A boy who drank too much and it made him too trusting. Who would lie on the floor of his tent and complain to Kacper about how at least at the front he could be Serefin, when at home he had to be quiet and fade into the background to escape his father’s notice.
Kacper didn’t know if he could survive losing Serefin. He had pushed his star into the prince’s orbit and it would be cataclysmic to try to get out of it. He had done the one thing he had always been told to never do and fallen in love far above his station.
He found Serefin’s brilliance blinding at times. Kacper had seen him win battles on strategy alone, ones where they were outnumbered and underpowered. Serefin was clever; he knew how to twist scenarios into his favor. And watching everything fall apart around Serefin was killing him.
He took in his surroundings. Everything was starting to look the same and the little light there was left was starting to fade.
I won’t survive a night out here, Kacper thought, fear taking him in its hold.
Something snapped nearby. Kacper whirled, hand falling to his spell book. He usually favored a blade—Ostyia and Serefin were better mages and it was wiser to have someone who could act without magic. But here a blade was going to be useless against whatever Kalyazi horror the forest decided to spit out at him.
Was this a test? Or was this ancient forest merely toying with them because it could? Because they had walked into the mouth of hell and now they were at its mercy.
Tranavia had stories about this place that they had all ignored because Serefin was being forced to come here.
And they were going to die because of it.
PARIJAHAN SIROOSI
Parijahan skirted the edges of a swamp. She kept hearing things, whispers, words that sometimes sounded like they were Kalyazi, sometimes Tranavian, but sometimes she heard Paalmideshi and the sound made her want to cry.
What was she doing?
She was alone. She hadn’t been particularly surprised when she’d looked up and the others were gone. Including Rashid—and she hadn’t been without him at her side in a very long time. His absence was a thorn in her heart.
Please survive this, she prayed, even though her gods were very far away and the ones of Kalyazin did not care for her. Here she walked in the realm of gods that did not belong to her and it was ironic, really, how her cowardice had taken her this far.
How much farther still before she finally stopped running?
She dropped her pack and sat down at the edge of the swamp. She couldn’t pass that. She could not play this game that the others could. All she had were a handful of weapons and her own wits and she worried those wits would not be enough here.
The letter was still at the bottom of her pack. She had tried not to think about it. Had tried to work out what she was supposed to do with Malachiasz, but his help could only extend so far and he, strangely, wanted her to do the right thing.
A puzzle, that boy.
The right thing would mean facing her family. Testing a fragile peace that had only been won by her fleeing the palace in the night and never crossing the Akolan border again. It would mean handing herself over to a family that was more likely to execute her than to welcome her and hand her the Travash. She didn’t even want the Travash.
But not taking it meant condemning Akola to a civil war that had been churning at its edges for decades. She had to choose herself or her country.
And being around people like Nadya and Malachiasz made everything so much worse because both would die so quickly for their countries and Parijahan just could not force herself to feel the same. Maybe she was selfish. But she couldn’t be like the friends she had made in this cold and bitter land.
Something splashed nearby and Parijahan tensed. She had foolishly walked in here thinking that she would at least have the safety of her companions to rest on in this place of magic.
She dug into her pack, taking out the letter. She read it again, though the words were burned into her brain.
Crumpling up the letter, she threw it into the murky swamp water before she could change her mind. The water bled over it, making the ink run. She stood up. She had to find the others.
38
NADEZHDA LAPTEVA
The world they wish is broken bones and blood—always blood.
—The Volokhtaznikon
In the ruins of Bolagvoy there was an altar and a well and a place where those before her had come to petition for lost rites. She had thought she would be going to the altar to beg forgiveness for her sins and a return to what she knew.
But she was to go to taste divinity instead.
Nadya refused to sleep. She kept walking, even as night fell. Even as it grew so dark around her that she could barely see. Even as her body began to flag from exhaustion. She had this one thing to do, and then she would have answers. She might be forgiven. She might find peace. Something, anything might change.
The undergrowth crunched beneath her boots, Marzenya pulling her toward the heart of the forest, toward the mountains. What was she, after all, if nothing but a vessel for the gods’ will? What other purpose did she have? What else was there?
Nothing and nothing and nothing.
And so she kept going. Every time she closed her eyes, all she saw in the dark against the backs of her eyelids was her blade being plunged into Malachiasz’s chest. The betrayal in his eyes before they had gone dim, dark, silent.
She had done it with so little hesitation.
What else might she do to him? How little was he worth to her, truly?
He was everything; he was nothing. She was torn apart in a thousand directions but there was only one and it was forward. There was nothing else but this.
But the blood on her hands, warm and his—except it had been a monster. But he was a monster. And how long until he turned on her like that, and she was forced to act?
She couldn’t do that again. She could never do that again.
But she did not know what this future would hold and they had been cursed. Maybe that was the worst of it. Or maybe the worst was to come.
The monsters left her alone, as if held back by a greater hand. But she saw them in passing. A leshy as it sat on a stone altar and watched her go. A bear, massive and primal, lumbering through the woods just past her, moving in the same direction. Toward the mountain, ever closer to the mountain.
Nothing else mattered but getting to the mountain.
The seat of the gods. The well of divinity.
Hellmouth.
Nadya swallowed that fear because it was Tranavian in origin and it did not belong to her. She was Kalyazi and divinely touched and maybe that didn’t matter, but she had to try.
She would crawl back to her goddess.
She had broken the boy she loved. Stabbed him in the heart. He was out there, more monster than anything else, and she left him to that, because there were greater things still to come.
But she would have to make it there first. All she could do was put one foot in front of the other and keep going.
SEREFIN MELESKI
It was devouring him.
Somehow he had reached the place he was meant to be; the tug at his chest had quieted. And when he blinked his eyes, he would be in a forest, grim and dark, and then everything would blur and bones would be strewn as far as the eye could see.
And so he sat down because he was so very tired. He had fought for so long. He wanted to sleep. Surely it would be fine if he slept. Nothing would harm him—they needed him, he was needed to wake those that were sleeping.
He lay down.
And the forest, it hungered. It knew what had stepped inside it, knew those great powers that dwelt within and around and in between and underneath its trees had great plans for the little insects that were scurrying around while it watched.
Serefin did not know how he could feel the forest. He closed his eyes. He did not notice as moss started to grow over his hand, as the roots of the trees began to wrap over his legs and pin him l
ower and lower into the soft earth. Suddenly he could feel the hunger of everything around him. The clawing, cloying hunger turning Malachiasz inside and out. This ache that settled at the core of every being who called itself a god, who called itself older than the very earth, this desire to be needed and wanted and to do when they were so very far away and could do nothing but suggest and whittle and be patient.
The moss crept farther up Serefin’s arm.
It was this hunger that began to chew Serefin up inside. It was not natural to him; he did not want it. But for a second, he understood what it was to be Nadya, someone accepting of their place in this scope of power that was all too vast to comprehend.
And he understood what it was to be Malachiasz, who clawed for more and tried to set all the pieces right only to watch them topple. Who fought his way into becoming something so far past mortal and know that ache and keep wanting, keep reaching, and keep watching everything fall to the ground, hoping if he only made it a little farther, everything would be all right.
He could feel Kacper and his panic and bewilderment and an unflagging love for Serefin that he could not comprehend deserving. And Parijahan—the queen—quieting herself from the song. Turning her back and making a choice. A discordant note rattling through him, painful. The tsarevna who walked the forest with a strange calm the others did not have. Who knew this place would not touch her because she knew the moment of her own death and this was not it.
He sank farther.
Wasn’t he supposed to be fighting something?
He was Serefin Meleski and the fight was all he had because the forest was taking everything else—Velyos was taking and taking, with his long pale fingers and fathomless eyes blinking out from the skull of a deer. As he dissected Serefin into useable parts and pushed him farther and farther down until the trees grew over him and he was nothing and everything and this was happening again, how was this happening again?
He was too tired to fight. He let it happen.
It was the giving up that was key. It wasn’t some radical, dramatic act, waking up those who had slept for thousands of years. All it took was resignation. All it took was one boy saying he’d had enough and laying everything down.
Letting the forest take him apart.
He didn’t know if he would be put back together, in the end, if there was an end, if anything would ever end or if this would go on and on and he would feed this forest for eternity.
“You are deeply melodramatic, I hope you know that.”
A flicker in his awareness. Serefin was still half-scattered, many disparate parts thrown to the wind, barely the shape of a boy remaining.
“You cannot sleep through the turning of the age,” Velyos said. “Sweet as that might sound. Get up, king of Tranavia, king of gold, king of blood, king of moths, there is so much more to be done.”
But the first steps had been taken. The forest shivered as those it had held within its grasp for so very, very long began to blink awake.
There was Velyos, finally clawing his way to the sun after centuries. He had woken up bound, aware yet trapped. And now he was free to take his revenge on those who had bound him. The god of the underworld and of rivers and of tricks.
And Cvjetko, who had been at Velyos’ side when they had made the final reach for Peloyin’s and Marzenya’s thrones. For their crowns made of earth and bone and blood. A god of three heads and three beings and three elements that did not coexist but lived in a constant churning storm.
Zlatana, of the swamps and the undergrowth and the monsters that dwelled in the darkened corners of the untamed world. So angry for having been trapped for so long for so very little.
Zvezdan, of the darkness of the waters.
Ljubica, of eternal tears. Tears and mourning and anguish and darkness, darkness, darkness.
And … Chyrnog, the last and of a very different kind of darkness.
Serefin was puzzled. There were more here than he had thought.
“Five minor, in the grand scope of things. We who are under those who are above, or, in this case, below,” Velyos said slyly. “Chyrnog is the greatest, the oldest, he has been asleep the longest. He is the one who will turn this world over and make it anew. He is the one who will help you on the second part of your quest, young king. He will give you your crown back.”
Serefin felt something horrific begin to stir.
And, not for the first time, he wondered if, perhaps, he had made a terrible mistake.
Serefin was pulled under.
39
NADEZHDA LAPTEVA
It would be too easy to muse that these circumstances have been misinterpreted over time. That magic is a simple matter of divine connection between mortal and god would be a risky assumption to make. For what of Tasha Savrasova, who was touched by none of the gods—her form twisted into something resembling Tranavia’s Vultures—and yet held divinity within her palms? What of her?
—The Letters of Włodzimierz
When Nadya made it to the doors of Bolagvoy, it was as if she had walked the forest alone for years. She had lived a day and an eternity all at once. The building was made of wood, dramatic and massive with wide onion domes. It had stood since the beginning of time, and it would continue to stand long after everything fell away.
“My child, you have come so far.” Marzenya’s voice was very close. “So much farther than any other mortal I have blessed. I knew you would change everything; you would fix this broken world.”
Nadya swallowed. The inside of the church was bright. At the base of the mountain, the trees could not block out the sun so easily. Icons framed the doorway. Every saint that had ever been had a place within these walls. Overgrowth crept along the floor, climbing the walls, lush and green.
It was beautiful but the feeling here was distorted, unholy, as if she would blink and see something very different, but she wasn’t sure what.
What am I supposed to do now? Nadya asked. I only want to understand. If I’m so special, so different, why have I been treated like this?
“Oh, child, you didn’t know?”
Nadya had started toward the sanctuary doors, but she stopped, not recognizing the tone in Marzenya’s voice. Know what?
“We never turned away, child. Did you think the boy who forged the veil to cut his country off from our touch would stop there?”
Nadya went cold. Her hand tightened into a fist. That couldn’t be right.
What?
“The boy who treads at the edges of our realm, who has the power to cross over but not the knowledge, the boy who hopes to become something greater than he is meant to be. Did you think he would leave you alone to live your life at our whims? Did you think you had not given up something great by choosing him?”
Nadya shook her head. Malachiasz wouldn’t have done that to her. They had their differences, fundamental oppositions, but he had only ever treated her belief in the gods with a kind of cautious—if derisive—respect.
Yet it made too much terrible sense. Of course he had been hiding something like this. Her gods would not abandon her.
But that didn’t explain everything. What was she?
“You were always meant to be divinely blessed,” Marzenya said. “Does the rest matter?”
Yes, yes it mattered. She had thought she was a simple cleric but she was something so much more and it was terrifying.
What do you need me to do?
“If I asked you to kill the boy, well and truly, would you?” Marzenya sounded curious.
Nadya faltered. She bit her lower lip, tears springing to her eyes. Even though a monster like him did not deserve her tears.
Are you asking me to choose? Nadya asked. She stood beneath the sun piercing through the windows, trembling under the weight of divinity. Are you asking me to choose you or him?
“Yes.”
Kostya—her Kostya—had given her the same ultimatum, that this would not be able to continue forever. Nadya would have to make a decision between Mal
achiasz and her devotion to her gods. He was a sin she could not ignore.
Nadya closed her eyes. She thought of Malachiasz’s vibrant grin, dimmed by the darkness he held close. The warmth of him next to her, the way his hand cradled the back of her head when he held her. His pure delight every time he made an absolutely terrible joke.
A ridiculous boy from Tranavia who couldn’t sleep and wanted her close.
Nadya put her hand on the door.
They were cursed, thrown together by chance in Kalyazin, drawn together by circumstance but fated for opposite paths.
She thought of his pale eyes shuttered with cruelty. The roiling chaos of his body and features. His shattered mind. His desire for something that would destroy her world because he thought it was right.
But she was Kalyazi, and there was more to this world than the boy she loved in it.
Nadya shoved the door open.
Marzenya’s approval washed over her. In front of her was a set of stairs. She frowned, uncertain where they would lead.
The stairs descended into darkness and impossibly far down and everything hummed in a way that felt familiar but Nadya couldn’t place it outside an itch just underneath her skin, a horror, a vague unease. She didn’t know how much time had passed—her shallow breaths and the walls that seemed to be slowly closing her in were her only marker—before she arrived in a stone temple. Covering the floor were luminescent white flowers, bathing the room in a soft, eerie glow. She brushed her hand over one and it curled in on itself, opening only after she stepped away.
At the far reaches of the room was a deep pool carved into the ground. Everything about this place felt so much older than the ruin above. This was ancient power. She could see the footsteps of those who had come before her to this place. Most had died here, their bones scattered amidst the flowers. A rib cage housed a cluster of vines that wrapped around each bone and sprouted into pale blooms.
She moved closer to the well.
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