A slow smile lit his eyes. “Really?” He arched his brows at her.
“Yes, really,” she said, undeterred. “I know you think it’s funny, but I refuse to be trapped into something whether I want it or not. It’s not good for you to think you’ve got me tied to you. I’m not a passive person and I wouldn’t want you to think I am.”
His laughter was soft, his breath warm against the nape of her neck. “Passive? You? I cannot imagine anyone, least of all me, making that mistake.”
She grinned, closing her eyes. “Razvan said I needed to curb my tongue and that if Shakespeare had met me, Kate wouldn’t be the famous shrew, Natalya would.”
“He said that, did he?” Vikirnoff was wise enough not to agree aloud. Not when her body nestled so comfortably next to his. “What else did Razvan have to say?”
“He said I needed to learn how to sew, to be more restful and soothing and to censor most of what I say.” There was laughter and affection in her voice.
“I cannot imagine.”
“I told him I did censor most of what I say. If he could read my mind . . .” Her voice trailed off, her lashes lifting so she could meet the amusement in his gaze. “Lucky you. You get to know the real me with no censorship.”
“Good night, Natalya.” He kissed her again and succumbed to the sleep of his kind, feeling very lucky to know the real woman.
15
“Razvan! Where areyou? I’m so happy. Come to me tonight. Where are you? Why won’t you answer me?” Natalya hurried down the cobblestone steps leading to the great garden. They always met in the garden if they’d been separated for the day, but she couldn’t find her brother anywhere.
“Why are you so happy?” The voice came from a distance and Natalya spotted her twin seated on the slabs of slate overlooking the fountain. He looked glum, his legs drawn up, his elbows on his knees, chin propped in hand. “Where have you been, Natalya? Do you even realize you deserted me? I didn’t know the safeguards and I had to see grandfather.”
That brought her up short. They never referred to him as grandfather. Xavier was supposed to be dead. If they talked about him he would punish them, and his punishments were terrible. Xavier. Their Grandfather. They were forced to live with him after their father had disappeared. Natalya frowned. Why couldn’t she remember Xavier when she was awake? She knew exactly what he looked like when she conjured up her dreams of her childhood, but not when she was in present time awake. How did that happen? “Don’t call him that. We are to call him Uncle. He might hear you.”
“Why didn’t you give me the safeguards, Natalya? How could you leave me wide open like that?” Razvan stood up slowly, turning as he did so, lifting his shirt. “Look what he did to me.”
Natalya halted instantly. “Oh, no! Razvan, why does he take it out on you when I make a mistake? I hate that. I hate that we’re so afraid to be together we have to meet like this. Did he take your blood?”
“He always takes my blood. If not mine, then he would take yours. You know that. I don’t care if he punishes me; he isn’t going to get your blood.”
“Why do we stay? Why are we allowing him to dictate to us and keep us small children? I have power. He can’t control me. He wants me to believe he can, but he can’t. You have the same power in you, Razvan. You’ve resisted him for years. Together we can break free of him.”
“We have different strengths, Natalya. You’re good at commanding the elements. You have a quick mind and can figure things out.”
“You come up with the ideas in the first place, Razvan. Without you, we would have been dead a long time ago.” The words caught at Natalya. She looked down at her hands. They weren’t the hands of a child, but those of a grown woman. Shock spread through her. She looked up at Razvan. “What happened to us?”
The form of the teenage boy shimmered, became translucent and a man’s image superimposed itself over the child. “You betrayed me. You chose the hunter, my enemy.”
Natalya shook her head, reaching out toward her brother. “I chose happiness, Razvan. That was something our grandfather didn’t understand, could never understand. What was the point of longevity? I’ve watched people die over and over, but they led happy lives while I just lived on and on alone with no one to share anything with. Neither sorrow nor joy.” Her arms dropped back to her side, empty.
“We have power beyond imagination.”
“No, we don’t. I’ve seen power beyond imagination, but it doesn’t matter to me. Those people who are born, live their lives together as a family and die surrounded by family; they know how to live. What do we do? What does he do? He hides from the world with his malevolent schemes, drinking blood to stay alive—for what? Why live so long without happiness? I choose to be happy, to share my life. I will not apologize or feel guilty for that.”
“Look at us, Natalya. You took our world and changed it. I’m no longer a boy and I’m fading. Would you really choose him over your brother? Your twin?”
“I will not leave him. Why would you think I’m trading one for the other? You’re in my dreams, Razvan. I will never forget you, never.” Her heart pounding, she studied the fading image of her twin, the harshness in the face of the man.
“You don’t need me. You have him.”
Natalya refused to sound as if she were pleading. Or asking permission. “He is alive and I am alive. I cannot sustain my life on dreams of a brother long gone from me. My love for him is different.”
Razvan’s face twisted with anger. “I forbid this! He is a hunter, hated by our family. Choose another.”
“This is a dream, only a silly dream. I choose Vikirnoff. I choose happiness,” Natalya said, determined to wake up. She would not allow her dreams to take on the twisted nightmares that sometimes invaded them. Razvan would want her happy. He wouldn’t be so angry with her over choosing to be involved in a relationship with someone who made her happy. Whatever occasionally crept into her dreams and corrupted them, she wasn’t going to put up with it anymore.
“Wait!” Razvan called frantically. “The safeguards. You didn’t give me the safeguards. I can’t weave them myself.”
Natalya turned back to him, frowning as she murmured the spell to him.
He smiled at her, beloved Razvan, already repeating the words to ensure he didn’t forget them. Pain flashed unexpectedly through her head, a terrible pressure that increased without mercy, and then, just as abruptly disappeared, leaving her shaken.
He shook his head. “It isn’t right. That’s not right. You aren’t telling me the truth.”
Natalya stared at her brother in sudden shock and dawning horror. “My god, Razvan, it’s you. It’s been you all along.” She gave a low, tormented cry. Her heart felt as if he had literally torn it from her chest.
She jolted into full consciousness with the sound of her cry still echoing in her ears. Tears spilled from her eyes and her breath came in great anguished sobs. “This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.” She pressed the back of her hand against her trembling mouth. Her stomach lurched and she crawled away from Vikirnoff on her hands and knees and was sick in the corner of the cave.
He woke instantly, moving with his preternatural speed, kneeling beside her, hand on her back, his body pressed against hers. “What is it? Tell me what has caused this distress.” Only an hour or so had passed, and the lethargy did not have him in its grip.
“A dream.” She sank into him, shivering with cold, wanting his arms around her. “Only it wasn’t my dream. It hasn’t been my dream for a long time only I didn’t know. I didn’t understand.”
Vikirnoff wrapped his arms around her tightly, pulling her into the shelter of his body. He rocked her gently, feeling her pain, a terrible hurt that couldn’t be comforted. “Tell me, ainaak enyém.” His voice was infinitely gentle.
Natalya was grateful he didn’t probe into her mind. She felt raw. Betrayed. Ashamed. Was it the legacy of her mage blood? Was it possible her whole family was so tainted? A small so
b escaped before she could choke it back. She huddled closer to Vikirnoff while he rocked her, stroking her hair and holding her close to him.
“He’s alive.”
“Xavier? We knew that.”
She shook her head, tightened her fingers around his wrist, needing to hold onto his solid strength while her world shattered around her. “Not Xavier. Razvan. He’s alive. He’s the Troll King.” Her hand crept down to rub her ankle. “And that means he’s in league with Xavier and Maxim. He’s in league with vampires.”
Vikirnoff brushed the top of her hair with a kiss and rubbed his cheek against the back of her head in an effort to soothe her. “How do you know this?”
“Remember when we were in the cave and Maxim attacked me, was able to get into my head so easily? My safeguards were gone. You replaced them, not me. You wove a different thread through my mind, not one I’ve ever used.”
“How does that make him alive?” Pain radiated off of her in waves but all Vikirnoff could do was hold her, feeling utterly helpless in the face of her anguish. All of his centuries of education, all of his vast power could not prepare him for this moment when she needed him the most. He could only hold her to him and feel her terrible grief.
“My dreams have always been of my childhood with him. It was the only time we were together. We separated to be safe from Xavier, but we’d meet in our dreams and share information. We did that for years. After he died, I summoned the dreams and they would repeat and it would comfort me. But somewhere along the line the dreams started changing. I don’t even remember when. We would talk about things pertinent now, in this time. I just assumed it was because I was lonely and I wanted to share my thoughts about things so the dreams changed to suit me.”
“That’s logical, Natalya. Things occurring during the day that prey on our minds often will creep into dreams. At least that’s what I’ve read.”
She shook her head, her eyes dark with pain. “It wasn’t like that. He would ask me questions about experiments just like in the old days, but these were new ones.”
“The challenges. You said you were challenged to make things work. I thought Xavier challenged you.”
“It was Razvan. Razvan has been using me, for I don’t know how long. It’s why I can’t remember things. Not Xavier. He didn’t have my blood.” A sob escaped, torn from her throat, the sound piercing Vikirnoff like a knife. “When I was a child, Razvan protected me from Xavier. He took the punishments and he went to the laboratories. He came up with ideas, but I figured out how to do them and gave Razvan the information. It was how we prevented him from receiving Xavier’s punishments. Xavier thought Razvan was the one who had the natural abilities. We tricked him for years into thinking that.” She wiped at the tears running down her face; the pain was so deep she felt as if her brother had torn out her heart. She pressed her hand there, trying to still the agony.
“And you believe somewhere over the last few years, Xavier managed to recruit Razvan to his side?” Vikirnoff kept his voice strictly neutral. Natalya was so devastated and he was helpless in the face of her suffering. He snapped his teeth together hard, rage building in spite of his effort to be calm. His arms tightened. He wanted to take away all of her pain, protect her from any further hurt, but Natalya was not a woman to wrap in cotton. She would face this in her way. On her own terms.
“He had to have. I don’t know how. I don’t even know why. Living a long time without happiness sucks. Why would either of them want that?”
His arms tightened, sheltering her even closer to him. “I have no idea. But are you certain, Natalya? Is it possible you really were discussing your everyday thoughts in your dreams?”
“You provided the safeguards and he couldn’t reach me. He couldn’t track me. That’s why the Troll King didn’t show up when you were fighting the vampires. It was so strange that he wasn’t there.” She raked her fingers through her hair in sheer agitation. “That bugged me. He’d been there every other time. He didn’t have the advantage of being able to read my mind. He couldn’t find me.”
“Because I used a completely different safeguard, one unfamiliar to him.”
“That first morning, after the Troll King marked me and I brought you to my room, he knew. You were already able to get past all my shields, which by the way, are incredibly strong, but Razvan had removed them. That’s how the shadow warrior was able to get in. I set the safeguards in the room, not you. And that’s why I didn’t sense him in the ground, even when he was attacking me in the cave.” Again she rubbed her ankle. “I was only aware of the actual attack after the poison was already on my leg.”
“And when we were running down the stairs in the cave, I sensed him running parallel to us, but he confused you, making you believe he was under us.”
Natalya nodded her head, trying not to shake with the sudden cold settling into the very bones of her body. “He’s alive, Vikirnoff. And he’s orchestrating something very bad here.”
“And he and the vampires want the book your father stole. Xavier and Razvan need the book to complete their plans.”
“But my father hid it from them. And Razvan knows I can touch objects and see things so they’ve been waiting until the right moment to acquire the book in order to proceed.” She pressed her fingertips into her aching temples. “I provided them with the way to do this.” She tapped her ankle. “Razvan challenged me and I made it happen. He used my own work against me. How ironic is that?”
“I am sorry, ainaak enyém, I know how much you love him.” He held her tightly, breathing for her, feeling the pain knifing through her heart and praying he wouldn’t have to be the one to kill her brother.
“I know I’m right, Vikirnoff. He’ll come after us with everything he has now. He knows that I know. I didn’t mean to give myself away, I was just so shocked.” She spread her hands out in front of her. “I’m so sorry. If only I’d thought to play along with him. I could have gotten us information.”
Vikirnoff took her hand, pressed a kiss into her palm, her knuckles, the tips of her fingers. “Do not apologize. Not now, not ever. Your reaction is entirely justified.”
“But he’ll try to kill you.”
“He has been trying to kill me.” He smiled against the nape of her neck. “You thought about killing me. I seem to bring that out in people.”
She tried to smile, appreciating that he would make such an effort with her, but she couldn’t get past how obtuse she’d been. “I should have handled it better.”
“Betrayal is never easy to handle and there is no right way to accept it. It doesn’t matter now. We are going to be okay.”
Natalya was silent for a long time. He could hear the beat of her heart begin to accelerate. She turned her face up to his, one hand reaching back to catch him around the neck as she looked into his eyes. “Exchange blood with me.”
His own heart began to pound wildly, matching the rhythm of hers. “I thought we were not going to take any chances that you can’t access the memories of the knife.”
“If I won’t be able to find the book, neither will they. Neither side will have it and that’s probably a good thing. Anything Xavier made and sealed with the blood of three magical species is no doubt powerful, deadly and too dangerous for anyone to try to wield.”
Vikirnoff took a deep breath and let it out. There it was. Total commitment. There would be no going back once she converted. She was tied to him now, but that last step, that important difference would seal her to him and his kind for all time. He wanted her to choose that path for herself. Not to escape from who she was.
“Natalya . . .” What could he say? He could deny her nothing, especially now when pain was her world and she was so shattered. “If we do not know where the book is, how can it be protected? What if they find a psychic woman with your talent to help them find the book? We need to destroy it.”
“How can we destroy the book? If it could have been destroyed so easily, then my father would have done so.”
“You have a good point. I do not know the answer to that, Natalya, but I think all Carpathians would sleep better knowing our prince had the care of the book rather than knowing it was floating around somewhere the vampires could find it.”
“What if the book corrupts those who touch it? Power corrupts.”
“That is something we do not have to think about yet, Natalya. The truth is, you want to exchange blood with me not because you are committed to me, to our relationship, but because you believe something is wrong with you.”
The gentleness in his voice made her want to weep and she turned her face away from his so he wouldn’t see tears glittering in her eyes. “It isn’t what you think.”
“It is, ainaak enyém, you think your blood is tainted and you wish to escape from it. Not all of the mages were evil. Most were kind and intelligent and so generous. Our people were friends. Even Xavier, at one time, was well respected and a tremendous help to all who sought his advice. You said yourself power can corrupt. I do not know how it happened, but it was not the blood running through his veins.”
She pulled out of his arms and made her way to the small waterfall, catching the water in her hand to rinse her mouth. She was still so cold. She couldn’t seem to find warmth in spite of the natural heat in the cave.
Vikirnoff could feel her anguish and cursed his own inadequacy at taking her pain from her. There was no way to ease betrayal, no way to kiss and make her better. His throat was raw with the need to help her, but he couldn’t undo this terrible tragedy.
“Maybe it wasn’t his blood, Vikirnoff, but I’m tied to them. They invaded my mind. My mind. They removed memories and planted stories. They traded on my love for my brother and corrupted my good memories of him.” She ran her hand over her ankle again. “And they put parasites in my body. I don’t want them to know me. I don’t want them to ever crawl inside my mind again.”
Christine Feehan 5 CARPATHIAN NOVELS Page 105
