32
NADEZHDA
LAPTEVA
Svoyatova Serafima Zyomina: Little is known about Svoyatova Serafima Zyomina. Though a cleric, she was blessed with a strange magic that never seemed to work the same way twice. If one was an enemy, seeing her on a battlefield meant a slow and agonizing death, for she was a cleric of Marzenya and both were cruel.
—Vasiliev’s Book of Saints
The rain from the night before grew steadily worse, turning into a massive storm. Lightning flashed every few minutes, casting the sanctuary into stark black and white. It made the room feel violent, angry, a place of death—fitting for a king of monsters.
Malachiasz melded into his role seamlessly. He was wearing a hood in the shape of a vulture’s head. It shadowed half his face with its vicious beak. A cloak of black feathers fell heavy over his shoulders. He was flanked on either side by Vultures in banded iron masks that covered most of their faces. He sat on the throne in a way that was casual, comfortably arrogant. One leg was kicked over the armrest, his tattooed fingers steepled over his chest.
A boy made king of monsters for a kingdom of the damned.
Something itched in the back of Nadya’s head. A shifting. It was uncomfortable. Something had changed. She couldn’t put a name to it; she wrote it off as nerves.
When the king arrived he was flanked by only a few guards. Such blind trust in Malachiasz. Such desperation for a power so abominable.
Malachiasz pushed the hood back to hang over his shoulders. His nails were iron, held at a length just long enough to appear as visible claws. His eyes were rimmed with kohl and more gold beads were knotted into his long, black hair.
He looks like a king … Nadya realized, feeling her stomach drop. How had he fooled her into believing he was insignificant?
Feral and wild with his hair in braids and knots. A smile glinted at his mouth, his teeth iron, his incisors too sharp. A little further and those incisors would be fangs in his mouth.
Her heart pounded in her throat. She was wearing an intricate white mask of pearls and lace. Her hair woven into a complicated mess of braids. They had taken the glamour off her face and stripped her hair of the dye as well, and though she had long since stopped noticing Malachiasz’s magic on her skin, she could feel its absence. Her old voryens were strapped to her forearms, their solid weight a comfort.
Izak Meleski, the king of Tranavia, paused in front of Malachiasz’s Carrion Throne. He did not bow, but a smile stretched his lips.
“We heard rumors of the flight of one of your Vultures, Your Excellency,” the king said. “Imagine our surprise when the truth came to light!”
Nadya tensed at hearing an honorific from the king’s lips.
“Mere exaggerations,” Malachiasz said. “I did spend some time in Kalyazin for”—he paused, thinking—“academic purposes. I must offer my condolences, Your Majesty. His Highness was a testament to Tranavian magic; he will be missed.” Chaos and madness were carefully cultivated threads in his voice.
“What?” Nadya whispered; her hand reached out and landed on Rashid’s forearm.
He frowned, uncertainty apparent in his features.
Nadya felt as if she were scrambling for purchase amidst a landslide. No, they were supposed to save Serefin, not kill him. Malachiasz knew, he’d agreed. Letting Serefin fall to harm was putting the king one step closer to his goal.
What if that was his intention all along?
She watched Malachiasz, not the king as she should, searching for an indication that he hadn’t meant for Serefin to die. There was only the cool expression of a monster.
The king carefully folded his hands behind his back. Nadya noticed Żaneta at his side, looking pale and withdrawn. She didn’t see Ostyia or Kacper in the hall, either.
“Kalyazin will pay for the death of my son,” the king said, his voice wavering slightly.
Nadya exchanged a look of alarm with Rashid. It wasn’t possible.
“We will start with the Silver Court,” he continued, fist clenched. “And we will bring them to their knees.”
A sweeping sense of magic being used washed through the hall. Izak jerked his arm down. Lightning crashed outside, jolting the hall with erratic, frantic flashes. The magic was overwhelming, Nadya could taste it in the air, copper, blood. The thought of how much it would take to control the skies like that was … unimaginable.
Malachiasz looked up at the ceiling, his expression unconcerned. Then he smiled.
“So, it worked.” His voice contemplative, but still audible. “I wasn’t sure, you know. It had not been confirmed that using the blood of a powerful mage would heighten the process.”
No. Nadya’s blood froze in her veins. Parijahan’s eyes closed and she leaned back against a pillar. Rashid’s expression blackened.
“It feels little different to me,” the king said, razor-sharp.
“How are you to know what the power of gods feels like?” Malachiasz asked. “You have nothing to compare it to.”
“And you do?”
Malachiasz clasped his hands together. “Well, I was—how was it put?—the ultimate success of my cult before this. You got what I promised, did you not?”
A biting glint of iron teeth. A puppet master, pulling them all along with his honeyed words and panicked pleas for trust. Nadya watched from the shadows with narrowed eyes. They were supposed to let the king think he had won, but that had not meant giving him the power he so craved.
Nadya’s will to fight leaked out of her. Had Malachiasz done it anyway? Orchestrated blasphemy in an attempt to destroy her kingdom?
She hoped she was wrong. She had to be wrong.
Except the king needed Malachiasz to complete the ceremony. Which meant Malachiasz had done it willingly. Had he betrayed them? For what?
But as she watched him sitting on his throne made of skulls and bones, she saw him for what he always was. Tranavian to his core: merciless and beautifully cruel. She had been a fool to believe him. There had been so many signs she had so willfully ignored, choosing instead to put her faith in a monster.
What could the king do to the heavens with the power he now bore? If man-made magic had created the veil keeping the gods out from Tranavia, what could this do?
Nadya thought fast. If it was down to her to stop this, then so be it. She looked at Rashid, who appeared as confused as she felt.
“I don’t understand why,” he said under his breath.
She tugged the silver pendant over her neck and eyed the spiral; she wrapped the cord around her hand as she would her prayer beads. If all she had was a bloodthirsty forgotten god-that-was-not-a-god, it would have to do.
The king took Żaneta’s shoulder and pushed her closer to Malachiasz’s throne. She stumbled, falling at the Black Vulture’s feet.
Malachiasz leaned forward, tipping her face up with one iron claw. “You did wish to be queen,” he hissed. “The price of power is blood; it always has been. The price of becoming like a god? Well, that’s death.” He crooked his head, the movement off-putting in its fluidity. “But such disloyalty. Such fickle whims belong to those who dream of rising above their station to places they do not belong.” He trailed his iron claw down her cheek.
Her expression turned to horror.
His mouth tilted upward slightly at the corners. “Subtlety would have been better for a queen. Betrayal is a taint not so easily ignored. Can I tell you a secret?” His smile widened when she didn’t respond. “My order was built on betrayal. You’ll fit right in.”