Chapter 21 #2
But Niko had no time to savor the man’s submission.
The rest of the Druzhina charged, some bearing the same nets that had captured his Dimi in the clearing, others rending the very earth in hopes that it would swallow Niko and Katerina whole.
Hidden within his shades, the night concealed Niko, but his Dimi enjoyed no such privilege.
Her red hair gleamed in the moonlight, the fire that sizzled at her fingertips making her an undeniable target.
He wanted to draw her to him under the protective shroud of the shades, to keep her safe. But how might such a thing affect her? Perhaps, if they didn’t touch her, she would remain unharmed—but did he really want to take that risk? What if she fought him, and the distraction got her killed?
Morozov lunged, casting his net, and the edge of it brushed Katerina’s skin.
She darted away, unhurt, but the man had come far too close.
Snarling, Niko sent his shades after the cretin, reeling him in.
A single tendril of Darkness plucked one of Morozov’s blessed blades from his weapons belt and curled around the hilt; another gripped the man’s neck, dragging him closer.
Berezin’s second fought valiantly, struggling to free himself.
The net fell from his hands as he gripped his blade, trying to wrestle it from the shade’s grasp, but it was a fool’s errand.
The blade held steady, hovering in midair, and the tendril of Darkness around Morozov’s neck curled tighter, compelling him forward inch by inevitable inch.
Closer still, the shades dragged him, until at last, with the crunch of gristle and slide of flesh, he impaled himself on his own blade.
Wide and dark and shocked, Morozov’s eyes fixed on the swirling mass of shadow that concealed Niko, as if trying to distinguish the man within.
Feet away, Berezin was howling, the sound somewhere between a man’s cry of grief and rage and a black dog’s devastated keen at the fracturing of his pack.
Well, let him. He had brought this on himself.
The shades tightened on the blade’s hilt, yanking it from Morozov’s body. Tendrils of Darkness twined around the metal, feeding on his blood.
Morozov wavered, hands pressed to his belly. “You—” he managed, his eyes still fixed on where he imagined Niko to be. “You are a scourge upon the. . .”
The words devolved into a cough, his face draining of all color. This was a terrible thing, killing another Shadow, much less the Druzhina’s second, but Niko couldn’t bring himself to care. The man had taunted him. Imprisoned him. Would kill Katerina, if he could.
“Who’s the weakened pup now?” he asked Morozov.
There was no answer, other than the gurgle of blood through Morozov’s compromised lungs. A moment later, it bubbled up through his lips, and his knees gave way. The job finished, Niko let the man’s body fall.
From within his maelstrom of shadows, he gazed at the battle that raged in the dungeon’s courtyard.
A wall of flame had sprung up around Katerina, keeping the Druzhina at bay.
Alexei fought back-to-back with Ana, not to kill but to defend his Dimi and himself.
Sofi was nowhere to be seen—had she fled to find Damien?
Niko could hardly blame her; this could not end well.
Morozov’s Dimi was sobbing, her face streaked with tears even as her features contorted in rage.
The earth trembled beneath her as she fell to her knees beside her Shadow, pressing her hands to his stomach in a futile attempt to stanch the flow of blood.
“Where are you, Alekhin?” she roared. “Show yourself, coward!”
The word stung. Niko had never turned from a fight, nor was he now.
He was trying to keep his oath to Iriska and to his Dimi, to drive the Darkness back into the Void even at the cost of his own pitiful existence.
If only the Druzhina had never waylaid him and Katerina by the river, none of this would have happened.
They are fools, his shades hissed. Ignorant and shortsighted. Let us free, let us feed, let us drain them all so they may cringe in the face of your power…
He could do it. He knew he could. It would be so easy to loosen the chains on his shades, to put an end to this battle by letting them descend on the courtyard and suck the marrow from his captors’ very bones.
They would see him dead tomorrow, if they had their way; turnabout was fair play, after all.
He gathered himself, teetering on the brink as the shades seethed around him. All he had to do was let go—
And then another voice spoke inside his head, low and firm, steadying. Katerina’s voice.
Hold, she said, as if this were the same type of fight they’d faced a thousand times. And as he’d done every other time, Niko obeyed.
We have to get out of here, she said, the words coming clear and sharp through their bond. Ana and Sofi have a plan.
Niko’s gaze flicked to her, standing tall and straight within her ring of fire—and then to Alexei, whose fingers moved, forming a sign the two of them had used a thousand times. Scatter, it meant.
A moment later, Alexei and Ana broke from their position and darted down one of the alleyways that led from the courtyard.
Katerina did the same, fleeing in the opposite direction, dividing the Druzhina’s forces.
His shades still wrapped around him, Niko followed, keeping himself between Katerina and her pursuers.
Berezin and the others bellowed in frustration, the firewitches lighting up the night in an attempt to penetrate the inky blackness that trailed in Niko’s wake.
But unlike the tendrils of Darkness that had recoiled from Katerina’s Light, his shades were unafraid.
They curled around the flames, extinguishing them as surely as fingers pinching a lit wick.
Niko didn’t have time to ponder what this might mean.
He swept after Katerina, craving the sensation of his black dog’s four paws hitting the earth, nose to the ground, defending his Dimi in his purest form.
But he didn’t trust himself to Change, not now, with the shades driven by bloodlust. If he lost all control over them, that would be disastrous.
Besides, he had his hands full keeping up with Katerina. She ducked through one alley after another, skirting the edge of Rivki’s city center, then dodging down a narrow passage that bordered the arena. Where are we going? he sent down their bond.
The stables. Damien has horses. Sofi went to warn him.
The stables? Perhaps that was where Ana and Alexei were heading as well, then; a single Shadow-and-Dimi pairing could hardly lead six beasts.
And there would be six; after so blatantly taking their side, their allies couldn’t hope to stay in Rivki.
Either way, all six of them were in this together now.
The others had yoked their fates to Niko and Katerina’s, for good or ill.
Katerina ran onward, toward part of the city that Niko had rarely had occasion to visit.
These were Rivki’s edges, where no one lingered—not that any of the city’s denizens would dare to venture out right now.
The bells had stopped clanging, but a palpable sense of dread had settled.
Every storefront was shuttered, every window shade drawn tight.
Soon, they had bypassed even the seediest corners, where rail-thin men and women lingered, begging for a dose of thorn apple or wild rue.
The stables were a straight shot through the city’s center, but had they stayed in the open, the Druzhina would have been on them in a moment.
He understood why Katerina hadn’t chosen that route, but why in the names of all the Saints and demons would she go this way?
She didn’t look back to see if he followed, and a good thing, too.
All she would have seen was darkness, in this part of the city where there were no lamps to light the way.
It reminded him in a sudden, horrible way of their flight from the Underworld, except now he had a corporeal form.
At least she could hear his footsteps; that must be some consolation to her.
At last, Katerina skidded to a halt in front of a hulking, thorny mass, breathing hard. Behind her, Niko stopped, too, tilting his head in bewilderment. An unexpected scent filled the air: lemon and spice, undercut with a wild sweetness. Roses.
Bewildered, he narrowed his eyes, focusing on the looming obstacle. He made out the gloss of deep green leaves, the whorl of crimson petals. A hedge of some kind, then. Why had she brought them here?
This was the very edge of Rivki, a place most had no reason to travel. And yet he sensed magic here, the presence of older, crisscrossed scent trails. Many people had once come this way; a few still did.
Polunochnaya Roza, Katerina said inside his head. Midnight Rose.
Surprise thrummed through Niko. Said to be built by the Saints themselves, Polunochnaya Roza was a long-abandoned labyrinth, once a place of meditation for Dimis seeking solace from fear and doubt.
They walked it only at midnight, representing the transition between night and day, Darkness and Light.
The maze was a living thing, crafted from rosebushes, their blooms and barbs said to be the mirror of life itself: beauty alongside strife.
Rumor had it that the price of entry was a single drop of blood—and that the Saints’ magic kept the passages open, no matter how rarely the maze was tended.
The reward for finding your way through its corridors was freedom.
On the other side lay the stables and Lake Krasa, feeding the moat that surrounded Rivki, over which the bridge to the mainland of Iriska arched.
Or so he’d always heard, when older Shadows mentioned the maze in passing, as part of days gone by.
He had never seen it himself, had never ventured to this part of the city.
All those times they’d delivered the tithe, had his Dimi come here while he slept, to seek peace in this forgotten tangle of briars?
What had she struggled with so deeply that she’d retreated here to wrestle with it, to a place governed only by the whims of nature and the Saints?
He hadn’t intended for Katerina to hear his thoughts, but she must have. Inside his mind, she spoke, a single, quiet syllable: You.
Silence fell, broken only by the heave of her breath and the pounding of Niko’s heart. The Druzhina surely still pursued them, but Niko couldn’t hear or smell their presence. He and Katerina were alone, for the first time since that awful morning by the river.
She stepped between a gap in the looming hedges, pausing to prick her finger.
The coppery aroma of blood drifted back to Niko as he followed, not daring to feed the maze himself.
Who knew what the sacrifice of his blood would bring?
For all he knew, the whole thing would close in upon them, trapping them inside, a gift of two corpses for the Druzhina.
He was drenched in the blood of his enemies, blood that had been consecrated to the Light. Perhaps that would be enough.
An arch formed the entrance to the maze. The two of them stood beneath it, on a brick pathway that led into the tunnel of leaves and thorns, as Katerina caught her breath.
We can’t tarry here, he urged her. We have to run.
His Dimi nodded, pushing her tangled, sweat-sodden hair back from her face. His gaze snagged on the raw skin of her wrist, and rage boiled inside him. The blood that soaked his clothes had been earned. He didn’t regret a drop.
“I know,” she said aloud, her voice hoarse. “But first, let me see you, in case it should be the last time. Please.”
He could deny her nothing. Even caught in a whirlwind of Darkness, he was still hers. For good or ill, he belonged to her.
As you wish, he told her, and let the shroud of his shades fall.
They stood across the walkway from each other, no more than a foot between them, but it might as well have been a thousand miles. His shades swirled around his ankles, as uneasy as the Shadow who wielded them. Anxiety seized his chest. What did he look like to her now? What did she see?
The blood. The shades. The ruthlessness that gnawed at his soul, even now.
“Your eyes,” she whispered.
His eyes? He raised a hand to his face, rubbing them. They stung with ash and sweat and the prickle of what might be tears. What was wrong with them?
“I—” he began, but Katerina didn’t give him a chance to finish. She flung herself across the space between them, wrapping her arms around him, heedless of the blood that drenched his gear and the tendrils of Darkness that rioted at his feet.
Slowly, carefully, Niko brought his arms up to hold her. She smelled of wormwood and mugwort, of garlic and the tomato that had stained her face in the arena. And beneath that, she smelled like her: salt and musk and always, always of the Light.
He should push her away, he knew he should, but he would allow himself this, one last time.
He would tuck it away and savor it forever, the way he’d done the first time they’d made love, when he’d assumed it would also be the last. And so he let himself drop his head to her shoulder, let his lips brush the pulse that throbbed at the base of her throat, let himself breathe in her intoxicating scent.
He smelled something else, too. A threat.
“Katya,” he began, his voice breaking. “We have to—”
And then she ripped herself from his arms.