Chapter 19 #2
The axe had come in handy while getting the burned bed out of the room.
“What was that?” She turned to him, her arms still crossed over her chest. “Do you know how much work Pavel put into that party? How much negotiation went into the guest list?”
Oleg nodded. “I do.”
“What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking…” He leaned against one soot-stained wall and picked at the burned fabric that covered the plaster. “I was thinking that it is good to remember that even the friendliest hound can turn and bite.”
She blinked. “What is that supposed to mean? Are you the hound in this story?”
“Ivan said that marrying you was very civilized.”
Her expression was still unreadable. “Was that an insult?”
It was mildly irritating that after a thousand years of life and five years being married to this woman, she could still stymie his attempts to decipher her emotions. He felt more through their blood bond than he could read on her face.
Oleg narrowed his eyes. “Sometimes I wish I could still manipulate your mind so you would tell me what you are thinking.”
She curled her lip, and the frozen mask she’d been wearing shattered.
Good.
“That makes me doubly glad you cannot.” She lifted her chin. “Did Ivan insult you by calling our marriage civilized? Is your scheme not working out exactly as you planned, O great Knyaz?”
He reveled in her irritation. “It was not an insult to me. Perhaps it was to him.” He snapped his fingers and brought a ball of fire to his palm. “But the observation is not incorrect. You do make me look civilized.”
He let the fire creep up the wall, licking along the brocade fabric of what had once been a nursery for a very wealthy noble family.
Countless humans had probably been raised in this room; now Oleg was eating the pretty yellow wall coverings that some long-dead mother had probably chosen for her babies.
Maybe it had reminded her of sunshine. That’s why Oleg had chosen it for his resting place.
“What were you thinking?” Tatyana still had her arms crossed over her chest. “Pavel was mortified by your outburst.”
“I’ve already called Lazlo.” Oleg waved a hand. “Lazlo will make him understand.”
“Will he make me understand?” Tatyana stepped toward him, her mood turning. “Because I don’t know why—”
“You don’t need to know why.” He sliced his hand through the air. “Enough, volchitsa. You are young. Give it a century or two and perhaps you will understand.”
She looked as if he’d slapped her, but Oleg was speaking nothing but the truth.
Tatyana was young, and in many ways she still thought like a human. Her life had been marked by human concerns. Human failures.
She hadn’t been nurtured by a sociopath.
Oleg understood that there was power in unpredictability. There was strength in chaos.
He didn’t indulge in it often because emotional chaos irritated him and too much of it would dampen the reaction he wanted to provoke.
He watched the blue flames that licked over the walls, slowly devouring the evidence of his nightmare. “Every now and then, it serves me to remind the others— Perhaps I need to remind you as well—”
He turned, and within the space of a human heartbeat, he was at her back, his palm at the base of her spine.
She froze.
The smell of her instinctive fear provoked a bitter taste in the back of Oleg’s throat.
He immediately pulled his hand away and bent to whisper in her ear. “It serves no one for me to be tame, volchitsa. It serves none of my people for the world to forget who and what I am.”
“And who are you?” she whispered.
“I am the son of Truvor the Red.” He backed away slowly. “I am a murderer. I am violent death that comes in the night and ravages entire villages on command. And now I hold Truvor’s empire together with that power. I cannot rely on his madness, so I must use other methods.”
She nodded slowly. “Will Ivan be expecting you to attack him?”
“I honestly don’t know. I doubt he does either. It does not matter.”
She was staring at the scarred parquet floor. “You wanted to unbalance him, and you did.”
“I want to unbalance all of them.” He crossed his arms over his chest as his fire continued to ripple along the walls. “All the civilized vampires from their soft seats of power.” He curled his lip a little bit. “They don’t have wolves waiting at the door.”
She turned toward him and narrowed her eyes. “How do you know? Maybe they’re just better at hiding it.”
He smirked. “Perhaps you’re right. But I know this: In all the world, there is only one empire larger than mine, and that is the territory of the Eight Immortals of Penglai Island. Eight vampires, Tatyana. Eight.”
And the vampires of Eastern Asia were more of the civilized variety, like those of Europe, South America, and the resource-rich lands of Africa.
Oleg’s territory, the cold grey stretch of it that swung between endless night and endless day, was no soft or generous place.
And it was no place for a soft and generous leader.
“I know you think I do not understand, but I do.” She carefully folded her hands, resting them in front of her body.
A barrier. Not as firm as her crossed arms, but she was still keeping her distance.
Gone was the warm, sociable woman at the party. Gone was the seductive goddess of the night before. She might love him. She might even understand.
But she didn’t approve.
“Ivan will have his guard up even more,” she murmured. “He’ll be looking for an attack in Saint Petersburg.”
She wasn’t talking to him, she was thinking aloud.
“Let me worry about Ivan,” Oleg said.
She blinked and looked at him, as if suddenly realizing he was still there. “Of course.”
A second later, she was walking toward the door, the mild, neutral expression back on her face.
“Where are you going?” He wanted to banish the bitterness in his throat. He wanted her kiss and her softness even though he didn’t deserve it.
“The nights are long here, but my body is expecting daylight, and as you have stated, I cannot sleep here.” Tatyana glanced over her shoulder as she left the room. “I will see you at dusk. We have a concert to celebrate Rudov’s and Kezia’s arrival tomorrow. If you still wish to attend.”
“I do.” Oleg narrowed his eyes.
What was she plotting? She had plans other than a concert turning around in her mind.
He’ll be looking for an attack in Saint Petersburg.
She left him, and the moment she did, Oleg secured the dead bolt in his day chamber, cutting himself off from the rest of the world.
Cutting himself off from his mate.
What are you planning, Tatyana?
What are you scheming, little wolf?
The days were short in the middle of winter, so when Oleg woke from his day rest a mere six hours later, he was still brooding and irritated about Tatyana. About the night before. About the problem of Ivan and the softening of his public image.
And Mika expected him to be social? No.
Oleg dashed off a note to be delivered to his wife’s day chamber along with a specific bouquet of flowers for her to see when she woke, then called for his plane to take him to the small airfield near Anna Asanova’s house.
Three hours after leaving Saint Petersburg, he was knocking on his mother-in-law’s door. He could see the dark shadows of Poshani Hazar in the trees, but none of them approached him.
Anna opened the door and immediately narrowed her eyes. “What are you doing here?”
His mood instantly lightened as soon as he saw her irritation. “It’s good to see you too, matushka.”
“Oh please,” she muttered. “Aren’t you supposed to be attending some fancy party?”
He stood at the bottom of her stairs, looking at the covered dovecote attached to the side of the house. “Do the birds freeze in the winter?”
“Not with the insulation and heaters you built for me.”
The corner of his mouth turned up. “Did I build that?”
“Yes, for my birthday. You were very generous. See the path?” She pointed to the concrete walk that led from the front porch to the dovecote, utterly clear of even the light layer of snow that covered the rest of the property. “It’s heated. I don’t even have to shovel it.”
“Good.”
Anna was too old to be shoveling snow, but she was terrible about hiring staff. Both Tatyana and Oleg had pestered her about it, but she insisted that she didn’t need any domestic help save for Marko and Marie, who lived in the guesthouse behind the barn.
She turned and waved him in the house. “I’m letting out all the warm air with the door open. Come inside or leave before Pushkin starts yelling.”
Oleg walked inside. “And how is Tatyana’s cat?”
“He’s mad at me because I won’t let him go outside in the snow.”
Pushkin jumped on the end of the couch and immediately pushed his fuzzy head under Oleg’s hand.
“Why not? Why no snow, Pushkin? I see you are a forest cat, are you not? A wild beast in need of roaming.” He smiled a little bit as the feline began a loud, satisfied purr.
“Pfft,” Anna muttered. “What roaming? He gets muddy and wet, then decides he wants to jump on my lap.” She shook her head. “I should send him to her house.”
Anna would never. She adored the cat even though she griped about him constantly.
Maybe because she griped about him constantly.
“Are you a government inspector or something?” she barked. “Take off your coat.”
Oleg did so and hung it on the hooks near the door. “I am supposed to be at a fancy party, but I am ignoring my responsibilities.”
“Why?” She walked over and picked up a hand bellows to puff at the fire in the hearth.
“Really?” Oleg walked over, put another log on the fire, and snapped his fingers, making the flames jump.
“Now you’re just showing off,” Anna muttered.
“Your daughter hates it when I show off.”
“Of course she does.” Anna looked Oleg up and down. “My father raised her, and he was a humble man.”
“Then she was lucky to have him.” Oleg leaned on the fireplace, looking at the family pictures lined up like soldiers on the dust-free wooden mantel. He pointed to a faded color photograph of an older couple with stoic faces standing in front of a familiar farmhouse.
A little girl with braids stood in front of them, looking off to the side.
“This is them, yes?”
Anna nodded. “We spent every summer at the farm. She was their only grandchild.”
“They look like very steady people.”
“They were.”
Not the sort prone to emotional outbursts. Not the type to spark in anger. But he could see the fine lines around the grandfather’s face.
Despite his stoic expression, this was a man who liked to laugh.
“Your daughter is angry with me because I made a scene at a party last night. I was bullying one of my brothers and made a show of it.”
“Why make a show of it?” Anna asked. “Did you have a reason?”
“Yes, but she didn’t like it.”
“I wouldn’t either.” Anna waved a hand. “If you had a reason for it, just explain it. She won’t stay angry with you for long. That’s not her nature.”
“I did explain it. She still didn’t like it. And remember, she stayed angry with me for two years after she became a vampire.”
“You deserved that, didn’t you?”
“Yes, matushka.”
Anna gave him that look again, then stepped away and sat in her chair. Pushkin immediately pranced over and jumped in her lap.
Oleg turned. “Do you want to come to the wedding? You wouldn’t have to be presented formally or anything like that.
It’s safer if you do not, but some of my clan have human family attending, and you are welcome to join them.
” Polina’s partner had asked after Tatyana’s mother, and Oleg wanted to extend the invitation.
“No, I went to the real one.” She frowned. “I don’t need fancy parties. I would feel out of place.”
“If you change your mind in the next month—”
“I won’t.”
Oleg smiled and went to sit in the chair across from her. “So how do I make things right with your daughter?”
“You’re asking me?”
“Doesn’t a mother know her daughter best?”
“You had a human mother long ago, didn’t you? Did she know you?”
“She trained me on the sword,” Oleg said. “But other than that, I do not have many memories of her. I was around twelve or so when I left home.”
Anna blinked and her expression softened. “You were just a little boy.”
“I suspect I thought I was a man.” Oleg smiled. “But you are correct. I was a boy.”
Anna was quiet for a long time. “She will try to take care of you, you know.”
Oleg knew exactly who Anna was talking about. “She doesn’t need to take care of me. My job is to take care of her.”
“It does not matter. That is how she loves. Not with words—with actions. If you’re as smart as you think you are, you will let her.”
Let Tatyana take care of him?
Anna’s house phone rang. She stood up and walked to the kitchen.
He could hear her answer. “Yes?”
Oleg frowned. The idea of allowing Tatyana to take care of him was so foreign he had to fight the urge to recoil or argue. How could Tatyana take care of him? He was far older, far more powerful. Far richer.
“He’s here.” Anna called his name. “Mika is on the phone for you. Something about a priest.”
Oleg stood, walked to the rotary phone, and picked it up. “Yes?”
“The priest in the village,” Mika said. “The one who married you and Tatyana. He’s dead. You need to fly here right now.”