As they drew closer to the fortress, Anna rose up on the red wolf’s back to survey their destination. The cement that had seemed to curve up over the windows from a distance actually formed balconies that flowed out from the glass in the shape of waves curling back into themselves. They would be an effective barrier against witch or human attack, but not against a Romanov wolf.
She didn’t have to speak. Soren had already seen what he should do. Anna only had to tighten her grip to be sure she didn’t fall off his back when he gathered himself and leaped onto the balcony that surrounded the first floor.
The red wolf slid several feet when he landed. Anna couldn’t let go to raise her hands to direct her energy. She could only duck her head against his fur and allow her power to flare out and around her body. The glowing energy that engulfed her protected her from the shattering glass as Soren’s momentum took them through it. Thousands of shards of glass turned to glittering diamond-like dust against the green force field she formed. The dust burst outward from the red wolf’s body as he landed inside the fortress’s walls.
“The emerald sword belongs to me,” Anna said as the dust dissipated.
A contingent of Dark Volkhvy met their arrival as if they’d known exactly where they would be even before they knew it themselves. One stood tall in front of all the others. It was the same Volkhvy who had drawn her attention at the palace dinner. He had the sword. He wore it in a black leather scabbard that draped loosely on a belt at his lean hips. The emerald in its hilt gleamed brightly as his jaunty walk toward them jarred it to and fro. During the dinner party, she’d told herself that the oily black of his hair and clothes didn’t mean he was a Dark Volkhvy, but it hadn’t been his clothes that made him shine darkly that night. She could see the darkness in his expression more clearly now. She could see the oily weight of his hair was caused by an almost-liquid shimmer around his head, a barely visible dark halo.
It wasn’t oil.
He and his retinue stopped a few yards away. The glass dust she’d created settled on his shoulders as a light snow.
“The sword is mine, Princess. And soon you shall be mine, as well,” the man said. “Forgive me for not introducing myself before. I am Aleksandr. I rule the Dark Volkhvy, but soon all Volkhvy shall have me as their Dark master.”
“If the sword is yours, why don’t you draw it, Alek?” Anna asked. The red wolf growled deep in his chest. The glow she’d summoned to protect herself from shattered glass still suffused her body. She didn’t send it away. There was no hiding who and what she was from the man who challenged her.
Aleksandr’s hand hovered over the hilt of the sword as if his fingers were being repelled. He didn’t seem to mind.
“Because you can’t. Now that the emerald shines for me, it won’t allow anyone else to wield the sword.”
Anna swung her leg over the red wolf’s back and jumped to the ground. Soren crouched to make the move easier for her, as he’d done a thousand times. Then he rose to his full height beside her. She reached to hold the fur of his scruff. Touching him gave her strength and steadied her nerves. She also hoped to hold him back from attacking the Dark Volkhvy until she was certain the time was right.
The witches they faced were too calm. Many had smiles on their faces. None of them looked afraid. Soren wasn’t the alpha wolf, but he posed a great danger to Volkhvy. Their calm made Anna’s stomach go cold, as if the Ether had crept its way inside.
“It was never my aim to steal the emerald sword...alone,” Aleksandr said. He sashayed closer toward them, as if Soren didn’t have teeth a foot long, ready to sink into his flesh. “I had to attend the dinner party that night. I needed to demonstrate my ‘loyalty’ to Vasilisa. But once I saw you, I was so tempted. I almost revealed my hand. It was always you I wanted. Anna, the Light Volkhvy princess. I couldn’t act at the palace, where Vasilisa’s power is in the very air one breathes. The attack that night was only to draw attention away from me,” Aleksandr continued. “I would have had you before now if you hadn’t been hidden by Bronwal’s curse. Why settle for the blade alone when I can have the blade and the woman who would wield it? You will unlock the sword’s power for me, Anna. And then I will rule all of Volkhvy kind. The Dark and the Light.”
He stopped far enough away that Soren would have to knock her aside to leap for the Dark Volkhvy’s throat. Anna’s fingers had loosened on the red wolf’s fur. But not because it was time for him to attack. Her hand grew slack from shock. The unexpected revelation caused her energy aura to fade just as she could feel her face go pale and cold.
“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 disposal 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.