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 even 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.
“You can’t love me,” Anna said.
She wasn’t prepared for Soren to scoop her up and propel her into the curve of the cement wave that created the balcony on which they stood. It created a nook for their bodies, and he pressed her there in between his broad chest and the wall with her feet off the ground. He held her, high and hidden, away from the Ether’s light.
“I can and I do,” Soren vowed.
Anna didn’t resist his angry passion. She reached for the back of his head and tangled her hands in the curls that were growing out at the nape of his neck. Her eyes had flared with flecks of emerald light. She could tell because the glow illuminated the frustrated desire on Soren’s face.
“I love you, too,” Anna said. “I always have.”
She lowered her head to capture his lips in a kiss that wasn’t slow or sweet. She was as frustrated as he was. She plunged her tongue to taste him deeply, and the resultant thrill that claimed her body was painfully bittersweet.
His hands had splayed on her back to protect her from the hardness of the cement. Now he used them to pull her closer. The sword blazed in its scabbard. The balcony was flooded with a green light that subsumed the Ether’s rainbow.
It was a goodbye kiss.
Only Soren didn’t know just how final she intended it to be.
She took them through the Ether without pulling her lips from his. Their tongues twined, and she continued to taste him rebelliously as all else disappeared. The sword would Call another. She would be gone. But he would always remember her. And, maybe, even if she never materialized again, she would remember him, too.