Soren and Lev had always stood watch outside the chapel door while Ivan had been forced to face their tormentor for her pleasure. This time Soren approached the vaulted chamber alone. There was no time to tell Ivan what he planned to do. Besides, he couldn’t risk his alpha deciding to stop him. Best to barrel ahead with his thoughts focused on saving the woman—the witch—in his arms.
The elaborately carved door was open when he finally reached it. Anna hadn’t made a sound since she’d moaned when he’d picked her up from her sickbed. Patrice hadn’t interfered. She knew this was Anna’s only chance to recover. The route had been familiar to him even though he traversed it on two legs instead of four. He didn’t have to look at the hallways and corridors—he navigated by habit. His attention had been wholly focused on Anna’s pale face. Two bright patches of color high on her cheeks stood out starkly against her white skin. Her rosy lips and her dark brown brows also startled in contrast.
She would look like a perfect sleeping beauty if it weren’t for the dark blood staining her shoulder and arm where her injuries had already soaked through the fresh bandages once more.
Near death, not sleeping.
They could never be together, not as the sword intended them to be, but the idea that she would leave this world before him, when he’d protected her for so long, was unfathomable. He could sense her letting go. He cradled her close to his broad chest and his pounding heart, but he couldn’t offer his ferocious life for hers. The bone-deep awareness he had of her deteriorating condition propelled him toward the one thing he’d intended to avoid for the rest of his life: the Ether.
He held his breath as he stepped across the threshold of the chapel into the gem-colored light of the sun filtered through the stained glass windows that ringed the vaulted chamber. The soft light fell on Anna’s face, brushing it with a colorful palette that didn’t come from within.
His vibrant companion who had been the only light in the darkness of his existence for centuries was almost extinguished.
Soren looked from Anna’s face to the mirror that stood in the center of the room. Ivan hadn’t destroyed it...yet. He’d sent the Light Volkhvy away. He must have intended to close the portal for good once they were all gone. But not yet, thank God. Not yet.
Anna was too weak to take herself to Vasilisa’s island. Soren had to help.
He was no witch, but Vasilisa had manipulated his family’s genes. There was Volkhvy enchantment in his blood. He hoped his shape-shifter blood combined with Anna’s Volkhvy heritage would be enough to help him use the mirror to get her to her mother.
Soren crossed the room in several large strides and stood in front of the glass. His and Anna’s reflections shimmered as if he looked into water instead of a mirror’s flat surface. He couldn’t see their faces and shapes distinctly. He and she blended into one figure as the silvery ripples flowed and swirled.
“Wait,” a loud voice said from the doorway as Soren lifted his leg to step into the vertical river of seemingly molten glass.
He looked back over his shoulder to see Ivan Romanov stride into the room. His elder brother’s shoulders were almost as broad as the doorway. Soren’s chest tightened when Ivan paused and crossed himself, even though the chapel hadn’t been used for religious services since their mother had died. Ivan had been the one constant in Soren’s life for as long as he could remember. He’d been the last Romanov standing even after Soren had followed his brother into a shift he’d thought would be eternal.
None of them would still be alive if it hadn’t been for Ivan. And the curse wouldn’t have been broken if it hadn’t been for his mate, Elena Pavlova, the tiny dancer with a warrior’s heart who had crossed the centuries and climbed a mountain to find the black wolf.
“Don’t try to stop me, Ivan. She’s dying. I have to save her,” Soren said.
“Vasilisa can’t be trusted. I’m not sure about her daughter. But I can’t risk Elena and the baby. The mirror has to be destroyed. The portal has to be closed. I came here to close it,” Ivan said. But he stayed where he was. He didn’t cross the room. His hands were two large fists, but he held them down and still at his sides.
“Once I’ve taken her through, then you can destroy it. I understand. I want you to protect the baby and Bronwal. Protect Elena. It’s what we were made to do,” Soren said.
“You don’t know what you’ll find on the other side. Vasilisa’s island is hidden from the outside world. You won’t be welcome. She made us her champions, but we were never the same as the Light Volkhvy. We were her monsters. Her useful pets. Our father was wrong. He never should have gone against her to try to steal the throne. He shouldn’t have destroyed the village that sheltered Bell. He shouldn’t have kidnapped her,” Ivan said. He stepped forward one pace, then two as he continued, “But he did it for a reason. He wanted more. He challenged the Light Volkhvy queen because being her champion wasn’t enough. He wanted to be king. You’ll be in danger there even if you go to save Anna. The curse might be broken, but Vasilisa is still the queen. She says she regrets what she’s done, but she will always see us as a threat to her rule. So she will always be a threat to those we love.”
Soren looked down at Anna’s flushed cheeks. Her breath still came through her parted lips, but it was light and quick, barely noticeable. Ivan had paused again, but two more strides would bring him close enough to stand in the way. Soren was big and strong. The Volkhvy manipulation of his genetic makeup had caused him to be over six feet tall. He’d been born in a time when men regularly fought and died in hand-to-hand combat. His time spent in wolf form had only increased muscle mass that had already been developed over years of hard training.
Ivan was bigger.
But it wasn’t his size that made him the alpha. He commanded respect and honor beyond his height and breadth because he was the head of the Romanov family, and he had earned that title over decades of continued dedication and determination. He was Bronwal. He was home. He had been home to Soren even after all hope of home was gone.
“I’m going. Destroy the mirror after I’m gone,” Soren said quietly.
He defied his alpha to save the woman in his arms. He would risk his life for hers, too. Without pause. Soren accepted the inevitability of having to give her up, but he would never let her die.
“Let them go,” Elena said. He and Ivan turned to face her. She stood in the kaleidoscope light of a thousand chips of colored glass forming saints’ figures, holding the hilt of the sapphire sword in her hand. It wasn’t drawn. The blade hung in a scabbard at her waist. Its sheathed tip reached beyond her knee. The sapphire winked with a gleam of sparkling blue that came and went with her every subtle move. “He has to save her. The emerald sword has chosen.”
Soren’s attention flew from Elena to his brother. Ivan’s whole body stiffened. He turned back toward the mirror and the man who held the dying witch to his chest.
“That isn’t why I’m helping her. I rejected the emerald sword a long time ago,” Soren said. He turned to fully face Ivan and Elena. With his back toward the mirror, he spoke directly to his brother. “It won’t choose my mate.” His words were a promise, but he took a step backward. He wasn’t lying. Anna would never be his mate, but he would always be her protector.
“The sword doesn’t decide, Soren. The sword reveals,” Elena said.
The cold embrace of the mirror began to absorb his body.
“No!” Ivan exclaimed. He leaped forward, and his leap, even in his human form, was a sight to behold.
It was the last thing Soren saw as he calmly stepped backward one more time into the swirling glass of the mirror’s face. It flowed over him and Anna like thick frigid mercury. The high pressure of its sucking embrace stole his breath. It enveloped with a heaviness that was a squeeze, not a splash. As it flowed, it sought access. It rose up over his back and shoulders. Liquid filled his ears and spread up over his cheeks and
beard to flood his nose and mouth with suffocating fluid.
He didn’t fight. Anna didn’t move. The silvery liquid flowed over her, as well. He watched as long as he could. He looked down at her face until his eyes were submerged and he couldn’t see anymore.
Like a man who had filled his pockets with rocks before jumping off a cliff into a winter river, he merely accepted as the mirror swept him away. For Anna. He could no longer feel her against his chest. His body had become the liquid mercury that consumed it. The mirror took them, but it was the energy from the Ether it channeled that swallowed them, body and soul.
* * *
When she channeled the power of the Ether with her Volkhvy abilities, Anna was in control—or as controlled as she could be with her level of experience. She’d been as traumatized as everyone else by the Ether that claimed Bronwal again and again during the curse. She’d been powerless against the frigid vacuum that caused them to dematerialize. She hadn’t known the ability to use the Ether’s energy was in her blood.
Even unconscious, she felt when the power of the Ether swallowed her. She felt as the man who held her disappeared. That mattered more than her own disappearance, for some reason. It was a nightmare she had to stop, but she couldn’t wake up.
Vasilisa had taught her for months on the island. In grueling training sessions, Anna had used every ounce of her strength to harness and then begin to manipulate the energy the Ether expelled. It was worse than playing with fire. It was inviting the fire into your soul. Except the power didn’t burn. It filled and froze. The trick was in not letting the energy from the Ether’s Dark vacuum crowd everything and everyone else out.
And, most importantly, keeping a warmth for humanity in your heart.
Her mother had lost nearly all that warmth during the centuries she’d thought her daughter had been murdered by Vladimir Romanov. It was only in discovering Anna alive and in seeing the witchblood prince completely filled by the Ether’s Dark energy that Vasilisa had come back from the cold.
Power could fill to the point that it overflowed and consumed.
Anna tried to scream. She tried to summon the lessons her mother had taught her. But she’d lost too much of her Volkhvy blood. She was near death, and even the threat of her red wolf’s annihilation couldn’t wake her.
The Ether had always claimed them with an inevitability they had learned not to fight. She had often sat on the ramparts of Bronwal with her wolf as the sun set on the last day of the month during their materialization. They hadn’t had to speak. Farewell for now until we meet again and again and again pounded in their hearts.
This time was different. She was too sick to understand why it was happening. She only knew Soren hated the Ether and he’d vowed to never be taken by it again, no matter what. She willed her dying cells to fight for him, to help him, but her abilities wouldn’t respond.
The cool nothingness of the Ether would have been soothing. She hurt. From wounds seen and unseen. But her resistance caused white-hot agony to consume her instead. The last drops of the powerful blood she’d inherited from Vasilisa didn’t help her help Soren escape. The last thing she knew before she vanished was agony—for failing her red wolf and for trying to reject the Ether that would save her.
Chapter 10
He materialized on the edge of a cliff with tears on his face, but the wind coming off the sea dried them. It was a stiff wind, stinging and harsh. His hair whipped around his face, each strand like a russet lash. He was able to see through the wild mane to the woman who had materialized with him. He hadn’t let her go, by God. Even when he could no longer feel his hands and arms. In the Ether, you were nothing, but if you were strong you could hold on.
He’d always held before.
His nightmares rose from the fear of not being sure he always would.
He was on his knees. He got to his feet as the wind fell. The weather around him was suddenly still and calm. He’d materialized to a cold, windswept ocean, but he rose to the warm embrace of a magically created Mediterranean climate. He’d heard of Vasilisa’s island, Krajina. She maintained its secrecy and artificial atmosphere with her Volkhvy abilities. The mirror must have disrupted the spell long enough to deposit him and Anna, and then the spell had reformed. He’d had only a glimpse of a stormy sea. Now he looked out over a calm, sunlit bay.
Anna’s skin appeared worse than pale. Her cheeks were translucent in the bright light. With all his strength, he was powerless to save her from the damage his brother’s bite had done.
And still he held on.
He turned away from the cliff to search for the beings he couldn’t trust. He had no other options. Nowhere else to go. He stumbled to a halt after several strides, because the Light Volkhvy queen rode to meet them.
He didn’t recognize the creature that bore her on its back. No doubt there were other species beyond man and wolf that she’d tampered with in order to enslave them.
Like a horse, her cream-colored mount had four legs. Unlike a horse, a golden mane encircled its head, and its tail was a short starburst of similar gold bristles. Its shiny brown hooves were as big as dinner plates, and it stood taller than the black wolf would be if he were here. Soren recalled tales he’d heard as a child of a mythological beast called an Indrik, but this beast had no horn on its head and it made no sound. It also moved slowly, as if it was very old. He noted gray hair mingled in its gold mane and tail.
“You did this?” Vasilisa asked as the beast she rode halted and she slid off its back.
She was dressed in a long white gown that blended with the white hair flowing over her back and shoulders. The absence of color startled against the green vegetation behind her and the blue sky overhead.
“No,” Anna said. The sound was so soft he sensed it more than he heard it out loud. He looked from Vasilisa to Anna’s face. The queen continued to approach. She might strike him dead when she reached his side. But he could only care about how weak Anna sounded and what it must have cost her to speak.
“Shh, you’re home. Your mother is here,” Soren said.
Vasilisa stopped a foot away at his words. He could feel her intense attention on his face. But he didn’t look at the queen. He watched Anna instead. For signs of life, to memorize her last breaths—he wasn’t sure which. As he stared at Anna, four more Volkhvy arrived. They pulled a cart with large wooden wheels by two handles on either side. They were big and burly witches, but the cart moved inch by inch up the rise to the cliff.
“Lev attacked her. We bound her wounds, but they continued to bleed. There were no witches left at Bronwal. So I brought her to you,” Soren said.
“Ivan hasn’t destroyed the mirror,” Vasilisa said. She was a breathtakingly beautiful woman. Her white hair was shot through with silver strands that caused it to shimmer and gleam in the sun. Her eyes flashed, dark yet bright. The sunlight glittered on her pupils, causing a silvery outline around the obsidian edges. Her face was unlined, but there was harshness to her high cheekbones and the set of her jaw.
She was unaged, but she didn’t look young. Vasilisa somehow carried all the years of the curse on her shoulders. He noted the weight as she moved closer to touch Anna’s pale face. She was no longer graceful. Every step she took seemed an effort to push against something trying to hold her back—guilt, time or the Ether’s hunger? Had she used too much of its energy for too long?
“He let me use it one last time,” Soren said. “By now it’s crushed beneath his paws.”
The queen’s dark eyes quickly cut upward to look at his face. He could feel the weight she carried pressing against him. He didn’t back down, although his first instinct was one of retreat. He stood. He cradled Anna against his chest and he met the Light witch’s eyes. The cart came to a stop several yards away.
“You risk your life for hers,” Vasilisa said. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact. His life was i
n danger on Krajina. His brother had attacked the queen’s daughter. Once again, the Romanovs had tried to take the life of her child. If Anna died—and maybe even if she survived—he would be the first Romanov to feel the Light Volkhvy queen’s wrath...again.
“Help her,” he said. “You can deal with me later.”
“Bring her. Quickly. As only the red wolf can,” Vasilisa commanded.
In the artificial light of an impossibly warm sun, Soren froze. He’d vowed never to risk the shift again. He hadn’t risked it even when he hunted for Lev over the hills and forests of the Carpathian Mountains. Two legs had been a hardship, but he’d needed the pain and difficulty to distract him from the constant nightmares...and his memories of Bell.
“You weren’t wrong. She is dying. And I can’t help her here on this cliff,” Vasilisa said. She turned and pointed toward the interior of the island, where he could see a distant garden surrounding a sprawling Mediterranean-style palace of stucco and tile. How much of the Ether’s energy did Vasilisa channel to maintain her hidden island home?
He had no choice. He’d faced the Ether and he’d returned to himself again. He would return to his human form again once he used his wolf to help Anna. He moved to place his burden in the cart Vasilisa’s men had dragged slowly up the hill. It was no relief to let her go and step away. The back of the cart was lined with pillows and soft blankets, but he missed her against his chest. He couldn’t feel her heartbeat or see her slight respiration. As he backed away, Anna looked like she was in the deepest of sleeps.
She looked like she’d never wake up again.
Vasilisa mounted her horselike creature. It was too old and slow to pull the cart. The big witches who had pulled it up the hill were already headed back down. Soren had already made the decision to shift. He blinked. The earth trembled. Down below, the sea churned as the island quaked.
The shift was brutally physical. It wasn’t pretty. Bones shifted and reknit themselves into a giant canine form. Skin stretched and changed and, in his case, russet fur spread across his cheeks and chest, arms and legs until he was covered. The pain was intense, but so was the relief. The wolf was always there, deep within his heart. Every beat risked its escape. Every space in between beats was a moment’s longing for the wild that could be.
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