Chapter 55
55
KATERINA
S omehow, impossibly, Katerina was standing in Kalach.
Had things gone horribly wrong? Had she traveled through a portal to the Underworld only to arrive home again?
She was at the edge of the village square, watching as Maksim passed by her without so much as a nod of acknowledgment. Behind him came Alyona, and Katerina braced herself for the Vila’s invective. But Aly merely waved at her, batting her lashes coquettishly in Katerina’s direction. Her green eyes were devoid of any kind of resentment or suspicion. And her cheeks were plump and full, unlike the last time Katerina had seen her, at Niko’s funeral.
That sense of wrongness intensified as Katerina turned, taking in her surroundings. There was the blacksmith’s shop. The apothecary. The marketplace. All where they should be. Except…the marketplace’s stalls were overflowing with lush, ripe fruit and vegetables, fresh-baked bread, cookies, and cakes. The air bloomed with the earthy scent of borscht and the tempting aroma of vareniki, sizzling in oil. Hungry as she was, her mouth watered at the sight.
As Katerina watched, the ruddy-cheeked villagers lined up for helpings, Konstantin and Ana among them. They chattered amongst themselves, looking healthy and fit and cheerful. There wasn’t a sallow-faced, malnourished one in the bunch. Mid-square, fiddlers and tambourine musicians played a jolly tune as dancers held hands and twirled. In the center stood a khorovodnitsa, directing the festivities.
Katerina stared, speechless. Kalach had been planning a celebration for the Kniaz’s arrival, but this was more than the village could usually manage for the fall Harvest Festival. What was happening? Where was she? And how long had she been underground?
“You, girl!” an elderly woman in a bright yellow apron called, motioning at Katerina. “What are you waiting for? Get the finest cheese vareniki in Kalach right here!”
Katerina loved vareniki; the fried, stuffed dumplings were her favorites. Every cook in town knew it, and had vied for the honor to have Dimi Ivanova sample their goods. In consequence, Katerina knew every vareniki-maker in Kalach by name. And this woman was a stranger. Odder still, how had she gotten the flour for the dough, when the fields were barren and the storehouses had been emptied for the Kniaz’s tithe?
Everyone’s happy expressions and well-fed bodies. The way Alyona hadn’t recognized her. The profusion of food. None of it made any sense.
“Would you prefer mushroom?” The woman smiled, showing unusually sharp, white teeth. “I picked them myself, just this morn. Tender as a baby’s flesh, they are.”
A fruit vendor, her hair tied back with a patterned kerchief and her cheeks unnaturally rosy, rummaged among her wares. She came up with a pomegranate, sliced in two. The seeds glistened in the harsh sunlight, ruby-bright and slick with juice. “Fruit of the damned,” she called cheerfully. “Beautiful fruit!”
“Or perhaps you would prefer borscht,” the man in the next stall over suggested, leering at Katerina. He gestured to a steaming cauldron, perched over a crackling fire. “Red as blood, and twice as sweet. See?”
Dipping a ladle into the cauldron, he lifted it for Katerina’s inspection. As fat, gleaming drops fell from the spoon, Katerina smelled not the tangy-sour aroma of the soup she loved but the coppery scent of blood. She gasped, and the man cackled, a horned, blue-skinned beast shimmering beneath the surface of his wrinkled skin.
“Come and get it!” he cried happily. “Come and eat…and eat…and eat…”
He bared his teeth, stepping toward her. And then he stopped, his nostrils flaring.
“What are you?” he said, his voice deep and threatening. “From whence have you come? You smell of Light, little one. You smell…tasty.”
The square fell silent, the fiddlers lifting their bows and the tambourines ceasing to jingle. The dancers, still clutching each other’s hands, turned as one to face Katerina. And then, as if attuned to a signal only they could hear, they all began to advance upon her, their eyes alight with hunger.
Normally, Katerina would have stood her ground and fought. But here and now, her magic wavered inside her, a candle flame whose wick was guttering. If she called, she couldn’t trust it to come.
So instead she turned and fled like a hunted rabbit, past the abandoned stalls of fresh-cut flowers and iced cakes and simmering stroganoff, past the fiddlers and the beribboned dancers who reached out taloned hands to grasp her. She ran and ran, her breath rasping in her throat, until she finally arrived at a familiar place.
Elena’s cottage.
The yellow siding, the white trim, the bright blue door…all of it was the same. Only the runes that twined along the window frames and beneath the eaves were different. They spoke of demonic influence, not goodness and Light.
Katerina stood, silently, and listened. She could no longer hear the crowd chasing her. The crowd, she realized now, that had been comprised of Grigori who had likely been ordered to take on the forms of the villagers of Kalach. Sammael had constructed a replica of their village for Elena. As she had left her home behind, he had brought her home to her.
It would have been sweet, if it hadn’t been a fallen angel’s gift to a deluded murderer.
She could see Elena through one of the windows of the cottage, sitting at her table, in front of a samovar and tea set that had been her Shadow father’s wedding gift. She was wearing the gown in which she’d married Niko, her platinum hair threaded with thorned greenbriar vines, in an eerie, sinister echo of her wedding’s roses. She looked remote, and lovely, and…untouchable.
Katerina pulled one of her blades from its sheath. Breath hissing through her teeth and witchfire licking her ankles, she crept toward the house. Through the wavy glass of the window, she saw Elena raise a cup to her lips, one hand resting casually on the head of a black dog that leaned against her side.
Katerina’s breath caught. But the dog was not Niko, with the white streak above his ear that marked him as hers and the wit that blazed in his gray eyes, even in dog form. It was the beast that had accompanied Elena to the clearing.
Where, then, was her Shadow?
Katerina scanned the front room of the cottage, all that she could see from where she stood. Niko was nowhere in sight. There was just Elena, sipping tea from her wedding china like a demented bride, and the black dog, her obedient companion.
The demon Sammael did not need to take a Shadow’s shape. It could have resembled anything: A man, a monster. Yet there it was, impersonating a Shadow, perpetuating Elena’s delusion that she was anything other than an abomination.
Rage swelled in Katerina, and her magic flared, escaping her. One of the windows blew inward, shattering. The shards of glass whipped around Elena, a tornado painting her white skin in blood, slashing her wedding dress, tearing the lace from its hem.
The Vila’s gaze fixed on Katerina. For a moment, her wide blue eyes reflected shock and horror. And then she started to laugh.
“Katerina?” she said, her voice unconcerned, as if she weren’t bleeding from a thousand tiny cuts. “What are you doing here? Come to join me for tea?” She gestured at the table before her. “There’s plenty, after all.”
Perhaps she had gone mad, altogether. “I’ve come—” Katerina began, but Elena wasn’t listening. Instead, she turned to the black dog at her side.
“Did you ask someone to impersonate her, for my entertainment? You are too good to me, my beloved. Let us spend the evening torturing her, and imagine that it’s truly Katerina who stands before us. It will be such fun.”
But the black dog was no more. Sammael stood there, in the guise of the redheaded man. “No,“ he said. “I did not conjure her, Elena, nor yet did I command a minor demon to impersonate her likeness. I called her here, in hopes that the two of you could come to terms.”
Elena’s mouth fell open. “What?” she croaked. “Is this a joke?”
The demon shook his head, his expression grave, and a rageful flush suffused Elena’s features. “I don’t understand. Why would you betray me this way?”
“Think of it as a favor, rather than a betrayal.” Sammael’s gaze lingered on the empty air by the Vila’s side. “You are not yourself. And like it or not, we share a common enemy.”
“Katerina is my enemy.” Elena stood, advancing toward the window frame, studded with shards of glass. Her cuts were already healing; were it not for the bloodied dress that swirled around her ankles, Katerina might believe they had never been there at all.
The Vila peered curiously at Katerina, as if she were looking through her. And then she shook her head so hard, one of the greenbriar vines came loose from her intricate braids. “That is truly her, and not an illusion or charm? How is that possible?” Her upper lip rose in a snarl more befitting a rabid beast than the demure Vila she had once been.
Katerina’s heart fluttered: a desperate sensation, as if it were trying to break free and flee back above ground where it—and she—belonged. Her magic faltered, the witchfire around her ankles winking out. She forced a smirk onto her face. “Surprise,” she said.
Elena let out an infuriated squeak. It would almost have been amusing, if it hadn’t been accompanied by a burst of the silver-blue flames that had surged from the portal in the clearing, devouring Niko alive. “I will have vengeance on you for this,” she said, turning on Sammael. “You brought the corrupt witch herself to our threshold!”
That was rich. “If one of us is a corrupt witch,” Katerina retorted, “I don’t think it’s me.”
The Vila didn’t spare her a glance, as if Katerina hadn’t spoken at all. “She’s interrupted tea-time,” she said, her fury transmuting to sulkiness with alarming ease and her lower lip protruding in a pout. “Now I’ll have to get rid of her. And I was having such fun.”
What was Elena capable of? Could the Vila vanquish Katerina, send her hurtling back aboveground, before she’d even laid eyes on her Shadow? Fear gnawed at Katerina’s stomach with vicious, razor-sharp teeth, and she fought to keep her voice level. “If you’re so keen to torture me, then invite me in, Elena. Before the demons who chased me through the square and into the streets do it for you.”
Sammael looked contrite. “Sorry about them,” he said. “In truth, I expected you to emerge here, rather than in the square. The portals right now aren’t…” He made a seesawing motion with his hand, as if to indicate everything the portals were not. “But have no fear. My minions know not to approach Elena’s cottage without permission.”
So that explained the demons’ sudden disappearance. She supposed she should be grateful for small favors. “Where is my Shadow?” she demanded.
Elena’s pink-tinted lips rose in a sneer. “He’s right here, of course,” she said, gesturing to the empty space on her left. “Right beside me, where he belongs. What, can you not see him, Katerina?”
Katerina stared at the spot Elena indicated. There was a shimmer to the air, a vaguely man-sized shape that wavered, flickering in the breeze from the open window. “But—how?—”
“He’s mine now,” Elena said, gloating. “I see his true form. If you cannot, then perhaps you should accept what you should have known all along. He was never meant for you.”
Katerina strained, trying to will the shimmer into being. And then she saw it, fractured by the shards of glass that clung to the edge of the window frame behind him: her Shadow’s transparent shape. For an instant, she caught an unmistakable glimpse of Niko’s face, his eyes wide with shock and misery. His lips moved, trying desperately to say something, but there was no sound. A moment later, he winked out of existence again.
What had Elena done to him?
The Vila was laughing now, a self-satisfied sound that Katerina wanted to smack right out of her throat. “I will kill you,” she told Elena, her voice cold. “I’ll take what remains of your cursed existence, and free my Shadow from your clutches.”
“This is not why I brought you here—” Sammael began, just as Elena’s laughter cut off. She glared at Katerina.
“You can’t hurt me,” the Vila said. “You’ve already done your worst, and I’m invulnerable now. It’s too bad the same can’t be said for you.” A chilling, self-satisfied smile lifted her lips. “I wanted nothing more than to hunt you down and end you like the murderer you are. Yet here you are, coming to me, sparing me the trouble. Make no mistake: I’ll be the one to take your life.”
To the Saints with whatever agreement Katerina had made with Sammael. Seizing the fading remnants of her power, she harnessed the wind. The front door flew open and she lunged at Elena, her witchfire surging up to devour the cottage and the Vila with it. She would vanquish Elena and her demon, save her Shadow, and flee.
Her blade was inches from Elena’s throat when the Vila snapped her fingers. Again in dog form, Sammael growled and leapt through the fire, knocking the blade aside and pinning Katerina to the ground. She fought and thrashed, but couldn’t move him: He was no ordinary dog, and had no ordinary mistress. And even fueled by rage, Katerina was half of what she’d been. Her magic slipped through her fingers, draining away.
The dog bared his teeth, crushing Katerina into the floorboards. Her lungs heaved, straining for breath, as rain called by her power blew through the empty window frame, drenching both of them. Above her, the demon beast growled in warning.
Elena’s voice came toward her, drifting on the rain-soaked breeze. “On second thought, I don’t think I’ll kill you so quickly. You should suffer, the way my Niko did, and pay for your crimes. I’ll chain you here, next to him. Every day, I’ll take another piece of you. You’ll weep while I watch and take pleasure in your pain. For I am Elena-of-the-Void, beloved of Sammael, Queen of Darkness, and you are at my mercy.”
There was a flash of light above Katerina, and then the weight of the black dog was gone. Sammael was himself again, standing and brushing bits of glass from his clothes. “Come now, my Vila,” he said, his tone cajoling. “Is there really a need for this? Here, the Dimi is as helpless as a babe. You are the one with all of the advantages. What could it hurt to hear her out?”
“I want,” Elena said, her tone glacial, “nothing to do with anything she has to say, unless it’s to beg me for clemency. I think I’d like hearing that, quite a lot.”
Katerina sat up, struggling to catch her breath. The storm outside had died down, and no wonder. When she felt for her magic, all that stirred was a weak echo of her usual power. She had been foolish to use so much of it attacking a creature that could heal whatever wounds she made, in a place where such a creature had, as Sammael pointed out, the high ground.
Think, Katerina. Baba Petrova’s voice sounded in her head. You cannot use your magic. You cannot use force. What is left to you?
She got to her feet, surveying the room. Elena stood by the table, fastidiously righting the teacups that Katerina’s assault had knocked over. Next to her, Niko’s transparent form glimmered and guttered, his eyes fixed on the Vila in fury and his lips moving in silent protest. Sammael drummed his fingers on the back of the settee, Katerina’s blade in his free hand. The clock above the mantel ticked.
Think, Katerina.
The duplicate of Kalach. The wedding dress. The china.
“You cannot walk above ground,” Katerina blurted.
Elena’s eyes flashed to hers, a hint of vulnerability in their depths. “What?”
“Bonding with Sammael prevented you from being devoured by the Void,” Katerina said, certainty thrumming through every word. “But it didn’t eradicate my curse completely. You’re not just here”—she waved at the cottage—“because Niko is dead and you sold your soul to a demon. You’re here because you can’t leave. That’s why Sammael recreated Kalach for you…because you can never go home again.”
The Vila flinched. “That is none of your business,” she said.
“Niko is my business.” Katerina took one step closer to her Shadow’s trembling image, then another. “The Darkness that threatens us all is my business. As it should be yours.”
“The Darkness is no longer my problem,” Elena said, but her gaze fixed on Sammael, and Katerina could hear an inkling of doubt in her voice.
“Elena,” Sammael said, sounding tired, “I have told you and told you that it is.”
Elena smoothed her bloodied wedding dress, the gesture both fastidious and petulant. “She wishes to steal my Shadow from me. She must die, as she should have died in the clearing.”
“Is that all you have to say?” Katerina heaved an exasperated sigh. “ She must die. She should suffer. She will weep while I watch. Wake up, Elena! We’re all in danger of extinction, demons and humans alike. You’ll kill me, and then what? Take away the best chance of vanquishing the Darkness? You’ll have a few glorious days of satisfaction, before you get sucked into the Void, just like you would’ve been if Sammael hadn’t rescued you.”
Elena glared at her. “What do you propose, then, Katerina?” She spat the name, as if it tasted rotten in her mouth. “I can hardly wait to hear.”
Katerina drew a sharp, shuddering breath. She had always been a gambler, and never thought much of it. But now she was gambling for Niko’s life.
“Give me my Shadow,” she said. “Let him fight by my side. And when the Darkness has been defeated, let him decide where he belongs.”
Katerina hardly dared to breathe. She watched Niko’s mouth move as he tried again and again to speak, watched Sammael watch Elena, watched the Vila consider her proposal.
Elena inclined her head, and Katerina’s heart leapt.
And then she answered, “No.”