Blessed Monsters

by Emily A Duncan

  “Ostyia, what.”

  “I know!”

  She laughed and it hurt. “Serefin is all right,” she said. “I meant to tell you earlier, but there was no time, and then, well…”

  Ostyia closed her eye, letting out a soft breath. “How do you know?”

  “I spoke with Velyos. I guess he’s still hanging around Serefin, but he assured me that he’s alive, at the very least.”

  “Does that mean all the nonsense on the mountain was in vain?”

  It was impossible to say.

  “Do you know if Kacper…?”

  Nadya shook her head. Ostyia bit her lip.

  “Knowing Serefin is alive helps. Thank you. I know you probably have … fraught feelings about him.”

  Nadya and Serefin had become something close to friends during the time she’d spent in Grazyk and she did not know how to put to words what he was to her now. She had led Malachiasz to that mountain knowing it would tear him apart. She had saved him knowing it would lead to his destruction. That Serefin had been the one to land the final blow was a painful shock, but wasn’t it inevitable?

  “I wish he hadn’t done it, but I understand why he did. I want this war to be over. I’m tired of fighting. What we have to fight now is far worse than a century-long squabble that is, ultimately, wildly petty and has broken so much. I get the impression that you feel the same, else you would have killed Katya the first second you had the chance.”

  Katya, who was clearly listening, glanced over her shoulder and winked at them. Ostyia’s face immediately flamed. Nadya grinned.

  “That’s a political disaster.”

  “I don’t want to hear it from the girl who was involved with the Black Vulture.”

  Nadya laughed.

  She almost touched the thread tying them together. It was easy to ignore, easier than when it had first appeared. It had unraveled; there was little left still hanging on. What if she was wrong? He had died in her arms and there was no coming back from death.

  Except she had. And Serefin had.

  “Did you know about Serefin and Malachiasz?” she asked.

  A flicker of distaste passed over Ostyia’s face. “I knew. He’s a bastard.”

  “Well, yes.”

  Ostyia laughed. “No, literally. They’re half-brothers. Malachiasz isn’t legitimate, which, honestly, if he hadn’t been so…” She trailed off.

  “Terrible?”

  “Evil. It wouldn’t have been a problem for Serefin. He has no claim to the throne.”

  Nadya gave a soft huff. What could they have been in a different world? Maybe not so broken, maybe so much worse.

  “Serefin would have been sentimental about it and that would’ve been a mistake. I don’t like Malachiasz, to be clear. He’s bad for Tranavia and bad for the Vultures, and I know how you feel about him, but I knew him when we were children, and he has always been poisonous.”

  Nadya pursed her lips.

  “Serefin cared, though, because that’s who Serefin is.”

  “He still murdered him.”

  “Serefin knows what’s best for Tranavia.”

  Nadya rolled her eyes. Ultimately, though, she didn’t know what Malachiasz had meant to Tranavia; what he had done as the Black Vulture outside of tormenting her people. Maybe Ostyia was right. Maybe it didn’t matter; maybe that was over.

  Or maybe he’s alive. But the thought was only stressful because Nadya didn’t know for certain, and she couldn’t check. If she pulled on the threads that bound them, he would know. And if he was alive, well, she didn’t want that. If he was dead, it wouldn’t matter because dead was dead.

  Her heart ached—everything ached—and she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to hope for him to be alive, or she was only allowed to mourn him in death. Because she knew. She knew what he was and what he had done. She had his spell book. His cruelty was unfathomable.

  “What does it matter, that they were brothers?” Ostyia asked.

  Nadya was quiet, unsure if it was for her to share Malachiasz’s truth.

  “He cared,” Nadya said softly, “so much about the family that he didn’t know. He wanted so desperately to know them. I wish he’d had the chance.”

  There was a flicker across Ostyia’s face. A heartbeat of doubt, sympathy. She wiped it away. She glanced up at where Katya rode. The tsarevna wasn’t listening anymore and probably hadn’t been since they’d started talking about Malachiasz.

  She wasn’t naive about the doubts she had drawn up in the tsarevna because of how she felt about Malachiasz. But if he was alive, he wasn’t returning to her, so Nadya’s misstep in falling in love with him would eventually become nothing more than that. A mistake.

  It sounded easy. It didn’t account for how she would suddenly realize she wanted to tell him something, only to remember he would never again shoot her a soft half-smile as he listened to her talk. She missed the quiet intensity he brought when he was arguing with her about utter trivialities. She had loved their arguments. He had, too.

  She had to move on. This half-formed knowledge—this quiet secret that maybe he wasn’t dead—had to remain just that. For her to keep close to her heart but never set free. A caged bird.

  She had fallen in love the wrong way with the wrong person. That was that. She had learned her lesson. She did not understand love.

  22

  SEREFIN MELESKI

  The only cleric to ever be taken to the Salt Mines and survive was Svoyatovi Lukyan Starodubtsev. When he returned his eyes never stopped bleeding.

  —Vasiliev’s Book of Saints

  It wasn’t another betrayal. It couldn’t be. Malachiasz, the night before, shaking and sick, hadn’t been an act. Malachiasz with his face shuttered and his eyes cold as he’d left them had surely been an act. But Serefin wasn’t certain and the odds were hardly in his favor. Like everything else it could be both. Malachiasz willfully leaving them behind, but oh, he’d feel bad about it.

  Kacper had grumbled, tetchy, “I guess we’ll wait and see what your damn brother has done,” with the bite of an oncoming argument.

  His damn brother, as it were, had betrayed them. Serefin was bewildered to find that it stung. It should be expected from Malachiasz. He was expecting it. But, apparently, a part of him had been hoping to be wrong.

  Even without magic, Serefin was sensitive to the power around him. He could feel it moving through Olya, through the tree in the center of the room, under his feet. It was like all the air being sucked out of the room, the moment it was gone. One heartbeat and the world tipped upside down.

  Olya staggered as if dizzy. She didn’t speak, a raw noise scraping from her throat before she collapsed, blood leaking from her nose and mouth.

  Kacper jumped to his feet. He had enough time to turn to Serefin, a spark of panic in his dark eyes, before the corner of his eye started bleeding. Serefin blinked, puzzled. Blood mages had a tendency to break blood vessels in their eyes or get nosebleeds, but he had never seen Kacper use enough power to get to that point. Serefin was opening his mouth to say something when it felt like a boulder was dropped on his head.

  It was a clearing, it was an altar, it was a door. All-consuming shadows. Vast and black and deep. Crawling, churning, seething. Again, in this place. Again, the terror chewing at his chest, making its home in his bones. Again again again.

  Serefin had torn out an eye rather than go through this again but here it was and here he was and there was no escape as the door opened before him. Maggots, snakes, a thousand hands grasping for him. Too many finding their mark, too many long fingers taking him apart and sequestering his pieces. He thought he had escaped. The severing, the snap, the moment where he had lost so much but gained—what? A fraction of coherence that was already cracking? His father’s son. Just another mad Tranavian king. Someone to forge a path of blood and steel and keep the world roiling in the chaos that fit it so well.

  Before he had his power, the will to fight, but that was gone, and Serefin simply
wasn’t strong enough. He couldn’t fight off entropy. Not again.

  There was blood filling his mouth, the copper tang bitter, and he tried to spit it out, but there was only more to take its place. He could feel it dripping down his face, wet and slick like when he’d torn out his eye—so much blood.

  How would he be destroyed? A quiet annihilation was too sweet for Serefin—he had tried to deny Chyrnog’s will. Torn apart by the thousands of grasping hands? Scattered into the wind like ash? Crushed under the earth like his near fate in the forest? How many times had death brushed her pale fingers over Serefin’s throat? He could not keep escaping it. There had to be an end. This was the moment where everything finally ceased.

  Silence.

  At last.

  * * *

  If he was dead his head shouldn’t hurt this badly. Serefin groaned, turning and spitting out a mouthful of blood.

  “Oh, very nice, thank you for that.”

  Right onto Malachiasz’s boots.

  Adrenaline surged with anger and left Serefin with enough energy to … sit up, not jump to his feet and punch Malachiasz hard like he wanted to. He was going to be sick.

  “Don’t throw up on my shoes. Kacper is fine, before you panic. There was a lot of blood, but he doesn’t seem injured. The witch…” he broke off. Serefin looked over at where he crouched back on his heels nearby. His expression was distant. “Well, she’s alive.”

  Serefin didn’t like that. “To raszitak?” He was unable to keep the venom from his voice.

  Malachiasz straightened, hurt flickering over his face. “Uwaczem ty,” he snapped. He wandered over to inspect the tree, turning his back on Serefin.

  Saved? He scrubbed his hands over his face, pausing when he lowered them. His hands were covered with blood.

  He worked his way to his feet, checking on Kacper. He seemed intact, just unconscious. He made his way over to Olya and stopped short.

  Her hands were gone.

  He was actually sick this time.

  “Entropy,” Malachiasz said shortly, not turning away from the tree. “She’ll live.”

  It was like they had been sawed off at the wrist. Serefin swore, scanning the room for something to bind them. But they weren’t bleeding—the wounds were dry like they had happened some time ago.

  “Don’t be cruel,” he murmured.

  Malachiasz shot him an incredulous look over his shoulder. He ignored it, shredding the last blanket and using his teeth to tear it into strips. He carefully bound her wrists.

  “He struck her hardest,” Malachiasz said, turning to eye the unconscious girl. “Likely because she was the one with magic of her own. Losing blood magic saved you.”

  “Who?”

  “Chyrnog.”

  Serefin tightened the bandages and dreaded the moment the Kalyazi girl woke. “You have to tell me what’s going on.”

  Malachiasz’s hand touching the tree looked twisted and wrong, his iron claws digging into the tree’s flesh. Eyes flickered open on his cheek—in odd colors, pale and bleeding, dark and void-like—and disappeared.

  “I was going to fight it,” he said softly. “There’s nothing that scares me more than the thought of losing myself completely, and if this god has his way, I will. But…”

  Serefin didn’t like that this statement had a hinge point.

  “There’s no point in fighting. Let the world burn. We tried to fix it—”

  “Sznecz.”

  “It didn’t work. Nothing is ever going to work.”

  “You tried extremes, Malachiasz,” Serefin said.

  “I could say you did as well,” he replied, a hand pressing against his chest.

  Serefin grimaced. “It was Chyrnog,” he said. “I—I couldn’t stop him.”

  “I want to say that makes me feel better, but you were traveling with Voldah Gorovni.”

  He sighed. “Katya was a chance encounter. I used what I had to keep her from slaughtering me.”

  “Do your intentions matter when the end point was you murdering me?”

  “Did your intentions matter when you convinced my father to kill me?” He touched the scar at his neck.

  Malachiasz smiled slightly. Something strange flickered across his face. “Wait. He’s not—”

  “No,” Serefin said, anticipating the question. “Klarysa, resident invalid whose machinations are an enigma, has the honor of being our mother. I don’t know who your father is.”

  “Oh,” Malachiasz said softly. “I remember pieces of her but pieces of someone else, too.”

  “Sylwia, probably. Klarysa’s sister. She was pretending to be your mother when we were children.”

  Malachiasz frowned. He hadn’t looked at Serefin once the whole conversation.

  “What are you planning, Malachiasz?”

  “I never tell,” he said softly. “Ever. Not once. I didn’t tell Żywia. I didn’t tell Parijahan or Rashid. I didn’t tell…” he paused, then added, resolutely, “Nadezhda.”

  “To your detriment, I should say.”

  “I don’t know what to do. I can’t see a way out. I don’t think there’s any hope for us left. We’ve used it all up.”

  “You’re going to let this old god have his way,” Serefin said flatly.

  “This old god wants to destroy Kalyazin’s divine empire,” Malachiasz said.

  “You’re still on that?”

  Malachiasz finally looked over at Serefin, his expression frantic. “Serefin, there’s nothing else. They’re going to destroy us if they’re not stopped. You know that. You were so desperate to get out from underneath Velyos’ thumb—”

  “It’s not what I expected of you.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  It was a simple statement, and maybe Malachiasz hadn’t meant for it to be cutting. It was the truth, an obvious one. The only things they really knew about each other were their betrayals.

  Serefin absently brushed a moth off the shoulder of his jacket. He wished he had his damn sleeves, but Katya had cut them off. “I suppose not.”

  Did he want to know Malachiasz? He suspected the actual boy was only seen in the flashes that happened when he was around Nadya.

  “It’s convenient,” Malachiasz said softly, “for you to blame killing me on Chyrnog.”

  “If you want us to be enemies, fine. I can leave you to your fate. I can go home and do my very level best to dissolve the Vultures. You can burn this world down, but I’ll take everything you have left and burn it right down, too.”

  Malachiasz closed his eyes, sighing. He leaned back against the tree. A rippling shiver cut through him.

  “No, I don’t want that.”

  “It doesn’t seem that way.”

  Malachiasz slid down until he was sitting at the base of the tree.

  “What happened?” Serefin asked.

  The tiniest crease pulled at the tattoos on Malachiasz’s forehead. “I thought I was getting somewhere. Then that boy set his magic on you all. He tried to kill you because you struggled against Chyrnog.”

  “I don’t think he succeeded, and I’ve been dead before,” Serefin said dubiously. “And then?”

  “Then?” Malachiasz asked, puzzled. “Oh. I knocked him out and came back to neutralize Chyrnog’s power.”

  “You can do that?”

  Malachiasz grimaced. He carefully rolled back his sleeve, revealing a network of gashes, as if every cut Malachiasz had ever made across his forearm had reopened. Serefin winced.

  “Chyrnog has particular ways of showing his disapproval.” He tilted his head. “And his favor. The boy lost another finger using that power on you three.”

  “Wait—does that mean we’re not locked in here?”

  Malachiasz did not respond. Serefin wanted to scream.

  “You left the cult leader unconscious somewhere else in the building and we’re not escaping?”

  “To go where? Do what?”

  “Home! Survive?”

  Serefin spun in a frustrated cir
cle before sitting down in front of Malachiasz. They couldn’t leave with Kacper unconscious and he didn’t know if he was willing to abandon the Kalyazi girl, damn his sentimentality. He kept his distance from the tree. The memory of being dragged into the earth and roots growing over his body was a little too close for comfort.

  “Fine,” he spat. “You clearly have a plan. Let’s plan.”

  “What?”

  “We are, somehow, against our better judgment, in this together.”

  “I can plan nothing without Chyrnog knowing.”

  “And?”

  Malachiasz scrubbed his hands across his face. “What if he makes me turn on you?”

  “We’ll burn that bridge when we get there, and it sounded suspiciously like you wouldn’t enjoy that.”

  Malachiasz waved a hand dismissively.

  “What happened when you…” Serefin faltered. “… killed the boy?”

  Malachiasz looked down at his hands. They were trembling. Serefin wondered if they ever stilled.

  “I finally found what I’ve been searching for,” Malachiasz whispered. “It’s been so long, wanting something that feels right, and it was like it was finally there.”

  “And that’s it? That’s what you want? Was there power? I’m trying to understand.”

  “I don’t know. Yes, there was power, of course there was.”

  Serefin simply couldn’t shake the feeling that working with the cultists, doing what Chyrnog wanted, wasn’t the right choice. They needed to be stopping Chyrnog, not aiding him.

  “Malachiasz, when this god topples Kalyazin’s divine empire, he’ll turn on us next. You know he won’t stop. It will all be ash. This isn’t something you can manipulate to your advantage. This is bigger than that.”

  “I can’t stop him,” Malachiasz whispered. He dropped his head into his hands. “I don’t think I want to.”

  A chaos storm in the shape of a boy waiting to claw the world to pieces. Serefin didn’t know how to stop him and he had a bad feeling that he was going to need to.

  “I refuse to believe you have no plan.”

  Malachiasz was quiet before the tension in his shoulders retracted a fraction. “Play the cult’s game for now. Tear them apart when they show weakness.”