He wanted to ask what she meant. He was fascinated by this backwater slavhka with her strangely soft words, but a stately Akolan girl stepped up to her side, whispering in her ear.
Józefina lifted her head, her smile like a knife’s edge. “Apparently I have a duel to see to.”
“Good luck, then,” he said. “I’ll be watching.”
She was ushered away and Serefin returned to his friends. Żaneta straightened when he sat down next to her.
“So?”
“You have competition, darling.”
Żaneta wrinkled her nose. “Really? She seems so … soft.”
“You know better than to hold being from Łaszczów against her,” Serefin scolded.
She rolled her eyes. “Well, if she dies in an hour, then it won’t matter at all, will it?”
NADEZHDA
LAPTEVA
Malachiasz had found Parijahan and Nadya in the courtyard just outside the arena. He looked tired. She could relate.
“This certainly wasn’t part of the plan,” he noted sarcastically.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Nadya muttered. She had heard enough from Parijahan already. Slip through under the guise of perfect mediocrity, indeed.
She let the noise from the crowd in the arena filter out as she fixed the belts on her hips strapping down Malachiasz’s spell book. It was so strange. All this time and energy spent on such a trivial affair when there was a war happening and people were starving, dying. It was just a game to them.
She was wearing the white leather mask again, and though it stifled, she took comfort in the anonymity. She was nothing but a name; a lesser noble from a forgotten city in Tranavia.
She heard her false name read to the crowd: Józefina Zelenska from Łaszczów, a blood mage of no military rank. Inconsequential. Insignificant by all standards. My name is Nadezhda Lapteva, she thought. I am from the monastery in the Baikkle Mountains. I am a cleric of the divine. I am here to kill the king and end this war.
She would bring this country to its knees.
Nadya let her fingers brush against the razor sewn into the sleeve of her shirt. She was wearing tight black trousers, high boots reaching up to her knees, and a loose-fitting white blouse with sleeves that constricted her forearms.
The gods were distant and Nadya would have the added difficulty of being forced to pretend to cast magic like a blood mage. The seed of fear she had been ignoring up until this point finally grew into something that threatened to topple her. She could barely feel the gods. How had she expected to do this—be anything—with the gods so far out of reach? What was she without them? Just a peasant girl who grew up in a monastery. A girl who would die for believing she was anything more than that.
20
NADEZHDA
LAPTEVA
The goddess of the hunt, Devonya, is known for her kindness to mortals, for her interest in their odd ways. She loves to grant them unusual talents in her name.
—Codex of the Divine, 17:24
My magic doesn’t feel right. That was the first thought to cross Nadya’s mind as the girl across the arena cut her arm and power whipped through the air like crossbow bolts. In comparison her magic felt weak, as if she was reaching through mud to grasp at mere threads. Her prayers were answered by magic only, no words, no touch of the gods. Just raw spells, cold power, and nothing more.
She slid the back of her hand over the razor in her sleeve, wincing as it cut, forgetting she wasn’t supposed to react. Blood mages didn’t react.
The girl—Felicíja—tossed a glass bottle onto the arena floor and poison sprayed out in an arc in front of her.
It got on Nadya’s clothes and the fabric sizzled as it burned. She fought the urge to brush the droplets off.
She let ice form at her fingertips, grasping for Marzenya’s power because she could form it to look the most like blood magic. The goddess was distant, her touch far away. Nadya’s prayers felt like nothing more than pleas to empty air.
Then power. Claws of ice on her fingers shot off her hands. She didn’t have time to see if they landed as she tore pages out of the spell book and crumpled them in a bloody fist.
She slammed the pages onto the ground and drew a circle of flames up from the dirt. The flames sparked underneath her boots and surrounded Felicíja. The girl staggered back as flames caught up her split skirt. She snarled, her fingers yanking out pages of her spell book.
Nadya was struck by a bolt of magic that sent her staggering back to the edge of the arena.
This isn’t working. Using the spell book and pulling at threads of power at the same time was slowing her down. She had to end this fast or everything would unravel.
She raked bloody claws of ice over a spell book page, realizing seconds later it hadn’t been blank. Panic slammed into her chest.
The flow of power she channeled shifted and became something dark.
This power was not hers to use. It wasn’t hers at all.
She had no word for it but wrong. It was the only word running through her head. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
Seething and black and powerful—so powerful—and in a different way than her magic was powerful because where hers was clarity this was madness.
There was something else, too. A needling that Nadya realized was a spell Felicíja was attempting to cast on her, but it felt so weak by comparison that she barely noticed. Felicíja tried again, and again, tearing out page after page, but her spells were only glimmers, bare brushes of magic against Nadya and this power that tore through her, threatening to rip her apart.
Blood dripped down her nose. She had to get rid of the magic. The taste of copper bloomed in her mouth. She spat, pressing a hand against her chest because her heartbeat felt erratic.
She exhaled and let go of the magic. It shot out from her fingertips like bolts of lightning. One struck Felicíja, the crack of thunder reverberating through the arena. The girl went down.
For a tense second, Nadya was sure she’d killed her. Instantaneously. But the girl got back up, a szitelka in her hand and fury warping her face. Blood dripped from a wound in her side and was smeared across her face.
Gods, please stay down. Nadya grimaced. Echoes of the darkness rattled in her head. She drew her own blades.
She blocked Felicíja’s strike, catching her blade on the hilt of the other girl’s szitelka and using the leverage to pull her closer. She lashed out with her second blade but Felicíja twisted out of the way.
Recovering, Nadya twisted the hilt of her blade and yanked down. The szitelka was pulled from Felicíja’s grasp and she staggered forward. Nadya caught the girl underneath her chin with her foot, snapping her head back and knocking her off her feet.
As the girl moved to rise, Nadya slammed the szitelka onto her hand, pinning her to the dirt.
Everything was too quiet. Too aware of the audience, Nadya hesitated, her other szitelka loose in her grip.
I don’t want to kill her.
The only reason this fight had worked in Nadya’s favor was because of magic that had not been hers. It could have so easily been Nadya on the ground, Felicíja contemplating the killing blow.
Felicíja lifted herself up on her arm, glaring at Nadya. She didn’t deserve to die here, with an audience, like an animal. And Nadya wasn’t going to be the reason for her death. She wasn’t going to perpetuate this Tranavian bloodlust.