I’ll defect. They cannot keep me here, I have always been their toy, their pawn, their weapon. Veceslav cannot hold me where I do not wish to remain. The gods are not nearly as powerful as they claim to be. The Tranavians, not so wrong, after all.
—Fragment from the personal journals of Celestyna Privalova
Warmth played across Serefin’s skin. He frowned, dimly aware he was waking, but not enough to open his eye.
“He’s breathing, at least.”
He knew that voice.
“And the others?”
A sigh. “Breathing, but comatose. I don’t know. It’s been weeks. They might be gone. I don’t know what they did.”
“Let me know if anything changes, please.”
“Of course.”
The sound of a door closing. The feeling of someone taking his hand.
“Your eye is twitching, which is more than I’ve been getting from you.” Kacper. “Maybe you’re still in there. I hope so. I miss you. Also, I cannot keep these moths from chewing through the bedding and Katya’s servants are going to murder me.”
It was the urge to laugh that knocked him through the wall holding him back. He stirred. He heard Kacper’s sharp intake of breath.
“Serefin?”
It took monumental effort to open his eye, but he did.
Kacper’s breath left him in a rush. “Serefin.”
Then he was being kissed and it was all very overwhelming, and he didn’t think he was really in a state to be kissing, but that didn’t deter Kacper who moved right on to kissing the scars on Serefin’s face.
“I shouldn’t’ve done that.” Kacper leaned back. “You need space, sorry. I’m sorry. Serefin, I’m so glad you’re all right.”
Serefin didn’t know if he was. The last thing he remembered was losing Malachiasz, feeling Chyrnog consume him totally.
He closed his eye.
“Give me a moment,” he said, his voice scratchy from disuse.
Kacper took his hand. He was freezing, suddenly. Had he died again?
“Who were you talking to?” he asked without opening his eye.
“Katya. I should tell her you’re awake.”
“Don’t leave!” Panic clutched at Serefin’s chest. There was nothing and nothing and nothing. He had lost something to Chyrnog—what? He was scared that he didn’t know.
“All right,” Kacper said softly. “You’re the first to wake up, but … I think you were the one outside of Chyrnog’s path, at the end.”
Tears welled in his eye. The feeling of everything being torn away from him as Chyrnog ate and ate and ate was much too close.
“What happened?”
“You four … did it. At least, I think. I don’t know. There’s a rift in that place now. It’s terrifying. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of whatever will come out of that.”
Serefin made a soft sound of assent. Kacper brushed his hair away from his face.
“Żaneta and Katya killed Nyrokosha. She’s warmed up to the Vulture.”
“Where are we?”
“Somewhere on the outskirts of Komyazalov. Katya has been trying to talk to her father, but it hasn’t been going particularly well. It sounds like the tsar refuses to talk while your status is up in the air like it is, but … if we can get Żaneta home and Ruminski off the throne, there’s a chance, I think.”
Serefin couldn’t be hearing this. “What?” He turned his head, looking Kacper more fully in the face. “What?”
Kacper only nodded. “It might be over soon? I can’t hope. I know what those talks will be like and we have to deal with Tranavia first, but we might be nearly there.”
“Come here, please.”
Kacper climbed into the bed next to him. With some effort, Serefin turned, pressing his forehead against Kacper’s.
“You’re saying ridiculous things,” he murmured.
“I know.”
“I think I died in a field outside Komyazalov.”
“No one really knows what happened. You and the others have been unconscious for weeks.”
Serefin’s hand found Kacper’s. He felt strangely empty inside and it was terrifying. What had changed?
Where was Velyos?
If he called, there was no reedy voice to answer. What … what had they done?
Kacper leaned closer, kissing him gently. “Let’s go home, Serefin.”
The manor they were staying in was, Katya assured them, just out of the way enough that no one was going to come looking for them. Serefin was trying to plot his return to Grazyk and trying his very hardest not to panic.
Ostyia sat down next to him at a table in a dusty, underused study. She leaned her head against his shoulder.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” he said. It wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have.
“I know.”
They both knew what needed to be addressed. They knew each other too well to continue dancing around it.
“You can stay here, with her, if that’s what you want.”
She took in a sharp breath. It wasn’t what she was expecting.
He glanced at her and she was staring at the mess of papers and maps in front of him, her blue eye glassy. “You’ve been by my side for so long. I can’t hold you there forever.”
“The thought of a country between me and you and Kacper is unbearable,” she said softly. “But, blood and bone, I like her so much.”
“Have you talked to her? About staying?”
Ostyia sighed. “She’s Katya, which means she told me to stay and to go in the same breath.”
Serefin nodded thoughtfully. “What if you stay? It doesn’t have to be forever.”
“You need help. You’re going to go depose Ruminski quite dramatically and I cannot miss the look on his face when it happens.”
Serefin laughed. Ostyia groaned, rubbing her hands over her face.
“This is the worst. What are Nadya and Malachiasz going to do?”
“Well, assuming they ever wake up, that’s a conversation they’re going to have, too. I don’t really know what they’ll decide.”
Ostyia frowned.
“I don’t want to push you to return with me, but what if you do until we get this peace treaty into something that’s real, and then you can come and go as you please?”
She considered that. “It doesn’t feel like we could possibly ever get to that point.”
“Well, I’m going to try.”
“He’s being stubborn.”
Katya poured them both overfull cups of wine and slid one to Serefin.
“My father is inclined to believe the claims Ruminski is making about your competency.”
“We kept his entire country from falling down around his ears.”
“Tranavia also brought an army here,” Katya pointed out. “And we haven’t even discovered how much damage Chyrnog did to the countryside yet. It’s not good, Serefin.”
He couldn’t really deny it. He sighed, pressing at his forehead. His head hurt.
“It’s not hopeless,” Katya said softly. “It’s just going to take time.”
“Time that will waste more lives at the front,” Serefin replied.
He appreciated that she was trying, he did. But he wanted to do something. He wanted to go home, frankly. Maybe that was the next step.
“I need some kind of assurance that if I go home and deal with Ruminski, your father won’t immediately forget that he ever entertained the idea of a peace treaty,” Serefin said.
“The entire country almost fell and we’re risking invasion from the north any day,” Katya said. “I’ve been trying to pull troops back from the front to head north for months and no one listens to me.”
Serefin frowned.
“The Aecii Empire hasn’t had a century of war to hold it back,” Katya said. “They’ve been eyeing us for years.” She went quiet for a long moment. “My father isn’t well, Serefin. He hasn’t been for a long time. I don’t know how much longer he has left. If we can come to an agreement soon, then I want that dearly, but if we need to wait until public opinion settles and I have the throne…”
“I cannot let the front continue as it is,” Serefin said.
She nodded. “Understood. So, we press on. There’s also the matter of your brother.”
“Leave him.”
“Serefin.”
“Katya, we would all be dead if not for him.”
“Thousands are dead because of him.”
“A moral quandary we’re going to have to accept. Tranavia is unstable. I need the security of knowing the Vultures are under control and I will not have that if he doesn’t return with me.”
“You and I, we get along, but if he ever makes another move like he has in the past year, I will send all the finest assassins in Kalyazin to take him down.”
“And ruin the blossoming friendship between our countries?” Serefin very much doubted Kalyazi assassins would so much as faze Malachiasz.
“Don’t fool yourself, Serefin. We’re in for long hard years of being hated for compromising.”
That they were.
“I’m willing to risk the tension to rid the world of someone like him if necessary,” Katya continued.
“I need some kind of assurance from you that your gods aren’t going to burn down Tranavia.”
“You don’t have blood magic anymore.”
Serefin didn’t respond to that. Malachiasz would put his mind to it the moment they were home. Maybe it would never come back, but Malachiasz would certainly try.
“That wasn’t an assurance.”
“Talk to Nadezhda about that. We’re about to deal with an upheaval in the Church, so I believe we’ll be too busy for our heretical neighbors.”
That would have to do. He didn’t know how much further this conversation could go, what with his authority not being recognized by Kalyazin and Katya having no true authority. They were in the same spot they had been in when they met in that Kalyazi village.
But there was hope. Sure, it would be a mess wrenching his throne back from Ruminski. Żaneta had agreed to go against her father in whatever capacity was necessary, and the man would not go down without a fight.
He would go down, though. Serefin was done running. Serefin had a country to rule.