* BATTLE-SCARRED !

here are my rules

here is the muselist

here is my interest tracker

nym (who’s likely to be readded real soon)

ashara (who lives in my heart always)

Turalyon glanced up as the elf slowed to a stop beside him. He hadn’t seen the ranger approach, but that didn’t surprise him. In the past few weeks he had learned how quickly the elves could come and go, and how silently. Alleria, in particular, delighted in startling him by suddenly speaking in his ear when he hadn’t even realized she was back in camp.

miscellaneous angst starters.

She had been, and how different everything may have been had she indeed left then. There would have been no necklace from the stag’s antlers, no bracelet from Rusalye’s scales. She would not have commanded the Second Army, Mal would not have had to die even once, Genya wouldn’t have had to suffer the Darkling’s wrath, Nikolai would not have had to know that darkness. The list went on; lives that could have been saved, others that would have been lost, none that would have been quite the same.

Well, perhaps some would be close enough; perhaps some would inevitably see the terror he meant to unleash, eternal darkness that may begin with Ravka but was sure to expand well beyond. Maybe someone wouldn’t be as foolish as she had been, so eager to believe his lies. 

Baghra could not see the white of her hair, permanent mark from her dabbing in merzost. Alina didn’t think the lack of sight prevented her from seeing beyond; light extinguished in so many ways, not alongside her power but because of it.

The ache for it would never leave. That knowledge had been with her from the moment the emptiness took hold; not the hurt of a wound or a broken thing, just the dull ache of longing for a part of yourself you could not get back. It was with her still, and it would be with her always.

“I figure I earned being called foolish after repeatedly ignoring your words.” A foolish girl, a greedy girl, eager to be powerful when she should have known better than to tamper with powers that shouldn’t be. A hopeless girl, a desperate girl, eager to have the strength to save her friends as darkness threatened to destroy all of them and more. Her gaze does not avoid Baghra, but if her tone had something of insolent in its attempted lightness, she cannot keep it from becoming softer, quieter, a whisper of what had been lost. “But I paid the price for that.”