Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
NIKO
He couldn’t look at her.
If he did, he would either run to her or kill for her, and both were terrible options.
But he could feel her there, the magnet he’d been drawn to every second of every day he’d spent in Rivki’s dungeon.
The oddest sensation came over him, as if a weight that had been tied to his ankles, dragging him down, had vanished.
Without it, the Light he’d been clinging to by his fingernails seemed suddenly within reach.
The shades still clawed at him, demanding release, but their addictive call was muffled, no longer an unending shriek within his head.
She had silenced them. There was no other explanation for it.
She was the Light that counterbalanced his Darkness.
Berezin’s blade pressed into his throat, threatening exsanguination.
The man needn’t have worried. Niko had a part to play, that of a submissive, cowed Shadow.
Everything depended on his ability to succeed where Katerina had failed the last time they strode into this arena.
He needed to keep Berezin’s lack of dominance over him a secret, and to suppress his shades, no matter what the bastards here did or said.
They needed to think him weak, a ruined and broken thing.
And so, even if it took every last bit of his self-control, he would make them believe it.
But as he stared at the ground, his shoulders slumped and his head bowed, he could feel the weight of Katerina’s eyes on him.
With their bond stifled this way, she would believe it, too: that he was Berezin’s creature, a subservient beast. And Saints, bond or no bond, he could feel her pain as if it were his own.
He had hurt her enough for two lifetimes, but this couldn’t be helped. And after this, if they survived, he would never hurt her again. He would carve his own heart out first, and gladly, if it meant keeping her safe.
Drawing a deep, shuddering breath, he took the first step into the unrelenting eye of the arena, commanding the shades that stirred within him to bide.
This was the beginning. Later, their time would come.