Every head of Cvjetko is at odds with the other.
—The Books of Innokentiy
Chyrnog held Malachiasz in a grip so tight it felt as if his ribs were being crushed. He wanted to close his eyes. But instead he was forced to quietly wait as the village stirred, as the torches burning in the distance grew closer, as they prepared to face a monster.
Don’t do this. Let him flee into the darkness and have that be the end of it.
“Every death gives me strength,” Chyrnog replied, sounding amused.
They’re nothing. You get nothing from them.
“Simple fool, I get everything.”
I’m only one person. I can still be overpowered.
Chyrnog did not deign to respond. Because it didn’t matter. However many they set after Malachiasz, it would never be enough. He was an army in and unto itself.
He was too dangerous to live.
This would destroy him. The blood and the rending and the devastation. But it didn’t take long. They were mere mortals and Malachiasz was something so much more and so much worse. He didn’t know how many he cut through in the darkness. For each that fell, there was another wielding a rusty scythe. They tried, valiantly, but they weren’t enough. They would never be enough.
It was over before it truly began. Chyrnog let him go like a bored dog dropping a toy. He wanted to die. He needed to be stopped and he didn’t know that he could stop himself. He wasn’t strong enough.
This was his fault. So many things would not be shattered if only he had … stopped. Stopped when Izak asked for the power of a god. Stopped when he had run—the single moment where he had made the right choice.
He didn’t know how he was supposed to break out of this. How he was supposed to find the fragments of his soul that he had bartered away.
His respite did not last. Panic bore down on his chest, so fast and heavy that it took him a moment to realize it wasn’t his own. He filtered through the threads of magic he had flowing and realized it was one he hadn’t drawn on in some time.
What were his Vultures doing?
What had they done?
They were closer than he would have guessed; he had traveled farther than he thought. He was very close to Komyazalov. His Vultures were in Komyazalov?
Damn. He worked his way to his feet. He was covered with blood and surrounded by corpses. He closed his eyes as dizziness threatened to overtake him. None of these people deserved this fate.
He needed to move, to stop his Vultures before they died on the walls of Komyazalov. He didn’t know who was behind this—Rozá must have finally worked up the courage to fight against him. He’d kept his thread of power over them closed even as it had woken up alongside him. There was only so much he could focus on and Chyrnog was a more important issue.
Malachiasz reached for the threads that bound him to his Vultures. He’d told Serefin he needed to be in Tranavia to fix the fraying threads, and that was mostly true. In the Salt Mines his power over them would be at its highest, but desperation could force his hand to do great things. He threw his power into the threads and felt the trembles of those who had taken advantage of his absence.
He had to stop them. His Vultures were powerful, but this … whatever they were up against, was madness. But he was so tired. He wanted to sleep, only for a few minutes. Just a few. He lowered himself to the blood-slick floor of the hut and knew only darkness.
Nadya had to close her eyes against the crushing wave of despair that swept over her as she stood before the fallen god. The feeling of inevitability, of being so so small and utterly helpless. She took in a deep breath, Serefin close and Żywia at her side.
Żywia doubled over, holding her head. “Oh,” she gasped. “Malachiasz is angry.”
Nadya swallowed her heart down from where it leapt into her throat. She had other things to worry about.
He had the look of a dragon, Cvejtko. Well, Nadya considered, a dragon with three heads: a lion, a bear, and a wolf. He was horrifying to behold, but in a different way than the other fallen gods. Her brain glanced away from true comprehension, but it wanted so badly to rationalize. A shivering of horror—a thousand eyes—then gone. A shiver of razor teeth and screaming, gaping mouths, then gone. She staggered under the weight of knowing.
Żywia shook off whatever Malachiasz was doing and slammed into the god, all teeth and claws and wild black hair.
What’s the plan here? Nadya asked. How did the Vultures convince you to come here?
“Convince me?” Cvjetko sounded like three voices speaking at once. It was profoundly unsettling and immediately gave Nadya a headache. “Convince me? Hardly. All I had to do was whisper, to nudge, to convince these beasts this was what they desired.”
Serefin cast her a concerned glance before he very gently put his hands on her shoulders and pressed her to the ground. He crouched in front of her. Here, in the shadows of a burning building, they were momentarily safe.
Serefin opened his mouth but Nadya put her hand over his lips. His expression wearied as she shushed him absently.
“Let me talk to him,” she whispered.
“You don’t have much time,” Serefin said, staying with her. She almost told him to go. The Vultures who weren’t trying to kill him would need his help. But he was solid and strong and his hands on her shoulders were a grounding weight she would need. She wanted him there.
Why come here? she asked. What could we possibly have that’s of use to someone like you?
“Who are you, little bird?” One of Cvjetko’s heads began searching for her.
She didn’t even blink. He wasn’t the first god who had used the nickname for her, he wouldn’t be the last.
Daughter of darkness, daughter of death, she replied, suddenly realizing why the god was there. It was deceptively simple. You want to free Nyrokosha. It explained why the goddess had stirred, sensing freedom at hand. If Nadya wouldn’t free her, someone else would.
“You are clever! How novel! You smell different than the others, why is that?”
How condescending.
She wasn’t willing to set the goddess free. Not when they already had to stop Chyrnog. They couldn’t survive both. Why was this fallen god concerned with the fate of an old god when the others weren’t? Old alliances coming out to play?
She got to her feet. She needed to stop Cvjetko before he freed Nyrokosha. Serefin scrambled after her.
“What are you planning?”
“To kill a god,” she said flatly.
“But—”
“Use a god to kill a god.” Nadya plunged herself fully into the dark water.
Serefin stumbled back as Nadya ripped away some shield over her power. She was practically incandescent with magic. Her eyes, already dark, went shadowy, and her skin threaded with power like molten iron.
Żaneta thudded to the ground next to him, eyeing the cleric as she spat out blood. Nadya held out a hand, a bundle of discarded spears coming to hover next to her.
“That girl almost won the Rawalyk,” Żaneta observed blandly. “I suppose she would have made a visually impressive queen.”
“Żaneta, I’ve missed you,” Serefin replied.
“Ah, my idiot prince, I have not been conscious enough to miss you. Do we help?”
Cvjetko slammed a clawed paw down where Nadya was standing as she deftly stepped away, flicking her fingers and slamming a spear up into the hinge of his shoulder. The bear head roared. Serefin couldn’t move past the feeling of utter helplessness. This would crush them all.
“I think we’re more likely to get in her way.” He saw Katya nearing them and remembered her necklace of teeth. “Shift back,” he said, voice low.
Żaneta cast him a sidelong glance. “What?”
“The tsarevna is a Vulture hunter.”
Her eyes widened. Her claws were gone in the next instant, onyx eyes clearing to brown. Her teeth looked a little sharper than normal, but that could be explained away. She was Żaneta again, and though Katya would certainly know how a Tranavian got into her capital, Serefin hoped she would be distracted enough to let Żaneta go without notice.
The Vultures had been stopped by whatever Malachiasz had done, but this god, oh, this god was more than any of them were able to stop.
It was too much. It didn’t matter that Nadya was a creature of strange divinity, that she harbored power stolen from so many sources. Malachiasz, Marzenya, Zvezdan, who else would she take from before she finally had enough?
I suppose I could steal from this one, she considered, the thought strangely idle as she narrowly avoided the sharp teeth of the wolf’s jaws. Claws raked close to her flesh, each one large enough to tear her into pieces on its own.
She had walked the limits of her capabilities before. She could only press so far until she became no more than charred bones. She was still mortal.
“You could … not be, you know.” So many voices were speaking up and she had no idea who this was.
She shoved a spear into Cvjetko’s chest, rolling out of the way as a foot slammed down. Too close. She wasn’t fast enough.
“It would be so easy to take and take until you left this behind. Until there was nothing left. You were made to be one of us. All you have to do is keep going. Take his power. See what you become.”
Nadya had three spears left and there was so much blood pouring down Cvjetko’s strange body. She struck again; another blow landed.
He batted her away like a gnat and she slammed into a building hard enough that something cracked, all the wind knocked out of her. She lay on the ground, frantic heartbeats passing where there was no air in her lungs. A beat, another, another.
“Pathetic. You could be so much more.”
A gasping breath. She struggled to her feet, flinging out her power and finding the last two spears. Two more.
Cvjetko slammed her into the wall again. She was going to die. All that power and it would never be enough.
“All you have to do is reach a little further…”
She didn’t want to die like this. She gave in, pressing harder—
And grasped both spears with her power, slamming them up into the jaws of the lion and the bear. Blood rained down from the beast and she could feel the magic escaping the god as he crumpled inward, a supernova, a dead star. She could feed on it, let it carry her out of this pain.
All she had to do was reach.
As the death of a god yanked all the air away from the night, Serefin ran to pull a shivering Nadya away from the wreckage. Blood dripped from her mouth. Her eyes opened, pure white, her skin so hot he thought it was going to burn him.
Then she went limp.
Everything was quiet, eerie. Serefin’s arms trembled as he held Nadya, because he didn’t think they were going to make it. Because he was trying his very hardest to not take in the absolute devastation around them.
Żywia raked her hair back with a weary hand and turned toward where Serefin stood across the road. Or what was left of the road.
She stopped, her gaze meeting Serefin’s, and his stomach dropped. Her eyes weren’t seeing him, her expression lightly puzzled. The front of her shirt canted out in the strangest way, and Serefin realized the tip of a blade protruded from her chest.
“Wait,” he said. He would have dropped Nadya if she hadn’t woken up struggling. He set her on her feet, and she gasped.
“No!” She ran toward the Vulture girl as she fell.
The tsarevna stood behind her, face impassive. Serefin recognized the pale blade in her hands with intimate familiarity. He had forced it through his brother’s chest.
Serefin’s hand absently patted for the metal disc and nearly dropped it when his fingers burned. Malachiasz was here.
And Katya had killed his right hand.