[ speak for yourself, she might have said, good-humored, if doubt and gloom didn't cling to the air in her lungs. i'm a living saint. alina draws no amusement from that joke, now, like a thousand shards of glass stinging her throat as she chokes it down. only monsters believe they hold the power to shape the world by their whims and their whims alone, to tip the scales of fate and fortune in their favor, doling out mercy only to snatch it back.

she is not divine, no. but ravka has asked her to be the holy answer to their prayers, anyway. the means to undo the past that has ravaged her country for so long. despite all of the questions she has for him, leaping to her tongue, maybe there's a greater question to be asked: if they're as monstrous for taking this deal as kovacs makes them sound. ]

And now you think you've become what you've fought against for so long. [ quieter, ] What you've hated.

[ her brows furrow as she slots those pieces together. for a moment, there's only pensive silence that follows, drowned in her own thoughts before: ]

I know I'm not a god. But I can't walk away from stopping someone who believes he has the right to conquer and destroy like one, either. Even if it means I have to change the past to do it.

[ her arms cross over her chest, unable to stop the flow of bitterness bleeding into her voice. ]

We've all made sacrifices to be here. Haven't we? Gods — they don't give. They only know how to take, and take, and take.