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Synopsis
"This series opener delivers on not just epic fantasy, but epic action and romance." —Kirkus
To cage a god is divine.
To be divine is to rule.
To rule is to destroy.
Using ancient secrets, Galina and Sera’s mother grafted gods into their bones. Bound to brutal deities and granted forbidden power no commoner has held in a millennia, the sisters have grown up to become living weapons. Raised to overthrow an empire―no matter the cost.
With their mother gone and their country on the brink of war, it falls to the sisters to take the helm of the rebellion and end the cruel reign of a royal family possessed by destructive gods. Because when the ruling alurea invade, they conquer with fire and blood. And when they clash, common folk burn.
While Sera reunites with her estranged lover turned violent rebel leader, Galina infiltrates the palace. In this world of deception and danger, her only refuge is an isolated princess, whose whip-smart tongue and sharp gaze threaten to uncover Galina’s secret. Torn between desire and duty, Galina must make a choice: work together to expose the lies of the empire―or bring it all down.
Release date: February 20, 2024
Publisher: DAW
Print pages: 384
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To Cage a God
Elizabeth May
PROLOGUE
The empress blazed against the twilight sky. Fire licked at her fingertips as flames spread across the meadow at the top of the hill—a portent of what was to come.
Hers was a power that had conquered empires.
A girl in the village below lifted her head from a spray of wildflowers, their blooms dancing in the smoke-tainted breeze. “Momma, look! There’s a lady up there!”
Her mother’s face drained of color. “Come here, my love,” she ordered, her voice sharp and urgent. “Now.”
Flowers slipped from the girl’s grasp, the petals scattering on the ground like falling ash.
The mother seized her child and dragged her to their cottage as the firestorm surged over the crest of the hill. It reached the hamlet, consuming all it touched in an instant.
The girl’s mother shoved her into the cellar. “Get as low as you can and curl up tight. Don’t come out, understand? I’ll be right behind you.” The girl heard nothing else but the roar of the inferno outside, followed by one last thing—a whisper from her mother amidst the chaos: “I love you, vmekhva.”
She sealed the girl in the darkness and didn’t come back.
The girl would never forget the screams. She would always remember the overwhelming heat, the thick smoke that threatened to choke her. How the fire brushed against her skin and left marks that no time would heal.
And she remembered—
Silence.
A stillness that echoed through the dark as days passed. Then, finally, hushed voices reached her. Residents from a neighboring village arrived to mourn and found only a wasteland—no bodies to bury, no survivors. Except for one.
A girl who rose from the ashes.
ONE
SERA
Twenty years later
The god caged in Sera’s body hated her.
She paced outside her forest cottage in irritation, frost crunching beneath her boots. The extended winter had taken a toll on the iatric plants in her garden, leaving a pitiful sight of withered foliage under a fresh layer of snow. A fever had swept through the outskirts of Dolsk—her medicines were in short supply.
And her deity was a fickle bastard that demanded a sacrifice in exchange for power.
An audience of blackbirds perched atop a nearby stone wall, their feathers ruffling in the morning breeze while they chirped in an irritating chorus that did little to improve Sera’s foul temper.
“Shut up, all of you,” she snapped at the avian gathering.
A foolhardy bird dared to trill in dissent.
Sera rounded on the creature and fixed it with her iciest glare. “One more chirp, and I’ll pluck you from that wall and eat you.”
The bird wisely held its beak still.
Sera kneeled beside the wilted plants, running her hands over the cold soil. She appealed to her god. “Give me your godpower.”
Scales shifted beneath Sera’s skin. Trapped wings fluttered. Talons flexed and scraped across her bones as it tested the limits of its enclosure. For over two decades, the zmeya, her caged god, had writhed and slashed within her—first with violence and desperation, and now with a quiet loathing.
The deity did not listen to her. If it yielded its abilities, it spoke with the deep, menacing rumble of a furious hostage. The Exalted Tongue was its language of resentment.
Every use of its power came with a message: Fuck you, hope you suffer.
Sera couldn’t blame the beast; they were both shackled together in this wretched arrangement. A cursed pair: an imprisoned dragon and a woman who never asked for her body to be offered to such a vindictive god.
Sera gritted her teeth as the god’s claws sent another fissure of discomfort through her. A deliberate provocation; its rage seeped into her veins, burning embers beneath her skin.
“Give me your godpower,” she hissed again. When the zmeya didn’t listen, Sera yanked the blade from her belt. “Fine. If this is the only language you know—”
“Polina Ivanovna!”
Sera turned to see a scrawny lad hastening up the path toward her cottage, waving a broadsheet. Sera’s heart lurched with anticipation. Anna, one of two spies Sera still communicated with back home, only sent missives when it was urgent.
“Polina Ivanovna, I have a message for you!”
Polina Ivanovna was the alias she’d taken up in Dolsk, a nondescript town deep in the territory of Kseniyevsky. For the past four years, Sera’s identity had been adopted and discarded with regularity: Marina, Svetlana, Aleksandra, and Feodora—but Polina stuck the longest. Serafima Mikhailovna had vanished the same day the empress executed her mother for sedition.
Residing within a region contested by two monarchs was a gamble, but the locals were used to foreigners coming and going. They didn’t ask questions.
Best of all, they minded their damn business—for a couple of fugitives, it was
ideal.
Sera clicked her tongue at the boy. “Slow down before you hurt yourself.”
This was why she kept her distance from the village children: their fidgeting, their antics, their general lack of coordination. But she needed to remain in their good graces, or they wouldn’t bring her newspapers with coded messages, so she paid the little bandits far too much silver to do her bidding.
Viktor halted before he reached her. “Polina Ivanovna, what are you doing with that knife?”
“Never mind that. Give it here.” She wasn’t about to explain herself to someone barely out of swaddling clothes. She slid the weapon back into her belt and dropped a coin into his small, gloved hand. “Don’t spend it all on sweets or your mother will ban you from running errands for me,” she warned, taking the paper from him.
Viktor grinned, displaying his milk-teeth-gapped smile, which she hoped resulted from childhood rather than the surfeit of confections he’d likely purchased with her money.
Sera carefully unfolded the broadsheet, and her breath caught as the headline blared from the page: EMPEROR YURI NIKOLAEVICH DURNOV DEAD IN CARRIAGE ACCIDENT. No foul play suspected.
As she scanned the article, the lack of details regarding the Tumanny monarch’s death hinted at censorship. She knew better than to trust the Blackshore Courier—every sentence, word, and exclamation point was meticulously edited to present the royal court’s version of events. Anna must have sent the newspaper knowing it contained a heavily altered report.
“A letter came for you, too.” Viktor handed her the envelope.
Sera tucked it into her pocket, her gaze still glued to the article. She’d read Anna’s coded message later.
“What are they saying about this in Dolsk?” she asked the boy.
He scratched his head, dislodging a few snowflakes from his woolen hat, and toed a rock on the snow-covered ground. “Not much,” he said. “But my mama seemed worried.” He looked up at her, concern casting a shadow on his young face. “Should I be scared?”
Sera toyed with a lie—an act of maternal deceit, easily within her capacity.
But, with a sigh and a long pause, she chose honesty. “I’m not sure.”
The alurea took malicious glee in exploiting their rivals’ weaknesses. Those nobles ruled across the continent of Sundyr—all bonded to deities unwillingly caged in their bodies and granted godpower that obliterated empires. Just a few hundred years ago, sixty-eight small nations comprised Sundyr, now absorbed into the holdings of more powerful monarchs. Battles had raged to seize control, leaving behind destruction and ruined lives.
Commoners had no choice but to obey the laws set down by their cruel rulers or face retribution, and every sennight, they paid tribute to their oppressors at local temples.
No matter how fiercely people rebelled, uprisings always failed.
Sera gave Viktor an affectionate pat on the shoulder. “Go home, Vitenka. Comfort your mama.” What else did one say to frightened children? “Erm. Be brave.”
It was perhaps for the best that she was not a mother.
“Am I gonna see you at the temple in two days?”
“No. I’m busy,” Sera said. She left out the possibility that it might be her last two days in town.
After she saw Viktor off, Sera took Anna’s cryptogram out of her pocket and opened it. Their code was complex, but after four years of running, Sera had learned the cipher by heart. The message was concise and concisely dreadful:
Intel indicates an explosive device. The palace has cracked down on the gossip, but Vitaly Sergeyevich has claimed responsibility. He’s not hiding anymore. Thought you should know.—Anna
Sera crumpled the paper in her fist. “Godsdamn it,” she hissed under her breath. “What are you doing, Vitalik?”
Vitaly Sergeyevich Rysakov—her mother Irina’s ruthless and younger second-in-command—had returned to the Blackshore and assassinated the emperor.
Sera tried to ignore the warning bells going off in her head. She remembered the executions they had witnessed together, bodies writhing in agony as they burned in the empress’s godfire.
Vitaly’s brother had been on that execution platform beside Irina, along with every other faithless member in the secret press room raided by the palace sentries. Printing and distributing seditious pamphlets against the alurea was a crime punishable by death—and there was no leniency for the pathetic piece of shit in the rebellion who betrayed his fellow faithless, either. Treason was always paid for in blood. That traitor had named Sera and Vitaly, forcing them to
flee the Blackshore.
Now the emperor was dead, and when rulers fell, war followed.
Vitaly was going to get himself killed.
Sera shoved the paper back into her pocket, shaking her head. Revolution was a game of strategy, patience, and intelligence—waiting for the right moment to light the match. She’d watched too many uprisings end with carelessness and stupidity.
That was why Sera’s mother kept secrets from the faithless even into her death: she’d learned how to cage gods in the bodies of commoners—and she’d succeeded. Then she trained an orphaned girl she’d chosen to breach the royal palace and seize the throne.
A girl who was the sole survivor of her village’s destruction, a symbol of the empress’s cruelty.
A girl who understood the motivations of vengeance from a tender age.
Her mind made, Sera unsheathed a blade, lifted her coat’s sleeve, and dragged it along her pale arm. She watched her blood drip onto the snow and seep into the soil. She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth as she reached for the dragon that lived in her skin.
“Give me your godpower.”
This time, the god listened—she had spoken in the violent language it required.
A surge of energy coursed through her, and the deity whispered from Sera’s mouth in the Exalted Tongue. Green spread beneath the layers of frost—but it wasn’t enough. The bastard demanded more. Her injury would heal too quickly, knit back together and mend without scars, a power her zmeya imparted against its will.
It wanted her to suffer.
The dragon stretched within her bones and sank its claws into Sera’s wound, opening the gash wide. It never granted power without consequence, would not allow her to heal unless it extracted its price from her flesh. It was a monster, and it did not aid by nature.
Sera’s god loved to make her bleed.
TWO
GALINA
Galina ignored the knock on her door.
Answering meant getting out of bed (and you’re incapable of getting out of bed. You’ve been here for days). She was comfortable in the shadows, watching the dust motes dance in the broad beam of light that shone through the cracked curtains. Recently, her only marker of passing days was the rise and fall of the sun.
When night fell anew, maybe she’d find the motivation to leave her nest of worn quilts (that’s unlikely, be realistic).
The knock came again, more insistent. “Za tasht stru,” Galina said in Zverti, her voice muffled by her pillow. Another knock. “Ugh, go away.”
She reached for the floor beside her bed, fingers searching for a bottle amongst the clutter of empties. Her fingertips met the smooth edge of the glass, and it rolled across the hardwood with a sharp clink.
Galina heard the faint and unmistakable metallic scrape of someone picking her locks. The door opened with a low creak and shut with a click. A dull thud of boots crossed the apartment to her bedroom.
“What happened in here?”
Sera. Of course it was Sera. She was the only one determined and irritating enough to break into Galina’s flat.
Galina ignored her foster sister and continued fumbling for the liquid-filled bottle she recalled was somewhere near her bed a few days ago. Was it three days or five? She couldn’t remember.
“Had guests,” she mumbled.
Sera came into view, irradiated by a ray of sunlight that set her plaited blonde locks ablaze like a halo of fire. Her complexion was pale, her cheeks rosy from the bitter kiss of the wind outside. Snowflakes melted across the shoulders of her dark green coat, the droplets shimmering like diamonds.
Her green eyes flickered over the room before settling on Galina’s face. “The troupe of fiddlers in the pub, or have you invited all those big men building Olga Pavlovna’s cottage into your flat?”
Galina took a cigarette from her nightstand and lit it. She gave Sera a reproachful look before inhaling deeply. “Why would I invite those men,” she said, blowing out the smoke with a laugh, “when their wives kiss so much better?”
Sera chuckled and shook her head. “You’re going to get yourself thrown out of Dolsk for fucking all their wives and end up as a hermit witch banished to some dismal forest.” She paused. “In other words, you’ll end up just like me.”
Galina rolled her eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic. You could live in the village if you weren’t such a recluse.” She exhaled a slow stream of smoke and reached under her bed, giving Sera a wry look. “Besides, I only have a problem if the husbands find out. As far as they know, I’m a woman with many very good friends.”
Her fingers wrapped around the cold neck of the bottle just in time; the god’s voice echoed in her mind, a desperate call that she had grown accustomed to ignoring. Galina pulled out the cork with her teeth and spat it onto the floor before taking a swig. The growl inside her body quieted to an angry rumble that sent a chill across Galina’s skin.
For the god, her silence had become a weapon of defiance.
For her, it was salvation
(because you’re too weak for your memories). And in a little while, maybe she’d get out of bed (you’re pathetic).
Sera’s leather boot nudged one of the empty jugs Galina had discarded. “Galya.” Her voice dripped with concern.
“Here it comes,” Galina muttered.
Her lip curled in self-disgust, all too aware of her pitiful state. She knew precisely what she looked like—the mirror had been tormenting her for days. Long, pale blonde hair matted and tangled like a rodent’s nest. Skin too pale, frame too thin, collarbones jutting up from the rough-hewn wool she wore. Her blue eyes were dulled—the consequence of excessive liquor and guilt from isolating the dragon caged in her bones. Everyone, even the village wives, couldn’t resist trying to feed her.
And now her god’s voice had been replaced with painful thoughts and unwanted memories. All those ghostly whispers reminded her of every secret and sin she had tried so hard to bury.
(You allowed yourself to be manipulated and used, and that’s why you’ll never forget.)
Sera raised an eyebrow. “Here what comes?”
“That tone you get right before you lecture me. You sound like Irina.”
She took another drag from her cigarette and then lifted the bottle. The pungent smell of alcohol filled the air as she brought it to her lips. She drank a long swig and tipped her head as the fiery liquid burned her throat. Cheap liquor did not go down smoothly, and Galina liked it that way. The potent drink was a reminder of the interloper in her body, of the things she’d seen and done—an insignificant punishment before complete oblivion.
And she found peace in oblivion.
Sera’s jaw went tight. “My mother wouldn’t let you lie there drinking and smoking and debauching all day. But this? This is something Irina would do.” With a huff, she strode over to the curtains and gave them a savage wrench, tearing them wide open.
Galina flinched from the onslaught of light. “Shut it.”
“No.”
Galina put out her cigarette in the ashtray and glared at Sera. “Sa zlu,” she spat in Zverti, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “Go away. I have things to do.”
“Things to do?” Sera smirked. “Seducing unsatisfied village wives?”
“Sleeping.”
“Yes, I can see you’ve been doing a great deal of”—she kicked an empty bottle across the room—“sleeping.” At Galina’s obstinate silence, Sera sighed and sat on the window seat. “You know you can’t quiet it forever with that.”
Galina set her liquor on the nightstand. “One hour,” she said bitterly. “And by then, the god will finish burning off all the alcohol, and I’ll shut it up again. Repeat.”
“Maybe you should let it talk,” Sera suggested.
Galina arched an eyebrow. “And this is coming from the woman who calls hers a bastard?”
“My zmeya is a vindictive little shit that extracts a blood price for paltry godpower. Yours used to listen to you.”
Galina let out a humorless laugh. “Listen to me? It helped me do things that still keep me up at night. And for what?”
For nothing.
Her memories dredged up all the violence she’d inflicted for Irina’s cause. But nothing had come from it—no victory or revenge. Her family was dead.
Her home was gone.
She rubbed her fingers over her robe-clad thigh, feeling the bumps of her scars—a topography of pain forged by the empress’s destructive godfire. The heat had peeled flesh and burned her skin black. Now, twenty years later, her right side was as rough as the sandbanks of the Lyutoga Sea. And the reminders were etched into her soul, like the marks on her body.
Sera’s attention fell on Galina’s hand, and she winced, pulling her gaze away. “What Irina made you do wasn’t right,” she said in a low, steely voice. “If I’d known she’d use your zmeya for her own vendettas, I would never have—”
“Let her summon it? You were ten.” Galina had been eight—mere children manipulated by a woman who promised a better world and lied.
“I would never have left,” Sera corrected gently. “When she trusted me on smuggling missions, I was adult enough to notice you changed every time I returned, and I was too much of a coward to ask why.”
Galina didn’t respond. She drank until her throat was raw. The god was muted now, and when Sera departed, Galina would begin putting the shards of her jagged soul back together.
Because that was what she did: woke up and repaired the tattered pieces of herself (they’ll never fit right. The cracks will always show).
Galina rose from
the bed and stood beside Sera at the window, taking in the cold evening air. The town of Dolsk was bustling with life. People filled the cobblestone streets, talking and laughing in carefree abandon. Many of them had never left the safety of their humble village, never seen the horrors of the outside world. Nor had they encountered an alurea beyond the temple icons—the privilege of living in hamlets beneath the notice of nobles, where war had yet to touch.
None of them were afraid of their entire lives burning to the ground.
“Irina called it a means to an end,” Galina said bitterly.
Her skin prickled with the barely contained energy of the godfire, courtesy of the rare zmeya she was bonded to. Only she and Empress Isidora had that skill in the last nine hundred years—and hers was all thanks to Irina.
“I don’t care what she called it. She promised justice against the empress and never let you take it.”
Galina loosed a breath. “I don’t think your mother put this god inside me for justice, vitsvi. She made promises to gullible children.”
Sera’s jaw clenched. “And we’re not gullible children anymore.”
She snatched a newspaper from her inner coat pocket and showed it to Galina, who stilled upon seeing the headline blaring the emperor’s tragic death.
“Not an accident, then?”
Sera’s mouth thinned into a grim line. “Vitaly Sergeyevich Rysakov.”
Galina chuckled. “Nicely done.” When Sera failed to return the humor, she shrugged. “What?”
“It would’ve been funny if the faithless planted a bomb while His Imperial Majesty was in the middle of shitting on a golden commode. This is sloppy. There need to be plans in place before the resulting power void—”
“Now you sound like Irina.”
Sera straightened in irritation. “Irina and I disagreed on tactics, and that’s why she was executed for sedition and I’m still alive. Bombs are a tool, not a solution.”
“Then let Vitaly Sergeyevich worry about the consequences. Unless you care about what happens to him.”
“Of course I care,” Sera said. “That isn’t the point.”
Galina cleared away some jugs from the carpet. “No, the point is you’re judging
strategy for a rebellion you’re no longer a part of.”
Sera fell silent, her focus on some distant place out the window. Then she quietly asked, “What if we were part of it again?”
Galina froze. “No.” An automatic response. “I’m not going back to the Blackshore.”
Her sister let out a breath. “Listen. Another kingdom will exploit Tumanny’s vulnerability. News of the assassination would have spread to the ruling families long before us. If the Sopolese forces invade, this is one of the first places in Kseniyevsky they’ll occupy. It won’t be safe here.”
“It’s not safe in the Blackshore, either.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Her stare was intent. “We need to leave.”
Galina shook her head in refusal. She enjoyed the peaceful life she had built in Dolsk, the little apartment that was her sanctuary from the chaos outside. “King Maksim is powerful, but Empress Isidora’s godfire will annihilate any army he sends. He won’t challenge her.”
“He would if he rallies enough allies,” Sera said. “Soldiers will come to Dolsk, and people are going to die. Have you forgotten Olensk?”
(Yes, you did. You buried Olensk in a grave and drowned yourself in alcohol to forget.)
Galina forcefully shook off the intrusive thought. “Get out.”
Sera winced, guilt flashing across her features, before she nodded and crossed the room to leave. She hesitated at the door and tipped her head back with a long exhale. “Two days, vitsvi,” she said wearily. “Pack one bag and leave everything else—just like before.” Her shoulders bent. “I’m sorry.”
Galina closed her eyes as the door clicked shut behind Sera. Then she returned to her bed and settled under the blankets.
The dark helped her forget. ...
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