“What?” He murmured the question against her lips, tugging her closer as if by instinct. The length of him pressed against her, hard and ready, and she caught her breath.
“You tell me what to do. Nothing will happen here that you don’t want. You’re in control, and all I want is to make you happy—to make you feel. Only tell me to stop, and I will.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about!”
“Well, good, then. Because I can take care of myself. And I’m not afraid of you.” She freed one of her hands and cupped his face: the silvered scar, the plush black stubble. He leaned into her touch, as if he couldn’t help himself.
“You should be. Because my Light is stained with Darkness,” he whispered, one finger tracing the length of her spine, “and my desire darker still.”
Katerina took a deep breath of the nighttime air of the forest, edged with the smoke of the rowan-fire, and fought the urge to shiver. “Do you truly see no way out?” she said, her voice breaking. “Do you believe we’re doomed?”
“Not you.” The answer came quick and sharp-edged, as if anything else were unthinkable. “But as for me…two paths are left to me, Katerina. Revenge and ruin.”
Maybe it was the finality of his tone. Maybe it was what they’d endured, how they’d almost died tonight. Or maybe it was just the weight of all they carried, the impossibility of their quest. Either way, Katerina couldn’t stop the tears from falling. They spilled down her cheeks, and Niko brushed them away with his thumbs, his touch gentle.
“Don’t cry, Katya.” His head lowered, his lips brushing the tender spot at the base of her throat, where the blood beat hot and fast beneath her skin. “I can’t take it.”
“Don’t push me away,” she pleaded. “Make love to me. Make both of us feel whole.”
His gaze flickered to her face, frustration warring with desire in the depths of his eyes. “Saints, you don’t think I want to? You don’t think it’s all I think about, when I’m not trying to figure out how to save Iriska?”
“How would I know?” she shot back, choking down a sob. “You say you do, but then treat me like I’m coated in Grigori venom. Like I’m your enemy, rather than the Darkness.”
“The Darkness stirs within me! I am your enemy, don’t you understand? Whether I want to be or not, I’m everything you’re sworn to destroy. And it’s killing me, Katya. It’s killing me.”
Her gaze raked over his face, taking in the unmistakable torment that raged in his gray eyes. A storm is coming, she thought. Perhaps it’s already here. How will we stand against it?
She must have projected the thought through their bond, because Niko lifted her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. “For once, we agree. But there is no we. For I am the storm.”
Katerina’s heart sank at the resignation in his voice, as if he’d already given up fighting. She stepped back, out of his reach, and he let her go.
“You should walk away from me,” he told her. “You should run. But first, there is one last service I need you to do for me.”
“I’m not running anywhere,” she told him, straightening her spine and injecting her tone with every bit of determination she possessed. “But as for a service, you know there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. Tell me your wish, and if it’s within my power to grant it, it will be yours.”
Her Shadow squared his shoulders and met her gaze head-on. “I need you to kill me.”
Chapter Thirty-One
NIKO
Alone in the forest, Niko fought the urge to follow as his Dimi’s furious footsteps retreated, leaving only silence behind.
I need you to kill me.
The way Katerina had looked at him when he’d said those words… He’d only seen that annihilated look on her face twice before. Once, when he lay dying in the clearing, Elena’s blade sunk deep into his chest. And the other?—
Well, the other was something they never talked about. They didn’t have to. But it had shaped them, as surely as the Mark that bound them, fading a little more each day. And tonight, for the first time in their lives, his Dimi had reminded him.
When Katerina turned six, her father had given her a rare Kalchek coin. It had been molded from ore harvested in Povorino’s mines and stamped with the Firebird that was her father’s nickname for her. The coin became Katerina’s prize possession. She’d worn it around her neck always, a talisman, a symbol of her father’s love. He doted on Katerina’s mother, a fierce, fearsome firewitch who held the whole of his heart. Sometimes, Niko had thought Katerina treasured the coin so much because she needed proof that her father cared for her, too.
It had gnawed at his heart, the way his Katya had fought for the smallest fragments of her father’s attention. When he’d given her that coin, she’d glowed. He’d never seen her take it off, not even during the most arduous of training exercises.
After her parents had died in the demon attack, Katerina hadn’t spoken for weeks. Her father, her mother, her mother’s Shadow…all of them lost. At the time, Niko hadn’t been able to fathom it. He hadn’t imagined that a few years later, he’d find himself lying with his head in Katerina’s lap next to his mother’s grave, weeping that he wished he’d been enough to make her stay. That his father would be shamed and cast out. All he knew was that his closest friend, the one who challenged him and made him laugh, who kept his secrets and made him feel things he could never, ever admit aloud, had retreated deep inside herself, and he couldn’t reach her, no matter how hard he tried.
Nor was he the only one. No one had known what to say to Katerina, whose magic now burst from her at unpredictable times, saying for her what she was unable to express aloud. Baba assigned her to a cottage for orphaned Dimi children, to be looked after by a host of fluttering Vila who Katerina regarded with such scorn, it was a wonder they didn’t burst into flame. They baked for her and crooned to her, petted her and groomed her, and Katerina ignored them a little more each day. She was slipping away; Niko could feel it, and it terrified him.
One night, she’d gone missing. The village was in an uproar; Niko’s own Shadow father had gone out hunting for her when a Vila minder had arrived at their door, breathless and miserable, wondering if Katerina had sought shelter under their roof.
