“A noble goal. Lofty. What a hero.” The voice was snide.
I know what I am, Malachiasz snapped. He didn’t need to be reminded of what he had done.
“You don’t, not really. But we will go on that journey, you and I, and I will break you if I must.”
Malachiasz scowled. I ask again, what is it you want?
“Your being exists in ideal circumstances. And I have already given you the tools you will need to put the first steps into motion.”
He frowned, uncertain where this would lead. The first steps … killing another god?
“I knew there was a reason I chose you.” The voice was smug as it let Malachiasz go.
2
NADEZHDA LAPTEVA
Out of Svoyatovi Yeremey Meledin’s mouth came twelve hundred snakes. When the last snake fell, the last word spoken, he died.
—Vasiliev’s Book of Saints
Light filtered in through the dirty farmhouse windows, illuminating the dust motes that hung in the air. Nadya picked at the bandages wrapping her hands, the temptation to pull them off strong.
It had been fourteen days since she had fallen off the side of a mountain and lost everything. Only a fortnight. To say she had spent every moment of it wallowing would be too gentle.
She pulled at the fraying cuff of her dress to avoid tearing at her bandages.
Rashid sat down next to her at the small table, cradling two cups of tea in his hand. Nadya took them, waiting for him to settle. He gave her a grateful smile, tucking a lock of long black hair behind his ear. His wrist was carefully splinted. Cuts were scattered across his hands and face, and a handful of ugly gashes along his forearms that Nadya didn’t want to consider. She hadn’t asked what had happened to him in the forest; he hadn’t offered to tell.
None of them would talk. The horrors were too fresh, and Nadya couldn’t fool herself into thinking that what the others had gone through hadn’t been as terrible as her experience. They may have gotten out alive—well, most of them—but they had all lost something. The forest ate and ate and ate.
Nadya had nothing left.
The door opened with a crash and Nadya’s tea jostled as someone kicked the back of her chair.
“All right, kovoishka, time’s up.” Yekaterina Vodyanova threw herself down in the chair across the table. She eyed the teacups before standing and abruptly leaving the room.
Nadya frowned, puzzled, before the tsarevna returned with a wine bottle—gods only knew where she had found it—that she casually placed on the table before dropping into her chair, kicking it back, and putting her feet up on the seat beside her.
Katya’s black hair curled, tangled, around her shoulders. A long cut was healing on her cheek, promising a scar. She was in a soldier’s uniform sans jacket, her black boots and cream blouse uncomfortably clean. Pristine and untouched.
“I’ve given you time. I’m done being patient,” Katya continued. Her gaze flicked to Rashid. “If you would also like to share, I’m all ears.”
“Considering our friend who was all eyes, thank you for that truly terrible image,” Rashid replied.
Nadya couldn’t decide whether she wanted to laugh or sob. The only thing she knew for sure was, she didn’t want to talk.
Her god was dead.
Malachiasz had killed Marzenya, and she had given him the means. How would the others retaliate for that transgression?
Since then, they had been ignoring her completely. It was a different emptiness than before. She had touched each kind of abandonment, categorized them all. This was new, more painful than when she couldn’t feel them at all. Or was it easier? She didn’t know. The very fabric of the world had altered, the universe tilted sharply on its axis. And it was her fault. She had broken everything.
“Don’t make me order you, kovoishka.” Katya took a long drink from the wine bottle and regarded Nadya with careful scrutiny, taking in the fading bruises from Marzenya’s touch that stained her skin.
Even now Nadya could feel her skin splitting open underneath her goddess’s fingertips. The warmth of Malachiasz’s blood on her hands.
“It wouldn’t make a difference,” she said, skimming her fingertip around the rim of her cup.
Katya’s eyes narrowed. They had been waiting for soldiers from the nearest garrison for weeks without sign of them. Nadya guessed they were still too close to the forest to be found, but Katya didn’t seem ready to give up. Regardless, what could Katya do to her?
Many things, but not here, not now. Not when all she had was the power of her name and some weak magic she barely knew how to use. But if Katya thought it would be useful to know the horrors that haunted her, who was Nadya to stop her?
“A god is dead,” Nadya said quietly. “And many of the fallen gods have risen. The rest have decided we’re not worth the trouble.”
“That’s impossible.”
“You will find a great number of impossibilities have become possible.” Nadya flexed her corrupted hand.
Katya didn’t appear appeased. “I don’t have time for your theological riddles.”
“I’m not giving you any. Marzenya died. Velyos and the others—” she waved a hand “—were set free. I have no answers because no one ever bothered to tell me any of this existed in the first place.”
“So, you went and crashed through every wall placed before you and toppled what little stability we had,” Katya said derisively.
I was a complacent little soldier, she thought. Fighting a people who were naught but monsters. Ask no questions, act on the faith that everything you have been told is absolute truth. Until you realize it was all lies. What did they expect I would do if I found out? Continue on as I had, I suppose.
“You should put a glove over that.” Katya frowned in disgust, her eyes on Nadya’s hand.
Nadya made a thoughtful noise. It horrified her once, this blackened claw, when the corruption had begun, but now, horror wasn’t the word for it.
“How does one kill a god?” Katya murmured.
“Become one,” Nadya replied, her voice hollow. It haunted her. A god of chaos was a fitting shape for a boy like Malachiasz, but it was a terrible, monstrous, ever shifting, ever churning horror. The madness they had been thrust into since that night in the cathedral, forever ago, made all the more sense. Chaos had gripped the world the night a god of chaos had been born. It was inevitable. All that had happened with her heart, broken and bloodied and pulled to him, was inevitable, too. His gentle hands and careful smiles had not been enough to mask his true horror.
“But that would mean…”
“I don’t know,” Nadya whispered. “He’s dead, too.”
Katya did a bad job of masking her delight. Nadya felt like she’d been punched in the chest.
“I didn’t think the drunkard could do it.”
Rashid tensed, and Nadya nearly reached out to hold him back but remained still. Anything the tsarevna received for her callousness she deserved. But was it even that? Why shouldn’t she celebrate the death of Kalyazin’s deadliest enemy?
Instead, Nadya tucked away the implication that Katya and Serefin had been planning something together. No wonder Katya had been there. A princess masquerading as a Vulture hunter, and what a prize Malachiasz made.
Except Nadya had carried the blade that murdered him. Had Pelageya known who it would be used on when she gave it to her? She had been warned the mountains would destroy him, but she hadn’t realized, not truly, how final the destruction would be.
“Did you not notice that he hasn’t been around?” Rashid asked incredulously.
Katya rolled her eyes. “That wouldn’t mean anything, and you know it. We don’t know where the forest spat out Serefin and Kacper—”
“If the forest spat out Serefin and Kacper,” Nadya muttered.
“—and I wasn’t about to indulge my hope,” Katya continued, ignoring her. “I can’t say I’m particularly sorry. Though, I was promised his teeth and he did have nice teeth.”
“Shut up.”
An eyebrow quirked. “It’s a very bad look, mourning the Black Vulture.”
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t, but you should. I won’t be able to protect you from those who will blame you for what’s happened.”
“Which part? His death, or Marzenya’s, or maybe stripping the blood magic from Tranavia?”
Katya paled. She lowered her feet off the table, a little less cavalier.
“What do you want from me?” Nadya asked.
“That should be obvious. If—if that boy, gods, both those boys, did what you say, you’re the only one who can do anything.”
“I just fell off a mountain after watching the boy I love kill my goddess and then be murdered. Katya, I don’t want to help anyone do anything.”
Katya winced.
“Don’t you dare say anything about Malachiasz’s teeth.”
“I wasn’t going to.” Katya sighed heavily. “I won’t lie to you and say I’m sorry he’s dead. But you’re grieving and I’m sorry for that.”
“Gods, you’re terrible at this.”
Katya shrugged. “He’s killed thousands of Kalyazi on his own, not including what his cult has done in his name.”
“Stop talking about him.”
Katya ran both hands through her hair, standing. She started pacing.
“What do you mean you stripped blood magic from Tranavia?”
Nadya wasn’t sure. Marzenya had implied that they simply would not remember how to cast magic anymore. She didn’t know if that meant they could relearn it, or if it was gone entirely. Malachiasz’s panic implied the latter.
“I don’t know.”
Katya’s gaze went to the window. “We have to leave,” she said, in a whisper so low Nadya almost missed it.
She exchanged a glance with Rashid. Katya didn’t say anything more, grabbing the wine bottle and dashing out the door.
“That was useless,” Nadya said, sipping her tea. “How does the world turn when the gods decide it’s no longer worth their attention?” She frowned. “How do we reconcile the gaze of gods who have gone mad in the dark?”
“I did not sign up for these kinds of conversations,” Rashid replied cheerfully.
She shot him a wan smile. The door to the other room opened. Arms wrapped around her neck, someone resting their chin in her hair from behind. She knew it was Parijahan, but the glimpse of black hair made her heart jolt.
Nadya didn’t know how to survive constantly having the people she loved returned to her, only to lose them again. First Kostya, then Malachiasz. Who else would be ripped away?
“You should both leave,” she said, tilting her head against Parijahan’s arm, twining her fingers between the other girl’s. “Go back to Akola before this gets worse.”
The look on Rashid’s face as he glanced up at Parijahan—hope and a plaintive entreaty—was not lost on Nadya. This wasn’t their fight, their gods. They could walk away unscathed. Nadya desperately wanted them to so she wouldn’t face losing them as well.
Parijahan sighed.
“They want you home,” Rashid said, his voice soft.
A lot made sense in those words. Why Parijahan had been upset on the journey through Kalyazin. But it didn’t explain the private conversations with Malachiasz, their frustration with each other. Parijahan was running from something in Akola, Nadya assumed whatever it was couldn’t possibly be as bad as facing this oncoming storm.
“No, they don’t,” she replied. “Flowery messages singing forgiveness are only ever lies.”
“Your cousins wouldn’t—”
“Rashid, don’t be foolish.”
Nadya frowned.
“It’s die here or die there.”
“You should consider it,” Nadya said softly.
Parijahan’s arms tightened around her. “I’m not leaving you, Nadya. Not after that. Not after losing him.”
“He was already lost,” Nadya murmured. “I knew the forest would kill him, I just didn’t know it would happen like that.”
Parijahan went very still. Rashid eyed her strangely. Why shouldn’t she take the blame? She had known from the beginning that he wouldn’t return from the Tachilvnik Wood. No, she hadn’t expected him to die by Serefin’s hand, but it was the inevitable coming to pass. She had played his game against him and he had lost.
And she ended up all the more broken.
“Even if you intended…” Parijahan trailed off.
“I intended it,” Nadya said. “And I regret it. But there’s no changing it.”
The door flew open. Katya, and one flustered blood mage being dragged by the wrist.
“Sit,” Katya said.
Ostyia glared, not sitting until the tsarevna did. Her black hair, already jagged and uneven at her chin and forehead, looked disastrous, and she hadn’t bothered with an eye patch, leaving the scarred void of her eye socket visible.
She muttered a curse under her breath in Tranavian, pulled her spell book from her hip and dropped it onto the table. Tense silence stretched throughout the room.
Fresh cuts were scattered across Ostyia’s forearms, haphazard and messy, sluggishly bleeding in a way she had chosen to ignore.
“It’s not working,” she hissed.
“Try,” Katya urged.
“Wait,” Nadya said, but she was silenced by a glare from Katya. She sat back in her chair.
Ostyia shook her head. She flipped her spell book open, frowning deeply. “I can’t even read it.” Her voice cracked.
“May I?” Nadya asked, reaching tentatively for the spell book.
Ostyia nodded. Nadya flipped it around and found pages upon pages of text she could read—it was definitely in Tranavian—but the words didn’t totally make sense, like some element was missing.
“It looks like nonsense to me,” Ostyia said.
“We’re leaving,” Katya announced. “You’ve all wallowed long enough. We’re going to Komyazalov. I need to speak with my father.”
Nadya swallowed hard, meeting Ostyia’s gaze from across the table. The Tranavian girl was clearly thinking the same thing: she did not want to meet the tsar.
3
SEREFIN MELESKI
There are no lies and no truths to Velyos. It’s all one and the same. Words are words are words, and words are meaningless.
—The Letters of Włodzimierz
Serefin Meleski should have succumbed to his wounds. As a fever burned through him, he contemplated more than once how nice it would be to simply give up.
He didn’t know where he was when he finally came out of it. He woke to darkness and cold. Someone was curled up next to him—which wasn’t like him at all—and his shattered world started to piece together when he realized it was Kacper. He touched the bandages over his left eye—or, eye socket, rather. It hurt, an ache like a thousand headaches at once, but he no longer felt like he was being stabbed in the brain.
He could still feel his brother’s blood on his hands, the god’s will smothering his own and shoving him down to use his body for its own ends. He hadn’t lost control since. And it had only taken tearing out his own eye.
A paltry trade, all things considered.
He nestled down and pressed his forehead against the back of Kacper’s neck, hoping to finish out the night with no more nightmares.
But he was back at the front and it was so loud. Screams and crying and so much blood. An arrow zipped past his face, grazing his cheek, and there was blood on his face. His friend Hanna was being cut into pieces by Kalyazi blades, moving too fast to be real.
Serefin shot awake as a blade was aimed for him. He shivered, raking a hand through his hair, trying to remind himself that he wasn’t at the front, and hadn’t been in some time. He was soaked with sweat. His gasps for air gave way to tremors and he buried his head against his knees and tried his hardest not to break.
“Oh, good morning,” Kacper mumbled, his voice scratchy with sleep in a way that sen
t a different kind of warmth rushing through Serefin, no less feverish. And, “It was only a bad dream.”
“That doesn’t really help when it actually happened,” Serefin muttered, before lifting his head.
Kacper squinted at the light filtering in through the hastily tied tent. “Ah, we overslept.” His brown skin was warm, his edges rumpled and soft, and his black curls were messy. “You look like you’re feeling better,” Kacper said, a hopeful note in his voice.
Not only had they overslept, they shouldn’t have both slept through the night without someone keeping watch—but it was growing harder and harder to care.
Serefin nodded, fingers fluttering near his bandage. “The fever broke. Maybe this thing won’t kill me.”
“Or lack thereof, of a thing,” Kacper said.
“Get out of my bed.”
Kacper laughed softly. He sat up and clambered over Serefin to dig through his pack. “Not a bed. Take that off,” he said.
Serefin hated this part, but he dutifully untied the cloth and carefully unwound it from his head, freeing the rest of the bandages covering the remnants of his left eye. Kacper returned with fresh bandages. He paused, taking Serefin’s face between his hands.
“How bad is it, really?” Serefin asked. He had been avoiding anything even remotely reflective.
“Charmingly rakish,” Kacper replied a little too easily.
Serefin lifted an eyebrow.
Kacper’s fingers traced the cuts on Serefin’s face where his fingernails had dug and dug. His touch was featherlight, and it was all Serefin could do not to pull him back down onto the bedrolls.
“They’ll scar,” Kacper murmured. He touched a cut that ended at the corner of Serefin’s mouth. It pulled at his lips as it healed. “This is going to be all some people see.”
Serefin closed his eye.
“Not me, though,” Kacper continued, his voice very low.
He gently pulled the last bandage away. He was quiet for a beat too long. Serefin opened his eye—the old healer had sewn his other eyelid shut until the socket healed.
“Kacper?”
Kacper blinked. He lowered his hands. “Sorry,” he said. “The swelling has gone down. Does it hurt?”
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