#mrzost

❛               HOW     AM     I     SUPPOSED     TO     TRUST     ANYTHING     ABOUT     YOU     ?               ❜               fingertips     press     to     the     veins     at     her     wrist     [     …     ]     if     she     concentrates     ,     she     can     imagine     there     to     be     sunlight     in     her     arteries     as     opposed     to     blood     .               ❛               all     you've     ever     done     is     lie     to     me     .               ❜           

@mrzost​ asked: you don’t understand. none of you do.

   it was almost laughable, really. to think that a man with a plan to destroy everything felt like they were the ones to not understand. nikolai wondered for a bit what it might have been like if he had grown up next to the man standing in front of him. if he hadn’t left the grand palace and hadn’t lived his life in the army. if he hadn’t left and became sturmhond. if he hadn’t practically staged a coup right on his own ship to get alina and mal away and bring them to safety. some days, it felt like nikolai had a bit of a death wish, and yet he still pushed forward, still tried to make all of this make sense.  “ don’t understand what? that you killing hundreds on hundreds of people was just part of your master plan? that it’s for the good of the people as a whole? ”

   nikolai had always fought for ravka. but this? whatever plans the darkling had? this wasn’t fighting for their country. for ravka.  “ tell the people that lost family that they just don’t understand. ”  thoughts of the darkling, of the man in front of him, never failed to light a fire beneath him. it never failed to make him feel like he needed to do something to help, to stop this madness. and yet, he was just one person. but with alina? with the crew he kept around? maybe they had a shot.  “ enlighten me, darkling. tell me what we all apparently don’t understand. ”

She has dreamt of this before; the dreams usually end with her dead. 

     Drüskelle, the people of Ulensk whisper; Astoria is sure they’re not an uncommon sight, considering the proximity to the Fjerdan border, but these drüskelle are on a hunt, and she is their target. She had hoped to cross the border closer to Djerholm, to reach Arkesk without fuss and without having to account for the Unsea, but there had been too many of them to pass by unseen. 

     But they know where she is, now. They know where she sleeps, and the people of Ulensk have taken note of the broad-shouldered men peering at every red-haired girl they can find. They say that word has been sent to the capital, for fear of some sort of invasion; they cannot imagine another reason for so many witch-hunters, and certainly not a single grisha girl with a penchant for boiling blood.

     And they’ve spotted her, this time, and this is usually where the dream ends, with a knife between her shoulder blades or blood on her lips. She wonders if they’d bring her back for a trial, or if they’ll kill her here and now and be done with it. 

     So Astoria runs, runs, like her life depends on it because it does. It rained last night and she loses her balance in a patch of mud; one of them is on her, the point of a knife aimed at her shoulder, and she thrusts her hands out and she closes her eyes and she finds the water in his blood as though it’s singing to her — 

     — there’s blood on her clothes when she pushes the body off of her and picks herself up and runs again, and that’s how she finds him, climbing down from a horse, surrounded by others dressed in bright, bloody red. He’s tall, she notices vaguely, tall and full of sharp angles, wearing a long coat of all black, and she runs between the men in red and reaches up with her bloodied, filthy hands for him and grabs desperately at his arm.