Disciples of Chaos, page 1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2024 by M. K. Lobb
Cover art copyright © 2024 by Sasha Vinogradova. Cover design by Karina Granda.
Cover copyright © 2024 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Interior design by Michelle Gengaro.
Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104
Visit us at LBYR.com
First Edition: February 2024
Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
Little, Brown and Company books may be purchased in bulk for business, educational, or promotional use. For information, please contact your local bookseller or the Hachette Book Group Special Markets Department at special.markets@hbgusa.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lobb, M. K., author.
Title: Disciples of chaos / M. K. Lobb.
Description: First edition. | New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2024. | Series: Seven faceless saints ; 2 | Audience: Ages 14 & up. | Summary: Damian Venturi and Rossana Lacertosa travel north to Brechaat to save their friends while protecting Ombrazia from a new and dangerous magic.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023012385 | ISBN 9780316471770 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316524476 (ebook)
Subjects: CYAC: Fantasy. | Magic—Fiction. | Gods—Fiction. | LCGFT: Fantasy fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.L623 Di 2023 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023012385
ISBNs: 978-0-316-47177-0 (hardcover), 978-0-316-52447-6 (ebook)
E3-20240106-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue: Milos
1: Damian
2: Roz
3: Damian
4: Damian
5: Roz
6: Roz
7: Damian
8: Milos
9: Roz
10: Damian
11: Roz
12: Damian
13: Damian
14: Roz
15: Milos
16: Roz
17: Damian
18: Roz
19: Roz
20: Damian
21: Roz
22: Damian
23: Roz
24: Roz
25: Damian
26: Roz
27: Damian
28: Roz
29: Damian
30: Roz
31: Roz
32: Damian
33: Roz
34: Damian
35: Roz
36: Damian
37: Roz
Epilogue: Kiran
Acknowledgments
Discover More
Also by M. K. Lobb
For those who have mastered the art of sharpening edges but are still learning how to be soft
Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more.
Tap here to learn more.
MILOS
Night was falling, and the wind had teeth.
Milos fastened the top button of his jacket with unsteady fingers as he gave the house behind him a final glance. The details were scarcely visible beneath the impending dusk, but he knew the place as he did his own reflection—the simple rectangular windows, a wilting garden, and the cracked plaster walls revealing the dusty stone beneath.
He didn’t know whether he would be coming back. For reasons he couldn’t quite verbalize, he didn’t care.
He readjusted the leather bag on his shoulder, his blood alive in his veins. All at once, he couldn’t move fast enough. Something had changed these past few days. He felt it like an incurable itch just beneath the surface of his skin, and he only grew more certain of it as the hours passed. His body had felt the shift before the rest of him caught on, and until now he hadn’t been able to identify the sensation that plagued him.
Now he knew.
It was the need to flee.
Or at least, something of the sort. His heart pounded within the cage of his chest as if he was being pursued, but Milos had the odd, inexplicable sensation that he was running toward something. It was pulling him close, and he had little choice in the matter.
Framed that way, it rang of madness even to himself. But he could feel the truth of it as he could feel his magic coiled around his bones. It was that, perhaps, which urged him onward and stoked the excitement burning within him. He swallowed hard, lifting his chin to the darkening skyline. His lips formed a prayer.
If he continued heading in the direction he was going, such prayers were bound to get him thrown in prison. For now, though, he pictured his patron saint at the edge of the sky, listening. Watching.
The dark countryside stretched out before him like fields of oblivion. Beyond it the sea lapped against the cliffs bordering the pass separating Brechaat from Ombrazia. If he strained to listen, Milos imagined he could hear the waves. An impossibility, of course. But the world felt so very small when he couldn’t see more than a few yards ahead.
Was it his saint that pulled him south? Something divine dragging him forth by magical tethers?
Milos shivered, though not from cold. Discomfort was a foreign sensation smothered by focus. He set his gaze southward and continued on.
Led by Chaos, or else toward it.
DAMIAN
As a child, Damian Venturi had always longed to be more story than boy.
He’d cut his teeth on tales of the saints and the disciples blessed with their magic. He’d dreamed of glory in the northern war, gripping weapons in hands that didn’t shake. He’d envisioned captaining ships across star-studded waters and standing at the edge of the world, shoulders squared in holy righteousness. He’d imagined falling in love.
He’d pictured it all with Strength at his side, certain that his father’s patron saint would one day bless him, too.
The thought made Damian’s lips twist as he knelt beside Battista Venturi’s gravestone. The glistening slab of marble was longer than his father had been tall, opulent and unnecessary. A grand bit of rock for a man who’d thought himself quite grand indeed.
No matter how many times he came here, Damian couldn’t shake the haze of bitterness. His frustration was an unforgiving thing. When his father had died, Damian had known despair. He’d watched crimson spread across the stark white of the Palazzo floor and felt the dull, inescapable thrum of that despair in his bones. It was as familiar to him as the sound of his own voice. Now, though, he was shedding layers of misery like ill-fitting clothes and replacing them with years’ worth of repressed anger.
He tented his fingers in the lush grass, nails scraping the dirt. The saints, if they were out there somewhere, weren’t in the business of liberation. Disciples died like any flesh-and-blood creature. Death made equals of them all.
Damian should know. He’d buried a bullet in a disciple himself. And perhaps that was the reason he kept coming here: to make himself suffer. To endure some sort of penance for the fact that he’d killed yet again, and this time had been the worst. Worse even than the swift deaths he’d carried out during his time on the northern front.
Because this time it had been so fucking easy.
“I bet you wish you’d seen that, don’t you?” Damian murmured to the gravestone, gaze sweeping the familiar epitaph: BATTISTA VENTURI—ESTEEMED GENERAL, HONORED BY STRENGTH. His father would be remembered not as a loving husband or doting father, but by his role and status. Given the man he’d become by the end, Damian supposed it was apt.
He brushed off his hands and pushed himself to stand, swallowing the acrid taste in the back of his throat. As he shifted, sunlight glanced off the flat stone. It felt like a mockery.
“I wondered if I’d find you here.”
Roz Lacertosa drew up beside him, mouth set in a hard line. She was as beautiful and unruffled as always: high-necked black shirt baring only a glimpse of her slender throat, long dark hair drawn into a tight ponytail. She stared at Battista’s grave, her expression of vague distaste unwavering. Damian couldn’t very well blame her.
“How long have you been out here?” Roz trailed her fingers up the small of Damian’s back. Her touch made him shudder, and he shrugged.
“Not long.”
It was a lie, and the weight of her cutting gaze told him she knew it. Her fingers found his chin, and she turned Damian’s face to hers in a grip that demanded no argument.
“He doesn’t deserve this… vigil. Besides, Enzo killed him—not you.”
Damian gently removed her hand from his
face and pulled her into his chest, inhaling the scent of her skin. He pressed his lips against the side of her neck.
“Damian, please,” Roz said, gripping his bicep. The words, though, were tinged with humor. “Not in front of your father.”
He snorted, pulling her away from the Palazzo’s sparse graveyard. His spirits were already lifting. The summer wind was warm, a trailing caress through his hair, and he could hear the crashing waves of the sea in the near distance.
“Your hands are dirty,” Roz observed, holding up their intertwined fingers. The revelation didn’t appear to bother her, but Damian cringed, attempting to disentangle himself.
“Sorry.”
She held fast. “What were you doing?”
He gave up, not wanting to let go of her regardless. “The chthonium Enzo had left on each of the victims’ bodies? I buried it beside my father. I didn’t want to have to look at it anymore.” Truly, he didn’t know why he’d kept it as long as he had. He would never forget the way it had been shoved into the empty eye sockets of those the disciple had murdered.
“You should have thrown it in the sea,” Roz said, squeezing his hand tighter. “But good—I’m glad. Some things are better buried and forgotten.”
Damian didn’t bother telling her he could never forget what Enzo had wrought in their city. He changed the subject. “How did your meeting with the rebels go?”
She seemed to consider the question as she walked at his side, boots tapping against the cobblestones of the wide path leading up to the Palazzo.
“As well as could be expected, I suppose.” She gave a haughty toss of her ponytail. “Some of them are still hesitant to trust me. They’ll be at the meeting, though.”
“You mean they’re hesitant to trust me.” Damian was, of course, referring to how Roz’s friends hadn’t been at all pleased to discover she’d been working alongside a security officer.
She blinked against the late afternoon sun, lashes casting long, delicate shadows on her cheeks. “They trust you enough to guarantee their safety at the meeting. Besides, they know you helped solve the murders, and that we’re friends.”
“I’m sorry,” Damian said, thrusting an arm out to stop her in her tracks. “Did you say we were friends?”
Roz’s blue eyes darkened in feral amusement. “We’ve always been friends, Venturi.”
“I think you know that’s not what I meant.”
She made a low hum in the back of her throat, glancing skyward as she feigned consideration. “So we’re not friends?”
“Rossana…,” Damian growled. They’d reached the side of the Palazzo, and Roz shoved him over to the wall until his back was flush against the cool stone. He could have resisted, of course, but he didn’t.
“Do you want them to know I can’t stand to be away from you?” she murmured, hands exploring the planes of his chest. There was wickedness in the curve of her smile. “Do you want them to know I’m obsessed with the sound of your laugh and the feel of your skin?”
Damian meant to answer, but Roz claimed his mouth with hers. It might have been a chaste thing, had she not been in the process of slipping her fingers beneath the hem of his shirt. A single touch of her lips, and he was consumed by fire. He never tired of kissing Roz. The press of her body against his, the familiar sweet scent of her hair, the way their mouths fit together as if they’d been created solely for that singular contact… But she pulled away too soon, taking with her the gasp she’d drawn from somewhere in his chest.
Her eyes lifted to his again, and Damian knew they were battling the same unspoken thoughts. They had been for days, and yet something kept them from voicing the subject. It was easier that way. Easier for Damian to go about his work at the Palazzo, trying to force some semblance of order following the deaths of Battista and Chief Magistrate Forte. Easier for Roz to spend time with her mother in the apartment that used to be Piera’s and focus on what came next for the rebellion.
“Just say it,” Damian said hoarsely, arms dropping to his side. “I can tell you keep putting it off, so just say it, Roz.”
She scanned his face, her own expression hard. Not suspicious, but searching. “I thought it might upset you.”
“That you can see what’s wrong with me?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you.”
“Roz, please.” Damian dragged a hand down the side of his face, still warm from kissing her. He remembered her words from last week: I see you. Even the dark parts. “When I killed Enzo, I felt good about it. There’s something… bad inside me.”
She gave an obstinate lift of her chin. “You thought he’d just murdered me. I’d be pissed if you didn’t feel at least a little satisfaction.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Damian waited, wondering if she would say more. If she would admit she’d noticed the flashes of wild fury that sliced through him when he wasn’t expecting it. He’d felt it that night, and it had been happening more frequently in the days since. After nearly three years at the front, he was accustomed to flashbacks, but this was something else altogether. There were strange, terrifying moments during which he felt too big for his skin. As if he wanted to rip free of his own body the way Enzo had stepped out of the chief magistrate’s form, letting the illusion of flesh fall to bloody pieces around him. Nothing about the feeling was right. When a disciple of Chaos was stalking Ombrazia’s streets, Damian had thought he was losing his mind. Now that Enzo was dead, shouldn’t that fear have died with him?
But it hadn’t. If anything, it was worse than ever.
“We went through a lot,” Roz said, interlacing their fingers and using her thumb to stroke the back of his. Although the action was intended to comfort, the words were not. They were simply a statement of fact. Roz rarely tried to soothe—she spoke what she perceived to be the truth. “You’re spending too much time worrying about how you ought to be reacting, instead of just letting yourself work through it.”
Damian wanted to believe her. But he’d known all manner of horrors in his life. Things that stayed with him, the guilt and misery forming a gradually tightening noose around his neck. This was different in a way he didn’t know how to describe. He could feel himself unraveling, yet couldn’t muster anything more than indifference when it counted. He felt violent. There was no other word for it. Unhinged and incognizant of consequences during those brief interludes where he was certain he’d lost hold of his sanity. He couldn’t shake the sensation that something horrible clung to him like an invisible shroud.
“You’re right,” Damian told Roz, because he couldn’t bear to continue the conversation. Perhaps sensing his dismay, she pulled him in the direction of the Palazzo.
“Come on. I want a good seat for the meeting.”
Damian wasn’t sure there was such a thing as a good seat for an event like this, but he didn’t bother saying so. He followed Roz to the Palazzo’s heavy front doors. The ancient stone building seemed to gather up the sea-tainted wind, compelling it to hush. Above them, metal-tipped spires rose to pierce the gray sky, the tallest of them hazy within the press of clouds. Once, Damian had thought the Palazzo beautiful. A shining refuge from the mud-laden front where he’d lost his friends and his innocence. Now, though, the very look of it sent cold threading along his bones. Death had followed him here, and he could not shed her. She lingered in the echo of his boots across the marble floors and peered at him from the eyes of the statues lining the main entrance. Every time Damian crossed the threshold, he could see his father’s body at the bottom of the stairs and smell the acrid scent of rust and gunpowder.
But he forced himself to nod at the officers on duty—Matteo and Noemi—before allowing the cool, quiet air of the marble entryway to envelop him.
The silence didn’t last long.
Damian’s surname rang through the foyer, a nasal bark of impatience that dragged a sigh out of him.
“Salvestro.” Damian turned to face the disciple of Death, casting his name like a whip through the space between them. “What can I do for you?”
Despite being the newest Palazzo representative, Salvestro Agosti had taken to leadership as though he’d been bred for it. Perhaps he had—it wouldn’t be unusual for a powerful disciple. Blessed by Death, he could glean the final moments of the recently deceased with a mere touch, but his air of superiority seemed to suggest he could read the living just as well.
