Wicked Saints (Something Dark and Holy #1) - Emily A. Duncan Page 0,12
nearby, very much alive.
Something slammed into Nadya’s back and suddenly the chilling bite of a blade was pressed against her throat. The boy appeared in front of her, his crossbow back in his hands, thankfully not pointed at Nadya. It was clear he could only barely see her. He wasn’t Kalyazi, but Akolan.
A fair number of Akolans had taken advantage of the war between their neighbors, hiring out their swords for profit on both sides. They were known for favoring Tranavia simply because of the warmer climate. It was rare to find a creature of the desert willingly stumbling through Kalyazin’s snow.
He spoke a fluid string of words she didn’t understand. His posture was languid, as if he hadn’t nearly been torn to pieces by blood mages. The blade against Nadya’s throat pressed harder. A colder voice responded to him, the foreign language scratched uncomfortably at her ears.
Nadya only knew the three primary languages of Kalyazin and passing Tranavian. If she wasn’t going to be able to communicate with them …
The boy said something else and Nadya heard the girl sigh before she felt the blade slip away. “What’s a little Kalyazi assassin doing out in the middle of the mountains?” he asked, switching to perfect Kalyazi.
Nadya was very aware of the boy’s friend at her back. “I could ask the same of you.”
She shifted Bozidarka’s spell, sharpening her vision further. The boy had skin like molten bronze and long hair with gold chains threaded through his loose curls.
He grinned.
A thud sounded nearby, startling him, but it was the recognizable sound of someone slamming face-first into a tree. Anna’s muffled swearing followed. Nadya rolled her eyes and sent up an apology to the heavens. The stars and moons relit in the sky, making the world seem three times brighter.
“We’ll be hearing prophesies about the end of the world for the next twenty years now!” Anna cried. She had her venyiashk drawn, her gaze wary as she looked just past Nadya’s shoulder.
Nadya crouched, stabbing her bloody voryen into the snow. She looked up at the Akolan boy, lifting her hands as she straightened. Caution was necessary, they were in the middle of a war zone, but she had just saved their lives. He eyed her before letting out the tension on the crossbow.
She glanced behind her to see a tall Akolan girl sheathing her curved dagger. Her thick, dark hair fell in waves around her shoulders and she wore old, weather-beaten Kalyazi clothes, but her gold nose ring glinted new in the moonlight.
When Nadya turned to shoot Anna a pointed look, the priestess sighed and dropped her blade as well.
“Who are you?” Nadya asked.
The boy ignored her. “Did you do that?” he asked, pointing at the sky.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped.
“Ridiculous, as you say. My name is Rashid Khajouti, and my lovely companion—”
“Can speak perfectly well for herself,” the Akolan girl said, sounding amused. Her hand no longer lingered near the hilt of her dagger and she moved away from Nadya to show she meant no harm. “My name is Parijahan Siroosi. I suppose we should be thanking you, not threatening you.” She glanced at Rashid. “There were more Tranavians than we initially thought.”
They had made quick work of them, regardless. Nadya’s gaze landed on a crossbow, dropped by a Tranavian soldier, near her feet. She picked it up. The image of Kostya flashed in her vision. It took everything she had to not smash the weapon to pieces.
“Why were two Akolans planning on taking down a group of Tranavians in the middle of the night?” she asked, running her fingers over the wood of the crossbow, trying to dispel the image of her dead friend.
“I could ask the same,” Parijahan said.
“We have a clear and obvious reason to be killing Tranavians, in general,” Nadya pointed out.
Rashid chuckled. Parijahan shot him a look and he fell silent.
Something felt off, but Nadya couldn’t place what it was. The way the Akolans had relaxed after initially being so aggressive, the stillness of the night air around them: the pieces weren’t lining up right.
Horz?
“Yes, love?”
That wasn’t all of the Tranavians, was it?
“I thought you knew.”
She cranked the crossbow to set the bolt and turned it on the Akolan boy. Anna moved at the same instant, her venyiashk drawn against Parijahan’s neck. There was no possible way she could have known the reason for Nadya’s sudden defense, but she trusted Nadya enough to move without question.