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Summary
Chapters 23 & "After"
Chapter 23
The pilgrims fight valiantly but prove little match for the nichevo’ya. Tamar leads a confused Alina and a besieged Second Army to the chapel, and David uses their last grenatki to help them get there. Tolya bolts the door and Tamar reveals a hidden passage beneath the altar behind Sankta Ilya’s panel. The Darkling floats in, carried by his dark army, shielding him from the soldiers’ shots. As he nears, Tolya, Tamar, Mal, and the Grisha gather protectively around Alina. The Darkling arrives and challenges Alina to surrender, promising that he will allow her followers to go free. She witnesses her army’s vulnerability and opens negotiations. He asks for her alone, promising to let the remainder go. In proof, he confirms the reality of his apparitions, claiming he has always wanted only her. He brings forth a prisoner. Alina fears the prisoner might be Baghra, but it proves to be Genya, horrifically mangled. David rushes for her, and Alina is heartbroken at Genya’s ruined state.
Alina allows herself to be convinced that she and the Darkling are destined for each other, and she orders Mal, Tolya, and Tamar to stand down. She kisses the Darkling, making sure Mal sees. She offers him her power, but then realizes that she has had control of his power ever since he appeared to her during the volcra battle on board the Hummingbird. Now she uses it, summoning more and more nichevo’ya in the hope of destroying them both. The Darkling recoils from her in fear and begins to weaken. The two of them fall to the floor, seizing from the effort. Right before the chapel collapses, Mal pulls Alina from the Darkling and into the tunnels behind the altar. They collapse, and the Grisha take them and run.
They remain on the run in the tunnels for weeks. Mal and Alina are too weak to walk, so the Grisha carry them on litters. After he recovers, Mal reports on the state of the Second Army, the pilgrim army, and their refugees. Among them is Genya, whom they call Razrusha’ya, the Ruined. Together, they figure out the extent of Tolya and Tamar’s deception. Alina confronts them over their devotion to the cult of the Sun Summoner, but they swear allegiance to her, not to the Apparat. When they finally arrive in the White Cathedral, the Apparat kneels before Alina but rises by her side and leads the pilgrims in a victory chant. Alone in her room, Alina is shocked to discover that her hair has gone white, and she tells Mal that she can no longer summon the light.
After
The girl dreams of ships that fly, captained by a fox, who might be a hellhound. She dreams too of the firebird. The Darkling survives and rules Ravka, while his army hunts her and the Apparat. She doesn’t know whether the tunnels are the work of humans or monsters, but she knows she and the boy are imprisoned there, or perhaps entombed. They are surrounded by fanatics and haunted by their memories of death and destruction. But the girl has experience hiding, watching, and waiting. She remembers all that she and others have sacrificed, and she is determined to return and claim her destiny.
Analysis
The twins Tolya and Tamar are extraordinary, but Alina finds them unsettling even before she realizes their true loyalties. They hail from Shu, a land where Grisha are feared and thus mutilated, tortured, and killed. It makes sense, then, that they are both superb warriors—they had to learn to fight in order to survive. But their lineage does not account for the other ways in which they surprise Alina, like the fact that they can read liturgical Ravkan, that they know about the firebird, and that they are always near Alina when disaster strikes. When the Apparat appears to Alina amid the chaos the night of the fortune-tellers ball, she has her suspicions. When Tolya hoists her above the pilgrim crowd and races her back to the city, she wonders. But when the two emerge outside the Little Palace hall leading an array of pilgrims, Alina knows: Tamar and Tolya are true believers, raised in the cult of the Sun Summoner. They decorate their bodies with tattooed symbols of her power, and they dedicate their lives to her service. For this reason, they have joined forces with the Apparat, which makes them suspect. No matter how many times they swear allegiance to Alina, their fanaticism always threatens to trump their promises.
Although Alina feels most fulfilled when she uses her power, throughout the novel, she holds a part of herself in reserve. To defeat the Darkling, she must tap into this part of herself without reservation. This is the part that Alina permits to nag at her, gnawing away at her self-confidence. This part tells Alina that she is an orphan and an outcast who was poorly received by the Grisha in Ravka, undermining her authority as commander of the Second Army. This part prevents her from making friends with Paja and Nadia, who genuinely admire her, or reconciling with Zoya, who could make a powerful ally. By holding this part of herself in abeyance, Alina denies her followers full access to her leadership abilities, and she denies herself the complete realization of all her potential. To access it, Alina must confront the Darkling’s threat in its full horror. The sight of a once preternaturally beautiful Genya, now tormented beyond recognition, alongside Alina’s own fragile and frightened army, propels Alina to go more deeply into herself and her power than she has previously dared, giving her the key to victory.
At the novel’s end, both Alina and Ravka are frail and have fallen under the sway of more powerful rulers with nefarious intentions, but hope still remains. The Darkling rules Ravka, intending to use it as a base from which to expand his power. This suggests a motive for the Apparat, who may be similarly using Alina and the pilgrims as pawns in a larger game. Whereas Alina formerly had the solace of power and the hope of using it to defeat the Darkling, her power is now gone, and any attempt to regain it will likely take her down along with the Darkling. Likewise, without the royal family or its armies, Ravka has lost even a semblance of its freedom and is completely dependent upon the Darkling. Nikolai had tried to negotiate with Ravka’s neighbors, but with the Darkling in charge, no one will come to Ravka’s aid. Indeed, Ravka’s enemies might attempt to seize the moment by siding with the Darkling to further Ravka’s destruction. Nevertheless, Alina is certain she has a destiny to fulfill, and Ravka, although weakened, has not yet gone the way of Novokribirsk, which was consumed by the Fold. Although Alina now knows the true cost of fulfilling her destiny, she is determined to see it through to the end.
