“The sword was bait for me,” Anna said. “You knew I would come for it. All along I’ve been trying to protect the Romanovs, but I’ve been lured here as the key to their destruction.”
The cold that had begun in her middle had spread outward. Now it wasn’t shock that had caused her fingers to loosen on Soren’s fur. Her fingers had gone numb from the cold.
There was only one place she’d ever felt such cold. The Ether. Aleksandr was somehow using the Ether as a weapon. Not its energy, but the Ether itself.
“I’ve had months to prepare for your arrival,” Aleksandr said. “And now I welcome you with the Ether’s kiss.”
Aleksandr’s pupils darkened, and the darkness spread until blackness entirely claimed both of his eyes. Anna cried out. Even her connection with Soren didn’t protect her from the spread of the Ether that had begun without her understanding what it was. The cold filled her. Her green aura of power faded completely. It winked out as if it was a candle that had been snuffed by Aleksandr’s hand. The gleam of the emerald in the hilt of the sword—her sword—at Aleksandr’s waist also went out. Her numb fingers slid from the red wolf’s fur.
Soren howled...but he didn’t leap for the Dark Volkhvy.
Aleksandr laughed.
“You should have brought an army, or at the very least your brothers. Or have they turned their backs on a wolf that would love a witch?” Aleksandr asked the red wolf with false concern. He showed how unconcerned he was by stepping directly up to Soren’s frozen face. He reached to grip the red wolf’s scruff in mimicry of Anna’s hold that had slipped away. “I should thank you before I feed you to the Ether. If your family hadn’t fallen apart after the curse was broken, I wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
He jerked his hand from Soren’s neck, taking some of the red wolf’s russet fur with his fist.
Anna’s body was still fully materialized, but she couldn’t move or speak. Aleksandr’s cruelty was a desecration toward the legendary wolf, but there was nothing she could do. The cold had fully claimed her. She couldn’t summon her power. The sword was close, but she couldn’t move to reach for it. She strained with all her heart, but her muscles didn’t respond.
Soren began to disappear without her.
His massive paws were planted wide, as if he would hold himself to the ground with their strength and weight, but they slowly began to fade. Anna wanted to scream, but her vocal cords were as frozen as the rest of her. She could only watch as Soren’s russet body began to disappear. He growled and whined and cried, but he was caught in a vacuum he couldn’t escape, just as he’d been every time the curse had claimed them together. Finally, his sounds ceased as his chest and head vanished into nothingness.
Her red wolf had never gone into the Ether alone.
Her last glimpse was of Soren’s amber eyes. They met hers. Somehow. With incredible effort. His gaze shifted toward her, even when his body was nearly gone. Aleksandr laughed as the giant wolf disappeared. He threw the handful of hair he’d torn from Soren’s neck onto the spot where Soren had been.
Then he turned to face her.
The Volkhvy were a handsome race. Their enchanted manipulations ensured that only perfection would be passed on from generation to generation. But evil joy and cruelty twisted Aleksandr’s features into a caricature of themselves. His nasty smile and obsidian eyes ruined his symmetrical bone structure.
Anna struggled, but her effort wasn’t rewarded by any outward sign that she tried to break free. She couldn’t so much as blink as Aleksandr turned his attention to her. He was in no hurry. He brushed his hands together to rid them of any remaining hair as he approached. His black eyes tracked from her head to feet and back again. He wasn’t checking her for signs of resistance. He was eyeing his prize. With the red wolf gone, he thought the battle was over before it had begun.
He was wrong. He had to be wrong.
His manipulation of the Ether controlled her entire body. The Ether that ate away at her inside froze her. But, in spite of her paralysis, one tear spilled from the corner of her eye to track down her cheek.
Aleksandr saw her emotion. He reached his hand up with one finger extended and caught the tear before it could slip from her face and fall to the floor. He looked down at her as he lifted the moisture on his finger, as if he would show it to her.
“My anticipation of this day fell far short of reality,” he said. His smile widened. He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together and crushed the teardrop in front of her face. He’d come far too close in order to catch her tear, but she couldn’t back away. She could only endure as his tall, lean body pressed against her side.
Anna’s eyelids were suddenly freed to close against his evil enjoyment of her devastation. She was no longer as frozen as she’d been seconds before. She blinked, and during the brief respite she felt the hard shaft of the emerald sword against her side.
The white wolf might kill her. She might throw herself into the Ether. But she wouldn’t allow Soren to die. This travesty wasn’t an option. If she saved the entire Volkhvy race at the same time, so be it. Anna refused to accept that the red wolf was gone.
When her eyes opened again a split second later, they glowed with emerald chips of the Ether’s energy. Her eyes and the emerald in the sword flared at the same time. Aleksandr cried out and tried to stumble back from her, but he seemed to move in slow motion. She easily reached and drew the emerald sword from the scabbard at his waist as he fell. Her hands closed over the hilt as if it had been made for her fingers—because it had. Before she was born, the sword had been forged by Vasilisa’s enchantment for Soren’s mate, for the warrior who would fight the Dark Volkhvy by his side.
Anna was a witch, but she was also a warrior. More than that, she was Soren’s champion, just as he was hers.
Her power blazed. The whole room was lit by the emerald aura that glowed around her and the sword she lifted high in the air above her head. Aleksandr had fallen to the ground. The black in his eyes had bled away until only a network of black veins remained. He was tainted by his Dark use of the Ether, but he was no longer powered by it.
Many of his retinue had run away.
Anna allowed them to run, but she used a directed blast of green energy to mark them. For the rest of their lives, the treacherous former Light Volkhvy would carry the shadowy scorched mark of a bellflower on their foreheads. Aleksandr cried out as a bolt of her energy traced the mark on his forehead. Smoke rose from his skin.
She’d always used the bellflower symbols to show her the way through the labyrinthine corridors of Bronwal. Now the Light Volkhvy would use them to know friend from proved foe.
Once the traitors were marked, Anna’s power didn’t diminish. She turned and stepped through the broken window to stand on the balcony overlooking the canyon. The aurora borealis glow of the Ether shimmered in the air. Her power rose. Thousands of tendrils of green light flared out from her sword and her body, but it wasn’t the source of its power that her energy sought.
Soren wasn’t gone. He was only lost without her. Fortunately, he hadn’t had to be alone in the Ether for long. As if her energy was a net cast into an icy, empty sea, Anna gathered Soren’s consciousness with a million threads of energy that began in her own heart. She pulled him from the Ether. He materialized in the sky, held by her power, and his howl echoed throughout the entire canyon.
The glass in the fortress behind her shattered as his cry filled the air.
The green tendrils of her power slowed his fall toward the balcony. As he descended, he shifted. His naked human body was wrapped in her energy’s embrace when his feet hit the ground.
Soren’s eyes opened and met hers.
The green aura around her softened. She lowered the sword and placed its tip on the ground. She was glad of its support. She was the daughter of a queen, but she was only a novice witch. She had used all the power at her dis
posal to save Soren from the Ether. She was left shaky and faint. Anna blinked and looked around. She had a lot to learn. Fortunately, she also had a warrior’s heart to guide the way.
It was her connection to the sword that had saved the day. He would have been lost without it. Even as Soren stepped toward her and gathered her into his arms, Anna suddenly knew what she would be forced to do. She couldn’t allow the emerald sword to be destroyed. The red Romanov wolf must have his warrior mate—even if that mate couldn’t be her.
Chapter 28
The fortress seemed deserted. It was eerily like Bronwal when they went inside. Her booted footsteps echoed through the empty rooms and halls. Several straggling Volkhvy saw them and ran away. The shadowy bellflowers on their foreheads stood out like ashy brands. Aleksandr had already gone. He must have realized she would bring the red wolf back from the Ether and that together, with the sword, they couldn’t be defeated.
“I marked them. You’ll always know who stood with Aleksandr against us,” Anna said. “Our connection with each other and the sword broke his ties to the Ether. He must have been absorbing it for years, just like the witchblood prince. If I hadn’t stopped him, he would have eventually been consumed by the darkness he allowed inside him.”
“He channeled it into me. If it wasn’t for our connection, I would have been lost,” Soren said.
“Being Volkhvy is a balancing act. We use the energy the Ether creates with its vacuum. Tampering with the Ether itself, accepting it inside us, is suicide,” Anna said. Her chest was tight. She’d fought the icy nothingness of the Ether’s hunger for so long she wasn’t sure she could stop even when circumstances forced her to, but she had to try.
Soren came to her. He carried a scabbard he’d taken from a suit of armor that decorated the main hall of the fortress. He’d claimed a crimson sash for himself. He wore it as a loincloth draped low on his hips. As he walked to her side, his powerful body was displayed nonchalantly, but even in her weakened state, he caused her mouth to go dry.
He was hers, but he wouldn’t be for long. She tried to memorize his tall, muscular form, from his broad shoulders to his strong legs. She stared at his face, the one she’d waited so long to see. Her imaginings of what he would be like seemed childish now. He was no longer a fantasy. He was a living legend. She cataloged every quirk of his lips and every movement of his jaw. His eyes seemed both ancient and ageless. No one who disappeared into the Ether ever came back the same. But Soren was a living champion this world needed against the darkness.
It was imperative that she let him go.
“Here. This will help,” Soren said. He wound the belt of the scabbard around her waist twice and buckled it in place. She’d been dragging the heavy sword behind her on the floor. He reached around her to take its weight from her fingers. His nearness sizzled her nerves, but even exhausted, she didn’t want to let the sword go. Her fingers clung. “I’m only going to put it in the scabbard so you can hold it more easily,” Soren murmured into her hair.
His body was big and warm against hers. So solid. She closed her eyes and opened her fingers to allow him to take the sword. While he moved to place it in the scabbard, she breathed in his forest scent and absorbed the feel of him as much as she could. Would she remember him when the Ether took her? Would her molecules ache and search for him even when her body was gone?
Anna gasped when Soren’s mouth left her hair to press against hers. He kissed her gently. His lips were barely a brush of warm air, tickling and tasting but asking for nothing in return. She didn’t reach for him. She was afraid if she twined her arms around his neck, she would never let him go.
“It isn’t safe to destroy the sword here. You need to rest first. Then we’ll travel back to the island. Once we’re there, I’ll shift and crush the emerald with my bite,” Soren said. She opened her eyes. He stared at her intently. He wasn’t fooled. He knew something was changed. He knew something was wrong.
He couldn’t know she intended to save the sword and allow the Ether to claim her so that he could find another mate. She’d only just decided herself. His amber gaze tracked over hers. He searched the depths of her eyes for answers to an unspoken question. She tried not to do the same.
She already knew the answer. She had to break her connection to the sword. The Romanovs could never be tied to the Volkhvy, no matter what the sword had decreed, but they would need all the enchanted swords to stand against the Darkness.
* * *
Anna had depleted all the energy she could channel in order to defeat Aleksandr and save Soren from the Ether. She was pale and wan as they searched the fortress to be sure no traitors remained. In spite of her weakness, she kept her hand on the hilt of her sword as if she would still draw it if she had to. He fully believed she would.
The Ether no longer froze him, and he was too used to nudity to be uncomfortable with his lack of clothes. His discomfort was pure concern. His heart beat too quickly. His respiration was faster than it should be. They looked for traitors, but he also braced for a more personal attack of a different sort around every corner.
His brother was coming.
Anna’s determined hold on the sword worried him, because it mirrored the stubborn negation in his own heart. He’d seen her standing on the balcony of the fortress with the sword raised high over her head. He’d seen the energy come to her, channel through her and then come for him. He’d felt her energy’s electric, tingling embrace. In spite of the ice in his heart, the charged memory of Anna’s energy still hummed beneath his skin, a pleasurable hum that reminded him of her kiss and her touch and the hug of her thighs on his hips.
There was no more time for lovemaking. They couldn’t hold off the inevitable separation any longer. The white wolf was on his way. Lev would find them again soon, especially with their enchanted connection resounding and reverberating with every beat of their hearts.
He couldn’t risk Anna bringing harm to herself because of the white wolf’s distrust of the Volkhvy.
He’d connected with Anna on a visceral level in the forest, but their lovemaking had only begun to solidify what he’d already known. He didn’t only love her. The struggle with Aleksandr had brought him to the truth: he trusted Anna with his life. That wasn’t a new development. It was only new that he should face it for the first time since he’d discovered she was a witch.
He no longer distrusted Anna’s Volkhvy blood. He’d seen that evil was a choice in Aleksandr and his followers, not an inevitability. Anna was powerful. More powerful now than ever before. She’d still chosen to mark the traitors rather than dissolve them in electric-green fire. She’d been a warrior before she’d known she was a witch. She’d fought the curse with the Romanovs for centuries.
Soren was devoted to his family. That would never change. But Anna’s safety was his paramount concern.
And his trust in her changed nothing.
Lev would never stop trying to kill her. And Soren could never give up on his brother. So he had to let Anna go.
They still needed to reject their connection and destroy the sword.
* * *
Soren was right about one thing. She needed to get him back to her mother’s island before she broke their connection. It might take time for the sword to Call a new warrior to fight by his side. Vasilisa might help to protect him until his new mate was Called if Anna insisted her own happiness depended upon it.
As nighttime approached, Anna discovered the value of a home overlooking the manifest presence of the Ether. She walked along the balcony of the top floor bathed in rainbow light and soaked up its energy like a plant in the sun. She kept herself carefully shielded against the Ether itself. She would open to it only when she was ready to leave Soren’s side.
He currently leaned against the frame of one of the windows his howl had shattered. He’d found some clothing in one of the bedrooms. More was the pity. But ev
en dressed in jeans and a plain white T-shirt, he was impressive. The thin cotton of the shirt stretched over his chest, and his biceps bulged from its sleeves. Modern clothing was made for men who found Pilates and free weights a challenge. Soren had been molded by a life challenged by much harsher things, including hand-to-hand combat on muddy battlefields.
His past showed in more than just his eyes.
She’d kissed his scars before, one by one. She wished she could kiss them again and memorize their every fine white line. He stared at her as if he’d like to do the same. She did have a few scars of her own. Their life during the curse had been hard and she hadn’t made it through unscathed, even with an enchanted wolf companion by her side.
Anna caught herself fantasizing about how they could soothe past hurts, and heat rose in her cheeks...and elsewhere.
“It’s working. Your color is better. Your cheeks are flushed,” Soren said. He pushed away from the door and approached her. Anna stopped her pacing and stood bathed in the Ether’s light. She liked how the multicolored light shimmered in Soren’s eyes. It didn’t disguise his thoughts. He wasn’t coming closer to gauge her recovery. He was coming closer for the same reason she stared.
“Even before I could hear the sword’s Call I felt connected to you, but it’s as if the connection I’ve always felt is more tangible now. There for all the world to see,” Anna whispered. Soren stopped, halted by her raw honesty, but then he proceeded. He came so close her breasts touched his chest before he stopped. He looked down at her upturned face.
“I love you. Destroying the sword won’t change that. I told you before, we’ll always be connected and I believe it now more than ever,” Soren said.
The atmosphere around Anna seemed to expand and contract. Her chest filled with emotion and then hollowed with dread. She’d known. His confession only made her more certain of her decision to free him.
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