Blessed Monsters

by Emily A Duncan

  Nadya’s vision tunneled and she wavered on her feet, dizzy. She’d known, but she’d convinced herself it wasn’t true.

  “You weren’t supposed to tell her that!” Serefin complained.

  Milomir scowled. Katya’s fist was clenched so hard her knuckles were white.

  “I thought you killed him,” she ground out through her teeth.

  “I did.”

  One eyebrow arched.

  Serefin almost seemed to smile. “He’s resilient. Runs in the family.”

  It struck Nadya very suddenly, what had happened, what she had been missing. She closed her eyes. The conversation continued on around her. When she opened them, Serefin was watching.

  “Chyrnog,” she said softly.

  Katya let out a disbelieving huff. “That’s impossible.”

  Serefin frowned and pointed at the slash of scar tissue around his neck.

  Katya conceded the point with a sigh. They couldn’t really act like the gods weren’t willing to claim Tranavians.

  “We need to figure out what to do with them,” Milomir said quietly to Katya.

  “My father isn’t in the city, so we have some time.”

  Serefin sighed, looking very put out. He glanced at Nadya after Katya pulled Milomir away to discuss the other prisoner.

  “I was going to tell you,” he said softly.

  “I knew,” she replied. “I thought I was imagining it but … I knew.”

  “You sound unsure.”

  “I am unsure.”

  He nodded. “Explains your greeting, though. I was certain you were going to stab me.”

  “Was … how is…” No, she couldn’t do this. There had to be an end, it had to be over.

  Serefin eyed her, clearly debating his answer. “He’s not well, but he’s alive.”

  That had to be enough. She couldn’t ask for more.

  “How do you feel about it?” she asked.

  Serefin looked thoughtful. Something about him had changed. She saw a king standing before her, the weariness of lifetimes on his shoulders. A conscious choice had been made to stop running.

  “I’m relieved,” he said simply. “Chyrnog was in control when it happened, and the regret would have killed me.”

  She tilted her head, curious. His gaze strayed to Katya and his expression shifted.

  “We can talk later, best not discuss him around the tsarevna. I didn’t want her to know he was alive but hopefully her attention can be diverted. We have enough to worry about as it is.”

  Nadya agreed. She met Anna’s gaze from where she stood across the courtyard looking dazed. Nadya let out a breath and turned to Serefin. One of his scars tugged his lips into a permanent sneer. It fit the picture she’d had of the bloodthirsty prince. It didn’t fit the boy she actually knew.

  “You should be upset with me,” she said.

  His hand strayed to his empty waist again. “I should, yes.”

  “Are you?”

  “Are you asking if I’m waiting to put a blade in your heart?”

  “More or less.”

  Serefin shrugged. “I should.”

  “You should.”

  “Was that your intent all along? To destroy Tranavia like this?”

  “No.” She had meant to strike a blow, yes. If she had known what Marzenya was planning, would she have done it, still? She liked to think she wouldn’t have, if only because she knew the true ramifications of taking away blood magic. Their magic used in everyday life wasn’t harming anyone, and without it, they might not survive. It was no longer as simple as ending a war.

  “Why should I believe you, when you’ve lied to me for as long as you have?”

  “Why should I believe that you didn’t intend to kill your brother?”

  Serefin grinned. “Now there’s a conundrum.”

  “I don’t think we can trade atrocities and call it even,” Nadya said dubiously.

  “No? Well, of course I’m mad at you. And now you have to work with me to stop this before we don’t have countries left to bicker with each other. Your punishment is dealing with me.”

  Truly, that would be a trial. Nadya nodded slowly. “Another thing.”

  Serefin lifted an eyebrow.

  Nadya glanced over her shoulder. Anna was staring at Serefin, her face chalky and pale. Serefin followed Nadya’s gaze, his expression faltering. She didn’t expect him to recognize Anna from the day he attacked the monastery. She couldn’t remember the faces she had struck down in battle, as much as they probably deserved it.

  “I grew up with her,” she said, her voice soft. “She was there, that day, she was with me in the tunnels.”

  “Ah,” Serefin said tonelessly.

  Nadya did not expect Serefin to step past her and approach Anna. The priestess froze, eyes widening as she readied to bolt.

  She followed Serefin, watching as he inclined his head to Anna, a bow no king should make, and said something very soft that she couldn’t quite catch.

  Anna’s expression cleared some. “That doesn’t fix anything,” she snapped.

  “No,” Serefin said. “There’s no fixing anything that has happened on the battlefield. All we have is what we choose moving forward, and I am weary of war.”

  Katya turned from where she was talking with Milomir, looking Serefin over appraisingly.

  “Nothing I say will bring back the lives I’ve taken,” Serefin continued. “But I was dragged across this entire country by your cleric and your tsarevna and … whatever he is,” he said, waving at Milomir, who made an affronted noise, “and all I saw was a country as tired and broken as my own. As seeded with monsters, as ravaged. You don’t have to forgive me, I don’t expect that, but I wanted to extend all I have to give at this point.”

  Nadya exchanged a glance with Katya, whose eyebrows were raised. She was clearly thinking the same thing. When had the drunkard princeling decided to become a king? Maybe when he realized, like the rest of them, that they were fighting a war that none of them believed in anymore.

  Nadya had spent so long fighting for a cause that had given her nothing in the end. The choice she made on the mountaintop had been the wrong one, and she could only hope it could turn things toward some kind of healing in the future.

  But that likely wasn’t meant to be.

  It was early afternoon, yet the sky had begun to grow viciously dark around them. Nadya frowned. Serefin turned, meeting Kacper’s gaze. He looked just as bewildered.

  “Serefin?” Nadya said idly as dark acrid clouds roiled above them, a slow build until it became clear they were going to blot out the sky.

  “Hm?”

  “What did you bring with you?”

  “Well, that’s the thing. I don’t know anymore,” he replied. He took a metal disc out, turning it in his fingers. “Huh, not him, though he’s not as far away as I expected. This is something else.” Milomir made a strangled sound and Serefin held the disc close to his chest.

  Nadya tried to pretend she didn’t know who he was talking about.

  Katya swore loudly. “Vashny Koroshvik, I hate you.”

  Serefin grinned at her. “I wish this was my fault!” He dropped his pack and pulled his spell book out, holding out his other hand to Nadya.

  She frowned dubiously but handed him a voryen, ignoring Katya’s protests. Serefin sliced the back of his forearm and bled onto his open spell book.

  Nothing happened.

  “In case you were concerned,” he said.

  Kacper rolled his eyes.

  Serefin turned to the dark-haired boy. “Is this you?”

  “Your brother took my ring,” he snapped, but the way he watched the sky gave Nadya pause.

  “Oh, so he did. Can you survive another claw to the chest without it?”

  The boy’s hand ghosted over his chest, his face paling.

  “Then, Rusya—”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “—I suggest you help us however you can.”

  Thund
er cracked ominously and with it something pierced directly down Nadya’s spine.

  “Ah, damn,” she said tonelessly. “Serefin, if we’re friends now, could you do me a favor?”

  “Depends on the favor,” Serefin replied. “Don’t know if we’re friends like that.”

  “Fair. Well, I’m about to pass out. Don’t let me break my head on the cobblestones.”

  “Oh, I can manage that.”

  31

  MALACHIASZ CZECHOWICZ

  So close, so close. All it would take is a few more bites, a few steps closer to ascension, I can feel it, I can taste it.

  —Fragment of a journal entry from an anonymous worshipper of Chyrnog

  “You think it will be as easy as that?”

  Malachiasz faltered, tripping and landing hard in the dirt. He hadn’t been walking long; he needed to be careful this far into Kalyazin.

  He spat out a mouthful of dirt and dragged himself up, smiling through the grit. Chyrnog was anxious because Malachiasz had something. It was impossible, too big too much too hard to put the pieces back together, but he had something. The four, the book, what he would need to bind Chyrnog back into the earth.

  It was dark. It had to be, he couldn’t stand the light. Destroy the sun and the pain will end. The thought was sly and insidious and very much his. Or not? He and Chyrnog would be the same, one day. Shape the world instead of changing for it. How many times had this world beaten him into an image that fit its shape better? Why should he submit again when this was his chance to finally take everything he had been working toward for himself? Why save a world that deserved to burn? Or, in this case, fade painfully into cold dark nothingness.

  He was at the edges of a forest, a frozen river at his side. His breath ghosted out before him in the freezing air, his fingers stiff beneath thin gloves. His hunger had him in an iron grip, tugging in a direction he did not wish to go.

  “You think I can do nothing without you? Boy, do not overestimate your importance. I am not the god you ended. Do not think I have not already started what will cause your downfall if you fight.”

  Anything can be killed, Malachiasz returned. I killed death.

  “Marzenya wished to have what I have.”

  Panic fluttered in Malachiasz’s chest.

  “How long can you ignore your hunger, child? How long can you pretend it’s not eating you from the inside out?”

  Malachiasz swallowed, mouth flooding with saliva. No. Not this again.

  “You make it so easy. Your fighting is a game. You yearn to know what would happen if you kept going, pushed farther, let go.”

  No.

  “You lie so easily. A lie all the same.”

  Malachiasz coughed, choking on blood. He spat. Wiped it from his eyes and nose. There was nothing he could do as his control slipped away and chaos took over.

  He wasn’t always conscious when this happened. Usually he hid until it was over and then investigated the damage he had wrought. This time was different. Chyrnog wanted him to bear witness, to see what he was, what he would do underneath the god’s sway.

  He couldn’t close his eyes against it. He couldn’t stop it.

  There was a village nearby, someone awakened. Not a soldier, not a cultist, not someone who had chosen this life of horrors. Someone who had simply woken up at the end of the world and discovered something had changed. Someone who had never touched magic, and only ever heard the fables of saints.

  Once upon a time, Svoyatovi Igor slew a dragon with three heads and stole its scales to make armor that could not be broken by spear or sword.

  Delizvik dela Svoyatova Kataryn threaded the stars through her hair and danced in the woods and kissed a god.

  Delizvik dela.

  Once upon a time, magic was a thing nestled under the roots of trees and in the sky and it could be taken so easily as whispering a prayer.

  How did he know this?

  He shouldn’t know this.

  Nadya leaning her head against his shoulder and reading fanciful stories of the saints aloud to keep the darkness of the forest at bay. Her voice gentle and rhythmic, the ice in it melted in the warmth of the fire. Somehow, the stories had remained.

  Once upon a time, there was a boy who had helped break magic free from its prison. But with it, entropy had escaped. And one would devour the other until only darkness was left.

  The end.

  That was why the Kalyazi had hidden their magic away, kept it sacred, safe. Worried so deeply when their neighbors pressed too far. Let worry turn fear to hatred to war. They knew what could happen. Would Tranavia have pressed so far without the war? He didn’t know. But Malachiasz had seen the way the war dictated the use of magic. In the darkness of the Salt Mines. In the salt poured down his throat, the iron in his bones, the blood, the blood, the blood.

  It was too late to stop.

  And here, there was a woman, alone. She lived apart from her village. There had always been whispers of witchcraft, but nothing that required an inquisition. Malachiasz tried to stop himself, so desperately, but he had no control, he had nothing.

  “You fight as if you care,” Chyrnog noted. “You fight as if you haven’t slaughtered thousands of innocents.”

  Malachiasz couldn’t argue. He knew what he had done. But that was different, this was different.

  No, it wasn’t.

  But he didn’t have a choice and he couldn’t look away. As much as he wanted quiet oblivion and to forget the promise of her blood in his mouth, the screams and the thrill of power, in the end what got him was the singing. It was constant and needling, burrowing deep into his bones until he wanted to scratch off his skin to dig it out. And so, he gave in.

  There was something in their blood that thrummed against Malachiasz’s skin and he wanted more, so much more than would ever sate him. What could he do if he let go? Where would this end?

  In darkness at the end of everything. He knew those answers.

  How long would Chyrnog only set him on random innocents? How long until he was set on …

  Serefin, godstouched and powerful. How long until Chyrnog decided he wanted that strange power of stars and moths and forests that Serefin quietly maintained? Serefin had fought the god off in a way Malachiasz could not. How long until Chyrnog wanted revenge?

  At least Nadya was gone. That was one particular horror he would never have to face.

  He still couldn’t wake up. He couldn’t come back. He sat in a pool of blood on the dirt floor of the woman’s tiny hut and he listened to the voices in the distance as the village was awoken by the sound of her screaming.

  SEREFIN MELESKI

  Serefin caught Nadya as she fell. She was too light, like her bones were made of air. He let out a breath, casting another glance up at the darkening sky.

  “Well, tsarevna?” he asked.

  Katya’s face was pale. “I—I know this feeling.”

  Serefin did, too. He spat a mouthful of blood over his shoulder. It was like the air was pressurized. There was so much magic in the air, he could taste it.

  “They wouldn’t dare,” she whispered.

  Serefin adjusted Nadya in his arms. Her eyes fluttered wildly underneath thin lids. Suddenly her whole body stiffened.

  “Shit,” Serefin said, dropping to one knee and gently resting Nadya on the stones of the courtyard. Kacper was fast at his side.

  “This is not unlike what happened with you,” Kacper said.

  “Yes, but Nadya’s supposed to be able to handle all this divine nonsense,” Serefin replied.

  The Kalyazi girl knelt down by Nadya, looking distraught. Parijahan whispered something to Katya before taking off out of the courtyard.

  “Call Eugeni,” Katya barked to Milomir. “I have no idea how many soldiers we have in the city, but I want them ready. Is Danulka around, or any of my order? I need them, all of them.”

  Serefin rested Nadya’s head in his lap so she wouldn’t hurt herself.

  “Serefin?” Katya snap
ped.

  “I’m busy,” he replied. Katya wrenched his head to the side and crouched next to him.

  “Can I trust you?”

  He stared at her for a heartbeat before looking to the sky. “Katya, darling, I’m not going to use your distraction by our impending demise as a chance to take over your capital, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m asking. Did you order this?”

  “I didn’t. I don’t think he did either, but I—I don’t know.”

  “You trust him that much?”

  Serefin hesitated. He shouldn’t trust him at all. But he genuinely believed this was not Malachiasz. “I do.”

  Katya glanced at Nadya, her face paling. “What is she?”

  The strange stain on Nadya’s hand had spread, swirling across her collarbone and up the side of her face. An eye opened at her forehead, then her eyes popped open, milky white and unseeing. Her spine arched as her body convulsed.

  “I have no idea,” he murmured. “But she’s the best chance we have.”

  Her and Malachiasz, he added silently.

  Katya hesitated for another moment before she ran off.

  Serefin exchanged a glance with Kacper. Once, this would have been the opportunity of a lifetime. The Kalyazi had left the three most powerful Tranavians in the courtyard of their palace, unguarded.

  But they no longer had magic, and all Serefin wanted to do was keep Nadya safe and survive the disaster about to strike.

  “It’s the Vultures, isn’t it?” Ostyia asked, sounding uncertain.

  Serefin grimaced, nodding.

  “But…” Ostyia trailed off.

  “Malachiasz said he could get control back, but he had to be in Tranavia to do it,” Kacper said, voice low. “And he’s not here. That means this is about something else.”

  Serefin looked over at him. “Ruminski.” He hesitated. Ruslan was still staring at the sky, rapturous. Serefin jerked his chin toward him.

  Kacper scowled.

  Nadya’s skin was hot to the touch. The moths around Serefin fluttered in a panicked frenzy, feeding off his anxiety. He hated feeling useless.

  “Why?” Ostyia asked.

  Serefin closed his eye. “Take one throne, then the other. Also, who’s to say they don’t know where I am? Two birds. One stone.”