The sunrise painted the island in shades of crimson and gold. The lank-haired witch had never reappeared. No other Volkhvy had attacked. Beneath an aqua sky, Anna walked along the deceptively calm shore where craggy rocks belied the false atmosphere of a gentle Mediterranean breeze. The Outer Hebrides was actually storm tossed. Anna closed her eyes and concentrated before she opened them once more.
For a few seconds, she saw a true glimpse of the rough ocean breaking against the rocky shore. Sea spray burst high into the cold air, and the stinging sand it blew turned to needles against her skin.
And then the atmosphere calmed.
Her mother’s enchantment held against her budding abilities.
The sun shimmered across the water, and its gentle warm light was a lie.
Soren had been gone when she woke up. She’d bathed and changed, expecting some word from him, but none had come. They had stolen a night together. No more. No less. And he’d been right. Everything was changed—for the worse. His silence and his distance flayed her skin in the same way the stinging sand driven by the stormy wind had now that she’d experienced the connection they could have had.
In her mind’s eye, the emerald on her sword had gone dark. As lackluster and gray as the true sky had been moments before. Its fading light shouldn’t hurt her. Not when her decision to destroy it had already been made. But shouldn’t and didn’t were two different things.
There was a hollow where her heart used to be. She should have grown used to it by now. But her brief wholeness the night before left her feeling less this morning than she’d felt yesterday, even before she and Soren had come together.
She had no time to coddle her feelings and coax herself back to full strength. Her pain had to be faced and worked through. Her difficulty would come in working through it with an audience of the one who was causing it.
He had basked in the glow of her power.
She had pleasured him as much with her Volkhvy abilities as she had with her body, and he had cried out her name. Only to leave her this morning before she woke up. It was for the best. He had given her time to rise and fortify her defenses. When she saw him again, she wouldn’t blink, much less cringe at his distance.
Distance was the only way forward.
Her inability to control her powers while they were making love had been undeniably pleasurable, but he worried about her possible loss of control at other volatile times. Especially if his family was responsible for the volatility. Both Ivan and Lev could easily provoke Anna’s Volkhvy power into exploding merely by being themselves—the alpha with his leadership concerns and his protective instincts on high alert because of his pregnant wife. The white wolf with his wild unpredictability. Lev was currently savage. Soren could hope to civilize him again, but there would be no chance of that with Anna around.
And there was the concern even Anna echoed herself. That the emerald sword would make a witch too powerful for that witch to exercise control.
Their time on the island had been a reprieve. Their time in each other’s arms the night before had been snatched from a universe that was obviously bound to keep them apart. Her chest might ache and echo with her lonely heart’s stubborn beat. Her lips might be tender from remembered kisses. Her core might be sensitized from his touch and the frantic friction of their sex.
But her feet carried her, one in front of the other, from the shore to the palace. They would leave the island today to search for the sword. There was no other way forward for them.
And they couldn’t go back.
* * *
He burned with the need to shift and run away. His human body couldn’t contain all the sensations that buffeted it. Remembered sensations from the night before—Anna’s soft lips on his skin, her hot mouth, the feel and taste of her nipple against his tongue—and current sensations, like the tenderness of his half-erect penis that wouldn’t subside no matter how he willed it away, and the tingling in his cells that had barely subsided hours after Anna had flashed with emerald light.
Soren had asked for it. No, he’d begged for it. He wanted it still. Anna’s power was the most intimate part of her. The way she controlled and protected it from view made him crave to see her release it. He didn’t want to merely tear off her gloves with his teeth. He wanted to shred them into a million pieces so she would never feel she had to hide behind them again.
He wasn’t free to do that.
He was an enchanted shape-shifter and Anna’s power had almost thrown him off the bed last night. The electric energy she channeled had shaken his body and lingered with him long after he left her sleeping. When Lev had attacked her, she’d traveled through the Ether to take them back to the castle, and she’d been wearing the gloves at the time.
Soren couldn’t risk that kind of power, unharnessed, around his family, even if Ivan and Elena would allow it. Even if Anna’s presence didn’t risk frightening Lev away, Soren had to think of the baby.
They’d all been through so much in their lives because Vladimir and Vasilisa hadn’t tempered their actions with the thought of the children their actions might harm.
He wouldn’t make the same mistake. He’d been protecting others too long to stop now.
And he’d been protecting Anna the longest.
There was no use denying he needed to protect her from his family as much as he needed to protect his family from her.
* * *
Vasilisa visited Madeline and Trevor every day. It was only one penance she undertook for what she had done. But it was also a panacea because, for now, their unchanged faces hid long-ranging ramifications even she couldn’t fathom.
They weren’t actually sleeping. They wouldn’t wake, refreshed and happy to greet the next day. Hundreds of years had passed as they’d been kept in a state of suspension. There would be a price to pay for all those lost years. She trembled as she ran her fingers along the crystallized glass. What if the cost Madeline had to pay for this refuge was too high?
Every day she visited, and every day she put off the inevitable. Eventually she would have to decide if she was truly sparing them from the danger the white wolf might pose or if she was only sparing herself.
For now, she waited.
She would delay as long as she could to ensure that Anna and Soren were given more time together. The mirror at Bronwal wasn’t her only portal. She had numerous portals all over the world. But she hadn’t informed her daughter, nor would she. Anna and Soren would have to travel the long way to the Dark Volkhvy who held the sword. Anna was still new to her abilities. The journey would tax her strength. Using the Ether would be quicker than traveling as a human, but it would still be slow.
Before Vasilisa woke Madeline, Anna and Soren needed more time to deal with their own awakening. She couldn’t undo what she had done to them any more than she could undo what she had done to Madeline, Lev and their baby. She had inadvertently thrown Anna and Soren together for centuries. Now they were determined to part. Seeing her daughter lose the man she loved was a high price to pay for her mistakes.
Too high.
She’d lived with the pain of loss for too long to sit back while Anna suffered.
Vasilisa’s hands glowed a soft violet as she continued to stroke the glass. Soon. The woman and baby beneath the glass weren’t as deeply suspended as they had been before. There was a stirring within them that only Vasilisa could sense. First, she would give Anna and Soren a chance to change their minds about the emerald sword. But no matter their decision, she would have to free Madeline and Trevor. Lev posed a dangerous threat to her daughter, and he couldn’t be allowed to hurt her again or come between Anna and Soren. Even if that meant Vasilisa would finally have to face the consequences of what she had done to the white wolf and his family.
For Anna, she had cursed Bronwal and its people.
For Anna, she would also set in motion what might become the culmination of her greatest mistake. There was no way to know how Madeline would wake or if Lev could be brought back from his feral state.
But Lev’s personal tragedy might spare her own daughter from more pain.
Vasilisa was the Light Volkhvy queen, but she had dealt in Darkness for too long. She was no longer free to deal wholly in the Light. Her actions would always be touched by shadows. She could only hope that Anna would make a better queen.