by Sela Carsen
Chapter Eleven
Rodion pushed the door open with effort, the solid fir heavy and built to last. Built to absorb magic and repel those who weren’t invited. Deep glossy red paint was trimmed in brilliant gilded detail – a reflection of nature, with fantastic animals not found in the mortal world. Unicorns, firebirds, domovoy, and leshy. Creatures both beautiful and terrifying, and some that were both. Artistic swirls and patterns dazzled the eye, drawing the attention, and with it, pulling down magical defenses.
He blinked and shook his head. “Don’t look at the door too closely. It has magic of its own.”
Carina nodded. She thought he hadn’t noticed how much pain she was in. His brave woman. The lines around her mouth had deepened, her lips pale and pinched, but she made not a word of complaint. Even if she had, he would have admired her. After a day that had begun innocently with coffee, to have come so far with such a curse laid on her, she had earned the right to say whatever she wanted.
But she stood firm by his side and walked through the door with him, armed with no more than a bag that held as much mystery as the room they walked into.
Like the nave of one of the onion-domed churches of his homeland, the space they entered soared above them. Columns lined the sides, the spaces there interspersed with fantastic statuary of magical beings like those depicted on the door, savage and lovely and cold. Each one was carved out of swirled pale marble, watching like ghosts.
“Are those real?” she whispered. “Are those statues, or are they… were they…?”
His gut clenched. They could be the work of a madly talented artist, but as he looked more closely, each one held the same look in their eyes – terror, horror, and pain. And every single one of them had swirls of black ink all over their bodies.
They weren’t statues. They were living flesh made stone.
“Don’t look, Carina. We’re not here for them.”
She nodded, but he saw the tears in her eyes, grief for the victims who had come before.
On the platform at the end of the nave, in front of the massive, wall-sized icons that depicted nothing holy, lay an altar. On top of the embroidered altar cloth lay a long pillow. And on that pillow, lay a sword.
Gebil. The sword wielded by Koschei the Deathless, who wished to rule over all the Rus on the fae side of the border he had guarded down in Volshev.
The sword was dedicated to death. Not conscious on its own, it still held the will of its master in its blade.
And he, apparently, had shards of it embedded in his bones.
“I suppose this at least explains some of the anger I’ve felt since my injury.”
“Really? We all thought you were just having trouble dealing with it.”
“I was. I admit that. But there were times when it felt like something was riding me. Pushing me to rages that left me exhausted and a little frightened.”
Carina rested a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry. If I’d known, maybe I could have helped.”
“I don’t think so. I’m just glad there are only small shards in my bone. Anything bigger and I might have hurt you if you’d tried.” He squeezed her hand lightly.
“So do we have a plan here, or are we winging it?”
He would have answered her, but he was interrupted.
A skeletal being draped in the rich robes of a king stepped out from behind the veiled Royal Door between the icons. His laugh echoed through the empty space, ringing strangely off the pillars and statues along the sides, filling the hollow dome above, before it fell back to them, having gathered emptiness on its travels.
He wore a tall crown, tufts of thin white hair sticking through the peaks. Flickering candlelight showed the jewels glinting dully through the film of smoke from the harsh incense that filled the air.
But his eyes reflected nothing. No light, no life. Nothing but neverending darkness.
“Have you brought what you stole from me?”
The words brought a painful chill to his skin, but he stepped forward. “I stole nothing, Lord Koschei. The pieces of Gebil were gifted to me.”
“A hard gift.”
“But a gift nonetheless.”
“Then you will return it to me.” The voice pierced his ears until he imagined he could feel blood running out of them.
Koschei was the stuff of terrifying childhood tales. He was the evil that would come and steal you in the night, take you away to eat you, drain away your life, and drink your blood so that he would never die. But Rodion hadn’t been afraid of fairy stories for many years.
“You would steal it from me, Lord Koschei? Without honor? Without payment? Giving it back to you will come at a cost.”
The one thing Rodion had learned from all those scary stories was that respect for powerful creatures in the Rus was paramount. No matter what position they occupied on the moral ladder, it was always a bad idea to be rude. But he also knew that if he didn’t command respect for himself, he would lose the battle before it was ever fought.
The old man, his skin so thin his bones showed through, ran his fingers through his stringy beard.
“And what would you have as payment, young bogatyr?”
“The cure for a curse, my lord. Your servant, Nazar, placed the proklyat’ye smerti on this woman. I wish for it to be removed.”
When those black eyes moved from him to Carina, Rodion felt as if a weight had been lifted from him. But then he immediately wanted it back. After all she’d been through, he wasn’t sure Carina was up to the strain.
But she proved him wrong. Again.
He was going to have to get used to that.
She pulled herself up and looked Koschei the Deathless, the most fearsome entity in all the Rus fae – aside from Baba Yaga, herself – straight in the eye, and nodded.
“Show me your curse, seer.”
She glanced over at Rodion, and he nodded. They had to show Koschei they were serious. At his gesture, she pulled up the sleeve of her shirt, although she hardly needed to. The deadly black ink covered her arm from shoulder to wrist, curling even over the back of her hand. And above the sleeve, the tendrils crawled up the side of her neck.
“Nazar does good work,” chuckled the old monster.
Only the clutch of Carina’s fingers on his arm held him back from striking Koschei. The madman noticed, and his chuckle became a cackle.
“I see why Nazar went for her, and not for you. Far more painful this way.”
“He didn’t go for her,” he spat back. “He missed. We’re only here because he missed.”
“Either way, pain all around.”
Rodion slashed the air abruptly with his hand. “Enough. We made it here. We fulfilled the terms of the curse. Now cure her.”
“Ah, ah, ah.” Koschei shook a bony finger at him. “You’re not done yet. You have not yet returned the shards of Gebil.”
The bony sorcerer stepped aside and spread his arm toward the altar.
A force like a giant hand wrapped around Rodion’s body. The moment it touched him, he felt his power drain away, leaving him gasping at the emptiness inside. It drew him in, dropping him on the platform, in front of the raised table. He didn’t even bother fighting. This was his destiny. His sacrifice so she would live.
He heard Carina cry out his name, and he twisted around to look back at her.
She was on her knees, one arm held out to him, and tears streaked her beautiful face. Tears for him. She’d done that too often today. Wept in pain because of him.
Desperate to give her something other than grief, he gave her the truth. “I love you, Carina. I’ll make this right for you.”
And then the pain took him.
In a haze of agony, he felt his arm burn as if someone was stabbing him with a red-hot poker.
He looked at his arm. Someone was stabbing it with a red-hot poker.
A hideous little being with leathery wings and too many teeth gleefully dug into his scar with a massive awl glowing with heat.
Rodion s
creamed. Blood poured down his arm as the hole the little monster was digging grew deeper. The smell of burning flesh seared his nostrils, triggering his gag reflex. He choked and coughed and held onto consciousness with everything he had.
And through the shreds of skin and muscle, three tiny specks rose. Crimson dripped off of them until they reflected a metallic glimmer in the candlelight.
The shards of Gebil that had been embedded in his arm during that fateful battle.
As if magnetized, they floated toward the sword, finding their place in the nicked blade. They settled in with an almost audible clang, and the sword… vibrated. It shimmered in a wave of darkness the color of spilled blood before it settled back onto the altar.
Rodion felt himself weakening. Even a charodey could die if he lost enough blood, and his was pumping out from the massive wound in his arm. It didn’t matter. He’d made a promise to Carina to make this right, and he was going to keep it.
And the only way to fulfill that oath was to destroy the sword that had started it. He knew he couldn’t kill Koschei. The man wasn’t called “the Deathless” just because it sounded scary. His soul was hidden far beyond anything Rodion could find.
But Gebil was only a sword. Not an immortal.
Gathering everything that was left of his strength, he called out the phrase he’d taught Carina before they had walked through the door.
“Osvoboditye drakona!”
Silence filled the room, drowning out the last echo of his words. The creature drilling through his arm stopped digging and Koschei’s grating laugh died off.
In their place, a whoosh of displaced air swept through the space, blowing out the candles and bringing with it the dry scent of a hot, clean desert breeze.
They saw the light before they heard the scream. And they heard the scream before they felt the heat.
The dragon’s wings blocked out all light except what came from his muzzle, brilliant and golden, touched with red.
Gebil was caught directly in the heart of the dragonfire. For long moments, it withstood the heat, slowly beginning to glow until it added its own heat to the conflagration. Brighter and brighter it shone until it began to consume itself. Flames arose from the blade as it warped and melted, the metal oozing its way down the altar to pool on the floor. There, the liquid boiled and bubbled until it turned to steam and ash.
When the last bit of it blew away on hot air, it was as if a vacuum of power was released. A sonic blast of magic exploded through the room, highlighting the dragon that took up most of the space in the castle before it faded away.
The prized sword of Koschei the Deathless was no more.
Rodion tried to roll away, but flame kissed his bleeding arm, burning away nerve endings until he felt heat but no pain.
His minuscule torturer turned to ash in a blink. Koschei’s robes were in flames, and the fire reflected the evil in the old man’s eyes. The clothing burned away, and his skeletal figure, still monstrously strong, was revealed. He stood within the fire and laughed again. Not an old man’s weak cackle, but a boom.
“I fulfilled my end of the deal, Lord Koschei,” called out Rodion. “Uphold your honor!”
Koschei sneered. “We’ll play this game again, Charodey Czernovitch. If there’s anything left of you to play with.”
“No,” he whispered. He didn’t have anything left to bring back the evil wizard. Carina would die.
And it would be his fault.
Chapter Twelve
Carina had never even let a cat out of the bag, much less a dragon, so when Rodion called out the signal, she had opened the bag made from the weave of her life. Ivan Tsvetkov, retired MMA fighter and dragon shifter, stepped out. She’d laughed weakly.
“Can you imagine what would happen if I spilled the beans?”
The massive, bald man she’d met less than an hour ago, had looked at her strangely, but she’d waved away his concern.
“Sorry. Weird sense of humor. I’ll die and my last words will be a terrible pun.”
The man snorted and shifted, his dragon form snorting a gout of flame before he turned away to do his job, which was to melt the evil sword.
After they got Nazar sorted and taken away, there had been only one thing left to do. Get the shards back to the sword, and exchange that service for Carina’s cure.
It had sounded so easy. So clean and simple. Yes, the timing would be tricky, but she hadn’t allowed herself to think much beyond that.
Asking for Ivan’s help had been the easiest thing they’d done all day. The giant Russian fighter had shown up at Daria’s house with his girlfriend, and he’d immediately agreed to putting a spike in Koschei’s wheels.
“I remember the stories of Koschei the Deathless. I thought I’d left them behind in Russia, but evil goes wherever it can creep, da? Of course I will help.”
He’d barely blinked when they’d asked him to climb into Carina’s totebag. No one thought he’d be able to fit his toe inside, much less anything else. But as he stepped in with the other foot, his eyes had widened when he fit without even touching the edges. Monalisa had unsuccessfully stifled a giggle as she watched her giant boyfriend disappear into a handbag.
“Now that is some handy magic, girl. Where can I get one?”
Carina had just smiled mysteriously, closed the bag and slung it over her shoulder as if it weighed almost nothing.
Their plan had worked. Mostly. Rodion was dead. They hadn’t discussed it, but they both knew that if he ended up anywhere near that altar when Ivan did his thing, he wouldn’t survive the dragonflame.
And she’d known she wasn’t walking out of there alive. She’d shown Rodion where the ink had spiraled over her arm and neck, but she hadn’t let him see where it ate deeper into her body, consuming her bit by bit. Her blood burned like acid as it pumped through her body.
But Gebil was destroyed, and that was important. The plan had mostly worked.
Now she lay on the floor of an evil castle filled with the dead creature statues that would keep her body company throughout eternity, and she was glad she’d never have to hear Rodion scream like that ever again. No pain anymore for him. For either of them.
An explosion of magic rolled over her when the sword died. The black stopped its toxic spread, but it was too late. Her heart bumped weakly in her chest and the effort it took to breathe was hardly worthwhile.
She couldn’t see what was happening on the altar with a giant dragon’s butt in her way, so she let herself rest. There was nothing left to do now. The sword was gone. Rodion had kept his promise to make this right.
A movement off to the side caught her eye. In the back, someone seriously skinny and alarmingly naked scurried away from the flames. Koschei. She wondered how he’d survived, then remembered that he was, after all, “the Deathless.” When Rodion had outlined the plan, sorry, the “mission parameters,” as he’d called them. When he’d done that, Koschei’s death wasn’t on the list. They’d been concerned with the sword, so really, it had all worked out. But she didn’t want her last vision on this earth to be that awful man’s scrawny butt, so she turned her head to the other side.
The statues were moving. Life flowed over them, melting away the cold marble and the black poison swirls like water pouring out of a mountain spring. She smiled and let her mind float with the pretty hallucination.
A lady with green, leafy things in her hair came to kneel beside Carina. And someone who looked like a friendly Sasquatch. A big frog man stared at her, then hopped wetly away. He hadn’t looked very pleasant, but she told herself it wasn’t right to judge people… frog men… on their appearance. Maybe frog ladies thought he was hot.
She was glad they weren’t trapped anymore. They were going to be all right.
She rolled her head back to see what was happening, but there was still a dragon there. He wasn’t breathing fire anymore, though. That was just regular fire, burning down the castle.
Carina almost smiled. Not her circus, not h
er monkeys. Not anymore. Rodion was already gone and she was going to be with him, wherever they ended up.
She wasn’t even in pain anymore, which was pleasant, since she’d been hurting all day. All she wanted to do was lay here for a little while until it was over. Instead, someone gently scooped her up and put her down on something warm and slightly furry and moving.
Not quite how she’d planned on going, but it was all out of her hands now. Carina closed her eyes and quietly, she died.
Chapter Thirteen
They needed a bigger bed, decided Rodion.
He lay next to Carina on the queen-sized mattress in his sister’s guest room, and decided that when they were married, they would need something bigger than this.
He had awakened a while ago, but didn’t want to move yet. It felt too good to be alive, lying next to the woman he loved.
He spent the time arguing with himself.
What kind of idiot fell in love in a day? Obviously, he was that kind of idiot. He’d known Carina for a while. He had liked her and thought her pretty before when he was broken, but he wasn’t broken anymore. Or was he? Normal people didn’t go from “Hey, you’re kind of cute” to “Please bear my children” in less than twenty-four hours. Not that they were normal people. Maybe it was different for the magical. After all, Daria and Trick had been inseparable since the day they met.
So was this love, or just infatuation? How did he know that this feeling wouldn’t fade now that the excitement and danger were gone? He couldn’t be sure, he supposed, but as he studied her beautiful face and the tendrils of bright pink and purple that threaded through her hair, this didn’t feel like a whim.
For one, she was too strong and solid to inspire something as lukewarm as a whim. The moment he’d let himself, the thin thread of attraction he’d let himself feel before had swelled into a lifeline. He could feel her connected to the solid center of him. She was woven into his magic, his blood, his life.
He had told her he loved her yesterday. Technically, he’d shouted it as he was pulled to certain death by an evil fae lord, but in the clear, quiet light of early morning, with the sun gently breaking through the gray of dawn, would she believe it was still true? And most of all, did she love him, too?