Chapter 45
45
KATERINA
“ N o!” Katerina’s cry filled the air, resounding through the woods. Clouds gathered in the night sky, the trees bending before her will as the wind began to rise.
With my will I bind you, Niko Alekhin. May you rise, and rest no more.
Katerina had chained Elena to the Dark, and Elena had bound Niko’s soul to hers.
Niko, a ghost. Niko, a prisoner.
Niko, a captive of the damned.
Katerina stood, fists at her sides, a gale whipping her hair back and plastering her blood-soaked shift to her skin. The earth cracked once more, this time at her command, the great oaks ripping free of their roots. Hail pelted the clearing, striking Elena and the demons. Gadreel tried once more to reach her, but a gust drove him backward, slamming him into the trunk of a fallen oak head-first. He fell and didn’t move.
The doorway to nothingness drifted closer, hanging in midair, unaffected by her storm. Inky tendrils seeped from it, leaving blackened, withered grass in their wake when they reached the ground. The Void sucked at her, icy and demanding.
She remembered what Nadia had written in her own blood— The Darkness is loose. The village of Satvala is gone . As the cold crawled over her skin in deadly, inexorable invitation, Katerina knew her fellow Dimi had been right. The Darkness that fueled the Void and had given rise to the Underworld, a shard of which lived within each demon… It was here, in this clearing. As it had been in Satvala and Drezna, before it had swallowed them whole.
The Darkness had gotten free somehow. It had wanted Elena, and been denied. And it was hungry.
Without her Shadow’s protection, Katerina was vulnerable. The Darkness could consume her. Own her, as it did Elena. And then it would take Kalach next.
That would never happen, as long as Katerina lived. Digging deeper than she ever had, praying to Niko’s soul for strength, she summoned the wind. It rose to her call, lifting the demons and Elena into the air. The Vila struggled, and though Gadreel hung limp, Sammael shifted shape again and again, trying in vain to break free of Katerina’s hold.
With a roar that shook the forest, she threw her power outward, forming a net around Elena and the demons. Every muscle clenched with effort, she imagined dragging the net closer and closer to the ragged hole, aided by the force of the wind.
Niko, she thought as the creature that had been Elena spat and fought, if you’re still here, if you’re still with me like you promised, help me now.
The wind screamed, its voice as eerie and plaintive as the cry of the snow leopards that roamed the woods north of Rivki. And then he came, melting out of the forest to stand before her: Niko’s shade, in human form, his mournful gray eyes fixed on hers. The flames of the smoldering trees flickered through his transparent body, so that for an instant he shone with Light, as he had on the road to Drezna. She could feel his strength bolstering hers one last time. Protecting her from the onslaught of the Dark.
Tears streaming down her face, she reached out a hand to him. His voice echoed in her mind, maybe a memory or maybe the answer to her prayer: I am your Lightbringer, Katya. Nothing will harm you while I live.
But you’re dead, she thought stupidly, even as she howled his name.
A terrible realization dawned on her: She could cast Elena into the Void, and the demons with her. She could save Kalach. But with Niko’s soul chained to the Vila, then that meant?—
She hesitated, her magic stuttering. But it was too late.
With a suddenness that sent Katerina reeling backward, the four figures—demons, corrupted Vila, and her beloved Shadow—flew toward the entrance to the Void, which yawned wider, as if in invitation. There was a dreadful sucking sound as the portal swallowed them whole…and then stillness, as the night knit itself back together. The hole was gone, like it had never been there at all.
Katerina dropped to the ground, gasping. The clearing and the forest that surrounded it were destroyed, awash in mud and blood, littered with rocks, tree limbs, and the corpses of fish. She crawled through the wreckage to where Niko lay, sobs ripping from her throat. As dawn broke over the treetops, she knelt, cradling the broken body of her Shadow. Beneath her knees, the delicate bones of tiny trout shattered, piercing her skin. She welcomed the pain; it was an echo of the serrated misery that gnawed at every inch of her body, perforating her heart.
She’d had to do it. If she hadn’t sent Elena hurtling into the Void, taking the Darkness with her, it would surely have consumed Kalach. But condemning Elena that way had done the same to Niko. In saving Kalach, she had cast her Shadow’s soul into the Void.
It was unbearable.
Over and over again, she remembered Niko flinging himself in front of her, taking the knife meant to end her life. Over and over he fell, the Darkness swarming from Elena’s mouth and the flames consuming him as he writhed in agony.
And then, as surely as if Baba Petrova stood beside her, the words of the prophecy echoed, uttered in Baba’s cracked, kvass-roughened voice:
Vila to Shadows, as dawn slips to dusk . Never Shadow to Dimi, betrayal of trust. In the slow slide to hate, so come secrets to light . Fuel for the war, for the unnatural fight . So will they forfeit what they love the most: Lost demon. Witchfire. Wandering ghost. So shall she burn as she brings his demise: The Dark will fall. The shadow will rise.