It was no way to live. Now, as Ana prodded at the potatoes she’d set to roast in the fire, studiously focusing on the task at hand, Katerina felt as if the tension might suffocate her.
“I need to take a walk,” she announced, in a tone that brooked no questions.
Her Shadow straightened from the hare he was skinning and shot her a skeptical look. “To where?”
Katerina had no good answer for this question, but perhaps she didn’t need one. She didn’t answer to him, she reminded herself. Not when he had spent the past two weeks treating her as if she were barely here, talking to her only when necessary and evading her touch as if it might poison him. Not when he’d insisted on silencing their bond, in case using it sullied her soul. “I don’t know,” she said, each syllable clipped. “I just…need some space.”
“From me?” He tilted his head, hare dangling from one hand, his brows dipping.
That was a joke. He’d given her nothing but space, until a gulf the breadth of the Vohdanya Sea gaped between them. “From all of this,” she said, gesturing to him, to Ana, and then to the forest around them. “I feel like something’s watching us, all the time. Like there’s something out there we can’t see. It’s pressing in on me, like my skin’s the wrong size.”
“And you think the right choice is to go wandering in the woods?” Her Shadow’s voice deepened, edging a growl.
“I—”
“Don’t tell her what to do.” Ana spoke for the first time in a quarter-hour, abandoning her preoccupation with the potatoes. “You of all people should understand why she’d need to escape. Or do you not trust her to protect herself, after she summoned the very spirits of the forest to her aid?”
The words were spoken in defense of Katerina. They should have heartened her. But the hostility with which they fell from Ana’s lips alarmed her, as if something darker lay behind them. She peered at her friend, trying to decipher their deeper meaning.
Niko had no such reservations. “I of all people?” he said, the growl deeper now. “What is that supposed to mean? And you’re a fine one to speak of trust.”
Oh, for the love of the Saints. “Stop it!” Katerina said. “This is exactly what I want to get away from. Will you stop arguing, the both of you?”
Nobody listened to her. On the contrary, Niko stood, hare in hand, his shoulders squaring as if in preparation to fight. “There’s something amiss with you,” he said to Ana. “I can feel it. I can smell it. Why are you encouraging Katerina to put herself in danger? Are you trying to harm her?”
“That’s ridiculous!” Ana turned to Katerina, palms out in a demonstration of innocence. “You know how sorry I am. You know I love you and only want to keep you safe. Don’t listen to him. He’s the one with the Darkness lurking inside him, not me. Is it any wonder I had such a terrible nightmare, sleeping feet away from him?”
Katerina glanced between the two of them, biting her lip. Niko and Ana had always gotten along, had never fought like this. She had always trusted them both. But now, after all that had happened, what was she to believe?
“That was no nightmare.” Niko’s form shimmered, the way it did when he was about to Change. It was hard to tell, with the aspens and pines rising tall behind him, but Katerina could have sworn obsidian rimmed the edges of his body, framing him within it. “That was?—”
His voice cut off mid-sentence. Tilting his head back, he sniffed the air. “Get back!” He grabbed for Katerina, yanking her toward him so hard she almost fell.
Ana followed, the strangest expressions flickering across her face. Alarm, confusion, and then, almost…satisfaction.
Her Shadow’s hand dropped to his blade, and four things happened in quick succession.
Katerina straightened, power gathering in her fingertips.
A crow cawed, harsh and demanding.
A seam of Darkness rent the earth, swallowing the rowan-fire whole.
And demons boiled out of the rift.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
NIKO
Whose demons were these?
This was not a question that, a year ago, Niko would have felt the need to ask. A Grigori was a Grigori, he would’ve said. Their goals were the same: to feast on the souls of Dimis, Shadows, Vila, and non-magical humans alike, in order to fuel their power.
But now, as he turned to face them, shoving Katerina behind him, he wondered.
The demons that clawed their way out of the bubbling rift were not in human form. Black-fanged hounds with molten, fiery eyes, they snarled and hissed as they emerged, their huge paws digging into the earth as they lunged toward him.
No, not toward him, he realized as he faced them, gripping a blade in each hand. Toward Katerina.
