Call Out My Name

Gone

Alina didn't know how long she lay in the snow. She didn't know if she fell asleep, if the day turned, if night ever came.

The moment she started coming back to her senses, or her senses back to her, she sat back up. She smelled blood; she felt the coldness and wetness in her bones, and she felt the pain from her bleeding side.

There were so many of them, so many dead bodies. She could truly see the effect of the Cut now, with clear eyes. And she had survived it.

This is what she left in her wake after having used it in the past; this was the power of it. Destruction.

She got up and stood on her feet. She couldn't hear the fight, and she didn't hear soldiers or wolves lurking on the sides of the forest, between the trees that have been spared.

She looked around as if she could find him, as if he would come back.

She knew better.

He was gone.

Alina couldn't feel his presence like she used to; she couldn't feel his energy and shadows around her. He had cut her, left her bleeding, and had left.

She stood all alone, searching for something, but she couldn't feel anything. Aleksander was gone.

I've let him run away; I've let him escape and roam the realms I can no longer reach.

Alina cursed as she stepped forward, holding one hand to her shallow cut on one side of her abdomen. Even though it was a flesh wound, it still hurt. The beams of her brooch hadn't been long enough to dig deeper into her skin, but the Grisha steel felt different from any other steel.

He had cut them both, himself and her. He had taken her bloodied brooch with him, mixed with their blood.

I can feel the pain, can you?

She stumbled over branches and rocks beneath the snow; she would trip, lose her footing, she would fall on her knees, she would bite her tongue, she would curse some more. Anything, anything to prevent her from crying.

She had done more than enough of that for a lifetime too. She had spilled enough tears over someone who was beyond saving. She had cried and honored him when she thought him dead; she had given him no grave, no place to go back to, she had spoken his name. She had cried it out loud too.

She knew his pain was far too deep to heal, she knew he would need lifetimes to recover from it all, and they both knew Alina didn't have lifetimes to spare; she didn't have thousand moments waiting for her. She had just one life—the life of an otkazat'sya.

He had said once he would never turn his back on her, but he could never have seen her lose her power, become nothing. He didn't need her. She didn't need him.

And yet, the fact that she had no way of stopping him, of helping him, made her sad.

She saw a movement in front of her, and her hand went to her rifle, only to realize she had dropped it long ago in the snow, along with her pistol. The dagger she had hidden in her boot was dug deep into the chest of a Drüskelle, and her brooch had been stolen.

"Alina!"

It was Mal, he had been searching for her, and even though he was not the same as before, he still managed to find his way to her.

He went to her and put protective arms over her.

"Are you hurt? How bad? Can you walk?"

"It's fine, just a scratch," she told him as he checked her. He put his jacket over hers and helped her get back to the others.