So she did the only thing she could. She squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and stared her assailants down, the same way she’d done when the villagers had stoned her in Kalach. Around her, shocked whispers rose: “She dares to look us in the eye! “She shows no remorse! Hang her!” And then, as the crowd picked up the rhythm: “Hang her! Hang her! Hang her!”
Next to Katerina, Dimi Orlova cleared her throat. “Zinaida,” she said, a note of alarm in her voice, “this is getting out of hand. Much as I hesitate to agree with the prisoner, perhaps we should?—”
The rest of her sentence was lost in the roar of the crowd, as two enterprising urchins hurled a pair of bright orange tykva through the air. The gourds split open at Katerina’s feet, revealing their stringy, fibrous guts. A spray of tangerine-colored goo and seeds arced from the point of impact, splattering Katerina, Dimi Orlova, and Dimi Novikova in equal measure.
The crowd roared their approbation, and Zinaida Novikova’s face hardened even further. She attempted to pluck the seeds from her crimson gear, but they clung, emboldened by the goop that encased them.
“King-killer!” came the cry again, this time accompanied by a green projectile that whistled through the air. Katerina dodged, but Dimi Novikova, still occupied with deseeding her uniform, wasn’t so lucky. The melon struck her forearm with enough force to bruise the bone, and the leader of the Druzhina lifted her head, murder in her eyes.
“Cease,” she roared, amplifying her voice with her witchwind.
For a moment, the crowd fell silent. But then they started up again, this time with low, uneasy murmurs that rippled through the stadium like wind through the trees: a breeze that preceded a gale. As one, their gazes turned toward the door through which Katerina had emerged.
Katerina looked, too. And then her breath caught in her throat.
There, flanked by Shadow Berezin and his second, stood Niko.
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.
Chapter Seventeen
KATERINA
Her Shadow’s gear was torn, his head hung low, and the bruise that discolored his jaw was visible even at this distance. His hands were cuffed and shackled together, just as hers were. But he was here. He was alive, and breathing the same air.
“Niko.” The word was a whisper, but with his keen senses, her Shadow heard her. His body stiffened in response to her voice, but he didn’t look her way.
The murmur within the crowd took shape, undulating throughout the arena. “Nezhit,” they hissed. And then, louder: “King-killer.”
The Niko Katerina knew would have bared his teeth at them, showing them how little he cared for their insults. But this one looked down at the stones that formed the arena’s entryway, taking one slow step after another as Shadow Berezin prodded him forward onto the sand, his own blade at Niko’s neck and his second’s blade at her Shadow’s back.
What was wrong with him?
The trio reached the center of the arena, a stone’s throw from Katerina, then paused. A word from Berezin, too quiet for her to hear, and Niko stilled, dropping to his knees.
The movement was complacent, no fight in it. There was an ease to it that Katerina had seen before, between a Shadow and his?—
Oh, Saints, no.
