Page 48 of Devil’s Night (The Shadows of Darkness Universe #3)

Chapter thirty-six

My Salvation

Katya

A pplause rings through the ballroom like shrapnel, hollow and performative, echoing between crystal and gold. My father basks in it, standing at the top of the staircase like some blessed monarch giving his people permission to breathe.

My heart pounds behind my ribs. Not with nerves. Not even with anger. With dread.

Something’s coming.

Echo must feel it too, because his arm shifts against me, tightening just slightly, protective without drawing attention. His body remains still, but I can feel the subtle coil of violence rolling through him like a loaded spring. His patience is measured. His restraint, razor-thin.

Dimitri raises his glass again, and the room hushes.

“Tonight marks a turning point,” he says, smiling that smooth, manufactured smile. “The union between House Romanov and Catalyst is not just a strategic move, it’s a legacy in motion. A bloodline strengthened. A future secured.”

I feel Echo exhale slowly beside me, like he’s counting every breath. Every second until this all falls apart.

“But there’s more,” my father continues. “Something I must speak plainly of.”

The crowd leans in, not physically, but mentally. You can feel it. The air tightens like a noose.

My father's eyes find me.

I stand straighter, jaw clenched, every muscle locked beneath the silk of my gown.

“For much of her life,” he says, tone shifting into something softer, dangerously soft-“I didn’t believe my daughter would offer anything meaningful to our cause.”

Echo bristles. I feel the movement ripple through his frame.

My father goes on, his voice taking on a mockery of affection. “She was… sensitive. Emotional. Obstinate. But what wounded me most, was the discovery that, after a certain punishment, she would likely never bear children.”

The words land like a blade, twisting.

All the air leaves my lungs.

I don’t move.

I don’t blink.

But something inside me cracks.

Echo turns his head sharply toward me, his brows knitting, but he says nothing. He’s watching me now. Reading me like a loaded dossier. Every detail. Every wound.

Dimitri smiles faintly, tilting his glass. “A regret of mine, truthfully. I should have tempered my methods. But discipline must be taught, and obedience must be earned, even if the cost… is legacy.”

The crowd doesn’t know how to respond. There’s a moment where the hush becomes suffocating. Some guests murmur into their glasses. Others look politely away. A few even glance at me with something close to pity.

I’d rather be shot.

Beside me, Echo doesn’t move for a long beat. Then, slowly, methodically, he reaches up and adjusts the cuff of his shirt as if to keep from breaking something.

Dimitri’s voice sharpens once more. “And yet… now with Echo Kane at her side, perhaps the Romanov line may continue in other ways.”

Another ripple of laughter, hollow and unbearable.

I feel my throat tighten, breath shallow. I want to run, scream, break glass, but I do none of those things.

Because I know how to survive my father.

And I won’t let him win this moment.

Echo finally turns to face me. One hand lifts to brush a curl from my cheek, gentle where the rest of the world has always been cruel.

His voice is low, just for me. “He’s wrong.”

My lashes flutter, vision blurring for the first time tonight. “You don’t know that.”

His hand slips lower, to my jaw, grounding me with the steadiness of it. “I don’t need you to be something useful to be something worthy, Katya.”

A breath shudders out of me.

“And if he ever touches you with words like that again,” he adds, voice barely containing the violence beneath, “I’ll do more than break hands.”

My father raises his glass once more, oblivious to the storm forming just below him.

“To legacy,” he toasts.

But all I can think about is the moment that’s coming, when this marble palace cracks, when blood pools beneath the crystal chandeliers, and when the father who once beat the future out of me stares down the same pistol Echo used to worship me.

Not as a daughter.

Not as an heir.

But as a reckoning.

The glasses lift again.

“To legacy,” My father says smoothly, voice rich with pride. But that pride is hollow, sharpened at the edges by cruelty.

And yet, somehow, he isn’t finished.

“My daughter,” he continues, “has always been a puzzle, fragile in the worst of ways. But perhaps her purpose has finally been revealed.” His smile curls. “Not through obedience, nor brilliance. But simply… by who she now spreads her legs for.”

That’s it.

That’s the moment the storm breaks in Echo’s eyes.

His jaw tightens so hard I can see the muscles twitch. One hand balls into a fist at his side, the other clenched tightly around the stem of his glass. But when he moves, it’s with terrifying control.

He releases my waist and steps forward, not toward my father directly, but to the foot of the marble staircase where the host still stands smugly above the crowd.

The room stills. No more laughter now. Only silence.

Echo lifts his glass.

“May I offer a toast?” he asks.

Dimitri looks vaguely amused, a hand gesturing with casual permission. “By all means, Echo Kane. You’ve earned your place at the table.”

Echo climbs the first step. Then another. The crowd shifts, eyes locking onto the two men now standing side by side, Romanov patriarch and Catalyst commander.

Echo stands just one step below, but in presence, in force, in gravity , he towers.

He turns to face the room, raising his glass.

“Legacy,” he echoes, voice clear and dark. “A word we cling to when our names are too soaked in blood to mean anything else. A word cowards use when they’re too afraid to change, and monsters use when they’ve run out of excuses for the bodies buried beneath their floors.”

A murmur rolls through the ballroom like distant thunder.

My father stiffens.

Echo continues, not looking at him. Not yet.

“I’ve served many empires. Brought them to heel. Burned others to the ground. But none have ever tried to disguise their rot with the perfume of lineage quite like this one.”

Now he turns, facing my father fully.

“And tonight, in front of every trembling mask in this room, I want to make one thing clear.”

He raises his glass higher, then tips it toward me.

“To the only Romanov I’ll ever kneel for.”

I can’t breathe.

The crowd doesn’t move.

My father's expression twists, confusion and fury flickering behind his eyes like static. He opens his mouth to respond, but Echo beats him to it, leaning in close, his voice low enough only we can hear.

“And one day soon,” Echo murmurs, “this toast will be for your fucking funeral.”

He knocks his glass gently against my father's, the crystal clinking between them like a bell tolling for the dead.

Then he turns and descends the stairs, glass untouched.

Back to me.

Back to war.

The second Echo squeezes my wrist twice, I know.

There’s no turning back.

Not from the plan. Not from the blood. Not from the war that’s about to rip through the Romanov estate like rot surfacing beneath polished wood.

He steps back from me without a word, hand brushing my hip one last time beneath my gown, as if to remind me I’m armed. I am. I have the gun Echo pressed against my thigh. I have my conviction. I have him.

And I have a father who is about to choke on the last lie he ever told.

Across the room, Roman nods from behind his mask, disguised in servant black, hands steady at his sides.

On the upper balcony, Ana watches everything like a hawk perched above the battlefield, hidden beneath velvet shadows.

Noah is already out of sight, slipping into the back corridor with a tray of flutes no one noticed him replacing.

And then-

Darkness.

The chandeliers stutter twice. A flicker. A warning.

Then black.

Gasps fill the room. Chairs screech backward. The quartet cuts off mid-note. A glass hits the floor and shatters. Somewhere across the ballroom, someone screams, not loud, but sharp. The kind of scream that sounds like someone trying not to scream.

My heart slams against my ribs.

And then the red lights pulse on, bloody and artificial. The backup generators flood the room with emergency lighting, casting every guest, every pillar, every sculpture in a wash of violent crimson.

For one suspended breath, the world seems still.

And then the bodies begin to fall.

It’s not a fight. Not yet.

It’s a reckoning.

The poisoned champagne, Noah’s doing. He must have worked through the list himself, targeting every loyalist with surgical precision.

There’s no flailing. No cries for help. Only the dull thump of bodies collapsing onto the floor.

A man near the fountain slumps into a seated position, eyes wide and glassy.

A woman in a glittering emerald gown lets out a garbled gasp before her knees give out beneath her, fingers clawing at her throat as she crumples like discarded silk.

All around us, people are dying. Quietly. Elegantly. Exactly the way this family built their empire.

Echo doesn’t flinch.

He’s already moving, eyes sweeping the room for threats, hand slipping into the inner lining of his coat to draw the pistol holstered there. My feet move of their own accord, skirts of my gown swishing through the marble-drenched chaos, but I don’t feel weightless anymore.

I feel anchored .

Because I know what’s happening. I helped plan it. Every hallway, every weak point, every locked door, we mapped it out. We practiced it in whispers and glances, in late-night meetings lit only by Echo’s smirk and Roman’s growl. This isn’t revenge.

It’s precision.

Up above, there’s a sharp report of a rifle firing. A guard drops near the entrance, skull snapped back in an instant. Ana. Her position is perfect. Her aim, deadly.

Below, Roman steps into the center of the chaos and rips off his mask, firing a single round into the air. The sound is deafening, and the entire ballroom freezes.