Page 50 of Devil’s Night (The Shadows of Darkness Universe #3)

Chapter thirty-seven

Cleanse It With Fire

Echo

T he Romanov manor doesn’t breathe anymore.

It groans.

The kind of sound old bones make when they’re left in the cold too long, cracking, brittle, rotting from the inside. The walls aren’t walls now. They’re tombstones. Plated in gold. Painted in family portraits that are going to burn the second I give the order.

Catalyst moves through it like a pack of wolves, disciplined and deliberate. Every room is accounted for. Every loyalist body is tagged. Every hard drive, ledger, blood-stained ledger, and secret compartment ripped open like the guts of a dead animal. We’re not just clearing the estate.

We’re dissecting it.

And for the first time in years, I don’t feel the weight of my name pulling me in two.

Because she’s here.

And she’s still breathing.

I spot her from the corridor that leads into the conservatory, what used to be Dimitri’s favorite room. A glass atrium where he played god. Where he cut roses at the stem and admired the way they bled on marble tiles.

Now, that same floor is covered in blankets.

In children.

And in Katya.

She’s kneeling between them, her once-immaculate gown torn and soaked at the hem, her palms bloodied in ways I know aren’t hers.

The moment she leans forward and wipes a child’s tear with the sleeve of her ruined dress, my throat closes.

Her fingers are trembling, but her voice, though I can’t hear it, is steady. Reassuring.

One of the boys clings to her sleeve like she’s the only solid thing in the world. She doesn't flinch. Doesn't move. She lets him.

She lets them all.

And maybe that’s what wrecks me more than anything. I’ve seen her powerful. Seductive. Weaponized. But this? This quiet kind of strength, the way she holds broken things like she was made to put them back together, makes my hands ache just to touch her.

I start toward her.

And that’s when the shot goes off.

Crack.

Not an echo, not a warning.

A bullet.

I turn, but I already know.

Nikolai.

Noah stands behind him, arm still extended, smoke curling from the barrel of his pistol. Nikolai’s body hits the marble like a sack of wet meat, blood spraying in an arc across the ivory floor. The back of his skull caves, just like I’d always imagined it would.

He doesn’t get a last word.

He doesn’t deserve one.

Noah doesn’t blink. He just lowers the gun, slides it into the back of his waistband, and looks at me like he’s asking if we’re done here.

I nod.

We are.

Roman’s footsteps approach before I speak. He smells like smoke and steel. His knuckles are torn. One sleeve is soaked in someone else’s blood. When he stops beside me, neither of us says anything at first. We both look toward the conservatory, where Katya is still holding the boy.

Still breathing.

Still there.

“She’s not the same girl you brought into this,” Roman finally says.

“She’s not a girl anymore,” I murmur. “She’s fire. All of it.”

He glances sideways at me, expression unreadable. “You love her.”

It isn’t a question.

And I don’t need to answer.

Because it’s in the way I look at her. In the way I haven’t exhaled since she walked into that ballroom hours ago. In the way her voice could cut through the worst of me and still sound like absolution.

“She told me she loved you,” Roman adds.

That makes me pause.

“She said it,” he clarifies, folding his arms, watching the way my jaw tightens. “To both of us. Said she chose you over blood. Over family. That those kids meant more to her than legacy.”

My chest aches.

“I knew it was real,” Roman continues, “when she said you were her family now.”

I swallow hard, watching her run her fingers through a little girl’s matted hair, her voice soft, patient.

“She’s not just mine,” I finally say. “I’m hers.”

Roman nods once. “Then let’s give her the world she burned this one for.”

We both stand in silence a moment longer, watching as she gently lifts a child into her arms and rises to her feet.

And in that moment, covered in ash, bruises, blood, and softness, she’s not a Romanov.

She’s a new dynasty.

The one we’ll bleed for.

The one we’ll rebuild everything around.

I’ve seen death in a thousand variations, quiet, violent, pathetic, cruel.

But what I see now isn’t death.

It’s something worse.

She stumbles into the conservatory like a ghost, one arm clutching her ribcage, the other reaching for something that isn’t there.

Her gown is shredded, pearls torn from the collar and scattered like teeth along the hallway.

Her hair, once always pinned, polished, immaculate, is matted and streaked with ash.

Blood seeps from the corner of her mouth, and when her eyes land on Katya, they widen with something that looks like recognition… but not relief.

There’s no relief left in her.

Only ruin.

Dimitri’s wife.

Katya’s mother.

The woman I’ve barely heard speak since the first dinner I sat across from her.

She staggers once more, then collapses to her knees, frail arms reaching forward, and Katya catches her before she hits the marble. Dropping to the floor with her, Katya's arms wrap around her mother’s too-light frame, holding her like she’s trying to keep the pieces from crumbling all over again.

“Mom,” Katya whispers, voice breaking.

The sound of it is a blade.

Her mother doesn’t respond at first. Her body trembles. Her fingers dig into Katya’s back with surprising strength, as if something inside her is finally waking up after years of sleep. Her mouth moves, lips parting against Katya’s shoulder.

“I tried to protect you,” she rasps. “I tried, I swear. I never wanted him to take it that far.”

Katya stiffens.

But she doesn’t pull away.

She holds her tighter.

“I know,” Katya whispers, voice ragged. “I know.”

Across the room, I stay still.

Frozen.

Watching.

Because what I’m seeing isn’t just a mother and daughter.

It’s a reflection.

Of what could have been.

Of what almost was.

That could’ve been Katya, if I had left her.

If I hadn’t dragged her out of the dark.

If she had stayed under Dimitri’s roof, letting the weight of Romanov legacy grind her down to dust. She would’ve become this: glass bones, downturned eyes, a hollow voice that only knows how to whisper apologies into bloodstained air.

And the thought of it guts me.

Because she was never meant to survive like that.

She was meant to live.

And now she does.

Because she fought.

Because she chose.

Me.

Us.

Katya lifts her mother’s face gently in her hands. Her own tears are silent, tracking down her cheeks as she brushes damp hair from her mother’s brow.

“You’re free now,” she whispers. “You’re free.”

Her mother’s body sags into hers. Not dead. Just… done. Like she’s finally allowed herself to fall apart now that the monster’s gone.

Katya rocks her slowly, eyes closed, lips pressed to her mother’s temple.

And I swear, in all my years of violence, rage, power, I have never seen anything more devastatingly beautiful than the way Katya holds a woman who never got to fight back, and says:

“It ends with me.”

And it does.

Because she made sure of it.

The air shifts.

Not because the blood is gone. Not because the silence is peaceful now, it isn’t. There’s nothing peaceful about the way this place dies. But it shifts… because something is done.

Katya’s mother goes quiet in her arms, head resting against her shoulder like she’s returned to a place she never thought she’d see again.

Safety. Warmth. Maybe even forgiveness. Her body is light, too light, and when Katya finally exhales and lets go, she does it slowly.

Carefully. Like putting down a porcelain doll that’s cracked but still precious.

She wipes her cheek with the back of her hand, eyes red but burning with clarity.

“She can’t walk,” she says softly, and I’m already moving.

I lift the woman in my arms without protest. She doesn’t resist. Just closes her eyes and leans into my chest like she’s already halfway gone. But I don’t carry corpses. Not today. Not now.

We walk together, Katya at my side, toward the long corridor that leads out of the west wing, the one we cleared first. The hallway smells like smoke and victory. Faint gunpowder and fading screams.

At the end of it, the children are waiting.

Blankets wrapped around thin shoulders. Eyes too wide, too old for their age.

Noah is crouched in front of one of the younger girls, speaking low and calm, while Ana checks over another boy’s bandaged arm.

Roman is there too, pacing, protective, his face unreadable, but his stance makes it clear: if anyone tries to come through that hallway, they won’t make it three steps.

The moment the kids see Katya, they brighten.

Not in the way children usually do, but in the way soldiers see a flag rise on the battlefield. She walks to them like she was always meant to lead. Drops to her knees again, arms open, and they move toward her like they’ve been waiting.

Like she promised she’d come back for them, and she did.

“Everyone ready?” she asks, voice gentler now.

Most nod.

One little boy steps forward, blanket falling off his shoulder. “Where are we going?”

Katya lifts her chin. “Home.”

“But where’s that?”

She glances at me. At Roman. At Ana, who gives her a small nod. Then she looks back down at the boy and says, “Anywhere he can’t hurt you again.”

The boy’s mouth wobbles. Then he nods. Slowly.

I feel something hard in my throat.

We guide them in a line, twenty-two in total. Some too young to understand, others far too old in their eyes. Katya keeps them close, touching shoulders, ruffling hair, keeping them anchored.

I walk behind them, carrying her mother, sweeping the rear like we always planned. My gun’s still warm at my side. My heart heavier than it’s been in years.

And still, somehow, it feels right.

As we step through the broken threshold of the Romanov manor, sunlight cuts through the haze of smoke and dust. It’s dawn. The storm passed hours ago, and now all that’s left is what we saved.

What we chose to save.

Katya turns back once, just for a moment, and looks at the place she once called home.

Then she turns away for good.

And we walk.

Out of the house that tried to kill her.

And into the world we’ll build from the ashes.

Together.

The last child steps past the threshold, feet dragging slightly as Katya squeezes his shoulder and sends him down the long gravel path where Ana and Noah are already helping load them into waiting vans. Roman gives a nod from the tree line, watching, always calculating, but his stance has softened.

The worst is over.

But Katya doesn’t move.

Not yet.

She stands just beyond the archway, where the ornate marble floor gives way to dirt and broken stone.

Her spine is straight. Her chin high. Smoke clings to her like memory.

The wind tugs at her gown, now stained and frayed, yet she looks like something carved out of the bones of goddesses.

Not fragile. Not clean. But holy in her rage.

I watch her from a few paces behind, the weight of her mother no longer in my arms, now resting gently in the van, wrapped in warmth and care Katya never had growing up.

And still, she doesn’t look back.

She lifts a silver lighter from her pocket. Not flashy. Just simple. Familiar. I’d seen her twist it in her fingers before, nervously, absently, back when this place still had power over her.

Now, she flicks it once.

Flame.

Small. Controlled. Alive.

She kneels at the threshold and places it beneath a torn piece of curtain soaked in alcohol—one of the first things Catalyst rigged when we swept the room. It catches quickly. Smoke curls up like a whisper.

Then the fire spreads.

Up the velvet, across the wall, licking at the banisters and the tapestries, devouring years of secrets and blood rituals, greed and quiet pain.

She watches it rise like it’s a performance she’s waited her whole life to see.

And then she turns to me.

No tears. No words. Just eyes that burn brighter than the inferno behind her.

“Ready?” I ask.

Her fingers slide into mine.

“I’ve been ready since the day he put a lock on my bedroom door,” she murmurs.

I draw her closer, the heat curling against our backs like a dragon exhaling its last breath. Her chest rises and falls. Her pulse beats steady beneath her skin.

She doesn’t look back.

Neither do I.

Together, we walk forward. Away from the Romanov name. Away from the graves we never dug. Away from the girl they tried to break and the man they never saw coming.

The manor burns behind us.

And Katya Romanov, no, Katya Kane , walks into her rebirth, hand in hand with me.

Not a prisoner.

Not a pawn.

But a queen made of ash and vengeance.

And I will follow her anywhere she leads.