The other two Shadows flanked their alpha, one of them pulling Morozov back, the other restraining Niko, even though he’d given no overt sign of resistance. Amidst the chaos, the shades wrapped around his ankles, unnoticed, absorbing back into his body as if they’d never been gone at all. Niko smiled at Morozov, who growled at him, the black dog barely chained.
“Nezhit.”
He turned in response to Berezin’s voice, just in time for the man’s fist to connect with his jaw. Pain reverberated from the point of impact, and he had to brace himself against the wall to keep his feet.
Kill him, the shades ordered, cold as the depths of the Vohdanya Sea that bordered Iriska. Strangle him with your chains, as you imagined. It will be the work of a moment.
Niko could envision it so clearly: wrapping the chain that bound his cuffs around Berezin’s throat until the man choked and sputtered, his face growing blue as Niko’s grip tightened. Sending the tendrils of Darkness to suck the life from the other three Shadows, helpless to defend their alpha. The satisfaction of watching Morozov die at his hands; the incredulous, defeated look on Berezin’s face when the alpha realized he’d never commanded Niko at all, right before the light vanished from his eyes and Veles came for him.
But, no. As satisfying as that would be in the moment, he was playing a long game here, holding his secrets close, like cards in a game of Durak, until the right time came to reveal them.
And so he let the four Shadows drag him from his cell, Berezin’s blade at his neck and Morozov’s, fittingly, at his back, the point digging in just enough to make him wince. He lifted his head and held it high, taking in everything he’d seen through his shades’ gaze: the winding corridors, the bedraggled prisoners, the rough-hewn walls damp with grime. And when at last he mounted the stairs and stepped outside, the sun’s warmth bathing him and the sweet, fresh air filling his lungs, he told himself that the tears that stung his eyes were only a result of the blinding light after so many days in the dark.
He was Niko Alekhin, alpha Shadow of Kalach.
He would do what must be done.
Chapter Fifteen
KATERINA
Ten bowls of repulsive soup after Sofi’s visit, they came for her.
That morning, a guard had rubbed her body all over with the same herbs that burned in the prison’s corridor, until the scent seared her nostrils and she felt like a chicken bound for the pot…if said chicken possessed magical gifts in need of stifling. Every time she moved, the reek of it wafted into the air around her, and by her side, Zinaida Novikova gave a small, disgusted cough. Well, the woman had no one to blame but herself. If she’d allowed Katerina to bathe and given her some fresh clothes, she could’ve attended this tribunal smelling like a rose, rather than the concoction of a misguided chef intent on poisoning the masses.
Dimi Novikova and her second, Dimi Orlova, had marched her from her cell without a word, taking her through a tunnel that led from the prison to the chamber that lay below Rivki’s arena. It was to be a public shaming, then.
The last time she had entered this arena, it had been as a contestant in the Bone Trials, pitted against a Shadow and Dimi pairing from each of the other six villages in Iriska. Never in a million years had she imagined that in just a few short months, she would be standing beneath the arena again, about to enter it not as a warrior, but as a condemned prisoner.
Once again, she was fighting for her life in this arena. It had a certain ragged symmetry.
Aboveground, a bell tolled, the sound round and full and final. “Let’s go,” Dimi Novikova said, her witchwind shoving Katerina over the threshold, just as Trina Samovar’s magic had done all those months ago.
With her hands bound, it was all Katerina could do to keep her balance. She managed it somehow, though it was a near thing: the toe of her boot caught the edge of a jagged stone and nearly sent her sprawling. Cheers rose from around her in a mocking wave, and she lifted her eyes to discover every seat occupied, other than the box reserved for the prince regent—the one that had once belonged to the Kniaz. Men, women, and children alike had come to witness her humiliation, their gazes hard and their features rigid with disgust. Many of them clutched rotten fruit and vegetables, arms raised and ready to let fly as Katerina stepped from the stones of the entryway onto the sand of the arena’s floor.
They had prepared for her arrival. A Shadow and Dimi pairing stood at each of the exits, armed and ready. Someone had taken the trouble to sprinkle the arena’s borders with a thick line of salt, lined with iron shavings. Torches stabbed the sand every few feet, their flames redolent of the same herbs that had burned outside Katerina’s cell.
“Stand there,” Dimi Novikova said, pointing to the center of the pit. And then, when Katerina didn’t move, “Are you expecting an engraved invitation?”
“There’s no need to be nasty,” Katerina muttered, allowing Dimi Orlova to prod her onward as she scanned the arena for her Shadow. But he was nowhere to be seen. Did they intend to try the two of them separately?
“Shadow-lover,” came a murmur from somewhere above her. The crowd picked up the chant: “Shadow-lover! Shadow-lover! Shadow-lover!” Even the children took up the cry, their high-pitched voices joining the adults’ full-throated shouts in a symphony of contempt, fury, and satisfaction. The Kniaz was dead, Iriska was falling, and finally, finally they had someone to blame.
“King-killer!” a gnarled woman called from one of the lower tiers, her cracked voice breaking through the melee. Her rheumy eyes met Katerina’s as she drew back her thin arm and let a wizened apple fly. It bounced harmlessly off the ground below, but a moment later, the crowd joined her, their ammunition plummeting toward the arena floor in a hail of half-rotted tomatoes, apples, and plums. Gods, the spoilage alone could’ve fed Kalach for a week.
If these people would shut up for two seconds, Katerina would’ve informed them that the Kniaz had been a duke, not a king. But she supposed ‘duke-killer’ didn’t have the same alliterative ring to it. And besides, she was too busy trying to avoid sustaining a concussion.
“You could stop this,” she muttered to Dimi Novikova. One blast of the woman’s witchwind, and the cannonade of food would be borne up and away, over the highest bleachers of the arena and into the streets beyond, where some lucky creatures could feast on their unexpected bounty. But instead, the woman stood as still as one of the columns that supported the arena, her face a mask.
“I could,” was all she said.
Irritation crested within Katerina, and yet again, she reached for her magic. It was there—she could feel it, like the lava that coursed beneath the rocks in Povorino, hot and eager to be used. But when she tried to grasp it, that damned barrier rose up to block her. In her mind’s eye, she threw herself against the wall again and again, to no avail. And when she tried to tap into her bond with Niko, only hollowness met her, as if her voice echoed down a long, empty tunnel.
What had they done to him?
She opened her mouth to demand answers, just as one of her assailants got lucky. The tomato they’d hurled found its mark, splattering against her cheek. Its pulpy fruit dripped onto her bound hands, viscous and red as clotting blood.
The crowd’s howling intensified, a fresh fusillade of rotting ammunition peppering the floor of the arena. Katerina wished she could incinerate all of them, but even if she could access her dampened magic, with her bond to Niko stifled this way, there was no telling how her gifts would behave. They were likely as unpredictable as they had been when Niko was a prisoner of the Underworld. For all she knew, they would rebound on her and burn her alive.
