to the other side of the room, fingers reaching blindly until they closed over Kostya’s necklace. The spiral at the center was giving off a low light.
Some gods require blood.
She swallowed hard. Taking the pendant in her fist, she let the blood soaking her hands drip into the ridges.
She held it closer to her face, peering at the soft, almost eerie light.
“You deserve to know the truth about the beings that chose you.” Nadya startled at the unfamiliar voice chiming in her head. It was speaking in holy speech and usually she didn’t understand the tongue without the gods’ blessing.
Nadya inhaled sharply, hit with a sudden barrage of images. The wave of pain that slammed into her nearly knocked her out.
Creatures with knotted joints like the whorls of a tree, faces enshrouded in fog, four eyes, six, ten. Beings with eyes on their fingertips, mouths at their joints. Iron teeth, iron claws, iron eyes.
One after another after another. Sinuous wings, feathered wings black as tar. Eyes of light, of darkness. And blood. So much blood.
Because that’s just it. It was always, always blood.
Feeling sick, Nadya dropped the necklace. The images stopped. She was panting, fighting for air.
She tentatively reached out for the voice again, only to be met with silence. She wasn’t used to silence in her own mind. When she picked up the necklace again, she was careful to not touch the spiral ridges but apparently any contact was enough. When the cool silver touched against her skin all her senses were flooded with white light. Purity with rivulets of blood staining it all. It fell in tiny droplets, from her fingertips, off her arms. There was nothing but the blinding white and the blood.
What is this? What are you?
“Does that matter?”
She was surprised when the voice—unusually high, like reed pipes—responded.
Are you … one of the gods? There were gods she had never spoken to, was this one?
There was a long silence, leaving Nadya suspended in the blood-soaked white space. She was vaguely aware her pain was only a dim buzz now. It surrounded her like a fog, barely noticeable.
Then: “Once upon a time, yes.”
And once upon a time that answer would have terrified Nadya. A few short weeks ago, the girl in a monastery who believed so wholly in her gods and her cause would have looked upon this with horror, disbelief. She would have written it off as hallucinatory heretical magic. But now …
Now she had allowed herself to doubt. Now she was tired. Now she had been forsaken and abandoned. She sat down, crossing her legs underneath her, conscious of the floor wet with blood beneath her. There was nothing left to do but hope for answers.
How does one become something that is no longer a god?
“How does a human girl become something divine and feared by the gods that gave her the power she wields?”
Nadya frowned, puzzled. I think you’re mistaken.
“Mistakes are not things I generally make,” the voice replied.
Where am I? What do you want? The being never answered her first question, but she held back asking again in hope she would receive some answers.
“Where you are is as irrelevant as it is immaterial. What I want is better answered by the question of what you want.”
Can I see you?
“You do not want to.”
Nadya flipped the pendant between her fingers. It had come with her. Had she been carrying this being around her neck all this time? Where had Kostya—of all people—found this? Why had he given it to her?
What … did she want?
“You have it already,” the voice said from behind her. When she turned there was nothing but the white and the blood. “But you don’t realize it. So long spent under the thumb of the pantheon has tainted your understanding.”
Tainted? Nadya asked, feeling sick. Whatever this was, whatever this being wanted, would only lead to danger. But what option did she even have?
“You think they can take your power away from you?”
Nadya grew cold.
They can. They gave me this power; they can take it at their will.
“That is incorrect.” The voice sounded amused.
Nadya trembled. Her vision blurred, shifting back to darkness before being flooded with white once more.
“Our time together grows short. You must make a choice, little bird. Do you continue on with your wings clipped or do you fly?”
Darkness plunged back around Nadya—abrupt and severe—as the necklace slipped out of her hands and pain crashed back down onto her.
26
NADEZHDA
LAPTEVA
Velyos is a god but not a god. He is a