do you care? About any of us?” Soren asked. “Bell is gone. She died with the breaking of the curse and you’ve been reborn as someone we hate.” The growl was still in his voice, but it was accompanied by a new emotion he’d hidden until now. She recognized grief. He mourned for who she had been as if she’d died. As if Bell and Anna weren’t the same person.
The idea that she was dead to him was worse than rejection. She felt more abandoned to her Volkhvy blood and adrift in its power than before. For the first time since he’d stepped out of the woods, an ember of anger rekindled beneath her breast.
“My blood doesn’t negate who I was before,” Anna said. Although she wondered. She’d wondered from the moment her parentage had been revealed. “Of course I care...about Bronwal and all the people in it.” Not about him in particular. Not anymore. It wasn’t wise and it wasn’t safe. It wasn’t controlled, and she wouldn’t allow it.
“Witches only care for themselves. Your mother manipulated our genes with magic before we were born. She made us monsters and then she cursed us when our father proved too monstrous for her to handle. You can’t expect me to trust her daughter,” Soren said.
He whirled away as if he couldn’t stand the sight of her. He paced several steps in the direction from which they’d come, but then he stopped in the middle of the path. His hair fell down his back in tangled waves. It created a halo around his head where the sunbeams fell. His clothes were still the mismatched, poorly mended type of garments that denizens of Bronwal had pieced together during the curse. He wore scuffed leather breeches and a long woolen cloak. His boots had seen better days.
There was something about his manly size and shape paired with the poor quality of his clothing that made her tight chest ache. His castle was on the mend, but he, himself, was still in the midst of the curse. It had been broken. But it didn’t matter. Lev was still a feral wolf. She was the daughter of his worst enemy. Soren’s nightmare wasn’t over.
“You don’t have to trust me. I’m not here to gain your trust,” Anna said. She couldn’t protect her secret and help him at the same time. Self-preservation and pride gave way, because her pain mattered less than keeping the people of Bronwal safe. “I’m here because the emerald sword Calls to me, Soren. Vasilisa sent me to help you find it.”
Soren’s entire body stiffened. It was as if his spine turned to steel as she watched him harden from his head to his shoes. She waited as he slowly turned back around. It seemed to take an eternity. Her breath caught in her throat as she both dreaded and anticipated seeing his face again.
No. No. No. No. No.
“No,” he said. His eyes met hers, and his amber irises no longer needed the sunbeam. They blazed with his emotion alone. “No.”
His words still sliced through her, even though they only echoed her own rejection of the sword’s Call.
“There’s nothing I can do to change it. I tried to ignore its Call. The enchantment is too strong. It can’t be ignored. My destiny and yours were forged into its blade and burned into the heart of the emerald in its hilt,” Anna said. “The two of us have to work together to prevent the Dark Volkhvy from using the emerald sword’s power to hurt the people of Bronwal. Only we can stop them. We have to prevent the emergence of a new Dark prince.”
“Or princess,” Soren added.
Her cheeks were heated. She could feel the flush flaming there against the cool morning mist. She hadn’t wanted to tell him, but she saw no other way to convince him that he needed her. He couldn’t ignore the enchantment without exposing his family and his people to further harm.
“I won’t be manipulated by Vasilisa’s enchantments,” Soren continued. “Never again. There is no chance I will accept that you are...that Vasilisa’s daughter...is destined to be my mate. And there’s no way I’ll work with you to retrieve the sword.”
Anna thought she’d experienced shock before, but she’d been wrong. He would turn his back on his responsibilities in order to turn his back on her. He hated her that much. Soren’s face had become pale marble behind his russet beard. His pupils were so large that his eyes looked black. The tightness in her chest suddenly released. She was hollowed out and empty. The hollowness seemed to be reflected in those bottomless pits as they stared at her.
The idea of her as his wife was repugnant to him.
Of course it was.
That should come as no surprise.
But he refused to hear her reasonable arguments because of her blood as well, and his stubborn refusal shocked her to her core.
She couldn’t reject her blood. She couldn’t reject the mother she’d found after centuries of having none. She might never trust her blood or her mother, but she couldn’t change them. She could only endure his opinion of her the same way she’d endured the curse. One foot in front of the other, for years and years and years.
She was a Volkhvy.
Soren Romanov despised Volkhvy.
And yet, the sword had chosen her, so it was only a Light Volkhvy princess who could lead him to the sword.
“I don’t want the sword or the connection between us. I only want to stop the Dark Volkhvy from using its power to do more harm. I’m not here to claim the sword. Or you,” Anna said.
The Call of the emerald sword echoed in the shell of her body as all she’d once felt for Soren Romanov evaporated like mountain mist in the rising sun.
I’m not here to claim the sword. Or you.
Her words echoed in his ears long after the silence of the forest had descended around their standoff once more. His feet were planted on firm ground. His muscles responded when he tightened his fists. His chest rose and fell. His heart beat. But none of those things negated the feeling that he stood on a jagged, dangerous precipice waiting for the suck of gravity to take him down, down, down to the floor of the canyon somewhere far below.
Bell was gone. But she was also mere feet away from where he stood waiting to fall to his death. The fall never came, of course. That would have been an escape, and there was no escape from this. The feeling of being on the edge of a cliff was only the emptiness her presence caused deep in his gut.
Because she wasn’t really here.
This wasn’t the girl he’d known. She wasn’t even the woman the girl had become as they’d endured the curse together, side by side. He’d been Bell’s protector. Her constant companion for more years than he could count. He’d been in his wolf form, but he remembered every second, every one-sided conversation, every wistful sigh and every battle. Those intimate memories scalded his already raw emotions.
The beautiful witch who faced him with wide green eyes and damp curly hair was a stranger, an enemy who was interfering with the hunt for his brother right when he was as close as he’d ever been to luring Lev home.
Soren had no time for Anna. He had to make the distinction between the girl he had known and the witch she had become clear in his heart. He had to save his
