Page 72 of Fate and Fury

Sammael’s touch pushed the Darkness back, chased the voices away. She forgot they stood at the edge of a clearing where Niko lay dying, forgot she meant not to incinerate the world but to save it, forgot everything but the incomparable relief of feeling the lure of the Void abate and those awful hooks disengage from her flesh. The ragged hole still shimmered in the air, but she felt safe in her demon’s arms. As long as he held her, the Void could not touch her.

“Yes,” she said again, her head lolling back onto Sammael’s shoulder. “Make it stop.”

Dimly, she was aware of Gadreel shouting, of the other demon’s hands on her, trying to pry her from Sammael. “Fool,” Gadreel was yelling, “don’t you see you’re feeding the Darkness, giving fuel to the Void?” But Sammael only swore, peeling Gadreel away. He held Elena tight, and she felt his invisible caress again, filling her, stroking faster still.

“Make it let me go,” she begged.

Let me please you, her demon whispered back,and it will.

Nodding, Elena closed her eyes.

41

KATERINA

Stunned, Katerina stared. The look on the Vila’s face, the blush that rose to stain her cheeks as her lips parted—it reminded her of Niko’s expression when he was buried inside her, his hands roving over her body, lost in pleasure. Agony shot through Katerina at the thought that he might never hold her so again.

Somehow, though they stood before Katerina fully clothed, Elena was engaging in illicit congress with her demon. She had stood up before the village and pledged herself to Niko—then accused him of being unfaithful—when all along, she had been consorting with a Grigori. Niko laydying, and Elena was despoiling herself with a damned, soulless creature.

Hatred and disgust welled up in Katerina’s heart.

She fixed her eyes on Gadreel, who stood a respectful distance from the rowan-fires and the Void, blue eyes flicking from the doomed Vila to Niko and back again. “You, demon—I know you want me. For your paramour, for your slave, for your weapon…I don’t care. You can have me. I’ll stand at your side, if you save him.” Tears choked her voice. “Please. I’ll do anything.”

“A rich offer,” the demon said over the crackle of the flames and the unsettled murmur of the Void. “But a pointless one. Your Shadow is dead where he lies, Dimi Ivanova. Once hellfire takes a beast such as that, he is damned. He will die burning, and you will be mine, anyhow.” His laughter rose, barbed and poisonous, stinging Katerina’s skin. It devolved into coughs as the smoke from the rowan-fires polluted his lungs, and then the sound faded into the dark.

As if the demon’s words had called them, the silver-blue flames crawled up Niko’s limbs, one bloodstain at a time. He rolled feebly, trying to extinguish them, but the more of his blood they tasted, the brighter they blazed. Katerina clutched him, trying to beat the demon-flames back with her hands, to no avail.

In desperation, she closed her eyes and reached out for the river that fed the village.She had never tried to summon water at this distance, and her body trembled with the force of her concentration. Her mind filled with the image of the river’s overarching willows and the rocks that lined its bed, making a slippery path that she and Niko used to chase each other across when they were children.

A roar rose in the forest, growing louder until a wall of water loomed above the trees and crashed into the clearing, extinguishing the rowan-fires but doing nothing to quench the demon-flames. Fish poured from the sky and into the Void, their silver bodies strewn across the dirt of the clearing. The forest reeked of iron, tidal mud, and rosemary, undergirded with the acrid scent of fear.

“Please,” Katerina said over and over, her fingers pressed against Niko’s Mark, tethering his soul to hers. “Please don’t leave me. Niko, please?—”

The water broke around his burning body, drenching Katerina but leaving him untouched. His teeth sank into hislower lip, back bowing as the silver-blue flames traced the blood that spilled from his mouth, then slipped inside when he gasped. He glowed with an unearthly light as the fire slid down his throat, illuminating him from within. It slid lower still, encasing his wounded heart, and Niko howled, his body arching out of Katerina’s grip. His voice resounded in her head.Let me go, Katya. I will always be with you, I swear it. My soul is yours. Set me free.

His pain was hers, her body an inferno, her heart struggling to beat. It was selfish to keep him with her, to let him suffer this way. She fought to think, to find the strength to do as he wished. Breath coming short, she closed her eyes once more, picturing the bond that tied them together. As his Dimi, she had to be the one to sever it. Better she should grieve for the rest of her life than for him to linger in this brutal half-existence. He would never leave her if there was the slightest chance he might live. She knew that with every fiber of her being.

The bond shimmered in her mind’s eye, frayed but holding. She dragged in a deep, scorching breath and braced herself to cut it.

42

ELENA

The voices murmured, troubled. The Darkness called. But as Sammael’s power slid over her skin and moved deep within her, Elena couldn’t bring herself to care. Dimly she knew something terrible had happened, was happening still—but the more she tried to grasp the knowledge, the more it receded, a tide drawn back to the sea.

I would be human for you if I could.His voice shivered over her body, and she shivered with it.Alas, I cannot. But I can give you this.

The darkness unleashed by her rage circled inside her, seeking to fulfill Katerina’s curse. Sammael’s power entwined with it, ink-black and silver-blue, twisting tighter and tighter. They fused, detonating outward in a spray of lightning that forked through Elena’s veins, spreading through every inch of her body, into the air, the sky, the earth.

Elena shook, and the earth shook with her. Behind her, within her, Sammael cried out, a sound she heard with her ears and her mind, with the power that was remaking her into something new. She shattered, and was reborn.

Into the trembling silence came a voice. It was everyone’s, and no one’s at all.

“Hail, Elena-of-the-Void,” it said.

43

KATERINA

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