Nadya thumbed at her necklace, searching for the god of truth—Vaclav’s—bead. She was bewildered when Vaclav confirmed that all three were being truthful with her. Even the Tranavian.
“None of this explains him,” Nadya said, pointing to Malachiasz.
“I’m an enigma,” Malachiasz replied archly. “There were rumors about you, towy dżimyka, on both sides of the war. The Kalyazi cleric come to save the country from the Tranavian scourge.”
A chill cut through Nadya. She couldn’t tell if he was goading her or not.
“What are you saying?”
“Tranavia knows you exist, clearly, why else would the High Prince himself—prodigy tactician of the war—attack a monastery in a location that provides no strategic advantage? And if Tranavia knows, then all of Kalyazin knows as well.”
There was something else he was saying and it took Nadya longer than she would have liked to catch up.
“You three are here … because of me?”
“Doesn’t that make you feel important?”
He was mocking her again. She sighed.
“We followed the rumors to this area, yes,” Parijahan said. “I didn’t think anything would come of them, but here you are.”
Nadya knew divine intervention when she saw it, but something still felt wrong. There was a path she was supposed to walk and this wasn’t it. Working with a heretic wasn’t it. It couldn’t be.
She ran her spoon around the now empty bowl. “I need time to consider this, to … pray. Do you have a plan for getting into Tranavia?”
“You can’t be serious,” Anna said.
“What choice is there?” Nadya retorted.
“They don’t have a plan,” Malachiasz answered, cutting off Rashid before he had a chance to reply. He closed his spell book with a loud snap. “Go pray,” he said to Nadya, putting the full weight of his loathing on the word pray. “Ask your gods to accomplish the impossible.”
* * *
A pathway led through the trees to the remains of a small stone altar. All that was left was a bench and a carving of a purposefully ambiguous figure meant to portray Alena. It was calm outside, early morning light flickering through the empty tree branches, striking the carving so that it drew the sunlight into itself. Nadya settled herself down cross-legged on the bench.
She tugged her necklace over her head, rubbing her fingers over the beads. She needed to refocus, to work through the trauma of losing her home and her friends. She only felt blank when she thought about the monastery, about Kostya. Where would she be when the agony of losing everything finally caught up with her; would she be in a place where she could handle it?
She had spent too many sleepless nights wishing she had some small part of her parents to hold on to. All she had was the knowledge her mother had always possessed that her daughter was touched by the gods. Her mother had shown up nine months pregnant on the monastery steps, staying only long enough to give Nadya her name before she was gone, so Father Alexei always told her.
Lapteva wasn’t even an uncommon surname. It was everywhere. It wasn’t until Nadya was fourteen when she realized no family was returning for her, that her fate lay within the monastery walls and nowhere else. The abbot was the closest thing to a father she would ever have.
Thinking about Father Alexei made her heart ache. He was dead now, along with everyone else she had known and loved. Kind Marina with her warm laugh, who would smuggle Nadya probov—flat, but tasty, flour cakes—when no one was looking. Dour but talented storyteller Lev, who could spin fables and legends that always made Nadya fear to go to bed at night.
One evening, he told her a story about a Tranavian monster known as Kashyvhes who drank blood and controlled victims with its mind. While she was walking through the dark halls of the monastery to her chambers that night, Kostya had jumped out of a closet. She punched him so hard he had to go to Ionna, the healer, for a split lip.
Now they were gone, and the monastery was empty. Its golden relics gutted and icons defaced. The altar probably lay shattered, the statues of saints had likely lost their heads and their hands. All that beauty—holiness—desecrated for the sake of magic and blood.
But she couldn’t force the feelings and so she sat with an empty heart and a blank mind and waited to see if her gods would talk to her. This time she was alone.
Ask the gods to do the impossible. The arrogance, Nadya thought. She wasn’t convinced they could do it, but if Malachiasz was right, there was nowhere for her to go. Maybe she should take that as a sign and accept that circumstance was forcing her into this situation that could very well end in disaster.
She was walking back to the church when she spied Malachiasz slipping through the trees. Curious, she followed, pulling at her prayer beads. She had only taken a few steps when he stopped. Her hand immediately dropped to her voryen.
“Are you going to put one of your pretty blades into my heart, towy dżimyka?”
“I’d like to,” she said. “Why do you call me that?”
He turned to face her, one hand lifting to rest against the spell book strapped to his hip. “What am I supposed to call you?”
She still hadn’t told them her name. She didn’t know why it felt important to keep it to herself; why she felt like giving this boy her name would be giving him more than he deserved. Maybe she was just being irrational.
“Nadezhda Lapteva,” she said, then added, “Nadya.”
Malachiasz looked almost relieved, but Nadya was probably just imagining things. He nodded.
“Well then, Nadya, please, you are welcome to join me.”
Her eyes narrowed. “So you can take me back into the woods and murder me?”
“You were following me,” he pointed out.
Heat rushed to her face.
He smiled, then turned to go. “We’re not enemies, Nadya.”
“Not right now, you mean.”
He paused, glanced back at her, then nodded. “You have nothing to fear from me.”
Yet. Nadya heard it in his tone, even if he didn’t mean it—even if he never meant it. He was a Tranavian mage and they were enemies by default.
She followed him.
The trees were thick in this stretch of the mountains and even with their leafless, snow-covered boughs it was hard to see through them. All was quiet except for the crackle of ice underneath their feet. Nadya was trying to figure out just where they were going when Malachiasz held out a hand, stopping her. He pressed a finger to his lips.
They had stopped at a high point on an overhang where the mountainside cut off precariously. Malachiasz shifted to the edge, dropping down into the snow. Nadya hesitated, then moved beside him.
It took her a second to parse out what she was seeing below, and when she did she nearly shot back to her feet and fled.
Malachiasz clamped his hand down on her shoulder, pressing her down into the snow. She froze like a startled rabbit; the only defense mechanism she had left. His fingers tensed against her, a pressure that maybe was supposed to be reassuring. He pulled his hand away.
He had led her straight to the High Prince.
Malachiasz leaned close to Nadya and she tensed as he tipped his face down to hers, lips at her ear.
“My magic will be felt the moment I use it.” His voice was a low murmur. “They won’t feel yours.”