His first soldiers were dead now. Lovers, allies, countless kings and queens. Only he continued on. Eternity took practice, and he’d had plenty of it. The world had changed. War had changed. But he had not. He’d traveled, learned, killed. He’d met his half sister, who had herself passed into legend and Sainthood. He’d searched the world for his mother’s other children, hungry for kinship, for a sense of himself in others. He’d discarded his past lives like a snake shedding its skin, becoming sleeker and more dangerous with every new version of himself. But maybe he’d left some part of who he was behind in each of those lives.

Brother Azarov startled awake as Aleksander brought the cart to a stop on the sloping road that led into Adena. The monk yawned and smacked his lips. It was early morning, and Aleksander could see it was market day in the little town. Even from a distance, he could tell the mood was somber, the threat of war creeping ever closer, but the square was still full of people stocking up on provisions, children playing or working the stalls with their parents, neighbors calling their greetings.

Aleksander hopped down to stretch his legs and make sure the weapons were secure at the back of the wagon.

“Have you been to Adena before?” Brother Azarov asked.

“Yes,” he replied before he thought better of it. Yuri had never been. “No … But I always wanted to visit.”

“Oh?” Azarov peered at the town as if expecting it to suddenly unfold into a more interesting version of itself. “Why? Is there something special about it?”

“There’s a very fine mural in its cathedral.”

“Of Sankta Lizabeta?”

Was this her town? Yes, he remembered now. She’d performed some kind of miracle here to lure the young king to the Fold. But there was no mural in the church. “I meant the statue,” he said. She’d made it bleed black tears and covered it in roses.

“Who are you?”

Aleksander looked up from the cartridges of ammunition he was sorting. “I beg your pardon?”

Brother Azarov was standing beside the cart. His yellow hair was mussed from the night’s adventure and his eyes were narrowed. “Whoever you are, you’re not Yuri Vedenen.”

He made himself chuckle. “Then who am I?”

“I don’t know.” Azarov’s face was grim, and Aleksander realized too late that his show of confusion over Adena had been an act. “An impostor. An agent of the Lantsov king. One of the Apparat’s men. The only thing I’m sure of is that you’re a charlatan and no servant of the Starless One.”