Page 71 of Fate and Fury

Elena shrieked.

“Stop this!” Katerina’s voice echoed in the clearing, raw with grief.

“I can’t.” The words were Elena’s, but the voice wasn’t her own. It was layered, spoken in the timbre of a thousand others. With horror, she realized that the tear in the night was a portal into the Void itself—what Sammael called The Darkness that Eats All Things. Her voice had become one with the cries of damned souls, stolen by the Grigori and condemned to an eternity of servitude, their spirits powering the Underworld and the Void. The very cries that fueled the Darkness that had devoured Drezna and Satvala.

Somehow, Elena’s magic had called this portal into existence.

Her power wasn’t like Katerina’s at all. It came from the Dark, and she had been fooling herself to think otherwise. It had ripped a hole in the night, and set a terrible force loose upon the world.

Baba Petrova had always taught themlike calls to like.Well, here was the proof. Elena had violated her vow to Sant Viktoriya. She had brought shame on everything she’d sworn to uphold. She had used a dark power, and now the Void itself had come to claim her.

Katerina’s curse echoed in her ears:Cleaved to a demon, may your soul walk in chains.

The doorway sucked at Elena, tugging, as if the chains Katerina had cursed her with had sunk hooks into her flesh—and deeper still, into her very soul. She took a step toward it, then another. Obsidian smoke writhed in its depths, vicious as a nest of snakes. Terror shot through her as she fought to stay where she stood, but it was useless. The Void called, and the Dark inside her answered, pulling her forward. Claiming her.

“Help me,” she tried to say, but the words stuck in her throat. Her legs moved without volition, taking her closer and closer to the rip in the night. She tried to turn her head, to look at Niko, but all she could see was blackness, pulsing, calling her home. The more she struggled, the harder it tugged. She screamed, thrashing in the Void’s grip, and stepped closer still.

39

KATERINA

The silver-blue flames that spilled from the Void cared nothing for Katerina. They curled around Niko, knotting around ankles and wrists, binding him. By a miracle, he was still alive, but his breath came shallow and irregular, blood pumping from his wound with each sluggish beat of his heart. Desperate, Katerina tried to pry the flames loose, as if disentangling a plant from an invasive vine. They didn’t burn her, but neither did they give way.

The circle of rowan-fires still burned, protecting Katerina from the demons’ attack. But what did that matter, if she couldn’t save her Shadow? If the rowan-smoke kept the demons out, but let their hell-flames in?

She cast spell after spell, sending wind whipping through the clearing, her hands pressed to Niko’s chest to stop the flow of blood. When those failed, she pressed one hand to Niko’s Mark, clutching the amulet around her neck with the other. Maybe she could force him to Change, to give his body a chance to heal itself in the form of his black dog, impervious to Grigori venom.

Her Shadow shuddered in her arms, a low growl escaping his throat, trying his best to obey—but there could be no shiftingwith a Grigori-soaked blade in his heart. His Change stalled and stopped, the growl subsiding into uneven, soundless gasps. Blood ran from his eyes and nose, streaking his face.

Elena had done this, her and whatever unnatural bond she had formed with her demon. Maybe she could undo it. For that, Katerina would join her power with a Grigori’s, no matter the cost. For that, she would give her life.

Katerina glanced upward, preparing to humble herself by begging Gadreel for help—and froze. Elena was staggering toward the doorway to the Void, compelled by Katerina’s curse. She walked one uneven, drunken step at a time, all of her usual grace gone.

The Vila convulsed, her face contorted. A scream ripped from her throat, then another. Her demon lunged for her, only to have her slip through his grasp as she took another lurching step forward. Gadreel laughed, a low, rich sound that made Katerina’s skin crawl.

And then, mere feet from the doorway to the Void, Elena’s body stilled.

40

ELENA

Elena.The voice sounded like Sammael’s, but she was sure he hadn’t spoken aloud. She could feel him inside her head—could feel him deeper, moving through her body, in places a human hand couldn’t reach. His power surged within her, bringing a momentary respite from the gnawing lure of the Void.Help me, she begged.Make it stop. Keep me here. With you.

His mind-voice came low, hesitant.I promised you I would never touch you in desire, save you asked it of me. But the Void demands a price, Elena. It is the absence of all things, the origin of the Darkness itself. Fueled by the witch’s curse, it craves to claim you as its own.

She could barely make out his words over the cacophony of the Void: the buzzing of wasps and the sound of desolate, abandoned voices.Come, Elena,they taunted.Be with us. One of us. Forever with us, here, in the Dark.

Elena couldn’t imagine a more terrible fate.

“No,” she begged aloud. “There must be something you can do.”

There is one thing. His powercoursed alongside hers, finding the source of her strength low in her belly, curling around it protectively. His touch was icy, the way his hands had felt in hers that day by the ruined chapel, a balm to the fire her rage had summoned.I can claim you as my own, and then the Void will be sated, the terms of the curse satisfied. But if I take you that way, it will be forever. You will be bonded to me. You will bemine.

There was a time when the idea of belonging to a demon would have decimated her. But anything would be better than eternity in the lightless hell of the Void. And Sammael cared for her. Once, he had been an Archangel, and the Light must surely burn somewhere within him still. She could rekindle his flame, and he hers, and together they would be the Saints of a new age.

“Yes, Sammael,” she gasped, digging her feet into the ground in an effort to resist the Void’s call. “Do it. Please.”

My Vila.Sammael’s whisper resonated through muscle and sinew, settling lower still, stroking her with gentle, invisible fingers, the way she’d always imagined Niko would. She staggered, trying to keep her feet, and felt his body behind her, solid, bracing hers.I know you grieve your Shadow. But I can give you things he couldn’t dream of. Together, we can make the world burn.

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