Archive of Our Own ^beta

“I need this job, I need this job, I need this job,” Alina mutters to herself as she heads to the communal dining cabin.

“Are you alright?”

She jumps nearly a foot in the air, blushing furiously when she turns to see the handsome owner of the retreat that had welcomed them earlier in the afternoon.

“I … I’m fine, just bemoaning my unfortunate need to keep a job I hate at a company full of terrible people because I need money to live.”

For a moment, as he tilts his head and regards her curiously, Alina wonders if she’s been monumentally idiotic.

After all, maybe he knows the Lantsovs, which is why Lantsov Industries are doing a retreat here. Or maybe he thinks she shouldn’t be disparaging the company that is paying him an eyewatering sum of money to house fifty of their employees for a week.

She is relieved when he smiles instead, “it certainly is a tragedy not to enjoy what you do. I do sympathise – this isn’t exactly what I planned to do with my life, but it’s the path I’ve ended up on.”

“I’m Alina,” she says, “I work in the R&D team. My job sounded amazing on paper and I was so happy to get it six months ago, but mostly I’m just putting out literal fires, avoiding my sleazy boss and his even sleazier son, and enduring lots of handwaving and it’ll be fine when I bring up legitimate concerns about some of our products. I’m trying to get out before I get embroiled in an inevitable lawsuit, but I need to find another job first.”

“Aleksander Morozov,” he holds out his hand, “I inherited this place from my uncle. I planned to simply get it valued and sold, but somehow I ended up taking over and now it’s been ten years of running the retreat.”

Alina shakes his hand, “I admit, I thought they were joking when they said it was a no tech retreat. I actually quite like the idea of unplugging for a week but I thought for sure that it wouldn’t be something the Lantsovs would want to try, especially Tatiana – she takes about a thousand selfies a day and I’m pretty sure her followers start to think she’s dead if she isn’t Tweeting every ten minutes.”

He laughs, a warm and rich sound, “it’s true that none of the Lantsovs were thrilled with that requirement, but I’m very strict about it. There’s a landline for emergencies and I do have the means to get internet access if absolutely necessary, but otherwise it is a tech-free zone.”

“Between you and me,” Alina leans in, feeling a sense of camaraderie with him, “and with no offence meant to your set-up, I’m pretty sure they only did this because they heard a rumour that Druskelle Inc did their own no tech corporate retreat and they’re always trying to one-up each other.”

“I know what an ascetic lifestyle those Druskelle Inc lot supposedly have,” Aleksander smiles, “all work and no play. I imagine they were doing cold plunges and ice baths rather than swimming in the sun-warmed lake.”

“And it wouldn’t do,” Alina says with a mischievous glint in her eyes, “for you to not give Lantsov Industries the same treatment.”

“I think we have our activity for tomorrow morning,” Aleksander nods decisively.

“It’ll be worth enduring that just to see Tatiana, Pyotr and Vasily’s reactions.”

“Ah, but you see, milaya,” Aleksander’s smile grows wider, “I think I might need an assistant, to ensure everything goes smoothly. Of course, they’d have to give up their chance at an ice bath …”

“Aleksander,” she smirks, “I’d be honoured.”

It’s strange, really, how comfortable Alina feels with Aleksander.

She’s never really been good at interacting with strangers or making friends, but it seems easy with him, like she’s met some kindred spirit.

True to his word, he drafts her in to help with the ice baths, meaning she gets to enjoy a morning of watching all her terrible colleagues shiver and shake, all the while pretending they’re having a cleansing, wonderful time simply because they know this is a trendy activity they’re supposed to relish.

And for the next few days as well, she and Aleksander fall into a pattern. He asks for her help, getting her out of yoga with the scarily stoic Ivan, and visits to the impossibly hot saunas, and awful team-building or trust exercises. She wouldn’t mind some of them, but only if she was with people she actually liked rather than her odious colleagues.

Aleksander is clever and charismatic, sharing her interest in art and history, always interested in everything she has to say. And while he’s older, with silver streaks in his dark hair, he never condescends to her or makes her feel silly.

It’s foolish, how quickly she falls for him.

Alina can’t help it, though. Every other person she’s ever dated pales in comparison. Even Mal, who she had once thought was the love of her life, seems like nothing next to Aleksander, who looks at her like she’s the sun.

----------

Her happiness is marred briefly when she and Aleksander are talking in his cabin, a two-storey building that has his living quarters and his office – and he is called away to deal with a minor incident with a concussion during a failed trust fall.

Saints, she hopes it’s one of the Lantsovs.

At first, she stays in her chair, not wanting to be nosy. But she’s always had a streak of curiosity that Aunt Ana tends to tut at.

She doesn’t go through any drawers, but she does flick through a pile of papers on the desk, pausing when she comes across a folder with some old newspaper articles in.

They’re all dated in June 1925.

Massacre at Balakirev Military Academy says one. Military history instructor slaughters twenty-eight people proclaims another.

Alina reads the first article, detailing a massacre that occurred at a military academy that was on the site now used for the corporate retreats. The details are sanitised and there are no photographs, only empty spaces where the images should be, but even this brief description of the tragedy sounds horrific. Nearly thirty people callously killed, many of them suffering terrible injuries that left them bleeding out, some in agony for hours before their deaths. The weapons involved hadn’t been guns, although there were plenty of those available, but seemingly a bayonet.

Alina shivers as she reads the next article, which goes into more gory detail about the suffering the victims endured.

“What are you reading?”

For the second time in their short acquaintance, Alina jumps to find Aleksander next to her.

“I … I didn’t … I didn’t mean to snoop. I was just bored and I … sorry …”

Aleksander glances down at what she’s looking at, “ah, I see.”

“I never knew this happened here,” she says, before adding, somewhat defensively, “you never mentioned it.”

He shrugs wryly, “you can’t blame me for not advertising that this site was the scene of a massacre a century ago. There are always rumours, but we certainly don’t encourage them. Saints, it was apparently a nightmare in the 60s, when this was a summer camp, because the children wouldn’t stop trying to find the killer’s skeleton.”

“He was never found?”

“No. the killer was chased towards the river and he fell in. It was a dangerous section, full of rapids, and witnesses say he dashed his head against the rocks as soon as he fell in. No body was ever recovered, but they put a guard around the river and no one resurfaced, so he was declared dead.”

“Sergei Kirigan,” Alina traces the name on the article, “why would he do it?”

“This place was a military academy at that point, and one with a reputation for particularly harsh methods. Lots of young men pumped with adrenaline, lots of corporal punishment and plenty of weapons. Not the most calming environment. If my memory serves – I read about this at least a decade or so ago – the killer was one of the instructors, a model one by all accounts, and no one suspected he might be dangerous. The anniversary of the incident is coming up, a century tomorrow.”

“The photos have been cut out of the newspaper clippings.”

“Yes,” Aleksander says, a little sheepish, “I kept the cuttings for historical record but, I confess, I didn’t want to look at his face – he has the eeriest smile.”

It’s understandable, Alina thinks. And it’s not like she won’t be able to sate her own curiosity in a few days, when she’s back at her apartment with Wi-Fi, her phone and her laptop.

“I’m sorry,” she says again, “for looking through your papers.”

“They were out on the desk,” he squeezes her hand affectionately, “and I wasn’t hiding them, not truly. It’s just an unfortunate piece of history that I don’t like to remind people of.”

“I’ll see you at the bonfire tonight?” she asks, a little unsure of how welcome she’ll be to him.

Aleksander smiles, though, warm and pleased, “yes, I’ll save you the seat next to me and maybe Tatiana Lantsova will get the hint that I don’t find her attractive in the slightest.”

Alina laughs, her earlier worry mostly forgotten, but a slight sense of unease lingers underneath it all.

There’s no alcohol allowed at the retreat, but her bosses and colleagues still get rowdy.

“You set a fire and give people cans,” Aleksander says, “and even though the drinks aren’t alcoholic, they will still behave as if they’re drunk, like regressing to some frat boy-esque behaviour.”

Alina is glad to be sitting next to Aleksander, his arm wrapped possessively around her. Some of her colleagues can get handsy when they lose their inhibitions and she doesn’t want to be anywhere near them.

As the others get noisier and more ridiculous – trying to show off and one-up each other by attempting handstands and cartwheels they are absolutely not capable of, their minds obviously addled by their withdrawal from technology – Alina and Aleksander sit and talk quietly.

She tells him about her Aunt Ana, who has cared for her since her parents died twenty years ago. About Mal and the small but wonderful group of friends she has.

In turns, Aleksander offers up his own information. He’d never known his father and his mother is, in his words, difficult, so he doesn’t see her anymore. He had a sister called Ulla, once, and he seems so sad when he tells her that Alina doesn’t dare ask what happened to her.

The two of them are still talking long after everyone else has stumbled off to bed.

They never run out of things to discuss. She briefly wonders if they ever will, and then blushes at the fact that she’s thinking about him in such a long-term way.

It seems only natural, when the mugs of hot chocolate he’s made are finished and the bonfire is dying down to embers, that he should kiss her.

Hesitant for a moment, and then more confident when she responds enthusiastically.

Hungry and passionate and heated, his hands on her face, thumb brushing her cheek.

No words are needed when they break apart.

They stand and she entwines her hand with his.

Together, they walk towards his cabin.

She wakes with the morning light streaming through Aleksander’s bedroom window.

Stretching, she revels in the delicious ache between her legs and the memories of last night and the pleasure Aleksander had wrung from her body for hours.

It had never felt that way before. Aleksander knew just how to touch her and kiss her. It is a level of intimacy she’s not experienced before and Alina knows that this is something special, not a simple fling.

Aleksander’s side of the bed is empty, but it is still warm so he cannot have been gone long.

There is a note waiting for her, in beautiful handwriting that would make a calligraphy expert weep with joy, telling her that he has gone to sort the activities for the day but will return to her soon.

Next to the note is a plate with two croissants and some breakfast blinis drizzled with syrup and topped with a handful of fresh berries.

Alina enjoys her breakfast and then washes up in the bathroom.

Going to the large bookshelf Aleksander has in his bedroom, spanning the length of one wall, she goes to choose a book at random and instead ends up with what must be a photo album.

A quick glance can’t hurt, she thinks, just to see if there are any adorable baby photos or –

Oh.

It is the articles, the same ones she’d seen in Aleksander’s office from 1925.

These, though, they have the photographs. Including the face of the killer Sergei Kirigan.

Alina looks at that photo and it is like looking at Aleksander’s identical twin. She cannot see a difference at all.

Slowly, she flicks through more of the album.

There are articles from 1825 referencing a massacre in Os Kervo.

The image there is a sketch of the suspect, who had fled the scene. A man called Eryk Kirigan, another identical face.

Frantic, she looks further. There are no newspaper articles for the earlier dates – 1725 all the way back over a thousand years – but there are records, handwritten accounts and half-faded sketches.

The same face, over and over and over, taunting her.

Some time later – she has no idea if it is seconds or minutes or hours – Alina is surprised by Aleksander’s appearance for a third time.

He sighs softly when he sees what she is looking at, “oh, milaya, I do wish you hadn’t snooped. I wanted to ease you into it.”

Alina is frozen in her chair. She wants to flee, to scream, to find someone who will lock him away. But he’d subdue her before she even had chance to reach the door.

He sits down next to her, slowly and carefully.

“It was the year 525,” he tells her, “and I was dying.”

Aleksander’s voice is low and melodic, soothing in spite of Alina terror.

“I was dying, the result of a war most people have never even heard of. My wife Luda was dead at the hand of the enemy and I was convinced the end was near. And then a voice came from the shadows.”

He pauses to walk over to the bookshelf and he picks out an old, heavy tome. He opens it to a particular page and then hands it to her.

The text is in Old Ravkan and Alina sees that the image – a reproduction of an old painting – is of a shadowy form towering over a kneeling man.

“We called Him the Darkling, although he too is mostly forgotten now, and he was known to make bargains – wonderful gifts or powers … for a price.”

“Immortality,” Alina whispers.

He nods, “He said I would not die – not of age or accident or illness or deliberate harm – for as long as I wished it.”

“And the price?” she asks hesitantly, not sure she really wants to know.

“The price was blood, to be paid every century. Not the cut of a hand, the smear of blood on a stone, and not even the sacrifice of one or two people. No, the Darkling demanded a massacre, a chaotic and bloody festival in His name.”

“And you …” she recoils at the thought, tries to move away from him, but his hands grasp her wrists, as unyielding as iron bands.

“I paid the price that was due, milaya. I paid it in 525 and I have paid it every century since.”

“Murderer,” Alina hisses, losing all sense of self-preservation in her horror, “monster!”

“What are a few dozen lives for a whole century of life?” he says, cool and unbothered by her disgust, “I daresay there are many alive today who would make the same bargain, given the chance, even if they might pretend they would not.”

She wants to argue with him, but she is depressingly aware that he is right.

A few moments of silence, and then …

“Are … are you going to kill me?”

He laughs, “of course not, milaya. You were so sweet in my bed and you are mine now. I should hate to lose you.”

“But your price,” she says, suspicious and wary.

“There is no set number of lives, no formula to follow. I can always feel it, the moment the Darkling has been sated for the next century.”

“You’re truly going to kill them all today?”

“Not all,” he says, “only half. You will kill the rest.”

She laughs, a choked, dark sound that entirely lacks real mirth, “you think I’m going to kill two dozen of my colleagues?”

“It is the same price I pay, milaya, and for the same gift.”

“No,” she shakes her head, “I don’t want that. I never said I wanted that.”

“Eternity stretching out in front of you, Alina. All the time in the world to do everything you’ve always dreamed of.”

“You’re insane!” she shouts, “I won’t do it, I won’t.”

“You will, Alina. I won’t lose you, not now I have you.”

“There is no way I –”

“For your friends and your family, you would, isn’t that right? For your Aunt Ana and your Malyen, your friends Inej and Genya and Nina and Zoya, for all those you love.”

She curses herself for sharing so much of herself that night at the bonfire, when she had never dreamed he would use the information she gave him against her.

“Make the bargain and join me,” he wraps his arms around her, pressing a kiss to the top of her hair, “or I will strip away all that you know, all that you love, until you have no shelter but mine.”

He says those cruel words so tenderly, like an ardent lover. And she knows he means them, knows he will kill everyone she loves to keep her.

“Aleksander, please don’t make me do this.”

“It is a gift, milaya, not a curse.”

She trembles as he places a wickedly sharp dagger in her hands, “come, Alina, I will show you what to do.”

The blade glitters in the sunlight as they step outside of the cabin. In the distance, Alina can hear the grumbling of her colleagues as they begin their first activity of the morning.

She can’t say she likes any of them. In fact, she actively despises about half.

But she never thought … never dreamed … never wanted …

“It’s not so hard,” Aleksander’s voice is bright and encouraging, “especially once you get used to it.”

Can she really do it? Kill twenty-five people now in cold blood and watch the same number die at Aleksander’s hand. Do the same every century that comes.

My family and friends will be safe, she reminds herself.

And Aleksander would probably kill everyone here anyway. At least I can try and make it as painless as possible.

Alina finds that justification can be surprisingly easy, in the end.

There is blood on her hands.

Dripping down onto the floor as she stares at it.

Red-stained fingers that she’s not sure will ever be clean, even if she washes her hands a thousand times.

Fifty people dead and she is one of the two responsible for it.

Aleksander is smiling and the shadows are rising up in front of her.

Aleksander is talking, but Alina can’t focus on what he’s saying.

And then, suddenly, the shadows engulf her and Alina has never been more terrified in her life.

Your offering has been accepted. The bargain is made.

When the shadows dissipate, Alina knows she doesn’t look any different, but she feels it.

She’s not human, not anymore. She is blessed-cursed-blessed with immortality.

Aleksander embraces her and she lets him.

Some of it is shock. Another part is the desperate desire for comfort.

“We are meant to be,” he kisses her softly, “we don’t need anyone else but each other. And we will have such a wonderful eternity, seeing the world together.”

Maybe that’s true, she thinks.

It has to be, she decides, if only to make all that death worth it.