“Deranged?”
“Abomination is too biased a word. You have to stay objective in history.”
“That’s not even remotely true. Are you going to sit here all night? Someone is going to wonder where I am.”
She was fairly certain the world had begun to spin around her in addition to her already dizzy head. She held a hand out in front of her face and squinted at it. She was seeing far too many hands.
“Are you in shock, Nadya?”
She squinted up at him. “Is that what this is? You lose a lot of blood and you’re perfectly fine. I lose a lot of blood and I go into shock? How is that at all fair?”
He laughed. She grinned through her pain-filled haze. She liked the sound of his laugh. She held her hands out to him. He could at least help her stand.
As she rose, everything spun so hard around her she only had enough time to shift her footing so Malachiasz could catch her when she fainted.
* * *
Nadya woke for the third time that day, but this time it was on a chaise that smelled of mildew. There were bandages wrapped tightly around her torso and limbs. Her tattered dress had been replaced with a simple one of gray wool. She sat up slowly, every inch of her protesting.
“Ah, she awakens,” a voice said from across the room. “Good, it was growing awkward with this Vulture here. Never did like his kind.”
Malachiasz made an affronted sound.
Nadya rubbed at her eyes. “How long was I out?”
“Not long, not long at all.”
The witch looked to be in her seventies. Her eyes sparked onyx bright in the dim light of the room. Her face was lined, her curls white but threaded with black.
Nadya met Malachiasz’s eyes from where he was sitting across the room. He smiled faintly, but seemed preoccupied.
“Do you know my name, child?” the witch said. “Because I know yours and that doesn’t seem fair.”
Nadya stiffened. “H-how do you know my name?”
She waved a hand. “My name is Pelageya, in case you weren’t aware. I know his name, too,” she said, hooking a thumb in Malachiasz’s direction. “Which is the true feat.”
Malachiasz tensed, but he didn’t move from his seemingly relaxed posture. His gaze grew wary as he eyed the witch.
Nadya frowned, puzzled.
“It’s been a long time since I was in Kalyazin, but I recognize a girl of snow and forest well enough even with dark magic’s touch upon her. And this palace has been without any blessing of the divine for so long that you were practically shining when you stepped inside. But…” she trailed off, peering closely at Nadya. “Not enough light to guide you now.”
Pelageya grinned. “What if I provide some illumination for this dark path? You came to the right place, though I’m surprised your Vulture brought you here. I’ll tell you a story.” The witch promptly sat down on the floor. “A story about our king and a young prodigy Vulture.”
Nadya looked up in time to see Malachiasz’s fingers curl into a fist.
“Though,” she considered, tugging at a spiral curl, “he’s not your king. Not mine, either. He’s not even sterevyani bolen’s king, now, is he? Is it treason if we all here swear to different crowns? Except…” Her gaze narrowed on Malachiasz. “You can’t really swear to your own crown, now can you?”
“Careful…” he murmured. He flexed his hand over the arm of his chair, nails flashing iron in the dim candlelight.
Pelageya smiled.
“You see, our Tranavian king has become a paranoid man, certain that because his son is a more powerful mage, it will spell his doom. So he needs more power, always more power.
“And amidst the Vultures was one who rose through the ranks at such a very young age. More clever than most and more dangerous by far, he spent his time with ancient books and old tomes and discovered the very secret the king was looking for.”
Nadya felt a chill of dread settle in the pit of her stomach. Malachiasz leaned his chin on his hand, listening intently.
“So, he offered it to the king. It was theoretical, of course, nothing that could ever actually be done. But the idea was there and this talented Vulture wanted his cult to be on better terms with the Tranavian king. The Vulture queen who ruled before him did a poor job, you see. She ground the order down to near insignificance and this talented Vulture wanted his order to have power again. He wanted a partnership of equals between the crowns. Perhaps he even wanted something in return for this gift, but who could say? But then the king asked him to perform this theoretical ceremony. Surely, he could do it. He was the ultimate success of his cult, the one whose power had been tortured into him to a higher point than even the oldest Vultures ever reached. If anyone could do this, he could.”
Pelageya giggled. “Can one have a crisis of conscience if one has no conscience to begin with?”
Malachiasz leaned back in his chair, gaze flicking to Nadya and away again.
“The Vulture disappeared. Poof! There one night, gone the next, leaving his cult to scramble in his absence. Because the Vultures need direction, they need their Black Vulture to lead them, and he had vanished.”
Nadya was listening at a distance, refusing to let the witch’s words catch up to her, to connect all that she was hearing, but she knew, she knew. Would that it had been so simple, that Malachiasz were just a Vulture recruit who got scared and fled. The world was falling out from underneath her and she had no anchor, she had nothing, because nothing was even real.
It was Malachiasz. It had always been Malachiasz. The leader of the cult, the one who had spun all of this into motion, the one who had smiled and charmed his way into Nadya’s trust because he could do terrible things with her power if he had access to it. She wouldn’t be sitting here with bandages covering her body if not for Malachiasz.
“But he fled?” Nadya asked. If she pretended the one they were speaking of wasn’t sitting in front of them, listening in calm contemplation, maybe that would make this easier.
“He did,” Pelageya said. “But he came back. Do you think that is coincidence? That this clever boy and his clever magic have returned now?”
“Malachiasz?” Nadya said, her voice smaller than she would have liked, weaker. She willed him to look at her.
He looked different, sitting in the witch’s chair in a way that made it seem almost a throne. His black hair parted far on the right side, falling over his shoulder in inky waves, his pale eyes cold and blank. Less a boy, more a monster. Was that all he was? The silly boy who smiled too much and felt too deeply just a mask for the monster underneath?
Had she fallen for his lies exactly as he wanted her to?
He finally met her gaze, eyes softening, growing familiar. “It’s all right, towy dżimyka,” he said, voice soft.
It wasn’t. Not at all.
Pelageya laughed. “Is that supposed to make her feel better?” She stood up, walking around Malachiasz’s chair. “Is that supposed to earn her trust again?” She hooked a finger underneath his chin, forcing his gaze up to hers. She looked young. Nadya didn’t know when the shift had happened but knew the witch was a force of nature. A magic just as old and dangerous as either of them possessed, made worse by the wisdom of her years. “What have you done, Chelvyanik Sterevyani?” she whispered. “What will you still do? I don’t think love is such a force that it will stop you. I’m not sure you’re even capable of it.”