her feet, she raced to the window, but the beach was empty, as was the stone stairway that led from the sand up to the palace portico.
Vasilisa and Trevor were gone.
Her gaze flew up from the sand to the cliff, but it was also deserted.
If the white wolf had returned, he hadn’t appeared in the same place as last time.
Madeline abandoned the window, but before she could make it to the door of her room, the screams had already begun. She wrenched open the door anyway and headed toward the noise of battle. She didn’t have the ruby sword by her side, and she was far from as strong as she could be, but she’d fight for Trevor with her bare hands if she had to.
He was all she had left of a life she couldn’t remember.
The palace was under attack, but it wasn’t the white wolf. Madeline searched for Trevor as witches all around her battled each other with bolts of energy from their hands. The transformation of the beautiful Mediterranean palace into a battlefield jarred her already tender senses, but she didn’t allow the shock to slow her down. She wasn’t Volkhvy, and her sword was gone, but she was quicker on her feet than she would have been because of her secret exercise regimen. She used that quickness to dodge and weave and make her way around the fighting witches.
As she ran, she noted that the witches who had attacked Vasilisa’s palace had black marks on their foreheads. Were all Dark Volkhvy marked? She couldn’t remember.
She only knew Vasilisa’s enemies were her enemies. She memorized the mark for later reference, but for now, she had to find Trevor and keep her baby from harm.
“This way,” a voice whispered from one of Vasilisa’s sitting rooms. Madeline reacted just in time, sliding inside the narrowly opened door before a contingent of marked Volkhvy could see her. She blinked when the door clicked shut, enveloping her in darkness. The marked Volkhvy ran by, their booted feet ringing down the hall.
“I’m looking for Trevor,” Madeline said into the darkness.
“They’ve taken him. And the queen. Her last order was that I should keep you safe,” the voice explained.
Madeline could finally make out one of Vasilisa’s older servants. The woman allowed the energy in her fingers to glow only slightly, lighting up the room enough to illuminate her face.
“No,” Madeline said. “I can help them.”
The servant reached out and touched Madeline’s cheek with her cold fingers. The violet glow of energy felt tingly on Madeline’s skin.
“You can’t help them alone,” the servant said. “Sleep now. Then you can seek the white wolf’s help.”
Madeline had slept over a thousand years during her illness. She resisted the sudden cool fog that claimed her mind with the servant’s touch to no avail. She slipped into an unconsciousness that was as dark and deep as before, but it wasn’t as silent. As her body crumpled, the last thing she felt was the servant lowering her to the floor and the last thing she heard was the white wolf’s howl. His cry echoed through her soul in an endless protest against losing loved ones to the evil Volkhvy.
Her journey from the Light Volkhvy island of Krajina had been long. Without the use of Vasilisa’s more powerful abilities, Madeline had been dependent on Vasilia’s followers and their help in procuring human modes of transportation. There had been a boat and a stormy, rough passage by sea. Following that, she had flown in a plane that seemed to her as magical as Vasilisa herself. But the length of her travels had caused her body to ache nearly as much as her heart. The soreness reached all the way to her bones and deeper still. The jarring movement of the final leg on a train that carried her closer and closer to her destination didn’t help. Not nearly as quiet as the plane’s flight, the constant metallic screeches of the train strained her ears.
Only her sketches soothed her.
She finished a particularly menacing charcoal drawing of the white wolf, and then she closed her sketchbook and pushed it into the backpack that sat beside her in an empty seat. She put the pencil in a side pocket of her pack, even though it was probably spent. It rattled against a handful of others that had been used up. She had a few good ones left—soon she would sharpen another and sketch some more.
Soon.
Trevor and Vasilisa had been ruthlessly ripped from her life by an attack that had taken even the queen of all Light witches by surprise because it had been perpetuated by a traitorous Light Volkhvy who had turned to the Dark. Vasilisa had told her that long ago she’d been a warrior for the Light. Madeline felt that truth in her heart, but it wasn’t echoed by any sort of ability in her muscles and mind. She hadn’t been prepared for the old servant who had knocked her out and hidden her from the fight.
She’d failed to protect her son. She’d failed to help the witch queen who had done so much for her.
“Care for some tea, miss?” an older woman sitting across from her asked. She poured herself a cup from a steaming metal container as Madeline shook her head. Her stomach was too knotted to keep the liquid down.
She’d put her sketchbook away and zipped her backpack closed, but the white wolf’s snarl was still vivid in her memory as the train took her closer and closer to the monster himself.
Lev Romanov.
She didn’t know him. She couldn’t remember him at all. But Vasilisa had told her the legend of the Romanov wolves. The Light Volkhvy queen had created champion shape-shifters to help her stand against the Dark. She had forged three enchanted swords to be wielded by their warrior mates.
Madeline’s heart beat too quickly in her chest, and her breathing was shallow. As usual, when she wasn’t sketching, she wasn’t sure what to do with the adrenaline that urged her to some vague action. She had forgotten too much for too long. Vasilisa had encouraged her to take her time. She’d told her to remember how to live first. The simple mundane tasks of daily life that so many took for granted had challenged Madeline for months.
But now she must do so much more.
She had to save Trevor.
Her secret exercises seemed silly now, poor preparation for what lay ahead. She was physically stronger, but her memory loss left her vulnerable.
Her arms were empty. She needed to sketch or she would go mad. She clenched her smudged fingers into fists and placed them on her lap. She only had a few pencils left, and she needed to ration out the precious charcoal as a starving man would his last crumbs of bread.
Vasilisa had urged her to take her time to recover all she had lost, but her time had run out.
“Here. You look like you could use a hot drink more than I could,” the old woman insisted.
Now that her sketchbook was tucked away, Madeline really looked at the woman across from her for the first time. She raised her hand to accept the proffered cup as the older passenger nodded in approval.
But something was wrong. The woman wasn’t as old as she had seemed. Her hair wasn’t gray. It was white like Vasilisa’s, and her eyes were sharp, not elderly and vague as they focused keenly on the cup in Madeline’s hands.
Steam rose from the hot tea, but as she
