Wicked Saints (Something Dark and Holy #1) - Emily A. Duncan Page 0,59

him from his enemies. Not his friends.

I guess that means we’re not enemies after all, she thought grimly.

They were maybe something close to friends, skirting past that line into something else Nadya was afraid to consider.

She wasn’t supposed to like him. He wasn’t supposed to be alive. She was helpless, all the control she had cultivated during her life crumbling because of this strange, wild heretic boy she should have killed. If she had done what she was supposed to none of this would be happening, her feelings wouldn’t be a tangled jumble of wanting him far far away and being perpetually drawn to his side.

She wouldn’t be so tempted by the idea of freedom he seemed to be holding before her. Letting him any closer was a mistake she couldn’t afford to make.

His eyes had closed and he opened them, locking on hers. “That feels strange,” he said, his voice thick. She pulled her hand away, shaking it as if that would help.

She reminded herself of the burned villages, of the desecration the Tranavians had caused to Kalyazin. That he was part of the cycle, had a hand in the horrors done to her people. She reminded herself Tranavians had destroyed her home, killed Kostya, and that she deserved revenge.

She reminded herself to blink.

“You’ll have a false name, too?” she asked, trying to distract herself.

“Jakob.”

“Well, that’s certainly easier on the tongue than Malachiasz,” she said.

He laughed softly. His laugh was so unexpected and came so rarely that it jolted her again. She felt her ears burning as a blush rose on her cheeks. She ducked her head to avoid looking at him.

She heard him flipping through his spell book and tearing out the page with the proper spell. His hand was warm underneath her chin as he brought her face up. He pressed the spell into her palm, using his bleeding thumb to smear blood against her forehead, down her nose, and against her lower lip and chin. She kept her eyes on his face, watching as a frown pulled his eyebrows down. He tilted her head back farther, drawing a line of blood down her throat.

At first, it was as though nothing happened. Then the blackened, poisonous touch of his magic washed over her. She let out a sharp breath, one hand reaching to grasp his forearm.

“It’s all right,” he murmured, steadying her as her knees buckled.

“No, this is wrong.” It hurt to speak. Hot waves of fire roiled over her with each breath. She felt tears burning at her eyes and wrenched them shut.

Then it stopped. The absence of pain was just as uncomfortable. She opened her eyes, realized slowly that her head rested against Malachiasz’s chest, and forced herself to pull away without making it obvious she was panicking.

He bent down, dampening a rag in the snow, then straightened, holding it in his fist to warm it. He reached for her. She took a quick step back.

A thread of tension stretched taut between them. They wore masks created by the other on their skin—magic binding them together.

He didn’t speak, but the expression on his face was a question. He reached his hand toward her again and this time she let him wash the blood off her face, his touch gentle.

“I should have warned you. You were probably rejecting my magic inherently because of what you are.”

“It’s over now, don’t worry about it,” she said. “Did it work? You don’t look any different to me, how do I look?”

He had stepped back to wipe the blood off his hands and his gaze flicked up at her. “You look lovely,” he murmured, and she wished she could put an adequate name to what she heard in his voice.

“Oh?”

He nodded, his expression perfectly blank. “Not quite so lovely as a Kalyazi peasant girl who spent her whole life locked in a monastery, though.”

Nadya blinked at him, taking a step back. She turned and abruptly fled the clearing.

17

SEREFIN

MELESKI

Svoyatova Violetta Zhestakova: When she was thirteen, Svoyatova Violetta Zhestakova led a Kalyazi army in the Battle of Relics in 1510. A cleric of Marzenya, Violetta was a ruthless killer who ultimately fell in battle, killed by the blood mage Apolonia Sroka.

—Vasiliev’s Book of Saints

The gardens were dark—no guards, no one at all. Just three Tranavian teenagers with jars of krój and time to waste. They were still waiting to hear back from the boy Kacper had sent to poke around the Salt Mines. Serefin had gotten to all the necessary tasks that