was gone. The white wolf was gone. Her numb fingers no longer held the ruby blade. The same person who helped her to stay on her feet had taken the blade from her and tossed it aside. It was lying on the ground, several feet away. The protection of its red aura was gone. Rain pelted her face and soaked through her hair and her dress.
And then a cold, calm, powerful presence was also there. All the terrible, overwhelming pain was soothed away by a cool psychic touch inside her mind. Her legs gave out beneath her, but it didn’t matter. The cool presence approached and took her weight from the smaller, warmer one.
Vasilisa and her daughter, Anna. The knowledge of their names was placed in her mind by the cool presence. Her thoughts were as hazy as her vision and as impossible to process, but the explanation calmed her slightly. She should trust her queen. Her instincts were screaming other things, but they were rusty from disuse, and the psychic touch chilled them into silence.
Madeline accepted the coolness in her mind. It came from the woman who held her on her feet, Vasilisa. She exuded an aura that numbed all else. Vasilisa turned Madeline, and they walked away together. But Madeline wasn’t entirely soothed. She had failed. She hadn’t killed the white wolf. The monstrous beast must have been the terrible threat that had woken her.
And now he had escaped.
Her mind was able to hold on to only one clear thought: wherever Trevor had gone, he wouldn’t be safe until the white wolf was destroyed.
Madeline’s fingers were smudged with charcoal from the hundredth pencil she’d worn down to a nub. She used her thumb and forefinger to blend the shadows around the figure of the white wolf she’d drawn. He was large on the page. Much bigger than a natural wolf. As always, he loomed, ready to pounce. She’d lost count of how many times she’d committed her memory of him to paper. No matter how many pages she filled with his savage likeness, she never exorcised him from her mind.
Good. She needed to remember so she would be prepared to protect Trevor if the white wolf should ever return.
That stormy day she’d first woken after hundreds of years, it had been Vasilisa who had broken the crystal chamber that had been her bed for so long. The queen had taken Trevor from her arms to keep him safe while Madeline confronted the threat of the white wolf. It had been horrible to wake up and find her baby gone, but she was glad the queen had protected him from harm.
Vasilisa had been the cool presence that had helped her. Madeline’s body had woken from a long illness, but her mind hadn’t. Every sight that met her eyes had dazzled and confused her.
The queen encouraged her drawings. She said the sketches came from the recesses of her mind that were still sleeping. Besides the wolf, there were sketches of a life she’d forgotten—a life very unlike the world she had woken to on Vasilisa’s island, Krajina.
Vasilisa was the Light Volkhvy queen, and Madeline had trusted her from the moment she realized it had been the queen who protected Trevor from the white wolf. Her queen. Her beloved liege. Vasilisa had rushed to break the crystal and take the baby from Madeline’s arms when the white wolf appeared on the island. His appearance had woken Madeline too harshly from her long sleep. She had risen to face his attack, but she hadn’t been strong enough. Vasilisa had explained everything as she helped Madeline recover. Healthy food and exercise seemed to clear her head a little more each day. As her health improved, Vasilisa gently tried to help Madeline recover the memories she’d lost.
But, most of all, the queen had continued to take care of Madeline’s infant son, who was still sleeping. She’d explained that Trevor needed to wake up slowly, and that soon he would be smiling, gurgling and grasping Madeline’s finger once more.
Madeline had forgotten a great many things, but she hadn’t forgotten her baby.
Trevor, the white wolf and her ruby sword—everything else in this strange new world she had to relearn, but not those things. Knowledge of them flashed behind her eyes with every blink and pounded in her chest with every beat of her heart.
Madeline finished the sketch and pulled her blackened fingers away from the page. The white wolf’s snarl was threatening, even though she’d created it herself with charcoal and paper. She calmly looked into the beast’s eyes for a few moments. Remembering his savagery made her stronger.
She had quickly come to love Vasilisa, who treated her as a daughter and Trevor as a beloved grandchild. But she wouldn’t depend on the queen to keep Trevor safe. Madeline was his mother. Facing the threat of the white wolf was her responsibility, and she was determined to be ready.
She closed the sketchbook and placed it on the window ledge that overlooked the ocean below.
Vasilisa was walking on the beach. She held a tiny bundle in her arms—Trevor. Even far away from her breast, Madeline could feel the tug of the invisible heartstrings that held her and her baby together. Yet she trusted the queen with him; Vasilisa visited with him every day, often taking him on walks beneath the Mediterranean sun.
The queen’s footsteps took her and the baby closer and closer to the cliff where the white wolf had appeared. Though Madeline trusted Vasilisa entirely, her breath still came quicker and her pulse leaped in her throat.
Vasilisa said the white wolf had once been her champion, but he had become a wild and savage monster that couldn’t be trusted any longer.
Madeline looked from the empty cliff down to the kind queen, who crooned to the sleeping baby she held against her chest. Queen Vasilisa’s enemies were Madeline’s enemies. It was a truth she felt to her bones.
She stepped back from the window and stretched before dropping down to the floor. She caught her weight with her hands and then pressed up and down until her shoulders protested from the effort. Then she pressed up and down a dozen times more.
When she’d woken up, her vision had been blurry and weak, but her instincts had driven her to rise and climb to the top of a cliff, where she’d found the white wolf. His presence had drawn her like a magnet—a terrifying magnet with vicious teeth and glowing red eyes.
She’d confronted the wolf with the ruby sword in her hands, but she hadn’t killed him. When he’d shifted into his human form, she’d been taken by surprise. Then Vasilisa had appeared to bring her back to the palace, along with Trevor. The white wolf’s brother had taken the beast back to his home.
Letting them go had been a mistake.
But her weakness that morning had only guaranteed she would work hard to heal so she could fight the white wolf another day.
Madeline brought her legs up beneath her and used them to lift her body back to a standing position with her arms outstretched. She exercised in secret because she didn’t want Vasilisa to worry she was overexerting herself. She grew stronger every day. Her arms, back and legs were responding to her efforts. Madeline straightened her shirt and stepped back to the window. She smoothed her hair back from her face.
The queen was heading back to the palace. As she came nearer, Madeline turned to go outside and meet them. In midmorning, she always sang to Trevor and watched his little face for signs of waking.
A sudden quaking of the earth beneath Madeline’s feet shook the entire palace and sent her to her knees. It was a testament
