Svoyatova Yulka Lokteva was led by a Vulture into their foul Salt Mines, hoping to sway just one. No one saw her again.
—Vasiliev’s Book of Saints
It wasn’t complete understanding. There was fear, confusion, bewilderment. Ultimately, though, there was quiet. Nadya didn’t cry as she told her story, she didn’t know if she could. She was far past feeling.
Anna had taken off her headscarf as the story went on. Her straight black hair had been chopped off just above her collarbones. She ran a hand through it before taking Nadya’s hand between hers, fingers tracking over the stained skin, the claws of her fingernails.
“Oh, Naden’ka,” she said, voice soft.
“It’s me,” Nadya said blankly. “I don’t know what I am, but…” She drew her hand back, flexing her fingers. An eye opened on the center of her palm. Anna gasped. Nadya swiftly pulled her glove back on.
“Does the tsarevna know?”
“Yes. But no one else can. The Matriarch cannot know. If she never learns I was here, it would be for the best.”
Anna nodded. “Those in the Church talk in whispers. There are omens everywhere. Signs of the end. Icons crying—”
“Mm,” Nadya assented. She dragged her chair to the doorway, standing on it to take the icon over the door off the wall. She carried it to Anna, her chair scraping behind her. It was Svoyatovi Viktoria Kholodova, and her icon was weeping tears of blood.
Anna reached for the icon, horror flickering over her face.
“The fallen gods have risen, and we cannot look to our gods for help,” Nadya said. “We’re on our own.”
“Not only the fallen gods,” Anna said.
Nadya straightened. She took the icon from Anna, setting it on the side table. Dread was a feeling that had settled deep in her bones, almost ordinary, but it spiked at Anna’s words.
Nadya pressed out tentatively, slowly, searching for what she had been ignoring since the mountains. The thing that had bled all the color out of the world and was eating at the trees like black decay. She couldn’t live from day to day with that feeling, even though it existed at the edges of her awareness.
A hunger that wanted to devour the world. To feed and feed and feed until there was nothing left. That would bleed out the sun and plunge the world in darkness.
“There have been whispers,” Anna continued, “of his followers rising out of the shadows. There are … people with magic, power, but not like yours, and not like blood magic. It’s something else, different, and those people have two fates before them: be captured by the Church or be Chyrnog’s followers.”
Nadya’s eyes opened. Anna’s expression was gray.
“People who … wake with magic. They’re called the Quiet Sinners. I—the Church—I…” Anna closed her eyes. “They are executed. Quickly. Better for them to die in sin than be taken by Chyrnog’s followers.”
“To what end? Why do Chyrnog’s followers want them?”
Anna shook her head. “I don’t know. But the way their power manifests is … strange.”
Nadya thought of flowers sprouting from Rashid’s arms. He already had magic but what if the flowers were something else? He’d said that was new.
The bleakness in Anna’s voice was telling, though. It sounded like her friend had found the same disillusionment that had struck Nadya.
“The church leaders are frightened,” Anna said. “This isn’t a threat they know how to face because it’s the thing we were supposed to be staying with our faith. If we remained faithful, magic would never become tainted. Haven’t we done right by the gods? Haven’t we fought this war for them? What have we done wrong that they allow one who would destroy the world to rise? There were prophecies, once, about how the end of the world would come, but they were never like this. The end of the world in the Divine Codex is nothing like this. What did we do?”
Nadya stared at her friend, the blood draining from her face. It was her. She had set this into motion.
And she couldn’t let anyone know.
It was presumptuous, and she’d received an odd look when she’d flagged down a servant and asked, but the next morning Katya flounced into Nadya’s rooms dressed in leggings and a fine crimson kosovortka. Her black hair was in unbrushed wild curls and one of her dogs was with her, Nadya had no idea which, though it was much calmer this time, curling up at the foot of Katya’s chair as she sat down.
“You’ve avoided talking to me since the mountains, so I assume this is important,” Katya said.
There was another knock on Nadya’s door. She frowned.
“Oh, I had Nina fetch us some tea, that’s all.”
Nadya let in the girl, who set the tray of cups and samovar on the table and departed.
“Seems a little light for you,” she noted.
“The sun just came up,” Katya replied. “Give me a few hours before I get into my cups.”
“You are much like Serefin in that way.”
Katya lifted an eyebrow. She sighed and tilted her head.
“He was at the front far longer than me, and at a much younger age. I was mostly kept from harm, but I did a few months out there, and what you see … never really goes away. The drinking dulls the memories, some.”
“Do you like him?”
Katya took a moment to consider. “I’m fond of Serefin.”
“But you like Ostyia.” Nadya wasn’t one to tease Katya, so it came out of nowhere, and Katya blushed.
“This is absolutely not why you called me here at the crack of dawn,” she said, her voice strained.
“I need someone to talk to who will know about this,” Nadya said with a sigh, tugging off her glove. She showed Katya the eye at the center.
Katya’s face paled. “The Matriarch—”
“Not the Matriarch.”
The tsarevna took a long sip of her tea, eyeing Nadya’s hand. It was quiet in the room for a long time. Nadya could hear the palace slowly coming to life outside her window. Katya stared up at the ceiling, clearly puzzling through things.
“Gods. He was right, wasn’t he?”
“I have found Malachiasz did not make a habit of being wrong.”
Katya tapped the arm of her chair.
“Katya. I know we don’t see eye to eye. You find me suspicious. Though, frankly, me traveling with the Black Vulture was about as weird as you traveling with the King of Tranavia. I’m not the cleric that was promised, and for that, I’m sorry, but this is bigger than the war and you know it.”
“It’s not that I find you suspicious, darling, it’s that you’re so damn stubborn and unwilling to work with me,” Katya said, with the light drawl of someone avoiding Nadya’s point. “And I don’t think you’re going to turn Kalyazin over to the Tranavians you love so much; you certainly proved your loyalties on that mountain.”
Nadya flinched. “Anna told me about the Quiet Sinners.”
Katya groaned.
“Katya…”
“I’m not going to defend the Church.”
“I know. Just, please, tell Viktor to keep an eye on Rashid.”
Nadya didn’t miss the way the tsarevna’s eyes widened. “Oh.” She was quiet before continuing. “Viktor isn’t nearly as devout as he wanted you to believe. He’ll be trustworthy.”
Trustworthy. That was what this was now. They had to figure out who they could trust. Because it wasn’t the Church she had once loved so much. If they knew what she was, they would kill her.
“How did you learn about the fallen gods? And the old gods? I know you know, Katya. What the decay means, what the forests moving past their borders means. It’s all going to end. Everything is going to end. Who can we talk to?”
“Pelageya.”
“Someone else,” Nadya groaned. “We don’t have the time to hunt her down.” Nadya picked the icon up off the table and handed it to Katya, who took it with a frown. “How long until the other icons in this palace are the same? The longer I’m here, the more likely it is to happen, and then no number of lies will hide what I am.”
“You’re a monster,” Katya whispered. She wasn’t leveling an accusation; it was a statement of the truth.
“It depends how you look at it, I suppose.”
“But you didn’t set the old god free.”
“No, but someone did. I don’t know if it was Serefin, or Malachiasz, or someone else entirely.”
“Even the old gods cannot work without a vessel.”
“How do we know he doesn’t have one? The cultists, the sects dedicated to these gods, how do we know that he hasn’t claimed one of them? Or someone who has had power awakened in them? Katya. I need to know what I am. I cannot stop him if I don’t get answers.”
“I don’t know if you can stop him at all.”