"CRESANA, STOP!"

Kirigan's voice was commanding, his presence imposing, but it was the use of his own powers that was jarring enough to pull Cresana out of her reverie. Although Cresana wasn't able to see when summoning light, she could feel the darkness that Kirigan had created in the training hall pressing against her skin like a vice. She was unsure how he could do this, and it was the first time she had ever experienced it, but she knew instantly and undoubtedly what was happening.

Shaking and breathless, Cresana felt her mental concentration snap like a brittle twig as she fell off the edge of her powers. As the light she had summoned faded, her eyesight slowly and hazily returned, as if waking from unconsciousness. She realized she had fallen onto her hands and knees. The cold hard stones helped her ground herself into the room. As did the roaring pain in her kneecaps from what had obviously been a hard collapse just moments before.

As her breath and concentration returned, Cresana dared to look up at Aleksander. He was standing only a few feet from her. He too was shaking, not from fatigue like her, but from rage. His eyes seemed to boil with ire as he stared down at her over his nose, his lips pursed together and jaw clenched.

Cresana braced for the onslaught she knew was coming. She wished she could stand as she loathed how weak and powerless she felt bowing before him, but the muffle in her ears told her that if she stood now she'd just as quickly faint.

She heard the General take a sharp breath in as if readying to yell. Instead of screaming, though, she heard him let out a long slow sigh, hissing faintly between his teeth. The silence between them grew thicker and tenser with each passing millisecond.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet but deadly, like a sheathed blade from an unseen hand.

"Pathetic."

It was nothing Cresana didn't already know – she was acutely aware of her incredible failure as a Grisha and an asset to Kirigan – but the venom with which that single word was delivered stung like acid in her blood. She felt whatever small sliver of hope Kirigan had been holding onto regarding her vanish, and along with it whatever protection she had as a possible weapon in his arsenal. All in a matter of an instant, Cresana felt her fate sealed by that single word. She knew what this meant, this final and total rebuke. It meant death. She had outlived her usefulness, and there was no more patience within Kirigan to allow such a liability and failed investment continue to exist. Against every fiber of her being, the crushing weight of this realization caused her to let out a small, terrified whimper.

Disgusted by her, Kirigan made a snort of derision. He considered ending it here. What a relief it would be just to be done with her. The very idea of shutting the chapter on this colossal dead-end was intoxicating. Images of what Kirigan had hoped Cresana could be – his greatest weapon, his gifted protégé, his equal, the answer to everything, and perhaps even a Queen next to him – fractured and rearranged into fantasies of watching her bleed out right here on the cold stone floor in front of him. It would be so easy, so clean. Even painless for her, although this was a minute consideration as he truly cared very little for her pain, given how much she had already caused him. Kirigan felt his hands beginning to twitch, the Small Science working automatically through his rigid fingers, his powers gathering like shadows at the edge of his mind. Just as he was about to give in to the temptation to kill Cresana as she lay prostrate in front of him like a pleading servant, the door at the end of the training hall opened.

Kirigan snapped his head up to see Ivan stride in. Kirigan couldn't be sure from this distance, but he had the vague feeling that Ivan knew somehow what Kirigan had been about to do and that his entrance was not a coincidence. With more than a little irritation, Kirigan forced the growing pulse of darkness that he'd been martialing for the Cut only moments before back into nothingness. He straightened slightly, trying to unclench his jaw.

"General," Ivan called out. "A moment."

Kirigan nodded curtly. "As much as you need, Ivan, I'm done here."

Kirigan strode past Cresana, so close she thought for a moment he was about to kick her, and left her shaking now both from exhaustion and terror alone on the cold stone.

*****

When Cresana had finally gathered enough of her senses, she made her way hurriedly back to her chambers. The terror she had felt in those few moments where Kirigan had held her fate in his hands had subsided only slightly into a blind panic. Cresana fought her instincts to try and regain control of her mind as it raced into worst case scenarios. She felt so far from her Blade training, so removed from the calm and dispassionate power she'd always had over her emotions. She was distraught to realize there were hot tears threatening to spill out of her eyes. It took all her control not to break into a full out sprint through the halls of the Little Palace.

When finally alone in her chambers, the door slammed shut behind her, Cresana felt her composure fracture completely. She slid down into a huddled crouch against the wall, her breath ragged and her heart pounding almost painfully against her throat. Bile threatened to claw its way up out of her stomach. Cresana's eyes flew wildly around the room. It was unclear what she was looking for, even to her, but the need to find something to defend herself with was paramount.

Suddenly, with a jolt, Cresana remembered the grimy package that Ivan had miraculously produced not two weeks ago. She'd hidden her Scythe Swords under her bed, tucking them up between the slats of wood that supported the mattress so they were off the ground and not visible to anyone giving a cursory glance under the bed. With a frantic tug, Cresana managed to wrest them from out between the slats just as the door to her chamber flew open. Hurriedly, Cresana fought with the burlap covering to expose the steel edges, raising her swords defensively in an X-shape in front of her body.

"For God's sake, Blade, what are you still doing here?"

It was Ivan. He seemed nearly as panicked as Cresana felt. She exhaled a sigh of relief; she'd been certain that Kirigan had returned to finish what he started.

"Quickly, pack what you need, only what you can carry. The General is sufficiently distracted with a murdered servant but that won't last long." Ivan rushed over to Cresana holding out a large knapsack he'd already loaded with a few stolen loaves of bread and a dozen or so apples. Cresana was too stunned to speak as she accepted the bag from him, but quickly began packing her few useful belongings: a wineskin of water, a thick cloak lined with horse hair that she'd been allowed to keep as the autumn nights grew chilly, and a piece of wood Cresana had broken off the leg of the single chair in her room and sharpened into a point. Before the arrival of her swords, that pointed wood scrap had been her only protection and she'd slept with it clutched in her hand under her pillows at night. In the back of her mind, Cresana realized she'd known that this moment was coming for a long time.

Ivan helped her shove these few contents into the bag. When he grabbed her Scythe Swords for packing, Cresana gripped his wrist.

"Ivan, I need these-"

"What you need is to trust me." Ivan's voice was low and desperate, cutting across Cresana's. He didn't stop in bundling her blades into the folds of the horse hair cloak, trying to conceal them as much as possible. Once finished, he pulled the bag's drawstrings shut and slung it over his shoulder.

"Kirigan has instructed the palace guards not to let you out alive. There's no exit that isn't guarded around the clock now. Even the sewers, the rooftops, they'll see you."

Cresana's mind raced with the implications.

"How am I-?"

"You're not leaving alive." When Ivan said this, Cresana took a step back. Did Ivan really mean to kill her, now? After this charade? Feebly, Cresana felt her muscles trying to prepare for a hand-to-hand fight.

"No, Militova, I'm not going to kill you. But I am going to stop your heart." Ivan stood motionless, tense, watching as his words sank in. Cresana's mind raced to catch up but she felt like she'd run into a dead end.

"Stop my heart?" she asked tentatively. Ivan nodded.

"The guards trust me, if we're lucky they'll let me pass with your dead body for disposal. They'll know Kirigan will want it done quickly and quietly... we just may get away with it..." Ivan trailed off, his eyes darting as if reading the imprint of his plan in the air in front of him.

"You said you wouldn't kill me," Cresana reminded him after a moment of quiet. Ivan refocused on her, as if he'd forgotten she were there.

"I'm a Heartrender, Militova, or did you forget? I can stop your heart for a few minutes and bring you back once we're clear of the Palace."

"Won't the guards know? They're Grisha too." Cresana tasted blood as she chewed a cut into the inside of her cheek. She hadn't noticed how hard she'd been focusing, trying to follow the loose ends of Ivan's plan to their ends.

"Maybe they will, maybe they won't," Ivan admitted with a defeated shrug. "I'm the best Heartrender in the Palace, but they might notice. If they do, I guess we'll have a chance to see just how useful you can be in a fight."

When Ivan said these words, Cresana felt a grim determination settle over her. Interestingly, her nerves stopped buzzing. Even though she didn't trust her Grisha powers to be one ounce of use to her in a fight, she knew that Ivan wasn't referencing those powers. She was a Blade, after all. Mere months ago, Cresana would have been able to fight her way in or out of any palace on either side of the True Sea without even so much as a nick. Months of futile training had blurred her own strengths and chipped away at the fortitude she'd spent years of her life building at The Institute.

Cresana took a steadying breath in. Ivan's confidence in her had reminded her of who she'd been – who she still was. She let the panicked energy in her muscles and chest slowly dim down.

"Why are you doing this?" she finally asked, opening her eyes to look at Ivan. He had been watching her with an odd expression in his eye.

She could tell her question took him by surprise, but his answer was quick.

"Blades have protected Grisha for generations. Figured I could start balancing the scales." He allowed a small conspiratorial smile to tug up at the edges of his mouth. Cresana returned the smirk, and nodded, grateful for his help and friendship in that moment.

Ivan broke eye contact with her to check the sky outside her chamber.

"It's almost dusk, we should go," he announced. Cresana nodded in agreement, and she followed him out of her desolate chambers at the Little Palace for the last time.