Blessed Monsters (Something Dark and Holy #3) - Emily A. Duncan Page 0,17

heart fell when he saw what they’d discovered in the eerie dim.

Something was eating the trees alive. Like mold, a black infection creeping along the bark and worming its way deeper. After peering too long, Serefin was overwhelmed with the sudden desire to plunge his hand in. He was oddly grateful his wrists were tied.

“Were any of the trees we passed on the way like this?” Olya asked the girl.

She shook her head, eyeing Serefin.

“I’m not sure why you’ve brought me over,” he said serenely.

“You’re a blood mage with a godstouched eye,” Olya replied, her voice flat.

Serefin froze, stomach clenching. His fingers twitched uselessly, wanting to cover his eye.

“Untie my hands,” he said.

“You think me a fool?” Olya replied evenly.

He didn’t. In fact, he was beginning to think she was much more than a simple thief. Serefin was infinitely tired of bossy, magic-touched Kalyazi girls.

“How do you expect me to—” He was interrupted when a choir of screams rang through the trees. A cacophonous echo, surrounding them. A thousand terrified screeches.

A bird, large and black, thudded to the ground at their feet, a scream tearing through it before it cut off, silenced and dead.

Serefin swallowed hard, dread coiling through him as he lifted his gaze to where hundreds of birds perched in the tree branches.

All of them screaming.

* * *

The group lost three quarters of their members that night. They argued for hours about acrid mold and screaming, dying birds. Olya wearily attempted to explain that they were nowhere near Tachilvnik; the horrors of the deep wood could not travel this far.

Serefin kept the truth to himself. The rush of old power, dark magic, ravenous and mad, sweeping past them. Clawing and biting and so very, very hungry.

Instead, he leaned against Kacper, resting his head on his shoulder, and listened to them argue. Most left, complaining of cursed magic and muttering how nothing good could ever come from treating with Tranavian demons, even if they were tied up. Only the girl, an old man, and a boy about Serefin’s age—twitchy in a shadowy way that reminded Serefin of Malachiasz—stayed.

The boy was excited about the horror, in an unsettling, morbid way. Olya took his enthusiasm with weary patience, as if used to it.

“The witches will have an explanation,” was all she said.

“It’s not witch magic,” the boy insisted. He had the look of the people from the very north of Kalyazin. Straight black hair tied back but still managing to hang in his face, and narrow dark eyes.

Serefin tilted his head slightly to glance up at Kacper, who was frowning.

Olya crouched down, poking a dead bird with a stick.

“It’s not blood magic either,” she replied, casting a look at Serefin and Kacper.

Serefin shrugged. He was trying his best not to think about the screams still ringing in his head.

Chyrnog was gone. Serefin wanted to be relieved, but he didn’t know where he had ended up, and so long as his dreams were tainted by a massive doorway and arms and hands, grasping, clawing at him, he would worry.

“The witches will know,” Olya said. “The witches have to know.”

“When did it become witches, plural?” Kacper asked, voice soft.

Serefin shook his head. “This might not be the worst situation for us to be in.”

He could feel Kacper’s incredulity and he didn’t particularly want to explain with the Kalyazi in earshot. He sighed.

“Magic,” he whispered.

Kacper rolled his eyes. “Magic is what got us into this mess.”

“And magic will get us out.”

6

NADEZHDA LAPTEVA

Marzenya has gone silent. I cut my palms, I bleed over her altars, I weep. There is nothing. She does not care. She will let this world burn.

—Passage from the personal journals of Sofka Greshneva

Nadya was startled by how cold it was when she left the farmhouse. But of course it was cold. Nothing had changed.

What happened when a god died—was murdered? Would Marzenya’s domains—magic and winter and death—change anywhere else, or only Kalyazin? How much power did the gods have over the world, truly?

Nadya had no answers, and she was beginning to wonder if she should stop looking for them. That was what had gotten her in this mess to begin with. If she had gone with Anna to Komyazalov instead of Grazyk, how much would be different? She wouldn’t be dreading the capital; she knew that much. She wouldn’t feel the icy chill of fear grasping at her spine at the mere thought of the seat of the church and the Matriarch.

She had never met the Matriarch. Magdalena Fedoseyeva, the head