Wicked Saints (Something Dark and Holy #1) - Emily A. Duncan Page 0,71
gets the throne after I’m done away with? he thought absently.
“It’s a game,” he said. “A game played in what you say, who you speak to, and how you act.”
She paled.
“Think of it this way,” he said. He ran his thumb over the rim of his wine glass, the crystalline tone sounding too loud amidst the hushed chatter of the parlor. “My consort—” He cringed. He had tried so hard to distance himself from this whole mess. “—will need to be someone who can prove she will hold her own against whatever Tranavia throws their way. Sometimes that will be underhanded slights in a ballroom. Mostly, with the state of the world as it is, it will be someone who can aid me in winning this war.”
A frown flashed across her face, and he realized that she didn’t seem nervous anymore. “You don’t seem particularly invested in this, Your Highness, if you forgive my candor.”
He couldn’t fathom how she possibly could have seen that. He was doing his absolute best to hide how trying this all was, how much he just wanted to curl up and sleep until it was over.
He shot her a crooked smile. “I’m less than pleased about the circumstances surrounding it, but that is certainly none of the participants’ fault.”
“It would be difficult, though, to have no choice,” she said, voice soft. Her hand went up to her neck, then fell. “You don’t, do you? The choice will be the king’s?”
Inexperienced maybe, but clever. She’s definitely clever. “I’m used to it.”
“Yes,” she said. “Me too.” Her thumb ran over the spine of her spell book.
He wanted to ask what she meant. He was fascinated by this backwater slavhka with her strangely soft words, but a stately Akolan girl stepped up to her side, whispering in her ear.
Józefina lifted her head, her smile like a knife’s edge. “Apparently I have a duel to see to.”
“Good luck, then,” he said. “I’ll be watching.”
She was ushered away and Serefin returned to his friends. ?aneta straightened when he sat down next to her.
“So?”
“You have competition, darling.”
?aneta wrinkled her nose. “Really? She seems so … soft.”
“You know better than to hold being from ?aszczów against her,” Serefin scolded.
She rolled her eyes. “Well, if she dies in an hour, then it won’t matter at all, will it?”
NADEZHDA
LAPTEVA
Malachiasz had found Parijahan and Nadya in the courtyard just outside the arena. He looked tired. She could relate.
“This certainly wasn’t part of the plan,” he noted sarcastically.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Nadya muttered. She had heard enough from Parijahan already. Slip through under the guise of perfect mediocrity, indeed.
She let the noise from the crowd in the arena filter out as she fixed the belts on her hips strapping down Malachiasz’s spell book. It was so strange. All this time and energy spent on such a trivial affair when there was a war happening and people were starving, dying. It was just a game to them.
She was wearing the white leather mask again, and though it stifled, she took comfort in the anonymity. She was nothing but a name; a lesser noble from a forgotten city in Tranavia.
She heard her false name read to the crowd: Józefina Zelenska from ?aszczów, a blood mage of no military rank. Inconsequential. Insignificant by all standards. My name is Nadezhda Lapteva, she thought. I am from the monastery in the Baikkle Mountains. I am a cleric of the divine. I am here to kill the king and end this war.
She would bring this country to its knees.
Nadya let her fingers brush against the razor sewn into the sleeve of her shirt. She was wearing tight black trousers, high boots reaching up to her knees, and a loose-fitting white blouse with sleeves that constricted her forearms.
The gods were distant and Nadya would have the added difficulty of being forced to pretend to cast magic like a blood mage. The seed of fear she had been ignoring up until this point finally grew into something that threatened to topple her. She could barely feel the gods. How had she expected to do this—be anything—with the gods so far out of reach? What was she without them? Just a peasant girl who grew up in a monastery. A girl who would die for believing she was anything more than that.
20
NADEZHDA
LAPTEVA
The goddess of the hunt, Devonya, is known for her kindness to mortals, for her interest in their odd ways. She loves to grant them unusual talents in her name.