When a battlefield was flooded, Svoyatova Nyura Zlobina, a cleric of Omunitsa, molded the water to drown an army.
—Vasiliev’s Book of Saints
It was like surfacing from underneath an icy river. Nadya couldn’t get warm no matter how hard she tried, even when a mug of near-boiling tea was pressed into her hands. Her back hurt—she was quite done with being stabbed. And Parijahan’s, and then Rashid’s, embrace, warm as they were, couldn’t quite chase the cold from her bones.
Katya had entered the room, taken one look at Nadya, and sighed, relief rippling across her taut shoulders. “You are far too much trouble.”
“So I’ve been told.” Nadya sat at the edge of the bed, a blanket snug around her shoulders. Lying down was too much like death.
“What happened?”
Nadya felt different, lighter, like something had been taken away from her. Had something else taken its place? “The gods are speaking to me again.”
Katya lifted an eyebrow. “What changed?”
“Chyrnog woke up.”
Katya’s face paled and she immediately sat down on a nearby chair. “Oh.”
“We have to stop him, bind him. It’s the only way.”
Katya opened her mouth, only to press her lips tight and shake her head. Nadya didn’t know how, either. That was their next step. Maybe Komyazalov would work out. If any place had that kind of esoteric knowledge, it would be the capital of Kalyazin.
The tsarevna tugged on a dark curl. “All right,” she said very softly. “I’ll talk to Viktor. Make sure the city is still standing, though it seems like we fought off the witches.”
“Zlatana will still devour the city,” Zvezdan said.
No hard feelings about earlier, then?
“I’m curious to see what you plan on doing.”
Are any of you aligned with Chyrnog?
“Aligned would be a simple description of a complicated relationship. Zlatana has always been fond of him, as has Cvjetko.”
What of Velyos?
“Velyos does what he likes, when he likes, with whomever he likes.”
That sounded right. Nadya gestured beside her and Parijahan sighed and sat down. “What were you planning with Malachiasz?”
Parijahan flinched.
Nadya didn’t want to touch the thread but she knew that desperation, that hunger. Why hadn’t that magic broken when he died? The implication that it could have survived was troubling.
Would she look for him? If she survived this, if he did? If their paths weren’t set in opposition to each other, which she had a bad feeling they were?
No, she decided. Whatever they had was over. She couldn’t hope for anything more, not after what he had done. Not after what she had done, either.
“What aren’t you telling me, Parj? I got pieces but my Paalmideshi isn’t very good yet.” She had been trying to learn with Parijahan, but it was slow going. The language didn’t have much in common with Kalyazi like Tranavian did and Nadya wasn’t grasping it as easily.
“A great deal,” she said, falsely cheerful. “And … and it’s not that I didn’t trust you or Rashid. I just…” She buried her face in her hands.
“Maybe start at the beginning?” Nadya suggested.
“I can’t exactly lay out Akola’s history in succinct terms,” Parijahan replied sarcastically. She glanced at Nadya, considering. “But you do know more about the technicalities of magic than you let on.”
Nadya smiled wanly. “And that’s what this is about?”
Parijahan scooted back on the bed so she could draw her knees up to her chest. “That’s what everything is about. The changes in magic have been happening for far longer than the night in the Grazyk. I remember eavesdropping on a meeting between my brother, Arman, and a group of mages from the southern dunes. They were talking about how the stars were changing, which is … impossible.”
“I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“He left to join the mages. He’s long gone.” There was pain in her voice, wrapped in a careful shroud. She didn’t talk about this; she never talked about this. Nadya could understand that.
“You have magic, don’t you?” That would explain Parijahan’s fear. It would explain why she would hide it and tell no one, surrounded as she was by people consistently ruining the world because of magic. Nadya looked to Rashid. “You both do.”
Parijahan chewed on her lower lip. Rashid lifted an eyebrow.
“It’s complicated,” Parijahan said. “I don’t have magic in the way that you and Malachiasz and Rashid do. But I was born under a bleeding star. So, there’s something. And being a mage in Akola isn’t like it is here or in Tranavia. In Tranavia, it’s banal. Here, it’s revered.”
“Well,” Nadya said.
Parijahan waved a hand. “In former Paalmidesh, you’re a tool. A weapon. In Rashnit, you’re cursed. In Tahbni, you’re akin to a god.”
“And in Yanzin Zadar?” Nadya asked.
“You hide it away in hopes that you won’t get sold to a Travash in a different part of the country,” Rashid said softly.
Ah. That also explained a great deal.
“You didn’t come to Kalyazin to avenge your sister, then,” Nadya said.
Parijahan’s steely gray gaze was firmly locked with Rashid’s. “No, not entirely,” she said softly. “There’s research happening in Akola. Research to get further with magic, do more, and my family would not be a Travash left in the dark.”
Rashid’s face had gone gray.
“I’ll never know if Arman went to the mages willingly. But—” Parijahan broke off, swallowing hard. “He told me what our Travash mages were doing to him. ‘Asking of him,’ they always put it, so politely, but he didn’t have a choice.”
Nadya felt dizzy. “That makes it a bit surprising you were so close with Malachiasz, considering.”
Parijahan shrugged, not denying it. But they had both looked away, fully knowing what Malachiasz had done to other people in his pursuit of power.
“The court mages were going to take Rashid. I never would have seen him again. It was selfish. My family kept me hidden away because of the stars I was born under. There was a chamber underneath the throne, below the council room, and they would put me in there, lock me up in the dark, so I could influence decisions to be made in their favor. Because things happen around me. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. I can’t control it, ultimately a very useless kind of magic. In Akola, they talk about how the gods of the North are vicious and mad and so wrapped up in this war that they don’t notice mortals the way the Akolan gods do.”
“What are the Akolan gods like?” Nadya asked, trying to wrap her mind around locking a child in the dark so that the power she had no control over might work. Was it worse than isolating a child in the mountains to prepare her for war? She supposed not.
“It’s hard to explain. What I’ve witnessed here isn’t similar. They care about the collective, while you have gods who attach to individuals. But I thought that by coming here, I would be safe. I wasn’t attached so the gods here wouldn’t care.”
Nadya could see where this was going. “And then you ran into me.”
Parijahan shrugged. “I was curious. And I did want revenge. To make Tranavia suffer.”
“Do you still?”
“I don’t know.”
Nadya could relate. “What changed?”
“My family wants me back. My father is dying, so the Travasha have to bid for the throne. I’m next in line for the Siroosi household, and with my influence…”
“Oh,” Nadya said softly.
Parijahan nodded. “I wanted Malachiasz to help me get out of it, as it were. But he wanted me to go back and tell them I was abdicating. I don’t think he understood that the second I cross the border into Akola, that’s it. I’m there until I die.”
Rashid sighed. “Would that be so bad?”
Parijahan tilted her head back, releasing an uneasy breath. “That’s what I had such a hard time explaining to Malachiasz. I don’t want the Travash. Give it to someone who wants it, who wants to rule. I don’t. I’ve never wanted it.”
“What do you want?”
Parijahan glanced at Rashid.
“I care about Akola, I do. I don’t want to rule it. But I do want to help. And I don’t think I can help there until what is happening here has settled. Everything is about to spill over in Akola. When my father dies there won’t be a careful process to choose the next ruling Travash. We’re on the verge of a civil war.”
Nadya lifted an eyebrow at Rashid and he groaned. He held out his forearm and she watched as flowers burst from his skin. She sighed.
“And you still don’t know what you can do? Have you talked to Ostyia yet?”
“There hasn’t been time, what with you dying and all,” he replied.
Nadya winced.
“You have different gods, though, because there are so many gods spread out so far,” she said, and her voice wavered a little at offering knowledge she was confident in when she was confident in so little these days. “That’s one of the dangers we deal with now, that these fallen gods might decide it would be more beneficial to latch onto someplace already being watched over by a different god. Cause a war.”
“But who knows, what has happened here might very well be happening there, too,” Parijahan said.
Nadya closed her eyes. “Is there more?” She didn’t know if she could take much more.
“A bit, but later. You’ve been through a lot.”
“We all have.”
“Yes, well, not all of us have literally died on top of it.”
Who knew I would one day have so much in common with two Tranavians? Nadya rubbed her face with her hands. “There’s no time to rest,” she said quietly.
This was going to spiral out of control faster than they were ready for. She doubted the attack on the city was the only one of its kind happening in Kalyazin. There would be more, in other places less prepared. More forests would stretch past their borders and devour, more monsters would come out of their darkened corners to consume.
She didn’t know how to stop an old god. She didn’t know what Myesta and Alena had given her. She didn’t know, still, what she was, though she was on the cusp of answers. It was terrifying, it was thrilling.
She had died.
Nadya moved to stand, only to be gently shoved back down by Parijahan.
“No,” she said. “This nightmare will still be spinning when you wake up. Rest.” Her palm pressed against the side of Nadya’s face and she leaned into its warmth. Rashid slipped out of the room.
“Everything … hurts,” Nadya murmured.
“That’s how life is,” Parijahan said. She kissed the top of her head. “Nadya, I am so glad you’re all right.”
“Bit of an overstatement, I think.”
“You’re alive. That’s enough.”
There was no staying to aid with the aftermath. Nadya refused to even stay long enough to heal. They didn’t have time to waste. Things had become all the more desperate now that they knew what they were up against. To the capital they went.
“Let me know if you need to rest and I’ll get Katya to stop,” Ostyia said to Nadya, moving her horse up next to hers. She glanced sidelong at Nadya. “I cannot believe I’m about to say this, but I’m glad you’re alive.”
“Ostyia, what.”
“I know!”
She laughed and it hurt. “Serefin is all right,” she said. “I meant to tell you earlier, but there was no time, and then, well…”
Ostyia closed her eye, letting out a soft breath. “How do you know?”
“I spoke with Velyos. I guess he’s still hanging around Serefin, but he assured me that he’s alive, at the very least.”
“Does that mean all the nonsense on the mountain was in vain?”
It was impossible to say.
“Do you know if Kacper…?”
Nadya shook her head. Ostyia bit her lip.
“Knowing Serefin is alive helps. Thank you. I know you probably have … fraught feelings about him.”
Nadya and Serefin had become something close to friends during the time she’d spent in Grazyk and she did not know how to put to words what he was to her now. She had led Malachiasz to that mountain knowing it would tear him apart. She had saved him knowing it would lead to his destruction. That Serefin had been the one to land the final blow was a painful shock, but wasn’t it inevitable?
“I wish he hadn’t done it, but I understand why he did. I want this war to be over. I’m tired of fighting. What we have to fight now is far worse than a century-long squabble that is, ultimately, wildly petty and has broken so much. I get the impression that you feel the same, else you would have killed Katya the first second you had the chance.”
Katya, who was clearly listening, glanced over her shoulder and winked at them. Ostyia’s face immediately flamed. Nadya grinned.
“That’s a political disaster.”
“I don’t want to hear it from the girl who was involved with the Black Vulture.”
Nadya laughed.
She almost touched the thread tying them together. It was easy to ignore, easier than when it had first appeared. It had unraveled; there was little left still hanging on. What if she was wrong? He had died in her arms and there was no coming back from death.
Except she had. And Serefin had.
“Did you know about Serefin and Malachiasz?” she asked.
A flicker of distaste passed over Ostyia’s face. “I knew. He’s a bastard.”
“Well, yes.”
Ostyia laughed. “No, literally. They’re half-brothers. Malachiasz isn’t legitimate, which, honestly, if he hadn’t been so…” She trailed off.
“Terrible?”
“Evil. It wouldn’t have been a problem for Serefin. He has no claim to the throne.”
Nadya gave a soft huff. What could they have been in a different world? Maybe not so broken, maybe so much worse.
“Serefin would have been sentimental about it and that would’ve been a mistake. I don’t like Malachiasz, to be clear. He’s bad for Tranavia and bad for the Vultures, and I know how you feel about him, but I knew him when we were children, and he has always been poisonous.”
Nadya pursed her lips.
“Serefin cared, though, because that’s who Serefin is.”
“He still murdered him.”
“Serefin knows what’s best for Tranavia.”
Nadya rolled her eyes. Ultimately, though, she didn’t know what Malachiasz had meant to Tranavia; what he had done as the Black Vulture outside of tormenting her people. Maybe Ostyia was right. Maybe it didn’t matter; maybe that was over.
Or maybe he’s alive. But the thought was only stressful because Nadya didn’t know for certain, and she couldn’t check. If she pulled on the threads that bound them, he would know. And if he was alive, well, she didn’t want that. If he was dead, it wouldn’t matter because dead was dead.
Her heart ached—everything ached—and she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to hope for him to be alive, or she was only allowed to mourn him in death. Because she knew. She knew what he was and what he had done. She had his spell book. His cruelty was unfathomable.
“What does it matter, that they were brothers?” Ostyia asked.
Nadya was quiet, unsure if it was for her to share Malachiasz’s truth.
“He cared,” Nadya said softly, “so much about the family that he didn’t know. He wanted so desperately to know them. I wish he’d had the chance.”
There was a flicker across Ostyia’s face. A heartbeat of doubt, sympathy. She wiped it away. She glanced up at where Katya rode. The tsarevna wasn’t listening anymore and probably hadn’t been since they’d started talking about Malachiasz.
She wasn’t naive about the doubts she had drawn up in the tsarevna because of how she felt about Malachiasz. But if he was alive, he wasn’t returning to her, so Nadya’s misstep in falling in love with him would eventually become nothing more than that. A mistake.
It sounded easy. It didn’t account for how she would suddenly realize she wanted to tell him something, only to remember he would never again shoot her a soft half-smile as he listened to her talk. She missed the quiet intensity he brought when he was arguing with her about utter trivialities. She had loved their arguments. He had, too.
She had to move on. This half-formed knowledge—this quiet secret that maybe he wasn’t dead—had to remain just that. For her to keep close to her heart but never set free. A caged bird.
She had fallen in love the wrong way with the wrong person. That was that. She had learned her lesson. She did not understand love.