Blessed Monsters (Something Dark and Holy #3) - Emily A. Duncan Page 0,105

speaking at once. It was profoundly unsettling and immediately gave Nadya a headache. “Convince me? Hardly. All I had to do was whisper, to nudge, to convince these beasts this was what they desired.”

Serefin cast her a concerned glance before he very gently put his hands on her shoulders and pressed her to the ground. He crouched in front of her. Here, in the shadows of a burning building, they were momentarily safe.

Serefin opened his mouth but Nadya put her hand over his lips. His expression wearied as she shushed him absently.

“Let me talk to him,” she whispered.

“You don’t have much time,” Serefin said, staying with her. She almost told him to go. The Vultures who weren’t trying to kill him would need his help. But he was solid and strong and his hands on her shoulders were a grounding weight she would need. She wanted him there.

Why come here? she asked. What could we possibly have that’s of use to someone like you?

“Who are you, little bird?” One of Cvjetko’s heads began searching for her.

She didn’t even blink. He wasn’t the first god who had used the nickname for her, he wouldn’t be the last.

Daughter of darkness, daughter of death, she replied, suddenly realizing why the god was there. It was deceptively simple. You want to free Nyrokosha. It explained why the goddess had stirred, sensing freedom at hand. If Nadya wouldn’t free her, someone else would.

“You are clever! How novel! You smell different than the others, why is that?”

How condescending.

She wasn’t willing to set the goddess free. Not when they already had to stop Chyrnog. They couldn’t survive both. Why was this fallen god concerned with the fate of an old god when the others weren’t? Old alliances coming out to play?

She got to her feet. She needed to stop Cvjetko before he freed Nyrokosha. Serefin scrambled after her.

“What are you planning?”

“To kill a god,” she said flatly.

“But—”

“Use a god to kill a god.” Nadya plunged herself fully into the dark water.

SEREFIN MELESKI

Serefin stumbled back as Nadya ripped away some shield over her power. She was practically incandescent with magic. Her eyes, already dark, went shadowy, and her skin threaded with power like molten iron.

Żaneta thudded to the ground next to him, eyeing the cleric as she spat out blood. Nadya held out a hand, a bundle of discarded spears coming to hover next to her.

“That girl almost won the Rawalyk,” Żaneta observed blandly. “I suppose she would have made a visually impressive queen.”

“Żaneta, I’ve missed you,” Serefin replied.

“Ah, my idiot prince, I have not been conscious enough to miss you. Do we help?”

Cvjetko slammed a clawed paw down where Nadya was standing as she deftly stepped away, flicking her fingers and slamming a spear up into the hinge of his shoulder. The bear head roared. Serefin couldn’t move past the feeling of utter helplessness. This would crush them all.

“I think we’re more likely to get in her way.” He saw Katya nearing them and remembered her necklace of teeth. “Shift back,” he said, voice low.

Żaneta cast him a sidelong glance. “What?”

“The tsarevna is a Vulture hunter.”

Her eyes widened. Her claws were gone in the next instant, onyx eyes clearing to brown. Her teeth looked a little sharper than normal, but that could be explained away. She was Żaneta again, and though Katya would certainly know how a Tranavian got into her capital, Serefin hoped she would be distracted enough to let Żaneta go without notice.

The Vultures had been stopped by whatever Malachiasz had done, but this god, oh, this god was more than any of them were able to stop.

NADEZHDA LAPTEVA

It was too much. It didn’t matter that Nadya was a creature of strange divinity, that she harbored power stolen from so many sources. Malachiasz, Marzenya, Zvezdan, who else would she take from before she finally had enough?

I suppose I could steal from this one, she considered, the thought strangely idle as she narrowly avoided the sharp teeth of the wolf’s jaws. Claws raked close to her flesh, each one large enough to tear her into pieces on its own.

She had walked the limits of her capabilities before. She could only press so far until she became no more than charred bones. She was still mortal.

“You could … not be, you know.” So many voices were speaking up and she had no idea who this was.

She shoved a spear into Cvjetko’s chest, rolling out of the way as a foot slammed down. Too close. She wasn’t fast