Winter War Awakening (Blood Rose Rebellion, Book 3)

by Rosalyn Eves

  A pair of Austrians were brought forward, boys not much older than I was. Chernobog snapped his fingers, and they began sinking into the ground, their startled cries turning to genuine screams as they were buried alive.

  “Stop playing with them,” Vasilisa said. “There must be nothing here that suggests our presence—the Austrians must blame the Hungarians for the atrocities, not us.”

  “Human Lucifera can do as much—and no one will find their bodies to know.” Chernobog shrugged. “It shall be as you wish.” The ground closed over the two unfortunate boys, cutting off their screams.

  Another soldier was tugged forward, less willingly than the first two, obviously fearing to share their fate. This one was older, a touch of grey in his beard and at his temples. An officer?

  “Unmake his eyes,” Chernobog said, snapping his fingers at me.

  What? I jerked in the saddle, sure I had heard wrong. But Pál had not given me my voice back, and I could not ask. My uncle dismounted and pulled me down, dragging me to stand before the frightened soldier.

  I stared at him, my heart thrumming in my throat. He looked to be my father’s age. Did he have children waiting for him at home? A wife? Friends?

  “His eyes,” Chernobog repeated, watching me idly, as though he’d asked me to pass the salt at dinner. “We did not bring you here for your amusement but to see if you have the strength and stomach to do what’s necessary when needed. If you do not obey, we will hurt your cousin until you do. It would be a shame if she died.”

  I glanced back at Noémi. Her shocked expression told me she had heard Chernobog’s threat. Hunger stood beside her, his fists tight and his golden eyes dark with anger. He must have known what Chernobog planned. If he cared for Noémi at all, how could he let her be used so?

  Perhaps, like me, he had no choice.

  I turned back to the soldier. His eyes were not worth Noémi’s life. But how could I do this?

  Eyes were not a manufactured thing that could be unmade, returned to its component parts.

  When I hesitated, Chernobog nodded back at Vasilisa—who lit Noémi’s hair on fire.

  Noémi’s mouth opened in a silent scream. Horrified, I whirled on Pál, whacking him with my bound hands. Stop, I mouthed. Stop!

  Pál waved his hand, and the fire winked out.

  I returned my attention to the soldier, my heart thudding painfully against my ribs. He watched me, wary, horror at the sudden spurt of fire still reflecting in his eyes.

  I had to try. God help me, but I had to try. The next time I failed, they might kill Noémi.

  Shaking now with both nerves and cold, I closed my eyes and called up my shadow self, hovering just beneath my consciousness. She came swiftly, trembling just as I was. I reached out, trying to feel for some sense of magic, some thread or spark that I might break.

  Nothing.

  I glanced behind me at Chernobog, watching with unblinking eyes. At Vasilisa, her face lit with unholy amusement. At Hunger, whose face told me nothing at all.

  Back to the soldier now, terror making my hands clammy. What if I could not do this?

  And what if I could?

  Both options made my stomach roil.

  Again. Desperation made my shadow self stronger, but my questing senses felt nothing they could grasp. I sent my second sight in the direction of his head, twisting in the same gesture I’d use to break a spell, hoping—fearing—to snag something.

  The soldier fell back with a cry, hand clapped to his ear, where blood poured out.

  A wave of revulsion knocked me to my knees, and I vomited. As repeated heaves racked my body, I thought, I cannot do this. I cannot.

  Pál must have sensed this, because his hand was on my back, warm and unexpectedly gentle. “I think you ask too much of her. This magic is beyond her.”

  “Then kill the girl,” Chernobog said.

  “No.” Hunger’s response was swift and sure. “If you lose your leverage against Anna, you lose her—she won’t be moved by threats against herself. Don’t waste her cousin on something Anna could not have done in any case.” I wondered if the others heard the thread of desperation running under his rational words.

  I sat back on my haunches, spent and shivering. There was vomit in my hair and on my clothes, and I could not get my hands free to wipe it off.

  I did not care.

  With one long look at Noémi, and then at Hunger, Chernobog turned back to the soldiers. “Kill them all,” he said. “And not gently. Put out their eyes, rip open their stomachs, peel back their skin. Leave their bodies in a state that will horrify the Austrians who find them.”

  He stalked forward and plunged his own clawed fingers into the eyes of the soldier before me, who fell, screaming.

  My stomach wrenched again, and I doubled over, dry-heaving. I tried to block out the sounds of the slaughter that followed, but by the time it had ended, I was curled in on myself, weeping as though I might never stop, great gasping sobs that shook my body. The tears froze on my cheeks.

  Vasilisa tugged me upright, not ungently, and murmured, “It would not hurt so much if you cared less.”

  She slid one arm around me to help me back toward the horses. The praetherian soldiers had already dispersed, melting back into the nearby forest.

  With a resounding crack, one of the great trees fell, narrowly missing Hunger. He jumped back, cursing, and the earth beneath him shook, knocking him to the ground.

  The earth beneath my own feet was steady. I whipped my gaze around to see Pál, his fingers flickering with another spell. A thousand droplets of water seemed to emerge from nowhere and arced through the air to encase Hunger in a film of ice.

  Hunger shifted, and the ice burst in a thousand tiny fragments, like glass. They glittered on the dried grass around him, and Hunger’s great dragon turned to face Pál.

  “There has been no challenge issued,” he growled.

  “I am not praetherian.” Pál flicked his fingers and a circle of trees lifted to the air, roots and all.

  Chernobog said, “You do not deserve the dignity of a challenge. You’ve grown soft, my old friend.” He stalked to Noémi and grabbed her by the hair, shaking her to demonstrate the source of Hunger’s weakness.

  Distracted by Chernobog’s movement, Hunger did not dodge fast enough. The trees plummeted down, smashing along his curved spine, across his neck.

  Hunger roared, and a gout of flame surrounded Pál, who did not flinch. The fire burned itself out against Pál’s faintly luminescent skin. Pál had planned this. He had known before he arrived how this night would end, and he had come spelled against dragon fire.

  I reached out to snag Pál’s protective spell, and Vasilisa grabbed me, shattering my concentration.

  “Do not make this worse,” she hissed, and something cold burrowed against the sensitive skin of my throat: her nails, sharp as any dagger.

  “You put him up to this,” Hunger said to Chernobog, evading the spear of ice Pál flung at him. “The praetheria will not thank you for betraying me.”

  Chernobog laughed, his hand still tangled in Noémi’s hair. “The praetheria will follow whoever is strongest, as they always have. And the strongest”—another shake for emphasis—“is no longer you.”

  I jerked away from Vasilisa, and her nails tore at my skin. Locked alone in my cell, I’d filled some of the empty hours practicing what few spells I could remember: a Lumen light, a basic Fire spell. My failure-to-success rate was staggering, but I’d gritted my teeth and tried all the same. While Pál was distracted, I snapped the spell preventing my speech and whispered, “Adure.”

  I flung the fire-lighting spell at Pál.

  But the shape of the spell didn’t hold; it fizzled as it left my fingertips. Before I could summon my will again, a weight crashed into me from behind, knocking me to my knees. Vasil
isa glowered down at me, a look that could shrivel a full-grown tree.

  “If you interfere in this fight, Chernobog will kill you. All my hard work to bring you here will be undone.” She appeared to consider for a moment. “Perhaps I will kill you and save him the trouble.”

  Hunger sprang forward, his teeth and claws closing over the spot where Pál stood—had stood. A glimmering archway marked the opening of the portal Pál had shaped.

  Hunger’s long, serpentine head darted around, searching for Pál’s new hiding place. My eyes swept the clearing, skipping lightly over the soldiers’ bodies, before searching the trees. Pál had disappeared.

  Not for long, though: he dropped out of the sky onto Hunger’s shoulder, a long, wicked blade gleaming in his hands. He plunged the blade into the base of Hunger’s neck and then vanished again.

  Hunger roared. His dragon’s strength and fire were a poor match for an opponent he could not find. He flexed his wings, once, twice, stirring up a windstorm that snagged my hair and whipped it into my eyes.

  A great longing poured into me, as though my heart had pushed its way free of my breast and hung vulnerable before me. The yearning tugged me forward, stumbling, but Vasilisa wrenched me back. Noémi broke free of Chernobog, as desperate as I was to reach…what? It hardly seemed to matter, only that I reach Hunger, that I put a stop to the terrible, pleasurable need tearing through me.

  I found myself weeping without entirely knowing why. As though everything I loved, everything I hoped for, had vanished in a blink.

  And then Noémi was plucked up, flying through the air like a rag doll before landing with a soft whump on the ground before Hunger.

  I scrambled to my feet, sprinting across the clearing. Noémi lay unmoving, the breeze stirred up by Hunger’s wings lifting a tendril of golden hair from her head.

  Hunger’s reaction was instant, faster than conscious thought. He shuddered down to his human form and knelt on the ground by Noémi, any mindfulness of his own danger lost in his concern for her. Pál’s dagger was still lodged in his upper shoulder.

  Before I could reach them, Pál appeared beside Hunger, the shimmering line of his portal bright behind him. He whipped the dagger from Hunger’s back and drew it, in one smooth line, across his neck.

  Blood bloomed like a shadow across his throat, and Hunger fell.

  Hunger’s body fell across Noémi, who began to stir. He lay across her knees like a discarded coat, dark blood spoiling his fine linen shirt. Noémi sat up, rubbing at her head.

  Then she saw Hunger.

  Her cry rang out in the still air, full of ravaged grief. She gathered the praetherian in her arms, his blood marking an uneven pattern across her throat, across the pale dress she wore.

  Pál glanced at me and lifted his hand to silence her again, but Chernobog waved him away with a laugh. “Let her scream. There’s no one here to care.”

  The horned god rose into the air, his bat wings nearly invisible against the night sky. “Bring the girls,” he said to Pál and Vasilisa, then flew away.

  Pál marched toward Noémi, who made a tiny gesture with her fingers. The faint buzz of a spell brushed past me, and Pál slumped to the ground.

  At that, Vasilisa raised her hands in the air: a sign of truce. “You needn’t fear me, healer. But we must work fast.” There was a leashed fury in her voice—the same anger I’d witnessed when we first met, when we’d seen a praetherian shot at a society ball.

  We? What a complicated net of alliances this night’s work was exposing.

  Vasilisa snapped her fingers, and a light hovered above Noémi, enough to see how very still and dead Hunger looked, his neck gaping like a cruel grin. She turned her burning eyes on Noémi. “Can you heal him?”

  “You watched him die,” Noémi said. “You let him die. Why do you want me to heal him now? You might have prevented his death.”

  “And I might have lost everything else I have worked toward these past years. Chernobog meant to bring down Hunger—if not now, through Pál, then through some other means. Hunger was already lost. Had I fought alongside Hunger, I would have declared myself Chernobog’s enemy.” Her words were hard, furious.

  “You and Hunger together could have defeated Pál and Chernobog,” I said. Vasilisa was afraid of nothing and no one.

  “And at what cost? The praetheria cannot afford infighting, cannot afford to show disunity among the Four. And Chernobog was not wrong—Hunger was weakening. This does not mean I want him dead.” She fixed her eyes on Noémi again. “And so I ask, can you heal his body?”

  “I—I think so.”

  “Then do so. By all the gods I have known and loved, we might yet salvage something from this night’s misery.”

  Noémi worked slowly but efficiently, murmuring spells over Hunger. First the interior ligatures and vessels sealed, then she walked her fingers across the gaping line of his throat, and it closed up. Though I wanted to kneel beside her, to offer her my support, I held back, afraid that even with my improved control I might inadvertently spoil her spells. As she worked, I marveled at her strength: were that Gábor, I’m not sure I could have done what she did, even with her gifts.

  Wordlessly, Vasilisa handed Noémi a wet cloth (though where she had obtained it, I didn’t know, as she hadn’t left our side). Noémi wiped the cloth across Hunger’s face and neck, blotting the blood from him with a gentleness that betrayed some of her heartbreak. Now that the spellwork was done, grief was creeping across her face, showing in a hollowness of cheek, a wet sheen to her eyes.

  By the time she finished, Hunger looked as though he was sleeping, though his stillness belied that.

  “Can you bring him back?” Vasilisa asked.

  Noémi shook her head, tears starting to slide down her cheeks. “That is not my gift. I have only done so once—but it was a different death. Not so”—she gulped—“violent.”

  “The Lady might have brought him back,” I said, my own pain driving me to be cruel. “Unfortunately, you killed her.”

  Vasilisa did not move, but her spell-fire lashed across my cheek, and my head snapped back.

  “Will you give us a few minutes?” Noémi asked, her voice steady despite her tears. “To say goodbye?”

  Vasilisa hesitated the barest moment, then nodded. She retreated to the edge of the clearing: far enough to give Noémi some privacy but where she could still see us.

  When Vasilisa had gone, Noémi’s composure broke. She curled her arms around Hunger’s head.

  “I did not want to love you,” she said, and then her voice dissolved into sobs.

  I had no words to give her, nothing that could make this disaster less than it was. We had lost the only ally we had in this place—and Noémi had lost even more. I sank down beside her and wrapped my arms around her, hugging her tight as my own tears fell, as though a tight grip might hold at bay, for a moment, the tide that threatened to wash us both away.

  God, help us, I prayed, though my prayer felt trapped by the clouds above us. Snow was beginning to fall, heavy and thick.

  And then, Mátyás, where are you?

  If ever there was a time for my cousin to find us, it was now.

  I caught the last wisp of mist from Anna’s dream as she woke, and it pulled me outside the dream realm. I didn’t understand how—I scarcely understood the mechanism of dream-walking as it was; I’d have to ask Hadúr. One moment I was inside Anna’s dream; then I was standing in the grey realm, grasping her dream as it faded; then my spirit was standing in the real world, tugged by that wisp of a dream across space.

  Reddish-brown rock walls surrounded me. Before me, the bars of a cell stood open, and an unfamiliar praetherian dragged my sleep-slurred cousin from a tiny alcove. She looked tired and drawn, as she had not seemed in her dream.

  A guard pulled Anna through the twisting cave, following Vasi
lisa and Anna’s uncle Pál. I trailed them, emerging at length beneath a star-strewn sky. And then everything else faded, because Noémi stood before me. Not the girl I’d seen in dreams, but my sister, in the flesh. Like Anna, she looked worn, but whole. I drifted over to her and set my hand against her cheek, though I knew she couldn’t feel it. Noémi.

  Impossible as it seemed, I’d found them. (It would be more ideal if I knew where we were, but that was a minor annoyance I could solve as I found my way back to my body.)

  I followed the cadre of praetheria and watched, appalled, as they slaughtered Austrian soldiers. I could not stop them: I would not abandon Anna and Noémi to raise a useless alarm. (The carnage would be over before any alarm had effect.) And I could not work magic so far from the anchor of my physical body. When I tried to rouse some roosting crows to distract the horned praetherian’s attention from Anna, they merely twitched in their sleep.

  Then the fighting was over, and I breathed a sigh of relief—only to see Anna’s uncle attack one of the remaining praetheria, a golden-eyed man in a neatly tailored suit, incongruous in this place of blood. It took me some time to place him, as I’d seen him just once before: he’d helped Anna kill me in the Binding.

  Then he was dead, and my sister went to pieces.

  Damnation.

  I went immediately to Noémi, tried to brush the tears from her cheek. But of course, insubstantial as I was, I accomplished nothing.

  “Táltos?” The smooth voice jerked me backward. I’d been so focused on Anna and Noémi that I’d not noticed the ghost materialize beside me. Superficially, the spirit resembled the body on the ground, but the eyes gazing at me blazed with light.

  I stuck out my hand, more from habit than any conscious decision. “Eszterházy Mátyás. I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced, though you killed me once.”

  “Hunger.” He did not take my hand, and I let it drop. It had been a pointless gesture anyway.

  I scrambled for something to say. “Dying is the worst part. It gets better after that.”