Home > Blessed Monsters (Something Dark and Holy #3)(7)

Blessed Monsters (Something Dark and Holy #3)(7)
Author: Emily A. Duncan

“I’m not feeling particularly reasonable right now.”

“I don’t think we can go back to Tranavia yet,” Serefin said, wanting to drop his head into his hands.

“We don’t even know who survived, and if they did, where they are. And what are our options? Nadya, who knows you killed Malachiasz and will definitely murder you for it—”

“She won’t.”

“Stunningly optimistic of you when she was in love with him. That leaves the tsarevna.”

Serefin liked Katya, which was alarming but perhaps spoke to his weariness. He had spent the past three years killing Kalyazi for a cause he thought was perfectly justified. He wouldn’t take back everything he had done in the name of the war effort, but he was ready for it to end. He didn’t really think he could fight with the same conviction, and maybe that was thanks to one dry Kalyazi cleric and one snotty tsarevna. He was fine with that.

But Tranavia had been rendered completely powerless. And that did not sit well. He wanted a truce, not to surrender. He had his pride.

“We don’t know if Ostyia survived,” Serefin said quietly.

Kacper closed his eyes, something in him clearly giving up.

“I can’t leave her here, Kacper.”

“No, you can’t,” he agreed. “She’ll take out your other eye if you do. But if she didn’t…”

“Stop.”

“You have to face reality.”

“No. No. You—” He poked his finger against Kacper’s chest. “—and Ostyia and I have been through hellfire and back and we have survived too much to be defeated by that damned forest and those miserable gods.”

Kacper lifted his hand, threading his fingers through Serefin’s, whose heart kicked traitorously in response.

“We’re going to find her. Then we’re going home.” Serefin had been so delirious for weeks and now everything was so clear.

“How are you going to find her, Ser?”

“Magic.”

Kacper was quiet. Serefin hated the look in his dark eyes; it was far too close to pity. He took his spell book and flipped it open. His heart immediately dropped.

It was indecipherable.

Suddenly he was too hot and too cold all at once, like his fever had returned in full force. He let out a shaky breath. Kacper put a steadying hand on his arm.

He knew these spells, had worked with an apprentice book binder to put them together; the girl had spent the whole time looking like she was going to faint at the prospect of writing the king’s spells for him. And he couldn’t read any of them.

This can’t be happening.

“Well. This is strange,” he said, voice strangled. “How can I remember how it works and you can’t?” He pulled his szitelka out of its sheath and cut a careful line down his forearm.

“Careful,” Kacper murmured.

“Probably not the wisest move to bleed on a random spell.” Serefin contemplated. He glanced at Kacper, a calming exchange, and shrugged. He tilted his forearm and let blood drip onto the pages. The seconds stretched to minutes.

Serefin had not been spared, after all.

 

 

4

 

MALACHIASZ CZECHOWICZ


It’s blood boiling underneath skin. Teeth tearing flesh. It doesn’t end. It never ends. We made a mistake. We made a mistake. We made a mistake.

—Fragment of a journal entry by Svoyatova Orya Gorelova

 

Malachiasz woke to darkness. His first instinct was to panic because not again not again. But the air didn’t taste like copper and terror. He wasn’t in the dank depths of the Salt Mines. But he also wasn’t in the church room.

And he wasn’t alone.

A door creaked open, and a knife of light landed on him. The smell of burning flesh filled his nostrils, and too late he realized it was his. He scrambled back, knocking into boxes and something that rattled. His body gave out on him and he ended up crumpled on the ground, too weak to run or strike, when a hooded figure entered. Face in shadow, they crouched in front of Malachiasz, a hand breaking free from the folds of their robe to tilt his chin up. He was being scrutinized and he hated it. He hated feeling weak; hated being this vulnerable.

The figure muttered something in Kalyazi that Malachiasz couldn’t parse and he blinked, puzzled. He was fluent in the language, especially after Nadya’s refusal to speak in Tranavian if she didn’t absolutely have to.

“Where am I?” he asked, stupidly, in Tranavian, his voice hoarse. A misstep.

The figure grabbed him by the throat. Malachiasz shut down, instinct finally winning out. Teeth sharpening in his mouth, the world closing in as his focus narrowed. A spike of iron split from his wrist and he lashed out at the figure, who caught the spike on the palm of their hand, and silently, slowly pushed down until it broke to the other side. The hand on his throat tightened its grip and he was pulled abruptly into the light.

It burned.

Malachiasz coughed, spitting up blood as he tried desperately to move back into the darkness and the figure held him down. His skin was bare, the shirt he’d been wearing long since rendered into tatters by his shifting body, and his flesh was sizzling like hot oil. Eventually he was let go and kicked back into the shadows. He slunk away like the wounded animal he was.

When he next woke, it was in the tiny room in the church, the oven still cold and dormant in the corner. He retched, spitting out a mouthful of bile.

Scorched flesh ran up his arm, bubbling into blisters. He gritted his teeth, hissing against the pain. Light flickered in through the shattered window and he carefully moved out of its way. After some consideration, he tentatively stretched his fingers out underneath the beams.

He jerked his hand back, squeezing his eyes shut against the white heat—the terror of what this meant. Against the ripple of chaos shuddering through him as his control slipped.

Taszni nem Malachiasz Czechowicz.

Taszni nem Malachiasz Czechowicz.

Taszni nem Malachiasz Czechowicz.

He needed to get out of here. Figure out this new … development. Had that dream been real? Was he not alone? Blood and bone, he hoped he was alone.

“Never truly alone.”

Malachiasz buried his head in his hands, his breath coming in pained, shuddery gasps. He was going to die here if he remained, or worse.

He wasn’t used to not knowing what to do. There had always been a next step, more to reach for, something else to gain when everything came crashing down. The ashes could always be swept aside to reveal a greater path.

Now, when he pushed the ashes away all he found was darkness.

He didn’t want to live in the darkness. As close as he may be with it, he didn’t like the dark. He scrambled to his feet, deciding to find someplace less likely to burn him. He’d wait out the rest of the day before he made his escape. To where, he could figure out later.

And if the voice in his head wanted him to kill another god, he could see that into being. But what was he dealing with? What kind of god would taint themselves with a heretic like him?

“It’s your heresy that makes you so compelling,” the voice said.

Malachiasz winced. None of his thoughts were safe, then. That was … less than ideal.

“Heresy is too simple a term. It is your denial of reality that makes you so interesting. Your power, your cleverness, your ruthlessness, all things I can use.”

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