“The average Kalyazi wouldn’t,” Pelageya said with a shrug. “But a Kalyazi disgruntled with the church? Who thinks the gods have abandoned us because there are no clerics and an unceasing, ruinous war? Well, they might go searching. They might learn about old gods who ruled with a very different kind of iron fist.”
“This is the whole problem with a religion that blankets the entire country,” Malachiasz muttered.
“Shut up, Malachiasz,” Nadya and Parijahan said. They smiled at one another and he frowned, lightly offended.
“You’ll have to run to make it there first. They built Komyazalov so close to the place where dead gods are buried, to the end of eternity. Could be worse, eh? You could be halfway across the continent with a kingdom falling around your ears.”
Serefin grimaced. He glanced at the door. “Pelageya…” he trailed off.
The witch seemed to know what he could not ask. “I won’t lie to you. You who have come to me for so much. You are your mother’s son, more than that one.” She waved dismissively at Malachiasz. “The situation is dire. The old gods are waking up, and the old gods in Tranavia may yet rise if you do not stop this.”
Nadya let out a long breath. “Oh,” she whispered. “That makes sense.”
“They were everywhere once,” Pelageya continued. “Everywhere and nowhere and they lived and they died and they salted the earth and made it fertile. This world has turned for so very long. You fight powers that have seen eternity, and you cannot possibly succeed. But you must, or everything falls. This one will take the sun and crush it.”
“Honestly, I’ll probably eat it considering how things have been going,” Malachiasz mused.
Pelageya barked out a startled laugh. Malachiasz was a little alarmed.
“How many has he forced you to consume? How have you enjoyed it?”
Malachiasz shifted. Nadya reached up, touching his hand where it rested behind her.
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It does, sterevyani bolen. In you, he has found his match. The one mortal who is a little less and a little more, who hungers, has always hungered, reached for more, farther, higher, and with a little prodding, will fall. You must not, for we will all perish.”
“I know that,” Malachiasz snapped.
“I have a question,” Parijahan said delicately. “You may not be able to answer, but…”
“Why you? Why a girl from the southern lands who has never dabbled in magic, never dabbled in the divine?” Pelageya asked.
“I wouldn’t say never.” Parijahan shrugged. “I knew what I was doing when I chose the clever boy from Yanzin Zadar to be my guard, when I took him out of the palace on days when the mages wanted to test him. I knew what I was doing when we fled.”
“But you didn’t, truly, because you never knew what the boy could do. What you could do.”
“I keep him in check.” Parijahan said, sounding unsure, looking at Malachiasz.
He could feel it, his own frantic power quieted by Parijahan’s sheer presence.
“And you didn’t even realize it. You could, though. You will never see outward manifestation like these mages do, but you could hone the numbers and the formulas into chance and providence.”
“We don’t have time for that,” Parijahan said, a touch mournfully.
If they survived this, he so desperately wanted to help Parijahan harness her magic. Nadya’s hand went to his wrist.
“That is not the puzzle to solve right now,” she said.
“It may never be,” Parijahan said resolutely, but her gaze met Malachiasz’s. She wanted to. If they survived—such a weighty if—they had to try. “What about Rashid?”
“He should be here for that conversation, no?” Malachiasz asked.
“Why isn’t he here?” Pelageya asked. “And I’ve never seen you without your little entourage,” she said to Serefin.
“I can survive without them for an hour,” Serefin replied defensively.
“You can’t.”
He hunched down in his chair and took a sulky sip of vodka.
“The Akolan boy’s role is different,” Pelageya mused, a finger winding one curl around another. “Nevertheless, you are correct. Your country knows what it has lost in you and the boy.”
Parijahan looked ill. “I can’t go back,” she whispered.
“You may not have to. We’re probably going to die,” Serefin said cheerfully. Parijahan glared at him.
“If you continue to make silly jokes, almost certainly,” Pelageya said, narrowing her eyes.
Serefin’s fingers tightened on the neck of the vodka bottle. Malachiasz hated feeling powerless. All he had done for Tranavia, and there was nothing he could do to save it.
Nadya’s thumb gently worked a circle at the base of his wrist. He felt a pang of hunger.
Pelageya’s eyes went to him. “Careful.”
“I’m fine,” he replied, voice strained.
Parijahan stood, a light frown creasing between her dark eyebrows. She crossed the room and took Malachiasz’s face between her hands.
“You’re like a storm and you are driving me insane,” she said, her eyes closing. “Let me try this.”
Her fingers light against his temples, the metal rings on her fingers cold against his cheek. Even when blood magic was all he had, there had always been an element of chaos to it, his power too great. Everything was always too loud and too complicated and too much.
This was a careful string, fragile but without breaks, without tangles, strung from her to him. Was she … counting?
But the hunger slowly eased. Chyrnog snappish but abating.
“What did you just do?” he whispered.
“I have no idea!” She smiled, the cool gray of her eyes meeting his.
“Take this moment of peace and run,” Pelageya said. “Go to the graveyard of gods.”
42
SEREFIN MELESKI
The longer Peloyin is silent, the more I worry that something has happened. But that’s impossible. The gods cannot be killed. They’re gods.
—Passage from the personal journals of Lev Milekhin
They were going to lose any advantage they had by arguing about who was going.
“There’s too many of us to travel as quickly as we need to,” Malachiasz pointed out.
But Kacper and Ostyia refused to let Serefin go without them, and Rashid felt the same about Parijahan. Katya outright scoffed at the idea of staying. Żaneta was the only one who was willing, but Malachiasz refused to leave her at the mercy of the Vulture hunters.
“We all go,” Nadya said, ending the discussion. “We’ll need a veritable army for what we’re about to face.”
Things were admittedly awkward with Żaneta around. She had noticed Kacper’s closeness to Serefin immediately, and her pointed looks had been bitter until cornering Serefin to ask if he was happy.
“Żaneta, I struggle to believe that my happiness is something you care about.”
“I do, Serefin.” She sounded sad.
“Why did you do it?”
She had been quiet, but it didn’t seem like something she had not thought about. “I felt threatened. By Nadya, of all people. I saw through her game early on, and that you didn’t seem to see through it at all, well, I thought you were…”
“You thought me an idiot drunk who was going to hand the country over to our enemies because I found one mildly interesting,” Serefin said flatly.
“Well, yes,” Żaneta admitted. “You make it hard to remember how clever you are when you’re in Grazyk. You become an entirely different person.”
“When did you see me away from Grazyk—ah, wait. I remember.” She had been at the front for a handful of months, a necessary formality for a child of the court, before she was swept back to safety.
“You were brilliant there, and when you returned, you were…”
“A drunk,” Serefin offered. “I’m the king, Żaneta,” he continued gently. “I am sorry about what we m
ight have had, but you sold me out to my father.”
“Does he make you happy? The soldier?” She looked at him intently.
Serefin thought of Kacper’s surety, his calm demeanor that could quickly fracture into anxiety. His wry, crooked grin and the scar that cut through his left eyebrow. His absolutely abysmal sense of humor.
“Ah, you don’t have to answer,” Żaneta said with a small smile. “I’m glad, Serefin. Truly.”
“Have you spoken to your father?” Serefin asked.
Żaneta’s face shuttered. “No,” she said softly. “He wouldn’t want to see me like this.”
Serefin had no idea if that was true, if Ruminski’s quest to get his daughter back was because he cared or political in origin. He hated—for her sake—that he couldn’t tell.
“Like what? You are radiant as ever,” Serefin said cheerfully.
“And you’re a flirt.”
“Kacper doesn’t mind.”
“Don’t be so certain,” Żaneta said wryly, squeezing his hand gently.
“If we make it back … you know what I have to do, right?”
Agony cut her expression. “Yes.”
“Żaneta, I should have done it when I took the throne.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“I can’t make the same mistake a second time.”
She nodded. “I understand, Serefin, I do. I’m trying to keep my own head on my shoulders. My father’s mistakes are his.”
“Well, I don’t have the authority to execute you, anyway, that’s Malachiasz.”
“Comforting, Serefin!”
They were to the north of Komyazalov and needed to go south. If they took the roads, they would skirt dangerously close to the city, and Serefin doubted the Matriarch had stopped her search for Nadya.
Nadya regarded the map impassively. She had been different since Serefin found her in the library with a feral Malachiasz. He couldn’t place how, but something about her seemed old and tired and sad.
Malachiasz perched on the table. “I would rather not take a horse,” he said. “They don’t like me. Won’t like Żaneta, either.”
Serefin had forgotten that Malachiasz had wings hidden somewhere underneath all that magic keeping him in human form. Did Żaneta have wings? He glanced at her. She nodded with a wry twist of her lips.
“Still a lot of horses,” Katya said, regarding the map with a sigh.
“If I go with Malachiasz, what do I do if I lose him?” Żaneta asked Nadya.
“Hit him as hard as you possibly can,” Nadya replied.
Malachiasz gingerly touched the bruise on his face. It was yellowing as if it had been there for weeks, not twenty-four hours.
“Hit him so fucking hard,” Nadya continued.
“Nadezhda.”
“Blunt force trauma to the face,” Serefin added helpfully.
“Got it!” Żaneta said gleefully.
Nadya smiled at Malachiasz. Her expression flickered, driving a spike of panic through Serefin. Malachiasz’s posture had subtly shifted. His pupils were blasted out, black leaking into the whites of his eyes.
“Katya, how close are we to civilization?” Nadya asked nervously.
Katya turned, her face paling. Her hand went to her waist and she growled when she realized she didn’t have the relic. It was tucked safely in Serefin’s belt.
“Stop him,” she snapped, which Serefin took to mean they were rather close.
Malachiasz was watching Nadya carefully, hungrily, every muscle tensed. She approached him, holding out a hand, stained and monstrous. He slid backward, his eyes going pale, blood dripping from his nose.
“Nadya, I can’t,” Malachiasz whispered, his claws digging into the table, splintering the wood. Something washed over him and he stilled to an eerie silence. Serefin sensed it before he struck, yanking Nadya away. A snarl of iron teeth; blood spattering on the floor.
And he was gone.
“Absolutely not,” Nadya muttered, and she took off after him.
There was a beat of silence.
Katya started, “Well I guess that solves—”
Serefin rushed after them, Katya letting out a frustrated groan.
When he reached the outside of the compound, Malachiasz was nowhere to be found. Nadya spun in a slow circle, her eyes closed, murmuring what Serefin thought was a spell until he realized it was an impressive stream of profanity in Kalyazi and Tranavian. Parijahan came up behind him.
Nadya went still, the eye at her forehead opening disconcertingly. “That way,” she said, heading into the woods.
“Oh, I don’t like that,” Parijahan whispered.
Serefin didn’t either, but he followed her and hoped, for Nadya’s sake, they were too late to witness what was about to happen.
NADEZHDA LAPTEVA
Malachiasz was still the profoundly broken boy she knew, who knew her, the darkness in him steadily amplifying as Chyrnog crept closer. She didn’t think she would know when the final moment happened. When he was gone for good. That frightened her most.
She stumbled past a broken fence and onto a forest road. The crumpled remains of a person were slumped beside it. Bile rose in her throat and she swallowed it back.
He did this. The gentle anxious boy she loved.
He was capable of this even without Chyrnog. It was the truth. It hurt.
She followed the road until she came upon the first of a few small houses, barely even a village. They were worn down, the painted flowers and blocky patterns adorning them faded.
The door to the first house hung open on its hinges. It was deadly quiet. She pushed the door open farther, her world jarring painfully as she took in the blood splashed across the floor. The scattered remains on the packed dirt. She forced herself to look.
She heard another door slam. A scream, fast cut off. Nadya ran toward the house that didn’t seem to be touched. She could warn them, stop this. She shoved open the door with her shoulder, feeling that weird unreality like when she saw some other realm.
She was only in time to witness what she would never be able to forget. His claws going through a man. His teeth parting flesh. Blood and blood and bone.
Wide-eyed with horror, she had once watched his body roil from boy to monster, her fear never truly leaving when chaos added teeth and mouths and eyes and eyes and eyes, but quieting, some. She had learned to see past the horror, some. She had forgotten what he was, some.
Monsters were made for destruction.
She closed her eyes; she would not watch this. She didn’t know when it ended. She flinched when she felt a hand over her mouth, against her waist, pulling her into the house, her feet sliding across so much blood.
This was not Malachiasz. Or, Malachiasz, but ravaged and beaten. Halfway consumed, halfway divine, monstrous and eldritch. She could see his jawbone under decayed and corroded flesh. His eyes were strange—not onyx black, but pale and ghostly, the pupils clouded.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that. He doesn’t have me totally,” he snapped, confirming her fears.
She blinked.
“Enough—we’re the same, he and I, of course we are, but I’m still here.”
“Malachiasz—”
He shuddered, wrenching back from her, a low whine breaking from his chest.
Still Malachiasz, at least a little. Nadya didn’t know what to do. She glanced over her shoulder—where were the others?
“They’ll be dealt with,” Malachiasz said, as if reading her thoughts. She wondered if he could. “We have to go; we have to find it first. Towy dżimyka, please, you have to help me. I need your help.”
This was wrong, something was wrong.
“Remember when you killed that creature pretending to be me? Nadya, I’m me.”
“You have an old god controlling you. I can’t—”
“You can hear their songs and survive. Nadya, we’re the same.” There was desperation in his voice, and he sounded like Malachiasz. She realized she didn’t know how C
hyrnog sounded. He took her corrupted hand, clinging to it. “You’re as monstrous as I am.”
Tears pricked her eyes.
“They thought if they sheltered you, you would never know what you are.” Nyrokosha’s voice was sly and smooth in the back of Nadya’s head. “But all truths must come to light eventually. We have waited so long, and here you are to set us free.”
“Please, Nadya. He wants to destroy you, to steal your power, but why? We can work together. Finish this together. You terrify him, the others, all of them—you don’t realize what you can do.”
What could she do? “Serefin and Parj, they—”
“They aren’t like us, Nadya. They won’t understand.” There was a strange, manic light in his ghostly eyes.
Even amidst all the divine nonsense, Malachiasz’s skepticism of the gods had always held firm. It was jarring to hear him talk this way, like Chyrnog might be right.
“No, Malachiasz, no, this isn’t the way.”
He whirled on her. She froze, holding her ground. “How do you not understand? Setting these beings free will stop the chaos. We’ll finally have the power to stop what’s happening. You can take down the Church that tried to execute you. I can save Tranavia. Nadya, it’s the only way. Please,” he begged, his voice thick. “I can’t do this alone. I need you.”
Maybe this was Malachiasz, after all. Maybe they were doomed to play out this terrible cycle, again and again. Except she had no blades poised over his back. She only had the earnest hope that he would claw out of the hole he was being buried in, not dig further, deeper, and let himself be consumed.
“Were you planning this the whole time?” Nadya asked, her voice dead. “Another betrayal?”
“What?”
“Everyone will die if I do as you ask, including Serefin. Do you realize how much Serefin cares about you?”
“Serefin can’t stand me.”
“You’re his brother.”
“I have no one!” Malachiasz cried, yanking his hand from Nadya’s. “I am nothing. I was created in darkness and darkness is all I have. There is no saving me, Nadya. There is no happy ending. Help me, or you die with the rest.”
She closed her eyes. “This isn’t you.”
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