Blessed Monsters

by Emily A Duncan

  Rashid. He would know not to have followed them, wouldn’t he?

  She couldn’t fool herself. Rashid had followed, for her. She sighed.

  “I don’t see what you want with me.”

  “The same thing that we want with the rest of you mortals.”

  “Why should I comply with any of your wishes? You can say this is our silly mortal fault, but it’s not like you haven’t been manipulating Nadya from the very beginning.”

  “Fair enough,” Bozidarka replied.

  Parijahan frowned, not expecting that response.

  “But this isn’t about Nadezhda. This is about you. This is about offering you the power you have run from for so long.”

  “Offering me what?” Parijahan stood. “No, no, no, thank you, very much, I don’t want anything to do with this. I’ve been running from power my whole life, I’m not about to change my mind now.”

  “If that’s what you truly want … but you could save that boy you’re so worried about.”

  Parijahan hesitated.

  50

  NADEZHDA LAPTEVA

  If there’s one thing Horz would never do, it’s hide away the stars he’s so very proud of.

  —Fragment from the personal journals of Leonid Barentsev

  When she died, Nadya had always thought Marzenya would be waiting for her. But Marzenya was dead and Veceslav was … occupied. Still, she figured one from her pantheon would greet her.

  Honestly, she should have known better.

  Nadya kicked her legs out over the wide cavernous expanse. A few small spiders ran up and past where her hands were resting. She did her best not to flinch.

  “You’ve done all you were meant to, daughter of darkness. Chyrnog’s daughter, Marzenya’s daughter, mortal, but so much more, so much stronger. Are you ready to shed all that is holding you down?”

  Nadya tilted her head back, closing her eyes. She felt a ripple in herself, a stone dropped in the ocean of dark water.

  “I set Chyrnog free,” she murmured.

  “Clever little thing.”

  “I did it so Malachiasz would live, but that didn’t happen, did it?”

  Of course not. The four had fallen and Chyrnog would never be chained again.

  “Now, you only have to set me free,” Nyrokosha said, a gentle prod. “It would be easy; my chains are not bound nearly so tight.”

  Nadya made a soft sound of assent.

  She had known what cutting Chyrnog’s threads from Malachiasz would do. She wondered, though, if anyone would realize. What had Malachiasz said once? Betrayal serves itself. But she hadn’t been serving herself, she’d been thinking of Malachiasz. Of the boy from Tranavia with blood on his hands, who loved art and magic, who was so much more than anyone knew.

  She had been selfish.

  It was strange, at the end of everything, at the threshold of death and oblivion, to feel so calm. Nadezhda Lapteva, the savior of Kalyazin, had set its destruction upon it. It was strange to feel no regret.

  The pieces were finally lining up, the nonsensical riddles, the countless nonanswers. She was a girl whose magic had come from the dark and been threaded with light. It was everything and nothing.

  That crystal jar strung with teeth, found in that place beyond the well of blood, had been her own essence. She who had taken the stars out of the sky—maybe that had been Horz, maybe Nadya had done it herself all along. She held out her hands before her, finally opening her eyes, ignoring Nyrokosha’s cruel whispers.

  One hand pale, her fingernails worn down, her palm worn with callouses. The other stained with long, ugly claws digging from her nail beds. One pale, thin wrist and arm, the other changed. Magic lit in her palms, a simple thing. A drop of water in an ocean. It had been withheld from her because of fear, because those in power—mortal and divine—had feared. What she might do if she realized that the world didn’t turn in the way that they wished it to. What might happen if she learned magic was a road that went in a thousand directions.

  What might happen if she listened to a Tranavian explain why his way of life was so deeply important to him, even if it was very different from her own.

  They had feared.

  It was time for the world to change. She had spurred it on in terrible ways, she knew. Sometimes it took a terrible thing for those in power to realize something was very wrong. The death of a god. The birth of an eldritch power.

  “I could let all this go,” she said.

  “Yes,” Nyrokosha whispered from the depths.

  “I could crack this world into pieces and shape it anew. No more war. No more suffering.”

  Malachiasz, bloodstained in a ravaged village, beseeching her to help him finish this. His hair tangled and his form monstrous, but still the boy she had fallen in love with, the one she so desperately wanted to help. But he had died, hadn’t he? And Serefin with him. And gentle, cunning Parijahan who didn’t deserve to be dragged into their chaos.

  Maybe their lives were worthy sacrifices.

  Maybe that was how it was to be. They were to die here, these four, and change would finally come.

  It was poetic. It was the stuff that her books of martyrs were made of. Necessary sacrifice. A dawning of a new age. One less cruel, less cold, a little less bloody. No blood magic, no more clerics, nothing but vast new avenues of power that still had to be forged and discovered.

  Nadya could take this mantle of godhood and fix so much more that way.

  She didn’t realize that she was making the decision in her heart.

  She didn’t realize—until the legs of a massive spider started to slam out from the depths. Nadya scrambled away from the ledge, something snapping within her.

  What am I doing?

  She didn’t want this.

  She wanted to dig into the dirt and the blood and the chaos and bring something good and beautiful back into the nightmare she had helped create.

  She wanted Malachiasz’s hand cradling the back of her head. Wanted him to lean over her shoulder to scoff at her Codex. To see the intense look on his face when he was curled over his spell book, the look that she now knew meant he was sketching.

  She wanted to spend another afternoon in a library with Serefin, him spending the first hour complaining that every book he picked up was too dry before one finally caught his attention, and his wine, for once, went unattended to.

  She wanted another evening with Parijahan, drinking tea while she braided Nadya’s hair, cajoling Rashid to tell them stories if he insisted on hanging around.

  Quiet moments of humanity with those she loved so dearly. Power wasn’t worth losing that.

  There were bones rattling off the spider’s legs as she hauled herself up the crevice. Nadya backed away. She hadn’t meant to do this. She hadn’t taken the divinity.

  She turned and ran, making her final choice.

  interlude viii

  RASHID KHAJOUTI

  Rashid stood at the entrance to the temple. He waited for the light to fade. He waited longer, still, for someone to come out from the darkness. Anyone, but Parijahan most of all. He didn’t think the others would be offended if they knew.

  But there was nothing but an ungodly silence. A godly silence?

  Then came a trembling in the earth and through the trees of bone he saw great figures rising in the distance. They were out of time.

  He knew this might kill him. But he had followed Parijahan this far, he wasn’t going to let her face this alone, either.

  Inside, the temperature plummeted. Flowers grew up around his feet, filling his footprints as he walked down a darkened hall. The torches had all gone out. It didn’t take long to reach the temple proper. To take in the four altars that held the bodies of his friends.

  His breath caught in his throat. He tried his hardest not to panic but his heart thudded heavily in his chest.

  Parijahan was lying on her side, her hands cradled close to her chest. She wasn’t breathing.

  Tears were immediate. Before
he fully registered what he was seeing. Before he felt how cold Parijahan’s skin was underneath his fingertips.

  “I don’t know how to live in a world without you in it,” he whispered.

  It was excruciating, walking away from her, but he had to check the others. They looked like they were sleeping. Malachiasz curled up protectively, his dark hair splayed out. Serefin on his back, one hand resting on his chest, the signet ring on his little finger a strange kind of irony. Nadya was the most disturbing—it was as if every muscle in her body was tensed.

  All of them cold. Not breathing.

  He had to tell the tsarevna. Tell Kacper and Ostyia. But he was drowning under his own grief, and he couldn’t stand to watch the Tranavians grieve their king.

  He returned to Parijahan. A lifetime ago he had been dragged from his home to work in the household of a Travash, to accept his fate. He hadn’t expected to find the young prasīt. A girl his age, mostly relegated to her rooms to stay out from underfoot—because she most certainly got underfoot. A girl, black hair wild, robes disheveled, who had locked eyes with him, something discerning in her cool gaze, before grinning and running off. Later he’d found out she had run to the keeper of the house to say that she wanted her own personal guard and wouldn’t that nice boy from Yanzin Zadar do well?

  He hadn’t left her side since. For nine years. Nine years making sure no harm befell the prasīt of Travash Siroosi. It hadn’t been about duty, not strictly. But because he loved her. It was an impossible love to describe. He didn’t want her. He didn’t want like that. He only wanted to keep her safe, always. Even when she dragged him into the heart of a country at war and told him she was going to burn down Tranavia in revenge. Very well, he’d said. Even when she’d dragged a haggard Tranavian with blood on his hands into their camp. Even when she’d taken a Kalyazi cleric and shown her the path to a country’s downfall. Very well, he’d said, to it all.

  He didn’t notice the flowers blooming where his tears fell. Or the flowers under his fingertips, at her skin. He only noticed her grow warm beneath his hands. She took a gasping breath.

  “Parj?”

  Parijahan’s eyes opened. Still strange and snakelike. Horns had sprouted from her forehead like a sharp crown. But she let out a pained laugh.

  “Help me up,” she said, eyes rimmed with tears. He pulled her up, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her head against his. Her shoulders shook with sobs. He’d never seen her cry like this.

  “Parj, I thought you were dead.”

  “I was,” she whispered. “I’m so glad you’re alive.”

  “Me too.” He gently pulled away, noticing the flowers. “Hold on, I need to wake the others.”

  “What?” She scanned the room, her face ashen.

  Rashid took the king of Tranavia’s hand first, frowning. He didn’t really know what he had done. He couldn’t—this wasn’t raising the dead, was it? That was too much to consider. Flowers, crimson and pale blue, began to unfurl, before bursting around his hands.

  Serefin immediately coughed, leaning over and retching. Rashid jumped back. Serefin rolled off the altar, landing in a heap on the ground, his cloud of moths frenzied around his head.

  “Blood and bone,” he said. “I’m sick of this dying business. Never again.”

  “I don’t think you’re immortal, alas,” Rashid said.

  Serefin let out a shaky laugh. “That prospect sounds even worse.” He leaned back against the altar, clutching his chest. Parijahan sat next to Serefin, taking his hand and whispering something Rashid couldn’t hear.

  Rashid moved on. He had barely brushed his fingertips across Nadya’s cheek when she awoke, gasping, her hand snapping out and clutching his wrist so hard he thought his bones would crack. Her eyes were strangely cloudy, gold and crimson and terrifying. She took in a hitching breath, and fell back, her body relaxing.

  “Nadya?” he whispered.

  Straightaway she made to get off her altar, and Rashid rushed to help her. She crawled over to Serefin and Parijahan, curling between them, pressing her face to Serefin’s shoulder. Rashid could hear her sobs.

  He had saved Malachiasz for last. There was so much blood dried on the front of his tunic and his lips, and it was too much to hope that he would survive whatever this was. Rashid took Malachiasz’s hands in his.

  He cared so much for this terrible boy. It was hard not to be charmed by his wide grins and quiet, careful kindness, even when it was so frequently couched in darkness.

  Flowers, black and white and the deepest purple, bloomed at his fingers as he touched Malachiasz’s pale, cold skin. It took longer—there was a terrifying moment where Rashid thought Malachiasz was truly gone.

  He took in a rasping gulp of air, instantly shielding his head with his arms.

  “Malachiasz, it’s all right,” Rashid said, taking his wrists and tugging his hands down.

  He looked horrible. There was too much monstrosity caught inside him now. He moved to stand but his legs were too weak, and he stumbled into Rashid’s arms.

  “You’re alive,” Rashid said. “Are you…?”

  Malachiasz nodded against Rashid’s shoulder. Rashid clutched at him a little tighter.

  “N-Nadya—”

  “She’s alive.” He felt Malachiasz relax against him.

  It took a few more seconds before Malachiasz was steady. He took a step back, something hard to decipher in his eyes. He scanned the room, a slight frown on his face, before his gaze landed on Serefin, Nadya, and Parijahan. A strangled sound caught in his throat. He lurched over to them.

  Nadya lifted her head from Serefin’s shoulder. “Malachiasz,” she whispered, her voice thick with tears. She scrambled up and threw herself against him.

  Rashid flopped down onto the ground next to Parijahan. She leaned her head against his shoulder, taking his hand.

  They would all be dead if I wasn’t here.

  “You’re impossible, my dear,” Parijahan whispered.

  It was an uncomfortable thought.

  51

  NADEZHDA LAPTEVA

  There are ties, connections, Alena and Chyrnog and Marzenya and Milyena and Nyrokosha. I cannot tell what they mean. I cannot decipher why clerics of Marzenya are accounted as speaking to Nyrokosha. Clerics of Milyena speaking to Chyrnog. As if there were a time when clerics could speak to other gods than their patrons. The idea is baffling.

  —Passage from the personal journals of Innokentiy Tamarkin

  Nadya wanted to press her face to Malachiasz’s chest and disappear. She wanted to pretend, only for a moment, that everything was all right. He was warm and himself.

  But Chyrnog had been set free.

  And Nyrokosha as well.

  Nadya leaned back, Malachiasz reluctantly letting her go. Gods, he looked horrifying. All eyes and teeth and mouths. This was how it was for him, forever. The chaos, the horror. She leaned up and pressed a fast kiss against his lips.

  Malachiasz stepped away and hauled Serefin to his feet. They eyed each other for a long, tense moment. They were so similar in profile. Serefin’s hair had fallen out of its tie and was long and loose at his shoulders, hanging in his face.

  Parijahan wrapped her arms around Nadya’s waist, and she nearly sobbed.

  “What do we do?” she asked, nestling her chin against Nadya’s shoulder.

  “I … uh…” She closed her eyes, but not before she saw Serefin give Malachiasz a hug, quick, like it would burn him if he did it, but he needed to anyway.

  Brothers.

  “I set Chyrnog free,” she said, rapid and rushed. “I had to or Malachiasz would have died.” She kept her eyes closed. “And I—I didn’t mean to, I swear, but I set another free as well. Nyrokosha. She wanted me to become a god and I thought—I almost—”

  “Nadya, shh.” Malachiasz’s hands went to her shoulders. “Did you choose it? This divinity you’re owed? Eldritch beast that you are?”

  She tipped her face up, laughing. It wasn’t f
unny. At all. It was horrifying, wasn’t it? Maybe not. Eldritch beast that she was. “I didn’t. I almost did. Think of all I could do no longer tethered to the ground.”

  Malachiasz kissed her, gentle and quick, a promise, of what she wasn’t entirely sure.

  Serefin blinked rapidly at them, and whispered. “Kacper.” And bolted from the temple, Rashid and Parijahan following swiftly behind.

  Malachiasz waited for Nadya. He glanced up as the ground trembled, dust raining down as the world shifted.

  “Lie to me,” she whispered. “Do what you do best.”

  His expression was difficult to read. “We’re going to live,” he said finally, his voice hoarse. “We’re going to live and put a stop to this and convince our damned countries to end this war. I’m going to leave the Vultures and take you somewhere far away and you can be just Nadezhda, the nightmare girl who stole my heart. We’re going to be happy, finally.”

  Tears slipped down her cheeks. Beautiful, wonderful lies.

  He gathered her in his arms, she could feel the tension in him—they were wasting time they did not have. He kissed the top of her head.

  “I love you,” he murmured, kissing her forehead. “Not a lie. You are the only good thing that has ever happened to me.” He kissed the bridge of her nose. “Not a lie then, not a lie now.”

  “I love you, too,” she said. An iron weight on her chest lifted at finally saying it. “And you are absolutely lying to me about leaving the Vultures.”

  He laughed and took her hand, gaze roving over her body in a way that made her feel far too seen.

  “A monster born, not made,” he murmured.

  She shivered.

  “Can I see you? As you really are?”

  She flinched. “I don’t—”

  “Not if you don’t want to. I suppose we don’t have time for that.”

  But she did want to. She didn’t know what it would be like, feel like, but if anyone was to see her that way, she wanted it to be him first.

  She thought back to that ripple while talking to Nyrokosha and let herself sink into it. Her vision shifted strangely, her peripheral vision becoming significantly more pronounced. Malachiasz’s breath left him in a soft rush.