Bones fractured, shattered, melded back together to be stronger than iron, harder than steel, and sharpened, so sharp. One wrong move will part flesh until they adapt, until they learn to control what they have become.
A baptism of dark magic and cold iron and blood.
But he wasn’t in that place anymore; he was more, he was greater.
No, he wasn’t. Not really. He was still that boy, confused and afraid and uncertain. Now he had all this power that could be twisted and formed and turned against him.
His spine fissured. The weight of heavy wings dragged at his shoulders and he tried to stop the changes—once upon a time he had control over them. Once, he could bend them to his will. When had that changed? His feet shifted and iron punched through his skin as he drew further and further down. Less human, less human, less.
5
SEREFIN MELESKI
Siblings abandoned at a monastery deep in the forests, Svoyatovi Kliment and Svoyatova Frosya Ylechukov grew up to infiltrate the Tranavian ranks where they were eventually martyred by the heretics.
—Vasiliev’s Book of Saints
Serefin couldn’t remember traveling this far south. He remembered everything from after the forest—well, mostly, a few days were blurred by his fever—and they couldn’t have walked as far south as they were.
“The forest spat us out close to its border,” Kacper explained with a shrug that said he wasn’t going to interrogate the weirdness, only be grateful the forest had let them out at all.
But Serefin wanted to interrogate the weirdness. Because everything and nothing had changed. He felt like he was biding time. If he had shattered anything by tearing out his eye, it had been the connection to the nameless voice, but then, what about Velyos?
“It’s true. I’ve been quite put out by it.”
Serefin was careful not to react to the return of the reedy voice he loathed so much. A shudder ran through him all the same.
Is there no way to be rid of you? He had done everything, and it wasn’t enough. Still haunted by some know-it-all Kalyazi deity.
“Oh, no, you succeeded. Claim broken, bonds snapped, all that and more. You’re free, little Tranavian! But once you hear the voices of my kind, well, that doesn’t stop.”
Serefin took the slightest comfort that the situation could be much worse. Still, less than ideal. No more visions?
“No more visions. Did you not like them? I thought they were such fun. It had been so long since I was able to play. I’m disappointed that you didn’t enjoy our time together. But the maiming really wasn’t necessary in our situation.”
Serefin disagreed. He refused to live under the will of a god who could physically control him like Chyrnog or twist his mind and yank him across the continent like Velyos. He refused to live by the whim of any gods. It was worth it.
“Yes, well, Chyrnog is … like that.”
Serefin shivered at the name. He didn’t want to remember that feeling of his control being wrenched away.
But you can’t do what he did?
“Oh, no, not anymore. Don’t even want to! Isn’t that nice of me?”
He made me kill my brother.
“You were planning on doing that,” Velyos noted.
Serefin struggled not to flinch. That wasn’t the point. Yes, Serefin had been planning it. Malachiasz was volatile, a wild card who couldn’t be trusted and needed to be dealt with. When it came down to it, though, Serefin hadn’t actually wanted to deal with him like that. He had lost so much already. It wasn’t enough that the blood of his father was on his hands, now he was stained with his brother’s blood, too.
How was he supposed to live with himself?
How was he going to face his mother—if he ever made it home?
He didn’t know how he was supposed to go to her and admit that the son she had lost to the Vultures could have returned—Malachiasz had stood before Serefin on that mountain top, terrified and in tears and ready to go home—and Serefin had killed him.
He couldn’t face her. He could barely face himself. Knowing that some kind of order had been returned to the world with Malachiasz’s death wasn’t enough to assuage the guilt. That Malachiasz had literally been the cause of Serefin’s murder wasn’t enough either, somehow.
“Serefin?”
He jolted at Kacper’s voice. “What?”
Kacper was eyeing him, clearly trying to appear nonchalant and failing utterly. He was worried. He shook his head slightly. “I don’t like when you go quiet,” he said.
Serefin glanced around, realizing how silent everything was. The roads were empty. They were exposed and had no magic to defend themselves. The alternative, though, was the forest that hemmed in the road on either side, and Serefin was done traveling through forests for the next ten years at least.
“Sorry,” Serefin said, shooting Kacper a wry smile. “I will endeavor to maintain a constant stream of chatter from here on out.”
“Wait, no—”
“I can start, well, on any topic. I was always told I had an alarming wit at court.”
“I don’t think they meant that as a compliment—”
“I also have an incredible collection of lurid ditties rattling in my brain.”
“Please, never say the words lurid ditties in front of me ever—”
“I can also start in on my unfathomable collection of jokes, with a warning that I picked most of them up from Lieutenant Winarski when I was a very impressionable sixteen years old.”
Kacper paused. “Wasn’t he—?”
“Of a deeply questionable emotional and mental state, yes. They are not good jokes.”
Kacper’s face broke into a weary grin. Serefin was not going to ruin the moment by telling Kacper that he could still hear Velyos. It truly was incredibly unseemly for a Tranavian king to be talking to a Kalyazi god—
“Not a god.”
Oh, shut up.
Serefin would have to figure out how to close himself off so Velyos didn’t chime in on every errant thought. At least he had broken off the greater bond. It was a relief to know his maiming had meant something. That was nice.
“I was thinking,” Serefin said softly. “We need to figure out how to get back to the capital and into Grazyk without Ruminski finding out.” He felt bad lying to Kacper, but, well, he could have been thinking about that, right?
“I wish we had been able to free Żaneta,” Kacper mused.
So did Serefin, but that wasn’t in the cards. He wondered if it even would have fixed anything, if Malachiasz had been telling the truth that she needed time to adapt. He didn’t know how the Vultures were made, but Malachiasz had seemed earnest about that, at least.
Suddenly Serefin tripped on a hole he’d thought was several steps away, Kacper barely catching his arm and keeping him on his feet. His depth perception was shot, and while he would eventually adjust, he couldn’t help feeling useless.
“Careful,” Kacper murmured, but didn’t pull away.
Serefin kept waiting for it, surprised when he slid his hand down Serefin’s arm, twining their fingers together. It was almost as if things were normal—or at least not quite so broken as they truly were.
A snap sounded within the forest, too loud to be an animal. Serefin cursed softly, dropping Kacper’s hand and reaching futilely for his spell book.