Legendary Wolf

by Barbara J. Hancock

  “My mother is going to open the case and wake her. She promised. She only waits for the right time,” Anna said.

  Soren had walked forward to place his hand against the cool, rough glass. Vasilisa’s power had crafted the coffin from the minerals in the rock from which it rose. The formation simply changed from dark granite to gray limestone speckled with mica to crystal to glass. The woman and baby hadn’t aged. They hadn’t changed. Madeline’s hair hadn’t faded or turned gray. The baby, Trevor, was in perfect repose, his tiny lips curved into a smile.

  “This is the most beautiful and the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen,” Soren said. His voice broke. He wasn’t ashamed. It was as if he’d been transported back to a time when he’d been at the edge of manhood, only to have the world he’d been growing into ripped away.

  He turned from his eerily unchanged sister-in-law to face the woman—the witch—who approached him, but his angry recriminations died on his lips when he saw the tears that trailed down her cheeks.

  Bell had never cried. At least not where anyone could see her. He was sure that Anna was the same. His chest was tight. His gut was clenched. His brother had searched the entire world for his family, but they’d been kept here, away from him and out of sight. They’d been stolen in the same way that Anna had been stolen from her mother.

  “She thought she was being merciful in comparison to what Vladimir had done to her child. To...me,” Anna said. “She could have killed them. An eye for an eye. She thought your father had killed me. Or she could have allowed the Ether to take the baby. He wouldn’t have been strong enough to resist. Madeline was her warrior, the bearer of the ruby blade. She spared her and Trevor out of love.”

  “If this is Volkhvy love, then the Romanovs are better off without it,” Soren said.

  He turned away from her as she approached and returned his fisted hands to the glass as if he would break it, but he simply held them against it as if he knew it was too late. That it should have been shattered long ago.

  * * *

  If this is Volkhvy love, then the Romanovs are better off without it.

  She didn’t flinch. It was a triumph. Besides, he was right. She could feel the potential for that kind of love humming beneath her skin. Especially when she was close to Soren Romanov. It was as if her Volkhvy abilities magnified what was already there. Theirs was a passionate race. Her mother had proved it. Anna proved it every second she was in Soren’s presence. Her tears had dried. Now her face was tight and the sea breeze made it feel raw. She came here often to be near Madeline and Trevor. She hadn’t expected to find Soren lying across their coffin. Her mother had promised to free them, but Vasilisa hesitated, because she feared what the white wolf might do once they were released. He was unpredictable and no longer human. He might be too wild for his wife to reclaim.

  “You knew I was trying to save my brother. To get him to come back home. Madeline and Trevor would help me. They need to return to Bronwal. He’ll come back to himself once his family is home. I know it,” Soren said.

  He straightened. She’d come to stand beside him. There was no chance they would disturb the bespelled mother and child behind the glass, but Soren spoke softly, as if he thought they might. She whispered, too. Because the peace of the garden’s heart seemed fragile. There was so much at stake.

  “Soren, you’re talking to the woman your feral brother almost killed. He tried to bite off my arm. He would have if I didn’t tap the Ether to transport us back to the castle and out of his reach,” Anna said. She wore a floral sundress and sandals. It wasn’t her usual kind of outfit. It wasn’t practical. She carried no weapons. It had been light and airy against her tender skin when she’d pulled it on.

  The man beside her seemed to notice her for the first time. His focus had been on the shock of his discovery. Now he turned to her. Had she come closer to him on purpose to draw his attention? She wasn’t sure. She only knew once his intense gaze fell on her, she wanted to run away. She had just recovered from a near-death experience. It wasn’t only her skin that was tender. She was vulnerable all the way to the deep, hidden hollow in the pit of her stomach. But, worse, she still remembered his kiss, even now. With poor Madeline and Trevor sleeping under glass beside them, her eyes still fell on his lips.

  “You’re healing,” Soren said. It wasn’t a question, but he suddenly lifted his hand to brush aside the loose sleeve of her dress. His touch was light. Barely there. She trembled anyway. The heat of his fingers transferred from those calloused pads to her sensitive flesh. Especially when he softly grazed over the reddened places where his brother’s fangs had punctured her skin.

  She released a long, shaky breath, trying to hide what his touch did to the hollow inside her. It had become molten. Filled with fire where only emptiness had been moments before. His hand fell away. She didn’t move to straighten her dress, because she was afraid her hand would shake.

  “I’m healing because I’m stronger than a human. If he bit Madeline or Trevor...” She hated to say it, but it had to be said.

  “Lev would never harm them,” Soren said. He wasn’t angry. He’d stepped closer while she’d been distracted by his touch. He looked down at her upturned face, as if he wanted to convince her that his brother wasn’t a monster.

  “I hope you’re right,” Anna said, softly. “But there was a time I thought he’d never harm me. His bite wouldn’t be venomous to his wife and child, but it would devastate all the same.”

  They shouldn’t be together. So close. So warm. Soren’s cheeks were flushed above his russet beard, and his eyes flashed with amber flames. From her eyes to her lips, his attention tracked, and she suddenly held herself very still. It would be so easy to lean into his muscular frame. To offer her mouth up for his taking.

  Madeline hadn’t kissed Lev in hundreds of years.

  Anna wasn’t sure if that made her kissing Soren, here and now, more impossible or more necessary. They’d been kept apart for so many Cycles, even though they’d been together. She’d longed to see his human face, but her longing had included desires she hadn’t even acknowledged to herself. She hadn’t only wanted to see him. She’d wanted to be with him. To feel his human arms wrapped around her waist. To look into his eyes as their lips came together.

  She’d experienced that now. And it was impossible not to want to experience it again.

  “You’re a witch. Madeline and Trevor are human,” Soren said.

  This time his voice rose to a regular volume. He had a deep timbre that was physical as much as audible. Standing as close as they did, she could feel the roughness of it as much as she could hear it. He was a man, but he held the potential for howls and growls within him, just out of range.

  His bark was worse than his brother’s bite.

  She stepped away. They both seemed to collapse a little as oxygen whooshed in between them. It seemed as if the air had been unnaturally still as they’d stood face-to-face, wanting to touch but refusing to give in to their desires.

  “So you think your brother was justified in his attack. That I deserved to be bitten,” Anna said.

  “I didn’t say that.” He’d fisted the hand that had touched her skin. Did he resist the warmth that had transferred from her shoulder to him?

  “You don’t have to say it. You feel it. But the red wolf leaped to my rescue. He didn’t hesitate. It’s your human form that sees me as a threat. Why is that, do you think?” Anna asked.

  She wasn’t wearing her gloves. He hadn’t noticed until now. Perhaps he’d thought she was still too weak to channel the Ether. The sudden arcing green light on the tips of her fingers proved him wrong.

  Anna knew he’d enjoyed their kiss. She also knew she was right about him thinking all witches, including her, were dangerous. He’d saved her after Lev’s attack, but he didn’t think Lev had been wrong to attack her. He trusted the white wolf’s feral instincts more
than he trusted the connection between them. Maybe it was enchantment that drew them together. Maybe enchantment only called attention to what was already there. Either way, he couldn’t kiss her and then hurt her unless she allowed it.

  His lack of confidence in her control made her more determined than ever to exercise it. Over her powers and over herself.

  No more kisses would be much easier to implement than no more tears.

  Chapter 12

  Queen Vasilisa of the Light Volkhvy knew all about mistakes.

  She would live with the shock of finding her daughter alive and traumatized by her own actions for the rest of her long life. Every time she saw Anna, she was reminded of what she had done. Not only to her daughter, but to all the people of Bronwal.

  They had been her people, in spite of what their ruler had done.

  She should have exercised more mercy and restraint, but should haves wouldn’t set things right. Only action could begin to do that. She’d already offered all the help of the Light Volkhvy to Ivan Romanov and his warrior wife. The bearer of the sapphire sword had brought the black wolf back from the brink of madness, and now she helped him reclaim Bronwal from the deterioration the curse had caused.

  But they would continue to need Volkhvy help.

  It pained Vasilisa that the Romanovs had rejected her Volkhvy workers when Elena had discovered she was pregnant. She knew it pained her daughter to no longer be welcome in the place she had once considered her home, curse and all.

  Anna’s pain was her responsibility.

  Helping those she’d hurt, including the Romanovs who refused her help, would only appease her own pain. She couldn’t let their refusal stop her. They were distrustful. She couldn’t blame them. She had turned their trust and loyalty to ash when she’d unleashed the curse.

  They might never trust her again, but she could only hope and mend and knit together all the pieces her vengeance had rent asunder.

  Soren Romanov. The red Romanov wolf. Lev was Soren’s twin. They had been born only minutes apart and they’d rarely been separated since. Lev was the youngest brother, but Vasilisa favored the middle child, Soren, above all the others, because he had stood by her daughter’s side for centuries. When he’d used the mirror portal to bring Anna to Krajina for healing, he’d stood on the cliff overlooking the ocean, but his eyes had been focused on her daughter’s pale face. He had barely spared a glance for Vasilisa or her people or the surroundings.

  And yet, he rejected the Call of the emerald sword.

  He would deny his own heart rather than trust a witch, and that was Vasilisa’s fault. She had tainted the Light Volkhvy with her Dark use of the Ether’s energy. Now her daughter suffered for what she had done. Much like how Vladimir’s offspring had suffered for what he had done.

  Enough.

  Vasilisa went in search of her daughter, because she had received a report that she was nearly healed. She’d also ascertained that Anna and Soren were avoiding each other. The red wolf rose every morning and ran the perimeter of the island in his human form, as if he still searched for his lost white brother. He wasn’t searching. He was escaping. The palace must seem like a sumptuous prison to him, filled with Volkhvy who might go Dark at any time. Not to mention the enchanted connection between him and Anna.

  The sword only enhanced a connection between them that was as natural as breathing, but the red wolf wouldn’t accept that.

  She found Anna in a stone folly built on a smaller rise just below the palace itself. The folly sat above the tangle of the rose garden, for now, but one day, decades in the future, the thorny vines would reach it and twine around its columns and its octagonal red-tile roof.

  The center of the folly’s construction was solid white stucco. Around the stucco was a circular portico that resembled a merry-go-round, but instead of horses there were only empty spaces between the columns that held the roof until a wider gap on the ocean-facing side. In the wider gap, Anna sat on a swing made of red-lacquered wicker.

  Vasilisa’s heart warmed when she saw her daughter—until she noted the longing on Anna’s face. The young woman shuttered her emotions as Vasilisa approached, but not quickly enough. An observant witch with the experience of centuries behind her, Vasilisa wasn’t fooled.

  It wasn’t only the Romanovs who didn’t trust her.

  “You are feeling better,” Vasilisa said. She stood beside the swing rather than sit where she wasn’t welcome. The wind off the ocean blew her day dress around her legs. It was shorter than her usual garments for convenient walking around the island, but it was still a design that would have been favored at the turn of the nineteenth century in the outside world. Its skirt was full but swept back in a bustle. A thousand ivory buttons fastened from its high-necked bodice down to just below her knees and along the insides of both of her arms. At her cuffs, her hem and her neck, puffs of snowy lace fluttered in the breeze. Vasilisa liked pretty things. She always had. And vintage clothing design appealed to her love of aesthetics.

  Modern style was much too plain for someone who had lived through ages of much more intricate and artistic clothing.

  “I am. Thank you,” Anna replied. She continued to stare out over the rolling waves.

  Vasilisa had apologized. A million times. Yet still she had to bite her tongue to keep from apologizing again. Words were meaningless. Apologies only went so far. She had to fix this, and the only way she could do that was to force the red wolf and her daughter to spend time together.

  She’d made her share of mistakes, but she couldn’t allow Soren and Anna to suffer any more because of them.

  “I’ve waited until you were well enough to attend, but there are many Volkhvy on the island and your wolf’s wanderings make them nervous. He has to make an appearance tonight. We’ll have a dinner to celebrate your recovery,” Vasilisa said.

  She left no room in her tone for refusal. Anna finally took her attention from the sea. Her green eyes fell on Vasilisa’s face. They were so cool they made even a queen shiver.

  “He isn’t my wolf, Mother. He never will be,” Anna said.

  But she didn’t argue or refuse the invitation. She simply stood and nodded before slowly walking away. That was when Vasilisa noticed the black leather gloves back on her daughter’s hands. The gloves were an affectation. Not necessary at all or even particularly helpful in aiding her control of Volkhvy abilities.

  Vasilisa stretched her arms out toward the sea. A heavy silver ring on her left hand winked in the sun. It had replaced the lover’s ring that Vladimir had given her. The silver had been crafted with thorns that faced both ways, outward and inward to pierce her skin. She had worn it at first as a constant reminder of Vladimir’s betrayal. It had come to represent more than that. She deserved the pain now more than ever. For her betrayal of the Romanovs and her own daughter.

  She was the one who had made Anna fear her ability to channel the Ether’s energy. Her poor choices and her temper and the curse she had worked when all her hope was lost had caused so much suffering.

  Truth was, Soren and Anna were going to suffer more. Together or apart. The emerald sword didn’t lie. They were meant to be. If they didn’t come to accept it, they would always be hollow inside, as if a part of them was missing. But, worse, if they didn’t come to accept themselves, the wolf and the warrior, they would be separated from their own hearts forever.

  Nothing about this was going to be easy, but Vasilisa was well versed in hard. She turned to watch her daughter head back to the palace. Anna had wrapped her gloved hands around herself as if the weather was chillier than it was. Without the Ether’s energy, the island would be like others in the Outer Hebrides, buffeted by the Atlantic cold and currents.

  Perhaps Anna could feel a hint of that weather through her enchantment.

  Or perhaps it was the red wolf’s distrust that made her cold.

  Chap
ter 13

  She wouldn’t wear green.

  Anna paced the confines of her room in her underwear as she tried to decide on a dress for dinner. Her mother dressed for every occasion, even walking in the garden, and dinner would be no exception. It would be a grand, formal affair, and as much as Anna might prefer to show up in jeans—or, better yet, not at all—there was also a part of her that wanted to go the other way.

  She’d dressed for Soren the night of the Volkhvy Gathering at Bronwal. She’d been drawn to a green dress that she and Elena had found while searching out something for the former ballerina to wear. At first, she’d put the emerald green dress back in the wardrobe where it had hung forgotten for centuries.

  But she’d gone back for it later.

  Elena had dressed in a white swan gown with graceful feather accents. She’d done it to reclaim the power an evil witchblood prince had tried to take from her by forcing her to become a caged swan in nightmares he controlled. She’d accepted the Call of the sapphire sword. She’d accepted Ivan Romanov’s love. Together, they had defeated Grigori and they’d broken the curse, freeing Bronwal and all its inhabitants.

  Except for the white wolf.

  Lev was still trapped in the shift he’d used to hunt for his wife and child until he couldn’t remember how to be human again.

  And her.

  She was trapped by her parentage and by the power of the Ether that flowed through her veins.

  She couldn’t accept the Call of the emerald sword. She couldn’t accept a love that wasn’t offered. Even if Soren had loved her in spite of her witch heritage, she would have to reject him because of it. He deserved to finally find happiness with his family, and they all deserved to be safe at Bronwal after all this time.

  Anna had been drawn to green for as long as she could remember. She’d never known the emerald sword influenced her preference. She trailed her fingers over several beautiful gowns a Volkhvy servant had draped over the bed. None quite matched the green of the dress she’d worn that night. In the end, her preparations for the Gathering had been wasted. It had turned into a battle, not a dance. And any appreciation Soren might have felt when he’d seen her had faded immediately once the truth was revealed.