Chapter Twenty-Six
Mikhail shouldered into the wind. It had picked up speed as he’d made his way along the southern perimeter of camp to the western edge, where he’d spent some time chatting with each guardsmen and even longer speaking to Gregory about provisions some of the men had picked up before leaving Arkadia. All was quiet, except for the howling wind. Nothing out of the ordinary at all.
He headed up the incline, where a hill protected their encampment from the harshest winds. Katya stood like a solid tree planted in the ground on the ridge. She spun at his approach, dagger drawn.
“Hold, sister. I’m not the enemy.”
Her eyes were all that were visible, her head hooded and face shielded by a kerchief like his. She rolled her eyes at him. “Dammit, Mikhail.” She dropped the captain title when they were alone. “This wind is playing tricks on me. Messing with my senses.”
“Aye.” He frowned, crossing his arms over his chest and standing in the wind to block her as best he could. “Mine, too.”
She crossed her arms in a similar fashion. “I know what you’re doing. I don’t need you to shield me from a little snowstorm, Brother.”
He scoffed. “Katya. You’re the toughest, meanest, hardest woman I know. You’ve proven it, aye?” He nudged her with his elbow. “But you’re still my baby sister.”
Her indigo eyes crinkled with her unseen smile. “All right then. I’ll allow it.” She sighed. “To keep my big brother from feeling insignificant.” Her eyes narrowed mischievously. “Though I believe someone else has convinced him of his significance.”
He stiffened. “What do you mean by that?”
Another roll of those eyes. “Please, Mikhail. The whole camp knows you and the queen are smitten with each other.”
“Smitten? I’m the Captain of the Bloodguard. I do not get smitten.”
She laughed. “Liar.”
He smiled beneath his kerchief and shrugged. “So I am.”
Katya sobered. “You’d be right to marry a queen, Brother. It would be fitting. Don’t you think?”
He glanced down, unwilling to travel down that path again. He made a promise to Mina, and he would keep it. He’d never leave her. Never. But he wasn’t sure how he’d fit in her world exactly. Time would tell. Rather than answer his sister’s question, he noticed her gloved hands trembling as she gripped her crossed arms. “You’ve been out here long enough. Why don’t you get some sleep? I’ll take your place.”
“Are you sure? I can remain on duty longer.”
He chuckled. She’d always been stubborn beyond reason. Even as a small girl, she’d face off with the biggest bully in the schoolyard. He didn’t stand a chance in convincing her to stay home with their mother after their father died and he set off to form the Bloodguard. She swore she’d just follow if he and Dmitri left her behind. So she’d become the one and only female of their band.
“Go. But before you do, go ’round to the eastern perimeter and tell Gavril to break now and tell his replacement to relieve him. I didn’t make it to him.”
She nodded and flashed away.
Mikhail faced into the wind, away from the encampment. He conjured images to keep him warm. Alabaster skin. Ardent sighs. Soul-stealing promises. Sea-blue eyes.
He smiled, a curl of contentment warming him from the inside out. This wasn’t the plan. She wasn’t the plan. So far from it that he chuckled at his own lack of foresight. The man who strategized every maneuver, rethinking every possible outcome before he took steps. She’d stepped directly in front of him. In his mind, she’d been the means toward their victory. An instrument to destroy the old monarchy and bring in a new one. A just one. He’d never calculated the possibility that the princess he awoke with a blood kiss would ensnare him so completely.
A distant thrumming sounded on the wind. Coming from the northeast. He stared into the darkness, knowing there was an open plain in that direction, though the snowstorm blocked him from seeing far, even with his vampire sight. The repetitive thrumming morphed into the recognizable thud of hooves. He drew his sword, double-fisted the hilt, and stared into the gloom, awaiting whatever threat drew nearer.
He inhaled deeply, unable to smell anything but ice and snow. The riders materialized, four of them, just off to the left. He lowered his sword as the distinctive red cloak of the female rider, and their familiar scents washed over him. He raised a hand in the air to get their attention.
Nikolai saw him first, jerking his mount toward Mikhail. The other three following, galloping right up to him. Nikolai leaped from his mount and shot to Sienna, lifting her from the saddle before she’d had a chance to dismount. Sienna pulled down the white scarf she’d wrapped around her face, her breaths puffing out white clouds.
“Nikolai. Sienna. What’s wrong?”
Sienna’s expression appeared desperate.
“Captain, we must see Mina right away.”
“Tell me what this is about.”
His gaze shifted to the other two riders. One was Dane Godric, the hart wolf, who rode in his human form, his amber-gold eyes shining like burning suns in the dark. The other man, hooded but without any shield over his face, which revealed the hard countenance of a dangerous vampire, a patch over one eye, a vicious scar trailing from beneath.
Nikolai noticed Mikhail’s discerning observation of the men. “This is my cousin Riker, back from Cutters Cove.” The vampire with the patch nodded.
Mikhail remembered the tale Nikolai told of his cousin who’d been tortured at the Glass Tower for information on himself, Sienna, and the Black Lily. The man had been battered and gouged with blades of gold to be sure the scars would remain. Apparently, they had.
Nikolai nodded to their other companion. “And Dane came along as well. We rode hard to get Sienna here as quickly as we could.”
“Please.” Sienna stepped forward, a wisp of her red-auburn hair caught on the wind, an urgent plea in her eyes. “I must see her.”
“What’s happened?” Foreboding dripped in the air like a black pestilence.
“Can we get inside, Captain?” Nikolai glanced around. Even as he spoke, the wind died down from the constant roar it had been for hours.
Before Mikhail could turn and lead them away, Sienna gripped his forearm with a gloved hand. “Two nights ago, I had a dream. A premonition.” She glanced sideways at Nikolai.
Nikolai stepped closer. “The hartstone is speaking to her again.”
“Go on,” Mikhail urged.
“I dreamed of a great hall in a beautiful castle. The white dragon sigil of Arkadia hung behind the throne dais, where a king sat near the cradle of his babe. Queen Morgrid was there, demanding the babe be given to her youngest son in marriage when she was of age.”
Mikhail frowned. “This isn’t a dream. This is the true story of Mina’s birth.” Why would they come all this way to tell him a tale they already knew?
“Yes,” said Sienna, still clutching his arm. “But listen. Queen Morgrid cursed the babe and left. Then the white witch came and gave her blessing.”
He nodded. He knew all this. What was going on?
“Do you know what the white witch decreed?”
“Yes. She will become queen and save them all. I don’t understand why this is so urgent.” Mikhail’s agitation prickled along his skin.
“No,” said Sienna, shaking her head. “She said, ‘You will drink fire into your soul and awaken the beast of vengeance and righteousness.’ This is what will bring about the victory.”
Mikhail glanced at Nikolai then back to Sienna, at a complete loss why this was important.
“Hear me, Mikhail.” Sienna pressed close, gripping him with both hands, a desperate urgency vibrating in her voice. Her green eyes glittered with sparks of gold. “I am the fire Mina must drink. The fire magic that races in my blood. I saw it. In the vision, I lifted the babe in my arms from the bassinet, then she transformed to herself as Mina is now. We were holding hands then she drank from my throat.”
Mikhail couldn’t help but wonder if this was all some effect of living within the Silvane Forest too long. So strange. And surreal.
Sienna seemed to see his doubt. She edged closer, intimately so, and cupped his face in her hands.
“This is no figment of my imagination, Captain.” Her palms heated against his skin, sending a tremble of energy into his mind. He saw the vision unfold.
Mina drinks from Sienna’s throat. A blast of white light. A field of dead soldiers dressed in black-and-red livery. Dominik’s army. And finally the tall green banner bearing the Arkadian sigil, the white dragon, whipping in the breeze in victory.
When he snapped from the vision, stepping out of her grasp, his heart pounded like a battle drum.
“This is urgent, Captain. I can’t sleep. Can’t eat. The magic has been pushing me hard since I awoke with the vision.”
“Come,” said Mikhail.
The other two dismounted, leading the horses by their bridles down the hill into the encampment.
Katya appeared at the bottom of the hill, wide-eyed and breathless. Not from fatigue. From fear.
“Mikhail!” She rushed to him.
“What is it?” He gripped her shoulders.
“Gavril is gone. He’s not at his post and there’s—there’s blood in the snow.”
A sudden blast of dread ripped through his body. The timing of this storm with the coronation and the intense darkness that swept over the land with it. The erratic wind hindering his vampiric senses. The constant nudges to his psyche that something wasn’t quite right.
Black magic.
He snapped his head in the direction of Mina’s tent. “No.”
Without a word, he left them, flashing through the encampment lightning-fast. The two guards at the door were crumpled on the ground, legs contorted unnaturally. Sweeping past, knowing what he’d find, he sped into the tent, finding exactly what he’d feared he would. Nothing. No one.
Combing his fingers against his scalp, he circled the room like a caged beast, looking for something. There on the rough-shod rug covering the ground, a single spot of crimson. Kneeling, he dabbed his finger to it and sniffed deep.
It was Gavril. He’d shed enough blood with the man over the years to know his scent. So he hadn’t been killed on watch, then dragged off and shoved in a ravine so that the king’s men could bypass him into camp. Of course not. The king.
“Fucking hell!” he roared.
He spun back outside and crossed paths with Sienna and her party with Katya. He didn’t stop when Katya called out, flashing back to his tent. By the time he’d tossed off his cloak and thrown open the chest of weapons, arming himself with razor-sharp, double-edged blades in every sheath and scabbard he could carry, filling the dozens of slits along his crisscrossing harness with finger blades, Dmitri was at his side in a rush of violent wind.
“How did it happen?”
Shouts echoed across the encampment as word spread.
He didn’t recognize his own voice, the malevolent timbre growling out of his throat like a cornered animal. “Dominik, the fucking butcher king, bit Gavril and injected his elixir into his body, then commanded he abduct Mina.”
It was the perfect plan. They’d scent a stranger among the encampment, but no one would stop Gavril, one of his Elite, from going into the queen’s tent.
He’d seen what the king’s power of persuasion could do even after the elixir had worn off. He and Friedrich had interrogated one of his bitten minions back at Winter Hill. The rogue vampire fell unconscious and died after disobeying a command of the king’s by giving them information. Gavril had been freshly bitten. He hadn’t stood a chance.
“What are you going to do?”
Mikhail cut a glare at him. “What do you think I’m going to fucking do? Get her back.”
He unbuckled his belt and slipped on two more scabbards in addition to the one already there. He’d have serrated daggers to rip sinew and bone on both hips and one at his back.
“You’re not going alone.” Dmitri stood in his path before he could make it back to the weapons chest. “You’ll be killed.”
Nikolai entered with Sienna, Dane, and Riker behind. Then Katya.
“Do you think my life matters more than hers, Brother?”
Ice poured from every word. He’d lost his ability to reason like the captain he was. Only one driving force moved his feet and pumped blood to his heart at this moment. Mina.
“I’m just saying we need a plan. If you’d stop long enough to think, we could form one.”
“We’re going with you,” said Nikolai.
Friedrich entered with Grant.
“Is it true?” asked Friedrich.
Seeing Friedrich was the only thing that made him pause. His wife had been under the power of that cruel bastard. Brenna had felt the cold icy fingers of his dominance in her veins, pulling her strings like a puppet. She’d felt his violent will when he slit her throat with his own claw right before Friedrich’s eyes, powerless to stop him.
“Yes.” He glanced away, unable to see the horror in his eyes any longer. What Brenna had experienced might very well be Mina’s fate, under the thrall of that evil bastard.
A gaping hole opened up inside of him. A chasm filling with the darkest kind of dread. The king wouldn’t kill her. He knew that. They needed her alive to fulfill Queen Morgrid’s plan to perform the black magic rite to blight the world in darkness. However, fulfilling that plan would also require the king to impregnate Mina so Morgrid could sacrifice the newborn pure-blood Varis at the hour of its birth. The thought made his vision blur, spots in his peripheral vision.
King Dominik may not kill her, but he was the one man in this world who could do so much worse. Mikhail had heard the horrors of his brutality.
Black thoughts flooded his frame, thinking of Mina in the control of such a monster. He shook it off, unwilling to allow his mind to spin out of control. Guilt of his own negligence threatened to make him insane. While he should’ve sensed that this storm was wrong in a supernatural way, he’d been too distracted by his emotions and need for Mina. The very reason he’d called for the Bloodguard vow to forsake love or marriage had been why he’d failed her. Why she was now in the ruthless hands of the butcher king.
Focus. Stay sharp. Cool thoughts. Deft hands.
He lifted the double-bladed sword, custom-crafted and forged by a friend in Korinth. The hilt at the center, made of black oak from Silvane Forest, was smoothed and honed to perfectly fit his fist. The black-iron blades—razor-sharp on one side, serrated on the other, curving in opposite directions—extended three feet from point to point. The edges of both blades sparkled with gold. Gripping hard, he bent his wrist, cutting the wind on one side then the other. Perfectly balanced. The supreme weapon for decapitating one’s victims. And he had only one victim in mind at the moment.
“Mikhail!”
His eyes snapped up, everyone staring at him. He’d been in his own trance.
“Did you hear me?” Dmitri stood close, fear and frustration on his face.
“Aye, Dmitri.” Though he hadn’t heard a word. “Fetch Gregoravich quickly. And alert my Elite.”
Dmitri disappeared out the tent flap, a gust of glacial wind blowing in. Mikhail’s Elite were his most highly skilled assassins. He slid a sheath onto one blade of the sword and a second on the other blade, then buckled it to the harness crossing his chest. Lifting his cloak, he hooked it at the neck and swept the room with an assessing gaze.
“Nikolai, your party is welcome to follow, but I’m not slowing down for anything.” He glanced at Sienna. “Or anyone.”
Nikolai nodded. “We’ll keep up.”
Dane stepped forward, the mountainous hart wolf in human form sparking the dimly lit tent with his amber-gold eyes. “I’ll carry Sienna.” He shivered as if the need to shift was on him now. “We’ll be close behind.”
Nikolai nodded agreement. Mikhail had heard Sienna complain often enough of the nausea she experienced traveling at vampire speed in Nikolai’s arms. Riding on Dane’s back while he’s a hart wolf would be infinitely faster than on horseback, but not at the dizzying pace of vampire speed.
Dmitri reentered with Gregoravich behind him, standing next to Dane, almost as tall with the same beefy build.
“Gregory, I’ll need you in lead for tracking.”
He was a memory reader, born with the vampire gift where he could recapture memories of people by touching places they’d been.
“Yes, Captain,” answered Gregory, scowling.
There was no time to discuss Gavril and his forced betrayal or where he was now, but the tension rolling off Gregoravich, who was a close friend, told him enough. The man wanted answers as much as he did.
“Dmitri, I need you to report to Prince Marius and Arabelle what has happened. Assemble the army and get them moving toward Izeling. You’re the fastest, so don’t argue with me.”
Dmitri closed his mouth, since he apparently was about to do just that.
“Are you sure that’s where he’ll have taken her?” asked Nikolai. “The Glass Tower is not far. He may have gone there.”
“Doubtful,” interjected Friedrich. “They’ve been amassing their army at his Dragon’s Eye. He’ll have returned to Izeling, where his forces are largest. My uncle is arrogant, but he’s also smart enough to know that the army set up in Silvane Forest could overrun the forces at the Glass Tower, even at our diminished state.”
“Katya, you’ll follow us with the Bloodguard. Send word to Lord Rathbone.”
“Yes, Captain.” She spoke like the perfect soldier, but her eyes shone with distress.
Anxiety riding him, Mikhail swept toward the door, stopping in front of Friedrich. “Your Grace, I’ll be parting ways with you here.”
Mikhail had worked as the duke’s personal bodyguard for months since Friedrich had released his Legionnaires of their duties, knowing there were spies for King Dominik within their ranks. Mikhail had continued to serve when they left Winter Hill, escorting and protecting Friedrich, Brennalyn, and their children in Silvane Forest. Now was the time he needed to sever that formal arrangement. He was moving of his own accord from here on out with one and only one objective.
Save Mina.
“Of course, Captain. We’ll follow Dmitri to Silvane Forest.” He clapped a hand to Mikhail’s upper arm in farewell, a look of fierce determination written in the duke’s eyes. “I’ll see you in Izeling.”
He swept from the tent out into the cold, where the winds had died away, a shimmer of moonlight peeking from behind wisps of cloud. His Elite stood in a single, silent line outside the tent, armed and ready, black hoods up shadowing their eyes, though he felt their keen watchfulness. Their sharp alertness. No movement but their cloaks billowing around their legs. All of these men were at the blood rite ceremony in Silvane where they dedicated their allegiance to Mina. Electric energy sizzled in the air, rippling between them. A vibration only an otherworld creature could feel, beckoning like a call from the hartstone herself. Or from hell.
A growl rumbled from the depths of his gut, the need for blood and crushing bones singing through his limbs, the beast within yearning for wrath and death.
“The butcher king used our guardsman, our blood brother Gavril, to betray us.” The timbre rumbled more growl than words. “And he took…our queen.” The eyes of his Elite glowed with blue fire and fury beneath their hoods. “Now let’s go fucking kill him and bring her back.”