Blessed Monsters (Something Dark and Holy #3) - Emily A. Duncan Page 0,12

so willing to lose, only to discover that it wasn’t the case at all once he’d lost it entirely.

As much as he might hate her—or hate that he didn’t—what Nadya had done for him was something he would never be able to repay her for. Because he had miscalculated the spell—it had driven him farther than he expected, and if she hadn’t gone into the Salt Mines to throttle him back into a bare semblance of human, he would still be down there. He would be gone.

He remembered what he had done in that state. Leaving the mines for the battlefield, rending apart his enemies, cementing his place in Kalyazi stories of what monsters Tranavians truly were. There was no regret there. One vibrant Kalyazi girl didn’t make up for the rest.

“Is that what you want? Better? Fine. This game can be played until you realize that fighting what I wish is futile. If you must be broken, I will break you.”

Malachiasz didn’t have a chance to point out that he was already broken before he shattered.

It was cold and dark, and he knew this cold, this darkness. He had been here before, a different time, under different circumstances. But he had forgotten this part, forgotten everything, because that was the way the Vultures wanted it. They wanted children to be blank slates, nothing but vessels for the magic that would be embedded in their skin. It was a closely held secret, how Vultures were made, but there were no secrets kept from the Black Vulture. He knew struggling was useless.

Agony, a searing heat that flashed to cold and back, too fast, too much, a boiling, a flash burn, a block of ice pressed down, down, down against skin. Repeated, unending, until a snapping point. There was always a snapping point. Everyone broke in the end.

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