The stables? Perhaps that was where Ana and Alexei were heading as well, then; a single Shadow-and-Dimi pairing could hardly lead six beasts. And there would be six; after so blatantly taking their side, their allies couldn’t hope to stay in Rivki. Either way, all six of them were in this together now. The others had yoked their fates to Niko and Katerina’s, for good or ill.
Katerina ran onward, toward part of the city that Niko had rarely had occasion to visit. These were Rivki’s edges, where no one lingered—not that any of the city’s denizens would dare to venture out right now. The bells had stopped clanging, but a palpable sense of dread had settled. Every storefront was shuttered, every window shade drawn tight.
Soon, they had bypassed even the seediest corners, where rail-thin men and women lingered, begging for a dose of thorn apple or wild rue. The stables were a straight shot through the city’s center, but had they stayed in the open, the Druzhina would have been on them in a moment. He understood why Katerina hadn’t chosen that route, but why in the names of all the Saints and demons would she go this way?
She didn’t look back to see if he followed, and a good thing, too. All she would have seen was darkness, in this part of the city where there were no lamps to light the way. It reminded him in a sudden, horrible way of their flight from the Underworld, except now he had a corporeal form. At least she could hear his footsteps; that must be some consolation to her.
At last, Katerina skidded to a halt in front of a hulking, thorny mass, breathing hard. Behind her, Niko stopped, too, tilting his head in bewilderment. An unexpected scent filled the air: lemon and spice, undercut with a wild sweetness. Roses.
Bewildered, he narrowed his eyes, focusing on the looming obstacle. He made out the gloss of deep green leaves, the whorl of crimson petals. A hedge of some kind, then. Why had she brought them here?
This was the very edge of Rivki, a place most had no reason to travel. And yet he sensed magic here, the presence of older, crisscrossed scent trails. Many people had once come this way; a few still did.
Polunochnaya Roza, Katerina said inside his head. Midnight Rose.
Surprise thrummed through Niko. Said to be built by the Saints themselves, Polunochnaya Roza was a long-abandoned labyrinth, once a place of meditation for Dimis seeking solace from fear and doubt. They walked it only at midnight, representing the transition between night and day, Darkness and Light. The maze was a living thing, crafted from rosebushes, their blooms and barbs said to be the mirror of life itself: beauty alongside strife. Rumor had it that the price of entry was a single drop of blood—and that the Saints’ magic kept the passages open, no matter how rarely the maze was tended.
The reward for finding your way through its corridors was freedom. On the other side lay the stables and Lake Krasa, feeding the moat that surrounded Rivki, over which the bridge to the mainland of Iriska arched. Or so he’d always heard, when older Shadows mentioned the maze in passing, as part of days gone by. He had never seen it himself, had never ventured to this part of the city. All those times they’d delivered the tithe, had his Dimi come here while he slept, to seek peace in this forgotten tangle of briars? What had she struggled with so deeply that she’d retreated here to wrestle with it, to a place governed only by the whims of nature and the Saints?
He hadn’t intended for Katerina to hear his thoughts, but she must have. Inside his mind, she spoke, a single, quiet syllable: You.
Silence fell, broken only by the heave of her breath and the pounding of Niko’s heart. The Druzhina surely still pursued them, but Niko couldn’t hear or smell their presence. He and Katerina were alone, for the first time since that awful morning by the river.
She stepped between a gap in the looming hedges, pausing to prick her finger. The coppery aroma of blood drifted back to Niko as he followed, not daring to feed the maze himself. Who knew what the sacrifice of his blood would bring? For all he knew, the whole thing would close in upon them, trapping them inside, a gift of two corpses for the Druzhina.
He was drenched in the blood of his enemies, blood that had been consecrated to the Light. Perhaps that would be enough.
An arch formed the entrance to the maze. The two of them stood beneath it, on a brick pathway that led into the tunnel of leaves and thorns, as Katerina caught her breath.
We can’t tarry here, he urged her. We have to run.
His Dimi nodded, pushing her tangled, sweat-sodden hair back from her face. His gaze snagged on the raw skin of her wrist, and rage boiled inside him. The blood that soaked his clothes had been earned. He didn’t regret a drop.
“I know,” she said aloud, her voice hoarse. “But first, let me see you, in case it should be the last time. Please.”
He could deny her nothing. Even caught in a whirlwind of Darkness, he was still hers. For good or ill, he belonged to her.
As you wish, he told her, and let the shroud of his shades fall.
They stood across the walkway from each other, no more than a foot between them, but it might as well have been a thousand miles. His shades swirled around his ankles, as uneasy as the Shadow who wielded them. Anxiety seized his chest. What did he look like to her now? What did she see?
The blood. The shades. The ruthlessness that gnawed at his soul, even now.
“Your eyes,” she whispered.
His eyes? He raised a hand to his face, rubbing them. They stung with ash and sweat and the prickle of what might be tears. What was wrong with them?
“I—” he began, but Katerina didn’t give him a chance to finish. She flung herself across the space between them, wrapping her arms around him, heedless of the blood that drenched his gear and the tendrils of Darkness that rioted at his feet.
Slowly, carefully, Niko brought his arms up to hold her. She smelled of wormwood and mugwort, of garlic and the tomato that had stained her face in the arena. And beneath that, she smelled like her: salt and musk and always, always of the Light.
He should push her away, he knew he should, but he would allow himself this, one last time. He would tuck it away and savor it forever, the way he’d done the first time they’d made love, when he’d assumed it would also be the last. And so he let himself drop his head to her shoulder, let his lips brush the pulse that throbbed at the base of her throat, let himself breathe in her intoxicating scent.
He smelled something else, too. A threat.
“Katya,” he began, his voice breaking. “We have to?—”
And then she ripped herself from his arms.
