Page 10 of Fate and Fury

Niko prowled to her side, leaving bloody pawprints on the sand, as Trina raised her hands and sent witchwind hurtling at four of the illusions. They stumbled backward, snarling—and then sailed across the arena, skidding to a halt mere feet from Katerina. Across the expanse of sand, Trina met her eyes and smirked. She carved a hand through the air, evoking a second blast of wind that sent Niko flying.

The illusion-demons found their feet and crouched, assessing Katerina. She stared back at them, power brewing within her, a gathering storm. Niko roared with rage, struggling against Trina’s witchwind as he fought to get to her, but the other Dimi held him back, gale-force winds whipping the sand into a maelstrom that obscured Katerina’s vision. She scrubbed at her stinging eyes, forcing them open enough to see the illusions advancing, venom-soaked blades gripped in their hands. They surrounded her, a circle of knives and teeth and vitriol.

I’ll kill her.Niko’s mind-voice came, ice-cold with wrath.Her corpse will lie at your feet.

Promises, promises,Katerina told him. And then she struck.

Drawing on the well of her power, she hauled the strand of fire up, up, up, pouring her energy into it until it curled around the charging illusion-demons, forging flaming vines that wrapped ever-closer, binding them. The yells of the crowd grew louder, competing with the crackle of the conflagration she’d ignited, but Katerina had no time to listen. All her attention was fixed on the flame-vines tightening around the illusions, choking the life out of them.

Beyond the burning demons and the swirling sand, she could just make out Trina’s face. The other Dimi’s eyes widened with disbelief an instant before they narrowed in calculation. And then her mouth lifted in a smile so malicious, it could only mean one thing.

Its outline visible through the haze of sand and flame, a black-clad form streaked straight for Niko, clutching a blade in each hand. These were the demons’ knives, the hilts a dull, uniform maroon rather than the rune-engraved onyx that topped Shadows’ blades. And yet, Katerina realized as bone-deep rage broke over her, it was a Shadow who wielded them.

Fyodor, in human form once more.

Trina had not only separated Katerina from her Shadow to weaken her. She had done it to isolate Niko while the other illusion-demons sought their quarry. Sofi and Damien couldn’t break free to help him, and the pairings from Liski and Voronezh were too far away to help, even if they would. The two remaining illusions had seized upon them as the weakest of the survivors, crowding them against the wall of the arena even as the Dimis and Shadows, half in human form and half in the form of their black dogs, sought to bring them down.

Don’t shift,she cried out to Niko.He has their knives?—

But it was too late. Her Shadow had already shifted back into human form, the better to fight from a distance. He’d managedto reclaim his blades—and his leathers, minimizing his exposed skin—but if Fyodor so much as nicked him, here in the arena without antivenin…

By the Saints. Trina could do what she liked to Katerina, but she would never touch Niko, with her Shadow’s hands or her own. Katerina would see her dead first.

She drew one burning breath, then another. The world slowed to a series of images once more: The illusions screaming as they burned. Damien snapping his prey’s neck and running to Niko’s aid, all four of his midnight-black paws pounding the ground, sand skidding in his wake and blood spraying from his jaws. The crowd on their feet, stomping and hollering. Trina laughing, Saints damn her, head thrown back and dark hair flying in the wake of her witchwind. Her own power, gathering inexorably in her chest and forking through every vein like lightning.

This wasn’t just her witchfire. It was everything: her four gifts offering themselves up, desperate to be channeled in the service of saving her Shadow. To use them would mean putting herself on display, stepping into the full strength of her power in front of the Kniaz, the Druzhina, and all of Rivki. If she were caught, everyone who’d known what she was capable of and kept her secret would be accused of committing treason against the realm. It was wrong, and rash, and dangerous.

But Katerina would do far worse, if it meant Niko lived.

She inhaled. Exhaled. And set her power free.

Her gifts snaked beneath the earth, seeking Fyodor, spreading fire as they went. Imbued by her power, the sand heated degree by degree, as incandescent as her fury. She fed her rage into the earth and the earth answered, rising and shaking and shimmering and fusing as Katerina’s witchfire transformed it at last to glass. It shattered beneath the illusion-demons,leaving them writhing aflame in midair, then splintered under Fyodor’s feet.

He tried to leap away, to dodge, but she wrapped her witchwind around him and propelled him toward her, straight through the flame-broiling demons. They winked out of existence, leaving fire-edged runes behind, just as he slid to a stop at her feet, bleeding and burning, his venom-laced blades still clutched in his hands and a look of incredulous hatred on his face.

“Surprise,” Katerina said sweetly, and bent down to pluck the blades free.

Abject misery warredwith dizzying relief as she and Niko sought their place in line with the surviving Shadows and Dimis.

This was exactly what Baba had feared. With Niko’s life on the line, Katerina had done what she’d sworn she wouldn’t: lose control. Her love for him had already made a liar out of her; now it had made her break her word and betray her home into the bargain.

She wasn’t sorry. And yet, she shouldn’t have done it.

True, the burning demons had formed a wall of flame between Fyodor and the Kniaz, hopefully blocking the nobleman’s view. And with luck, Fyodor’s burns could be attributed to the wrath of a firewitch whose Shadow was in mortal danger. The cracking earth could be blamed on heat alone, the wind on Trina Samarin. But in the moment, Katerina had been thinking of none of that. All that had mattered was that she save her Shadow, Kalach and her vow to Baba Petrova be damned.

Regret forged a lump in her throat. “Niko,” she whispered, “I’m sorry. I should have told you. I shouldn’t have?—”

He tilted his head to look down at her, his gaze impenetrable. Try as she might, she couldn’t make out what was going on behind his slate-gray eyes. “Not now, Katerina.”

She wanted to demand to know what he was thinking. To have the same access to his thoughts as she did when they fought side by side. But all she could do was nod in tacit agreement as they strode across the bloodied sand of the arena, sidestepping the bodies of the fallen Dimis and Shadows. It was better that they both lived, was it not, no matter the price? They could fight later. At least they would be alive to argue.

The crowd was eerily silent as Dimi Novikova, head of the Druzhina, stood from her place at the Kniaz’s right hand. “Ten survive,” she declared, her witchwind carrying her voice across the arena. “Four have fallen. We commend their souls to the Saints and pray for their deliverance to the Light.”

A murmur of acceptance rose from the crowd, quieting as Dimi Novikova spoke again. “Come forward, Dimis and Shadows of Iriska’s villages. Stand before us and face your verdict.”

Terror flashed through Katerina’s body, as potent and lethal as her magic. There was no coming back from this. One by one, Dimi Novikova would call their names. And then, when they all stood in front of the Kniaz, he would make his choice.

She glanced left and right, at the other Shadows and Dimis. Their bodies were taut with anticipation, their gazes fixed on Dimi Novikova. All of them would do anything, sacrifice anything, to be chosen today. And Katerina would do anything to be passed over.

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