Nadya gasped, her heart in her throat, because the figure was taller, lithe and pale, with a pile of long black hair and knife sharp features.
“Don’t you dare,” she whispered.
“He bled all over that divine mountain. We all know what he was.”
Heat prickled Nadya’s eyes. She wasn’t going to cry. Not here. Not ever again. Certainly not for him.
Ljubica grinned but they were wearing his face and a sob broke from deep in Nadya’s chest. She shoved past Ljubica.
“Your tears are exactly what I want,” Ljubica said with a blissful sigh. “Let’s make a deal, you and I, for you have so many tears to give and I have been thirsty for so very long.”
No more deals. No more listening to gods who only wanted Nadya for their petty games. No more trusting pretty Tranavian boys with sly smiles.
“No.”
“You can’t do this on your own,” Ljubica said.
Nadya risked turning back. The god didn’t look like him anymore. They were back to their normal form. She didn’t like the way her heart wrenched at the loss because she had wanted to see him one more time.
“No. I’m done being manipulated. You can all find some other mortal to torture.”
Silence fell on the wood. Not a complete silence—the birds were too loud in the treetops. Something rustled nearby and Nadya couldn’t help but think about the rumors of dragons Katya kept bringing to dinner. It would be quite a fate for her, to survive so much only to be killed in the woods by a mythical creature. Fitting, really.
“You are not wholly mortal, though. Isn’t that right?”
Nadya closed her eyes. Stars and oblivion and an ocean of dark water. “I don’t want answers.” She had thought that was all she wanted—to know what she was, why she was different, why it was so necessary for those she trusted to lie to her for eighteen years.
“I don’t think that’s true, either.”
And maybe it wasn’t. But answers might break her and she had so little strength left.
“I don’t want to be anything else,” Nadya said softly.
Ljubica nodded. “That Tranavian king set us free. You set us free. Velyos set us free.”
“How many of you?”
“Five of us retained our minds after being locked away.”
The implications of their words chilled Nadya. That meant there were others that did not.
“Who are they?”
“Myself, Cvjetko, Zlatana, Zvezdan, and Velyos, of course.”
“Of course,” Nadya murmured. “What happens now?” she asked pathetically.
Ljubica smiled serenely. “Chaos.”
Nadya was left standing alone in a clearing, her corrupted hand clutched to her chest. She closed her eyes. It was so quiet. She had grown mostly used to the quiet since that night in the cathedral in Grazyk, but there had been potential, then, for the quiet to cease. No more.
She could sense the wrong in the earth beneath her feet. The loosening of the ties that bound the world into its careful order. The witch had told her that the gods’ retributions on the mortal world were made in small movements. They needed people to push along their plans, and people could only do so much.
But Ljubica’s tangible presence meant these five weren’t so bound. And the others might not stay so bound.
So, Nadya’s theory, whatever it was worth, was accurate, though she wasn’t quite sure what to do with that information. She almost wanted to talk to Velyos. He had started this whole mess. Except she didn’t know how to reach these five like she had reached her gods. She didn’t have symbols to ascribe to them; she didn’t have a tether that she could grasp.
A tree branch snapped. Nadya whirled, reaching for—
What? What did she have? Her fingers closed over the hilt of one of her voryens, an almost blinding pain in her hollowed palm followed.
She was relieved it wasn’t a dragon that stepped out through the brush. Her relief was short lived as a starved wolf watched her with gold, hungry eyes.
It was huge. Nadya had seen plenty of wolves near the monastery while growing up, but none of them had been this big. It was unnatural. What primordial monstrosities walked the earth because of their recklessness?
Her recklessness.
She shifted her voryen in her grip, wincing as warm liquid slid down her palm. Malachiasz’s claws had punched clean through her hands and the wounds were slow to heal. She held out a hand, remembering how the rusalki had responded to her, the way her blood had hummed when they had fought the Lichni’voda. Could that work here, too?
A growl rippled through the clearing. The wolf’s fur was matted with dirt and dark with dried blood. Her fingers stretched toward it. The growl grew to a snarl. Nadya drew her hand back, fear icing her veins. One didn’t run from wolves; they were too fast. The trees surrounding her were impossible to climb—their branches too far out of reach. She had to fight.
All she had was one voryen, that was it.
That’s not remotely true. The voice was hers, yet not, and it jarred Nadya enough to focus, to dart away when the wolf lunged, jaws snapping a hair away from her arm. But she didn’t want to reach for the dark water. To use that power was to admit that even if she had been a cleric once, it was not all she was.
The palm of her corrupted hand, wounded and aching, grew warm as the wolf circled her, salivating at the anticipation of a meal. She sensed the coil in its muscles, the rippling of its fur before it struck again.
Nadya knelt at the edge of a churning ocean. Desperate, she plunged her hand under the icy water.
A wall of power, shimmering in the light, slammed up before her. The wolf crashed into it and yelped, rearing back. A wealth of pure magic, a drowning. The taste of iron and ashes. Time slowed around her, and she clenched a fist. The wolf let out another distressed yelp as its body went rigid.
It would be so easy to kill the beast. The thought was dispassionate. Nadya felt like she was watching herself from afar. Another inch of tension, tightening her fist a little more, and she could crush the beast’s bones as easily as if they were twigs. White flames licked up her corrupted hand, catching on her sleeve.
Her vision shifted and she could see far more than she should. The beast—not a beast, only a wolf, an ancient creature that had prowled the forests for hundreds of years—and its ravaging hunger covered up an old nobility. Nadya could not find the cruelty within herself to snuff it out. She dropped the magic with a gasp, considered further, and slammed a heavy blow of power down on the wolf to knock it unconscious.
Then she fled.
She patted out the flames on her sleeve, breathing hard. It was foolish to leave the wolf alive. Stupid. It was too close to the village. But old things had woken, were set free, and she didn’t know if the right move was eradicating them. And if it was, she was afraid of how using that power made her feel. Like she was someone else, something else, and cruelty was nothing but a pleasantry for her. She had done enough cruel things that maybe it was. The echoes of Malachiasz’s voice telling her how well she wore cruelty were too near. She didn’t want to force herself further down that path than she had already gone.
She winced at the raw, seeping wound on her right palm. Using her magic had obliterated the bandages on her hands. With a start she realized the left had healed, spiral scar punctuated by the place where Malachiasz had pierced her.
A sense of wrong came over her. Warily, she moved toward a copse of trees that seemed darker than the rest. Like shadows were eating at their bases and slowly chewing their way up.
She brushed a hand against one. The bark fell away, crumbling at her touch and revealing pale white underneath. Sap the color of dark blood oozed down the tree.
Oh, this is bad. Her first instinct was to clutch at her necklace. Vaclav would know what was going on. With a sinking feeling it hit her fully that she had no one. She was completely alone.
No gods, no goddess, no obnoxious, anxious Tranavian boy with too many answers.
Just Nadya.
Just a girl and the eldritch well of magic that had made its home inside her at the end of the world.
interlude i
PARIJAHAN SIROOSI
Parijahan could not think of a single time when Rashid had been as upset with her as he was now.
“It’s not that you told Malachiasz,” he said, rigid with anger. “I understand that. It’s that you didn’t tell me.”
She had withheld everything from him. The missives, the letters, the reports that kept finding their way to her. All begging for her return. All whispering that her particular transgression would be forgiven, her status secure, and everything would go back to the way it was before she had run.
Nadya had left the house without a word, unreadable. Ostyia left not long after, Katya following. Parijahan sat down across from Rashid. She had been avoiding him—avoiding this—since the forest.
The notes from her Travash were spread out on the table before him, and she couldn’t stop watching the way he was rubbing at his forearms, at the strange markings and terrible gashes scattered across his brown skin that didn’t seem to be healing.
“Did you tell him everything?” Rashid asked.
Parijahan shook her head. “He would have made it obvious if I had.”
He tilted his head in agreement. Cold fury was pouring off him in waves. She refused to let him see how rattled she was by his response. She deserved it, but they would get nowhere if they sat here and fought.
“What were you planning with him?” Rashid asked. “Don’t tell me it was nothing.”
She eyed him warily. He looked exhausted. His black hair, kept long, was tied back, which only made the shadows under his dark eyes more pronounced. She had known Rashid most of her life. He’d been by her side the entire time. She hadn’t intended to keep him in the dark.
“Do you remember your home before you came to Paalmidesh?” she asked.
He frowned at her for turning a question back on him. He gave a hesitant nod. It was not the answer she wanted, but she waited, watching as he decided whether to speak. He had told her what little he could recall of his family, but she wanted something deeper. When the tension in Akola finally came to a head, she needed to know: Would he be with her, or would he be with Yanzin Zadar?
“It’s only pieces. There’s little to remember,” he replied. “Why didn’t you trust me, Parj? What did I do?”
It had nothing to do with him. If anything, it had everything to do with what she and her country had done.
His rich, warm eyes were wounded as they searched her face. “Oh,” he said, some measure of disgust in his voice.
“Malachiasz was a neutral party,” she said softly. “I never want to put you in a position where you have to make that kind of choice.”
“I was never given that choice,” he pointed out.
She winced.
“Now I make that choice every day. I stay here, with you, instead of going home. Could I even do that? You’re the prasīt, I suppose you could have me hunted down for running.”
“Rashid.”
“You chose not to trust me,” he snapped. “What were you planning?”
“A way to save Akola from the civil war that is on the horizon,” she said, lifting her chin, daring him to tell her what she wanted was wrong.
There was a gulf between them, and it was made from the fractures threatening to shatter Akola back into the five countries that had formed it. A faulty bridge—made from the backs of the people of Yanzin Zadar, broken under the weight of Paalmideshi rule—between them.
He blinked at her, faltering slightly.
“Yes, the unification is failing, and my father is dying,” she murmured, aware it had never really been successful. “I thought there would be a way to save it. That maybe Malachiasz could help. And, yes, I was worried that if given the choice to go home to your people, you would take it, and I couldn’t bear to lose you. It was selfish.”
Rashid rubbed his hands over his face and was silent. Parijahan looked away, gaze darting around the farmhouse, the soft golden light of the setting sun casting it in unearthly shadows. She looked anywhere but at him.
“Parj … I don’t think there’s a way to save it.”
“That is exactly what Malachiasz said. But that means a civil war.”
“A civil war that you could stop if you returned home?”
That was … also what Malachiasz had suggested. She shook her head. They were past the point of no return. Paalmidesh had been sucking the other countries dry and her Travash was at fault. If she went home, she would be assassinated long before she could fix her family’s mistakes.
“Malachiasz had a lot of convoluted suggestions that required poisoning choice nobility at very specific times to create a rather impressive domino effect that would eventually leave the Siroosi Travash standing.”
Rashid snorted.
“And I would lead the Travash,” she said, her voice growing quiet. “And I don’t want that.”
“What about—”
The door opened, and he broke off. Parijahan looked up, hoping for Nadya, but found the tsarevna instead. She moved to hastily gather the papers on the table, but Katya had already seen them. The tsarevna sat down with them, eyeing the ephemera before leaning back.
“You’re a long way from home,” she observed. “And you’re not who you say you are.”
“I’m exactly who I say I am,” Parijahan replied.
“An Akolan prasīt in a known kingdom of chaos and you can talk to the cleric when no one else can.”
“Nadya needs time,” Parijahan said. “Give it to her.” Parijahan had lost one of her closest friends on that mountain, but Nadya had lost much more. It would be a long time before she came back from that, if she ever did.
“We don’t have time.” Katya sighed, tying her dark curls back. “I need to know why you’re here so when we reach the Silver Court I can explain to my father why I’ve dragged a prasīt into the heart of our country. I would like to keep your Travash from claiming I’ve kidnapped you and declaring war.”
“They wouldn’t declare war,” Parijahan said. “Not over me.”
“I would not be so certain.”
“They wouldn’t declare war over me because it would mean moving resources that are necessary in case of an internal conflict,” Parijahan explained.
Katya’s eyebrows rose. Parijahan had never lied about why she was in Kalyazin, but she had also never told the entire truth. It was easy to talk of vengeance. It made sense to those like Malachiasz, or Nadya, whose worlds were born of violence. It was a perfectly reasonable explanation why an Akolan would willingly be in such unforgiving countries as theirs. But there was so much Parijahan was running from, and she wasn’t ready to stop running. Her grandmother was the real ruler of Akola, not her father, and Zohreh would do anything to keep that stranglehold on her family, on the country.
Parijahan had grown up thinking she was safe from her grandmother’s machinations. She’d never been expected to take over the Travash. She’d had her sister, Taraneh, and Arman, her older brother. But then Taraneh had been married to a Tranavian, effectively removing her from the line to rule, and Arman had gone to the desert mages and never returned. Parijahan was not so optimistic as to think he was still alive.
That left Parijahan with the weight of a fractured country on her shoulders. A weight she did not want. A weight no one wanted her to have, either.
She thought she’d been fixing things when she left. No one wanted her on the throne. Her grandmother had dismissed her as too headstrong to be of any use long ago. What had changed?
Rashid lifted his eyebrows at her after a pointed look at the tsarevna. She had never seen him so dimmed, his cheerfulness tempered in a way that was painful. She didn’t know what he had gone through in the forest—she was too scared to ask. That was the first time she had been separated from him in years, and it was a divide they couldn’t quite cross. But then, she had al
ready planted the seeds of their rift by not telling him that her father was dying and what it meant for Akola.
He wanted to go home, and she couldn’t follow him. If he left her now it would break her heart, but she wouldn’t stop him.
“Give me something, anything,” Katya said. “I’m not the enemy. I’d simply like to avoid an international incident.”
“Akola knows what I’ve done and why I left. What they don’t know is why I chose to remain here. Akola isn’t going to turn on Kalyazin or Tranavia, trust me. We have our own issues. But if you want to give your court an excuse, tell them a portion of the truth. I’m here to help you fix your disastrous kingdoms.”
“But that’s only a portion?”
Parijahan could feel Rashid’s dark eyes focus on her face.
“It’s enough.”
Parijahan’s time in that damn forest had been strange and uncomfortable, and now she was marked like her friends and it wouldn’t be easy to escape. She knew what she had seen, what was required of her, though she wasn’t sure how anything would be possible without … she swallowed thickly. No matter.
7
MALACHIASZ CZECHOWICZ
A churning, unending horror, pulling back in on himself as he feeds on whatever he can find, even his own body.
—The Volokhtaznikon
He couldn’t stop shaking. Try as he might, he couldn’t get warm, couldn’t stop the anxious tremors that had molded alongside a shivering hard enough to rattle his bones.
Taszni nem Malachiasz Czechowicz. Not again. Please, no more. He would do what he had to—anything.
He couldn’t escape the fact that he wanted to live and to hold onto a scrap of himself as he did. It didn’t need to be much—only a piece—and that god had threatened to rip everything away, more than he ever thought he had to lose. Strip away all that was Malachiasz until he was nothing but a soulless vessel.
It wouldn’t do. Malachiasz was a god in his own right, and he wouldn’t be controlled like this. If it took cooperation, so be it. He would suffer; he would survive. If he was alive, he could change things.
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