you? What he’s been doing?”
Nadya hadn’t felt much of anything recently. She shook her head. Nadya wasn’t certain she wanted to know where this conversation would lead.
The witch looked at Nadya with a pity that made her furious.
“Stop it. Take me back. I don’t want this.”
“Oh, child. I have saved you for last because your road will be hard and long. Fervent and zealous and abandoned in the end. Or maybe not? Or maybe so. It is so hard to say with those divine monsters we call gods. It is so hard to see what it is they are doing to you.”
Nadya gripped her prayer beads, tears pricking at her eyes.
“What has he done?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.
It was troubling how much more coherent the witch was than the last time Nadya had seen her. She didn’t know where Pelageya’s power came from; this force of wind and nature and strange magic. She didn’t know if it was a magic she could access herself. She had used power outside her gods’ will, but when she reached for it now, there was nothing there.
“Things are waking up. Old things, dark things. The old ones who have slept for so very very long. You set it into motion. You and that Vulture.”
Nadya opened her mouth to argue, but Pelageya clapped her hands in front of her face.
“Your intentions do not matter. You and the boy—though something tells me he was not involved so willingly—freed Velyos from his prison. Velyos has found a new mortal to claim. He will wake those who were allied with him in his long fight against your pantheon’s leader.”
Nadya frowned. Her pantheon didn’t have a leader. They didn’t have a single god above all others. It was more varied than that, wider than that. And what did she mean about Velyos claiming someone? Who?
Pelageya cocked her head. “The little cleric does not know? Yes, a cleric, don’t shake your head at me, you may be an odd one—you may bathe in blood and be touched by darkness—but you cannot hide from your fate by denying your reality so easily. Sit, child, we have a lot to talk about.”
Nadya sat tentatively.
“Tea? I didn’t offer those boys tea. What a strange, brutal pair they are. They wanted information or magic and nothing more. So rude. Their mother clearly never taught them any manners.”
Mother? She didn’t know what to do with that, so she tucked it away.
Pelageya busied herself with a samovar. “Your Tranavians. The Vulture and the princeling, oh, king, I suppose. The boy cast from shadow and the boy cast from gold.”
“You’ve seen him?” she whispered.
Pelageya looked up.
“Nevermind. Don’t answer. I don’t—”
“You care, little Kalyazi, and that is your weakness. It could be your strength, in another time, another life. But here? In this world of monsters and war? You care too much.”
Nadya chewed on her lower lip, trying to will the threatening tears away. She took the warm mug of tea Pelageya handed to her, and sipped it slowly.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” she said.
“You have little time, you see,” Pelageya said. “So little time before the heavens are ripped asunder and all that fire and damnation comes raining down. Do you think it will only flood Tranavia? Do you think your precious Kalyazin will be spared?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Nadya said wearily. She drew her legs up onto the chair.
“Broken so easily by divine mischief.” Pelageya clucked her tongue at Nadya. “What a shame, what a shame. I had such hope for you, child. Salvation or destruction, capable of either, but giving up will dash all chances.”
Nadya’s grip on her mug tightened. She wouldn’t sit here and be mocked.
Pelageya took Nadya’s hand as she passed her chair. Nadya protested, trying to pull her hand away as Pelageya flipped it over.
“You as well,” she said, “but yours is different.”
“I stole his magic,” Nadya said.
“Clever girl. I’m sure the Vulture didn’t like that.”
Nadya shrugged.
“An impossible thing. But I should have expected impossible things from you, all things considered.”
What was that supposed to mean? “Maybe expect fewer of those now.”
Pelageya’s finger traced the blackened scar on Nadya’s palm. She squirmed. “Untapped power that has festered, or something darker that has been waiting to surface?”
Nadya jerked her hand away.
“You didn’t get the hellfire you were promised. Now what?”
“I didn’t want hellfire…”
“Oh, lies. You tell yourself that your opinions were swayed because of a few pretty Tranavians, but I know the truth of your vicious soul.”
Nadya shifted uncomfortably.
“I