Vasilisa took the chance of looking around the arena to note as much detail as possible in his memory. There were drums beating, a rhythm that was pervasive, and demons sat in the stands humming a deep low note to accompany the drum. Low embers lit the arena in various places, and they would suddenly flare up in a dark red fan of flames and then subside again. When the flames were at their height, Vasilisa saw distorted faces with teeth and claws and red glowing eyes. They disappeared into the darkness as the flames settled.
“I smelled the cannibals. She had them hidden in the darkness, waiting until the negotiations were over so they could rush out and tear at my parents when she took me out of there. We had known all along that was the plan. She sometimes would douse the air with drugs, and it was difficult to tell reality from fantasy at first. I learned, but it took time—time my parents didn’t have.”
That persistent drumbeat was giving her a headache. It felt as if someone were trying to get inside her head, but she knew she was feeling his physical pain. The knocking persisted determinedly. She refused to allow her heart rate to increase. She sat across from him, breathing evenly, watching both places, present and past, just as obstinate as Lilith, maybe even more so.
You can’t have him,she whispered in her mind. She could afford to have that conversation with herself. Her shields were up, and no one, not even her lifemate, had penetrated them. If she wanted to tell Lilith to go to hell, she could. There might be some irony in that.
“She kept dancing around, trying to keep us distracted. When the demons brought my mother, it was clear she was already dying. Lilith pretended great sympathy. She berated the demons who brought her. My father went over to my mother and carried her to where we were reading the contract. It was the only spot where there was any light, a single sconce with a weak candle flickering.”
Vasilisa’s heart went out to Afanasiv. She saw the condition hismother was in with the skin torn from her body. There was little left of her. Still, she looked at her husband and son with love in her eyes.
“My father whispered to her, told her he loved her, told her the plan. She looked at me, and I could see she didn’t want me to stay there. She tried to shake her head, but she was too weak even for that. I knelt beside her, the contract in my hand—the only way I had to keep Lilith from having the cannibals rush them—and told her I loved her.”
There was emotion in his voice. So much it shook her. Tore her up inside. Vasilisa refused to give in to emotion. She needed to make sure that she didn’t miss anything significant in either the past or present.
“She drew her last breath and I signed the document. The moment I signed, I felt the difference. A hush fell over the arena.”
What he said was true, other than the drumbeat. That continued. It didn’t pause for a single moment. Vasilisa felt the expectation in the arena. The mad triumph of Lilith. The sorrow pouring off Afanasiv. His father had gathered his mother into his arms, cradling her on his lap. He threw back his head and roared his anguish to the world. As he did, Afanasiv slammed his fist into his father’s chest and extracted his heart. He turned and threw it straight into the nearest flames.
The heart was pure and the flames were not. The fire leapt and spread, rushing throughout the arena in an ever-widening circle, burning through rows of demons, burning white-hot and pure until it reached Afanasiv’s parents. The flames caught them up and incinerated them, taking them in seconds so there was nothing left, not even ashes.
Red blood tears tracked down Afanasiv’s face. He looked at his lifemate. “That is what really happened to my father and mother that night. He never would have turned. Never.”
“No, he wouldn’t have, Siv,” she agreed, because she was certain he wouldn’t have. “But he knew those cannibals would have eaten him alive, and Lilith would have made you watch. You spared him watching his beloved wife being eaten after all the tortures they’d subjectedher to. Your father managed to slay demons, most likely many of the ones who had tortured his wife. You spared him horrendous suffering. This was his plan, and you carried it out at great cost to yourself. You did what a loving son was asked to do without hesitation. It’s what you always do, Afanasiv. You sacrifice yourself over and over for others. Has she ever tried to convince you there is a child?”
He nodded. His gaze never left hers. “I know there isn’t, so when she pulls that one on me, I can breathe easy.”
“How does she contact you? You no longer go to the underworld. How is she able to get to you?”
He frowned and rubbed at his temples. “She would become a woman preyed upon by vampires. She’d be in a village that was set upon by a master vampire with lesser vampires or a puppet. She would look completely different, and I would have no way of knowing who she was until I got close enough to her. The battle was always fierce, and I would sustain many injuries before I reached her. Everyone else was dead, so getting one person alive from the village seemed a victory. Then I would get close and know that it was Lilith and that she had orchestrated the entire event. All those people in the village dead just so she could try to persuade me she had nothing to do with my mother’s torture. Or mine, even.”
“When was the last time she did this?”
“It has been well over two hundred years. Maybe more. I have been in the monastery. She could not find me there.”
“You sleep in the ground every night, and the soil heals you. It welcomes you, right?”
He nodded, puzzled, pressing his fingers against his temples, trying to figure out where she was going with her inquiry.
“You are Dragonseeker and also a child of Mother Earth. Did it occur to you to ask for healing from the constant headaches you have?”
He pulled his hands from his temples. “I don’t have headaches.” He looked puzzled. “Do I?”
“You have a headache because Lilith is trying to make entry intoyour mind. It’s the drumbeat from that night. You have a trigger, and it starts to play in your head, re-creating that scene over and over so she can call you back to her.”
Afanasiv sat back in the chair, his strangely colored eyes drifting over her face. “I do not allow myself to think of those memories. I told you they were lost to me until I forced myself to remember them in order to ensure your people—and you—were safe.”
“There is such a thing as the subconscious, Afanasiv,” she pointed out as gently as she could. He never lost his calm exterior, but she could see that the headache was becoming worse. “You do revisit that terrible nightmare and you get headaches. You’ve had them ever since your parents died, but because you lost all emotion and you don’t feel or recognize pain, you never acknowledged that you had headaches. You don’t acknowledge that you feel them, so you don’t see that they’re triggered by something outside of yourself.”
Afanasiv was suddenly out of his chair and flowing across the room, his power filling the space until the walls expanded and contracted as if they couldn’t possibly hold him in.
“Why did you cut yourself off from me?”
Vasilisa hadn’t expected him to ask her point-blank. He had his back to her, but he suddenly turned to face her, his strange eyes staring directly into hers, piercing every shield she had so that she felt stripped bare and vulnerable.
“You are still holding yourself away from me.”
Twice she opened her mouth to answer him, and twice she swallowed down what she was going to say. What could she say? That he was the only person she truly feared? That he made her weak? That she was obsessed with him? She’d always been her own person and went her own way, and suddenly she couldn’t think without wanting him right beside her. She wasn’t that kind of woman. She feared she was losing herself. And then hearing that he’d been lovers with Lilith... She’d grabbed at that as an excuse to run from him. Only she couldn’t run far, because all she could think about was him.