.