Belka clapped her hand over her mouth.
“Vovo, did you take Alyona from the play yard?” Andros asked.
The man narrowed his eyes at him. “Why should I tell you? You have already condemned my family to death by silver. There is no merit in giving you a single word of this child. In fact, I can go to my grave happy that Lada and her family suffer every day wondering where she is.”
Lada jammed her fist into her mouth. Andros pulled her closer and leaned down, whispering encouragement to her, and then pressed kisses on her temple.
Afanasiv wasn’t in the least bit worried about being dignified as a royal or nice to anyone. He was used to fighting vampires. Evil was evil as far as he was concerned. He entered Vovo’s mind with all the finesse of a hard punch, knocking through all barriers and sifting through memories and thoughts fast. Once he found what he was looking for, he passed the information to Vasilisa.
He took the child from the little play set and ran into the forest in wolf form. She was very frightened and screamed, so he kept his hand over her mouth. When she bit him, he slapped her. He ran with her for miles until he came to the middle of Dimitri’s preserve. Rudlof waited for him there, and he gave the child to him.
Vasilisa walked right up to Vovo and slapped him hard across the face. “You horrible little toad. You slapped a child because she was terrified and she bit you when you stole her from her mother, and you put your hand on her mouth so she couldn’t breathe? Or cry out to her mother or grandmother? You are the most pathetic, horrible excuse for a Lycan I can imagine. I am almost glad you committed treason so I can tell myself you were never one of us.”
She turned away from him. “All Lycans are one with the land. With each other. To know that ones such as you exist sickens me.”
Afanasiv left behind mirrors reflecting the rot inside him. Vovo could blink several times, but he could never be free of seeing his self-centered life and the sins he’d committed and intended to commit. Afanasiv pulled out of the man’s mind, caught the chains of glittering silver and, without a word, caught up the man and his son, one under each arm, and took them out the door and into the forest to one of the oldest trees with thick, sturdy branches.
In spite of the kicking and screaming and both attempting to shift into their wolves, they were stripped and chained with silver hooks so that it could drip into their bodies and kill them slowly. Death by silver was excruciatingly painful to any Lycan. Straight across from the two men, Belka appeared to be hung, as well, so her husband and son could see her painful death. In truth, she was an illusion. Her death had been swift and her body had been incinerated completely. She would not be added to any memorial wall, her name would never be mentioned and the land would not welcome her ashes.
“Polina,” Andros said, “I would like you to take Lada into the other room and attend to her wounds. She has several. Before she came home, we cleaned them thoroughly, but she was handled roughly, so the lacerations are deep. The stitches might have opened.”
Lada shook her head. “She’s my daughter, Andros. I shouldn’t leave this to you.”
“I want to do this for you,” he said, turning her toward her mother. “Please let me do this without you in the room. Some things are not for your eyes.”
Polina wrapped her arms around her daughter. “Come with me, Lada. Let them find out what Rudlof knows by whatever means they can. Sometimes it is better to allow them to work without you present.”
“In other words,” Rudlof said, squirming and struggling against the burn of the silver torture. He panted, his mouth open, gasping for air as he fought for the ability to speak. “They have bound me withsilver, and you see how it burns into my flesh. How it torments my wolf. You would feel it if they didn’t shield you.”
“Lada.” Andros framed her face with both hands and looked into her eyes. His voice was very gentle but compelling. “I have asked you to leave the room. Please comply with my wishes.”
“Yes, of course, Andros.” She brushed her lips against his, featherlight, as if daring to make the move on her own, before allowing her mother to lead her out.
“All others are excused,” Andros continued, looking around the room at the practitioners of the Sacred Circle.
“Andros, we had no idea of the conspiracy against you,” Stepan said. “We follow the ways of the Sacred Circle, but we are Lycan first.”
“I’m aware.”
“I would like to stay, if you don’t mind,” Stepan continued. “I want to know what happened to my granddaughter. It was bad enough to realize that somehow Nikita had allowed demons into our Circle, and they had taken over our minds to the extent we didn’t realize they were using us to do their bidding. I have so much to make up to my daughter for.”
“She doesn’t blame you.”
“The conspirators would have used her to harm you and the other royals. That was their goal. I have no idea what the demons wanted with you, but there seemed to be something there, as well,” Stepan continued. “To know that I wasn’t strong enough to protect my family, the Lycans and the royal family from harm is humbling.”
“The man you call Nikita was a mage of great power. He was very well versed in appearing to be a Lycan and a member of the Sacred Circle.”
The ancients guarded the surrounding forest in case any demons had been left alive and were in hiding, waiting to attack the unwary. They provided unseen escorts for those going back to their homes, making certain they weren’t attacked and taken over.
Andros waited until the room was empty of any others except hisfamily, Afanasiv and Rudlof. “Your time in the chains would be over, Rudlof, unlike the others in this conspiracy, if you cooperated. You may have nudged them on their path, but you believed we were unworthy of leadership. That belief is still in your mind. I can tell you—and you should be able to hear lies—that the woman you trusted is not our aunt and has been corrupted by the high mage and consorts with those in the underworld.”
Rudlof erupted into swearing in the Lycan language, spitting his rage at Andros in an insane display. His eyes went from glowing amber to heated red to a mixture of both until he looked like the very devil, his hatred so deep and unbending, his gaze encompassing all of the royals. There was no getting through to him. No reasoning with him. His loathing of the royals was palpable, tangible and so intense that it filled the room and sank into the walls until they breathed with a dark revulsion.
Vasilisa moved closer to Afanasiv. He knew it was an involuntary action on her part. She would have been annoyed at herself had she realized she had done so, but Afanasiv was elated that she had turned to him when the room had grown so hostile. Her sensitive nature felt the hostility and hatred so much more than most would. Afanasiv registered it, but he shut down emotion easily after centuries of no feeling, particularly when it came to treachery and darkness.
How would my aunt be able to get him to believe her to the point he cannot hear her lies, Siv? And Rudlof was always one with a sense of justice. How is it that he cannot even hear us anymore? He shuts down the moment one of us tries to talk to him.
Afanasiv studied the Lycan as Grigor tried next to reach out to the prisoner. The royal appealed to him first as a man and then as a Lycan. He got the same results Andros did—malevolent loathing. This time, the walls rippled and smoldered with animosity. The wolf snarled and snapped with vicious teeth beneath the mask of the man. Was there a shadowing on him? The man or the wolf? A mage shadowing?