Ruthless Gods Page 16

  “There’s nothing I want more right now than to punch his stupid face, do not take this from me, Rashid,” Nadya replied, but her side twinged.

  “Stitches?” Malachiasz questioned gently, and all the air in the room was sucked out. He was picking at his cuticles and his right fingers were already bleeding. He coughed violently.

  This was the boy who had convinced her so earnestly that he cared, only to throw it all in her face. How dare he come back and act like they could slide back into the comfortably strange friendship they had before, when it was all a lie.

  “That’s what happens when you impale a person with all ten of your godsdamned finger blades,” she snapped, livid.

  Finger blades, he mouthed, puzzled, before his hands slowly curled into fists—not combative, protective. A flicker of panic crossed his face. He looked to Parijahan beseechingly but she took a step closer to Nadya. The subtle shift in allegiances made his panic grow more pronounced.

  “What did I do?” he asked slowly.

  Nadya scoffed, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. Rashid was frowning. Malachiasz had gone from leaning against the door to appearing as though his legs were about to give out.

  “But this is what you wanted,” Rashid said to Nadya.

  “I said I needed him back, I didn’t say he was going to be forgiven,” she replied.

  Malachiasz flinched as if she’d struck him. She watched as he tried to shutter away the anxious boy and … failed. He lifted a hand and started gnawing on a hangnail. She didn’t trust this—couldn’t possibly—but there was something strange about the way he was acting.

  “Malachiasz…”

  He startled at his name, eyes flickering closed briefly.

  “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  He frowned. Shook his head slowly. Kostya had come up behind her to lean in the opposite doorway, the hatred radiating off him in cool waves.

  “I woke up in the mines,” Malachiasz said. “But it was Grazyk, the cathedral. I—there are other things, flashes, but…”

  “The cathedral was nearly six months ago,” she said.

  He shook his head again and raked a hand through his hair; his fingers caught on a piece of bone threaded amongst the gold beads caught in the strands, and it only rattled him further.

  “All right,” he said softly. “That was not a calculated result.”

  Parijahan snorted. “You idiot.”

  He smiled weakly. His gaze returned to Nadya, fell on her necklace, and his face paled. “I didn’t…”

  “That grand plan of yours? No,” she said, voice sharp. “Or maybe? Who knows. We need to talk.”

  “Yes.” He sounded like he would rather do anything else.

  “You should get cleaned up first,” Parijahan said.

  He let Parijahan pull him into the room. He stood there listlessly, lost and bewildered before she nudged him in the right direction.

  Rashid left to heat the bathhouse and Malachiasz followed as quickly as he could, clearly wishing to be away from Nadya. And as angry as she was, it hurt. Because she had missed him and he was right in front of her—so close to her—but she couldn’t have him because he had lied and was trying to destroy her gods for the sake of some extreme ideal. Because she didn’t know what he was and she couldn’t see past that monster in the dark.

  She shivered hard, wrapping her arms around herself. The monster she had kissed. But he didn’t remember. That sheer blasphemy was for her to bear, alone. For her to forget, alone. It had been a kiss goodbye.

  Parijahan glanced over Nadya’s shoulder at Kostya. “Leave him be,” she warned.

  “Nadya—” Kostya tugged her around to face him. The anger and confusion and bewilderment in his face was a barrage.

  “He was my friend,” she said, voice hoarse. “But something happened and he’s not anymore but I need him for something. I need to do something big, something that might fix everything, but I can’t do it without him.”

  Kostya furrowed his brow. “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t know if I can help you understand,” she whispered.

  A painful silence stretched between them until, with a disgusted grunt, he stepped past Nadya and Parijahan, out the door and into the rain.

  Nadya bit her lip, willing back tears. “I didn’t expect this to be so hard.”

  “Do you want me to talk to Konstantin?” Parijahan asked.

  “It’s kind of you to offer, but no, I’ll do it. He’ll cool off,” Nadya said, though she wasn’t sure that was true.

  “And?”

  “Oh, I’m definitely talking to the other one, too,” Nadya said. “How dare he act like that? Like nothing happened at all. Like he doesn’t remember.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t,” Parijahan said.

  “Even if he doesn’t, he sure as hell remembers that everything he ever told me was a lie,” Nadya said. It did bring up a problem, though. How was she ever going to figure out what exactly he had been up to if he didn’t remember? She couldn’t dismiss that lost time, optimistically shoving it away with the explanation that he had been too incoherent to do any real damage. It wasn’t true.

  Parijahan frowned. “He did lie,” she said, but her gray eyes were, as always, too discerning. “Is this how you’re going to punish him, then?”

  “He’s deserving of whatever I decide.” And it was true, but she knew that wasn’t what Parijahan was trying to say.

  She couldn’t help it. She was angry at everyone. She was angry at Malachiasz for lying. She was angry at Marzenya for turning her back when Nadya needed her most. And she would see this through—use him the way he used her. If she was the one who was supposed to stop this war, then she was damned well going to do just that, regardless of what it took.

  PARIJAHAN SIROOSI

  There were only so many dry Tranavian military reports Parijahan could stand before she wanted to burn down the whole country herself. She left Rashid, who was still puzzling over a report that Parijahan was fairly certain meant nothing and Serefin hadn’t intended to bring with him. She wandered into the tiny kitchen to find a significantly cleaner Malachiasz intently boiling water for tea. She watched him—the way he tensed at her footsteps and relaxed again without looking.

  “Parj.”

  “Are you trying to bribe your way to forgiveness?”

  “I,” Malachiasz said, voice prim, “am trying to bribe my way out of getting my throat slit or nose broken. Forgiveness is hardly a factor and does require remorse.”

  Parijahan laughed and hopped up onto the table. “You look wretched.”

  “Thank you,” he replied. “That is exactly what I want to hear right now, you do know all the ways to make me feel better, Parj.”

  He had found raspberries and withered apples somewhere, and was steeping them in the tea, but Parijahan supposed he would know exactly where to find ingredients for a very Tranavian drink in this little Tranavian farmhouse.

  Parijahan’s personal vendetta against his country was nothing like Nadya’s and she didn’t particularly care about the monsters and the heresy—whatever that meant. If Malachiasz were some rich slavhka, her feelings might be different.

  “I missed you,” she said. “I wish you had told me the truth about what you were planning.”

  “I have not had the capacity for missing anyone,” he said, falsely cheerful.

  She was quiet. His cavalier tone wasn’t masking everything like usual. The cracks were showing. She knew how lonely he was, but she hadn’t realized how scared he was, too. And she wished, so badly, that things hadn’t ended up this way because, despite everything he was, she wanted to help him and now she wasn’t sure if she could. Her circumstances were rapidly shifting and she didn’t know how much time she had left here. Soon she would have to leave him behind.

  “No remorse, then,” she finally said.

  He drummed his fingers against the table. “I didn’t know if you would trust me or tell her,” he said, his voice near
ly inaudible.

  Parijahan opened her mouth to protest but he held up a hand.

  “You can’t fault me for it when I am very aware that you would like to see my entire country in flames,” he pointed out.

  She sighed.

  A cluster of eyes, in unsettling colors and dripping blood, opened up on his cheek. He pushed away from the table before he could get blood on anything. A few seconds passed before they disappeared and he could clean off. She grimaced. It was sickening.

  It had been obvious there would be nightmarish ramifications from what he had done, but she hadn’t expected this. She thought of the night where his control had slipped and he’d admitted to her just what he was; the way his voice had trembled, how she’d thought he was going to cry when she’d taken the revelation with a shrug and told him it was his turn to make dinner. She hadn’t expected he would want to be worse than he already was. A lapse in judgment.

  “We need to talk.”

  “Do we?” He was immediately wary.

  She almost laughed. “Not about any of this.” She didn’t know why Malachiasz was the person whose help she wanted in making the decision that was before her—he had lied, and how was she to know if he was going to use what she had to tell him against her? It was politically tenuous, and he was ambitious, to say the least.

  A quizzical head tilt from him. He poured the tea into two ugly, misshapen mugs and offered her one.

  “You know I’m picky about tea.”

  “If you hate it, I will make it my new life’s mission to get you tea from Akola.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “You do need a new life mission.”

  “You’re not allowed to hate it on that principle.”

  She didn’t hate it. It was much sweeter than she usually liked, but the sweetness wasn’t cloying, it was pleasant.

  “I suppose you get to keep your fool’s quest.”

  He grinned. She eyed him over the rim. He was barefoot, his hair haphazardly tied back, hardly the incoherent monster Nadya consistently implied.

  “What did you want to talk about?”

  She shook her head. “Not here, somewhere the others can’t hear, later.” She didn’t want to talk about Akola with Rashid within earshot, wrong as it felt to hide something from him.

  He waited for her to continue.

  “I’m in trouble.”

  “And you need my help?”

  “I need advice.” Parijahan took another sip. “You should take Nadya her tea. She probably won’t hit you.”

  He frowned at her, debating whether to press further or wait. But he knew her; he understood she would tell him eventually.

  Because, though he had proven he didn’t feel the same, she trusted him. Terrible as it was, the betrayal he had enacted was one she understood, even if she wished he had gone about it in some other way. She knew how much he wanted to change things, how willing to go to extremes he was. He could have told her, even just a piece of it. Then there wouldn’t be this awkwardness between them where before there had only been ease. They had crashed into each other—quite literally—but he had fit in so well with the odd band of Kalyazi that Parijahan had gathered around her since fleeing Akola. She missed them, the ones who had left, and she had always been very aware that he was the one who had stayed; the Tranavian, the Black Vulture, the boy who wanted too much and knew too much and was too much. She didn’t want to lose him like she had lost the twins and dear, sweet Lyuba. But she also didn’t want to lose, well, everything because of him and his rash actions and his lies.

  So she would grant to him what he refused to grant her, even if it might end in disaster. Frankly, she wasn’t sure how things could get much worse than they already were.

  He gave a quick nod. And, looking like he was staring down the executioner’s block, he took the mug of tea to the other room. Parijahan didn’t immediately hear any yelling, so she supposed Nadya had decided to spare him. This time.

  NADEZHDA LAPTEVA

  Kostya still hadn’t come back in from the rain, and Nadya sat at the table with a map open before her, trying to figure out how they could get to Bolagvoy without it taking half a year. The prospects weren’t good.

  She would be eighteen by the time they made it that far into Kalyazin, she considered with no small amount of distress. The country was massive, and the Valikhor Mountains were on practically the opposite side, right up along the border to the Aecii Empire with its flatlands and horse lords.

  A fresh mug of tea slid over the table to her. Malachiasz sat down across from her, his movements slow and careful, as if he was in significant pain.

  A cluster of eyes opened up on his cheek. He flinched, a shaking hand immediately flying up to cover his face. Nadya watched in silence as he let out a long, tremulous breath before slowly lowering his hand. The eyes were gone.

  “Well,” she said.

  He pressed his fingers against his cheek, searching. There was no hiding what he was. The shield of the anxious teenage boy was too easily fractured by the monster out of his control.

  Gods, she wanted to rage, because he looked so sad and she didn’t know if that was him playing at human to get the response he wanted.

  She took a small sip of the tea, finding raspberry seeds floating at the top. It was sweet and good. She didn’t want to think about how Malachiasz was the only person in the farmhouse who would prepare tea like this.

  He had cleaned up, his long black hair drying tangled and wild around his sharp features. Exhaustion painted shadows under his pale eyes and hollows under his cheekbones. The features of his face didn’t shift as wildly as before, but decay crept over his cheek as she watched.

  He was quiet, scratching at the table with a chewed up fingernail, but Nadya had missed his thoughtful silences and that frustrated her, too.

  “Nadya, I—”

  “Did you—”

  They spoke at the same time.

  Nadya glared and continued. “Did you ever regret what you were doing? Did you ever feel bad for all the lies?”

  He cleared his throat but didn’t speak. He nodded slowly.

  “Not enough to ever tell me the truth.”

  “I had to do what was best for Tranavia,” he said, voice hoarse.

  “Of course.”

  “I—thank you. For—”

  “Stop. Just stop, Malachiasz. If this is all a game to you, I don’t want any part of it.”

  “Yes,” he said sharply. “Because I’m nothing but a monster. It’s what I will always be. No matter how hard you pray, no matter how many times you throttle me into the semblance of something human. I am barely that. I was barely holding it together before and I am barely holding it together now.”

  Her jaw clenched.

  “But apparently, you need me,” he continued.

  So she did.

  He sighed. “I never wanted to hurt you.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what you wanted or didn’t want. You sat on your throne and watched while the king nearly slaughtered, not only me, but Serefin—you executed a plan to destroy my gods. You did all of those things. They happened.” She paused, knuckling the bridge of her nose. “I went into those mines for you and it wasn’t only because I need you, but I can’t … I can’t do this. Not right now.”

  He lifted an eyebrow, distant.

  “You’re right, though, I need you for what you’ve turned yourself into.”

  He winced.

  “Not what you expected?”

  “No.”

  “Did you truly think it was going to be sentiment?”

  He shot her a dark glare, his eyes flashing black to pale blue again so swiftly she almost missed it. A shiver of ice trailed down her spine. How quickly he had gone from a boy shivering in the rain to something vicious.

  “One of your gods can’t help you?”

  She looked down. Away from his pale eyes that were too capable of seeing a part of her she didn’t think anyone else saw. The girl that simply
didn’t know what to do. Maybe he was the reason that girl was even there, his words drawing up an ocean of doubt within her. And because he was Malachiasz Czechowicz he didn’t need her to explain. His eyes widened, his expression fracturing sadly.

  “Oh,” he said, gentle in a way that she didn’t want because she didn’t want anything from him that might make her forgive him.

  “Stop,” she said, because she was being drawn to this awkward, terrible boy beyond all reason. And she had to fight it off. She wouldn’t dare let him lie to her again.

  He gave a slight feral smile. He folded his tattooed hands on the table and leaned over to inspect the map.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I haven’t told you what the plan is.”

  “You will. I’m sure it’s something particularly ill-advised that will go against my tender sensibilities—”

  “You have those?”

  He took a moment of thoughtful contemplation before he shook his head wistfully.

  A laugh escaped her. And her heart faltered at the way his smile shifted to a genuine grin, quieter than before, his former brilliance dimmed. His teeth a little sharper, darkness all the more present at his edges. Every little facet of him that was slightly off before had become utterly monstrous.

  She sighed heavily and pointed at a spot on the map. He stared at it before getting up and coming to the other side of the table. He leaned over her chair. She couldn’t tell if his face had paled or if his complexion was just that sickly in the dim light of the farmhouse.

  “That’s on the other side of Kalyazin,” he said. A crack in his voice confirmed that, yes, he was definitely paler.

  “Yes.”

  He rubbed his jaw, perplexed, and asked distractedly, “Who’s the boy?”

  She cast him a long look, not sure if he was being serious. He lifted his eyebrows.

  “His name is Konstantin. We grew up at the monastery together.”

  “Ah,” Malachiasz said.

  “He’s been in the Salt Mines.”

  “Ah.”

  He tugged on a piece of bone that was threaded through his hair, anxiously searching for something to do with his hands.