Wicked Saints (Something Dark and Holy #1) - Emily A. Duncan Page 0,46

from his father’s informants, but that would mean speaking to Pelageya Borisovna.

His father gave Pelageya a wide berth. The Kalyazi woman had left her own country after rejecting her gods. While she did not have magic, per se, she was something. A seer. A madwoman.

“Do you know if Pelageya is in her tower?” Serefin asked mildly.

Kacper’s eyes widened. “What do you want with her?”

“Someplace my father won’t think to look.” He reached for his spell book, forgetting he had cleaned it out. He sighed. “We have three weeks until the Rawalyk.”

Kacper nodded. Hopefully it would be enough time to piece together what was going on. If this Rawalyk was just as it appeared, or if it was … something darker.

Serefin turned to Kacper, opened his mouth, and closed it again. He glanced down the hall. “Come with me,” he said.

He wove through the labyrinthine halls of the palace, passing servants wearing dull, gray masks, aware of their lingering glances. They reached one of the three spires. Serefin opened the door, ducking into the entranceway.

A voice formed of ancient promises and death called down: “His Highness has decided to grace me with his presence? We are in dire times.”

Serefin smiled at Kacper, who looked distressed.

There was no way to see the top of the tower, but Serefin knew Pelageya was up there, leaning her head down over the railway, looking like a sixteen-year-old dolzena when in truth she was nearly ninety years old. He wondered how she would look when they reached her, if they would get the young woman or the old. Frankly, the young one terrified him.

“Serefin…” Kacper groaned as Serefin started up the spiral stairs, taking them two at a time. “This is madness. You hate her.”

“She terrifies me. As she terrifies everyone.” Serefin paused, pulling on the railing as he leaned back. “Like she terrifies my father.”

Kacper frowned. “She’s Kalyazi. Your father probably has a hundred spells on this tower to know what she gets up to.”

If Serefin had his spell book, he would have cast a perception spell. Even still, he sliced a finger on the razor inside his sleeve and pressed it against the window.

“Get your bloody hands off my glass!” Pelageya called.

The spell wasn’t as strong as it would have been if Serefin had his spell book, but it was sufficient. The witch’s tower was void of his father’s magic, but choked with something ancient and dreadful.

“There’s nothing of my father’s here.”

“Blood and bone, of course not. Your mother made sure of that, princeling.”

Serefin reached the landing only slightly winded—being back at the palace was already getting to him; he had climbed all those ridiculous stairs in Kalyazin and had been fine. He found the young Pelageya at the top. She stood in the doorway to her chambers with her hands propped on her hips. Her black hair was wild and tangled against her pale skin, her sharp eyes dark. Whatever magic she had, whatever it was that allowed her to shift from young to old and back at a whim, it showed in her eyes.

“My mother?” he asked. Of course his mother. Izak and Klarysa only outwardly tolerated each other. Bringing the witch back to Grazyk was just another way for Klarysa to get under Izak’s skin.

“Aye. Come in, princeling, I can see you want somewhere to speak without your father’s snooping rats hearing you.” She turned, stepping into her rooms.

Kacper shot a desperate look at Serefin. “Come on, there are better places for this,” he murmured. “Places that don’t involve being around a crazy Kalyazi witch.”

“Don’t try so hard to compliment me, Zyweci,” she called.

Serefin entered Pelageya’s rooms. Black rugs overlapped on the floor and deer skulls hung from the walls, tied up by their antlers. The witch sat in a plush ivory chair, her legs crossed underneath her, twisting a lock of black hair in between her fingers, eyeing Serefin with her head cocked to one side.

“You’ve realized your father isn’t so good a father to you, eh?” she asked.

“What is he planning?”

“No one but he knows. Klarysa has her suspicions, but of course she could do little from her seclusion in the lake country. She can do a bit more in Grazyk, now, but…” She waved a hand to the ragged chair across from her. Serefin sat cautiously.

“Your people put little stock in prophecy and foretelling,” she said, gazing off into the middle distance. “So odd, for a people so entrenched in blood magic, that the Kalyazi are a more