A tongue of deceit, a spirit of mischief, a desire to foster chaos, these are the things that make up Velyos.
—The Books of Innokentiy
It was a full day before Malachiasz’s seizures stopped. Serefin kept wiping blood from his remaining eye and brushing away moths, keeping his distance from Malachiasz’s chaos and wishing there was something he could do. He understood the helplessness of losing everything when a god decided their will was more important than yours.
The Kalyazi boy returned, eyeing what remained at the foot of the tree with a slight, feral smile. He pushed a stack of blankets into Serefin’s hands with an unfathomable look toward Malachiasz before leaving, locking the door behind him with a resounding clank.
When Malachiasz’s seizures quieted to trembling, Serefin carefully draped a blanket over his thin frame before returning to the safety of the other side of the room. Kacper sat there, bleakly staring at the tree with a moth-eaten blanket around his shoulders.
“We’re going to regret this,” Kacper said.
“You say that as if I’m not already regretting it,” Serefin replied, sitting next to him and tugging the blanket over his shoulders. He held his arms out, frowning.
Kacper glanced at him, lifting his eyebrows.
“Nothing,” Serefin said. “Just noticing what all this trauma has done to me.” He had never been a particularly imposing person, but he had grown rather slight. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten an actual meal.
Kacper’s expression wrenched. “How long until he turns on us?”
“Neither of us has anything that god wants.”
“That implies Malachiasz had nothing to do with what happened.”
Serefin hesitated. Malachiasz was ruthless enough to comply with what Chyrnog wanted. Malachiasz was enough to take like that. Especially when it came to power.
He let the silence go on until Kacper sighed.
“He’s a liability.”
“Kacper, we can’t handle what we’ll find when we return to Tranavia.”
Malachiasz could still use magic. Whatever was making blood magic inaccessible didn’t seem to reach him.
“You’ll have to deal with the Vultures.”
Malachiasz was standing before them, skin pallid, a hollowness to his expression that Serefin couldn’t quite work out. He faltered, slumping down to the floor, the blanket clutched around his shoulders. It was difficult to watch him for more than a few seconds at a time as his body twisted.
“How are you?” Serefin asked, feeling strangely charitable. Malachiasz just looked so miserable.
“Remember when Elżbieta fed us mushrooms that turned out to be poisonous? I feel a little like that.”
“You remember that?”
Malachiasz shuddered through a shift. “I … get pieces sometimes.”
“You were sick for a week. Threw up on everything, including the cat.”
“I don’t remember a cat.”
“Piotr. Father hated him. He was a stable cat with an attitude. I kept bringing him into the palace, much to the dismay of everyone around me.”
Malachiasz smiled wanly.
“What was that?” Kacper asked, voice hard, clearly unimpressed by their filial bonding.
“The destruction of an … awakened one,” Malachiasz said, pitching over and landing on his side. “I’ve decided having more power is a bad thing.”
“Oh, you’ve finally decided this?” Serefin asked.
He nodded, burying his face in the crook of his elbow.
“But that will change the second you feel better, huh?”
“Probably,” he mumbled.
Kacper rolled his eyes. “We don’t know what these cultists want now that Malachiasz did as they asked. We don’t know that we can get out of here to make it back to Tranavia. We don’t even know where we are!”
Malachiasz tilted his face toward them and opened one eye. “Is he always like this?” he asked Serefin.
“Oh, yes,” Serefin replied warmly, ignoring the all-suffering look Kacper was giving him. “I’d be dead many times over if he wasn’t.”
Malachiasz responded with a sound of disbelief before hiding from the dim light of the torches once more. Dawn was starting to break through the grimy windows, but it was too early to do much good.
“And what does that mean, the destruction of an awakened one?” Kacper continued.
Malachiasz sat up with a groan, cradling his head with long, pale fingers before slowly dropping his hands. He stared at the tree, the fingers of his right hand pressing hard against the scar on his left palm. Serefin frowned as he noticed the metallic sheen of Malachiasz’s claws digging into his own skin.
“I don’t know,” Malachiasz whispered, standing shakily. “He tasted like ashes. Divinity tastes like copper and ashes. He had … power.”
“Well, you did make it so we couldn’t ask him any helpful questions,” Kacper pointed out.
Malachiasz was nonplussed. Serefin shouldn’t be surprised that he wasn’t horrified by what he had done. How much worse had he done during his reign as the Black Vulture?
“It’s a question we’ll need to answer, in any case,” he said absently. “If magic isn’t like what we thought, if it can appear in someone who previously could not use it … that changes things. That changes everything.”
Malachiasz’s gaze fell to Kacper’s hip. “May I see your spell book?”
Serefin glared at Kacper. He shouldn’t have been wearing it when they were captured by the Kalyazi. It was too dangerous. Kacper bit his lower lip.
He unclipped the belt and held it out, hesitating right before Malachiasz took it.
Malachiasz’s expression softened. “I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important.”
Kacper relinquished the book and Malachiasz, with a gentleness that Serefin had rarely seen in him, cracked it open. He flipped through the spells, a frown creasing the tattoos on his forehead.
“Can you read them?” Kacper asked, hopefully.
Malachiasz stopped on a page, inspecting it further. He squeezed his eyes shut, swaying as if overcome with dizziness. “Not entirely. I don’t know what Nadya did. I don’t know how to fix it.”
“Nadya did this?” Kacper asked, and Malachiasz flinched at the sound of her name.
“Yes,” Malachiasz said, his voice small. He cleared his throat. “But if blood magic had truly been eradicated, I wouldn’t be here. There’s too much of it in me. The Vultures are made of it, and I can still feel them, faintly. Our link is supposed to sever when a Black Vulture dies, but I don’t think I stayed dead long enough. If they try to appoint a new Black Vulture, they’ll fail. They’re mine.”
“So, you can have them stand down.”
Malachiasz nodded slowly.
They were no longer chained, but still prisoners. Malachiasz handed Kacper his spell book and lowered himself to the floor. He curled up, looking young and frail, before dragging the blanket over his head and appearing to attempt sleep.
“They’re going to make him do that again,” Serefin said with a frown.
“To what end?” Kacper asked.
That was what Serefin didn’t understand. What did Chyrnog want? Destruction? Something more cosmic that they couldn’t fathom? Serefin considered the temple Velyos had taken him to, the arms reaching for him; that feeling of morbid inevitability.
“This is hopeless.” Serefin sighed. “Chyrnog was always going to latch onto Malachiasz’s soul. There was no stopping any of this.”
“Don’t have one,” Malachiasz mumbled.
“I’m sorry?” Kacper asked.
Serefin tilted his head, alarmed. He straightened his leg and nudged Malachiasz with the toe of his boot. “What did you just say?”
He groaned softly. “I want to sleep.”
“Tell me what you said.”
He opened one eye. “I gave Pelageya the pieces. I don’t know what she did with them.”
“Why would you do that?” Serefin cried.
Malachiasz sat up, slowly, a defeated slump to his shoulders. The terrifying, calculating Black Vulture wasn’t home anymore and he had left the broken boy in his place.
“It was the only thing I had left to give,” he said, blankly. “The ritual wasn’t enough—I miscalculated, and I needed one more piece, but I didn’t know who else to turn to. I don’t know what she did with it.”
“If you hadn’t done that, would we be dealing with this old god?” Kacper asked, starting to sound desperate.
Malachiasz shrugged listlessly.
“He had me, for a time,” Serefin said.
“But you got rid of him,” Malachiasz pointed out.
Serefin touched the skin under his left eye socket. So he had.
Kacper rested his chin in his hands. “If you could get it back, would you be able to break free from him?”
“Oh yes, I’ll go find my soul, I’m sure that will be easy,” Malachiasz said spitefully.
But Kacper had a point.
“We’ll talk more about this later,” Serefin said slowly, needing to think. The concept of a soul was tricky in Tranavian culture, souls were so tied up with Kalyazi theology that Tranavians didn’t really think about them much. Their concept of the afterlife was different, quieter, a rebirth and a renewal; it didn’t weigh so heavily on the idea of a soul. For Malachiasz to have involved himself with the Kalyazi witch was out of character.
“Did it work?”
Malachiasz looked thoughtful, his fingers tugging on a piece of bone threaded through his hair. “I suppose so. The eyes started not long after, though that’s a guess. I was barely lucid after the cathedral. Then I went … somewhere else on that Kalyazi mountain, and I don’t think I would have had I not gone to Pelageya.” He sighed. “I don’t know. I thought I could fight him. I don’t think I can.”
Couldn’t, or didn’t want to? Malachiasz had always made it perfectly clear that there were no lines he was not willing to cross, nothing too horrific for him to not consider and see into reality. Serefin wouldn’t fool himself about his brother; he was a monster to his core. He wanted to believe that Malachiasz could be something better, could claw his way back to human—at least a little—but he didn’t know if he could believe that.
Malachiasz was eyeing a patch of light streaming in through the windows. He carefully moved to a corner that almost definitely wouldn’t see any light.
“Sleep,” Serefin said, not wanting to know. “Our problems will be here in the morning.”
“That is not the comforting Kalyazi version of that saying,” Malachiasz mumbled as he curled up.
“Well, no.” It was dawn now.
“Ugh, Tranavians.”
Serefin smiled at that.
They were either forgotten the next day or deliberately abandoned to think on what had happened in the eerie sanctuary. Either way, Serefin was hungry and bored. He tipped back until he was lying down, draping an arm over his eye. His head hurt, a pulse right behind his left eye socket. He let out a breath as Kacper rolled on top of him.
“You’re moping,” he observed.
“I’m not, though I’d deserve it if I were. My head hurts, is all.”
Malachiasz let out an irritated huff, getting up and wandering away. Kacper lifted his head, watching him.
“We’re making your brother uncomfortable,” he observed.
Serefin tilted back to see where Malachiasz eyed the tree, avoiding the mess but tense all the same.
“No, it’s not that.”
Kacper frowned. His one hand was close to Serefin’s head, his fingers twining through Serefin’s hair.
“I find it difficult to believe that Malachiasz would be so limiting.”
“Blood and bone,” Malachiasz muttered. “Stop.” He returned and sat down nearby, closing his eyes when shifts rippled through his body, coughing into the crook of his elbow. “I don’t care what you two do.” His mouth twitched. “And, no, I’m not.”
Kacper rested his chin on Serefin’s sternum, relaxing against him. “Please tell me you have sordid Vulture tales.”
Serefin lifted his eyebrows at the unexpected shift in Kacper’s attitude toward Malachiasz. Kacper glanced at him, shrugging lightly as if to say, well, we’re stuck with him, might as well make the best of it.
Malachiasz drew his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. “It’s the Vultures, it’s all sordid.” He also seemed puzzled by the lack of cool disdain from Kacper, who breathed out a laugh. “There was one when I was younger, Łukasz,” Malachiasz continued. “He was brilliant, but things changed when I took the throne.”
“Thrones’ll do that,” Serefin said.
Malachiasz snorted softly. “And now…” he trailed off.
“Did you know what Nadya was planning?”
He shook his head. “I naively thought she was telling the truth. That she wanted her power back. It was such a Tranavian sentiment, I should have expected that she wanted something else.”
“You were also baiting her,” Kacper pointed out.
“I saw an opportunity.”
“Would you have killed that goddess if Nadya hadn’t…” Serefin trailed off. If she hadn’t stripped them of their power. If they hadn’t gone from three of the most powerful blood mages in Tranavia to three boys, broken and in an enemy country.
“I don’t know,” Malachiasz said, softly.
Serefin suspected that, yes, he would have. Very little could stop Malachiasz once he decided on a course of action, and the instant he realized where Nadya was going, he had made his decision.
Kacper was idly running his fingers along the shell of Serefin’s ear. They caught on the bandage and his expression twisted. He rolled off Serefin and Serefin was sadder for the loss of his warmth.
“I want to see how your eye is holding up,” he said, straightening. “Does your head still hurt?”
“Only a little.”
“Told you. Moping.”
Serefin chose to ignore that, letting Kacper carefully unwrap the bandages from his head. Malachiasz moved closer, curious, and paled.
“You’re a mess.”
“A mouth just opened on your neck so, really, speak for yourself.”
Kacper shook his head. “I can’t believe we didn’t realize you were brothers,” he muttered. “You’re both insufferable.”
Serefin met Malachiasz’s gaze over Kacper’s shoulder. There was a world of conflict in the other boy’s expression.
“I don’t think this needs to be wrapped,” Kacper continued. “The swelling is almost gone, but it’s impressively bruised. I’ll leave the stitch in, but we’ll see how it does without the bandage.”
Kacper kissed Serefin’s cheek and shifted away, and Serefin leaned back on his hands. Malachiasz was mercilessly picking at his cuticles to avoid looking at him.
“How long have you known?” Malachiasz asked.
“I thought we were cousins, though I hadn’t seen you in a long time—that I realized, anyway. I learned that wasn’t quite the case a few months after that night in the cathedral.”
Malachiasz frowned. “Do we keep this a secret?”
“There’ll be rumors enough in Grazyk if we’re ever seen in the same place,” Serefin said.
Kacper nodded, gaze shifting between them. “You definitely appear related in a way that even the denser slavhki will eventually notice.”
“But I’m so handsome,” Serefin whined.
“I am so sorry to be the one to tell you this, truly the words are acid on my tongue, but he is, too,” Kacper replied solemnly.
Serefin clutched his chest. Malachiasz grinned.
They had fallen into an uneasy sleep when Olya was shoved inside. She did not enter quietly, and the cultists did not stay to listen to her stream of curses. The door slammed shut behind her.
Olya stared at the tree in the center of the room, her eyes wide. Serefin watched her. He was the only one who had woken, surprisingly.
The girl took a tentative step into the light. There was a significant amount of blood on her arms, like she had been bled a great deal by the cultists. She was gazing at the tree with something close to reverence. Her face went ashen as she noticed the blood on the white bark.
“You don’t want to know what happened here,” Serefin said.
She whirled on him. He got up, carefully extricating himself from Kacper, and crossed the room. He caught the tension in the Vulture’s shoulders as he passed. He was awake, then, listening.
“You,” she said flatly.
He waved. “Your twitchy friend is involved in a cult. I’ve been there.” Serefin gestured at Malachiasz. “So, in a way, this is all your fault.”
A flicker of fear passed over her face before she shuttered it away. A slight tremor remained in her lower lip. She was younger than he thought—maybe Nadya’s age, or younger.
“As if you would have left a pair of defenseless Kalyazi alone in Tranavia.”
“A fair point,” he allowed. “I’ve killed my share of wandering Kalyazi.”
Her hand reached for a voryen that she did not have. She winced, blood trickling down her arm. It was such a normal sight for Serefin, he almost didn’t register the deep alarm on her face. She looked to the tree again.
“It’s Svoyatova Varvara Brezhneva’s tree. A sacred, sacrifical space.”
Serefin lifted his eyebrows but said nothing.
“Not her tree, of course, but an ancient rite. Where are we?”
Serefin wished he knew. “Guests of a cult of a very old god.”
Olya flinched. “And the desecration?”
“Better you not ask. What did they do?” He nodded to the cuts.
She hesitated, distrust in her gaze. But she was in the same mess as the rest of them, so he wasn’t going to be particularly uncharitable about the whole kidnapping thing.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” he continued, “the cultists are Kalyazi, so it’s not like you have a better option with them. Worshipping an old god makes them heretics too, no? But why would you care about that? Aren’t you a witch?”
She lifted her chin defiantly. He lifted his hands.
“I have nothing against witches.”
“You can be a witch and hold to the faith,” she said.
“Literally everything in my understanding of your Kalyazi religion says that you can’t, actually.”
“Not if you listen to the church,” Olya replied.
“Apostasy, all right, I don’t care one way or the other, frankly.”
“They said they were testing me,” she said, words rapid. “I don’t know for what.”
Malachiasz shifted. Of course that got his attention.
“You’re predictable,” he said to Malachiasz when the other boy stood and stepped past him, stopping just shy of the patch of light Olya was standing in.
“And you’re useless,” he replied, but he faltered when he turned to the girl. “I—I’d like to see the cuts. I have a sense of what they might be looking for, but could you step out of the light?”
“Why?”
Malachiasz appraised her. She was tall. Not quite so tall as him, but enough that she only had to tilt her head slightly to meet his gaze with fire in her dark eyes.
Serefin didn’t know why they were still fighting these people. Yes, their religious intolerance, and the so-called heresy of the Tranavians and their blood magic, but … when he thought of Nadya—zealous and sharp and so very tired—or Katya—bossy and irreverent—he thought there might be a chance between these two kingdoms.
Except Nadya had taken away Tranavia’s foundation. Kalyazin would always see his magic as horrific, and he would never be willing to give it up, not even if forced.
Malachiasz opened his mouth and hesitated. “It’s too difficult to explain,” he eventually said, shoving his hand into the light. His flesh began to sizzle.
Olya let out a horrified gasp. Serefin reacted fast, grabbing Malachiasz’s wrist and pulling his hand back into the shadows. The commotion finally woke Kacper. Malachiasz’s hand was an angry, scalded red and Serefin dropped his wrist, staring at him in horror. He only shrugged.
“Chyrnog,” he said, as if it were simple.
Malachiasz was hiding something. Fear or anxiety or desperation, whatever it was, he was trying to force it away. Serefin understood Malachiasz well enough to know that there was no way he was handling this well. He was merely putting on a damn good show. That’s what he did. He lied. He pretended. He made everyone believe everything was perfectly fine. And when people lowered their guards—he stabbed them in the back.
Though Serefin supposed he was the one who had stabbed Malachiasz, so he wasn’t much better.
“Please, step out of the light,” Malachiasz said, intent on Olya.
Serefin watched her eyes track over the Vulture. A ripple of eyes opened on his skin and horror flickered across her face. But she stepped into the shadows.
Malachiasz quietly asked for permission before taking the girl’s arm and inspecting the cuts that were scattered across her flesh. He spoke softly, his questions disarming as he asked about the methods the cultists had used to draw her blood.
“There are a lot of people trying to discover new avenues for magic,” Malachiasz said, after she had finally answered. “It’s changing, spreading out like the roots of a tree.” He nodded to the pale, bloody tree and Olya grimaced. “Were you trained?”
She shook her head. “I taught myself what I know.”
“Hedge witch?”
She nodded.
“Do you use blood in your magic?”
She shifted on her feet. “Sometimes,” she said softly.
“Was that how it started?”
She hesitated, before nodding.
“Interesting,” he said. The door opened. He immediately tensed, curling in on himself, as if he had been struck.
“Well,” Ruslan said, “you survived! It seems we have a great deal to discuss.”