“If you wish to blame someone for his descent into the Underworld, and you choose not to accept Elena Lisova’s role in all of this, then accuse me!” she burst out, unable to contain herself. “It was my curse that vanquished the Vila and the demons, and took him with them. Had Elena not chained his soul to hers, he would have remained aboveground. None of this was his doing. He died protecting me.”
“Enough!” The slovetnik’s voice cut across her words, slicing them like a blessed blade through flesh. “You will answer the questions you were asked, and nothing more.”
Katerina bit her tongue to keep from speaking, so hard she tasted blood. There was no justice to be found here, only scapegoats.
But why would Niko not speak in his own defense? Was he so under Berezin’s thrall that even his voice was not his own?
The slovetnik was speaking again, this time to Niko. “To the charge that your soul is corrupted, that the Darkness lurks within you and rises at your command, how do you plead?”
Lie, Katerina begged him. Say you’re innocent. Tell them you need time, tell them you don’t understand what’s happened to you, tell them you are still a warrior for the Light.
As if he could divine her thoughts, even with their bond compromised, Niko lifted his head at last and his eyes fixed on hers. For a moment, she saw everything in their depths: his love for her, his ache for all they’d lost, the war that raged inside him. His gaze raked over her, taking in her tattered gear, her bound hands, her stained cheek—and then went cold with rage. Something flashed in his eyes, so quickly she could choose to deny it had ever been there at all: a flash of Darkness, there and then gone. A storm within the storm.
Katerina had never feared her Shadow, in all of his many forms: fierce warrior, desperate lover, broken man caught between worlds. Now, though, she feared for him.
She couldn’t imagine a scenario in which the prince regent would ever let him live.
His gaze held Katerina’s for a long beat before he spoke, as if the words were intended for her and her alone. “Guilty,” he said.
Pandemonium broke loose in the arena. Some people fled, bursting through the rear doors to the street beyond in terror. Others scooted to the edge of their seats, slack-jawed, as if they’d finally been delivered the spectacle they’d come to see, and they intended to make the most of it. But Katerina paid no attention. She held her Shadow’s gaze, wishing she could know what in all the realms of Saints and demons he was thinking.
If this were some type of misguided plan to sacrifice himself to save her—if he let himself die again in her name—she would never forgive him. Even if she had to hunt him down in the darkest corners of the demon realms, she would do it, just to slap him across the face and tell him how furious she was at him for not believing in them. For giving up without a fight.
“Order!” The slovetnik’s voice resounded throughout the arena, the doors to the street slamming shut as the windwitches used their powers to stem the fray. “Silence for your prince!”
At long last, the arena quieted, the remaining citizens taking their seats once more. Niko was no longer looking at her, but at Alexei, far up in the gallery, who hadn’t moved an inch. His throat worked once, twice, as he stared at his former second, his face giving nothing away.
“Now,” the slovetnik announced, his tone replete with self-importance, “we will have our prince’s verdict. Should he rule in favor”—he clenched his fist, pointing his thumb toward the sky above the arena—“this pair will be imprisoned once more, to be interrogated and tortured in Rivki’s dungeons for the benefit of the realm. But shall he rule against them”—here, he indicated a downturned thumb—“they shall be hung side-by-side from the gallows in this very arena, as a reminder to all of how fragile our commitment to the Light is, and how easily even the strongest among us can be corrupted.”
His voice rang with the sincerity of a zealot. “Should our prince decree, they shall die tomorrow, as the sun sinks below the horizon, to symbolize their descent into Darkness. Then we shall burn their corpses, and from their ashes shall come the knowledge of our strength: that we have banished an emissary of the Darkness and his accomplice from our ranks.”
All eyes fell upon the prince in his velvet, gold-trimmed finery, his raised hands winking with bejeweled rings. The moment hung like fog over the waters of the Vohdanya, heavy and filled with portent.
The prince’s thumb hovered, parallel to the ground. And then it moved, pointing downward with mute finality.
Ice-cold sweat broke over Katerina’s body as the crowd roared their approval. The arena fell into sharp relief, each moment strung together like beads on a chain, so that it seemed she had all the time in the world to notice what came next.
Inside her mind, her Shadow spoke at last, each syllable strained with effort. Have faith, he said, though he didn’t look her way.
High in the upper gallery, Ana mouthed something again and again, desperate for Katerina to understand.
And, concealed by the folds of her robes, Sofi’s fingers moved, forming a single, unmistakable word.
Tonight.
Chapter Eighteen
NIKO
What in the name of Sant Andrei himself was Alexei doing here?
He’d only had an instant to clock his former second’s presence, high in the gallery, Ana at Alexei’s side. Still, an instant was all Niko had needed. Pack or no pack, distance or no distance, he could detect Alexei’s presence anywhere. Aside from Katerina, his second was the person to whom he was most attuned, who he’d relied on in strategy and battle. The man he considered his closest friend, in human form and out of it.
Alexei hadn’t defended Niko when Baba Petrova had banished him. That had hurt, even as Niko had known why; as the new alpha, Alexei’s job was to hold the pack above all else. Defying Baba would have been the basest type of disloyalty, and would have compelled the entire pack to follow. So, yes, Niko had understood. That didn’t mean it hadn’t wounded him. Alone in his cell, grieving all he’d lost, he’d placed Alexei’s friendship near the top of the list.
But here his former second was, eyes boring into Niko’s as if determined to communicate a message. If their pack bonds still existed, Niko could have discerned it. But now, he was no more able to tell what Alexei was thinking than he could read the mind of the prince regent, whose bejeweled thumb he would have liked to sever from his body.
Let us go, his shades snarled. Set us free, and we shall drain every faithless soul in this arena of their Light. We shall punish those who seek to take the life of your Dimi. We shall have our vengeance, and you will be one with us, here in the everlasting Dark.
