Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
KATERINA
“You’ve really done it this time.”
The voice was annoyed, resigned—and one of the best gifts Katerina had ever received.
She leapt to her feet, her body aching at the abrupt transition from the cold stones.
Blood rushed to her head, and she had to brace her bound wrists against the wall to keep her balance.
She hadn’t eaten the disgusting excuse for a last meal the guard had shoved at her, too consumed by nausea and terror to devour so much as a bite.
And while she’d drunk the cup of water they’d deigned to grace her with—Saints forbid she die dehydrated—it, too, had repulsed her, warm and redolent of a lingering, coppery taste that had reminded her of blood.
When she blinked the dizziness away, on the other side of her cell’s door stood Ana, her dark hair gleaming blue-black as a raven’s wing in the torchlight. Despite her aggravated tone, the expression on her face wasn’t condemnation. It was worry, laced with fear.
Katerina’s eyes burned at the sight of her friend, and she fought back tears. “Ana,” she breathed, making her way to the bars. “You came.”
“Of course I did,” Ana said, the dark circles below her eyes belying her flippant tone. “You go off and get yourself exiled and nearly hung, and you think I’m going to miss out on all the excitement?”
“I don’t understand,” Katerina admitted, even as a wave of relief and gratitude rose inside her. “How did you know where Niko and I were taken? How are you here?”
“Alexei and I were tasked with bringing the Kniaz’s body back to Rivki.
We came, and then we stayed. But this is not the time for stories.
” Ana’s eyes darted to the right, in the direction of the guards’ station.
“I’ll tell you everything later, if we live.
But first, let us leave this despicable place.
It smells like the unfortunate offspring of mold and putrid onions, and I fear you will, as well. ”
Katerina snorted. Only Ana could make her smile under these circumstances. She’d opened her mouth to ask how, exactly, her friend planned to mastermind their escape, when a small figure materialized from the shadows behind Ana, delicate shoulders squared in determination.
“Hello again,” Sofi signed. “Sorry it took us so long.”
They’d both risked themselves to help her? Gods, Katerina was truly lucky to have friends like these. She vowed to make it up to them, if they all survived.
“I’m just glad you’re here at all,” she said to both of them. “But what—”
The words died on her lips as Sofi withdrew a keyring from her pocket and, with her usual deft movements, rifled through the selections until she found what she was searching for. She slid the key into the lock of Katerina’s cell, which yielded, the door swinging open with a beleaguered groan.
Katerina strode through, wishing she could hug them both. “How did you do this?”
“Ana beguiled the guard,” Sofi signed, slipping the keys back into her pocket. “And then I knocked him out. It was quite fun, really. He was an oaf and a fool.”
Katerina turned her narrowed gaze on Ana. “You slept with that greasy buffoon?”
“Oh, you don’t want to know what I’ve done to get you out of here.
Let’s go. But first…” She looked Katerina up and down, lips pursed.
“Mold and onions,” she muttered, but pulled Katerina into her arms anyway, hugging her tight.
“Don’t ever do that to me again, you hear?
First the Underworld, now this. Are you trying to turn my gorgeous hair white? ”
A choked laugh escaped Katerina despite herself. She pulled back, raising her shackled wrists. “Please tell me the key to these is on that ring.”
“I don’t think so,” Sofi signed. “We’ll find another way. But now, we have to get out of here, before that idiotic guard wakes up and finds you missing. He’ll raise the alarm, and then we’re done for before we’ve even begun.”
Swallowing her disappointment, Katerina nodded. Saints, she hated these cuffs, which had worn her wrists raw. But it wouldn’t matter much to get her hands free, only to wind up at the gallows anyway. “What’s the plan?”
“We’ll tell you as we go. Come on.” Ana jerked her head in the direction of the guard’s station. “Damien’s waiting for us with the horses, and Alexei’s got his own job to do. But first—”
“Niko,” Katerina interrupted as they crept down the hall, past the bowls of burning herbs that floated in the fountains. “We are going to get him out, right?”
Ana sighed. “Yes, we are. Sofi and I know you well enough to know that you wouldn’t come with us, otherwise. But we’re going to have to be fast. Who knows when that moron will wake, and a half-dozen more like him.”
“A half-dozen…?” Katerina’s voice trailed off as they passed the first of the guards, lying sprawled on the stones, shirtless and blood trickling from his head.
Then, a second, his pants around his knees, face-down in a puddle of pink-tinged drool, and a third, naked but for the weapon clutched in his hand, stinking of kvass from the bottle that had broken when he fell.
“Ana,” she said, her lips quirking despite herself, “did you seduce all of these idiots?”
“Seduce is a strong word. Watch it!” She grabbed for Katerina’s torn shirt and pulled her against the wall, head cocked as footsteps sounded somewhere off to the left.
Katerina’s heart pounded—what would they do if they were attacked down here, with their magic bound?
—but to her immense relief, the footsteps faded, tracking down a different corridor.
“Come on,” Sofi signed, and they followed her, past two more guards in various states of undress, and finally past the one who’d spat at Katerina and called her Shadow-lover.
He looked particularly pathetic, his member hanging out of his pants and his body slumped atop a hand of cards, a leer on his lips and a livid bruise already forming on his temple.
“Good for you,” she signed to Sofi, who smirked.
Katerina didn’t have much time to gloat, though, because Sofi was tugging her onward, down a narrow corridor off to the left. “This way,” she signed.
With every step away from the wing where she’d been imprisoned, Katerina felt lighter, somehow, less…
stifled. And then, like an invisible barrier had strained and burst, her magic flooded back into her, breaching the wall that had held it at bay.
She gasped, and beside her, Ana and Sofi did the same.
“Thank the Saints,” Ana muttered, flames flaring at her fingertips before she clenched her hand into a fist, extinguishing them. “I don’t know how you stood it, Katerina. Those bastards.”
But Katerina was seeking Niko, sending her newfound energy down the bond they shared.
Maybe now, she would sense him; she could talk to him, the way he’d somehow spoken those two words to her in the arena.
Have faith. But where he should be, there was nothing.
Just a barrier, and beyond it, that hollow, echoing emptiness.
He lived; that was all she could tell. But the emptiness had a different sense to it now, a foreboding tinge that sent a curl of dread through her. What did it mean?
She tried to tell herself not to worry. She would see him soon enough, and, somehow, they would make it out of here.
“How do you know where he is?” she signed to Sofi.
“Damien overheard Berezin talking about it. He got his hands on a map of the dungeons; I memorized it.” Her friend’s hands flew faster now. “But I don’t know what shape he’ll be in, Katerina. No matter how we find him, we can’t dally. Our plan depends on stealth and speed.”
Katerina wanted desperately to know what they had in mind.
How did Sofi, Ana, and their Shadows intend to get past the full might of the Druzhina, the night before an execution?
But Sofi and Ana were right; this was no time for explanations.
Like so many of her questions, this one would have to wait.
Anticipation built inside her as they crept down the deserted, dusty corridor. “Lux,” Katerina whispered, and the familiar small flame rose in the air in front of them. Ana followed suit and, guided by the flickering lights, the three of them moved onward in silence.
The corridor forked: left, right, then left again. On the other side of the wall, the murmur of voices rose, and her heartbeat quickened—but the voices faded into silence as they took yet another fork, arriving at last at a small, arched wooden door.
“This is it,” Sofi signed, removing the keyring and trying one key, then another, until one finally turned in the lock. She spun the knob, pushing her shoulder against the wood, but the door didn’t budge.
“Let me,” Katerina signed, gripping the knob and shoving.
The door resisted, as if something on the other side was blocking it. Gods, what if it had been bricked over?
Panic seized Katerina, and she called on her witchwind, urging the wood to give. Sofi joined her, and bit by bit, the door eased open. Summoning her courage, Katerina stuck her head through, half-expecting to be decapitated.
But there was no one there. No one living, anyway.
Blocking the door was a body, as shriveled as the ones that the tendrils of Darkness had devoured in Kalach.
Nausea roiled inside Katerina again, and she swallowed bile. “Come on,” she said, willing her voice to steady as she stepped over the desiccated corpse.
Sofi and Ana followed her in silence. They stood in a corridor much like the one where she’d been imprisoned, except here, there were no burning herbs. The air smelled of rot and decay, and the only light came from the wall-mounted torches.
Fighting back her horror, Katerina made her way down the hallway, past locked cell after locked cell. Only one stood open, and outside it lay a guard with a blade buried deep in his belly. Another lay next to him, onyx chains wrapped around his bruised neck. Neither was breathing.