Ruthless Gods: A Novel

By Emily A. Duncan

The stunning sequel to instant New York Times bestseller, Wicked Saints

Nadya doesn’t trust her magic anymore. Serefin is fighting off a voice in his head that doesn’t belong to him. Malachiasz is at war with who--and what--he’s become.

As their group is continually torn apart, the girl, the prince, and the monster find their fates irrevocably intertwined. Their paths are being orchestrated by someone…or something. The voices that Serefin hears in the darkness, the ones that Nadya believes are her gods, the ones that Malachiasz is desperate to meet—those voices want a stake in the world, and they refuse to stay quiet any longer.

In their dramatic follow-up to Wicked Saints, the first book in their Something Dark and Holy trilogy, Emily A. Duncan paints a Gothic, icy world where shadows whisper, and no one is who they seem, with a shocking ending that will leave you breathless.

This edition uses deckle edges; the uneven paper edge is intentional.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Apr 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781250195715

Emily A. Duncan

EMILY A. DUNCAN is the New York Times bestselling author of Wicked Saints, Ruthless Gods, and Blessed Monsters. They work as a youth services librarian and received a Master’s degree in library science from Kent State University, which mostly taught them how to find obscure Slavic folklore texts through interlibrary loan systems. When not reading or writing, they enjoy playing copious amounts of video games and dungeons and dragons. They live in Ohio.

Book preview

prologue

THE GIRL CAUGHT IN-BETWEEN

All was darkness. Vast and cold and alive. She could feel it breathing, shifting, wanting from her. There was nothing to stop it from consuming her.

Her arms were bound to a slab of stone—there was no escape from this place she didn’t recognize. She couldn’t remember when she had stopped fighting. But the real fear—the blistering horror threatening to tear her apart—was that she didn’t know who she was.

That will return. A soft voice curled around her, calm, the hand against her hair gentle where all others had been hard and cruel. You will be allowed one thing, you see. It will be returned when the process is finished. But not until the taste of it becomes a bitter wine that you crave and detest in the same breath. When it is something you would kill for but would kill you if you had it, only then will it be given back.

She yearned to reach for the voice. It was terribly familiar. It was bones and gold and blood, so much blood. A boy with a throne and a boy reaching for another and a girl with hair like snow who did not belong.

But none of that mattered here.

The darkness was creeping beneath her skin. Settling inside of her, making its home within her bones and swimming through her veins as it tore her to pieces and re-formed her into something else.

If she could scream, she would. If she could fight, she would.

But she could do nothing.

She could only suffer her fate.

There was only the dark, stretching on for so long that she wondered if she had imagined it all. There had never been a voice. There was never a gentle hand against her hair. There was nothing, nothing but this darkness.

1

SEREFIN MELESKI

A viper, a tomb, a trick of the light, Velyos is always reaching for whatever does not belong to him.

—The Letters of Włodzimierz

Serefin Meleski inhabited the sliver of night that was ripe for betrayal. It was a time when knives were unsheathed, when plans were created and seen into fruition. It was a time for monsters.

He knew that span of hours intimately, but even knowledge of the inevitable wasn’t enough to make it less painful. It wasn’t like he spent his nights awake because he was expecting another tragedy.

No, he did it because it was easier to drink himself into oblivion than face the nightmares.

He was awake when Kacper slipped into his chambers. To rouse him, clearly, but he probably wasn’t particularly surprised to find Serefin lying on the chaise in his sitting room, one foot braced on the ground, the other leg kicked up against the back. An empty glass on the floor within reach and a book hanging over the arm where Serefin had put it to mark his place as he considered the same thing he had considered every night for the last four months: dreams of moths and blood and monsters.

Horrors at the edges of his awareness and that voice. The thin, reedy voice that needled him from a place past death. It never left. Those strange intonations hummed constantly in his veins.

Any trouble is of your own making, the voice snipped.

He did his best to ignore it.

Who is it? he asked Kacper. The hammered iron crown had long since been placed on his head, his palm cut and bled on an altar as he was named king of Tranavia—his downfall was oncoming. The nobility had never liked him, not when he was the High Prince, and certainly not since his coronation. It was never a matter of what or when, only who would be the first one brave enough to strike.

He had let the tense whispers go on and put off explaining fully how his father had died. He was tempting fate. Tranavian politics were messy. So very, very messy.

There’s a collective meeting happening, Kacper answered, voice soft.

Serefin nodded, not bothering to sit up. He’d anticipated it from the slavhki who had been supporters of his father.

"Ksęszi Ruminski is involved," Kacper continued.

Serefin winced, finally standing. Nicking his finger, he lit a few candles with the magic sparking from his blood and wiped his hand, movements slow.

Żaneta’s family had been demanding answers for months. Serefin was at a loss for what to say. Oh, terribly sorry, she committed some light treason and the Black Vulture decided she would be better served amongst his kind. Tragically awkward situation, but, there it is! Nothing to be done.

It was a constant, festering point of anxiety that had settled underneath his skin. Yes, Żaneta had betrayed him, and, yes, he had died for it, but did she deserve the terrifying fate Malachiasz had chosen for her?

You’re being unusually calm about this, Kacper noted.

What will they do, I wonder? Hang me? Toss me in the dungeons and forget about me?

Kacper deflated some, shoulders slumping. I hate when you’re defeatist, he muttered, shoving past where Serefin stood to make his way into Serefin’s bedchambers.

Where are you going? Serefin asked. He contemplated the bottles in his cabinet before pulling a miraculously full bottle of vodka from the shelf. I’m not defeatist, he murmured. I’m pragmatic. Realistic. This was inevitable.

A coup is not an inevitability, Kacper snapped from inside the room. Was he packing? None of this would have happened if you had hanged that damned cleric instead of forcing her into the same odd limbo you’ve forced on the rest of the country. But you didn’t. And here we are with a coup on our hands because we have no one to blame. Do you want to end up like your father?

Serefin flinched. He took a long drink. Dreams of moths and blood and his father’s body at his feet. He had not landed the killing blow but it was his fault all the same.

No, he whispered, brushing a pale moth away from the flame of the candle.

No. You don’t.

But that is likely inevitable, too, Serefin thought morosely. Kacper would not take well to him saying it out loud.

Half your clothes have been eaten by moths. Kacper sounded despairing.

The door flew open. Serefin’s hand went to his spell book, adrenaline spiking. He shuddered, sighing. It was only Ostyia.

Oh, you’re awake, she said flatly.

Lock that door.

She did.

I told him what was going on and he’s standing there drinking! Kacper complained.

Serefin offered Ostyia the vodka bottle.

Kacper poked his head out and groaned as she grabbed it and took a sip.

She winked at Serefin—an exaggerated blink from her one eye.

Get back in here, Kacper, Serefin said.

Kacper huffed loudly and leaned in the doorway.

How long have they been meeting?

I’m fairly certain this is their first, Kacper replied.

They won’t strike tonight.

But—

They won’t strike tonight, Serefin repeated firmly.

He tamped down his rising panic, taking the bottle back from Ostyia. Anxiety had been steadily dogging his steps for months, waiting for him to falter. If he paused and thought too hard about it he would be swallowed alive. He had to pretend this wasn’t happening.

Kacper slumped against the doorframe.

Your desire to see to my safety is, of course, appreciated, Serefin said, ignoring the dry look Kacper shot him. You’re a good spymaster, but a tad hasty.

Kacper slid down to the floor.

Let’s figure out what they want first, he said. He set the bottle down on the table, brushing away another moth.

Ostyia frowned, moving to the chaise and perching on the armrest. She yawned.

We knew Ruminski would want answers eventually, Serefin said.

"He’s been asking for months, Serefin. He simply got tired of waiting," Kacper groaned.

Serefin lifted his shoulders in a weary shrug. Perhaps they can be reasoned with? Surely there is something they want that I can give them.

Clandestine meetings by your enemies don’t suggest a list of demands that can be provided for, Ostyia said.

The entire court is my enemy, Serefin muttered, throwing himself down into an upholstered chair. That’s the problem.

She nodded thoughtfully.

He had tried to win the court to his favor but nothing was working. There were too many rumors to combat that he couldn’t explain. He couldn’t reveal who had truly killed his father, and the whispers swirling through the underbelly of the court were starting to drift dangerously close to the truth.

A Kalyazi assassin. The Black Vulture. Treason. Disaster. A missing noble. A dead king. Titles from the common folk that Serefin could not shake: King of Moths, King of Blood. Serefin blessed by something no one could explain. What could the blood that fell from the sky that night be other than a blessing?

Serefin had nothing but questions and resistance from his nobility. The Kalyazi were pressing Tranavia’s forces back, and even if Tranavia did not know Kalyazin’s only cleric had killed the king, the Kalyazi surely did.

Renewed hope from Kalyazin was the last thing Serefin needed.

He couldn’t stop the war. He couldn’t answer his nobility’s questions unless he wanted Nadya hanged and he found he didn’t want that. She had done what he could not, and while she was still from an enemy territory and a force for something Serefin did not trust or believe in, he would not have her executed.

What do we do? Ostyia asked.

Serefin raked a hand through his hair. I don’t know.

---

There was an obvious solution to appease Ruminski, but Serefin was uncertain of how to attempt Żaneta’s retrieval. From what he could discern, the Vultures had fractured significantly. He hadn’t seen many slinking around the palace, but he wasn’t about to go to the cathedral door and knock to see who answered.

He rubbed his eyes, tired. He wanted to sleep through the night, just once. Instead he sought out the cleric, holed up in the library as ever, because, as she put it, where else was she supposed to be?

"So his majesty has deigned to grace the poor boyar locked in her tower, wasting away," she said when he found her. She was sitting in a high window alcove, one leg kicked off the edge. Her white-blond hair was loose around her shoulders. Serefin couldn’t recall a time when it had not been carefully braided.

He tensed, glancing through the gaps in the stacks to see if anyone was around to hear. But it was too early for any slavhki to be awake.

It’s like you want me to be forced to hang you, he muttered.

She snorted softly, dark brown eyes dismissive. She had dropped the act of the clueless, backwater slavhka and the girl who had appeared in Józefina’s place was sharp and witty and completely infuriating. The handsome Akolan boy she was constantly with, Rashid, had quietly given Serefin new paperwork to explain this girl—pale freckles, pale skin, pale hair but curiously dark eyes and eyebrows—a far cry from red-headed Józefina. The paperwork was forged; the explanation surprisingly solid. Road flooding from the lakes had plagued their journey and they had arrived too late for the Rawalyk but couldn’t yet return home. It would do. Her given name was functionally Tranavian enough to pass, if spelled differently.

She sighed, shifting to the corner of the alcove, and gestured for him to climb up. He settled in next to her and riffled through the stack of books she had piled up. Tranavian texts on the old religions that were so decrepit and brittle they might fall apart in her hands.

Where on earth did you find these? he asked.

You don’t want me to answer that, she said absently as she returned to her book. But do warn the librarian. Wouldn’t want the old blood mage to die of shock when he finds his banned texts collection ransacked.

I didn’t know we had banned texts.

She made a humming sound. Of course you do. Have to keep all that heresy at the forefront of the kingdom somehow, yes?

Nadya—

I do have to say, she continued, I am surprised these weren’t burned. You lot seem like the book-burning type.

He wasn’t going to take that particular bait.

They were quiet as Nadya read and Serefin paged through another book. He couldn’t quite figure out what she was studying.

Have you seen any Vultures around recently? Serefin finally asked.

She lowered her book and shot him an incredulous look. "Have I what?"

He supposed he hoped the answer would be yes and everything would be simple for him; a mess easily cleaned up.

I should think the king of Tranavia would have more dealings with that cult than one captive peasant girl, she said primly.

I hope someone overhears you saying these things and forces my hand, he replied.

That got a short laugh from her. She leaned back, dangling her legs out into the open air. He didn’t even know why he was asking her except she had shown up in Grazyk at the same time as Malachiasz and clearly knew him; he didn’t know what they’d had between them. He’d never asked. But Nadya had said enough offhand to suggest she and the Black Vulture had been more than strange allies and what he had done was more than a simple betrayal.

Why did he assume she knew more about the Vultures than he did? Her, the cleric from Kalyazin. It was ridiculous; this wasn’t getting him anywhere.

He leaned his head back on the wall.

Why are you asking? she asked.

I don’t have to give you my reasoning, he reminded her.

Serefin, every day you make me regret not killing you a little bit more. But there was no heat in her words. They had an uneasy truce, and though Nadya was furious he had kept her more or less trapped in Tranavia, she didn’t seem altogether eager to leave, either.

Żaneta, he said quietly.

Nadya paled.

He nodded curtly.

What happened to her? she asked delicately.

Malachiasz took her.

She tensed at his name and picked at a hangnail, refusing to meet Serefin’s gaze.

She did betray you, she said. It sounded like she was trying to convince herself that what Malachiasz had done was justified.

And I died.

And you died.

Supposedly.

They’re starting to talk, you know, Nadya said. Her hand went to her neck, falling when her fingers met nothing but air. An absent tic he had watched her perform countless times. She had worn a small, silver amulet for a bit, but that too had disappeared. We weren’t the only ones in the cathedral that night. They say, ‘Not even death commands this new young king.’

Serefin shivered.

My goddess is death, Nadya continued. No one walks into her realm and returns.

Blood and stars and moths. And that voice, that voice.

Serefin shoved it away before it spoke to him.

And what does she think?

Nadya shrugged listlessly, gazing blankly out over the library. She doesn’t talk to me anymore.

This was not the conversation Serefin had come here to have. But the desolation in Nadya’s voice struck even him.

What will Tranavia think of a king who was brought back from death? he said, after a long stretch of silence.

She looked over, one eyebrow raised. He remembered the halo that had shivered around her head, fractured and tainted. She lifted a hand, one of the pale gray moths that constantly fluttered around Serefin landing on her index finger.

Serefin Meleski, she said contemplatively. There has been a mark on you growing darker with each day. I thought… She trailed off, waving her hand at the piles of books. I don’t know what I thought … that I could help? That I might want to? It doesn’t matter.

Help me? Or help him?

It doesn’t matter, she repeated, an edge to her voice.

If suspicion grows, neither of us will walk away unscathed, he said.

She nodded. It was already treacherous here for her. If his court turned on her, he could do nothing. Though, he still wasn’t entirely sure why he wanted to protect her at all.

"I shouldn’t want to help. You destroyed my home," she said.

Serefin had avoided bringing this up, but had wondered when she would. He closed the book and set it on her stack. Serefin had never had any intention of torching the monastery, and he couldn’t speak for what Teodore had done once he’d left. He’d found what he was looking for there: her. And the pressure from his father to capture the cleric to see how her power might augment a blood mage’s was gone. Serefin didn’t particularly care to discover the answer to that question. He wanted to end a war, and it would be easier with this girl for leverage.

I did. I would be lying if I said I haven’t been waiting for some kind of vengeance.

I would be lying if I said I didn’t want it.

Look at us, being honest with each other!

She rolled her eyes. Do you regret it?

It’s war, he said. She gave him a pointed look, and he sighed. Nadya, if I let myself regret everything I’ve done, I wouldn’t be able to get up in the morning.

She made a thoughtful sound.

Is this you deciding ‘well, revenge it is, then’?

Not worth my time. Serefin, having watched your court, I can safely say any chaos that might ensue from your death would hardly be enough to deter anything out at the front.

Ah, saved by my own deeply dysfunctional court.

Nadya glared at him. What does all this have to do with Żaneta?

Her father is going to stage a coup if I don’t bring her forward soon.

You think that he won’t do it regardless of your actions?

Ah, ruined by my own deeply dysfunctional court.

She was right. He wasn’t going to stop what was spinning into motion. The mysticism growing around him was making everything worse. How could Tranavia be ruled by someone touched by something no one understood?

And that voice. It whispered to him constantly, but if he didn’t answer, it wasn’t real. If he told no one, it wasn’t real.

Or maybe he was simply his father’s son and losing his mind as well.

They sat in silence. He didn’t know what to do, and she couldn’t really help—if he was overthrown, she would be hanged.

We can’t get her without a Vulture, Nadya said. Then, softer, Have you heard anything…?

He shook his head, cutting her off. Every few weeks she would ask after Malachiasz and he would always give the same answer.

It was a lie. But she wouldn’t want to hear the things he had heard. The rumors of deaths and dark magic that could only be caused by his cousin.

You’ll figure something out, she said. You have to.

Novel, that the we had become just him fixing things. That was the thing: he had no choice. Nothing would change if he didn’t stop this in its tracks.

2

NADEZHDA LAPTEVA

A goddess of winter knows the taste of bitter cold and broken bones, of frozen ground choking out life. A goddess of death knows vengeance and the burning hatred that fuels the wars of men. Marzenya is benevolent—when she wishes—but cruelty sits easier upon her shoulders.

—Codex of the Divine, 399:30

There were a surprising number of Tranavian holy texts for the last—maybe the last?—hopefully not the last because she had failed so utterly—cleric of Kalyazin to read as she bided her time, captive in the heart of Tranavia.

Not captive, technically, Serefin would chide, you just shouldn’t leave.

The definition of a captive, then, she would reply, but she understood. Nadya was in constant danger the longer she remained in Grazyk, but staying in the palace kept her within Serefin’s fragile sphere of protection. Granted, protection he seemed puzzled at extending to her. She had no magic and wouldn’t survive the journey through Tranavia to make it home. The well of power she had touched had either dried up or had never been truly hers. And as much as she hated it, she lingered, hoping for the return of the sad, broken boy who had brought her here. She was frustrated with how much hope she felt every time she asked Serefin if he had news and how quickly it crumbled when he told her no.

Why should she hope for the boy who had betrayed her so completely? Her fury had tempered to a numb ache as months of silence passed. She had no more anger left in her to fight Serefin, much less Malachiasz’s ghost.

So she skulked around the palace and dragged what religious texts she could find up into the little corner alcove. None of them were particularly helpful. Her gods were her gods, as it was, and there was little a book written centuries ago by a Tranavian priest could inform her that she didn’t already know.

But there were occasional glimmers among the pages of what she was missing, hints at why she had failed so fully. Why the gods no longer spoke to her, and how a boy twisted into the form of a monster was able to tear himself into pieces and reassemble in the shape of something potentially divine.

At times the books she found spoke of old religious sects and saints Nadya did not know. How many clerics had been abandoned like Nadya? Her heart would be broken, she thought, if there was anything left of it to break.

After Serefin wandered off, clearly no closer to a decision than before, she left the library—abandoning the pile of obscure, ultimately forbidden texts stacked in the alcove. She hid the ladder in a random part of the room every day. As yet no one had disturbed her ever-growing stacks, but she was caught in a silent war with the old librarian who perpetually acted like someone using the library was the worst thing that could possibly happen to him.

There you are! Parijahan tugged Nadya away from the direction of the kitchens where she had been planning on smuggling out some bread and cheese, and toward her chambers. There is a court dinner tonight and you must attend.

Nadya groaned. Serefin didn’t mention that.

He said if he did you would do such a spectacular disappearing act that even I wouldn’t be able to find you. Clearly he was correct.

I’ll kill him, Nadya muttered as she let Parijahan drag her back to the rooms they shared.

You would have done that by now if you were going to, Parijahan replied evenly.

The Akolan girl was wearing simple, loose trousers and a blouse in complementary shades of dark gold. Her black hair was tightly braided; the golden ring in her nose caught the light every time they passed a window. They had dropped the pretense of Parijahan acting as Nadya’s servant, though Parijahan continued to decline Serefin’s offers to have her own rooms and be treated as the noble she truly was. Too suspicious, she said, and Nadya had noticed there were a handful of slavhki that Parijahan always went out of her way to avoid.

Even with the king of Tranavia finally dead, Parijahan was more on edge than ever, her secrets held with a firm grip from Nadya.

Malachiasz’s betrayal was just as brutally unexpected to Parijahan, but questioning her about it got Nadya nothing but cryptic answers that meant little. Asking Rashid was worse. The Akolan boy was far too good at spinning his words, so he said absolutely nothing but took ten minutes to do so.

Did Serefin tell you anything else? Nadya asked.

Parijahan shook her head. Is it me, or does he look like he hasn’t been sleeping?

Not just you. There had been dark smudges underneath Serefin’s pale blue eyes and stubble dusting his pale jaw and cheeks. And he had reeked of alcohol. Frankly, I don’t blame him.

Nadya couldn’t say she had been sleeping well, either. The months since that night in the cathedral had been hard, and when she slept she saw things she didn’t particularly want to consider. But at least when she was asleep she didn’t have to confront the silence in her mind. She wasn’t used to being alone with her thoughts and found she hated it.

Read anything interesting? Parijahan asked. It was her standard inquiry after Nadya’s visits to the library.

Nadya always shrugged noncommittally. She didn’t even know what she was searching for. Mostly she was hiding. From herself, from Serefin, from Parijahan.

There was a Tranavian saint named Maryna Cierzpieta whose head was cut off, but she picked it up and went on her way.

Parijahan cast her a sidelong look. I can’t tell if you’re making that up or not.

Nadya pressed a hand over her heart. "This is my religion, Parj, would I lie?"

Parijahan snorted.

I’m serious! She started a cult of personality and everything. It all died out about one hundred and thirty years before Tranavia broke from the gods.

Parijahan made a contemplative noise as they reached their rooms. Nadya flopped onto a chaise in the sitting room.

You’re not locking yourself in that library every day to read stories about saints you already know.

Frustrated, Nadya’s fingers went to her prayer beads, the shock hitting her anew when she found her neck bare. It was a daily occurrence and she was still waiting for it to stop hurting. She gathered her hair back and began braiding it instead.

How did he decide on the path he took? she finally asked. How did he get the idea that he should be the one to unseat the gods? He must have read it somewhere. Something started him down that road. I have to find it.

Parijahan moved across the room, sitting next to Nadya. Or, he’s simply an idealistic boy who found something to blame. You’re not going to find answers to that problem in old books.

I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do, Nadya said softly.

Parijahan took her chin and angled her face toward hers. "Don’t you dare. He hurt you. You don’t get to fling yourself into trying to save him when he clearly did not want to be saved."

I know. No one knew the gods did not speak to Nadya anymore. She was nothing but a Kalyazi peasant. Good for little, useful for less. She wasn’t trying to save him; she wanted to understand. It was her fatal flaw, her desire to understand. It was what he had used so willingly in the tapestry of lies he had woven around her.

Besides… Parijahan said, her voice shifting, calculating and sly, if he got his grand ideas from a book, shouldn’t you be looking in the cathedral?

Nadya shuddered. She had been avoiding that place for months. The thought of going back chilled her to her core … and yet …

Parijahan noticed her hesitation. He’s not there, she said. You’re safe.

An impossible position, the hating and the missing all at once.

Are you scolding me, or encouraging me? It’s very unclear.

Parijahan smiled ruefully. Maybe a bit of both?

How long do we have until the dinner?

Parijahan noted the sun’s position through the window with a shrug. We have time.

---

Nadya gazed up at the broken statues lining the entrance of the massive black cathedral, and wondered if she was more afraid now that she knew what lurked inside. If the terror settling in her limbs was because, this time, she was walking in unprotected.

Parijahan spared the crumbling face of the cathedral a passing glance, unfazed. Nadya had come to find that indifference a comforting aspect of the Akolan girl. Parijahan wrenched the huge wooden doors open.

It was deathly quiet. Nadya swallowed thickly. She didn’t want to remember the last time she was here, fingers tangled with Malachiasz’s, trusting him against all reason. And she certainly didn’t want to intrude on any Vultures in their home.

But it wasn’t their home once, she thought. She trailed a hand against the wall, wondering which god this church had belonged to when Tranavia still cared for such things. Panic began to claw at her chest from the silence in her head so she shoved the thoughts away, following after Parijahan, who was—unfortunately—intent on where she wanted to go.

Oh, Parj, must we?

Where else? Parijahan replied.

She had a point. There hadn’t been so much as a whisper as to what had happened to the Black Vulture. Though Nadya asked, the reality was she didn’t want to know.

To know would be to acknowledge the blackened scar on her palm each time it heated, a burning itch lasting for hours before it went away. To acknowledge the pull of her heart to something far away, as if linked to someone. She didn’t know what had happened the night she carved Velyos’ symbol into her palm, then Malachiasz’s. Something had happened when she had stolen his power to use with hers. When she had done the impossible.

It remained, still. The sludgy, inky darkness of Malachiasz’s magic slumbered somewhere deep within her.

Parijahan tried the door to Malachiasz’s chambers, a small smile flickering at the corners of her lips when she found it unlocked.

Nadya hesitated. Nothing had changed since she had been there last. Malachiasz’s patched-up military jacket hung off the back of the chair where he’d last tossed it. Paintings were stacked in every spare corner of the room and piles of books surrounded the bookshelves. Piles and piles of books.

Parijahan whistled low. There you have it. She picked up the jacket, frowning at it before she handed it to Nadya.

She waited until Parijahan turned away before she pulled the jacket on over her dress and tucked her face against the collar. It smelled like him still, iron and earth and boy in a way that was comforting and painful, and the pang in her chest was a vicious stab.

It was hard to parse her feelings about Malachiasz’s betrayal. With time she had hoped she might untangle her mess of emotions. She knew how she was supposed to feel and how everyone expected her to feel. But she couldn’t figure out if any of those things were true of her.

Yes, she was furious and hurt, but she also caught herself waiting for him to burst into her rooms, a whirlwind of dark hair and bad jokes and painfully brilliant smiles. She missed him.

But that wasn’t who he was anymore. Idealistic, but powerful and cruel, his body twisted and his mind shattered.

Nadya desperately wanted to stop thinking about him altogether. He had lied to her for months, making himself out to be an anxious boy who had made a mistake and needed help fixing it. Instead he had used her to gain a power so terrible it had driven out the last of his humanity.

The silly, condescending Tranavian boy with the sly smile, who chewed on his fingernails when he was nervous, was gone. Maybe forever. And she was so deeply sad that it had swallowed the heat of her anger. He didn’t deserve her sadness, but that didn’t make a difference to her heart.

Did he plan this from the beginning, do you think? Nadya spoke up quietly.

Parijahan looked up from where she was riffling through a stack of paintings. Are you finally ready to talk about this?

Nadya shrugged.

I spent months with him and he never seemed remotely interested in finding you, Parijahan said. I had to convince him to come with us when we started following rumors about a cleric. In the end, something forced him to flee to Kalyazin, and later return here. He never said what.

Well, he’s a liar.

He is very good at lying, Parijahan agreed. If only because he’s actually telling the truth while he does it.

The door to his study rested like a black stain in the wall. What did she hope to find here? The thing that set him on his reckless quest to destroy her gods? Something else?

She paged through the books mindlessly. They were eclectic piles: history, novels, magic theory. But she didn’t understand blood magic enough to comprehend the latter. She was wasting her time.

Parijahan opened the door to his study. She coughed as she stepped inside the room. Nadya didn’t immediately follow, though something tugged her toward the doorway. She heard Parijahan shift around papers on his desk, and she shivered, a chill suddenly pulling down her spine.

Magic.

Something she had not touched in quite some time.

What do you have? she called. Her stomach churned. There was something familiar and terrible yanking at her, a call that sent a deep wave of dread crashing over her.

Some of his spells, I think, Parijahan said, unaware of Nadya’s sudden anxiety.

Nadya flinched as she stepped into the study. The palm of her left hand ached, a dull pain steadily and sluggishly working its way up her arm. Sweat broke out on her temples. She was too hot and too cold and she could feel—she could feel—

She snatched the papers out of Parijahan’s hand, crumpling them in her tight grip. She was breathing hard and couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very wrong. There was something moving, something hungry that wanted with such a deep and powerful ache it was going to swallow everything if it wasn’t stopped.

Nadya?

She slammed a hand down onto the desk. No, she said flatly. This isn’t how magic works.

She spread the spells out in front of her. Her heart tripped at the sight of Malachiasz’s messy, borderline incomprehensible scrawl. She shouldn’t be able to feel his power, shouldn’t be able to feel him. Not now, not after so much time had passed.

She could read Tranavian, but the words blurred. Frantic, she riffled through more of the pages, digging out hastily scrawled notes and diagrams underneath the spells. Endless markings Nadya did not understand.

I shouldn’t be here, she whispered as horror continued to curl around her core. She lifted a page that had clearly been dipped in blood, the bottom stiff and dark. The top she could read, and she wished she couldn’t.

Notes on Kalyazi magic, on divine magic, on her magic. Notes on how her magic and blood magic might intersect, how they shouldn’t but could, how there is something else changing very slowly and it might be new or it might be a melding of both.

Serefin had mentioned, once, finding Tranavian spell books with Kalyazi prayers scrawled inside on the battlefield. It was an impossible combination. Why was Malachiasz studying it?

She froze; the something else on the other end of that thread of connection had grown nearly tangible. A gaze from far away turning on her where previously there had been none. It was a power so much greater than her own, infinitely dark. Magic that did not belong to her hummed underneath her veins with a painful tug toward the one who truly owned it.

She never should have stolen his power.

But surely he had known what she intended when she’d dragged that blade across his palm? It had been his idea once—a sly musing she would be stronger if she used his blood. Abhorrent, horrible, and yet, she had done exactly what he wanted in the end. Just another twisting of truth to push her to unwittingly aid his incomprehensible plans.

Nadya had fallen too far, sacrificing everything she believed for a chance to change the world, and she was punished with silence.

She gasped, burning hand curled against her heart. The sludgy power had altered. A tether, a line rapidly pulled taut.

I should not have come here.

The monster. Malachiasz. She backed away from the power that suddenly was too strong, too much, too evil.

Nadya took a few ragged breaths—the muddled sound of Parijahan calling her name glancing off her ears—and let her awareness press out, cautiously brushing her fingertips against the pane of black glass that separated Malachiasz from her, yet bound them together.

This is my fault. She had created something when she stole his power and bound it to hers. Of course it lingered, of course there were consequences. Gods, she could feel him. He was crumbling, eroding like a cliff face being rocked by an ocean’s waves.

Then—as clear as if it were happening right in front of her—she heard the sound of an iron claw scraping against glass. A painful, caustic screech that drove needles into Nadya’s ears. Down, down, down. A hand slammed against the glass, slender fingers tipped with dripping iron claws.

Nadya broke away.

She stumbled back from the desk. Nadya willed her last meal not to return. This couldn’t be happening. How was this happening?

A few agonizing seconds passed without a rekindling of the twisted connection. The brush against the roiling chaos of his madness.

But it had felt like Malachiasz. The monster was still Malachiasz.

Would it be hope, then, that killed her in the end?

Nadya looked up at Parijahan, who stared at her in horror.

Well, Nadya rasped, I guess he’s not dead.

interlude i

THE BLACK VULTURE

The hunger would not relent. The gnawing at the edges of his being was too much to bear yet never enough. He could only hunger, need, until finally he was released unto perfect oblivion and felt nothing. No hunger, no unceasing, unending emptiness pulling at the core of him, the ever-present threat of fully shattering.

The darkness was a comfort. Torches were few and far between here and easily avoided. It was a welcome escape to remain far from the glimpses of light that reminded him of the missing. Of the thing that flickered outside his consciousness, just far enough away that he couldn’t grasp it. The relentlessly fluttering wings of a little bird that refused to be choked by darkness.

It was an irritant sweet enough to drive his madness a little further, a little deeper. But ignorance was sweeter. He never moved beyond that initial grasp.

There were glimmers that didn’t belong to him, didn’t belong to anyone, frustrating in their displacement. A girl with hair like snow, fiercely glaring, pale freckles dusting her skin. A girl arguing, rooted and stubborn and passionate. Beautiful, brilliant, torturously absent. He had no idea who she was and that made everything all the more frustrating.

Eternal and instantaneous, time became extraneous. The glimmers—the distractions—faded. Only the hunger, always the hunger, remained. Only the feeling of being taken apart and put back together and ripped to pieces once more.

(Being unmade was, apparently, an ongoing

Reviews for Ruthless Gods

[wagner5sarah35 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Maybe because I listened to this book as an audiobook, but I really struggled to get into this story. There are pieces of it I enjoy for the creativity, but as a whole, I'm just not that into it.

[jmchshannon · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ya'll know I like my stories dark and disturbing. But there were times in Emily A. Duncan's Ruthless Gods where even I was like, "Damn, girl!" Which only means I LOVED this book even while it tore me open and made me bleed.Ruthless Gods is dark. SO much darker than the first book in the series. This is not your average Disney fairy tale, people. There is going to be no happily ever after for any of these characters. It is so dark that I honestly have no idea how anyone is going to end this adventure still alive and, well, sane.Starting six months after the end of Wicked Saints, Malachiasz is off still trying to overthrow the gods, Serefin is now king and trying to stave off those who oppose him as well as end the war. And Nadya, poor Nadya, must repair her broken heart and figure out what is next for her now that her gods no longer speak to her. It is as depressing an opening as one will find. Once they finally take action, it is one step forward and two steps back for this trio. Think Empire Strikes Back except they still don't quite know who the puppeteers are to their puppet states.As you get to know these characters a bit better, their personalities come to the fore more than they did in the first book, when you were basically trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Serefin is a pawn. He is ruthless in his determination to end the war, but he rarely does anything of his own volition. Rather, he lets others make his decisions and do his dirty work. He is afraid of taking action, and when he finally grows a pair, it is too late.Malachiasz is literally the Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde of Eastern Europe mythology. You want to love him because he is capable of such depths of love and longing. But his Mr. Hyde state is brutal. His outward appearance in this form mirrors the depths of his depravity. I ended the novel not trusting a word out of his mouth and not even wanting his redemption. His ability to repeatedly manipulate and hurt those who love him make him a lost figure to me.My heart lies with Nadya, our Joan of Arc figure. She is still too gullible and naive for her own good, but she creates a mothering instinct in you where you just want to protect her and make sure she is happy. She trusts Malachiasz too much, even though she says she doesn't. My heart literally ached for her throughout the entire novel because I don't want her to get hurt once again. For this reason, all my hopes are with Nadya. I want to see her become a badass bitch in the finale. I want her to stop being reactive and start being proactive. I want her to hurt Malachiasz as much as he hurt her, maybe more.Also, can we just take a minute to appreciate the fact that Ms. Duncan's world takes place in a pseudo-Slavic world? It makes sense then that the story is so dark because if you know anything about Slavic/Polish history, you know it is nothing but misery. Their myths and folklore are going to reflect their experiences, and their experiences include nothing but being conquered over and over again. Plus, I just really like the names and the fact that I can pronounce them correctly.Ruthless Gods was my most anticipated release for 2020, and I am so glad to say that it did not disappoint. In fact, my respect for Ms. Duncan only increased because she refused to let her characters settle or take the easy route through their adventures. In my opinion, she gives Jay Kristoff a run for his money in creating characters you adore and then breaks your heart with the pain and suffering he puts them through, and I love that. I love the despair that oozes from the pages. I love that she rivals any horror novelist for terrifying, gory af scenes that mentally imprint themselves into your brain. Ruthless Gods is disturbing and somewhat depressing but you care so much for Nadya and want to see Serefin and Malachiasz receive their comeuppance that you keep going and find yourself falling in love with this very unusual, deliciously evil story.