Wrath & Mercy

Book 2: Bright & the Pale

by Jessica Rubinkowski

Genres: YA Fairy Tales & Folklore

Synopsis

Perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo and Sara Raasch, this epic finale complete with high-stakes action and page-turning romance delivers a thrilling conclusion to Jessica Rubinkowski’s Russian folklore–based YA fantasy duology.

Surviving the ill-fated expedition to Knnot, Valeria, Alik, and the others have found refuge in Valeria's village. Though Val should find comfort in reuniting with her family, everything has changed—including herself. For now, Val is the Pale God's chosen champion. And she is ready for revenge on the Czar.

Gifted with the Pale God’s power, Val will do whatever it takes to liberate her people. Even if that means stealing the Czar's son away from the safety of the Winter Palace. But as Alik watches Val struggle to maintain control over the god she holds captive, it becomes clear that the Pale God plans a revenge of his own.

The inevitable is coming: one final battle. And Valeria must be ready to sacrifice everything—even her love for Alik—to win.

Release date: March 22, 2022

Publisher: Quill Tree Books

Print pages: 336

Sample

One

Once there was a girl who was gifted the powers of a god. Filled with a righteous fury, she tore down the Czar’s army and ripped apart the curse that had held her village in an icy grasp for a decade.

She did it for love.

She did it for power.

But mostly, she did it for revenge.

IN THE OLD TALES, THE ones grandmothers tell in hushed whispers around dying fires, villains are creeping, evil things full of malice and deceit. It is a familiar story, one that children have heard all across the frozen country of Strana for hundreds of years. Once, humans warred among themselves, knowing nothing of industry or peace. Seeing the destruction being wrought on the land they so loved, the Brother Gods, one Bright and one Pale, fell to the earth. They did so willingly and with no expectation. They wished only to help. For years, there was prosperity, a utopia the world hasn’t seen since.

But gods and mortals were never meant to live side by side. As the Brother Gods remade humanity, so too were they changed.

Before their fall, the Brothers knew nothing of jealousy, hate, or fear. These were mortal emotions meant for humans alone. Slowly, these sentiments sowed seeds of discord between the Brothers, choking their benevolence until they were consumed only by their envy of one another. The Bright God wished to wield his brother’s power over frost, snow, and stone, while the Pale God wanted the light and life that came with his brother’s might. In the end, their jealousy devoured them.

The war they waged lasted a decade, destroying mountains, lakes, and woods, decimating the very world they sought to protect. At the end, when both were exhausted and bleeding, the Bright God made his final, desperate blow. He struck down his brother, burying him deep beneath the earth, entombing him in frost and bone and stone, until there was nothing left but a mountain. A monument to a former god.

But wars between brothers are bitter, volatile things. They were not content to let their battle end there. From their secret, hidden places, they chose mortal champions, humans destined to wage war against one another until death claimed them. The battles would play out as the original had, with the Bright champion casting down the Pale. A repeating cycle that never seems to end.

Until now.

I will be different.

The sky reels as the last claws of sunlight disappear behind Knnot Mountain at my back, as if my hatred of the Bright God alone forced twilight upon the world. With the dark comes a wave of dizziness, the edges of my vision going black and fuzzy, the world no longer as certain as it had been mere moments ago when I commanded the Pale God’s power. My arms ache, the scalding heat of Alik’s body is too much for the ice filtering through my veins. I can’t stop the tremor that rolls up my spine and down my arms, losing my hold on Alik, who falls to the powdery snow.

Alik slowly rights himself, his gaze going to the field of destruction before us. Bodies bedecked in the black-and-gold uniforms of the Storm Hounds, Czar Ladislaw’s personal army, lie sprawled and broken across the icy field between Knnot and the small village of Ludminka. Kosci’s monsters still lope among them, ripping into limp bodies to eat their fill. Pools of ice form along the areas where Matvei, the Bright God’s champion, pulled rays of sunlight from the sky in an attempt to kill me, cooled by the nipping wind of night.

All of it—the death, the blood, the monsters with wide, unseeing eyes and a maw of teeth—had been me. Instead of despair, a strange warmth brews in my heart like a storm, thunderheads of pride and vindication building in my chest.

“Valeria?” Alik’s voice is hoarse as he reaches for me, brushing warm fingers along my cheek so softly it’s as if he isn’t there at all. “Are you okay?”

The eyepatch over his left eye is stained with blood, some still leaking from the corner of his mouth. A bloom of deep maroon mars his chest, a hole torn in his shirt where the bolt went into his heart. I healed it. I brought him back. Yet looking into his face, with its pale cheeks and jagged scar from hairline to nose, I see nothing but the specter of death. I lost him for a second time, and it had been all Ladislaw and Matvei’s fault.

A familiar mantle of rage falls across my shoulders as I stumble to my feet, pushing away from Alik’s pinched face. I will never bow to the people who forced me to my knees, no matter what it will cost me. I do not care what I have to do to kill Czar Ladislaw. I will leave a river of red all the way to his palace in the capital. If Matvei seeks to destroy me, I will kill him first. No one will stop me.

Czar Ladislaw sent his Storm Hounds to trap us in Knnot. He let Matvei round us up like sheep to slaughter just so he could get his hands on lovite, the magical ore deep within Knnot’s heart. And Luiza helped.

Luiza, who claimed to love me. Luiza, who saved me from the streets when I was just a little girl, lost and alone after frost had devoured my family. As if that meant nothing, she betrayed me, and it almost cost me the only thing in this world that I loved.

I stagger toward Ludminka, ignoring Alik, who calls after me as snow swallows my boots. I have to keep going, I have to move toward Rurik and the palace and the Czar. If I don’t, they will come, they will take and conquer and kill. I can’t let them step foot onto Zladonian soil again.

I slip forward on a patch of ice, my exhausted body giving way, but a set of warm arms catches me before I collapse. I blink up into Alik’s face to find a single wide, panicked eye, the rest of his face dissolved into a pale blur. He hugs me tight to his chest, keeping me upright by will alone. I tell my body to fight, but it doesn’t respond, the last vestiges of Kosci’s power trapped in the pendant around my neck leaking away, one heartbeat at a time.

“It’s over,” Alik says into my hair, his breath almost too hot against my cheek. “It’s over, Val. Let them go. Send the creatures away.”

I open my mouth to say it isn’t over, it won’t be until Ladislaw is dead at my feet, but I release a strangled sob instead. The threads of magic twining from the pendant into the monsters and people in the village pull at the interior of my mind, siphoning energy with each breath they take.

Slowly, I relinquish the tight hold on the pulsing power coursing through me. First, from the creatures, who look in my direction before slinking back toward the gaping mouth of Knnot, to hide in their pit of darkness until I have need of them again. I turn my attention to the droning buzz of the village.

I can’t leave them to walk their ruined streets full of bodies with no explanation, not when my family is among them, too. The world changed as they slept in their cocoons of frost, and they’ve a right to know why. Vaguely, so softly that I almost don’t catch it, Kosci murmurs in the back of my mind, like a thought I don’t remember thinking.

Order them to the square.

At first, I have no idea how I am supposed to do that. I know nothing of Kosci’s power or how to wield it. After I accepted his deal to plant his heart somewhere it could flourish in exchange for his power while I wore it, I let my rage and sorrow overtake me. It had been as simple as breathing then. Now it’s like trying to dig through frozen ground. Plaintively, Kosci attempts to guide my mind, pointing it toward the threads tugging at his heart trapped around my neck. I think a single word, “square,” before every last one of the strings snaps from my control.

The feeling is visceral, like a spring trap exploding into my chest. I sag against Alik, who catches me with a soft huff.

“Alik, I need—” I start to say, and it’s like speaking through water. “I need to get to the village square.”

“You need to sit down,” Alik says, his arms still the only thing holding me upright. With every last bit of strength left within me, I force myself away from him once again. I wobble but remain standing, the edges of my world going murky and dark.

“I have to go to them,” I say. I’m not certain if Alik hears me, but I don’t wait for his response. I struggle forward, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. I trip over something, an arm or leg, I don’t know, but someone is there to grab me. Alik slips his arm beneath my left, while Chinua, one of the few to make it out of the mines of Knnot alive, appears and takes my other arm. Her long black braid sits in disarray, but her mouth is determined.

Neither speak as they help me toward Ludminka, which sits eerily quiet as we are swallowed by the brightly colored houses of the main street. Shutters bang against the sides of cabins, forgotten, decade-old clothes flapping in the empty alleys between the buildings. When I’d freed Ludminka, I’d expected life to flow into the streets again, not this empty husk of what used to be.

At last, we break out into the city center, finding a small crowd dotting the snow-dusted cobblestones of the square. I scan each face, searching for my parents or brothers, but their features bleed together in a blanket of icy white. My family is out there, though. I can feel it.

The silence deepens as Chinua and Alik slow to a stop in the center of the square. In the gloom of winter dusk, the citizens of Ludminka are more ghost than people, but I can feel the slip of their eyes over my face like a warm wash and I disentangle myself from the others, determined to stand on my own before the people I freed.

“People of Ludminka,” I cry out as a dull ringing begins in my ears and sweat pools on my brow. “I know you are confused. You likely have no memory of what happened here. I hope I can provide you with the answers you seek, though I will warn you that what I am about to tell you will seem unbelievable. For the past ten years, all of Ludminka has been trapped in ice. Strana has long since believed you dead and the mines within Knnot unreachable.”

I don’t think I imagine the collective inhale. I forge ahead, the world spinning rapidly around me now.

“Everyone outside Ludminka within the Zladonia region fell to plague, their bodies withering away until their hearts gave out. Czar Ladislaw, whom you only know as a benefactor, refused us all sanctuary. He claimed we would bring disease and ruin to Strana. He imprisoned Zladonians, one by one, and holds them captive still. The world you remember is no more. Zladonians are hated. Hunted. And we will continue to be until either Ladislaw is dead or we are.”

As my words sink into the sea of people before me, whispers begin, quickly changing to mutters, then shouting. Their voices blend together in a symphony of fear and worry until it beats against my eardrums. I raise a hand to silence them before the tide of their voices can pull me under. To my surprise, the cacophony cuts off completely.

“I know you don’t want to believe me,” I say into the silence. “It sounds impossible, like something out of a legend. But I’m here to tell you that’s exactly where you find yourself, in the middle of a myth. My name is Valeria, daughter of Ivanna and Nicklaus, and I am the Pale God’s chosen champion.”

Not a single person moves. I’m not certain they even breathe. The weight of my new title settles into my body, sending cold goose bumps up my arms. I attempt to wet my lips as tension crawls through the crowd.

With the very last dregs of Kosci’s power, I raise my hand and release his magic. It curls along my palm in frozen fractals, spiraling along my fingers until it creates a small, diamond-shaped shard in the middle of my hand. Some gasp, others silently gape, while still others surge forward to get a better look. Their faces come into startling focus for a single heartbeat before my vision collapses into darkness.