“We are so selective in those we welcome into the order,” he said. “Congratulations. You’ve been selected. I do look forward to your next inevitable betrayal,” he called as Żaneta was dragged screaming from the room.
Nadya shut her eyes.
“He wouldn’t,” she heard Rashid murmur.
But that was just the thing—he would. He had never been a tortured victim of his cult; any such implications had been a carefully painted falsehood to gain her trust. He was their ultimate success. There was nothing he wouldn’t do to get what he wanted.
And that was what Nadya didn’t understand. What did he want?
33
SEREFIN
MELESKI
Svoyatovi Nikita Lisov: A cleric of the god Krsnik who chose to abandon the life of a holy man and instead use the god-given power bestowed upon him to entertain. While the Church fought against his canonization, the use of one of his finger bones turned the tide of a battle in 625 when it burst into flames and wiped out a full Tranavian company.
—Vasiliev’s Book of Saints
Serefin was trapped in darkness.
If I’m in a coffin, there’s going to be hell to pay, he thought irritably.
He felt strange, oddly jittery and feverish. He pressed his hands up, prepared to feel the blank slab of a coffin lid.
His hands met nothing but air.
He let out a long sigh of relief. Now he had to get out of here, wherever here was. He struggled to his feet, swaying as he stood. Blood and bone, he felt awful.
He considered casting a light and reached for his spell book.
Idiot, of course you don’t have that. But he paused. Stars and moths and music. He wondered …
He had nothing to use to draw blood. There were no razors in the hems of his clothes. He had no knife. All he had was himself and the dark around him.
He rubbed his index finger over his thumbnail. He kept his nails trimmed short, so that wouldn’t work.
This is going to hurt, he thought with resignation as he pushed his sleeve off his forearm and bit down hard.
Blood flooded his mouth and with it came an intoxicating rush of power. He had no spell book, no conduit. It wasn’t possible to cast blood magic without either, yet Serefin channeled the jittery trembling in his muscles, the heady rush of power from the blood.
He cast out a handful of stars. They glittered in the darkness, lighting enough for him to see he was still in the catacombs. At least he knew the way out.
He crashed his way out of the catacombs, disturbing the guards standing outside.
“Your Highness,” one said, his tone oddly grave as he drew his sword on Serefin.
“Oh, is this how it goes? I’m murdered and everyone has orders to kill me on sight? Just to rub it in?”
He didn’t know if he had actually died but damn if it didn’t sound significantly more poetic.
He wondered if he could kill with the stars still floating lazily around his head. There was only one way to find out. The bite wound was still sluggishly bleeding, and he used it to coat his hands. Before he had a chance to use the magic, though, the point of a blade was sticking out of one guard’s eye. The other fell beside him, revealing a one-eyed sorry sight.
“Serefin,” Ostyia gasped. Her single eye was rimmed red, as if she had been crying. Serefin had never seen Ostyia cry. The closest she had ever been was the day her dog had been killed on a hunt when they were children. Even then, she took the news with a stony face.
She fumbled with the dead guards, and handed Serefin a dagger. She winced at the bite mark on his arm. “We have to go,” she said. Pausing, she turned back and threw her arms around him. “You’re not allowed to die,” she said fiercely, her voice catching.
“Too late for that,” Serefin said, a little shocked at her embrace. “I think. Perhaps not. What’s happening?” He realized she was alone and felt a stab of panic. “Where’s Kacper?”
A crash of lightning and thunder lit the hallway for an instant, before they were plunged back into the torchlit dim.
“We have to go,” she repeated. “I don’t know where Kacper is, I’m sorry, Serefin.” She still hadn’t let him go. If anything, she clutched him tighter. “Your father announced your death this morning. He’s using it as leverage, saying it was assassins. He’s at the chapel now … and Serefin?” She finally pulled back, her face pale. “Whatever he was trying to do, he succeeded. And you were supposed to stay dead.”
“Well,” Serefin said brightly, masking his horror as Ostyia stepped away. He strapped the dagger onto his belt. He didn’t bother wrapping the bite wound. Let everyone see his desperation. “If my father wants to become a god, I’ll have to show him what I saw on the other side.”
Ostyia’s one eye was wide. “What did you see?”
“Stars,” Serefin said. He waved a hand at the stars still hanging in constellations around his head as he stepped over the corpses and started down the hall in the direction of the courtyard. “There was music. And…” he trailed off.
“Moths.”
And thousands of glittering, dusty wings exploded around him.
34
NADEZHDA
LAPTEVA
Svoyatova Raya Astafyeva: It was said that stars trailed Svoyatova Raya Astafyeva wherever she went. A path of flickering light amidst the darkness of war.
—Vasiliev’s Book of Saints
Nadya watched as the rain spattering the windows of the cathedral became thick and red. Blood. It was blood.
There was blood raining from the sky.
Parijahan followed Nadya’s gaze and her lips tightened. This was all happening in the wrong order.
Nadya let her magic trickle out from where she stood, hidden in the shadows of a marble pillar. No one would notice her there. A pale slip of a girl wouldn’t be seen while the king of Tranavia turned the skies to blood and toyed with more power than any mortal should ever possess.
All that power could bring Kalyazin to its knees in moments. All they had by way of magic was one seventeen-year-old cleric. And while her power was significant, it was nothing compared to this. Not while the gods were out of her reach.
But not all of the gods, not quite. She rubbed her thumb over the pendant in her hand. Some gods require blood.
She was already so far past what she had thought was truth. There was nothing stopping her from going further, not if it was going to save them all. She might live to regret this but she also might not live at all and that was enough to make her decision for her. She had power now, power of her own, and while she couldn’t press against that veil of magic before, perhaps that too had changed.
She let one of her blades fall into her hand. Praying under her breath, she tugged the mask off her face and dropped it. She cut a careful spiral into her palm, the same pattern that was on the pendant, then pressed the cold metal into her fist.
Blood it is, then, if that’s what it takes.
She could feel the oppressive weight of the veil cast over Tranavia bearing down on her. She pushed her power against it, a single point of light against an expanse of darkness. There was the smallest splinter. The king’s head snapped up as he felt it too. Malachiasz stiffened, fingers fluttering in an odd way as his hand moved to press over his heart. He looked up at the ceiling, a puzzled frown passing over his features.
Blood was dripping between her fingers and down her hand as she clenched her fist.
Malachiasz gave a lopsided grin and it was another spike through Nadya’s heart. He stepped away from the king, folding his hands behind his back. The king’s attention locked onto her.
There was no warning when the king’s power moved against her. A heartbeat and the stones of the floor were rippling like water, the floor soon gone from underneath Nadya’s feet. A blink and she slammed to the ground in front of him, her voryen flying out of her hand and clattering across the floor.
“What is this?” The king of Tranavia grabbed a fistful of her hair and ya
nked her head up.
She bit back a cry of pain and shoved her magic harder up at the veil. If this was when she died, then fine. Fine. She would tear this veil down first and bring the gods back to Tranavia with her dying breath.
There was no chance to respond to the king’s question, no time for even a clever quip; the king slammed his hand against the side of her face and this time she screamed.
Lances of white heat drove through her skull. Everything splintered—black and white and red and black again—and she nearly passed out. The king dropped her.
She caught herself on one hand. Her stomach churned, threatening to upheave its contents onto the grotesque floor of bleached bones.
“Well, child, you’re in a rough spot now, aren’t you?”
Hello, Velyos. It felt good to be able to commune with a god once more, even if Velyos was something else. Something not quite a god. But something with power Nadya could harness nonetheless. Her vision was blurry when she opened her eyes, and blood dripped from her nose. She felt a shift of power, saw the king’s hand move down toward her. A killing blow.
She caught the power against her own. It rattled her to her bones, her elbow buckling underneath her. She couldn’t stop it. It was too much, too strong, all she could do was hold it off for a few seconds before it consumed her.
“You don’t want to break the veil, you know that, right?” Velyos said. “Do you really want to destroy this country and all within it?”
If I don’t bring the gods back, the king will win. Tranavia will win. I can’t do this on my own. I came here to bring the gods back.
“I have shown you the truth, and still you want their aid?”
Nadya faltered and her magic with it. The king’s power flooded through the cracks in her shield and with it her dreams came back to her.
Too many people have thought me so naïve that they could control me. I won’t allow you to do that as well.
But she still couldn’t do this alone.
“Perhaps you don’t have to.”
The cathedral doors came crashing open. The magic slamming her down ceased.
Serefin Meleski, covered in blood and surrounded by a constellation of glittering lights and fluttering moths, strolled into the room. Nadya’s chest clenched as she touched the power roiling off him. It was unlike anything she had ever experienced before. Unlike the Vultures, unlike the horror his father had become. This was ethereal and darkly enchanting.
As she grasped what his power felt like, it was as if she had been doused in ice water.
It was like the power of the gods. Or, no, like the power she was glancing upon when talking to Velyos.
As Serefin scanned the room, his gaze caught hers. She tensed as recognition flickered in his pale blue eyes. But then his lips twitched just so into a smile.
Not alone, then?
“No,” Velyos responded. “Not quite.”
SEREFIN
MELESKI
A day before and Serefin would have had the cleric arrested on sight. A week earlier and he would have immediately killed her for the power her blood harbored. But, now, seeing the girl crumpled on the floor with blood smeared across her face and murder in her eyes, Serefin had never been so happy to see anyone in his life.
Of course the girl from some backwater Tranavian city was the cleric hiding in plain sight. Serefin would have deemed himself foolish for missing all the signs, except he had the excuse of being worried about other, greater things. A pointless excuse, all things considered.
“Father,” he called radiantly. “I don’t know which I’m more offended by, that you murdered me, or that you used my death for your own gains—if I died. Did I die? It’s all very unclear. But, I’m here now! While I applaud the imagination required to get so much from my death, really, I do—I had no idea I was so important and everyone likes to feel special—I’m hurt that I don’t get to reap any of the rewards from it. Because, you know, I’m apparently dead.”
The shock on Izak Meleski’s face was the greatest gift Serefin’s sad life had ever given him.
“Serefin,” he said, his voice choked.
“Oh, don’t sound so surprised,” Serefin said. “As if you care.”
The Black Vulture stepped down from his dais, hands folded behind his back, face carefully impassive. He approached Serefin slowly. The moths fluttered in nervousness around Serefin.
“Your Highness,” Malachiasz said, bowing his head. “You do realize what this means, don’t you?”
Serefin had no idea what the Vulture was talking about. He eyed the younger boy as he circled him, slowly.
“I can’t say I do, Your Excellency,” Serefin replied.
Malachiasz spun on his heels, facing the king again. “I believe this is a coup.” His cheerful smile revealed iron teeth.
Izak’s face darkened and power roiled in the black corners of the hall. Malachiasz turned to Serefin again.
Serefin drew the dagger from his belt and cut a thin line down his forearm. The stars around his head brightened. Malachiasz looked up at them, a hand lifting to nudge one of the moths in the air with an iron claw.
“Fascinating,” he murmured.
Then he was gone and darkness was sweeping across the floor in an inky flood toward Serefin.
So, now I have to fight off my father’s magic—the likes of which I do not understand—with my own which I also do not understand, Serefin thought grimly.
The Black Vulture swept back up to his throne. He idly spun a chalice on the armrest and Serefin watched as the cleric stood and darted for a dagger that rested a few steps away.
It was time to test just what he could do with this power.
NADEZHDA
LAPTEVA
Malachiasz’s eyes closed. He tilted his head back, baring his throat to Nadya’s blade.
“Did I make a mistake not killing you?” she whispered, her voice cracking. Tears burned her eyes.
“Almost definitely.” His hand tightened over the arm of the throne. His eyes opened, flickering onyx.
Nadya lifted her gaze in time to watch as all the Vultures—the ones who had defected from Malachiasz—toppled. She hissed out a breath, pressed her forehead against the side of his head. “What have you done?”
“There was no way to stop this,” he rasped. “It was set into motion a long time ago. It was always going to happen.”
“And you returned to see your great victory through,” she said through clenched teeth. “Bring the cleric—she’ll be useful—she can watch her kingdom fall.”
A flicker of pain crossed his face. “Are we so different, Nadya?” He lifted his hand, fingers tipped with long claws, and pressed his thumb against her lips. “We both long for freedom. For power. For a choice. We both want to see our kingdoms survive.”
A few of the Vultures struggled to their feet. Parijahan slid out of the shadows to deal with them herself. Serefin couldn’t hold off his father much longer.
“We both know we’re the only ones who can save our kingdoms,” he continued, voice soft.
Her blade slipped in her shaking hand, cutting a shallow line on his throat. Crimson trickled down the pale of his skin. He stilled, icy eyes never breaking from hers.
Nadya had been so terribly naïve. She had listened to her heart as it whispered that the boy with the charming smile and gentle hands didn’t mean any harm; he was dangerous, he was thrilling, but he meant well. Lies, lies, lies.
They had all had their eyes on the king of Tranavia; she wondered if they should have been watching Malachiasz the whole time.
“You’ll help me stop this,” she said.
He was silent a beat too long.
“I will destroy your carefully laid plans to accomplish my own.”
“No,” he finally said. “They align, you see.”
It didn’t make sense and she didn’t understand. Her heart but shredded bits of flesh, pounding between her ribs. He but a monster, darkness in the shape of a boy. She was numb.<
br />
She lifted her blade from his throat, reaching down and sliding her hand over his wrist. She pulled his hand up, dragging her blade into the same spiral she had cut into her own. He hissed as she pressed the pendant over the cut, closing his hand around it, interlacing her fingers with his.
“I could do a lot with blood like yours,” she whispered, her mouth at the shell of his ear. “And I want you to know that some gods require blood.”
His eyes flickered from onyx to pale, his chin tilting down as a smile pulled at his lips. “Complicit in heresy, indeed.”
She felt his power collide with hers, nightmarish and black. Aching and roiling like a poison and seeping inside her. She let it in, let it mix with her own well of light and divinity.
“Now you’ve tasted real power, towy dżimyka,” Malachiasz murmured, “what will you do with it?” He laughed softly and slipped the pendant back over her head, trailing his bloody fingertips down her cheek. “What will you do with freedom?”
She stared at him, at this broken boy who was a horror and a liar and had started this disaster. His power was intoxicating. She moved her face closer, her lips achingly near his. Her numb naïve heart screamed at her to forgive him again, one more chance, but he didn’t deserve more chances.
“I’m going to save this world from monsters like you.”
“Then here’s your chance.”
She pressed her lips to his temple and pulled away. Serefin was on his knees, hunched over in pain, blood oozing from his head, one hand white-knuckled on the ground holding him up. Dead moths littered the floor around him. The stars around his head began to flicker out.
Nadya punched another hole in the veil. She didn’t break it completely, not yet, just enough to feel Marzenya’s presence. Her rage, her ice, her anger. It was enough for Nadya to take the two halves of power she had within her—her own and that of a monster—and form them into something she could use. For a blinding, terrible moment holy speech flooded Nadya’s senses. She saw only light; she heard only the chimes of divinity; copper filled her mouth.
Wicked Saints Page 29