He doesn’t think he’s ready for this, Nadya realized. He’s scared.
It was strange to see Serefin as a boy and not as the terrifying blood mage who had been whispered about throughout the monastery where she’d grown up. The monastery he had burned to the ground.
Ostyia touched his hand. “I’ll go,” she said, voice quiet.
Serefin nodded. She slipped out of the cathedral.
Parijahan picked up the chalice lying near the king. Nadya cringed away from it when she brought it near.
“I trusted him,” Parijahan whispered, her gray eyes misty. She met Nadya’s gaze, sympathy evident.
Me too. Worse, I think I loved him.
Without thinking, Nadya’s fingers closed over the stem, taking it from her. It was made of silver and glass. There was still blood pooling at the bottom. Her fingers absently glanced across the rim.
Everything felt murky and fog-like. As if they were all waking from a dream. It was clear Serefin felt the same.
Serefin still gripped the crown in his hands, fumbling with it, face puzzled and torn. He stood and took a step toward his father’s body, a flicker of pain passing over his features. Parijahan moved to stop him, a hand on his arm.
“Let me,” she said gently.
“The ring,” he said, relief cracking his voice.
Parijahan nodded and she moved to slide a heavy signet ring off the king’s hand. She handed it to him. He thanked her quietly, the ring in one hand, the crown in the other. He hesitated before slowly sliding the ring over the littlest finger of his right hand. The crown remained clutched in his hand.
Nadya nearly tried to contact the gods again, but something held her back. She’d never been afraid of the gods before. But after nearly losing everything, and after realizing her magic was something she possessed, not a thing given or taken away at the gods’ whim, she worried they wouldn’t treat her the same. She had doubted too much, gone against their will too many times. She had loved the wrong person.
But she still believed in them; her version of gods, not Malachiasz’s, and she dearly hoped that meant something. It didn’t mean she didn’t have questions—she had a thousand—but she was willing to ask them. But … maybe not yet.
Nadya sighed heavily. Serefin glanced over at her. He lifted a hand and the moth shifted over to land on the signet ring.
A boy who is mortal and maybe a little divine, Nadya thought. He held no belief in the gods, he was still a heretic, whatever had been done to him she doubted it had changed what he believed. He was still a blood mage.
He smiled at her, though, and she wondered if maybe that was all right.
“Will this be enough?” she asked him. “To stop the war?” Malachiasz was wrong, he had to be wrong.
Serefin twitched his hand and the moth flew away. “It will.”
epilogue
THE BLACK VULTURE
He didn’t know what it wanted.
The hunger. The raw, scraping need that had hollowed him out, clawed out the core of him and left him with nothing but wanting. There was no name for it, for what the hunger wanted. For the dissonance that rattled apart and reformed and created a cacophony of words and voices and too much too loud.
He knew where to go from here. A place to hide, to recoup, to plan. Pieces to be moved and taken away and brought forth. He needed to … he needed …
(He’d never expected to make it this far.)
(He’d never expected survival.)
What he needed didn’t matter; the darkness was clawing through him. He had so little time left. More time than expected.
(Being unmade was such unpleasant business.)
A point of clarity, insistent in its rhythmic return, battered against the corners of his awareness, a single note: regret.
Regret.
Regret washed away by the intoxicating thrill of power that was greater, that was more. Swept away with the last dregs of paltry weakness that tried to force him to look back, look back.
(There was no turning back.)
It grew greater, a vastness in the switch from human, barely, to something not.
Stone doors flew open before him, leading into a darkness so complete that walking down the steps toward it would be like ceasing to exist.
(How fitting.)
Lightly he touched a symbol, roughly hewn into the stone wall, that his hands had glanced upon so many times before.
Dimly, he considered how his enemies called this place hell on earth. This place where blood flowed too freely—unwillingly given.
His hand pressed into the stone, finding it sticky with fresh blood. He hesitated; a pressing thought needled at his heart, a reminder, a mantra.
He whispered to the darkness: “My name is…” He shook his head.
It was gone.
Once there was a boy who was shattered into pieces and put back together in the shape of a monster. Once there was a boy who clutched at the remnants of what he had left as it fell through his fingers. Once there was a boy who destroyed what little there was remaining because it wasn’t enough.
The boy was gone. The monster had swallowed the heart that beat in his chest.
He let the darkness take him.