“Nadya—”
“No,” she snapped, cutting him off. She stood up, clutching her voryen. She pointed it at him. “Give me a reason not to kill you.”
“You would be dead if not for me?” he offered, looking up at her, squinting at the glare from the sun off the snow.
“Not good enough. You would be dead if not for me.”
He nodded, allowing that. She pressed the tip of her knife underneath his chin, tilting his head back farther.
“What I just did was heresy,” she said softly.
“Was it worth it?” he asked, sounding curious.
Of course it wasn’t worth it. Every breath more he spent alive Nadya was disobeying her goddess. They had saved each other but it didn’t mean she should let him live. It was her duty to rid the world of monsters like him. She moved to press the blade against his neck, cut his artery and be done with him. His hand landed over hers, fingers digging into the spaces between hers. His pale blue eyes met her dark brown. He didn’t struggle, instead he bared his throat farther to her blade.
“You could do a lot with blood like mine,” he murmured. “That’s always the first step, you know. Spilling the blood is the hard part. Using it is easy. Using your blood was enlightening; that’s quite a power you have. It could be greater, if you had mine as well.”
Revulsion charged through her body and she pulled back. “What are you?”
Malachiasz shrugged. She watched as he stood, unnerved by how much taller he was than her. Her head only just came to his shoulder. She’d liked it better when he was at her feet.
He took a step closer; she forced herself to hold her ground. Then his hand—anxious tremors gone—was underneath her chin, directing her gaze up to his. She couldn’t help feeling the chill of iron nails graze her flesh, even as his hand was steady and warm against her cold skin. He studied her face and all feelings of distaste quieted as she studied him in return, trying to piece together what it was that kept staying her hand. His dark tangle of thick hair that he had pushed away from his face was caked with blood and snow and made him look all the more feral. A curiosity she couldn’t quite name took root within her. Here was the very thing she had been taught her entire life was an abomination—and he was very much the worst kind of abomination—but he was also just … a boy.
A boy whose hand was still on her face. She fought between wanting to wrench away and resting her face against his palm because it was warm and she was so very cold.
“Nadezhda Lapteva,” he said contemplatively. When he shared his own name, she couldn’t help feeling as if he were pulling her under into some dark depth from which she would never escape. It was a similar feeling now.
But it was only a feeling.
“What?” she said irritably, upset with herself for whatever this was, and with him for acting strange after she had just watched him turn into a monster.
“You could be exactly what these countries need to stop their fighting,” he said. He dropped his hand and she was colder for its absence. “Or you could rip them apart at the seams.”
11
SEREFIN
MELESKI
Svoyatovi Valentin Rostov: A cleric of Myesta, Rostov infiltrated Tranavia at the beginning of the holy war, utilizing his goddess’s powers of deception. For years, Rostov fed information back to Kalyazin, until a Tranavian prince who suspected him of using magic other than heretical blood magic poisoned him.
—Vasiliev’s Book of Saints
Serefin hated when he had to admit Ostyia was right, but he woke the next morning with a hangover to compete with all others. To her credit, she wordlessly handed him a waterskin as they left and her smile was only slightly sly.
“How much of a fool did I make of myself last night?” he asked once the inn was out of sight.
“You promised Felicíja Krywicka the entire western reaches as a wedding gift,” Kacper said.
Serefin’s eyes narrowed. The prior evening was hazy but he was fairly certain that was a lie.
“It was fine,” Ostyia said. “You were a little too Serefin at times, but overall, no harm done.”
“Blood and bone, not my true face,” Serefin said, mock horrified.
“While you were talking to Felicíja, Krywicki mentioned he was in Grazyk a month ago and was alarmed by how many Vultures were skulking through the palace,” Kacper said.
Serefin straightened in his saddle. “Did he say anything else?”
Kacper nodded. “The Vultures are recruiting at a fast pace, as if they’re preparing for something.”
“We know that Vultures are taken to the Salt Mines when they’re instated,” Ostyia mused. “And we’ve been sending a lot of Kalyazi prisoners there the past few months.”
Serefin felt a shiver creep up his spine. They were still missing something.
Sunlight glittered off the deep blue of the lake, nearly blinding Serefin if he looked at it directly. Grazyk was a port city by Lake Hańcza, open to many channels and wide rivers that eventually flowed into the sea.
Boats floated lazily near the docks. Serefin wondered if anything was ever done about the pirates preying on Tranavian ships as they met the open waters. It had become enough of a problem to garner his father’s attention, but that was before Serefin left. A port city in the middle of the kingdom. Sometimes it felt like Tranavia was more water than land.
There would be a string of small villages to pass through before they finally reached the city. Those always smelled foul and looked worse, what with the beaten shacks only barely holding together and racks upon racks of fish drying out in the sun.
Serefin watched a young woman cross the street, two buckets attached to a rod over her shoulders. They were full of water and moving, live fish. Her clothes were tattered, her skirts ragged and dirty at the hem. A small boy ran up to her from where he had been sitting in the doorway of a house with shutters that hung on single hinges. He pulled on one of the buckets, knocking her off balance. She was laughing as she set them down and reached inside, pulling a fish out and showing it to the boy.
The war was running Tranavia into the ground. Kalyazi villages were in a similar state, but he didn’t care about starving Kalyazi villagers; he cared about starving Tranavians.
When they were nearly at the city, Ostyia spurred her horse to a gallop to reach the gates first so the guards would be prepared for the High Prince’s arrival.
“Well,” Serefin said softly, “so it begins.”
“Cheer up, Serefin,” Kacper said. “It won’t be too bad. You just have to do some groveling and lying and then you can stab your old man in the back and be done with it.”
Serefin tamped down his paranoia. He shoved it out of his head, pushed his empty spell book into his pack where it wouldn’t be noticed—an empty spell book on a prince was considered disgraceful—and prepared to face his fate.
* * *
Grazyk was the most opulent city in Tranavia, built long before the war, when Tranavia was at its peak in wealth, and the fashion was color and light and gold. Serefin didn’t think gold ever went out of fashion, but it was certainly too expensive now to line doorways and molding with golden bricks and gold inlaid wood. A few of those buildings still stood, a testament to when Tranavia was not so poor. Most had been destroyed long ago for the paltry wealth that could be sucked from their foundations.