He glanced from one man to another, but none of them responded. They were staring at the corner where Elena floated, the whites of their eyes visible all around the pupils, goosebumps visible on their skin.
“In the name of the gods, what is that?” one of the men whispered, pointing at her.
The black-bearded man sat with his back to her. He twisted his head to see, caught a glimpse of Elena, and froze. The cards in his hand cascaded to the table. “Sant Antoniya, preserve us,” he whispered.
Elena’s lip curled. A Vila stood before him; he should be calling upon Sant Viktoriya, her patron saint, not Sant Antoniya, patron saint of Dimis. But of course, in his hour of need, he didn’t pray to those who had given life to Shadows and Dimis since Iriska’s birth, those without whom no Shadows and Dimis would exist. He underestimated her and her sisters, and it was fortunate he wouldn’t get a chance to make the same mistake again.
She stalked toward him, and the man recoiled, leaping from his chair with such force it clattered to the ground. He ran for the door, but Elena got there first. She smiled at him, lifting a hand to touch his face, with every intention of twisting off his head.
But her hand passed right through him. Again and again she tried to grab him, but to no avail, and with a cry of terror, the man fled.
This would not do. How had she somehow risen from the Underworld, only to be completely helpless? She pursued him, relishing the terror that baked off him as he ran. He tripped; she fell atop him. And then, somehow, she was sinking into him, her body taking on the form of his own. His meaty hands encased her delicate ones; her breath stank of honeyed medovukha and rot. But it was worth it, because his memories and fears were hers for the taking, offered up at the surface of his very being. The Darkness lapped at them, savoring them like fine wine, and Elena threw her head back and fed, and fed, and fed.
The man shrieked, a high, agonized wail. He clawed at his face, as if to rip the memories out of himself, begging her to stop, to go, to leave him alone. She left him cradling his eyeballs in his hands like a pair of gambling dice, sobbing for his mother, and went to finish off the rest.
The men had scattered like hunted quail, and it was Elena’s pleasure to retrieve them. One by one she sank into their bodies and evoked their greatest fears; one by one, they became the instruments of their own demise. One pulled a knife and sawed off his hand at the wrist; another gnawed the skin from his own bones. It was pleasurable, and deeply satisfying, and yet still she had not seen her Shadow, for whom all of this was a gift.
When the gamblers had at last been dealt with, and Elena had cleansed the corridors of their ceaseless squealing—could they not even die with dignity, the swine?—she went at last to find her Shadow. The creatures in the cells pounded on the bars, their terror perfuming the air, but she couldn’t stop to sample it. Niko awaited her, and soon they would be together again.
Anticipation mounted inside her as she drifted down the cellblock where he was surely housed, following the instinct that led her toward him. The Darkness was stronger here, and it bolstered her, strengthening her resolve.
She was just yards away from her destination when a guard barreled through a doorway and cut in front of her, rubbing his arms as if he’d brushed a snowbank, his boots pounding on the stone floor. “What have you done, nezhit?” he bellowed, coming to a halt in front of one of the furthest cells. “I know it was you. Such unnatural, vicious slaughter I’ve never seen?—”
Her slaughter, he meant. Pride filled Elena, swallowed by surprise as tendrils of Darkness slipped between the bars of the cell, snatching a knife from the man’s holster. His words drained away into a choking gurgle as the tendrils gripped the hilt and drove the blade into his stomach. The guard’s knees buckled and he hit the stones, blood trickling from his mouth.
Surely, her Shadow must be responsible for this. Perhaps her proximity lent him strength; perhaps he sensed her presence. They were a warrior pair now, just as he and Katerina had been.
The door to the cell swung open, and her Shadow stepped out, peering in her direction. Elena pressed her insubstantial hand to her chest, where her heart pounded. Or did it? Nothing beat beneath her palm. Her flesh was cold, hollow, silent.
“I’m here, Niko,” she tried to call out, but her voice was no more than a wisp of breath.
He stood for an instant, as still as if his form had been etched into the air that filled the dim corridor. And then, tendrils of Darkness rushed toward her, past her, sweeping her up in their wake. They grabbed her, shook her, threw her. And she was falling back through whatever crack in the worlds had brought her here, back into her rightful place in the Underworld, into a room that smelled not of rot but of cloves, into the realm where she was chained.
She landed with a thump in the body she’d abandoned on the window seat, her skin sliding back over her soul with an uncomfortable stretching sensation, as if it didn’t wish to accommodate her. Her dress was soaked with tea, and her briar-thorn crown had tumbled from her head. Sun streamed through the glass pane, casting prisms on the mosaic mural where Lilith loomed, slicing off the heads of her enemies with a diamond-studded sword.
Grief stabbed at Elena: Niko had been almost in her grasp, just to be ripped away once more. But as she smoothed the skirt of her ruined gown and stood, tracing the path that sunlight had carved over the point of Lilith’s weapon, she knew two things.
First, her Shadow would escape and come back to her; the Darkness wished it so. She had seen as much, for why else would it humble itself to obey him?
And second, though she might not yet be able to walk aboveground in her true body, the Darkness had given her the gift of possession. That, she knew now, had been the purpose of her excursion; to show her that she could slip beneath another’s skin and make them do her bidding. She could wear them like a hand puppet, and discard them just as easily.
One day, soon, she should rise. But until then, she would prize this knowledge, examining it from every facet as she would a jewel. She would learn to use it to her advantage, and when she did, Katerina Ivanova—who had won six months with her Shadow only to endanger his life yet again—would pay.
Chapter Twenty
KATERINA
“You’ve really done it this time.”
The voice was annoyed, resigned—and one of the best gifts Katerina had ever received. She leapt to her feet, her body aching at the abrupt transition from the cold stones. Blood rushed to her head, and she had to brace her bound wrists against the wall to keep her balance. She hadn’t eaten the disgusting excuse for a last meal the guard had shoved at her, too consumed by nausea and terror to devour so much as a bite. And while she’d drunk the cup of water they’d deigned to grace her with—Saints forbid she die dehydrated—it, too, had repulsed her, warm and redolent of a lingering, coppery taste that had reminded her of blood.
When she blinked the dizziness away, on the other side of her cell’s door stood Ana, her dark hair gleaming blue-black as a raven’s wing in the torchlight. Despite her aggravated tone, the expression on her face wasn’t condemnation. It was worry, laced with fear.
Katerina’s eyes burned at the sight of her friend, and she fought back tears. “Ana,” she breathed, making her way to the bars. “You came.”
“Of course I did,” Ana said, the dark circles below her eyes belying her flippant tone. “You go off and get yourself exiled and nearly hung, and you think I’m going to miss out on all the excitement?”
“I don’t understand,” Katerina admitted, even as a wave of relief and gratitude rose inside her. “How did you know where Niko and I were taken? How are you here?”
