Nadya let her head fall back against the ground. Żywia scrambled off and she sat up.
“Not here,” Nadya said, standing.
The Vulture eyed her warily as she held out her hand. Nadya didn’t know what she was doing anymore, but she had done enough to Tranavia, anything more was baseless cruelty. Malachiasz was Żywia’s friend and she had to tell her that he was gone. Just punishment.
The Vulture took her hand, iron claws slowly receding. Nadya hauled her to her feet and turned her in the direction of the forest. “Go,” she whispered. “I’ll meet you shortly.” After she disappeared into the trees, Nadya woke Rashid to take watch and slipped away when he wasn’t looking. She didn’t doubt that he was aware of her leaving.
The forest around her was a terrifying, suffocating darkness that pressed down at her chest. She wasn’t entirely sure how far Żywia had gone until something rustled in branches above her.
“Taking high ground really isn’t necessary,” Nadya said. “I’m not going to harm you.”
Żywia slid on the branch she was perched on until she was hanging upside down in front of Nadya. “I don’t trust you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
A trickle of blood dripped down the Vulture’s face, starting from the corner of her mouth. Could she use magic still? What did wrenching blood magic away from Tranavia mean for the Vultures, who were made of magic?
“Something broke in the air,” Żywia said, her voice holding the chaotic note of wrongness that came whenever the Vultures were closer to monster than person. “Something broke and our Black Vulture is gone. You’d better talk fast, little cleric, because I’m not feeling particularly kind and I would very much like to kill you.”
Nadya lifted her chin. She couldn’t crumble at every mention of him. “Your Tranavian king killed his brother,” she said.
Żywia frowned, head tilting, before understanding sparked in her eyes. She closed them for a heartbeat. “Of course they are.”
“They had the same eyes,” Nadya mused, unable to hide the tremor of fear in her voice as she waited for the Vulture to react fully.
Żywia pressed her hands to her temples, still hanging. “How did it happen?”
“He was stabbed in the heart with a relic.”
The Vulture frowned. Her eyes opened and she stared at Nadya for a long time. She carefully cut a line down the back of her hand with an iron claw. Nadya tried not to wince.
“That is impossible,” Żywia said.
I wish. But did she? There had been no other way for this to end. No matter how strongly her heart was pulled to him; he had been everything she was born to destroy, and so she had.
“I know you Vultures are functionally immortal—”
Żywia scoffed. Nadya ignored her.
She could still feel the warmth of his bloody fingers against her lips. “He’s dead, Żywia.” Her voice cracked. The Vulture’s eyes flew open at the sound.
Nadya only had seconds to react as the Vulture struck. She moved fast, shooting to her feet and away right as the Vulture snapped. Żywia whirled, crouched, baring her rows and rows of iron teeth. Nadya swallowed hard. She wasn’t so lucky a second time, Żywia slamming into her and throwing her to the ground.
She raked her corrupted hand against Żywia, and the Vulture hissed, immediately scrambling back, a pained whimper escaping her. Nadya watched in horror as her torn flesh rippled. Eyes flickered open and closed along her arm. She slammed a hand over the cuts, staring at Nadya wide-eyed.
“What are you?”
Nadya shook her head slowly. She clenched her hand into a fist, her claws digging into her palm, blood trickling between her fingers.
A series of sluggishly bleeding cuts raked down Żywia’s arm from her shoulder, but no more eyes. What had that been?
“It doesn’t make sense,” she murmured. “That’s not how we die.”
Nadya didn’t know how to kill a Vulture, but dying from a relic wound made sense to her. “What’s happening with the Vultures?”
Żywia glared, a shiver of anxiety cracking through her. For all the Vultures had been twisted into monsters they were still painfully human. Żywia shook her head. “Why should I tell you?”
“Because we’re past this war deciding our fates,” Nadya replied, wishing she could say she had tried to save Malachiasz. Wishing she had.
Żywia lifted her chin and Nadya recognized something in her expression that cut down to her bones. A girl, grieving. What had he done to trap so many under his spell that their lives were so altered by his death? It seemed wrong, that so terrible a boy could leave behind so much hurt.
“Another turning of the war is on the horizon,” Żywia finally said. “I won’t be able to stop it. I don’t know if I want to. The Vultures have always rested tenuously at the edge of chaos and now—”
There was noise from the direction of the camp. Nadya stood.
“Get out of here. There’s Voldah Gorovni in our group.”
Żywia gave her a dirty look. “Of course there are.”
Nadya sighed. It was useless explaining that she had nothing to do with Katya’s presence. None of it mattered.
Żywia eyed the cuts on her arm dubiously. Then she glanced from Nadya to her corrupted hand before disappearing into the darkness.
Nadya tugged at the end of her braid, chewing on her lower lip. Divinity twisted mortal flesh—but Vultures weren’t entirely mortal, so what was that?
She was no better than the Vultures she had spent her life thinking were abominations.
Katya stepped through the trees, her hand on the hilt of her sword. “You shouldn’t be out here,” she said.
“I can handle whatever these woods spit out,” Nadya replied wearily.
“Even so,” Katya said softly. She was looking at Nadya’s hand with narrowed eyes.
Maybe Malachiasz was right and her hand was a product of corrupted divinity, an allowance of a taste when she had freed Velyos. That night she had set free a part of herself she never would have known had she not bled for power and treated in heresy. She’d found the dark water in a place where she never should have trespassed. When she considered all the pieces of herself that were different, wrong, they all came from pushing back at the structures of her life that had been presented as immutable truth.
If only she knew what to do with those revelations.
“If I go to Komyazalov, can you guarantee me your protection?” Nadya asked. She was too cautious to think she would have another Brother Ivan in her future. The Matriarch and the capital city would not be so kind toward her transgressions.
“Why would you need that?” Katya asked.
Nadya shot her a dry look. “Don’t pretend. I’m not the cleric that was promised to Kalyazin. I’m not the one to stop this chaos.”
If anything, I’ve made it so much worse.
Katya scoffed. “You’ve stripped heretic magic from the world—”
“And caused the death of a god.”
“—and the death of the worst Black Vulture we’ve ever known.”
Nadya flinched.
Katya was oblivious. “The Vulture killed Marzenya and he’s dead.”
But he killed her with my help. She was sick of being lied to, controlled. She’d wanted out from underneath Marzenya’s thumb.