(This may be more sadistic than what you had requested but my imagination went off the rails)
Blood Bender
in which a girl who loved the prince was given the darkest power of them all.
The room that was held in the lowest cell of the Little Palace’s dungeon was freezing, even on the warmest of days in Ravkan.
The girl had been close once, to the prince. Had been in love with him. Had shared his own quarters on his insistence that he could be stabbed in the night and needed his favorite healer with him. But she was property of Kirigan, had been since he’d practically raised her, and the general didn’t take kindly to what belonged to him. And he’d noticed her affections, as much as he’d noticed the prince’s feelings for her.
So when he’d left, the prince, her Nikolai, even though she’d been ordered to keep him there so she could spy on him, she hadn’t protested. She’d wanted him out—wanted him away from Kirigan’s clutches, especially when her dark master had begun brewing up monstrosities in the hidden dungeons under the palace.
She could picture Nikolai’s face, even then, as she laid on the cold, hard ground. The healer had long since given up on her life, but not on his. The Darkling’s strange minions tortured her daily, and every punishment was some new form of Hell. First came the voices. It was fellow Grisha, their tortured screams echoing around her, the sound so close they could’ve been in the next cell. But then it was Nikolai, Nikolai who she heard screaming for help, for her, Nikolai whose bones were being broken, skin marred, and she could do nothing but sob at the bars or cover her ears and wail against the floor.
Next was the altar. That stone altar that had chained her up as his minions sliced into her, burned her, broke her, reconstructing and bending her power to its greatest limits. Her voice broke from strain and she couldn’t speak for days after those long, horrific hours on the table, where she begged Saints that did not answer for death.
Then came the experimenting. Kirigan attempted new ways for her to use her power, trying to mold her into a demon of a Grisha. He insisted there were secrets the Grisha hid from the healers, ways to bend and burn and turn people inside out. But she had refused, all up until the day that one of her fellow healers was dragged down there, and Kirigan threatened to strap her to that disgusting altar and torture her until Y/N agreed to submit.
And a piece of herself left every time he brought a new criminal to practice on. Every time she bent the very blood in a person’s body, until she watched that blood creep out from every exit point, until the sight of the red leaking from her victims didn’t inspire horror from her but a strange, blank, hollowness.
Three years since she’d been hauled down here as punishment, and the prince was back. She was instructed to kill him as soon as possible, told that she could leave her cell when she wanted, but Y/N only laid there, soul completely gone, and stared at the walls until her eyelids could not hold themselves up any longer.
Kirigan was beginning to panic. The girl—his prized weapon—was fading away. No amount of torture would persuade her now; he knew she had passed her breaking point, and she’d likely kill herself before allowing his minions to lay hands on her ever again. So he tried a different direction. He bought her gifts, had her transported to lavish, comfortable chambers. He offered her riches beyond imaginable—books he knew she loved, music to be played, invitations to parties and plays and concert halls.
But she just laid in bed, refusing to eat. All she could see when she opened her eyes was blood. And all she could hear whenever people neared her was the rush of it inside their veins. It was its own kind of torture. Especially when Nikolai, Saints bless him, somehow found out where she was staying. And when he came to her rooms, her heart began to beat so fast in her chest she was almost sick.
“What the—for fucks sake, Y/N.” He gasped, lurching towards her side, taking her gaunt face in his hands. She recoiled from his touch, almost gagging when she felt every pulse of his heart, could hear and sense every artery, every single capillary, every vein…
Her magic thrummed beneath her skin. Her magic, her power, had become a monster of its own, tortured alongside her. But where she was broken, it was fixed. Where she was tired, it was starving. So it took everything in her to say the words she spoke, voice hoarse from disuse.
“I don’t want to see you ever again.” She told him, heart breaking at the hurt expression on his face.
“Its been—it’s been three years, Y/N. I’ve written you at least a hundred letters—where have you been? I was so worried for you. No one seemed to be able to find out what happened to you until a week ago when a servant reported you alive.” His hands grasped her face again, ignoring the disgust on her face because it was breaking his own heart, as well. “I thought you loved me. I thought we—”
“We’ll you’re wrong.” She hissed, jolting up, forcing herself away from him. Her face had drained of color and—no. It wasn’t that. It was that she had grown almost ten shades paler. Like she hadn’t been in the sun for years. His stomach lurched. What had they— “I do not love you. I could never love such an arrogant, prissy—”
He held up a hand to stop her foul words, his chest aching as he took in a trembling breath. All this time. Every night he had longed for her, had written to her, had craved her touch and her scent and her lips against his, and she…she…
“You must truly hate me,” he started, voice low. “if you would pretend to love me and then treat me this way.”
She was quiet, and when he looked at her, he saw that she was shaking. Her eyes were tear filled and she turned away, looking out towards the window. Saints, she was thin. And—and there were scars on her small arms. Scars and—and were those burn marks?
Nikolai’s stomach roiled with nausea as he reached for her, hesitating for half a second before touching her hand that was curled into a fist against the bed.
“Please do not touch me.” She whispered, all trace of malice gone from her voice, and so he didn’t.
Tears of his own were beginning to fill as he watched her, watched her thin shoulders shake as she shoved down her emotions. When he finally spoke, barely able to push back that knot in his throat, he told her about the Sun Summoner. About the Darkling’s betrayal and the war on the horizon. About the sea whip and the adventures he’d been on. About how he loved her, and had missed her, and how he’d doing anything for her to just…smile at him again.
But she was quiet, and after a full minute had passed, he wiped the wetness from his face and stood, headed towards the door.
“Do not come to me again.” Her voice was so quiet he hardly heard it and he turned, pained and stunned. “I—I don’t think I can…” her throat cleared. “The things he—I don’t know if I can stop myself if you..” she couldn’t finish her sentence, couldn’t finish the thought, and his mind raced as he tried to understand what exactly she was saying to him.
“Kirigan?” He asked, brows furrowed, and she stilled. “Kirigan? Tell me, Y/N, and I’ll fix this. You’ll come home with me, tonight, and we’ll—”
“This cannot be fixed.” She said, so slowly it sounded as if there was a period in between each word. “I have been…I cannot see you.”
“Just look at me.” He insisted, frustration and pain and fear rising when she didn’t. “Please. Just look at me and acknowledge that I love you, that I’ll fight for you, and we can fix this.”
He watched her shoulders droop as she turned, fixing him with a look full of hope and sadness. He almost dropped to his knees but managed to stand, holding his shoulders back the way a prince would.
“I’m taking you with me.” He told her, voice firm. “You’re not staying in this—this place. I swear to take care of you, for the rest of my life, if need be.” When he didn’t respond, he added, “I love you. Please believe me.”
So the girl swallowed, blinking at her prince, and moved, standing on shaking, too skinny legs. And she followed him wordlessly out, neither of them touching, as they left for his carriage towards the grand palace.
The war had been bloody and horrific. The other Grisha—the ones working for Kirigan, had power like nothing the others had ever seen. But it was the figure in a black dress, flimsy and ridiculously thin, that strode across the quiet feel towards Kirigan’s army. That was the figure that struck everyone dumb, staring at her determined face and gaunt body.
Nikolai and his friends froze, watching her emerge from the fort, expression so blank it was like looking at a ghost. She stared back at the enemy Grisha that looked at her, confusion in their eyes at her weaponless state.
“You,” the brunette in the front, the one that threw ice at her prince, started, voice trembling a fraction. “You’re um—you’re General Kirigan’s prize, right? The one he uh,” she looked at the others; shame had coated some of their faces, and she wondered how much they truly knew of her torture. Nikolai had gone deathly pale at the sight of her. “we won’t hurt you. Just—just come over here, and we’ll shield you, okay? You’ll be safe, Y/N.”
All fighting had ceased, watching the exchange with interest and tension, and the fire bearing Grisha beside the brunette spoke up.
“Come on, Y/N. You’re safe with us.”
And as Nikolai watched her, heart climbing in his throat, a small, sinister smile began to pull at the healer’s mouth.
“I’d like you to tell Kirigan something for me, if you don’t mind.” She whispered, her low voice quiet enough that everyone stopped moving, stopped breathing, in order to hear her. “Tell him I love him for what he did to me.” She said, and her hands moved.
The Grisha didn’t have a chance.
They dropped the ground, almost as one, all of them; they clutched their throats and gasped, unable to use their power if they tried. But Y/N simply tilted her head to the side, watching with a hungry, hateful stare.
When blood seeped from their eyes, their noses, their mouths, Nikolai turned and vomited onto the ground, the sight something of a nightmare made reality. The Grisha were dead within seconds, every single one of them, and Y/N sank onto the ground, her eyes finding Tolya’s. He was closest, his sword in hand, and the only one not shaking with fear.
“Kill me, please.” She whispered, still feeling utterly numb at what she’d just done.
“If you touch her,” Nikolai panted, shoving himself to his feet. “I will kill you where you stand.”
Her gaze snapped to the prince’s as he approached, then dropped to his knees, wrapping his arms around her. He breathed in her scent, ignoring the whispers around them, not when her pale hand moved hesitantly up to touch his back.
“I’m so sorry.” He whispered, piecing together her behavior—her appearance—what the Grisha had said—and then her power. Her dark power that was unnatural, that was nothing he’d ever seen before. “I won’t leave you again. I’m sorry.”
He pressed a kiss against her brow and she sighed, leaning into him. The power in her had been satisfied by the multitude of quick deaths, and his blood didn’t roar in her ears the way it sometimes did when he’d brought her to the palace, had brought her to his rooms, had fed her soup and clothed her and jabbered away even if she didn’t respond.
And on the days she refused to get out of bed, her expression haunted, he stayed beside her, refusing to leave the woman he loved. Not when he knew, somehow, that she’d been tortured ever since he had left. And though she still refused to tell him what had happened…well, they had time for that later.
“I do—” she swallowed, trying to bring the words out of her. “I do—love…you.” She said, her throat practically searing against the phrase, as the power inside her growled its disapproval. But Nikolai only kissed her forehead again, utterly unafraid of her.
She pulled back to look at him, touching his face with a tiredness that was bone deep, and forced her eyes not to linger on the gash on his head. If she did, she might feel the urge to see just how much it could bleed.
“I’m…” she swallowed again. She’d hardly spoken a word in months; it felt strange to communicate in more than nods or shakes of her head. “I’m going to…kill..”
He saw the look in her eyes and helped her up, his friends backing away from the girl as if she had the Black Plague. But her eyes simply swept over the clearing, meeting every gaze she saw, and spoke. For the first time in three years, she felt a sense of strength.
“Kirigan is mine.” She said, glaring around at them once more, before striding off into the distance, stepping over the bodies of her fallen Grisha on the way out of the fortress.
Kirigan had died begging.
She was laughing as she tugged his blood from his body, his eyes pleading with her. She had even mocked him, mocked him, miming choking on something as he gurgled and gagged on his own life’s blood. And when he was dead, good and truly dead, a strange weight whooshed out of her and she collapsed, panting.
Nikolai was at her side in seconds, Alina having had cleared the Fold, and when his hand touched her shoulder she felt, for the first time in a long time, no thrum of heartbeat. No hint of blood. She turned to look at him, eyes wide; Kirigan’s death had somehow reversed the damage. She raised her hands, healing the gash on his head, and sobbed in relief when his skin stitched together instead of tearing apart.
“Darling,” he sighed, gathering her into him, holding her close. “darling you’re safe. You’re free, now.”
“My—” she choked as she gasped for air, hardly able to breathe past the ache of relief in her chest. “Nikolai, I need you. I need you beside me.”
“I am yours.” He said simply, holding her close, and wondered, for the first time in a while, if a future with the woman he loved was truly possible.
And later, after months of healing, after hesitant attempts at stitching wounds, of curing illnesses, of gaining her color and gorgeous figure back, she finally told him of the horrors she had endured. When he had wept for her, she’d promised she loved him, and had endured it for him. For they would do anything for each other—anything.
And damn them if Kirigan would ever interfere again.
don’t ask where or why I came up with this but it’s gnarly to me to imagine someone with that kind of power xx
