That earned her a strained half smile from the Vulture boy. She kissed him, once more, a soft and slow and equally purposeful kiss, before she tucked her head down and settled herself against him.
* * *
Nadya woke with her head pillowed on Malachiasz’s chest, one hand pressed against his ribs. Soft, early morning light was slipping through the cracks in the curtains.
She sat up, trying not to think about what she would have to do by the day’s end. Malachiasz stirred beside her. He didn’t wake, just folded his body around her. She smiled and softly rested her fingers in his hair.
Lying on a nearby table was the iron mask he wore over his face as a Vulture. It was similar to the one she had seen him wearing when they first reached Grazyk, but this one had a vicious edge to it, designed to cover even more of his face.
Malachiasz stirred again, waking.
“How many more lies are you going to tell me before I finally hear the truth?” Nadya asked. She turned his mask around in her hands, the iron cold. She didn’t mean it in an accusatory way, she was merely curious.
Malachiasz frowned; the expression tugged at the tattoos on his forehead. He took his time answering. “When we met I gave you my name,” he said, his quiet voice scratchy with sleep. “It’s the only truth I have left.”
“It’s a truth you’ve given others as well.”
He turned, groaning, and pressed his face against her hip. “What do you want from me, Nadya?” His voice was teasing.
“I’m just pointing out: I am not the only person to know your name.”
“You’re just being difficult.”
She laughed and looked down at him. His black hair spilled onto the white pillows like ink. She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them; thought about how when they were sitting in front of Alena’s altar he had practically admitted to her he was evil. He closed his eyes and his face was pleasant, peaceful. A monster king, feral and beautiful.
Her chest ached in the oddest of ways as it struck her again just how much she cared for this broken boy and how it terrified her. It would never stop terrifying her.
She laid back next to him. “Is it part of you? I mean, has it always been with you?” She didn’t need to clarify.
He was silent—she was getting used to his long silences—she hoped he said yes. That he had been born with iron in his body instead of bone. It would mean a curse of blood instead of something done to him by man. If he hadn’t been born with it, then it had been tortured into him. Experiments more gruesome than Nadya was willing to contemplate.
“I was born with the potential for monstrosity, as all people are,” he said finally. “The Salt Mines made it a reality. All I have is what they made me.”
Nadya pressed her mouth to his bare shoulder, another fracture making its way down her heart. She didn’t know what would happen to them at the end of this. She couldn’t even think that far. Her future was bleak and she knew it.
What would he say, if he knew her end goal remained the same? That she was willing to bring the gods’ judgment down on Tranavia. That when this veil parted she would still be theirs.
At least, she thought she would.
As Malachiasz turned his head to look at her, lifting a hand and brushing the backs of his fingers against her cheek, her heart squeezed painfully. He wasn’t the only one lying. She was doing a perfectly good job lying to herself.
31
SEREFIN
MELESKI
Svoyatovi Dobromir Pirozhkov: When Svoyatovi Dobromir Pirozhkov was a child, his sister fell into a frozen river and he miraculously returned her to life. Hers was an odd life, full of strange mishaps until finally she was killed in a bizarre accident, trampled by her own horse. Dobromir, who was not a cleric, was also chased by terrible luck throughout his life until ultimately he drowned in the same frozen river he saved his sister from years prior.
—Vasiliev’s Book of Saints
Serefin was used to the concept of pain. It was a familiar friend. When he was forced into the dark, what waited for him was something that could not be described in such easy, small words. This was not his friend. It was more; it was bigger than anything human vocabulary could name. It obliterated him—pulled him out of conscious existence and threw him into a world where monsters walked and blood fell from the sky like rainwater.
He was losing his grasp of his own awareness, of the very essence that made him Serefin, the moody High Prince with far more blood magic talent than would ever do him good as a king. The High Prince who never thought he would be king because he would die first. It was slipping away from him. No, not slipping, being pulled. It was being taken. He was losing all that made him who he was and he would be left in this wasteland world of blood and monsters and magic.
This world, this world, this world.
This world that would become reality. That he knew, intrinsically, whoever he even was. It was an overwhelming sense of knowing, of horror, of the kind of foreboding that drove a man insane.
Something he was, once. Before. Before what? Was there a line, a point, a moment that divided him into the Before and the After? Or was there nothing but this blood raining from the sky and soaking him to his skin—skin?—and draining into rivers.
He was aware of the bitter punch of copper; that he had put his blood-soaked fingers into his mouth and tasted the crimson stain on his skin. But why?
Soft feather glances brushed across his face. Razor teeth nipped at his ear and he heard singing. No, no, that was wrong. He didn’t hear it because hearing was a separate experience. It was something he did not have. He felt it, he became it. The song and the music and the whispery reed of a voice was what he was now—he was ever changing, ever shifting, and still blood rained down.
This song was not one he knew. He did not know the tongue, it felt wrong, it felt perfect but in a wrongness that made him shudder.
It was sudden, the shift from incomprehension to enlightenment. The moment when the words he was hearing made sense to him in their perfection and their abhorrence.
It was someone else and this voice was angry, it was frustrated, it was sad. It had lost so much and gained so little and it was tired of fighting and tired of war and—
War?
War and blood and magic staining the land and staining the people. Heresy and—
No.
No, this was all wrong, this was wrong. Something still lucid, still Serefin, was screaming because this was wrong.
The war meant freedom. The war was necessary.
The song changed. The song became an agreement. Correcting itself midnote, apologizing for its mistake because of course of course of course this land would never have peace until one of its blasted kingdoms was eradicated.
That was wrong, too. Serefin—what was left of Serefin, if anything was left of Serefin—scrambled for the word that would describe this song. He had it, but it existed out of his reach, just past the point where Serefin became something not-Serefin.
It wasn’t there, though, and so he felt himself fall, disintegrate, lose the last piece that made him Serefin until there was nothing nothing nothing left.
And there was silence. And from that silence came a different song. Sly and sharp and slow. Needling through the silence for something that had gone missing.
There were prophecies and there were visions of a world where nothing was left. What was the point of a world of nothing? But he needed four things: one that was lost, one that was held in a different song’s grasp, one that had stopped listening to songs years ago, and one who was untouchable because they were too close to being a song themselves.
It made it difficult, especially with this world so focused on ripping itself apart. But a challenge was a riddle was a test.
Even if it meant putting back together what arrogance had torn apart. Even if it meant forcing one unwilling to listen. Even if it meant seeding doubt into a zealot’s heart. Even if it meant bringing madness.
First, though, a stumbling prince.
Serefin saw an ocean of stars. A blackness stretching out into forever around him. It pressed upon him, washed over him, swallowed him alive. Surrounding him, guiding him, though he did not know where he was going. He just knew he had been; he once was. He was nothing—no one—and there was nothing but stars.
And moths.
Millions of dusty wings the color of starlight, dancing through moonbeams, flitting on him, around him. One moth, far larger than the others, soft and gray, landed right over his bad eye.
He took a step forward. His foot left a bloody print in the ash behind him. Blood dripped down his fingers, but he didn’t think he was wounded.
But maybe he was. He existed. He was real.
He was dead.
He found he wasn’t too bothered by that, if slightly irritated that his paranoia had turned into reality.
His hand crept to his face, nudging the moth onto his index finger. It complied, its slight legs barely heavy enough to register as a weight against his skin.
The moth and the stars swirled around him until they were one and the same; moths flying in constellations with points of light on their dusty wings.
Something was burning within him, hot in his veins. Something was changing and he didn’t know what. Something within him—about him—had shifted amongst the stars and the dark and the glittering moths.
He thought, quite clearly, This is not the fate my father intended for me.
Blood and demons and monsters. A will to break. That was what he was supposed to see.
Not stars, not moths, not songs.
“Meddling with Izak Meleski’s plans from beyond the grave,” Serefin said aloud to the moth on his finger. At least, he thought he spoke aloud; he wasn’t entirely sure in this place what that meant.
The moth fluttered its wings in acknowledgment.
His sight tunneled …
A world burning. Grazyk in rubble. The Tranavian lakelands filled with blood and death. Scorched Kalyazi mountains. Punched-in onion domes of the Silver Court, smoking. A world broken, a world starved. Blood falling from the sky like rain.
A future that could not—would not—be stopped. A future that had already been set into motion.
Serefin woke up.
32
NADEZHDA
LAPTEVA
Svoyatova Serafima Zyomina: Little is known about Svoyatova Serafima Zyomina. Though a cleric, she was blessed with a strange magic that never seemed to work the same way twice. If one was an enemy, seeing her on a battlefield meant a slow and agonizing death, for she was a cleric of Marzenya and both were cruel.
—Vasiliev’s Book of Saints
The rain from the night before grew steadily worse, turning into a massive storm. Lightning flashed every few minutes, casting the sanctuary into stark black and white. It made the room feel violent, angry, a place of death—fitting for a king of monsters.
Malachiasz melded into his role seamlessly. He was wearing a hood in the shape of a vulture’s head. It shadowed half his face with its vicious beak. A cloak of black feathers fell heavy over his shoulders. He was flanked on either side by Vultures in banded iron masks that covered most of their faces. He sat on the throne in a way that was casual, comfortably arrogant. One leg was kicked over the armrest, his tattooed fingers steepled over his chest.
A boy made king of monsters for a kingdom of the damned.
Something itched in the back of Nadya’s head. A shifting. It was uncomfortable. Something had changed. She couldn’t put a name to it; she wrote it off as nerves.
When the king arrived he was flanked by only a few guards. Such blind trust in Malachiasz. Such desperation for a power so abominable.
Malachiasz pushed the hood back to hang over his shoulders. His nails were iron, held at a length just long enough to appear as visible claws. His eyes were rimmed with kohl and more gold beads were knotted into his long, black hair.
He looks like a king … Nadya realized, feeling her stomach drop. How had he fooled her into believing he was insignificant?
Feral and wild with his hair in braids and knots. A smile glinted at his mouth, his teeth iron, his incisors too sharp. A little further and those incisors would be fangs in his mouth.
Her heart pounded in her throat. She was wearing an intricate white mask of pearls and lace. Her hair woven into a complicated mess of braids. They had taken the glamour off her face and stripped her hair of the dye as well, and though she had long since stopped noticing Malachiasz’s magic on her skin, she could feel its absence. Her old voryens were strapped to her forearms, their solid weight a comfort.
Izak Meleski, the king of Tranavia, paused in front of Malachiasz’s Carrion Throne. He did not bow, but a smile stretched his lips.
“We heard rumors of the flight of one of your Vultures, Your Excellency,” the king said. “Imagine our surprise when the truth came to light!”
Nadya tensed at hearing an honorific from the king’s lips.
“Mere exaggerations,” Malachiasz said. “I did spend some time in Kalyazin for”—he paused, thinking—“academic purposes. I must offer my condolences, Your Majesty. His Highness was a testament to Tranavian magic; he will be missed.” Chaos and madness were carefully cultivated threads in his voice.
“What?” Nadya whispered; her hand reached out and landed on Rashid’s forearm.
He frowned, uncertainty apparent in his features.
Nadya felt as if she were scrambling for purchase amidst a landslide. No, they were supposed to save Serefin, not kill him. Malachiasz knew, he’d agreed. Letting Serefin fall to harm was putting the king one step closer to his goal.
What if that was his intention all along?
She watched Malachiasz, not the king as she should, searching for an indication that he hadn’t meant for Serefin to die. There was only the cool expression of a monster.
The king carefully folded his hands behind his back. Nadya noticed Żaneta at his side, looking pale and withdrawn. She didn’t see Ostyia or Kacper in the hall, either.
“Kalyazin will pay for the death of my son,” the king said, his voice wavering slightly.
Nadya exchanged a look of alarm with Rashid. It wasn’t possible.
“We will start with the Silver Court,” he continued, fist clenched. “And we will bring them to their knees.”
A sweeping sense of magic being used washed through the hall. Izak jerked his arm down. Lightning crashed outside, jolting the hall with erratic, frantic flashes. The magic was overwhelming, Nadya could taste it in the air, copper, blood. The thought of how much it would take to control the skies like that was … unimaginable.
Malachiasz looked up at the ceiling, his expression unconcerned. Then he smiled.
“So, it worked.” His voice contemplative, but still audible. “I wasn’t sure, you know. It had not been confirmed that using the blood of a powerful mage would heighten the process.”
No. Nadya’s blood froze in her veins. Parijahan’s eyes closed and she leaned back against a pillar. Rashid’s expression blackened.
“It feels little different to me,” the king said, razor-sharp.
“How are you to know what the power of gods feels like?” Malachiasz asked. “You have nothing to compare it to.”
“And you do?”
Malachiasz clasped his hands together. “Well, I was—how was it put?—the ultimate success of my cult before this. You got what I promised, did you not?”
A biting glint of iron teeth. A puppet master, pulling them all along with his honeyed words and panicked pleas for trust. Nadya watched from the shadows with narrowed eyes. They were supposed to let the king think he had won, but that had not meant giving him the power he so craved.
Nadya’s will to fight leaked out of her. Had Malachiasz done it anyway? Orchestrated blasphemy in
an attempt to destroy her kingdom?
She hoped she was wrong. She had to be wrong.
Except the king needed Malachiasz to complete the ceremony. Which meant Malachiasz had done it willingly. Had he betrayed them? For what?
But as she watched him sitting on his throne made of skulls and bones, she saw him for what he always was. Tranavian to his core: merciless and beautifully cruel. She had been a fool to believe him. There had been so many signs she had so willfully ignored, choosing instead to put her faith in a monster.
What could the king do to the heavens with the power he now bore? If man-made magic had created the veil keeping the gods out from Tranavia, what could this do?
Nadya thought fast. If it was down to her to stop this, then so be it. She looked at Rashid, who appeared as confused as she felt.
“I don’t understand why,” he said under his breath.
She tugged the silver pendant over her neck and eyed the spiral; she wrapped the cord around her hand as she would her prayer beads. If all she had was a bloodthirsty forgotten god-that-was-not-a-god, it would have to do.
The king took Żaneta’s shoulder and pushed her closer to Malachiasz’s throne. She stumbled, falling at the Black Vulture’s feet.
Malachiasz leaned forward, tipping her face up with one iron claw. “You did wish to be queen,” he hissed. “The price of power is blood; it always has been. The price of becoming like a god? Well, that’s death.” He crooked his head, the movement off-putting in its fluidity. “But such disloyalty. Such fickle whims belong to those who dream of rising above their station to places they do not belong.” He trailed his iron claw down her cheek.
Her expression turned to horror.
His mouth tilted upward slightly at the corners. “Subtlety would have been better for a queen. Betrayal is a taint not so easily ignored. Can I tell you a secret?” His smile widened when she didn’t respond. “My order was built on betrayal. You’ll fit right in.”
Nadya saw Żaneta’s lips form the word no, her terror silent. Malachiasz straightened, towering over the girl as he waved a languid hand to the masked Vultures who grabbed her.
Wicked Saints Page 28
