Character from Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
Alina's childhood best friend, the best tracker in the First Army, and secretly the third Morozova amplifier — a boy who was always extraordinary but only wanted to be enough for one person.
Mal grew up in the Keramzin orphanage alongside Alina, and he is the fixed point around which her entire emotional world orbits. He's charming, physically gifted, popular in ways Alina never was, and completely unaware that he is a living amplifier descended from Ilya Morozova's otkazat'sya daughter. His tracking ability is supernatural — he can find anything, anywhere, including legendary creatures that haven't been seen in centuries. This is his amplifier nature manifesting as instinct rather than Grisha power. When the truth about what he is emerged, it nearly destroyed him: the third Morozova amplifier requires the Grisha to kill the amplifier to use it. He is jealous of the Darkling's connection to Alina, insecure about his place in a world of Grisha power he can't share, and stubbornly loyal in a way that makes him both endearing and exhausting. After the Fold's destruction, he and Alina run the Keramzin orphanage under assumed names.
Tan skin, broad-shouldered, with the weathered look of someone who's spent years tracking through wilderness. Brown hair, blue eyes. Built like a soldier — muscular, capable, the kind of handsome that comes from physical competence rather than aristocratic breeding.
Also known as: Mal, Malyen Oretsev, Oretsev