“Dimi Ivanova. Shadow Alekhin.” The slovetnik’s cold gaze flicked from one of them to the other, drawing Katerina’s attention back to him. “The time for your sentencing has come. You will answer to the charges set before you, and then the prince regent will decide your fate.”
Panic sparked inside Katerina, but try as she might, she couldn’t coax it into a flame. How had she fallen this low?
Could she run? No, there was nowhere to go. If the Druzhina didn’t catch her first, the crowd would trample her or rend her limb from limb. Weaponless and magicless, she was no match for them.
There was nothing to do but stand here, tomato-splattered and filthy, to face her fate…and then find a way to escape it somehow.
“Katerina Ivanova.” The slovetnik’s voice carried on the wind, heavy with the scent of burning herbs and rotten fruit. “To the charge of fornicating with your Shadow and breaking the covenant, how do you plead?”
Katerina swallowed hard. She had imagined they would ask her these questions, of course, but to hear her relationship with Niko reduced to this—no more than lust and lies—made her chest ache. Bracing her shoulders, she answered, “Guilty.”
The crowd inhaled collectively, as if her answer had shocked them…or as if they hadn’t thought she’d admit the truth so freely. But Katerina was not ashamed of her love for Niko. She was not about to lie.
That said, she also wasn’t about to go down without a fight. “Yes,” she said, raising her voice to be heard, “it’s true I lay with my Shadow. But that is not the cause of the chaos within Iriska. I’ve said this over and over, until I’m blue in the face, but no one will listen.” She lifted her bound hands, as if to demonstrate her defenselessness. “Perhaps you will heed me now, for what do you have to lose?”
As if she hadn’t spoken, the slovetnik barreled on. “To the charge of consorting with demons and descending to the Underworld to retrieve your corrupted Shadow from the realm of the sullied dead, how do you plead?”
Again, Katerina tried to argue her case. “I am not the one who consorted with demons! The blame for that can be laid at the feet of the Vila Elena Lisova. She is the one who gave herself to Sammael, mind, body, and soul. She violated her oath to the Light, and invited the Darkness in. Even now, she is still confined belowground because of the curse I placed on her to drive the Darkness back and save Kalach.”
She turned to face the prince regent, who lounged in his seat, the picture of privileged indolence. Did he not care that Iriska was falling? “Niko and I are not the cause of this,” she said, speaking directly to him. “We are the solution. If you would just listen?—”
But Prince Mikael ignored her. She might as well have been speaking to the tykva that lay, splintered, at her feet.
“How do you plead?” the slovetnik demanded again, his tone implacable.
“I did not consort?—”
“How do you plead?”
The crowd’s eyes bored into her, and still, Niko did not speak a word in her defense or his. Would not, or could not; she had no way to tell.
The truth was a matter of semantics; she had gone down to the Underworld, after summoning a demon to open the way. She had retrieved her Shadow, even though he was not quite himself. And if, together, they had saved Kalach, if they intended to save Iriska, no one in this arena cared to know the nuances that had made it so.
“Guilty,” she said at last, the word reverberating in the air of the arena, carried upward by Dimi Novikova’s witchwind.
A grim silence fell as the slovetnik turned his attention to Niko. “Niko Alekhin, former alpha Shadow of Kalach,” he said. “Walker between worlds.”
Her Shadow gave no outward acknowledgment that he had heard, his eyes still fixed on the sand between his feet. Berezin and his second grabbed Niko’s arms, pulling him upright. He stood steady, the white streak in his dark hair gleaming in the sunlight, the scar that ran from his temple to his jaw bisected by that purple bruise. A peculiar stillness emanated from him, as if though his body stood here, in this arena, the rest of him was somewhere else entirely. He looked, Katerina thought, like a stranger.
“Niko,” she whispered, but though a tremor wracked him from head to toe, he didn’t turn.
In the silence of the arena, now so still that Katerina could swear she heard the ripples in the lake that surrounded Rivki, she lifted her gaze and sought Alexei. Of all the others in this arena, he had known her Shadow best. He knew Niko was good. During the battle in Kalach, Niko had hurled himself between Alexei and a demon to save his former second’s life.
Alexei was staring at Niko, his expression desolate. Katerina tried to imagine what he must be thinking, to see his former alpha reduced to this. Or maybe he was simply a spectator, waiting to see Niko get what he deserved.
But then—why would Ana feel the need to conceal herself? Surely, she and Alexei would flaunt their presence here if that were the case. They would do anything possible to distance themselves from the Dimi and Shadow who had once been their closest friends.
Could they have come…to help?
A hum had spread through the crowd now, as if a contagious energy had passed from one person to the next. Even Prince Mikael had slid to the edge of his seat. His eyes were riveted to Niko, as if he expected inky tendrils to streak from her Shadow’s fingertips and plunge the arena into Darkness.
“Niko Alekhin,” the slovetnik said again. “To the charge of fornicating with your Dimi and violating your sacred covenant, how do you plead?”
Niko’s throat worked. And then he spoke for the first time since entering the arena, his voice rusty and unused. “Guilty,” he said, and locked his jaw again.
“To the charge of consorting with demons in the Underworld, how do you plead?”
Katerina seethed at the unfairness of these questions. Did they not care that Niko had been bound to Elena against his will? That none of this had been his doing?
