LITMIR.BIZ

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Again and again she found knitting laid to one side and never taken up again. She found dusty books marked with faded ribbons. There were chessboards waiting for next moves that would never come and clothes laid out that would never be worn. Toys abandoned.

      And paintings of generations of Romanovs lost to the Ether.

      The curse had been a terrible punishment and a horrible fate for the legends she’d loved as a child. Ivan Romanov lived in a haunted home. Bronwal was a majestic graveyard filled with the discarded remains of lives interrupted never to resume.

      Finally, Elena came to a large portrait hall lit only by the scant light of sunrise filtering through heavily draped windows set high in the stone block walls. The scarlet of the thick velvet drapes gave the light a reddish glow. She moved along the edges of the room, avoiding the center of the floor filled with a forest of sheet-draped statuary.

      Instead, she looked at the people. Especially an oversize painting that dominated the room. The subject of the painting was Ivan Romanov and his family—mother, father, and two younger brothers. She stepped close to the base of the portrait to stare. There was warmth and familial affection captured by some long-gone artist’s deft hand. Ivan stood behind and between his younger brothers with his hands on their shoulders as if he held them still. She could see the twinkle in the boys’ eyes and the patience of a wiser older brother in Ivan’s. The younger Romanovs weren’t identical twins. One favored his father with reddish brown hair. One favored his mother with pale, unblemished skin and platinum blond hair. But all of them had the Romanov nose and the tall, fine forms of aristocratic warriors.

      Had he lost them all to the Ether?

      His mother had leaned toward all three of her boys. Her body language conveying that she preferred their company to her husband’s. The eldest Romanov looked more proud than warm, but she was certain it was her knowledge of his failures that diminished him in her eyes.

      She’d come for the alpha wolf, but she couldn’t help being drawn to the Romanov tragedy, as well. No matter what their father had done, the boys had been innocents caught up in the curse through no fault of their own. Elena had to force herself away from the painting. It was too easy to be transfixed by the younger Ivan and the warmth and ease that was now absent from his green eyes.

      She saw the shapes first beneath large sheets in the center of the room. She walked to each and pulled them off, first one and then the other. She found stone carvings of the two wolves she’d already met—the red and the white.

      But there was one larger covered form behind them.

      Its sheet came off in her hand in a sudden flourish and dust filled the air with motes that rained down over the black marble she’d revealed. The alpha wolf was the size of a great stallion. It wasn’t a pet of the Romanov family. It was the greatest champion just as her grandmother had said. Its purpose was evident in every stone sinew and in its marble teeth.

      Where had the alpha wolf gone?

      Surely he hadn’t disappeared into the Ether. Not the largest and strongest of them all. She looked into his ferocious maw and her flight instinct kicked in. The sheet dropped from her numb fingers and her breath came quickly.

      She risked her life in this place where’d she’d come to try to save it.

      Hunting such a creature without its master’s blessing was as suicidal as climbing up the mountain looking for a fantasy castle. She should leave as Romanov advised and never return.

      Elena lifted her hand and her fingers hovered near the black wolf’s face. She noted the tremble of her digits and forced herself to touch the cold stone. She cupped beneath the great snarling mouth as if she held the wolf’s head in her hand. She couldn’t leave. The hollow place inside of her where the dance had been wouldn’t allow it. She was here for a reason she didn’t yet understand, but the search for the black wolf was a part of it.

      Her silent communication with the statue was interrupted by a clicking sound behind her.

      She recognized what made the sound even without turning around.

      Slow, stalking claws click, click, clicked on the tiled floor. They approached her from the way she’d come. Elena didn’t turn around. She looked into the alpha wolf’s stone eyes. They were as black as the rest of him, but the midnight glinted in the soft glow of filtered sunlight. Even as her heart pounded and her spine froze, the sculpture’s eyes seemed compelling.

      She braced herself. The clicking came closer and closer from two distinct directions. One to her left and one to her right. When the massive creatures she’d met earlier came into her peripheral vision, flanking her on either side, she had the crazy sense that the two other wolf sculptures had come to life. Of course they hadn’t. These were the wolves from last night. And this time their master wasn’t around.

      There was no one to call them off.

      “You know where I can find the alpha wolf. Take me to him,” Elena said. Her voice didn’t waver. She spoke firmly. The flutter was hidden from view deep in her stomach and her knees. The wolves moved to stand beside the sculpture of the alpha wolf, on either side. They loomed over her and they were no longer acting like gamboling giant puppies. Their eyes blazed with predatory intent. Had they been hunting her while she searched the castle? Had they followed her from room to room at the bidding of their master or for some hungrier cause?

      “I came for the alpha’s help,” Elena said. They weren’t ordinary wolves. Perhaps they would be able to understand. “A Dark Volkhvy stalks me. A witchblood prince. No friend of yours. Help me against him,” she urged.

      She had no idea if they understood her words, but she had to try. She hadn’t come this far to stay locked in a tower.

      First the russet and then the white stepped toward her. Elena lowered her hand from the marble wolf’s jaw. The trembling in her fingers was more noticeable, the better to show the wolves the terror she tried to hide. It was the russet wolf with coppery eyes who lowered his head to her hand first. She cried out softly, certain he would bite off her hand, but then the silky hair on the top of his head tickled the palm of her hand. The white wolf stepped forward to lean and lower and nudge her other hand until it too rested on a monstrous wolf’s head.

      “Does this mean you’ll help me?” Elena said. “Will you lead me to the alpha wolf?”

      * * *

      The courtyard was churned into ruts and packed dirt by frequent use. Considering it was only materialized a month every ten years that meant the sweat that ran down Ivan Romanov’s half-naked body had been well-earned time and time again.

      The wolves hadn’t understood her after all.

      They’d led her to their master. A betrayal for sure, but she couldn’t blame them. Especially when she was grateful that they hadn’t eaten her for breakfast. They left her and bounded onto the field, chasing each other beneath the rising sun. It was cold in spite of the sun. Snow drifts lay all around. Elena wrapped her arms around herself. The castle walls protected the inner courtyard from excess snow accumulation, but Romanov’s practice field was dusted with white and edged by icy foliage on evergreen bushes. It glistened and dazzled her eyes because they’d grown used to the dimness inside.

      Ivan lowered his arms. He’d left a sword embedded in the cross-shaped practice form. It was buried deep in the scarred wood. So deep that she wondered at the force required to leave it there. He didn’t turn around. She could see streaks of sweat on his muscled back and his labored breathing as his broad shoulders rose and fell. A leather cord wrapped the wild hair she remembered from the night before. The thick queue hung midway down his spine.

      She didn’t like his hair bound. She wanted to free it. The crazy urge took her by surprise, as did the sudden feeling that everything she’d been looking for was here, in this courtyard, for her to see.

      She hugged herself tighter as she waited long heartbeats for him to turn and face her. He expected her to leave today. She hadn’t found the alpha wolf. Grigori would find her, alone and defenseless. There was nowhere she could hide from

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