Chapter 3
Ksenia’s coarse, wavy locks were twined through Bohdan’s fingers as Karsan watched him behead her corpse.
Blood spattered the ground. Her eyes stayed open. He averted his.
Her head swung from his fist as he stood stiffly, eyes trained on the distance.
When they had mounted their horses and retreated from the clearing, the forest was cloaked in a heavy silence.
The squall had cleared up, the moon spotlighting her headless corpse at the base of the tree.
Surrounding her body, the grass withered and desiccated, despite the fresh rain. The bark of the tree closest to her was petrified and gray, its leaves curled brown on brittle branches. The temperature dropped, hardening the mud in a ring around the corpse.
Despite the cold, there was a deep, pervasive heat warping the air above Ksenia’s body, like a coal with a burning ember at its center.
And it called to the dark.
A cloud of black smoke rolled over the ground in the clearing and seeped between the blades of grass and young saplings.
It stopped at the widening, deadened ring surrounding Ksenia’s sprawled corpse.
A spark of white light ignited in the air.
The spark swelled, the shadows answering in kind as inky smoke rose from the pooling darkness, pluming into a slender silhouette.
From the spark, a hand emerged: smooth and pearlescent.
From the shadow, another took shape: gnarled, blackened, sharpened to a point.
They existed in opposition, the darkness threatening to consume the light and the light burning brighter despite it.
The figure raised both hands to lift a hood from their face. Skin ashen and luminous. Cheekbones cut sharp, juxtaposed with lips the color of dried blood, pressed into a severe line.
They crouched and pressed a gnarled hand against Ksenia’s mangled chest. Her heart was still there—darkened and grisly with the unfulfilled grudges she carried. Iron and salt.
A heart of darkness. The voice was lyrical, piercing.
Silence.
But the heat deepened, the way a fire deepened when it received air.
The hand drew back, paused.
Then it plunged into Ksenia’s cooling chest. Her sternum and ribs gave way with a crunch, blood and viscera clinging to the hand and wrist as it wrenched out something that looked less like a heart and more like something pulled from the earth.
A dark stone with veins of pulsing red and orange, calcified with vengeance.
And as the hand reared back, a translucent shade of a woman formed of bloody vapor peeled upward, chest-first, and separated from the corpse. Her limbs and head hung limp, as if she were being towed through water. Slowly, her form rippled like a flame and rose to standing before the figure.
Wild curls fanned away from her face, eyes closed, brow furrowed.
Ksenia slammed awake, as if half-drowned.
She gasped for air and found none. She clutched at her throat, her hands falling through.
She registered the deafening silence in her own body. No heartbeat. Not even the wet sound of her swallow.
She shot her eyes down.
Her hands were incorporeal.
No.
She turned them over, eyes focused on the corpse beneath her. A leg bent out of sorts. Rib cracked open. Headless.
Her corpse.
No.
A woman with a pair of mismatched eyes studied her: one silver, one void-black with the weary patience of someone who had done this many times, neither finding it surprising nor mundane.
Just necessary.
Her patience thinned, and she tightened her grip around the stone. Ksenia felt a heavy pressure envelop her, and her form rippled, as if a wind had cut through her.
You called for me, she said, her voice resonating in Ksenia’s skull. And I answered.
Ksenia’s attention snapped to the foreign being.
Called for her?
I am Vornaya. God of Crossroads. She stood, stony heart in hand. When the dead linger, be it they are unwilling or too vengeful to go, they find themselves at my mercy.
She had never seen this deity’s likeness in any church or scripture she had been taught.
Ksenia shifted but found herself unable to move, unable to cry out. Bound by an invisible straitjacket that was Vornaya’s grip on her heart.
But Karsan Saranov is…productive in creating aberrations without souls…salting the lands and making me clean up his mess. A hint of annoyance lingered in her words.
At the mention of the king, the veins in the heart within Vornaya’s blackened palm became cracked fissures. She chuckled, examining it. Your hell-bent need for revenge will destroy you from the inside out and ravage the lands. It must be destroyed.
If Ksenia had breath, smoke would have wafted from her nostrils. The heart in Vornaya’s hand grew incendiary, compounding with hatred. An unjust ending—I know. I’ve tried to offer aid to the others who suffered your fate. All of them were certain they could slay him and win their souls back.
She tilted her head and continued.
None of them did. And now this is all that remains of you. A grudge that runs deep enough to salt the earth. Enough to constitute a wretched self. A wry smile curved her lips as Vornaya tossed the heart from hand to hand. Barely.
Ksenia’s jaw clenched, writhing fruitlessly in her binds. To what end, she wasn’t sure.
You certainly have fire if not sense… Vornaya traced the fissures with her nail.
So I’ll give you a choice: I can put you out of your misery, quickly. Her grip tightened on Ksenia’s stony heart once more.
Pressure climbed, and her being dimmed like a snuffed flame.
Or. Or.
Ksenia gritted her teeth.
You agree to a blood pact. You already pledged a little to me—what’s a little more? Her smile stretched as wide as the crescent moon overhead.
Ksenia stilled. Did she mean…the shrine?
I’ll lend you a piece of my soul and body to make you whole so you can kill the king and get your own soul back. Vornaya circled her captive slowly. In exchange for sacrifices to me, she whispered in Ksenia’s ear.
A shudder rippled through her.
Vornaya didn’t have animal sacrifices in mind.
It was common knowledge that only the old gods had called for sacrifices. Any god that required them now was barbaric and had few followers.
The old gods’ generosity had never come cheap.
There were tales of scholars who’d begged for all the knowledge in the world, only to have their skulls burst at the seams. Generals granted unbeatable armies that turned on their masters with unquenchable bloodlust. Nobles cursed with eternal beauty that only they could see, appearing decrepit to all others.
And Ksenia knew this intimately. An ancient god called Old Hollow had struck a pact with the first of her kind over a century ago, infusing their blood with metal and the ability to forge weapons that no ordinary smith could fathom.
It made them a commodity to be courted or caged, depending on who wore the crown.
Her people were something the world would never stop wanting to use or destroy.
And now, another god was offering.
I give you power. You give me power. She reappeared on her opposite side, cooing. An even exchange, isn’t it?
She circled back in front of Ksenia, as if listening patiently.
Be destroyed, or do the destroying and be indebted to a god.
But if her grudge alone had called the God of Crossroads, then she would use the opportunity to burn Karsan’s kingdom to the ground.
She would strip him of everything he held dear.
She would make him pay, and then some.
Death was not a kindness she owed the butcher king.
She leveled her gaze on Vornaya and gave a single, resolute nod.
A cold wind cut between them.
The moon hung behind the god’s head, casting her face in shadow as she assessed her new apostle with clinical detachment. She stood gravely still before lifting the tortured heart.
The god held out her luminescent hand, and from behind the clearing, beckoned Ksenia’s lost dagger. She caught it with little effort and drew a slit across her palm, black ichor beading to the surface, smearing over the hardened heart.
Ksenia sensed the cold thread of Vornaya’s being weaving through the cracks of her like roots through stone.
She plunged it into Ksenia’s incorporeal self, back into the nest of broken ribs, shaking the forest floor.
Rise from your ashes.
A scream ripped from deep within Ksenia. Wet, ragged, raw as torn flesh.
Trapped in her own dead body, the darkness was absolute.
She was being smothered from every direction, but she held on to her will.
She summoned what little strength she had left.
Because she wasn’t done with the butcher king.
This body was just a spent husk. She reached for the rage where it always lived, and her heart cracked open, revealing a molten core that incinerated her from the inside out.
The sparks seared the flesh and boiled the remaining blood.
She stoked the rage and let it breathe the air from her lungs till it consumed her entirely.
A thousand sensations assaulted her, spreading through her like wildfire. Tremors racked her as she was forced back into existence, bones reforming, sinew snapping, every muscle fiber knitting together in paralyzing agony. She was mute as she writhed, save for a pained whimper.
She was being stitched back together, back to life. Her skin stretched taut, covering weak fingers and limbs that were outgrowing the nest.
Bone gave way with wet snaps, her whole and new body forcing itself through the ribcage of the old in a dark spray of blood as she tore free.
Her lungs burned from the acrid night air, her airways drowned and gasping at once.
She could now feel every inch of herself, brought back from the void, naked to the elements.
The first thing she saw through dilated pupils was the crescent moon.
She slammed onto the frozen ground, environmental sensations rushing back in dizzying force. Her chest convulsed, retching.
A heartbeat.
Another.
A life to weigh, a soul to lend. A kill each week, and I’ll extend. Vornaya’s cruel voice lacerated Ksenia’s new eardrums, and she burrowed into the mud, desperate to escape it.
Vornaya lifted the thin blade, examining it as it caught the moonlight.
Caromir. She tested the name on her tongue. A fitting name for a kingkiller. Her fingers tightened around the mahogany hilt. And the chain that binds you to me.
She hurled the blade into the dirt, narrowly missing Ksenia’s splayed fingers. Don’t think you’ll be free of me, just because you cannot see me...
The frost melted, beading into dew. The air’s temperature rose tenfold. The petrifying gray receded, color returning to the trees and grass.
Ksenia cracked an eye open to an empty clearing and what remained of her old corpse beneath her.
She stifled her scream as she staggered away, weak as a baby deer.
Cold sweat coated her skin as she drew in a breath, the stench reeking of viscera.
Slowly, she retrieved her dagger, her fresh skin prickling at the bit of metal.
She lurched from tree to tree until she reached the forest line, each step becoming more solid as her sense of equilibrium returned.
She no longer shook from weakness, but rather from the nakedness of her body as she made her way back to the empty cottage.
The light of dawn spread over the townscape, burning her sensitive retinas. Darkened, drab buildings rose in a crooked line, each leaning slightly into its neighbor as if sharing a secret.