( sharply, she's reminded of the steel in ivan's voice, a blade poised to strike: it's about knowing you're powerful, and making them look. arrogant. assured in his skill in ways that alina hadn't grasped, then, before she had understood the weight of the burden on her bones. a laugh flutters out of her — not the jagged, glass-scrape of mockery, but incredulity. )

Because.

( because, viscerally, she loathes the thought of filling the darkling's shoes, bowing and bending and breaking for puppet kings — kissing boots, gathering power in the dark. because sainthood means nothing in terms of power, without worshippers to elevate her. because she is armyless, penniless, with so few allies to account for. because — most selfishly of all — she enjoys wearing the skin of a coward, masquerading as normal alina starkov, a girl whose existence alone doesn't demand blind, sweltering devotion. a girl who might be loved as more than a vessel of holiness, of purifying light.

she stumbles into her pause, falling short on which answer to pluck from the vine first, rosy lips petaling open on a stunted exhale. it leaves her off-kilter, feeling so naively youthful in the eclipsing shadow of his confidence, eyes drifting to the clinking shudder of metal in the corner.

her imagination, maybe. everything about this heated pool is dreamlike, to be seen through a hazy lens. )

I don't have a death wish. Shockingly, I enjoy my head attached to my body.

( from the hungry look of him, tightening her skin into pebbled goosebumps despite the cloying heat, she has the sense that he might enjoy that, too. she pins him with a look, some sense of challenge, despite the way the brown of her iris has gone liquidy amber. )

There are some merits, ( she says slowly, pointedly. ) To being invisible.