Page 15 of Fate and Fury

The woman had sent for copies of Katerina’s genealogy and bonding ceremony from Iriska’s largest repository of knowledge, halfway across the realm from Rivki. Did that mean she’d suspected Katerina long before the incident in the arena today?

Maybe it meant nothing. Perhaps this type of surveillance was done on all of the candidates for the Trials. Still, fear iced the blood in Katerina’s veins.

Steady, she told herself.Hold the line.

“I am a firewitch,” she said, each word dropping like a stone into the still air of the hallway. “If you’ve troubled yourself to look that deeply into my origins, you know every woman in my mother’s line since the Saints conferred their blessings on Iriska has been a firewielder. What else would I be?”

She let her lips rise in a mirthless smile, the one that usually preceded stabbing a demon through the heart and sending ithurtling into the Void. “I’m sorry to waste your time. But Iamflattered you’ve concerned yourself with me, Dimi Zakharova. Why, I don’t know the slightest thing about you, save that you’re happy to warm the bed of a tyrant and a fool.”

The other woman’s eyes narrowed, rage heating their depths. A muscle in her jaw twitched, and the ground beneath Katerina’s feet shook, forcing her to fight to keep her balance. “You dare to speak so of the Kniaz? Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps you truly don’t want to share his bed.” Her voice lowered to a hiss, laden with suspicion. “I saw the way you looked at your Shadow, when you thought he couldn’t see. Is that where your heart lies, Dimi Ivanova? For if so, you’re a threat of an entirely different kind.”

Katerina’s pulse kicked up, pounding so hard, she swore she could taste it. A quarter-hour in the arena and five minutes in a hallway, and Dimi Zakharova had seen deeper into her heart than anyone ever had. It was insufferable…and dangerous.

“How dare you suggest such a thing?” she said, her voice ice-cold. “My Shadow will be betrothed to his Vila before all of Kalach the night of the Bone Moon. He is a man of honor.”

“One can be betrothed, and even marry, and still betray one’s vows.” The other woman was so close, her breath brushed Katerina’s cheek. “So many lies, Dimi Ivanova. So many lives you hold in your hand. For surely everyone in your village knows you are not merely a firewitch. Keeping a secret that could mean so much to the realm…the price for such a thing would be steep beyond measure.”

By all the Saints and demons, she refused to make twenty-one years of sacrifice and silence be for nothing. “What iswrongwith you?” she snapped. Better to put the other woman on the defensive than to be constantly caught wrong-footed like this. “Are you so desperate to keep your place in that bastard’s bed that you’re willing to betray a fellow Dimi to have what you want, inventing threats where none exist?”

She dropped her voice, letting a full measure of viciousness fill it. “Or is that he’s grown tired of you, Dimi Zakharova? Does he not reach for you as often; do you sense his gaze roving, as he seeks a wife to give him heirs? I feel sorry for you. Such petty insecurity is beneath a Dimi. The world bends to our will, not the other way around.”

The woman sucked in a sharp breath. She stepped back, scanning every inch of Katerina, her lip curling in scorn. “I don’t know what you are, little Dimi,” she said. “But I intend to find out. Because you might not wish to be the Kniaz’s consort, but he covets pretty things. He covets power. The choice might not be yours. And I have no intention of being displaced at all, much less by a liar and a traitor.”

The marble floor beneath them cracked with the force of her outrage, the movement jostling the glasses in her hands. As liquid sloshed over the rims, Katerina smelled what she hadn’t before: bitter cascara, a potent laxative.

If she’d accepted the kvass, she wouldn’t have died, no. But she would have spent a very uncomfortable evening, away from the covetous gaze of the Kniaz, just like Dimi Zakharova wanted. And next time, her drink might be laced with something worse.

Her gaze flicked to Zakharova’s face. The other woman was watching her, dark eyes glittering with malice. A satisfied smile lifted her painted lips.

For the love of the Saints. This was what happened when a greedy tyrant pinned a beautiful, powerful woman under his thumb: insecurity and jealousy. In another world, Katerina and Dimi Zakharova would be allies. Katerina might even look to her as a mentor; the woman was politically savvy, able to navigate the treacherous waters of this despicable place without so much as turning a hair. But instead, the other Dimi hated and feared Katerina, not because of her power but because she inspired the Kniaz’s unholy lust.

It was just one more reason to despise the man. But right now, he wasn’t the threat. Dimi Zakharova was, and though Katerina would never have started this fight, there was no way to turn from it now.

She couldn’t light a fire inside the Kniaz’s palace. Nor could she use her other magic, without confirming Dimi Zakharova’s suspicions and endangering everyone in Kalach. She was trapped, Saints curse it. Hatred burned inside her, desperate for an outlet, as she bared her teeth. “Count yourself lucky I don’t yet call Rivki home. You may not know what I am, but trust me when I say I am powerful enough to end you. For your insinuation that something improper exists between myself and my Shadow alone, I should make you pay.”

The other woman lifted one shoulder in an elegant, disdainful shrug. “Watch what you eat and drink tonight, Dimi Ivanova. For I have taken on far more worthy opponents than you. And the Kniaz can’t Reap you if you’re dead.”

Giving Katerina one last, weighted look, she turned and strode through the carved wooden doors at the opposite end of the hallway, the earth trembling in her wake.

9

KATERINA

Katerina knocked so hard on the door to Niko’s room, it threatened to bruise her knuckles. She wanted to pound on it, but that would draw attention. Already, the other Dimis and Shadows were streaming in, some of them obviously the worse for drink, with Sofi and Damien bringing up the rear.

Sofi slid Katerina a grin, which Katerina did her best to return. She was pretty sure she did a terrible job, because the other Dimi rolled her eyes in response. She didn’t stop to question Katerina, though, thank the Saints, just signed, “Later,” and headed up the stairs. Behind her, Damien raised his tumbler of kvass to Katerina in salute, then padded down the hallway toward his room, leaving a trail of bloodied sand in his wake.

By all the Saints and demons, what could be keeping her Shadow? She knocked again, more insistently still. “Niko, I don’t care if you have a bevy of Vila beauties in your bed,” she snapped, though it was a blatant lie. “Open the door this instant, or?—”

The words died on her lips as the door swung inward, the firelight within illuminating the form of her Shadow. He was bare from the waist up, clad only in his leather fighting pants.On the bicep of his left arm gleamed Katerina’s Mark: three interlocking circles, the black pigment of the dye mixed with her blood. He’d taken the rawhide tie out of his dark hair, and it fell loose to his shoulders. The tips dripped water onto his muscled chest, crisscrossed by scars that she knew as well as the lines of her own palm: A thin, long-healed souvenir from his first sparring match. The silvered track of another Shadow’s teeth, which would never heal completely. An etched, jagged line from a blade soaked in Grigori venom.

As if taunting her, the firelight flickered over the white streak in his dark hair that had come after Baba Petrova inked Katerina’s Mark on his skin. Every Shadow had a distinguishing feature, something besides their Mark that showed how they’d been changed by the bond. It was just Katerina’s luck that Niko’s was so visible. Each time she looked at it, she was reminded how he was hers and yet not, all at the same time.

Why did he have to be so Saints-damned beautiful? Speechless, she tried to stop staring but only succeeded in glancing downward, to the V of muscles that disappeared beneath the waistband of his fighting leathers, which didn’t help. At all.

“You called?” Niko said, his voice wry. “For someone who wanted my attention, Katya, you don’t seem to have a lot to say.”

Her childhood nickname, the one only he was allowed to use, did the trick. Lifting her head, Katerina found his eyes locked on hers, glittering with amusement and an emotion she couldn’t quite decipher. She opened her mouth, shut it again, then mastered herself with an effort. “Sorry to pull you away from whatever orgy kept you from answering the door, but we have a situation.”

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