Can you love a god? No, such things were impossible.
The barest glimmer, a fraction of sharpness in Malachiasz’s onyx eyes.
His hands clasped over hers—mortal and eldritch—and his iron claws punched clean through her palms. A starburst of pain that felt distant as she toppled the dark well of magic within her and flooded him with it. He was darkness and eldritch and mad, and, in the end, with a cracked and bitter halo of divinity tainted by an ocean of horrors, so was she.
Marzenya shoved her away as Malachiasz staggered to his feet. A monster—chaos—but sharpened. Coherent. The Black Vulture, and a god in control of the magic churning within him. Only in control because Nadya’s dark thrum of power had smoothed the edges of his chaos. A bond broken; a bond reforged.
“Leave us,” Nadya spat at him, through a mouthful of blood.
He spared her a brief glance as Marzenya’s hold of death grew palpable. And with a twisted smile, he slammed his iron claws into the goddess’s chest.
The death of a god was like a star collapsing, crumpling in upon itself until there was nothing left but a supernova—one solitary moment of brilliance before emptiness.
No. She had given him power to flee to run not to do this. Not this.
It was over before Nadya had even realized Malachiasz had struck. And all that was left was the snow raging in a blizzard around them and an absolute and utter emptiness.
The other gods were gone. None would risk this god killer’s wrath.
Nadya scrambled backward in the snow as Malachiasz turned on her. All she had wanted was to set him free. And all she would get in return for that mercy was death.
42
SEREFIN MELESKI
Their names are lost to time, these gods of chaos, these beings of trickery and deceit and chance. But those who destroyed them live on: Marzenya, Veceslav, Peloyin, and Alena. Striking down those who would strike them down by their sheer nature alone. And so the cycle stretches on, turning, turning.
—The Books of Innokentiy
Serefin clutched the bone dagger so hard he was afraid the hilt might crack. The scene had left a mark upon him. A monster of shifting parts and sharp teeth and claws destroying the one of ice and snow and death. A god made, a god murdered.
Serefin only had one last thing to do before he could sleep. Gone were all thoughts of returning to Tranavia and reclaiming his throne. Gone were any thoughts of making it off this mountain. If he just dealt with the monster before him, his younger brother, he could sleep. He could sleep forever.
That sounded fine to Serefin, nice even. A moth fluttered against his shoulder. He brushed it off absently. It returned with more urgency.
He crushed it in his hand. There was no time for that.
“Malachiasz,” Serefin called, and his voice sounded wrong in his ears.
The monster turned and slowly, unwillingly, abandoned the cleric where she lay gasping and blood-covered in the snow.
“Come now,” Serefin said, voice softer. “I don’t know if you’ve known for long, or if you know at all, or if it takes magically transcending time and space to dredge up memories the Vultures locked away, but we need to talk, you and I. It isn’t worth it, turning on her. Well, maybe it is, she is the enemy, but you would regret it.”
Nadya dropped her head back in the snow, covering her face with her hands.
Malachiasz took a step closer to Serefin. Twisting, roiling, churning, teeth and limbs and chaos and madness until quiet.
Quiet.
Narrowing down, slower and softer, until all that stood before Serefin was a boy, taller than him, younger than him, terrified and confused.
The boy standing in the hallway of Grazyk, tears running down dusty cheeks as it dawned on him exactly what his power meant. Serefin hadn’t understood, that day, what he had done. Forcing Malachiasz to reveal his power to that Vulture had damned him. Serefin had damned him. And, maybe, the Vultures were where Malachiasz belonged, but if it hadn’t been for him, Malachiasz might still have been simply a noble boy raised in Grazyk. Malachiasz might have known they were brothers long before this.
Serefin’s heart clenched in his chest. He took a step closer.
“You managed it,” Serefin continued. “That grand disturbance against your enemies.”
“It’s not finished. I’m not finished,” Malachiasz said desperately. “That was only one and there are so many—”
“And what happens then?”
Malachiasz blinked. He opened and closed his mouth, licking his cracked and bleeding lips.
“What happens when you topple this divine empire?”
“I make it better,” Malachiasz said. “I make Tranavia better.”
“You can’t do that,” Serefin replied.
The way Malachiasz was staring at him: hurt and anger and such a deep well of sadness. He knew.
“It’s been a long time,” Serefin said lightly. “I did miss you.”
“Not enough,” Malachiasz spat, taking a step back. He pressed his hands to his temples. His features still shifted—eyes blinking open, teeth clawing his skin where no teeth should be, only for it to heal—but this was nothing like that monstrous display of divinity. “Not enough to ever tell me?”
“I didn’t know.”
“You’re a liar.”
“I am.” Serefin shrugged. “A liar. A murderer. A drunk. You’re no better. A liar. A murderer. A monster. What a pair we make. The kings of Tranavia, a pair of good-for-nothing brothers.”
Malachiasz flinched like he had been struck. Serefin stepped cautiously, finally making it to the other boy. Malachiasz was anxiously shredding his fingernails, his edges shivering as though he was seconds away from becoming the monster.
Malachiasz swallowed hard. His pale eyes were glassy with tears. “Brother,” he murmured.
And it was the broken, hollow emptiness in Malachiasz’s voice, the tears running down his bloodstained cheeks, that tore what was left of Serefin to pieces. He wasn’t as cruel as he thought. Serefin couldn’t do this. The boy standing in front of him wasn’t only a traitorous Vulture trying to ruin Serefin’s life. He was more than that. Serefin had so little family left, he couldn’t kill the brother he had never really known. Malachiasz had made his life an absolute hell and that was one thing, but Serefin couldn’t repay that with another murder.
Serefin let his hand fall away from the bone dagger at his belt.
“I am most certainly the last person you ever wanted to hear that from,” Serefin said. “And, honestly, I could have done better in the little brother area, but—”
He was startled as Malachiasz yanked him into an embrace, his shoulders shaking with sobs. Serefin stood frozen, held captive by how much he had missed Malachiasz and how much he loathed and hated him but couldn’t stand to see him so broken. He returned the embrace.
The world flashed, warping as Serefin lost control of his left eye. It was a slow bleed, shadows crept into the corner of his vision, and his hand was wrapping around the hilt of the dagger, pulling it from its sheath.
No. I have given you enough. You have taken enough, Serefin thought, struggling, trying to drop the blade, trying to get Malachiasz to pull away and see what was about to happen so he could at least try to stop it.
But he didn’t have control. He was utterly helpless to watch, to feel, as his hand gripped the dagger tight. His other arm embracing Malachiasz in return.
“Goodbye, brother,” his mouth whispered into Malachiasz’s ear.
A wrenching as he pulled back from Malachiasz. The dagger plunging into Malachiasz’s chest. Malachiasz stiffening, his exhale of pain. The warm blood pouring over Serefin’s hand.
He took a step back. He was crying. This wasn’t what he wanted—he hadn’t wanted to kill Malachiasz.
He was dimly aware of Nadya’s scream of anguish.
He had to get control. It couldn’t end like this. He would not live like this. What would be the bloody point?
Every ti
me Velyos or Chyrnog had spoken to him, every time something weird and divine happened, it began the same. His left eye would hurt and start bleeding, his vision would go blurry. His left eye was the problem.
There was no spell to cast, no magic to break this connection. The divine were too strong and Serefin was too mortal. A moth landed over his left eye, forcing it closed. The eye hungered to see and to control Serefin and use him for more killing, more ruin of this world so it could delight in the suffering left in his wake.
He needed it out.
It was an impulse, an irrational, uncontrollable beast. No one was paying attention to him. No one noticed his hands snaking up his face. It wouldn’t take much. Eyes were fragile, and this one was weaker than most.
This would end it.
There was a very real danger of bleeding out up here. And there was the equally real danger that Nadya would leave him up here to rot like he deserved.
But he had to get it out.
Cut out the eye, cut off the divine. It was so easy. So simple. If only he had done it before he had come to this hellish place. Before the worst had happened.
Pain was a familiar friend to Serefin. What was a little more pain?
He hesitated. Kept hesitating. That little human instinct that keeps the body from harming itself prodding at him.
But he didn’t have control of his left eye.
It wasn’t even his anymore.
And if it wasn’t his, what was it doing in his body? He had to get it out. He had to drive it out.
He had to dig it out.
And his fingers were prodding at his eye socket and that little, needling voice—that little, careful instinct—went quiet. It went dark. It let him claw, let him bleed, let him pry and dig until something gave. There was so much blood—so much blood—Serefin grew dizzy because even the starburst of pain wasn’t enough to knock him out. He had survived too much. The aching agony wasn’t enough to shut him down and finally let him sleep. Maybe he would never sleep. Maybe this was his damnation. To claw out his own eye and never sleep, never dream, never know another moment’s rest. He had been taken by these gods—claimed, and he would never be free.
Something snapped.
It had not wanted to break. Bodies, so fragile, so mortal, but so resilient under pressure. They did not want to break. But it broke, it snapped—the piece of flesh that kept his eye grounded in its socket, that let him see, let him feel, broke in two.
And, for the first time in months—silence.
Serefin broke the connection with the gods.
His left eye fell to the ground, a chaos of stars.
43
NADEZHDA LAPTEVA
Greedy, he is, Chyrnog, greedy to feast on all he desires. Alena’s power rests in the sky and he yearns, he hungers, and if he were to escape, if he were to break past the bonds that bind him, he would devour her.
—The Volokhtaznikon
Her grief was going to swallow her whole. Her goddess was gone. She kept reaching for Marzenya and there was only a void, empty and silent.
She barely saw Serefin through her tears as he approached Malachiasz. Suddenly they were so very close.
The tremor of agony that cut across Malachiasz’s face sent terror deep into her core. He stumbled back from Serefin and it took Nadya a moment to register the blood covering his hands. The hilt of a blade buried in Malachiasz’s chest.
No.
The ground tilted as the rest of Nadya’s world tore apart. She scrambled forward as Malachiasz fell to his knees. She was only aware of her surroundings in painful flashes. Tears streaked down Serefin’s cheeks as he raked a bloody hand through his hair, glassy, godstouched eyes staring at nothing. The terrible blank of Malachiasz’s face. Her own heart pounding in her throat as she panicked.
But Malachiasz was the Black Vulture. She had seen him stabbed before and survive. This would be nothing. He would be fine. It was almost impossible to kill a Vulture, and he was far more.
Nadya’s hand neared the hilt of the blade and she felt the power it was giving off. She knew this blade. She knew what it was capable of.
A terrible dread spiked within her. She slid to her knees in front of Malachiasz and, gods, there was so much blood and his breathing was shallow and this couldn’t be happening this couldn’t be happening.
“Malachiasz, look at me,” she whispered, panicked and shaking. “Stay with me.”
His eyes were unfocused and he pitched forward. Nadya only barely caught his shoulders, lowering him to the ground, cradling his head in her lap. She smoothed his hair away from his forehead. Surely she could do something. Her magic could heal. Frantic, she called on it—feeling the immeasurable void with no Marzenya to meet her prayer—and pressed her hand over the wound. Fine. Fine. She would use her own power. She was desperate—beyond desperate—this couldn’t be happening. Surely her magic would comply. Surely that well of power must be worth something.
“Nadya,” Malachiasz murmured, the urgency in his voice pulling her attention away. But she knew she knew the worst.
It wouldn’t work. She had expended the power she had breaking him free from Marzenya; there was nothing more she could do.
Whatever that blade was, whatever power was within it, there was no stopping it. There was poison and magic, and if the blade hadn’t done enough damage on its own, the magic and the poison would finish the job soon.
Not this. Not now, not after everything that had happened. She couldn’t lose her goddess and him all in one terrible blow.
“No,” she said fiercely. “You’re not going to die on me.” I haven’t gotten to apologize for what I did, and you killed my goddess, you unrepentant bastard.
He gasped for air, his hand reaching up and leaving bloody fingertips against her cheek, over her lips.
“Malachiasz, please,” she said, her voice cracking. “About what happened—”
“I love you,” he said, cutting her off. “So much. I wanted…” He trailed off, face wrenching, blood welling at the corners of his mouth.
“No,” she whimpered. She clutched his hand, his fading pulse trapped under his skin.
This wasn’t fair. She had been given all this power, and here, when it mattered, she was powerless. She couldn’t save him.
“I wanted to show you peace,” he finally whispered.
There was nothing left of her heart to break.
He let out a breath but never took another. His pale eyes dimmed, lights blinking out.
Nadya waited for all of this to be one big cosmic joke. For him to laugh at her for being so dramatic. But as his hand clutched in hers went limp, reality began to claw at her.
A terrible, panicked sob broke from her chest. Grief too big for words drowned her. He couldn’t be gone, he couldn’t be. She had worked so hard to get him back, to keep him human—too human, in the end, too mortal.
“No,” she whispered, kissing his tattooed fingers. “No, no, come back, please come back.”
She rested her forehead against his, her tears given less distance to fall. She didn’t know what to do. Someone was pulling at her arm and distantly, as if very far away, she could hear someone tell her that they had to go. But she wasn’t going to leave Malachiasz, she couldn’t.
The beautiful, terrible boy who only wanted, in the end, nothing more than peace.
He couldn’t be gone.
“Nadya.” Her face was jerked to one side, inches from Parijahan’s tearstained face. “We have to go.”
She shook her head, digging her fingers into Malachiasz’s hair.
Parijahan took Malachiasz’s dagger from his hip, stuffing it into her bag next to his spell book. Sorrow broke her features and she reached out, touching his cheek, carefully closing his eyes.
“Goodbye, darling fool,” she whispered.
Something deeper cracked with Nadya. “Parj, I can’t.”
“He wouldn’t want you to die here, too.”
“We can’t just leave him.”
&
nbsp; The ground shook. Parijahan staggered to her feet. “If we can come back and give him the burial he deserves, I swear to you, we will. But, Nadya, if we stay any longer, we’ll be dead. Please, I know it feels impossible, but we have to keep moving. This mountain is going to come down around us and we need to get down now.”
If they left they were never going to be able to come back. She had to leave him here.
Nadya nodded very slowly. Do what had to be done. She kissed his still mouth one last time. Took her voryen and caught a lock of his hair where a golden bead was threaded through, slicing it off.
“I love you, Malachiasz Czechowicz,” she whispered. “And I never told you and now I have to be mad at you forever and I’ll never forgive you for that.”
She placed her hand on the dagger buried in his chest, but couldn’t make herself take the next step. She needed to know what had done this; how the boy who had survived so much had been killed by this. Another sob rattled through her.
Parijahan put her hand over Nadya’s and yanked the dagger out.
Her anguish scrambled for something to latch on to and bury itself deep within and it landed on the one who had held the blade that severed the life from Malachiasz’s twisted body. Nadya would kill another Tranavian king if she had to, she would keep this damn cycle burning forever.
But he was gone. A pool of blood all that remained of where he had stood.
Nadya didn’t remember getting to the bottom of the mountain. Being pulled apart and put back together was catching up to her. She wasn’t conscious when the mountain broke in half and her gods finally turned away altogether.
* * *
Nadya found herself in a warm, dry bed. It was a dismal comfort as she curled up in a feeble effort to protect herself from the ache of a loss she feared would never release her.
Ruthless Gods Page 41