I hear whispers in the night. I thought it my dreams, nothing more, but they’ve grown so insistent and the things they say … is there truth to them? Is there truth to what Odeta has said? Are we fighting for a lie?
—Fragment from the personal journals of Celestyna Privalova
When Serefin returned, his skin was so gray it was almost green. He wordlessly sat back down. Pelageya had spent Serefin’s absence muttering nonsense to herself and glaring at Malachiasz as if she would kill him on the spot if able. It was a rather unnerving shift in atmosphere.
“Oh,” Serefin said. “It’s gone.”
Malachiasz rubbed at his palm. “They do that. It’ll be back. There’s no real pattern to it.”
Serefin looked like he was going to throw up again.
“Get out, both of you,” Pelageya said. “I need to think. To plan. Don’t give me that,” she snapped at Serefin. “If I need you, I’ll find you. You have bigger problems to worry about. I’m not the only one who knows what has woken up, and that witchling outside has some rather unpleasant company.”
Very suddenly her hut was gone and Malachiasz and Serefin were left abandoned in a darkened clearing. Serefin scrambled to his feet, putting significant distance between them. Malachiasz considered that before he tilted over, landing face-first in the grass, and was very still.
The only sound in the clearing was the occasional rustling of branches in the wind.
“I expected you to be more upset,” Serefin said.
Was Malachiasz upset? Yes, very. It hadn’t been fair of Serefin to stab Malachiasz right as he finally started to remember all that had been wrenched away. It hadn’t been very fair to stab him in the heart at all, come to think of it.
But he was alive. And whatever he was being led to do, he wouldn’t want to go about it alone. Everything was very confusing and very loud and he was used to every emotion he had being too much and too loud but now it all felt even worse. And his fury didn’t manifest as destruction—it never had—so the idea of lashing out at Serefin rang hollow. He considered his usual defense—planning Serefin’s downfall somehow—and tucked the thought away. Later, revenge might be necessary since he had no idea what Serefin was willing to do anymore and murdering Malachiasz was apparently an option.
“Please don’t stab me again,” Malachiasz said, more to the dirt than Serefin.
He heard Serefin sigh, and the sound of him sitting down heavily near Malachiasz’s head.
“I…” Serefin hesitated. “I’d only just rationalized that I was willing to mourn you.”
Malachiasz rolled onto his back. He wasn’t in a survivable situation, so Serefin would probably fight that internal battle once more.
“I don’t think there’s anything I can say that will fix this.”
“No,” Malachiasz agreed absently. He was hungry again.
Serefin leaned back on his hands, tilting his gaze up at the canopy of branches. “I’m relieved you’re alive, if that counts for anything.”
“You sound surprised.”
“Well, I don’t particularly like you.”
“The feeling is mutual.”
Something flickered on Serefin’s face. “I did once, though, a long time ago. All I can say is I’m sorry.”
Malachiasz squinted up at him, taking in the full extent of the damage to Serefin’s face. He looked … bad. His face was covered with long, scabbing gashes, the bandage over his left eye promising a mess of an eye socket underneath. His hair was long enough that he wore it tied back, and exhaustion shadowed his features.
“The slavhki are going to have quite the time with you,” he said.
Serefin smiled slightly. “Kacper has been avoiding telling me how bad it is, which suggests very.”
“I have a Vulture in my order with as many scars as you and she got in a fight with three leshy at once.”
Noises rang out abruptly, the sound of something crashing through the woods at an alarming speed. Serefin jumped to his feet. Malachiasz merely sat up. He had the power of a god rattling through his bones, he wasn’t particularly worried about anything this forest spat out.
Although one furious Tranavian was a bit alarming. He scrambled away from a blade that went spinning for his face.
“Kacper!” Serefin cried.
The other boy was absolutely not stopping. Malachiasz bolted to the other side of the clearing, afraid that if he was forced to fight back, things would go very badly for Kacper. He didn’t want to give Serefin another reason to kill him. Malachiasz lifted his hands. “Call off your general, please. This really isn’t the time.”
Serefin blocked Kacper from throwing himself on Malachiasz. There was a beat of silence; Malachiasz could see the strain in Serefin’s arms as he held the other boy back. Finally, Kacper relaxed, his head dropping to Serefin’s shoulder.
“I’m not a general,” Kacper muttered.
Serefin blinked. “You’re not?”
“Lieutenant,” Kacper said.
“No…”
Kacper was nodding.
“But Ostyia is a general.”
“You promoted Ostyia but didn’t promote me.”
“That can’t be right.”
“You were very drunk when you promoted Ostyia.”
Serefin paused. “That … sounds right.”
Why is this happening, Malachiasz thought wearily. He started picking at a spot of decay on a tree. That didn’t seem good. In fact, the closer he looked at the state of the clearing, the more wrong he saw. The ground was scattered with the bodies of dead birds. Tiny bones were strewn everywhere. The air had been strangely quiet since Pelageya left, he realized, especially strange for somewhere so deep in the forest. Even with all the noise they were making, they should be hearing something.
“Well, would you like to be promoted?” Serefin asked.
Kacper considered that.
“I’m going back into the forest,” Malachiasz announced. “I think my chances are better there.”
“Wait, Malachiasz,” Serefin started, right as Kacper said very quietly, “I would like to be promoted.”
Malachiasz lifted his eyebrows at Serefin. “Is this not where we part? Before either of us do more stabbing, or, throat cutting, as it were.”
He hadn’t expected the flicker in Serefin’s expression. The moment where the other boy looked utterly lost because … why? Malachiasz was leaving?
“You need help, Malachiasz.”
“I don’t. Especially not from you.” Malachiasz turned to leave. He didn’t like not knowing where he was. This forest was a maze and already he could feel it trying to feast on his bones.
He also realized the god had been suspiciously quiet for a long time, and silence was not absence.
Is this not what you want? My compliance? he thought sarcastically.
“Is this you complying? Strange, that’s not how it appears to me.” It was a knife dragged through his brain, needles underneath his fingernails. Every time the voice spoke it brought unimaginable pain that Malachiasz was forced to press through.
Are you why I feel like this?
“It’s merely your nature. You mortals are so very good at hiding from your true natures, but they always catch up eventually.”
Malachiasz didn’t understand what was happening to him.
“And that’s what ultimately matters to you, isn’t it?” Chyrnog’s voice sounded curious. “Not what has happened to you, truly, but to understand it?”
Of course that’s what matters, he snapped. That was the only thing that had ever mattered.
Something else was moving heavily through the trees. Malachiasz shivered, magic itching underneath his skin. There were no guarantees that he could maintain control if he fell into the other parts of himself. He’d avoided knowing how much magic had been lost to him because testing those waters might mean he would drown.
“We’ve got to go,” Serefin said suddenly, grabbing Malachiasz’s arm.
Malachiasz flinched but didn’t fight as Serefin dragged him out of the clearing and into the woods.
“Wait, he’s coming with us?” Kacper cried.
“I can’t keep an eye on him if I let him go, can I?” Serefin called over his shoulder. There was a smile in his voice that baffled Malachiasz.
“We don’t even know who we’re running from,” Malachiasz said.
“Not something I intend to find out!” Serefin replied, before slamming face-first into someone, his grip on Malachiasz falling away. Malachiasz skidded to a stop, underbrush flying underneath his boots.
The tall figure was hooded, features hidden in shadow, uncannily familiar in a way that Malachiasz couldn’t place—until—
A spike of iron driven through a pale palm. Nadya’s. His claws punching clear through her hands because she was giving him power and it was so much darker than he ever could have guessed. Except no, not that instance, a different one. But that hadn’t been real, he had written it off as the forest toying with him when he was alone. He had been alone, hadn’t he?
Who are they?
“Did you think I had no disciples in this world?”
A tight circle of hooded figures had closed in around them. Malachiasz glanced at Serefin, who seemed to catch what Malachiasz was about to do, his eye widening.
“Wait, Malachiasz—”
The taste of copper bloomed in his mouth. His vision shifted, sharper, more, as dozens of eyes blinked open and closed on his skin. Iron claws grew out of bloody nail beds, his teeth sharpening in his mouth. He stopped there—he tried to stop there.
Taszni nem Malachiasz.
Don’t fall too far.
Don’t lose the fragments that make you human.
“Boy, you lost those long ago.”
Malachiasz struck.
He was infinitely faster than Chyrnog’s acolytes, infinitely more powerful. But he was tired. He was hungry. He was wrapped around the will of a being so much older than him and even as he moved, claws shredding through black robes and teeth tearing through flesh, it wasn’t enough.
Chyrnog did not want him to fight. Chyrnog wanted submission. Suddenly his body was no longer under his control. He was slammed to the ground hard enough to rattle his bones, sharp teeth cutting through his lower lip. He spat blood onto the boot of one of the acolytes.
“Now, now, none of that.” The voice was calm and smooth, lilting and deceptively gentle. “We don’t want to break you or your companions.” Someone knelt down in front of Malachiasz, tilting his chin up with a gloved hand. “What a creature.” They straightened.
He regretted wasting the blood in his mouth on a shoe. Everything was moving too fast and too slow and he couldn’t seem to form words.
“Knock them out. We have a long way to go and I don’t want them fighting.”
Malachiasz tried to struggle but his body wouldn’t listen. What is happening to me?
“You have made a great many assumptions about what I will allow, but it never occurred to you how this arrangement truly worked. You are nothing. Mere flesh, a worm, nothing but a vessel for me to enact my will, and my will is destruction, consumption. You can fight, or you can be compliant, none of it matters. I will win. I always win. And you need some nudging in the right direction. My acolytes have captured one who has awakened, and I need you to destroy it. Aren’t you hungry?”
He was starving.