Chapter Twenty-Six

Uriel

This motherfucker. Too long I’d waited. Far too long. I still had one more hurdle, and there was no way I was holding myself back like I had in Yorick’s and Zigor’s rings. I’d kept my powers tamped down on purpose, but the vibration humming through my veins warned me I was at detonation level. My need to eviscerate as I looked on this fucking piece of shit who’d hurt my Nadya was a primal longing like no other.

Vladek visibly forced himself to relax, hunching his shoulders to one side of his throne. But I knew what he was. A feral lion about to strike.

“I can’t believe you actually came back here.” He glanced at Lisabette standing to his right. “Your mistress has missed you. Though she’s not as pretty as when you left her.”

I said nothing. Gave him nothing. Which only stoked his anger.

“I’ve been told something rather disconcerting, angel.”

“Archangel,” I corrected, fury lacing each syllable.

That’s when his eyes flicked to the sides and thirty guards armed with ether ammo guns marched onto the arena floor. It was just as we’d suspected. He wasn’t planning on letting me fight his champion. I only hoped that Nadya was right and that her gamble would give me what I wanted. The chance to kill him.

He stood to his full height, nearly seven feet like me, and stepped down one step of the dais, his obsidian gaze glinting with hellfire.

“I’ve been told you have something that’s mine.” His voice was a whip of razors and hate, slashing out with dark promise.

I couldn’t help but smile. “She never was yours. She never will be yours.”

“Take him!” he bellowed.

Without acknowledging the approaching soldiers, I said in a steady voice, “Don’t you want to hear my offer first?”

He held up a staying hand. His men stopped halfway to me, guns up and aimed.

“You’re in no position to bargain, asshole.”

“I’m in the perfect position.” The audience was so quiet now you’d think we were completely alone. Thankfully, all eyes were watching. “It’s true, I have something you want.”

He took a threatening step forward, balled his fists, then kept coming, four guards flanking him as he marched out into the arena, kicking up dirt with his boots as he approached. He stopped ten yards away.

“Tell me where she is, and I’ll make your death swift.” The venom in his voice assured me that was a lie.

I shook my head. “Fight me in one-on-one combat, and I’ll tell you where she is.” I could lie as easily as him.

He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, gauging my game. He knew what it was. My fingers twitched, wanting to wrap around steel and embed it in his throat.

“Unless you’re afraid to fight me,” I bellowed loud enough I heard it echo up to the sky. “My lord,” I added mockingly.

“I am going to gut you right here on the arena floor,” he said with sickening relish. “By the time I saw off your pretty wings and tear your spine from your body”—spittle flew from his mouth, rage burned in his eyes—“you’ll tell me where she is.”

“So you are afraid,” I accused, realizing that Nadya was right. He’d never match me in a fair fight. Unless coerced by something more than fury—his lust and his ego.

“Did you fuck her?” he spat, his sharp canines and demented temper contorting his perfectly angled face into something monstrous.

“Yes, he did,” came Nadya’s strong and steady voice above us to the right.

My heart sank into the dirt floor of the arena. Vladek stared in complete shock. She stood on the lower level of the private boxes of scaffolding closer to the dais. Her cloak gone, her white-blonde, silken hair lifted in the cold breeze. She held something small in her hand, the locket that usually dangled at her throat.

Her voice was all sweetness when she added, “He was everything you weren’t. He is everything you aren’t. So far better than you, in every possible way.” She laughed and shook her head. “I screamed his name every time he made me come and cried tears of absolute joy when he was inside me.”

I was momentarily stunned. She was going too far. Vladek was visibly changing right before me. His horns actually curled out another inch. His claws were embedded into his palm, dripping black blood into the dirt. But he didn’t move. Just stared at her like she was some alien creature he’d never seen before.

And Nadya? She went on with such poise you’d think she was asking us to sit down for tea. The arena, filled to the brim with demonic beings, was absolutely, breathlessly still. Listening to every word.

“If you want me back…” Her gaze dipped down, almost seductively, submissively. She was playing him, showing him the girl he craved. My gut tightened. Then she lifted her gaze on Vladek but nodded to me. “Then fight for me.” Her tone hardened, flinty as a mountain’s heart, jagged as broken glass. “If you want to punish me, then you’ll have to win me first. Fight for me.”

“Oh, I’m going to punish you, kroshka,” he ground out.

I took a step, ready to decapitate him here and now. His personal guards lurched forward, one putting the tip of his sword against my shoulder. I pressed into the blade, slicing my own skin before pulling away.

“Let’s do this, Vladek,” I commanded. “You know you want to gut me yourself.”

His burning gaze cut to me for a second before returning to her, his obsessive thoughts and dark longing filtering through the air with menace and violent lust. It was almost a living thing that threatened to choke me with fear. For her. Instead, I inhaled a deep breath, whispered a prayer to the heavens, and focused on my goal.

“Fight me, Vladek.”

His sinister gaze cut to me, narrowed, his eyes bleeding full black—whites and all. He stared at his greatest nemesis, me, but snapped his fingers with a command to two of his men at his back.

“Get her.”

“Stop!” she rang out, holding up the locket held between her index finger and thumb. “I will drink this poison before they reach me.”

“Wait,” hissed Vladek to his men who’d only taken a few steps. His chest expanded and sank with deep gulps of air. “You wouldn’t do that, Nadya.”

Her throaty laugh, a bitter song on the wind, fell down to us, frosting my heart with ice. “You know I will. In a heartbeat, I’d kill myself before I let them take me. Just a few drops of this, my refined concoction of monkshood, and I’ll die in minutes.” She glanced at the small vial, what I’d thought was a sentimental token from her grandmother, holding death in her hands. “It’s also known as Devil’s Helmet, you know.” Another small laugh. A bitter one. “It’s my own personal shield from you.” She glanced away from him to me, love now shining there, but it slipped past me on the Russian winds, because I knew that she actually would do this. This was part of her plan she’d kept from me. She’d die before she let herself be taken. She’d planned this all along. To bargain with her life, a foolproof strategy to get him in the fighting pit. And if he didn’t agree…

“Nadya,” I whispered, shaking my head, a fist-sized lump in my throat.

“If I fight him…and kill him,” growled Vladek. “Then you promise to drop the poison and come to me.” His question came out as a command. “Promise,” he ordered in a sibilant hiss.

A stiff nod of her beautiful head. “I promise.”

Vladek’s attention snapped back to me. “Fine, you fucking thief. There’s nothing I’d love more than to cut you to pieces myself.” He glanced back. “Blade!”

A guard on the dais pulled a curved cutlass from a scabbard hanging over the back of his throne and rushed forward to hand it to his master. He made a show of stripping off his vest to fight me shirtless, awing his sycophants with a massive, well-muscled body.

I laughed. His need to flaunt was an innate trait. He could strut a circle around the entire fucking arena. I didn’t care. All I knew was that this moment had come.

“Finally.” I grinned, readying my stance, double-fisting the hilt of Silversong and facing my enemy with all the black revenge I held in my heart.

There was no dancing or circling or predatory flaunting. Vladek charged like the demon lord he was, swinging his curved blade down toward my head. Rather than dive and evade, I met him with a defensive swing, my blade clashing against his, sparks flying in the air.

A rumble of thunder bowled across the night sky, dark clouds pressing lower. The audience lurched to their feet, cheering for their king. The cacophony of demons yelling for my blood, the battle drums pounding loud and strong, and the rolling thunder was a siren song I’d been yearning for since the fateful day Vladek had caught me and made me his slave.

Our blades locked, we faced off, wrath holding us both in tight fists. With a lunge, I hit him in the chest with my shoulder, the momentum knocking him away with a zing of our blades as we slid apart. He came at me quick again, swinging his blade at a horizontal angle, going for my throat. Ducking, I swung my leg up with a swift kick to his face, snapping his head back at the exact moment a crack of lightning splintered the sky. He stumbled back a few steps, swiping his thumb across his lip and coming away with a smear of black blood. Arrowing his baleful expression on me, he spat a wad of inky blood into the dirt.

“By all the demons in hell, I’m going to slice you up nice and slow this time.”

A whirling tempest of ghost-gray clouds swirled over Ivangorod. Otherworld energy saturated the air. The storm would break before this was over.

“There aren’t all that many demons in hell anymore,” I countered. “Most of them are cavorting up here.” With a casual swing of Silversong, a rotation of my wrist, I said, “You caught me off guard last time. That’s the only reason you had any power over me. Besides, this time, I have much more to fight for.”

“What’s that?”

“Nadya.” Her name was a soul-scream, a prayer, a goddamn war-hammer slamming down between us.

I grinned at the naked hate in his eyes before he came at me again.