After a while he became aware that he was weeping, deep inside, for those years of torment and regret, for the arrogance of a young man who thought he could single-handedly defeat an enemy who’d eluded warriors and minds far older and wiser than his. He realized he was lying with his head in her lap, her hand stroking his hair, the blood of his tears smearing her thighs.
“Do you see what I am?” he asked. It was a plea. He had spent the last twenty years planning to escape, planning to let the sun cleanse his soul, to take his chances in the afterlife. But here she was, the one woman who could stop him—and she refused to let him go. If he’d had the strength, he would have fought his way out, but he couldn’t risk hurting her, and with his mind so shredded and his body so weak, he doubted he could reach the surface without a major battle between them.
“I see more than you think I see. You have forgotten, Razvan, that I had my own experiences with Xavier.” Her fingers stroked his hair and began to make small circles over his temples. “And you have revealed far more of Xavier and his spells than you know.”
He didn’t like the speculation in her voice, but her hands worked magic, holding anguish at bay along with physical pain.
“You cannot best him. Believe me, I have tried over the centuries and I’ve always failed.” He should have pushed away from her, but found he could not. Her hands were inducing a magic all their own. How long had it been since someone had touched him with such gentleness?
“As did I,” she replied. “I knew Rhiannon and her lifemate. And when Xavier cast a holding spell over me and dragged me into the deep woods, he told me of his plan to kill her lifemate and force her to breed with him. He already had everything in place. Of course I knew the Carpathians would defeat him; we were too strong.”
She paused. Her voice had gone singsong, lower pitched, almost velvet. He felt the soft notes sliding inside of him, stroking at the painful memories, pushing them back ever so gently. Everything about Ivory seemed soft and smooth and so peaceful.
“No one defeats Xavier.”
She leaned close to him and whispered in his ear. “Because he has help. He
always
has help. Every memory you have shown me, a lesser mage first found the platform for the spell he cast. When he took me, and then later took Rhiannon’s lifemate and murdered him, it was not Xavier who committed the actual murder—although I have heard he took the credit. It was Draven, Prince Vlad’s eldest son. He betrayed our people to Xavier. He delivered Rhiannon’s lifemate, dead, into Xavier’s hands.”
Razvan tried to stir, but his limbs were heavy. He felt his mind drifting a little as she built up doors, then slowly and gently pushed them shut to trap the pain and guilt where it couldn’t reach him. One by one, the memories of his defeat and his crimes were slowly blocked until his mind could accept, from a distance, the centuries of failure, of torture and of self-revulsion. Her voice was the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard and he concentrated on it, on that soft, sweet melody that seemed to take him somewhere far away from the stark brutality of his existence.
“I remember Draven. He is a distant memory. A murderous, treacherous man who demanded young mage women from Xavier in return for his information. He disappeared one day and Xavier was furious, spewing vile curses on Gregori Daratrazanoff for weeks after. I assumed Gregori had finally found out his betrayal and administered justice.” He tried to open his eyes to look at her, but his eyelids were too heavy and he didn’t want to disturb her soothing fingers. “Why would Draven kill Rhiannon’s lifemate?” He choked a little over his grandmother’s name. He had his father’s memories of her, the soft-spoken woman Xavier had fed off of until his children were old enough to take her place.
“Draven was obsessed with me. I was not his true lifemate, but he wanted me. He had the sickness in him that some of our males get, and he believed, because he was in line to be prince, that he should have any woman he wanted. My brothers refused him when I told them I knew I was not his lifemate. When they were gone in battle, Prince Vlad sent me to Xavier’s school, I think to keep me away from Draven.”
“So Draven bought you from Xavier with the body of Rhiannon’s lifemate.” Razvan made it a statement.
His mind seemed at peace, drifting with the stroke of her fingers and the soft melody of her voice. It mattered little that the subject they discussed was abhorrent, his mind could process without fear or guilt or the overwhelming emotions that had poured into him at the sound of her voice. Now, his mind simply accepted and for the moment he was at peace. He didn’t want that ever to end. He imagined this moment must be close to heaven, a haven where nothing bad could happen, even for just a brief interim.
“Yes, but Draven didn’t count on the fact that I had ten strong warriors who had spent my lifetime teaching me to fight in battle. My five brothers and the De La Cruz brothers.” Ivory rubbed the strands of his hair between her fingers and then shifted him, just the slightest of movements, turning him so that his head was facing upward toward hers.
Razvan’s eyelids fluttered. He opened his eyes to narrow slits and looked up at her. His breath caught in his throat and he stared at the woman above him. Her face was still that of an angel, skin so flawless and pure, but now he could see the scars—terrible scars that started on her throat and ran down her body as if she’d been pieced together by barbed wire.
“He did this to you?” He breathed out the words in shock, knowing Carpathians didn’t scar—not as a rule—yet her body was covered with lines, the disfigurement a patchwork of skin sewn back together almost haphazardly.
“Draven did not like a woman defeating him, the mighty, soon-to-be prince, if his plans with Xavier succeeded. He could not resist bragging, telling me how he was going to kill his own father, because it never occurred to him that I could fight and defeat him in battle. He was so furious.”
Her voice sounded far away, a distant song of peace and warmth in spite of the chilling tale she told. He found, try as he might, that he couldn’t experience the horror of her words, the extent of Draven Dubrinsky’s betrayal of not only his people but his own father. Xavier was the devil himself, a monster unrivaled, and yet Draven had deliberately sought an alliance with him.
“I was caught by four vampires on my way back to my people,” Ivory continued, shifting him again, cradling his head to her.
Her body felt warm and soft and so giving against his. She smelled of the forest, of the wilds, deep and green and secret. There was a touch of snow, distant and compelling, an ice princess yielding to no one, yet giving of herself to him. It was fanciful. He’d long forgotten fanciful and his wayward thoughts didn’t belong in the midst of her retelling such a traumatic event in her life. Everything seemed so dreamlike, yet he’d ceased to dream, knowing Xavier extracted information from his sister when he dreamt. He hadn’t even been able to stop that and save Natalya such grief. He knew she’d been attacked by Xavier, but four vampires?
Four?
He struggled to get up, to try to go to his sister’s aid.
The singsong voice soothed him. “Not Natalya, Dragonseeker, the vampires attacked me. Xavier wanted the most horrendous death he could envision for one like me. He had them chop off my head and then cut me to pieces, scattering me across a field so the wolves could consume me. They should have incinerated my heart. I did not have the will to die, not when I needed to see Draven and Xavier gone from this earth.”
For a moment the horror and agony of what she had endured was in her mind—and his—and then, before he could possibly assimilate and process what she had given to him, it was gone, replaced once more by the soothing touch of her fingers stroking over his temples and her whispered, seductive voice.
You are so hungry, Dragonseeker. You have been starved for so long and kept without true strength. I am offering you life. Strength. A chance to join me in defeating the devil himself. You have only to take what is freely given. If, when you are at full strength, you choose to walk away, I will take you from here and you are free to go your own way
.
The thought of separation from her gave him pain somewhere in his tattered soul. She was his lifemate; once found, he could not simply abandon her, yet he knew—frowning—that there was a reason he must not utter the words that would bind them together.
She rubbed gently at the frown lines between his eyes.
Be at peace. You are safe here
.
He shook his head, although it was difficult to do so. More than anything he wanted the touch of her magic fingers and the warmth of her body after he’d been cold for so many centuries. He’d existed in the ice caves with so little blood to live on, Xavier determined to keep him from strength, that he had all but forgotten warmth—or kindness. He didn’t want to destroy the illusion that someone cared enough for him to render him aid without strings.
It wasn’t true, of course; he’d learned that painful lesson over the centuries. No one could be trusted, least of all himself, but the illusion could sustain him when his starving body and his shredded mind could no longer function properly.
She leaned closer. Her breast grazed his face and his body tightened strangely in reaction.
Hear the beat of my heart. Match your rhythm to mine
.
He could hear her heart, steady, like an unfaltering beacon, a signal for him to find his way home.
Ivory looked over his ravaged face and her heart contracted painfully. She hadn’t felt compassion for another in centuries. She’d been careful to avoid the traps and pitfalls of emotion. Her beloved brothers had betrayed her.
Her own family
. She would never forget how she sought them out, crawling out of the ground, her flesh barely intact, fighting every inch of the way back home, only to discover that centuries had passed and her brothers had joined the very ones who had chopped her into little pieces and left her for the starving wolves.
Hearing Razvan confess to the betrayal of his own sister and aunts, of his child, she had thought to aid him to find the dawn, even though it would mean condemning herself. But once inside his mind, she realized more than he did the centuries of struggle, of fighting to protect everyone around him from a monster. And he had held out in spite of torture and starvation and anything else she could ever conceive of.
In some ways it scared her to think what his will and determination would be when he was at full strength. Never once during the time Xavier held him captive had he been at full strength. He’d been a youth when Xavier had taken him, and even then, as a mere boy, he’d protected his sister. He didn’t consider himself good with spells—his sister was a far better mage—but he was Carpathian male through and through, strong and protective and unflinching in his fight, no matter how weak he had grown.
Hear the blood rushing in my veins. It flows like the tide itself, like sap in the trees, nectar of life, flowing for you. Can you smell it? Do you feel your body crying out for life?
She drew a line across her breast, one of many lines, but this one welled bright red blood. Shifting him again, she pressed his mouth to her. There was a heartbeat. Two. Everything in her stilled.
Veri olen elid—blood is life. Saasz hän ku andam szabadon—take what I freely offer
. She put every ounce of compulsion she had into her soft entreaty.
She felt him stir. His tongue licked over the raw wound and her womb clenched. Teeth sank deep, a biting, burning pain that gave way to a rush of heated pleasure.
She stroked back his hair and began to chant the Carpathian Lesser Healing Chant. Her voice rose, soft and melodious, filling the chamber with the rich gift of song.
Kuńasz, nélkül sivdobbanás, nélkül fesztelen löyly—You lie as if asleep, without beat of heart, without airy breath
.
Ot élidamet andam szabadon élidadér—I offer freely my life for your life
.
O jelä sielam jorem ot ainamet és soŋe ot élidadet—My spirit of light forgets my body and enters your body
.
O jelä sielam pukta kinn minden szelemeket belső—My spirit of light sends all the dark spirits within fleeing without
.
Pajńak o susu hanyet és o nyelv nyálamet sielametsívadabat—I press the earth of our homeland and the spit of my tongue into your soulheart
.
Vii, o verim so
ŋ
e o verid andam—At last, I give you my blood for your blood
.
Weary, Ivory closed her eyes. She dared not give him more blood than she was able. One healing session and one feeding was not going to be nearly enough. A week, a month . . . time mattered little, but she would heal him. For now, she’d done all that she could do.
Find peace, Dragonseeker
.
Pressing her hand to his mouth, she whispered for him to stop before placing him in the deep, rich loam of her bed. Calling to her pack, she signaled them to take their places around her lifemate—claimed or not—and she pressed close to him before allowing the dark soil to engulf them, her protections around their bedchamber the strongest she knew.
3
T
he search for Razvan had been intense over the past three weeks. Ivory crouched below the snow-covered slope, raising herself just enough to study the forest beneath her. She couldn’t see anything, but the wind had shifted enough on its own to bring her the scent of blood and death. Along with that scent came the soft sobbing of a child.
She had been careful to feed far from her lair, but then her travels had taken her closer to the Carpathian world where Mikhail Dubrinsky, the prince of the Carpathian people, and his legendary guard, Gregori, made their homes. There seemed to be far more Carpathians than the last time she’d been this close. That meant, when she hunted for food enough to feed her pack, she had to avoid not only vampires, Xavier and his servants, but the hunters as well.