Wicked Saints (Something Dark and Holy #1) - Emily A. Duncan Page 0,33

him down the hall.

“Well, welcome home, Your Highness, you don’t have a damn choice.”

10

NADEZHDA

LAPTEVA

Krsnik, the god of fire, is quiet, calm, but ruthless, and when his followers call upon him—when he chooses to listen—his attention is destruction.

—Codex of the Divine, 17:24

Nadya stared at Malachiasz, horror trickling down her spine. He moved down the wall of the church, scrawling his blood onto the boards. She took a step back, then another, and another, until there was enough space between them, until she felt like she could flee. Her breath jolted in panicked gasps because this couldn’t be happening, he had to be lying.

“What does that mean?” she asked, her voice hushed.

“It doesn’t matter now.”

Nadya clutched her prayer beads in a fist. Maybe she had been wrong to wait for an opportunity to put down this heretic. Her other hand twitched toward her knife.

Prodding agreement came from Marzenya. A needling feeling to rid the world of this terrible boy before he spilled any more blood.

His eyebrows were drawn in concentration and he had spent so much of his own blood that Nadya wasn’t sure how he was still standing. Horror flashed against his features and he stepped back from the wall, wavering on his feet.

“Kien tomuszek,” he murmured. He ran a trembling hand down his face, streaking blood down his cheek.

“What are the Vultures truly like? Could we fight them?” she asked. Surely the stories were exaggerated.

Malachiasz coughed out a panicked-sounding laugh. His gaze was glassy. “Amplify an already talented blood mage’s power tenfold. Grind their bones into iron and salt their skin in darkness until nothing can break it but their will alone. Until their blood burns so hot in their veins that when it spills it creates magic of its own. Burn out every memory, every thought, until they can become nothing at all, until they are nothing at all. When there’s nothing left but magic and bloodlust and rage, then they are finished. When they are empty, they are ready.” His eyes closed, eyebrows furrowing. “No, towy d?imyka, we cannot fight them.”

Nadya took a step back, heart thudding so hard in her chest that she shook. She shouldn’t have asked; she already knew the truth. Was that what he was? Or had he fled before any of that was done to him?

He cut another line down his forearm, hissing through his teeth. “Do you trust me?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

He laughed, taking another spell book page and soaking it with blood. He slapped it against the door as he went into the church. She darted after him, feeling the threshold push against her. She shuddered at the close contact with his magic.

It was like she could feel them just over her shoulder, lurking, waiting. She didn’t know if they were close, or how much time they had before the monsters struck.

She almost ran into Malachiasz’s back when he stopped dead in the sanctuary.

Parijahan jumped to her feet. “What is it?”

He held out a hand, keeping Nadya from fully entering the room. His eyes were strangely cloudy, murky and dark. “I thought we had time,” he said, some thread of something else crackling in his voice.

Cold panic pressed against Nadya, driving in between her ribs. The temperature seemed to plunge so quickly that Nadya wasn’t surprised to find her breath clouding out before her face.

“Abominations,” Marzenya hissed.

An earth-shattering crash resounded through the church, shaking it to its foundation. Nadya stumbled into Malachiasz and it was like slamming into a stone wall. She shoved away from him though it seemed like he didn’t even notice.

He glanced up at the ceiling, head tilting. Nadya watched with horror as his eyes grew unfocused and a trickle of blood began to drip out of the corner of his eye. A small part of her had been convinced Malachiasz had fled the Vultures before he had been turned into a monster. Apparently that wasn’t the case.

“You said we couldn’t fight them,” Nadya whispered.

“We don’t have a choice,” he replied. “There are two of them inside: Ewa and Rafa?.” His voice sounded different, dropping lower, grit scratching through. His lips twitched into a sneer. “And one in this room.”

Nadya was almost knocked to her knees at the refrain of holy speech that slammed through the back of her head. Her hands were nowhere near her necklace.

What is this?

“What you need.”

It was raw, unformed magic. This could kill me.

“Yes, it could.”

She was grateful for the odd collection of weapons scattered around the sanctuary because it meant the