Page 84 of Fate and Fury

If it did, she reflected, would that really be so bad? Perhaps then she could confront whoever it was and demand answers. Perhaps if the solution to her problem were not to be found within the walls of the village, she could discover it elsewhere.

The thought nibbled at her, oddly tempting. She set it aside as she hurried through the forest, brushing aside branches that snagged her clothes and vines that threatened to catch her ankles. Five minutes, ten, and then she was there, in the small clearing where Niko’s grave lay.

It was the first time she had been back here since the funeral, and she noticed all the things she had been too distraught to observe then: the beauty of the white-skinned birches and rowan trees that ringed the clearing, the night-blooming jasmine that curled around their branches, forming an arch overhead. The elderflowers that carpeted the ground beneath her feet.

It was a desolate spot, true, and unconsecrated. Lonely, yes. But there was a certain wild beauty to it. In the summer,provided everything bloomed as it ought, it would be peaceful and lovely, scented with the perfume of a thousand flowers.

If only she would be here to see it.

Swallowing the lump in her throat for the second time that night, she knelt beside Niko’s grave. Her knees sank into the dirt, crushing the elderflowers beneath them. “Hello, my Shadow,” she said, forcing a smile. “You wouldn’t believe what’s happened since you’ve been gone. How I wish we could talk about it, that you could give me your advice.”

She paused, waiting, half-hopeful. But she had no sense that Niko was there with her, nor did she see a hint of his form, human or black dog, moving in the woods beyond. Sighing, she called the wind, breaking dead branches from the rowan trees and setting them down in a circle around where she knelt. Then, carefully, she called her witchfire and set them alight. When the fires held, threatening neither to gutter to nothingness nor to set the forest aflame, she began speaking, telling Niko everything that was in her heart.

By the time she’d finished, her cheeks were wet with tears and her mouth was dry. She glanced up at the sky; the moon had risen even higher. It was time to go.

Katerina rose, in search of a gift to leave atop Niko’s grave. She considered commanding the wind to strip some of the white jasmine-flowers from their vines, but it didn’t feel right, as if she were desecrating the beauty of Niko’s resting place. So instead, scooping up her lantern and lighting the wick afresh from the still-burning rowan-fires, she tiptoed between the flames and ventured into the forest.

She’d followed the path to Niko’s grave by instinct. But now, walking in the opposite direction from the village, she found herself in a part of the forest she didn’t recognize. She brushed aside the bushes that blocked her way, lifting the lantern high to see what lay beyond.

And then her breath caught in her throat.

She was mere feet from the ruined chapel, the one where Sant Viktoriya, Sant Antoniya, and Sant Andrei had first made their pact to defend Iriska. The one that had been defiled by a Grigori attack and left to be swallowed by the woods years ago. And around the crumbling columns twined early-spring roses, so deep a red as to be black by torchlight.

The bushes bent, making way for her as she skirted them and walked up the steps that led to the altar, barely visible beneath a carpet of moss and a wreath of jasmine and honeysuckle. Her feet thudding on the cracked flagstones, she reached the columns and pulled a knife from her belt to cut the roses free.

On impulse, she paused. The Saints had allowed her Shadow to be taken from her, true. But perhaps they might still hear her prayer.

“Sant Antoniya,” she whispered, each word falling like a weight into the night, “look after my Shadow. Guide me to find him again. Hold his soul in the Light.” And then she pricked her finger with the knife and let the droplets fall onto the ruins of the chapel, sealing her prayer.

Her blood hissed as it hit the stones, as if they were white-hot. Beneath the vines that covered them, letters began to appear.

Breath catching in her throat, Katerina knelt and yanked the vines aside, heedless of the thorns. Holding the lantern close, she peered at the words that were revealed, each glowing with light, like the Mark she’d inscribed outside her cottage.

Call ye upon the Dark in need

In service to the Light

Speak ye the words that set us free

And thwart the demon’s bite

We three, we Saints, we fight with you

Our battle becomes thine

Dimi blood, your heart beats true

Call four, call Light, child mine.

Katerina’s jaw dropped. Her head jerked up, eyes narrowing, ensuring that she was, indeed, alone. That this was not some kind of trick.

But how could a demon have known she would come here? That she would seek these roses, that she would cut herself here, on these stones?

She looked left and right. Nothing but empty forest. Up, at the flat, gleaming disc of the Bone Moon, drifting in a formless, black sea pricked with stars. Down, at the words etched into the stones as if with fire.

She had come this far. She had nothing left to lose.

Call four, call Light,she thought, and closed her eyes. She summoned all four elements to her hand, and sent them tunneling straight down into the stones.

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