There’s no way to stop this. The gods never cared for us, not truly, and I feel as if all I can do is watch as Innokentiy and Sofka descend further into madness looking for a solution that doesn’t exist. We’ve been left to our fate. Our gods are not stronger than the ones who have awoken.
—Passage from the personal journals of Milyena Shishova
They chained Malachiasz up. Serefin wasn’t sure that would hold him, but it was what they had. Nadya returned with Serefin to the village where they dealt with what little was left in silence. Serefin pretended not to notice the tears tracking down Nadya’s cheeks.
They returned to the stronghold to find Malachiasz awake and struggling. Katya eyed him dispassionately. She held out a hand when Parijahan tried to go calm him down.
“You cannot stop the inevitable,” Malachiasz said, a dark void in his voice. “It’s already begun. I’m going to kill every last one of you.”
Nadya took in a sharp breath. He noticed her, and his demeanor changed completely. Eyes, still murky but sharper, widening, his shoulders dropping. He struggled against the chains, but it was less about escaping and more about getting close to Nadya.
“Nadya? Nadezhda, towy dżimyka, my love, please, this isn’t the way to stop him.”
Serefin put a hand on her arm. She glanced at him before her gaze returned to Malachiasz.
“Cover his mouth,” she said.
For a split second, Serefin worried that this was another twisting of another knife. He eyed Nadya, trying to gauge what was happening, who he was supposed to be helping.
“Nadya?” Malachiasz’s voice was small and bleak.
Her eyes flickered closed. She waved a hand to Katya.
“N-Nadya, please, I’m not—this isn’t—Nadya, this is me.”
“Then you know why I’m doing this, Malachiasz,” she replied. Her eyes narrowed slightly, and she reared back, staring. “Gag him.”
“Nadya!”
Katya did so, with a little too much enthusiasm.
“We need to leave,” Nadya said.
They got Malachiasz on a horse, which did not appreciate having the Vulture dumped on his back. Malachiasz had simmered down from wide-eyed panic to a kind of cold fury that, frankly, Serefin found terrifying. Nadya seemed unconcerned.
“I need to know how you’re so confident about this,” Serefin said to her.
They left in a hurry. Malachiasz snapping was the sign that they were out of time. This had to end, and fast.
“When Malachiasz is himself, hearing his own name makes him twitch,” she said.
Serefin frowned. “What?”
“You’ve never noticed?”
He couldn’t say he had. “You might be a bit more observant of my brother’s finer quirks than I.”
“He heard his name without so much as blinking.”
Serefin couldn’t help but sigh. “I don’t understand.”
“He and Chyrnog are the same,” Nadya said softly, her words chilling Serefin to his core.
He glanced over his shoulder to where Malachiasz was along for the ride, Parijahan nearby and anxiously trying to calm his chaos.
Malachiasz stared at the back of Nadya’s head with murderous intent. For a bizarrely chivalrous heartbeat, Serefin wanted to protect Nadya, but quickly realized that if—or, perhaps, when—those two went after each other, he would want to be far away.
“How do we move forward?”
“Go to this graveyard. Find his soul. Hope it’s enough to get him back so we can bind Chyrnog.”
He cast her a sidelong glance. “You don’t think it will be.”
She was quiet for a long time, clearly struggling. “I think that’s up to him.”
Serefin winced. They both knew what that meant. “If we survive this … he’s never going to be better, is he?”
“That’s up to him as well. I doubt it. But if we survive—gods, Serefin, what a horrifyingly big if—and he has us still … Maybe. I don’t know. I mean, he’ll always be an ass.”
Serefin laughed softly.
“But,” she continued, “I think it would be naive of us to act like he’s helping for any other reason than self-preservation.”
The handful of days spent in the safe house had been protecting them from more than Serefin had realized. The air outside felt … bad. He didn’t know how else to describe it. The horses they rode were consistently on edge, which made for a deeply unpleasant journey.
Nadya existed in a state of constantly looking like she was about to throw up. If anyone asked her if she was all right, she would wave them off. She had taken a headscarf from Anna and tied it around her hair, a band covering her forehead, temple rings swinging at the sides of her face.
The first day was rough. Snow fell the entire time and the roads were almost impossible to cross. At one point their only option was crossing a frozen river or tracking west to a bridge that would take them dangerously near Komyazalov. Nadya had simply dismounted, taken her horse’s reins, and begun the tense trek across the ice.
“I hate that girl, sometimes,” Kacper muttered, dismounting. “I hate Kalyazin. I hate all this snow.”
Serefin laughed. He dismounted, grabbed Kacper, and kissed him.
“What was that for?”
“We’re going to a divine graveyard where we will probably die and you’re complaining about the snow.”
“Yes, well, that all sounds impossible. I can’t complain about the impossible.”
“Think of the stories you can tell your siblings back home.”
Something flickered over Kacper’s face. “I don’t know if they would want to listen.”
Serefin frowned but Kacper grinned.
“If we die here, at least I’ll never need to have the wildly uncomfortable conversation that would be telling my family I got involved with the king!” he continued cheerfully.
Ah.
Sometimes it was easier to think of the small, inconsequential battles they could be fighting, instead of the ones they were about to face.
“I’ll take off my signet ring when I meet them, then I’m just Serefin,” he said.
Kacper laughed and shot him a sad smile. “I wish that was all that was needed.”
It was only a few more days of travel but moving through the snow was a struggle until the path cleared from the east. It was bewildering to see the tamped down snow, until Serefin realized what it meant.
“The army. We found our Tranavians,” he said, feeling profoundly miserable.
“What are they doing, Serefin?” Katya asked, her voice level and low.
“It’s Ruminski,” Serefin replied. “He’s not a strategist. This is … suicide.” He scanned the fields. They were moving toward Komyazalov. Blood and bone. Judging from the size of the cleared area, this wasn’t an army large enough to engage in a successful attack on Komyazalov.
Ruminski was desperate. Ruminski was a fool.
Ruminski, Serefin considered, had no blood magic. So, what else was he supposed to do?
Anything but this.
“What do we do?” Anna asked.
Serefin didn’t think they could do anything. They had a more important battle to win. “We keep going.”