Blessed Monsters

by Emily A Duncan

  “Blood and bone, yes.” Constantly. A ceaseless headache that varied in levels of intensity.

  Kacper hesitated before gingerly cupping Serefin’s cheek. “You made it out, that’s what matters.”

  “Oh, so it’s very bad.”

  Kacper’s continued silence was not reassuring.

  “Kacper.”

  “Your eye never went back to normal,” he finally said. “I guess I keep thinking it will.”

  Serefin wasn’t so optimistic. Moths still clouded around him. Something was off. Like he had been taken apart and put back together in the wrong order. Being snapped across the continent by the whim of a god had not been kind to him.

  Kacper cleaned the socket carefully before bandaging Serefin up. He kissed his forehead.

  They had left the tiny Kalyazi village weeks ago, even though Serefin had been in no state to travel. The last thing he wanted was to be trapped in Kalyazin with no way home, but that appeared to be his terrifying new reality. He had no idea what was happening at the front or at court.

  Kacper sat back on his heels and shoved extra bandages back into his pack. He tied his tunic and picked up his military jacket, frowning at it quizzically.

  “Don’t wear it,” Serefin said. He gathered his tangled hair in his hands—when had it gotten so long?—and tied it back.

  Kacper sat down next to him, pulling his boots on. Serefin pressed his face against Kacper’s shoulder. Kacper tensed for a heartbeat before he rested his head against Serefin’s. That was how it always was, a beat of hesitation where uncertainty flickered in Kacper. Serefin had grown deft at catching it.

  He’d known Kacper for three years, but it was three years of chaos. The things a person learned about another during long days on a battlefield and long nights of excruciating routine watches were deeply specific. He knew Kacper had grown up in Zowecz, one of the southern Tranavian provinces. He was one of the youngest of five and nearly all his siblings had done time at the front before returning home to the farm. But Kacper hated getting dirty and didn’t really think farm work would suit him. He loved plants, but not the growing—rather, the effect they could have on a person. Poisons, specifically. The broad strokes of a person’s life were easy to paint in the quiet moments between brushes with death out at the front.

  Kacper busied himself lacing his boots and Serefin lifted his head to study the side of his face, wondering about the little things he didn’t know. He was very good at getting to know every soldier under his command’s broad strokes, but the little things? Those were hard for him.

  Serefin didn’t have friends. He didn’t really know how. Ostyia was all he had because they’d been attached at the hip as children and mutually decided that was how it should be always. She’d gone to war because he was being sent.

  And with Kacper … sure, if he thought about it, he could remember when he’d promoted Kacper and pulled him into his inner circle. He remembered when the formality finally broke between them. It had been a slow build. Kacper warming up to telling jokes at Serefin’s expense, cracking him across the face during a training drill and laughing instead of immediately apologizing, treating him like a person and not the prince. It had been gradual, this thing between them, whatever it was that burned through him when Kacper smiled. He hadn’t realized how much he trusted Kacper until the chaos in Grazyk when he repeatedly turned to Kacper to keep him grounded.

  So, what was the hesitation?

  He reached up, brushing his fingers against Kacper’s jaw, rough with a few days of stubble.

  “Ser—?”

  Serefin caught the end of his name with his lips. Kacper made a low plaintive sound, one hand lifting to curl against Serefin’s neck, thumb brushing up his throat.

  He wanted to know Kacper in a way that he was too aware he simply didn’t yet. And he wished they weren’t in a situation so deeply antithetical to making that happen.

  “What was that for?” Kacper asked breathlessly when he broke away.

  “Why do you always tense when I touch you?”

  Kacper blinked, visibly startled. “What?”

  Serefin backtracked, looking away. This was going to start something. “N-no, I—never mind—”

  “Serefin, wait,” Kacper said, turning Serefin’s face back toward his. “I didn’t realize I did.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s because you’re the king.”

  It was not the answer Serefin wanted to hear. “I’m just Serefin,” he said, a little desperately.

  “I know. You are. But you’re also not.”

  Serefin pursed his lips, tugging away. They needed to get moving. Kacper scowled.

  “No, you’re shutting down on me, don’t do that,” Kacper said, sounding frustrated. “Can we talk about this?”

  “What’s there to talk about?”

  “A lot, actually.”

  “It’s too much trouble.”

  “It is. But it shouldn’t be. I don’t care about that.” Kacper took Serefin’s hand, stroking the inside of his palm with his fingertips, before releasing it. “I’m sorry. I’ll be more aware of how I respond. And it would be nice if you remember that I’m breaking a thousand different rules with this and it might take a little getting used to.”

  “What rules?”

  “Don’t act dense, Serefin. You need an heir. Your court hated my proximity to you enough as it was.”

  Serefin sighed. He had spent so long thinking the crown would never pass to him that the things he should keep in mind never occurred to him. Not that he cared much about the heir problem. Not that he cared about the opinions of his court, either, but Kacper cared because Kacper had to. Serefin wondered, not for the first time, if he had done more harm than good dragging Kacper into this life. “There may be no Tranavia to return to, so.”

  “Deflecting by way of catastrophizing is a great strategy,” Kacper replied dryly.

  Serefin shot him a look. He closed his eye, knuckling the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. He buried his face in his hands, immediately drawing back at the shooting pain. “Ow.”

  “You just came out of a fortnight-long fever, so I can’t really be too upset with you.” Kacper kissed his cheek. “We both need to get better at talking, I think.”

  “Gross.”

  “I’m going to leave you here. I’m walking back to Tranavia without you. I’ll be the king.”

  Serefin grinned. “That’s treasonous.”

  “I guess I commit treason now.”

  But the jokes made Serefin relax, which was what Kacper always managed to do. He squeezed Serefin’s hand.

  “What are you actually worried about?” Kacper asked, his voice low and gentle, and it felt like an unfair question. Serefin was worried about everything.

  He was worried that if—if if if—they made it back, this would be over for all the reasons Kacper was worried about. He was worried that Ostyia wasn’t with them and he didn’t know if she was alive. He was worried that every single thing they’d done had been in vain.

  He was worried they were going to die, and he would never know all the things about Kacper that he didn’t know yet.

  “Do you think the priestess was telling the truth about Tranavia?” he asked. It was a horrifying thought that blood magic was gone as if it had never been in the first place.

  Kacper’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know,” he said after a long pause. He picked up his spell book and his brow creased. He held it out to Serefin.

  Serefin swallowed hard. “That’s yours.”

  “I…” Kacper trailed off. “That feels right, but—” he shook his head “—it’s also wrong? I don’t know what to do with it.”

  “Kacper, you’ve known how to use magic your whole life.”

  Another reason Serefin was terrified of returning to Tranavia. What had happened to make Kacper forget such an intrinsic part of himself? Why could Serefin remember? Why had he been spared?

  “I can tell something is mi
ssing.” He tilted his head. “But I don’t know what it is.”

  Tranavia was built on blood magic. The country would crumble without the small spells everyone used without thinking. Serefin couldn’t confront how he might not have a country to go home to. Kalyazin could very well already be moving in to raze it to the earth.

  But shouldn’t he try to save it? After everything? He’d likely lost the throne to Ruminski, but he could take that back. The noble was no more than a nuisance, those who followed him would eventually have their self-interests turn them back to Serefin. Court politics were the least of Serefin’s concerns. If he went back to Grazyk, he worried he would be letting something even worse fester.

  Kalyazin wasn’t his problem. Their capricious gods were not his problem.

  But …

  What had he set free? What had he done? He wasn’t so naive as to think that the consequences of his actions would stay in Kalyazin, that he could go home and forget about it while this nightmarish kingdom burned. Katya had warned them that no one would be safe if one of the elder gods returned and Serefin had a bad feeling he knew what the second god he had been dealing with truly was. He had cast that voice out, but that didn’t mean it was contained, or powerless.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said.

  “I can’t say I do, either,” Kacper agreed.

  “But you’re my voice of reason!”

  “I’m not feeling particularly reasonable right now.”

  “I don’t think we can go back to Tranavia yet,” Serefin said, wanting to drop his head into his hands.

  “We don’t even know who survived, and if they did, where they are. And what are our options? Nadya, who knows you killed Malachiasz and will definitely murder you for it—”

  “She won’t.”

  “Stunningly optimistic of you when she was in love with him. That leaves the tsarevna.”

  Serefin liked Katya, which was alarming but perhaps spoke to his weariness. He had spent the past three years killing Kalyazi for a cause he thought was perfectly justified. He wouldn’t take back everything he had done in the name of the war effort, but he was ready for it to end. He didn’t really think he could fight with the same conviction, and maybe that was thanks to one dry Kalyazi cleric and one snotty tsarevna. He was fine with that.

  But Tranavia had been rendered completely powerless. And that did not sit well. He wanted a truce, not to surrender. He had his pride.

  “We don’t know if Ostyia survived,” Serefin said quietly.

  Kacper closed his eyes, something in him clearly giving up.

  “I can’t leave her here, Kacper.”

  “No, you can’t,” he agreed. “She’ll take out your other eye if you do. But if she didn’t…”

  “Stop.”

  “You have to face reality.”

  “No. No. You—” He poked his finger against Kacper’s chest. “—and Ostyia and I have been through hellfire and back and we have survived too much to be defeated by that damned forest and those miserable gods.”

  Kacper lifted his hand, threading his fingers through Serefin’s, whose heart kicked traitorously in response.

  “We’re going to find her. Then we’re going home.” Serefin had been so delirious for weeks and now everything was so clear.

  “How are you going to find her, Ser?”

  “Magic.”

  Kacper was quiet. Serefin hated the look in his dark eyes; it was far too close to pity. He took his spell book and flipped it open. His heart immediately dropped.

  It was indecipherable.

  Suddenly he was too hot and too cold all at once, like his fever had returned in full force. He let out a shaky breath. Kacper put a steadying hand on his arm.

  He knew these spells, had worked with an apprentice book binder to put them together; the girl had spent the whole time looking like she was going to faint at the prospect of writing the king’s spells for him. And he couldn’t read any of them.

  This can’t be happening.

  “Well. This is strange,” he said, voice strangled. “How can I remember how it works and you can’t?” He pulled his szitelka out of its sheath and cut a careful line down his forearm.

  “Careful,” Kacper murmured.

  “Probably not the wisest move to bleed on a random spell.” Serefin contemplated. He glanced at Kacper, a calming exchange, and shrugged. He tilted his forearm and let blood drip onto the pages. The seconds stretched to minutes.

  Serefin had not been spared, after all.

  4

  MALACHIASZ CZECHOWICZ

  It’s blood boiling underneath skin. Teeth tearing flesh. It doesn’t end. It never ends. We made a mistake. We made a mistake. We made a mistake.

  —Fragment of a journal entry by Svoyatova Orya Gorelova

  Malachiasz woke to darkness. His first instinct was to panic because not again not again. But the air didn’t taste like copper and terror. He wasn’t in the dank depths of the Salt Mines. But he also wasn’t in the church room.

  And he wasn’t alone.

  A door creaked open, and a knife of light landed on him. The smell of burning flesh filled his nostrils, and too late he realized it was his. He scrambled back, knocking into boxes and something that rattled. His body gave out on him and he ended up crumpled on the ground, too weak to run or strike, when a hooded figure entered. Face in shadow, they crouched in front of Malachiasz, a hand breaking free from the folds of their robe to tilt his chin up. He was being scrutinized and he hated it. He hated feeling weak; hated being this vulnerable.

  The figure muttered something in Kalyazi that Malachiasz couldn’t parse and he blinked, puzzled. He was fluent in the language, especially after Nadya’s refusal to speak in Tranavian if she didn’t absolutely have to.

  “Where am I?” he asked, stupidly, in Tranavian, his voice hoarse. A misstep.

  The figure grabbed him by the throat. Malachiasz shut down, instinct finally winning out. Teeth sharpening in his mouth, the world closing in as his focus narrowed. A spike of iron split from his wrist and he lashed out at the figure, who caught the spike on the palm of their hand, and silently, slowly pushed down until it broke to the other side. The hand on his throat tightened its grip and he was pulled abruptly into the light.

  It burned.

  Malachiasz coughed, spitting up blood as he tried desperately to move back into the darkness and the figure held him down. His skin was bare, the shirt he’d been wearing long since rendered into tatters by his shifting body, and his flesh was sizzling like hot oil. Eventually he was let go and kicked back into the shadows. He slunk away like the wounded animal he was.

  When he next woke, it was in the tiny room in the church, the oven still cold and dormant in the corner. He retched, spitting out a mouthful of bile.

  Scorched flesh ran up his arm, bubbling into blisters. He gritted his teeth, hissing against the pain. Light flickered in through the shattered window and he carefully moved out of its way. After some consideration, he tentatively stretched his fingers out underneath the beams.

  He jerked his hand back, squeezing his eyes shut against the white heat—the terror of what this meant. Against the ripple of chaos shuddering through him as his control slipped.

  Taszni nem Malachiasz Czechowicz.

  Taszni nem Malachiasz Czechowicz.

  Taszni nem Malachiasz Czechowicz.

  He needed to get out of here. Figure out this new … development. Had that dream been real? Was he not alone? Blood and bone, he hoped he was alone.

  “Never truly alone.”

  Malachiasz buried his head in his hands, his breath coming in pained, shuddery gasps. He was going to die here if he remained, or worse.

  He wasn’t used to not knowing what to do. There had always been a next step, more to reach for, something else to gain when everything came crashing down. The ashes could always be swept aside to reveal a greater path.

  Now, when he pushed the ashes away all he found was darkness.

 
He didn’t want to live in the darkness. As close as he may be with it, he didn’t like the dark. He scrambled to his feet, deciding to find someplace less likely to burn him. He’d wait out the rest of the day before he made his escape. To where, he could figure out later.

  And if the voice in his head wanted him to kill another god, he could see that into being. But what was he dealing with? What kind of god would taint themselves with a heretic like him?

  “It’s your heresy that makes you so compelling,” the voice said.

  Malachiasz winced. None of his thoughts were safe, then. That was … less than ideal.

  “Heresy is too simple a term. It is your denial of reality that makes you so interesting. Your power, your cleverness, your ruthlessness, all things I can use.”

  Malachiasz would have to be willing. He knew that much. Nadya’s gods couldn’t force her hand, not truly, they could only suggest and grant power.

  “Oh, that is precious,” the voice said, sounding like a sigh and a groan and death and death and death.

  Malachiasz stumbled as pain lanced through his head at the base of his skull. He put a hand on the wall to steady himself.

  Suddenly he was sitting down, a hairsbreadth away from the light, a needling feeling to edge closer, to let it bathe his face, and burn.

  “I can make you do whatever I wish. You have no choice but to comply. I am not like the pretenders. I am more, I am greater.”

  Malachiasz swallowed hard. His body sagged as he was released. He shoved away from the light.

  Serefin had been dealing with a Kalyazi god in his head—had he managed to break that off? Was he even alive? Malachiasz couldn’t decide whether he hoped the boy, the king, his brother was dead, or if he hoped he’d done what he set out to do and had torn himself away from malevolent powers too great to fathom.

  No, not that. Not unfathomable. Malachiasz was near that state, too, wasn’t he? A sidestep into the void, and he could touch the chaos he had power over. Nothing could truly control chaos, though, it did as it willed. Malachiasz was a channel and a vessel but he could harness it, at least; he could point it in the right direction.