“I will, too,” added Nikolai.
“I’ll help you,” said Sienna, following Mikhail to the next room.
Sienna pulled back the rose quilt so Mikhail could lay Beatrice down.
“Are Marius and Arabelle all right?”
“Yes.” Sienna’s brow furrowed as she felt the lump on the side of Beatrice’s head. “Arabelle was badly injured. They’d broken her arm, the bones sticking out and cracked her rib cage. She couldn’t breathe, one of the bones must’ve punctured her lung. Marius gave her his elixir, but it wasn’t enough. Blood was coming out of her mouth, and we knew”—she choked up, glancing at him—“we knew she’d die if he didn’t take action quickly.”
Mikhail didn’t need to hear the rest to know what happened next. “He made her a vampire.”
Sienna nodded, brushing Beatrice’s hair away from her face.
“Then she will be fine.”
“Will Beatrice truly recover?”
“Yes.” He sat on the edge of the bed beside Sienna and lifted the girl’s arm, rolling up the sleeve of her blue dress. “After I give her my elixir.”
“How, Captain? How is your elixir more powerful than Friedrich’s? He is a Varis.”
The most potent elixir of healing pumped through the veins of a pure-blood Varis. The closer one was to the original source, Queen Morgrid, the more potent the power of healing.
He caught Sienna’s curious expression. “I saw what you did for Denny. You brought him back from the dead.”
“His blood was warm and his spirit still close. It would’ve been too late had we waited another second.”
“But it wasn’t too late. How, Captain?”
“A tale for another time.”
He leaned his head and bit into the girl’s thin forearm. He didn’t suction her blood but allowed his potent serum to be released from the needle-thin glands in his fangs. He counted to ten, then pulled away, hearing her faint pulse thrum faster into a healthy, strong beat. She turned her head to the other side of the pillow, the first sign of consciousness.
Sienna stared at Mikhail questioningly. But he wouldn’t tell her what she longed to know. How and why his elixir was as powerful as that of a Varis prince.
“I must find my brother and Friedrich.”
He blurred from the room and away into the woods in the direction he’d gone after Radomir. The night was lit with the orange glow of an inferno beyond Silvane Forest to the west. Anxiety rode him when he smelled the familiar scent of his brother, Friedrich, and hart wolves. He sped past the body of Denny’s would-be killer toward the sights and sounds of those he knew.
Dane—naked in human form from a recent shift—had Friedrich’s arm wrapped around his shoulder as he helped him walk. Allora and her mate, Bron, in wolf form, flanked them, as well as Dmitri, Yuri, and Gavril. Allora’s white coat glistened by moonlight. Bron’s sleek black fur helped him meld with the trees. Their gold wolf eyes glinting in the dark.
Dmitri’s eyes widened in relief when they landed on Mikhail. The two jogged to each other. Dmitri gripped his shoulder, squeezing hard.
“I didn’t know where you were.” Which was the closest he could come to saying, I thought you might’ve died.
Mikhail grabbed his brother’s nape and tightened his hold, thankful to the heavens for sparing him. For he was sure there would be a high count of the dead from this night.
“I’m hard to kill, Brother. You know that.”
“You mean you’re too damn stubborn to die.”
“Aye. There’s that.”
They shared a knowing but brief smile. No need to say what was surely on both their hearts—sheer relief. The others caught up to them.
Mikhail broke away to walk on Friedrich’s opposite side. “Are you badly injured?”
“Hell no. The bloody bastards nearly cut my leg off, but it’s healing.” He gripped his thigh, the blood-soaked trousers sliced open from a blade where a deep gash slowly mended. “But I couldn’t follow them,” he added bitterly. “I’m worried for Grant. He went after them alone.”
“Gavril, Yuri,” snapped Mikhail. “Follow Grant’s trail. If I’m right, they were prepared to be followed. He will need help.”
Gavril and Yuri chorused together, “Aye, Captain.”
They blurred away. Bron and Allora sped after them, a streak of black and white disappearing in the gloom of the wintry forest.
“Get home, Your Grace,” said Mikhail. There was time to plan strategy to get Izzy back later. But for now, they must end this unhallowed night and mourn their dead and pray for the dying. “Denny is alive.”
“What!” Friedrich’s eyes snapped wide. “Alive?”
Mikhail nodded, not ready to explain that it was he who’d brought him back. “Brenna needs you now.”
Friedrich’s gaze peered in the direction of his cottage as if he could see his wife and children in pain, in need of him. “Faster, Dane.” He quickened his pace with Dane’s help.
“Dmitri,” said Mikhail. “The encampment.”
“Aye. Let’s go.”
They spirited away, the icy wind turning colder by the second, as if winter deepened with the loss of so many souls to keep the forest warm. The forest full of magic that had sheltered humans and vampires alike, brothers in arms, against a dark evil. Their loss slowed her pulse, as if she wept with them.
The stench of burning flesh grew stronger when they wound out of the forest’s edge to Harrison’s farm—the center for the soldier’s tents and weapons armory. They stood on the hillside near the archery training site.
The farmhouse was ablaze as well as the barn and every tent along the forest’s border. The field was littered with bodies, both their own and Legionnaires’, their uniforms setting them apart. The soldiers still standing had a chain of buckets from the well to the barn. Some of the Bloodguard flashed in vampire speed to and from, dousing the flames as fast as they could.
The brawny form of Harrison was at the helm. His wife and children stood to one side near the boy Nate, holding the reins of Friedrich’s Arkadian horses. Nate stared at the burning barn, where his father worked and they both slept each night. Mikhail didn’t see the silhouette of Nate’s father, the blacksmith who’d forged many weapons for their army. As horrific as the sight was, it wasn’t their dead men burning that wafted that unholy smell up into the night.
“Dear God,” muttered Dmitri at his side.
In the distance, a hellish haze glowed up into the wintry sky as if the netherworld had opened up right where the town of Hiddleston stood. Amid the roar of flames came the quieter sounds of stifled cries and screams of women and children.
“They burned the whole fucking village.”
Hiddleston had been a friend to the Black Lily. And so was an enemy to Queen Morgrid.
Dmitri sped off toward the cries for help. Mikhail was right behind him. He stared up, watching his hope that they’d ever escape the queen’s evil rising with the smoke and ashes of Hiddleston.
Chapter Seventeen