Nadya whispered, horrified. “You knew he would do this.”
“Of course I knew.”
Nadya tried to reach for him but the snarling monster snapped at her, blood pouring from his mouth of jagged, iron nails. Her tears froze on her cheeks, blood dripped from her nose.
“So this was your plan? To bring me here, to use him, to turn the gods away so that … what?”
“The era of heretic magic is over,” Marzenya hissed. “The time of the abomination has ended. Sacrifices must be made to reach an ending that speaks of truth.”
Malachiasz fell to one knee. His spine cracked out from his skin. Nadya slammed a hand over her mouth to keep in a sob. Marzenya’s fingers clutched the back of her head, forcing her to watch. Blood dripped underneath each spot the goddess touched on her head. But she could no longer look away as his bones cracked and bent, re-formed only to shatter. As blood fell from his eyes and his eyes and his eyes and there were too many, so many, and it hurt to look, it hurt to see.
She loved him. Even now, even here, even when he had forged the last pieces of his monstrous plan into place with hatred in his heart for her. His betrayal for her betrayal.
He would die here. He had the power of the gods, the knowledge to form it into being, but, oh, he was so young—a child—and they knew how to twist his power of chaos against him. They’d had gods of chaos before and every single one burned out as they would burn Malachiasz out.
He wouldn’t survive.
“You have been so good, so useful to us,” Marzenya whispered. “I love you, my daughter.” She brushed a finger over Nadya’s cheek, still holding the back of her head. Nadya flinched, her skin parting beneath her goddess’s caress.
Nadya turned her face into Marzenya’s touch. “And I love you,” she whispered, dropping her corrupted hand down from where it rested close to her chest, palm out to Malachiasz.
Marzenya’s hand slid down from her head to her back. It would take so little, one errant brush of her deathly cold fingers, for Nadya to die. Her usefulness at an end because for all that she had done, she still asked too many questions. She still doubted too much. She had still fallen in love with a monster.
Can you love a god? No, such things were impossible.
The barest glimmer, a fraction of sharpness in Malachiasz’s onyx eyes.
His hands clasped over hers—mortal and eldritch—and his iron claws punched clean through her palms. A starburst of pain that felt distant as she toppled the dark well of magic within her and flooded him with it. He was darkness and eldritch and mad, and, in the end, with a cracked and bitter halo of divinity tainted by an ocean of horrors, so was she.
Marzenya shoved her away as Malachiasz staggered to his feet. A monster—chaos—but sharpened. Coherent. The Black Vulture, and a god in control of the magic churning within him. Only in control because Nadya’s dark thrum of power had smoothed the edges of his chaos. A bond broken; a bond reforged.
“Leave us,” Nadya spat at him, through a mouthful of blood.
He spared her a brief glance as Marzenya’s hold of death grew palpable. And with a twisted smile, he slammed his iron claws into the goddess’s chest.
The death of a god was like a star collapsing, crumpling in upon itself until there was nothing left but a supernova—one solitary moment of brilliance before emptiness.
No. She had given him power to flee to run not to do this. Not this.
It was over before Nadya had even realized Malachiasz had struck. And all that was left was the snow raging in a blizzard around them and an absolute and utter emptiness.
The other gods were gone. None would risk this god killer’s wrath.
Nadya scrambled backward in the snow as Malachiasz turned on her. All she had wanted was to set him free. And all she would get in return for that mercy was death.
42
SEREFIN MELESKI
Their names are lost to time, these gods of chaos, these beings of trickery and deceit and chance. But those who destroyed them live on: Marzenya, Veceslav, Peloyin, and Alena. Striking down those who would strike them down by their sheer nature alone. And so the cycle stretches on, turning, turning.
—The Books of Innokentiy
Serefin clutched the bone dagger so hard he was afraid the hilt might crack. The scene had left a mark upon