Chapter 41
41
KATERINA
S tunned, Katerina stared. The look on the Vila’s face, the blush that rose to stain her cheeks as her lips parted—it reminded her of Niko’s expression when he was buried inside her, his hands roving over her body, lost in pleasure. Agony shot through Katerina at the thought that he might never hold her so again.
Somehow, though they stood before Katerina fully clothed, Elena was engaging in illicit congress with her demon. She had stood up before the village and pledged herself to Niko—then accused him of being unfaithful—when all along, she had been consorting with a Grigori. Niko lay dying , and Elena was despoiling herself with a damned, soulless creature.
Hatred and disgust welled up in Katerina’s heart.
She fixed her eyes on Gadreel, who stood a respectful distance from the rowan-fires and the Void, blue eyes flicking from the doomed Vila to Niko and back again. “You, demon—I know you want me. For your paramour, for your slave, for your weapon…I don’t care. You can have me. I’ll stand at your side, if you save him.” Tears choked her voice. “Please. I’ll do anything.”
“A rich offer,” the demon said over the crackle of the flames and the unsettled murmur of the Void. “But a pointless one. Your Shadow is dead where he lies, Dimi Ivanova. Once hellfire takes a beast such as that, he is damned. He will die burning, and you will be mine, anyhow.” His laughter rose, barbed and poisonous, stinging Katerina’s skin. It devolved into coughs as the smoke from the rowan-fires polluted his lungs, and then the sound faded into the dark.
As if the demon’s words had called them, the silver-blue flames crawled up Niko’s limbs, one bloodstain at a time. He rolled feebly, trying to extinguish them, but the more of his blood they tasted, the brighter they blazed. Katerina clutched him, trying to beat the demon-flames back with her hands, to no avail.
In desperation, she closed her eyes and reached out for the river that fed the village. She had never tried to summon water at this distance, and her body trembled with the force of her concentration. Her mind filled with the image of the river’s overarching willows and the rocks that lined its bed, making a slippery path that she and Niko used to chase each other across when they were children.
A roar rose in the forest, growing louder until a wall of water loomed above the trees and crashed into the clearing, extinguishing the rowan-fires but doing nothing to quench the demon-flames. Fish poured from the sky and into the Void, their silver bodies strewn across the dirt of the clearing. The forest reeked of iron, tidal mud, and rosemary, undergirded with the acrid scent of fear.
“Please,” Katerina said over and over, her fingers pressed against Niko’s Mark, tethering his soul to hers. “Please don’t leave me. Niko, please?—”
The water broke around his burning body, drenching Katerina but leaving him untouched. His teeth sank into his lower lip, back bowing as the silver-blue flames traced the blood that spilled from his mouth, then slipped inside when he gasped. He glowed with an unearthly light as the fire slid down his throat, illuminating him from within. It slid lower still, encasing his wounded heart, and Niko howled, his body arching out of Katerina’s grip. His voice resounded in her head. Let me go, Katya. I will always be with you, I swear it. My soul is yours. Set me free.
His pain was hers, her body an inferno, her heart struggling to beat. It was selfish to keep him with her, to let him suffer this way. She fought to think, to find the strength to do as he wished. Breath coming short, she closed her eyes once more, picturing the bond that tied them together. As his Dimi, she had to be the one to sever it. Better she should grieve for the rest of her life than for him to linger in this brutal half-existence. He would never leave her if there was the slightest chance he might live. She knew that with every fiber of her being.
The bond shimmered in her mind’s eye, frayed but holding. She dragged in a deep, scorching breath and braced herself to cut it.