Parijahan would never forget the deadened expression on Rashid’s face when he brought Nadya’s body in from the rain. The cleric looked young and fragile in his arms. She was so small as he gently placed her on a bed in the boyar’s house, carefully pushing her hair away from her face.
Biting her lip to keep the rush of grief from overwhelming her, Parijahan did her best to lock it away. To place it on the shelf next to Malachiasz’s death. She couldn’t take this.
They couldn’t both be gone.
The tsarevna followed Rashid into the room, but when he stepped away from the bed, dark eyes glassy with tears, she clearly wanted to flee. She touched Nadya’s forehead, closed her eyes with fingertips that were achingly gentle, and left the room in a hurry.
It had happened quickly; she had fallen quietly. Parijahan had watched it from a distance, unable to stop it, and it was too much like watching Malachiasz fall when she was still struggling up the mountain. The blade a careful caress that had slipped from a woman’s hands into Nadya’s back. Nadya had been gone by the time she had crossed the muddy square.
Nadya had survived so much. She’d seemed so impervious.
Parijahan moved to Rashid, who was staring, unseeing, at Nadya. She wrapped her arms around his waist, resting her forehead against the back of his neck.
It’s time to tell the truth.
“No more of this. No more death.”
“Parj…”
“You never asked what I was doing the night we left Akola. All this time, all these years, you’ve never asked what we were running from. What my family would want returned to them so badly. What makes it impossible for me to go home.”
She had asked him to go, and he had. She’d asked that he follow her into Kalyazin, and he had. He had watched her gather a group of misfits and renegades around her and never asked what she was doing. He would listen to her tell Taraneh’s story and know she was giving a partial truth, but never asked what she was hiding.
“I never told you,” she continued. “For foolish, petty reasons. I never told Nadya for similar reasons. And I should have.”
“No more secrets. We’ll talk later,” Nadya had said before going with Katya to defend the city. And now it was too late. Her arms tightened around Rashid.
“Too many secrets. Too much death.”
“They’re trying to get you back,” he said.
“I’d just lost Taraneh and I was scared and confused. Arman was never coming back. He had gone to the mages in the sands and I knew what that meant. I knew what you were capable of.”
Rashid tensed.
“It was so impossible, living in that palace, listening to talk of how to handle the problem in the west.”
What a benign way to talk about what amounted to attempting to eradicate his people, she thought blandly.
“And conversations about the north … Did you ever hear how they spoke of these countries? They were barbarians, mad, and this was the problem with power. This was why Akola kept their mages locked away.”
It would have been his fate. The mages in the Travash only had a few years at court before they were imprisoned. Chained under locks made unbreakable by some long dead mage of the past. Only drawn out for death and pain before being swept back into the dark, out of sight, out of mind.
“They spoke of you constantly. The little indentured servant from Yanzin Zadar who had power. Do you remember being tested?”
He was quiet for a long time before a very soft, “Yes.”
She swallowed, overcome with tears. “Rashid, I’m sorry I didn’t trust you.”
He pulled out of her arms, turning to face her. “What do you mean? What did you do?”
She closed her eyes. “It’s what I didn’t do. I don’t know how the missives kept finding me. How they knew. They kept begging me to return, but begging turned into threats, and the threats became something much darker and I—I … it was you. I know what not going back to Akola means for me, but it’s more than being the prasīt, it’s—it’s far more in line with all this divine nonsense. And I’m sorry, but Rashid—” she reached out and took his wrist, pushing his sleeve back. She ran her fingers along his forearm, down the vine markings.
Suddenly flowers were blooming from his skin. He choked on a breath. She hated doing this to him, she knew how much he didn’t want to use his power.
“I knew what bringing you here would do because I’m like you. I knew the stars in our blood would burst in this land of gods and power. In Akola, it was only magic on sand, but here it’s different. The gods that walk these lands are not our gods. They are much worse. They’re greedy and they want, and our foolish friends have set them free.”
She closed her eyes. “In the forest, I chose to stay here, knowing what that would mean. We’re going to be burned up by all of this and it’s my fault. Without Nadya … we’re doomed.”
The flowers growing from his skin were white and crimson and shot through with purple. They would be beautiful if they weren’t so terrible.
He would have a thousand questions. She didn’t know how she would answer them all; she had been holding this close for too long. Malachiasz knew a piece of it. That she had magic, a kind unlike the power used in Kalyazin or Tranavia. But Malachiasz had died and taken that truth with him.
Rashid didn’t get the chance to ask any questions. Nadya’s voice, small and tired, jolted them both.
“I’m going to need to hear all of that again, but in Kalyazi,” she said.
The world dropped out from underneath Parijahan and Rashid’s hands held her up as her knees gave out.
Nadya lifted a hand very slowly, her eyes still closed, her eyebrows furrowed. “Gods, I feel … well, like I was dead. Give me a second for my limbs to work.”
Parijahan struggled out of his arms, moving to kneel at the side of the bed. She reached out, very carefully, and touched Nadya’s hand.
Her eyes opened at the touch. Her skin was like ice. A moth appeared and settled in her white-blond hair.
How was she back?
Nadya groaned, closing her eyes again and pressing her hands against them. There was a long beat of silence.
“Right, then, now I can say that dying is extremely unpleasant, in case you were wondering.”