Malachiasz was gone in the morning. Żaneta, too.
It was difficult not to despair.
Serefin looked to Katya for what they should do. Katya looked to Nadya.
“We get there first,” Nadya finally said. If Chyrnog was taking Malachiasz to the same place, they had to get there before Chyrnog could consume the vestiges of Malachiasz’s soul.
Katya estimated they had two more days of travel. It went faster while they followed the army’s path, but soon they veered farther south and were back to tramping through piles of snow.
They set up camp and it felt like they were all waiting for the end. Nadya sat next to Rashid by the fire they should not have lit, but had to for survival, and leaned against him.
“I hope he’s all right,” she whispered, knowing he wasn’t.
“What happens if he gets there first?” Rashid asked.
Nadya shook her head but looked up at Serefin where he stood before them. He shrugged helplessly.
“We have to hope,” she said. “That’s all we have.”
Rashid scratched at his arms, as if his markings were perpetually itchy. He’d discovered that if he thought really hard, he could make the snow melt away, green growth shooting up, but the cold quickly choked it down. He toyed with it as they sat.
Parijahan came over, sitting on Nadya’s other side. She knew Parijahan wanted to know if she had a plan. They all hoped she had a plan. She did not.
She had the few things she was confident about. She knew there was no reasoning with the old gods—they were more power than anything else—and that her knowledge about power structures and hierarchies would do her well because that was what it came down to, ultimately. Her gods weren’t on the same rung of the ladder.
But if she was molded from the old gods, did that make her one, too?
“It’s not that simple.”
She flinched at the unexpected voice. Rashid cast her a glance before getting up to help Ostyia with dinner. Ostyia was not great with food.
But the voice had been so unexpected and so dearly wanted.
Veceslav.
In the pantheon there had only been a few gods who spoke to her as regularly as Marzenya, and the one she was most fond of was Veceslav. Of war and peace and iron. He was kind—as much as a god could be, she realized now. His silence had wounded her the most; that his silence had continued after the gods had started to speak again had been equally hard.
“Hello, child.” The god’s voice sounded warm and Nadya knew to be wary. Marzenya had taught her caution.
I could ask you a thousand questions. I could ask why you left me. She got up, gently touching Parijahan’s shoulder.
“I’m going to take a walk,” she whispered, holding up her prayer beads by way of explanation.
Parijahan nodded. “Stay close.”
I want to understand, Veceslav. I feel as if I have pieces but still so much is being hidden from me.
“There was fear, when Marzenya claimed you. We had stopped claiming mortals because of one who had fallen to Chyrnog before you.”
Nadya frowned. Who?
“Oh, you’ve heard of Celestyna Privalova. They were never stricken from record.”
Fragmented passages in old books didn’t paint a clear picture.
Nadya crunched through the snow. They were in a forest, less dense than the ones they had trekked through to Bolagvoy, but darkness still held the air around her. The trees were oppressive even if they weren’t tucked so close together.
Celestyna was said to be the reason Kalyazin was losing the war. It had been evenly matched—neither side gaining a true advantage—until the day Celestyna had betrayed General Khartashov to a Tranavian blood mage, for a Tranavian blood mage. The army had suffered devastating defeats. The clerics had died. Then there was only Nadya.
But she was a cleric?
“She was mine.”
“Oh,” Nadya breathed. She had known Veceslav had a cleric that he never spoke of. But that couldn’t have been that long ago. “Was Chyrnog awake?”
“He has always been able to whisper from a place past oblivion. Able to twist and tug those who are weak to him into doing as he desires.”
You think you’re seeing it happen again.
“Marzenya was convinced you could be controlled. She thought that if she held her grip tight enough, you would never know. If she covered your ears, you would never hear their songs. If she shielded your eyes, you would never see how this world turns. You would never feel your own magic and realize that you could act apart from her.”
Nadya frowned. That’s why you stopped talking to me.
“I feared another tragedy,” he said.
It was … strange. To be talking like this to a god once more. To feel like one knew her, even cared, though she knew not to go that far. Not to ascribe human emotions to these beings who were not human.
But who might have been, once.
Veceslav, why are you talking to me?
“I would like to make things clear.”
Sounds like a job for Vaclav.
“If you’d like. He is willing as well.”
Nadya blinked. What?
“This is … not a universally held opinion. Most of us are willing to extend our voices to you once more to try to prolong the inevitable. We are all in danger.”
You think I’ll fall to the old gods.
“You already have. It’s simply a matter of how it will manifest.”
Nadya winced. Nice to know they believed in her.
And so it’s self-preservation that brings you back.
“Do you wish to hear our voices, truly?”
She closed her eyes. Yes and yes and no.
And this wasn’t about them anymore. She was making her own decisions to save the world, to save everything, to save a Tranavian king who drank too much and had fallen hard for his lieutenant, to save an Akolan girl who was calculating and far more manipulative than she ever let on but was so very kind, to save an Akolan boy who was gentle and good and so ready and willing to die saving his friends. She wanted to save the dry Tranavian girl who was terrifyingly loyal.
She wanted to save a monster. A monster with sharp claws and teeth and cold eyes. She wanted to save a boy with careful hands and a soft voice and gentle smile.
There was no saving him.
“You were taken by the dark. We wait to see if you will be strong enough to fight it. But I am here to tell you that I want to help.”
She tugged on her prayer beads, her fingers finding Marzenya’s. A crack had run through it, right over the symbol of the open-mouthed skull. She pressed the pad of her thumb against the splinter, thinking. Considering how everything she had known about the world had shifted. Wondering how a boy who hated the gods so much yet was possessed by one could be saved. Thinking about how, even if the gods spoke to her now, nothing would ever be as it once was.
What will this ask of me?
“Everything.”
* * *
There was no marking on the map. Pelageya had called it Stravhkinzi’k Volushni. It was an archaic name, old and foreign to the tongue. There would be no trite Tranavian translations to paint a better picture of what they might see.
What would a graveyard of gods be?
Nadya thought of the clearing. The circle of statues. That feeling, impossible to shake. The bad luck that had followed her and Malachiasz ever since.
This was worse.
Without warning, Serefin fell from his horse, choking. He waved Kacper off and hunched over his knees. When he straightened, his eye had collected more stars. A burst of moths clouded around his head. He rested a hand on Kacper’s chest for balance, not looking at him. Whatever Serefin was, he was sensitive to the divine. He swayed on his feet before leaning over and spitting out blood.
“Not alarming in the least,” Katya said, voice dull.
Nadya dismounted, tossing her horse’s reins to the tsarevna. “We go on foot from here.” Nadya walk
ed over to Serefin and, with a glance at Kacper, wrapped an arm around his waist.
“How have you not been bowled over yet?” Serefin asked blearily.
“I was made for this. You had it forced upon you.”
One foot in front of the other. Ahead, Nadya could see the steep drop off of a ravine. Making their way across the distance seemed to take the entire day. When they reached the edge, a boneyard met their gaze.
It scattered for miles in every direction. Bleached white from a millennia of sunlight. Vast and huge, bigger than any city she had ever seen. A rib cage that stretched for miles. A skull that appeared capable of blocking out the sun.
Kacper frowned. “It’s just another forest.”
Serefin blinked at him.
Nadya ducked out from underneath Serefin’s arm. He wavered slightly. “Do you want to see it?” she asked Kacper.
He hesitated.
Already something was beginning to pick at Nadya’s edges. She could hear singing, a low, haunting, infuriating melody. Mad and hollow and repetitive.
She waved at her head as if batting away a fly.
“I want to know,” Kacper said.
“Tell me when it becomes too much,” she said. She didn’t want to break him. Bodies were strewn among the bones, and she couldn’t tell if she was seeing reality, the past, or another realm entirely.
She pressed her fingertips to Kacper’s forehead, sharing her sight. The boy stiffened, hand clutching at her elbow. He shivered, jarred and unsteady. He had seen enough. She lowered her hands.
His expression was one of sheer horror, his dark skin tinged a sickly gray. “Oh,” he whispered, casting a desperate glance Serefin’s way. “He sees that?”
“I think he always sees divine influence now. That eye is … something else.”
“Do you see someone on the other side of the ravine?” Serefin spoke up suddenly, making them jump. Ostyia came up beside them but did not ask to share in what Kacper had seen.
The other side of the ravine was too far away. She cast Serefin an uncertain glance. He kept rapidly blinking his one eye and messing with his eye patch.
“No,” Ostyia murmured, taking his hand. “It’s gone, Serefin.”
“There’s—Oh,” Serefin whispered. He closed his eye. “It’s that eye. He’s over there. There’s an army on the other side of the ravine. Two, I think.”
No.
“I can’t tell what he’s doing. I…” he trailed off.
Nadya didn’t understand.
“It’s my eye.” Serefin answered the question she had not asked. “He ended up with it. I don’t really know how. We left him on that divine mountain, and it twisted him up. There was so much blood, and it doesn’t matter what you did, Nadya, blood is power. Blood has always been power.”
Kacper swore softly and grabbed Serefin’s hand. “Hey, come here.” He tugged Serefin closer, sliding his hand up the back of Serefin’s neck, pulling him down so his face buried against his shoulder. “Serefin, stay with me.”
Nadya’s stomach tightened. She’d never be able to touch Malachiasz like that again.
Serefin twitched. “He’s not Malachiasz, Nadya. Hitting him real hard isn’t going to fix this.”
46
SEREFIN MELESKI
They struck down Milyena and cast out Sofka. Innokentiy lost the voice of his god and Lev lost his voice. Who else would fall from the graces of the gods? Who else would be cast aside for a single misstep?
—The Letters of Włodzimierz
Serefin’s stomach roiled. The air here was heavy and suffocating. He felt bad Kacper had been forced to see the boneyard. He felt worse that they needed to enter the boneyard.
“Why?” Nadya asked, horrified.
“No questions.” Malachiasz—Chyrnog—was going to strike and they couldn’t fight an army. Serefin knew how to look at a battlefield and immediately understand what strategy would get the highest number of his soldiers out alive. Sacrifices would be made, but sacrifices were necessary in war.
Was this war? He supposed it was.
The climb down was arduous, but they managed it. Nadya kept close to Serefin’s side, aware he saw things she could not. But her time would come. The graveyard was shifting for her, rumbling at her presence. A new age was dawning, one that had been waiting for Nadya, the girl with darkness in her veins.
“Is he gone?” she asked softly.
They stood sheltered from the snow by what Serefin thought was a rib bone. It was so large to have lost its articulation completely. He eyed it before looking down at her.
“Yes.”
Agony cracked across her expression.
“Maybe he’s in there, buried deep, but…” Serefin shook his head. It was disturbing how Malachiasz still looked like Malachiasz. Maybe Chyrnog and he were too alike for it to have changed him.
“But not likely,” Nadya said. “The inevitable come to pass.”
Perhaps. Perhaps they were doomed to die in this place. Perhaps Pelageya had been coordinating their downfall since the beginning. Serefin didn’t believe that, not truly, but it was impossible to know.
“We have to find his soul,” she said.
“How are we supposed to do that without him? How do we know he doesn’t already have it? Or the god destroyed it?”
Nadya’s fist clenched. “Because that would mean we’ve failed.”
Żaneta stumbled into their group. That wasn’t ideal—if she could find them, so could the rest.
“I’m sorry,” she said, trembling. “I don’t know what happened. He was fine and then he was … not. And now the Tranavians are here and the Kalyazi army has mobilized and it’s going to be a massacre.”
She was bleeding from a messy head wound, and Serefin couldn’t tell if it was benign or serious. He almost joked that she must not have hit Malachiasz hard enough, instead motioning for someone to help her. Rashid rushed over.
“Why are they here?” Ostyia asked. But she knew, same as him.
The war had to end sometime. He just hadn’t expected the last stand to come like this.
Serefin exchanged a glance with Nadya. He was rather hoping she would know what to do next. Bile churned in his stomach and the whispers settling in the back of his mind reminded him terrifyingly of his time in Tzanelivki.
You wanted this, he said, accusatorily, to Velyos.
“I wanted my freedom. Chyrnog came with you wanting that Vulture dead.”
Well, that failed, didn’t it?
“Things don’t always work out as planned.”
But you’ll suffer, too, if he truly breaks free from Malachiasz, won’t you?
A long pause.
“You play in the realm of the gods, now. Go find your brother’s soul.”
Something landed at Serefin’s feet. An arrow. He stepped back behind the rib bone.
“Don’t you dare say we need to—” Kacper started.
“We need to split up,” Serefin said.
Kacper sighed.
Nadya looked nervous. The longer they stood there, the more she changed. That strange, shivery halo flickered around her, fractured and tainted. It had been mostly whole, a few fine cracks, when Serefin first saw it, but jagged knives had since punched through. Her left hand had sharpened claws curling outward. Her white-blond hair was in a single thick braid over her shoulder and when she spoke her teeth were strange and wrong. Serefin couldn’t shake the feeling that she would alter more the longer they were here. That he might, too.
“We’re not splitting up,” Katya said. “It’d be the forest all over again.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, dear, we’re right back in the thick of the divine nonsense that happened in the forest,” Serefin snapped.
A volley of arrows landed at their feet. They couldn’t stand here anymore. It was clear no one was actively trying to kill them, but a stray arrow could do the job just the same.
“Each minute we stand here arguing, Chyrnog gets closer to Malachiasz
’s soul,” Nadya said softly. Her voice was weirdly tonal, like more than one person was speaking. When she looked up at Serefin, her dark eyes were shot with gold. He flinched. “He’s your brother, and you’re the one who can see this place as it is. When I try, I…” She faltered, falling quiet. “It’s better if you lead on.”
Serefin wanted to run. It was the comfortable choice. He loved Malachiasz, even after everything. He could admit finally that he loved his brother, but they were also racing headlong into disaster. This was doomed.
But he was no longer the boy who ran. He had one godstouched eye, a cloud of moths that followed his every step, and the voice of a god he didn’t particularly want rattling in his head. He wasn’t the same person who had staggered home from the front. Serefin was a king. Beaten and battered by magic, but a king, nonetheless.
He had helped start this nightmare; he had to help stop it, somehow.
And it would be better if they split up.
“If this place wanted us separated, it would do that itself,” Anna pointed out. The priestess had been quiet, and her voice came out sharp and unexpected.
She was right. It wasn’t the same here as the forest. If he turned away, everyone else wouldn’t disappear.
But this was a graveyard of the gods. Much worse could be lurking here, hiding among the pale white shards. The bones were too large to consider, so vast that sometimes they didn’t even register as bones, but as strange pale trees with no branches, smooth and eerie.
Nadya slipped her hand into his, jarring him. Her hands were freezing.
“We need to stay together,” she said quietly. “At the very least, us and Parj.”
Parijahan glanced over at her name. Right. The four. Pelageya’s strange omen. They couldn’t do much without Malachiasz.
One step at a time, he thought.
Where would Pelageya hide a soul? He took out the disc of metal tied to Malachiasz. The Kalyazi spellwork scrolled around the edges was structured in a way that was familiar, like blood magic. A lifetime ago he had found those spell books scrawled with Kalyazi prayers and wondered if the Kalyazi weren’t as devout as he had believed, and now he had more evidence of that very fact.
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