Wicked Saints (Something Dark and Holy #1) - Emily A. Duncan Page 0,2

what this would be like if you were fighting against people who also petitioned for my protection?” His voice was a warm summer breeze slipping up the back of her head.

Truly we are fortunate our enemies are heretics, she replied. Heretics who were winning the war.

Veceslav was always chatty, but right now Nadya needed help, not conversation.

I need some protection spells, please, she prayed.

Her thumb caught Marzenya’s bead, pressing against the symbol of an openmouthed skull. And if Marzenya is around, I need her, too.

Magic flooded through her veins, a rush of power that came with chiming chords of holy speech—a language she only knew when the gods granted it. Nadya’s heart raced, less from fear than the intoxicating thrill of their power.

The wide courtyard was blessedly silent when she finally pushed through the front doors of the chapel. To the left ran a path leading to the men’s cells; to the right, another trailed off into the forests where an ancient graveyard that held the bodies of saints centuries gone was kept by the monastery. Snow from the night before piled on the ground and the air was frigid. It snowed most nights—and days—on the top of the Baikkle Mountains. Hopefully it would slow down the Tranavians.

Nadya scanned for Father Alexei, finding him at the top of the stairs. The priests and priestesses who trained for battle waited in the courtyard and her heart twisted at just how few of them there were. Her confidence faltered. Barely two dozen against a company of Tranavians. This was never supposed to happen. The monastery was in the middle of the holy mountains; it was difficult—almost impossible—to reach, especially for those unused to Kalyazin’s forbidding terrain.

Marzenya brushed against her thoughts. “What is it you require, my child?” spoke the goddess of magic and sacrifice—of death. Marzenya was Nadya’s patron in the pantheon, the one who had claimed her as an infant.

I want to give the heretics a welcoming taste of Kalyazi magic, she replied. Let them fear what the faithful can do.

She felt the press of Marzenya’s amusement, then a different rush of power. Magic granted by Marzenya felt nothing like magic granted by Veceslav. Where he was heat, she was ice and winter and cosmic fury.

Having their magic at the same time itched under Nadya’s skin, impatient and impulsive. She left Kostya and Anna, moving to Father Alexei’s side.

“Keep our people away from the stairs,” she said softly.

The abbot looked over at her, eyebrows drawn. Not because a seventeen-year-old girl was giving him orders—though if they survived he would scold her thoroughly for that—but because she wasn’t supposed to be there at all. She was supposed to be anywhere but there.

Nadya raised her eyebrows expectantly, willing him to accept her place here. She had to stay. She had to fight. She couldn’t hide in the cellars any longer, not while heretics tore apart her country, her home.

“Move back,” he called after a pause. “I want you all at the doors!” The courtyard was a cramped enclosure, not made for fighting. “What are you planning, Nadezhda?”

“Just some divine judgment,” she replied, bouncing on the balls of her feet. She was going to shake out of her own skin if she stopped moving and allowed herself to think on what was about to happen.

She heard his weary sigh as she moved to where the stairs met the courtyard. It was the only way for the enemy to make it to the monastery and even then sometimes the steps were so coated with ice they were impossible to climb. No such luck today.

How could the Tranavians know she was there? The only people who knew Nadya existed were in the monastery.

Well … there was the tsar. But he was far, far away in the capital. It was unlikely news of her had spread into Tranavia.

Her breath whispered out in a prayer of holy speech, symbols forming light at her lips and blowing out in a cloud of fog. She knelt, trailing her fingers over the top of the stairs. The slick stone froze, forming the stairs into a single block of ice.

Idly twirling the voryen in her hand, she stepped back. The spell was a ploy for time; if the Tranavians had a blood mage who could counteract her magic, it wouldn’t last.

No going back now.

Nadya could fight an average blood mage. But the possibility of a Tranavian lieutenant or general—a mage promoted because of sheer magical power alone—made her feel like running back