They struck down Milyena and cast out Sofka. Innokentiy lost the voice of his god and Lev lost his voice. Who else would fall from the graces of the gods? Who else would be cast aside for a single misstep?
—The Letters of Włodzimierz
Serefin’s stomach roiled. The air here was heavy and suffocating. He felt bad Kacper had been forced to see the boneyard. He felt worse that they needed to enter the boneyard.
“Why?” Nadya asked, horrified.
“No questions.” Malachiasz—Chyrnog—was going to strike and they couldn’t fight an army. Serefin knew how to look at a battlefield and immediately understand what strategy would get the highest number of his soldiers out alive. Sacrifices would be made, but sacrifices were necessary in war.
Was this war? He supposed it was.
The climb down was arduous, but they managed it. Nadya kept close to Serefin’s side, aware he saw things she could not. But her time would come. The graveyard was shifting for her, rumbling at her presence. A new age was dawning, one that had been waiting for Nadya, the girl with darkness in her veins.
“Is he gone?” she asked softly.
They stood sheltered from the snow by what Serefin thought was a rib bone. It was so large to have lost its articulation completely. He eyed it before looking down at her.
“Yes.”
Agony cracked across her expression.
“Maybe he’s in there, buried deep, but…” Serefin shook his head. It was disturbing how Malachiasz still looked like Malachiasz. Maybe Chyrnog and he were too alike for it to have changed him.
“But not likely,” Nadya said. “The inevitable come to pass.”
Perhaps. Perhaps they were doomed to die in this place. Perhaps Pelageya had been coordinating their downfall since the beginning. Serefin didn’t believe that, not truly, but it was impossible to know.
“We have to find his soul,” she said.
“How are we supposed to do that without him? How do we know he doesn’t already have it? Or the god destroyed it?”
Nadya’s fist clenched. “Because that would mean we’ve failed.”
Żaneta stumbled into their group. That wasn’t ideal—if she could find them, so could the rest.
“I’m sorry,” she said, trembling. “I don’t know what happened. He was fine and then he was … not. And now the Tranavians are here and the Kalyazi army has mobilized and it’s going to be a massacre.”
She was bleeding from a messy head wound, and Serefin couldn’t tell if it was benign or serious. He almost joked that she must not have hit Malachiasz hard enough, instead motioning for someone to help her. Rashid rushed over.
“Why are they here?” Ostyia asked. But she knew, same as him.
The war had to end sometime. He just hadn’t expected the last stand to come like this.
Serefin exchanged a glance with Nadya. He was rather hoping she would know what to do next. Bile churned in his stomach and the whispers settling in the back of his mind reminded him terrifyingly of his time in Tzanelivki.
You wanted this, he said, accusatorily, to Velyos.
“I wanted my freedom. Chyrnog came with you wanting that Vulture dead.”
Well, that failed, didn’t it?
“Things don’t always work out as planned.”
But you’ll suffer, too, if he truly breaks free from Malachiasz, won’t you?
A long pause.
“You play in the realm of the gods, now. Go find your brother’s soul.”
Something landed at Serefin’s feet. An arrow. He stepped back behind the rib bone.
“Don’t you dare say we need to—” Kacper started.
“We need to split up,” Serefin said.
Kacper sighed.
Nadya looked nervous. The longer they stood there, the more she changed. That strange, shivery halo flickered around her, fractured and tainted. It had been mostly whole, a few fine cracks, when Serefin first saw it, but jagged knives had since punched through. Her left hand had sharpened claws curling outward. Her white-blond hair was in a single thick braid over her shoulder and when she spoke her teeth were strange and wrong. Serefin couldn’t shake the feeling that she would alter more the longer they were here. That he might, too.
“We’re not splitting up,” Katya said. “It’d be the forest all over again.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, dear, we’re right back in the thick of the divine nonsense that happened in the forest,” Serefin snapped.
A volley of arrows landed at their feet. They couldn’t stand here anymore. It was clear no one was actively trying to kill them, but a stray arrow could do the job just the same.
“Each minute we stand here arguing, Chyrnog gets closer to Malachiasz’s soul,” Nadya said softly. Her voice was weirdly tonal, like more than one person was speaking. When she looked up at Serefin, her dark eyes were shot with gold. He flinched. “He’s your brother, and you’re the one who can see this place as it is. When I try, I…” She faltered, falling quiet. “It’s better if you lead on.”
Serefin wanted to run. It was the comfortable choice. He loved Malachiasz, even after everything. He could admit finally that he loved his brother, but they were also racing headlong into disaster. This was doomed.
But he was no longer the boy who ran. He had one godstouched eye, a cloud of moths that followed his every step, and the voice of a god he didn’t particularly want rattling in his head. He wasn’t the same person who had staggered home from the front. Serefin was a king. Beaten and battered by magic, but a king, nonetheless.
He had helped start this nightmare; he had to help stop it, somehow.
And it would be better if they split up.
“If this place wanted us separated, it would do that itself,” Anna pointed out. The priestess had been quiet, and her voice came out sharp and unexpected.
She was right. It wasn’t the same here as the forest. If he turned away, everyone else wouldn’t disappear.
But this was a graveyard of the gods. Much worse could be lurking here, hiding among the pale white shards. The bones were too large to consider, so vast that sometimes they didn’t even register as bones, but as strange pale trees with no branches, smooth and eerie.
Nadya slipped her hand into his, jarring him. Her hands were freezing.
“We need to stay together,” she said quietly. “At the very least, us and Parj.”
Parijahan glanced over at her name. Right. The four. Pelageya’s strange omen. They couldn’t do much without Malachiasz.
One step at a time, he thought.
Where would Pelageya hide a soul? He took out the disc of metal tied to Malachiasz. The Kalyazi spellwork scrolled around the edges was structured in a way that was familiar, like blood magic. A lifetime ago he had found those spell books scrawled with Kalyazi prayers and wondered if the Kalyazi weren’t as devout as he had believed, and now he had more evidence of that very fact.
He supposed he was getting his answer.
“Blood has always been power,” Serefin murmured.
He gently pulled his hand away from Nadya’s, taking the blade from his belt, and with a nod, Kacper’s szitelki from the sheath at his hip, rolling up one sleeve, then the next.
He crouched, motioning for Nadya and Parijahan to do the same.
“Let’s start with those of us we know are wrapped up in this,” he said, his voice soft. “If we need more, we can get more.”
Nadya frowned. “Serefin, what—”
He flipped the blades, and in one swift motion sliced both his forearms at once. The initial rush of power that always came when he cast magic did not come. He missed it. This was slower, sluggish, building in intensity until something pulled steadily at his heart.
He flipped the blades again, wiping them deftly on his trousers, and started to hand them to Nadya, but she was already dragging her voryens across her forearms. Parijahan swiftly followed suit. The ground grew wet beneath them.
He let his blood seep into the earth, closing his eye, hoping the blood of the godstouched did something, anything, in this place of divine memory and death. He heard Nadya’s low intake of breath. When he opened his eye, a trail of flowers was sprouting, leading off into the bones.
“Do we follow it?” she asked.
He gave a nod and straightened. Nadya touched the bone nearest to them as she rose, staining it black. His gaze lingered on the imprint of her fingertips.
Serefin took the first step. Tiny bones snapped and crunched beneath their feet, not those of the gods, but of simple creatures who had stumbled into this terrible place and been found wanting. Bones of gods caged them in as they walked. A jawbone. A rib cage. A skull that took a significant amount of time to walk past.
Eventually, they arrived at the skeletal remains of a god, somehow intact, and in the center, where the god’s heart would have been, was a vast lake that Serefin was certain was made of blood. Little creeks like veins spread out from the lake. He stepped over one.
“Didn’t Pelageya say it was on an island?” he asked.
Nadya’s eyes closed. “In a tree in a rabbit in an egg or some nonsense. It’s from a children’s tale.”
“Well, we’re children.”
She laughed at that, which was good. Serefin didn’t think he could handle another Nadya meltdown. Seeing her crack scared him in a way that was hard to define because she had always been so unflappable.
“You’re twenty years old,” she said.
“Details.”
They reached the shore of the lake. There wasn’t sand, or if there was, it was the wrong color. Black and glittering. It would almost be pretty if it weren’t so macabre.
“For a country horrified when you get a paper cut, there sure are a lot of bloody pools here,” Kacper commented.
Katya crouched at the edge. “Truly, we’ve been in this long enough to realize Kalyazin has been overcompensating for something.”
Nadya snorted. Parijahan held her hand out over the water—well, it wasn’t water, but Serefin didn’t really want to think of it as anything else.
“We have to cross it,” Nadya said.
“You think this is the place?” Rashid asked.
“Do you have a boat?” Kacper asked.
She shot them both withering looks and moved closer, digging a heel into the sand. She narrowed her eyes at the water, plunging her hand in. Katya hastily shuffled back and Parijahan reached out as if to stop her. Kacper took a step forward, but Serefin put his hand across his chest.
“Let her,” he murmured. “We have to work on instinct here and it will lead us to strange places.”
Nadya’s eyes began to glow, cracks of golden light forming under her skin. Her strange halo shivered and grew brighter.
The ground shook. Serefin turned slightly, studying the path behind them. He couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched.
“Of course you’re being watched. The gods, the freed, the never caged, the old ones, we all watch. We wait to see how you will shift the world on its axis. If you will balance it or plunge it further into chaos.”
Did Pelageya start all of this?
Velyos laughed. “The witch? Pelageya has power enough to become a god if she wishes, but every day she turns away from that path. Pelageya is many things, but where you are is no more her fault than it is yours, or that cleric’s, or that Vulture’s. The world turns. Choices are made. Yes, I had hoped someone would set me free. Yes, I called to Pelageya to take the pendant and place it somewhere it might be used. Yes, she complied.”
So, it’s your fault, then.
“I have always been one for mischief,” Velyos replied.
This is a little more than mischief. You got what you wanted. You got your freedom and your revenge; what about this four songs nonsense? That was you, wasn’t it?
“Chyrnog has worked for far longer than I. He has been nudging the pieces of this game for a millennium and you have all complied exactly as he wished. Mortals are predictable. This isn’t revenge, this is simply his nature. His nature is to devour, to consume, this is simply what he knows. And he found in your brother a mortal made for the same.”
Pillars of dark stone began to lift up from the bloody water, forming a bridge that disappeared into the distance.
Nadya stood, the gold slowly siphoning away.
“The four songs? Yes, that was me. Chyrnog was always going to break free. Chyrnog was always going to need to be contained. That’s the way it has always been, but it has been so long since he last escaped that the world forgot him. You mortals thought if you no longer spoke of the terrors of the deep, they would be condemned to myth and no longer ravage the world. Alas, it’s not so easy. This was all inevitable.”
Inevitability is too Kalyazi a notion for me, Serefin replied.
“I didn’t choose Tranavians intentionally, but you have made this game so much more interesting, so I have to thank you for that.”
Serefin rolled his eye.
What about her?
Nadya wavered on her feet, turning to him. He took a step toward her as she hesitated.
“I’ve never seen anything like her. She makes things so much more unpredictable. Delightful, really.”
Serefin didn’t like the sound of that.
“She has their power in her bones, but it wasn’t enough to make her like them. Or, maybe it was.”
“What do you think we’re going to find?” Serefin asked aloud.
Nadya glanced over. “Whatever it is, it’s not going to be pretty,” she said simply, then set off across the bridge. Serefin let out a breathless, incredulous laugh, before jogging to catch up with her.
“How did you do this?” he asked.
“Magic. What else?”
Like no magic I’ve ever seen, he thought. He didn’t really understand what Nadya was, but apparently neither did the gods.
“Don’t mistake my not telling you things you did not ask for ignorance,” Velyos snipped. “She is what happens when the darkest divinity is harbored in a mortal. A girl, divine in one breath, monstrous in another. That she has survived this long is remarkable. And truly, the old gods must have something very specific in mind for her. Their voices should have driven her mad long ago.”
But she can hear the voices of the gods, that’s her whole thing.
“Yes, and no mortal should be able to stand as many voices as she does. Perhaps she isn’t as sane as assumed.”
Serefin frowned. He cast Nadya a glance, but her gaze was locked on the island they drew near.
“What if we didn’t make it here first?” Serefin whispered, as Nadya stepped off the bridge and onto the glassy black sands.
“Catastrophizing again?” Kacper asked, coming up behind him.
Serefin should have asked everyone else to wait on the other side of this strange water, but he was grateful for Kacper’s presence. Here, the beach broke into forests, dark in a way that terrified Serefin.
“Hypothetically speaking,” he said to Nadya, “the only place where the gods could walk in our realm was on that mountain, right?”
“Hypothetically, yes,” she replied, eyeing the forest with trepidation. “But this place doesn’t play by the rules either, so we shouldn’t count on being safe from that.”
Great.
“I’ll wait here,” Katya announced. “Hold the bridge if needed.” It was very clear that she simply did not want to go into the woods.
Serefin took the bone relic from his belt, holding it in his palm.
Nadya’s face paled. “I need that,” she whispered, taking it with trembling fingers.
Anna glanced at Nadya, who nodded slightly. The priestess sat down next to Katya.
Kacper grabbed Serefin’s hand. “No, you—”
Serefin cut Kacper off with a kiss.
“I’ll come back,” he murmured against Kacper’s lips. “I promise. I love you.”
Kacper’s expression cracked. He grabbed Serefin’s face and kissed him harder. “Don’t you dare make this sound like a goodbye. I love you, and you’re coming back to me.”
Ostyia took Kacper’s hand and tugged him away, directing a look at Serefin that said that if he didn’t come back, she would resurrect him to kill him herself. He’d missed having her around.
“Come along,” Parijahan said, stepping past Nadya and Serefin.
His breath caught. He had known Parijahan was as trapped in this as the rest of them, but he’d thought the visual cracks in their mortality wouldn’t extend to her. Nothing ever seemed to really touch her.
Her black hair was tied in a loose braid, but small triangular horns pressed out from her forehead. She glanced over her shoulder at them. Her gray eyes were gold, the pupils the wrong direction, slitted like a snake’s. She grinned.
“I want to save my friend,” she said brightly, setting off into the forest.
“She’s going to be the only one to make it out alive, I swear,” Nadya muttered, then ran after her.
It was too late to turn back, too late to run. And as much as he wanted to, as much as he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were walking directly into a naked blade, Serefin followed them anyway.