A low, pained moan broke past her lips as she tried to shift off the slab. Her head spun; she had lost far too much blood.
She moved herself gingerly off the slab, wincing as her legs were sliced open at every movement. Her feet landed on cold stone, but her knees buckled the instant she tried to put weight on them. She bit back a cry, snapping her teeth down on a fist, instantly breaking the skin of her hand. Iron heat filled her mouth and she coughed, spitting blood.
She pushed herself up off the ground and felt in the dark for a way out, a door, anything. Even if it was locked, she would feel less like she had ceased to exist. She had become nothing but the blood slicking the floor and blinding pain.
She couldn’t help the whimper of relief when her hand landed on a doorknob. She rattled it, though it was useless. It was fastened tight. Another surge of panic threatened to ruin her. She was starting to see things creeping out of the darkness. Things with nails for teeth and razor smiles.
She turned away from the dark and pressed her forehead against the door. The wood was cool and let her refocus before she tried to reach for the gods again.
The door to the heavens remained closed.
Anguish and a rage too fluid to fully define washed through her and she wanted to scream. She reached for the prayer beads she did not have and found nothing but Kostya’s necklace. She yanked it over her head and threw it across the room. She heard it hit the wall with a feeble, metallic clang.
“This isn’t fair!” she cried, to no one and to nothing because she was alone. Entirely alone in the kingdom of her enemies. Her best hadn’t mattered.
“I have only ever done what was asked of me,” she said, her voice feeble and broken. She leaned back against the door and slowly slid to the ground, ignoring the wrenching agony that followed, the blood that she could still feel dripping down the backs of her legs.
The veil had been uncomfortable, stifling, but she could always hear Marzenya’s voice if she reached. This was different. This was purposeful and had nothing to do with Tranavia’s machinations.
A line in a history book would half-heartedly mention the cleric who had tried to save Kalyazin but only managed to be forsaken by the gods. There would be no canonization after death for Nadya, just a quiet passing of the cleric who had failed.
She clenched a fist, ignoring the pain, only to cause more blood to slide down her wrist from her sliced-up palm.
Please don’t let this end here. If she cried out with everything left within her would she get an answer? Or would she have nothing but the ashes of the only thing that had ever made her life worth living? Zhalyusta, Marzenya, eya kalyecti, eya otrecyalli, holen milena.
Her plea went unanswered. Nadya was dropping into despair when something flickered at the corner of her vision. Nothing more than her addled mind playing tricks on her.
But the light grew stronger. Nadya frowned and slowly crawled to the other side of the room, fingers reaching blindly until they closed over Kostya’s necklace. The spiral at the center was giving off a low light.
Some gods require blood.
She swallowed hard. Taking the pendant in her fist, she let the blood soaking her hands drip into the ridges.
She held it closer to her face, peering at the soft, almost eerie light.
“You deserve to know the truth about the beings that chose you.” Nadya startled at the unfamiliar voice chiming in her head. It was speaking in holy speech and usually she didn’t understand the tongue without the gods’ blessing.
Nadya inhaled sharply, hit with a sudden barrage of images. The wave of pain that slammed into her nearly knocked her out.
Creatures with knotted joints like the whorls of a tree, faces enshrouded in fog, four eyes, six, ten. Beings with eyes on their fingertips, mouths at their joints. Iron teeth, iron claws, iron eyes.
One after another after another. Sinuous wings, feathered wings black as tar. Eyes of light, of darkness. And blood. So much blood.
Because that’s just it. It was always, always blood.
Feeling sick, Nadya dropped the necklace. The images stopped. She was panting, fighting for air.
She tentatively reached out for the voice again, only to be met with silence. She wasn’t used to silence in her own mind. When she picked up the necklace again, she was careful to not touch the spiral ridges but apparently any contact was enough. When the cool silver touched against her skin all her senses were flooded with white light. Purity with rivulets of blood staining it all. It fell in tiny droplets, from her fingertips, off her arms. There was nothing but the blinding white and the blood.
What is this? What are you?
“Does that matter?”
She was surprised when the voice—unusually high, like reed pipes—responded.
Are you … one of the gods? There were gods she had never spoken to, was this one?
There was a long silence, leaving Nadya suspended in the blood-soaked white space. She was vaguely aware her pain was only a dim buzz now. It surrounded her like a fog, barely noticeable.
Then: “Once upon a time, yes.”
And once upon a time that answer would have terrified Nadya. A few short weeks ago, the girl in a monastery who believed so wholly in her gods and her cause would have looked upon this with horror, disbelief. She would have written it off as hallucinatory heretical magic. But now …
Now she had allowed herself to doubt. Now she was tired. Now she had been forsaken and abandoned. She sat down, crossing her legs underneath her, conscious of the floor wet with blood beneath her. There was nothing left to do but hope for answers.
How does one become something that is no longer a god?
“How does a human girl become something divine and feared by the gods that gave her the power she wields?”
Nadya frowned, puzzled. I think you’re mistaken.
“Mistakes are not things I generally make,” the voice replied.
Where am I? What do you want? The being never answered her first question, but she held back asking again in hope she would receive some answers.
“Where you are is as irrelevant as it is immaterial. What I want is better answered by the question of what you want.”
Can I see you?
“You do not want to.”
Nadya flipped the pendant between her fingers. It had come with her. Had she been carrying this being around her neck all this time? Where had Kostya—of all people—found this? Why had he given it to her?
What … did she want?
“You have it already,” the voice said from behind her. When she turned there was nothing but the white and the blood. “But you don’t realize it. So long spent under the thumb of the pantheon has tainted your understanding.”
Tainted? Nadya asked, feeling sick. Whatever this was, whatever this being wanted, would only lead to danger. But what option did she even have?
“You think they can take your power away from you?”
Nadya grew cold.
They can. They gave me this power; they can take it at their will.
“That is incorrect.” The voice sounded amused.
Nadya trembled. Her vision blurred, shifting back to darkness before being flooded with white once more.
“Our time together grows short. You must make a choice, little bird. Do you continue on with your wings clipped or do you fly?”
Darkness plunged back around Nadya—abrupt and severe—as the necklace slipped out of her hands and pain crashed back down onto her.