others moved fast and without questions. Anna shot Nadya a terrified look.
Nadya could barely fathom that this was happening, that her elbow was an inch away from the arm of a boy who was everything she hated, everything she had been trained to destroy. A boy whose trembling had ceased to a stillness so complete it was like he’d turned to stone next to her.
Malachiasz scanned the ceiling. His sneer turned into something closer to a smile. “Rozá.” The way he said the name sounded like a song, a tease, a challenge.
Something materialized on the ceiling and began to drip down to the floor like blood. It was blood, Nadya realized. It dripped faster, becoming a torrent.
Malachiasz finally noticed the blood leaking out of the corner of his eye. He shuddered and wiped at it with his thumb.
Parijahan’s face was white as chalk. “Malachiasz…”
What is going on?
The blood moved as if it had a life of its own until it formed into the shape of a girl, materializing in the center of the room. Iron spikes wove through an auburn braid. A thick black book hung from straps on her hip. Her face was covered by a crimson mask crafted in strips. It left only her eyes visible, black as onyx. Blood dripped from her bony shoulders.
“Perfect. Saves me a double trip to this wasteland,” the girl said. Her voice sounded wrong. Everything about her was off-putting and otherworldly, as though Nadya’s brain couldn’t comprehend she was even real.
Blood was leaking from the corners of Malachiasz’s eyes again. He looked down at his hands with something too close to resignation, shaking as iron claws grew and lengthened from his nail beds. Blood fell from his lips, landing on the back of his hand—crimson on pale skin.
Nadya was still too close to him and now there was nowhere for her to go. The Vulture girl stepped closer, her movements odd, too fast and jerky, like Nadya’s eyes lost seconds as they tried to track her.
“Look at you,” the girl said. Nadya shuddered at the sound of her voice. It was like death and madness clashed in dissonant chords when she spoke. “Debased, unmasked, diminished.” Her hands looked perverse: the fingers too long and the joints thin and spindly. Her nails were also iron claws.
A vein pulsed in Malachiasz’s neck. His gaze was flinty as he eyed her. There was blood dripping from his nose now, catching on his upper lip. Rozá stepped closer. Malachiasz was trembling. Not from fear, though, it wasn’t that. It took her longer to put a name to it: restraint.
“How much further do I have to rile you before I can make you face me as you truly are?” Rozá asked.
She was much shorter than him, probably Nadya’s height. Even so, she leveled to him, reaching up with an iron claw and trailing it down the side of his face. It opened a thread-line cut, welling blood.
“Not much further,” he replied.
He had said there were two other Vultures. Three of them was too many, Nadya knew, but at least the Vultures were outnumbered. She drew her voryens.
Rozá’s head shifted, birdlike, her onyx gaze honing in on Nadya. There was no warning before she struck. She was there and then she was gone. Nadya didn’t have the opportunity to defend herself, she barely had enough time to realize the Vulture had moved.
Then the world shifted. Two more Vultures materialized into the room, then a third. Nadya’s heart plummeted in horror as she realized there were more than just the three that Malachiasz named.
The others jolted into motion. Rashid sidestepped a flash of dark magic and whipped two Akolan blades from the weapons rack. He spun one in a lazy arc, a smile on his face. Anna’s terror had chilled to something deadly.
A split-second, a blink, and Rozá was impaled on Malachiasz’s long iron claws. He gritted his teeth and Nadya felt her chest tighten as metal glinted in his mouth; his teeth rows of iron nails, too-sharp canines now deadly fangs. Pale eyes darkening as his pupils dilated, expanding to swallow the ice of his irises, then more, further, until the whites of his eyes were gone.
“It won’t count if I don’t kill you as you truly are,” Rozá said. There was no hint of pain in her voice, nothing to suggest she was even injured as she pulled herself almost elegantly off Malachiasz’s claws.
He sneered.
The air stirred behind Nadya and she whirled, drawing her voryens up in