“What does Malachiasz have to do with this?”
Pelageya leaned forward over the skull. “Everything, dear princeling.”
“King,” Serefin murmured.
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m the king now,” he said, fingers running across the hammered iron crown that rested over his hair. It still felt like a mistake had been made and he had been given something that did not belong to him. He supposed no one truly believed it did. All he wanted was to prove the throne was rightfully his—even if he had to prove it to himself along with his nobility.
Pelageya nodded but he couldn’t shake the feeling that she was unconvinced, her gaze drawn to his left eye. He lifted a hand to it self-consciously.
“She knows.”
Serefin chewed on the inside of his mouth to keep from reacting to the reedy voice.
“Black and gold and red and gray. Vultures and moths and blood, always blood. A boy born in a gilded hall and a boy born in darkness. Bred in bitterness and bred in lies. Change your place; change your name. Nothing for it, it’s a mirror, you see. The blood’s the same, the darkness more cloying on one, but a mirror, you look to find yourself and find the one you are terrified of becoming. Two thrones, two kings, two boys to plunge this world into darkness for the sake of saving it.”
A shudder wracked Serefin’s body. He regretted coming here alone. He wished Kacper’s steadying hand was against his shoulder, pulling him away yet again from the incoherent ravings of the witch.
“What are you talking about?” Serefin said, voice low.
“Hide and forget. Hide and remember. You hide from the truth, basking in the lie of a family deceitful from the start. He hides under magic that has burned away remembrance of what he used to be. One day, both will remember, and what will happen then?”
“Remember what?” Serefin’s nerves were fraying further.
Pelageya stared off into the middle distance, pale fingers stroking the top of the skull.
“Should I tell you a story, dear king of moths, king of blood, king of horrors?”
“Yes.” The word escaped in a whisper before he could stop it and he flinched. He desperately wanted to flee whatever revelation was about to drop.
“A story about two sisters from the lake country. A story about a girl who married a prince she disliked who became a king she hated. The girl became a woman who bore a son she did not understand but loved anyway. But it wasn’t enough. And she would seek oblivion far from the husband she detested. A second son, of the dark, hidden away and born of masked passion and lies.”
“No…” he murmured, shaking his head. “No.” The walls began to close in around him, everything growing black at the edges.
“Tranavians make it so easy!” Pelageya said, delighted. “Oh no, no, you see, this boy belongs to the sister, not the woman, they said! Hide him in a twisted truth and no one will suspect! Send him away to Tranavia’s high order and no one will remember he was anything other than a dispensable slavhka! Burn his bones and shatter his body and it won’t matter who he came from. Make a weapon; make a king.”
She’s lying, Serefin thought frantically, yet he knew—somehow, deep down in his core, in that place that kept Malachiasz in his thoughts long after he was gone—she wasn’t. Maybe that was why it hurt so much when Malachiasz had opened the door to Pelageya’s tower and his sharp-toothed smile had no recognition in it.
“Where is your brother, dear king? Where did the Black Vulture go?”
The word brother hit Serefin like a punch to the chest. “How do you know?” Serefin asked, voice strained.
Pelageya cackled. “You ask as if you have doubts. But you know, you know, the blood is the same.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Why now? When all he had was a simmering hatred that burned for the Black Vulture because he had died because of him. Because of Malachiasz. His brother.
“Who else would tell you?” she asked. “Certainly not your mother.”
Serefin shivered. How much did his mother know of Malachiasz’s fate? How is any of this even possible?
Pelageya’s pitch-dark eyes tracked the moths fluttering around Serefin’s head. “That,” she said, “is an interesting development. Has he spoken to you yet? I’m sure he has. Whispers, though, only whispers because you are Tranavian and thus so very difficult to break. You are not the one he wanted.”
Pelageya tilted her head and stood, moving to the heavy curtains that cloaked everything in darkness. She drew them back, flooding the room with blinding light.
“The creeping shadows slither from the dark; retribution falls from the sky,” she murmured. “You have time, but fast it slips. And slip away it will. Things are set into motion and you must see if you will stand or fall.”
Serefin struggled to his feet, his limbs finally free. This was more than he wanted. He didn’t care if there was more to be said. Pelageya turned from the window, giving him a wry smile.
He fled.
* * *
Serefin crashed into his mother’s rooms, ignoring the protests from her maidservant.
“I’m her son,” he snapped as she bustled after him, muttering about decorum. He found his mother in her sitting room and slammed the door in the maid’s face. A glass vase near the door wobbled precariously.
Klarysa looked up from her book, glancing pointedly at the door, and to the vase.
“When were you going to tell me?” Serefin asked, surprised at his level voice.
“You are going to have to be a great deal more specific, my dear,” she said, oblivious to his distress. She held out a hand, beckoning him closer, taking the cloth mask down from her face.
He didn’t move. He wanted to take that damned vase and hurl it against the wall. He didn’t do that, either.
“You knew what my father was doing,” he said carefully, slowly. “You gave me a warning, you knew the whole time.”
Her pale blue eyes narrowed and Serefin absently considered that he and Malachiasz had both inherited those eyes.
“And you stopped him,” she said placidly, hooking her mask back over her face. “The crown is yours.”
“You knew he was acting with the Vultures.”
“I did.”
“You knew the Vulture whose fault this is.”
She frowned slightly. “It was the Black Vulture.”
“How do you not know who he is?” Serefin asked, his voice finally cracking. He raked his hands through his hair. For months, he had been steadily tucking away information on Malachiasz as it came to him because eventually he would have to deal with the Black Vulture. He would have to make him stand for his treason.
But now he didn’t know what he was supposed to do.
“Serefin, what are you talking about?”
“The witch had to tell me,” he said, raw panic tearing at his voice. “You didn’t even have the decency to tell me yourself. Did you know, when you sent him to the Vultures, what he would become?”
Klarysa finally tensed. “What?”
“You were never here. Of course you didn’t know. Of course you never saw him in passing. But you could have told me. He was here this whole time, so close, and I never knew.”