Katerina didn’t give him the chance to finish his sentence. She flung her arms around him, and he yelped in alarm. “What are you?—”
“Thank you,” she said, knotting her hands in the leather of his jacket. “For seeing me. For knowing me. For always putting me first.”
“Always,” he said, his voice soft. But when she lifted her face to his, he stiffened and stepped back, out of her grasp.
She looked up at him in surprise. His jaw was set tight, and dark circles rimmed the hollows beneath his eyes. He turned away, striding along the path toward the river and the remains of the bridge that Katerina had destroyed at the Kohannya ceremony, months ago.
With a sigh, Katerina fell into step behind him. “Are we going to talk about it?” she said to his back.
“What is there to talk about?” The words came low, as if through gritted teeth.
She came level with him and drew a deep breath of the fresh forest air to center herself. Here, there were no bubbling pits of Darkness or ravaged villages. All was as usual: the orange glow of the rising sun, the chirp of the birds as they rose from drowsiness, the rowans and oaks and fir trees swaying in the gentle wind. She could almost believe it had all been a bad dream, except she had never been one to flee from the truth.
Placing a hand on her Shadow’s arm, she forced herself to sound calm, as if the events of the previous night hadn’t rent a fissure through her heart. “Ignoring it won’t make it go away?—”
Niko spun to face her, arms folded across his chest. Emotion clouded his gray eyes: fury, sadness, and frustration warring for dominance. “You want to talk? Fine, we’ll talk,” he said. “You first.”
He expected something from her; she could see it in the way his shoulders braced, as if to bear a heavy weight. But try as she might, she couldn’t figure out what it might be. “I’d rather listen,” she said warily. “If it’s all the same to you.”
Her Shadow glared at her. “It’s bad enough that my soul is bonded to a woman who is corrupted by Darkness,” he bit out. “That my time aboveground is only made possible by a loophole in her curse. It’s worse still that the village I dedicated my life to protecting sees me as the cause of their woes and has banished me from its borders. But this?” He freed one hand to make a furious gesture in Katerina’s direction. “The knowledge that the Darkness within me has taken shape and form—that at the height of my desire for you, the person I care for above all else, it escaped my control and touched you?—”
He shook his head, a shudder coursing through his frame. “I want you more than anything, Katerina, don’t you understand? You’re all that’s keeping me sane. But Saints help me, I’m afraid to put my hands on you.”
His voice broke, and so did Katerina’s heart. “You didn’t hurt me,” she argued as he turned around once more and began stalking down the trail, eyes scanning in search of his snares.
“That was pure luck! I shouldn’t have even slept next to you. With my guard down, who knows what I could have done.” He turned his head to look at her, his face a study in misery. The scar that ran from his temple to his jawline stood out in sharp relief against the pallor of his skin. “If I hurt you, Katya, I would never forgive myself.”
Katerina’s breath caught at the pain in his voice and the sheen in his eyes. “Next time,” she began carefully, “we?—”
He shook his head, his dark hair flying. The light of the rising sun picked out the white streak in it, the one that marked him as hers. “There can’t be a next time.”
“But—”
“Our bond is dangerous enough. Who knows what might seep through it? But this…” He ran his hands through his hair, the way he always did when words failed him. “I won’t risk it. I won’t compromise you this way. I swear it on my blade.”
Damn him and his nobility. “What about what I want?”
“What you want.” He gave a bitter laugh. “I love you, Katerina, but you have no more regard for your own safety than the sun has regard for its own fire. That’s my job, to look after you. Or it was. Now I’m as much of a danger to you as Gadreel and his armies. So if you truly love me, too, you won’t fight me on this. Because I’m not strong enough to resist us both.”
He turned away before she could reply and knelt beside the path, peering into the brush. Katerina assumed he was searching for one of his snares, doubtless as a distraction from this awful conversation. Fine, then; she would use the time to think up a solid argument for why she could take care of herself. Why she hadn’t saved him only to have him wall himself off from her.
“It’ll be the devil of a trip to the Magiya if you plan to avoid me the entire time,” she said to his back. “Why don’t we just try to figure?—”
He held up a single finger, interrupting her. His muscles tense, he tilted his head back, scenting the air. A low growl rumbled in his throat, the one that meant a threat was near.
“Gadreel?” she whispered, gathering her magic. Niko had wounded the Dark Angel of War; she’d been certain he would want to recover himself before attacking again. Perhaps it wasn’t him, though, but his minions. They had incinerated the ones who had attacked Kalach, but perhaps he had sent more. Perhaps the infernal creatures had spied on them all through the night, haunting Niko’s dreams?—
But her Shadow shook his head, pulling a blade loose from his belt. “Not Grigori,” he said. “Magic-users. And familiar ones. I’ve smelled them before, somewhere.”
For a moment, Katerina entertained the notion that Ana and Alexei had come to find them, disobeying Baba’s dictates. That their loyalty was to friendship, rather than to Kalach. But no sooner had the thought crossed her mind than the brush on either side of the road rustled and an army of Shadows and Dimis burst from the trees, wearing crimson uniforms with black trim.
The Druzhina Guard.
It wasn’t the whole guard, which stood a hundred strong; they would never leave Rivki unprotected that way. Still, at least twenty Shadow and Dimi pairs surrounded them. Katerina recognized Dimi Novikova, the windwitch from the receiving line at the Trials. Next to her stood Shadow Berezin, and from his hand dangled a hare’s limp body. “Looking for this?” he said.
It was a rhetorical question, and Katerina treated it as such. Wherever the Druzhina had been during Kalach’s attack, and whatever the reason they were descending now in force, it could not be good. She found her voice, willing it not to tremble. “What do you want from us?”
“What do we want,” Dimi Novikova mused, her tone deceptively calm. “Let’s see. You brought the Darkness upon Iriska by consorting with your Shadow. You are responsible for the destruction of two villages and the near-annihilation of a third. You raised your corrupted Shadow from the Underworld, and brought a nezhit to walk among us. Now, because of the two of you, Kniaz Sergey lies dead.” Her voice grew louder with each sentence, as if amplified by her witchwind. “And you have the audacity to ask what we want of you?”
