“Can I have that?” Nadya reached for Anna’s dagger. Anna wordlessly handed it to her. It felt solid, not flimsy like the paring knife.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Anna said.
Kostya shot Nadya a pointed look. In the monastery’s hierarchy, Anna—as an ordained priestess—outranked Nadya. If Anna ordered her to go to the sanctuary, she would have no choice but to obey.
So I won’t give Anna the chance.
Nadya took off down the hall. “Have they breached the stairs?”
“They were close,” Anna called.
Close meant the very real likelihood that they would make it to the courtyard and find the Tranavians already there. Nadya pulled at her prayer necklace, her fingers catching across the ridged beads as she searched for the right one. Each wooden bead was carved with a symbol representing a god or goddess in the pantheon, twenty in all. She knew them by touch, knew exactly which bead to press to attune to a specific god.
Nadya once wished she could blend in with the other Kalyazi orphans at the monastery, but the truth was, for as long as she could remember, when she prayed the gods listened. Miracles happened, magic. It made her valuable. It made her dangerous.
She tugged her necklace until the bead she wanted was at the bottom. The sword symbol carved into it felt like a splinter against her thumb. She pressed it and sent up a prayer to Veceslav: the god of war and protection.
“Do you ever wonder what this would be like if you were fighting against people who also petitioned for my protection?” His voice was a warm summer breeze slipping up the back of her head.
Truly we are fortunate our enemies are heretics, she replied. Heretics who were winning the war.
Veceslav was always chatty, but right now Nadya needed help, not conversation.
I need some protection spells, please, she prayed.
Her thumb caught Marzenya’s bead, pressing against the symbol of an openmouthed skull. And if Marzenya is around, I need her, too.
Magic flooded through her veins, a rush of power that came with chiming chords of holy speech—a language she only knew when the gods granted it. Nadya’s heart raced, less from fear than the intoxicating thrill of their power.
The wide courtyard was blessedly silent when she finally pushed through the front doors of the chapel. To the left ran a path leading to the men’s cells; to the right, another trailed off into the forests where an ancient graveyard that held the bodies of saints centuries gone was kept by the monastery. Snow from the night before piled on the ground and the air was frigid. It snowed most nights—and days—on the top of the Baikkle Mountains. Hopefully it would slow down the Tranavians.
Nadya scanned for Father Alexei, finding him at the top of the stairs. The priests and priestesses who trained for battle waited in the courtyard and her heart twisted at just how few of them there were. Her confidence faltered. Barely two dozen against a company of Tranavians. This was never supposed to happen. The monastery was in the middle of the holy mountains; it was difficult—almost impossible—to reach, especially for those unused to Kalyazin’s forbidding terrain.
Marzenya brushed against her thoughts. “What is it you require, my child?” spoke the goddess of magic and sacrifice—of death. Marzenya was Nadya’s patron in the pantheon, the one who had claimed her as an infant.
I want to give the heretics a welcoming taste of Kalyazi magic, she replied. Let them fear what the faithful can do.
She felt the press of Marzenya’s amusement, then a different rush of power. Magic granted by Marzenya felt nothing like magic granted by Veceslav. Where he was heat, she was ice and winter and cosmic fury.
Having their magic at the same time itched under Nadya’s skin, impatient and impulsive. She left Kostya and Anna, moving to Father Alexei’s side.
“Keep our people away from the stairs,” she said softly.
The abbot looked over at her, eyebrows drawn. Not because a seventeen-year-old girl was giving him orders—though if they survived he would scold her thoroughly for that—but because she wasn’t supposed to be there at all. She was supposed to be anywhere but there.
Nadya raised her eyebrows expectantly, willing him to accept her place here. She had to stay. She had to fight. She couldn’t hide in the cellars any longer, not while heretics tore apart her country, her home.
“Move back,” he called after a pause. “I want you all at the doors!” The courtyard was a cramped enclosure, not made for fighting. “What are you planning, Nadezhda?”
“Just some divine judgment,” she replied, bouncing on the balls of her feet. She was going to shake out of her own skin if she stopped moving and allowed herself to think on what was about to happen.
She heard his weary sigh as she moved to where the stairs met the courtyard. It was the only way for the enemy to make it to the monastery and even then sometimes the steps were so coated with ice they were impossible to climb. No such luck today.
How could the Tranavians know she was there? The only people who knew Nadya existed were in the monastery.
Well … there was the tsar. But he was far, far away in the capital. It was unlikely news of her had spread into Tranavia.
Her breath whispered out in a prayer of holy speech, symbols forming light at her lips and blowing out in a cloud of fog. She knelt, trailing her fingers over the top of the stairs. The slick stone froze, forming the stairs into a single block of ice.
Idly twirling the voryen in her hand, she stepped back. The spell was a ploy for time; if the Tranavians had a blood mage who could counteract her magic, it wouldn’t last.
No going back now.
Nadya could fight an average blood mage. But the possibility of a Tranavian lieutenant or general—a mage promoted because of sheer magical power alone—made her feel like running back into the sanctuary where she belonged.
Marzenya scoffed at her doubt.
I belong here, Nadya told herself.
Kostya stepped up beside her. He had abandoned his kitchen knife for a noven’ya—a staff with a long blade on one end. He leaned against it, watching the slope where the stairs dropped out of sight.
“Go,” he said. “It’s not too late.”
Nadya grinned at him. “It’s too late.”
As if agreeing with her, the bells cut off with a disconcertingly final ring. The air around the monastery was silent but for the steady sound of cannons, now pounding clearly at the base of the mountain.
If Rudnya fell, the monastery would be next. The city at the base of the mountains was well fortified, but they were in the heart of Kalyazin. No one had ever expected the war to push this far west. It was supposed to stay on the eastern border where Kalyazin and Tranavia met, just north of the border on Akola.
A crack trailed up the solid block of ice on the stairs like a spider web. It spread, forming a pattern of fractures before the whole thing shattered. Kostya pulled Nadya into the courtyard.
“We have the high ground,” she murmured.
She was holding a single voryen. Just one dagger.
We have the high ground.
There was a tremor in the silence and a sharp touch jabbed into the back of her skull.
“Blood magic,” Marzenya hissed.
Nadya’s heart lodged in her throat, doubt sliding cold tendrils down her spine. She felt her magic shivering, and without thinking, shoved Kostya aside just as something exploded near where he had once stood. A hard chunk of ice slammed into her back, pain ramming down to her toes. She was thrown onto Kostya and they both went crashing to the ground.