“It’s faint, Captain. But he’s alive.” Desperation rang in his voice, for he and Gavril had also been close friends. “Gavril, can you hear me?”
Mikhail reined in the thoughts of Gavril stealing Mina away from him and handing her over to Dominik. Not to mention wounding his blood brothers. Dmitri had assured him none of the guardsmen at her tent were killed. Their necks and legs had been broken so that they couldn’t heal quickly enough to set off a warning in the camp.
Gavril’s eyes opened to narrow slits, pain etched in his brow when he looked beyond Yuri to Mikhail standing at his side. “God, no.” His voice was little more than a weak rasp. He closed his eyes. “Leave me.”
Mikhail knelt and gripped his shoulder. “Listen to me, Gavril. You did not betray your brothers. Or the queen.” He squeezed his shoulder harder. Gavril opened his eyes, despair swimming there. “Or me, my brother. You had no choice. You could’ve killed your blood brothers, for I imagine Dominik ordered you to silence anyone in the way. Correct?”
Gavril didn’t move or speak, his hopeless gaze unmoving from Mikhail.
“You’re going to survive. Then make amends and fight alongside your brothers again.”
A faint nod, then he pointed up. “Bring Gregory…up there.” His voice cracked, barely a whisper.
Mikhail glanced over his shoulder. “Soren!”
The broad-shouldered vampire snapped to his side. “Yes, Captain.”
“I need you to carry Gavril back to Katya. She’ll be sure he’s tended to.”
“Yes, Captain.”
He helped Yuri gingerly lift the battered man to Soren’s shoulder, then they flashed away.
“Gregory!”
“Over here,” he bellowed from off to the left.
Mikhail and Yuri joined him where he was already climbing, having found a particularly jagged facing.
Gregoravich glanced down. “I can smell traces of the queen.”
Mikhail leaped up, climbing fast. “Gavril said to go up.” He gripped each notch in the mountain and launched himself up, clamoring to the top first.
He gasped, inhaling deeply of that sweet jasmine and sunshine scent. Something half covered in the whirling snow caught his eye. Kneeling, he lifted the dagger he’d given her and smelled the drop of blood at its tip. Not her blood. But certainly not a death wound by the mere drop left here.
Gregoravich was at his side, puffing out a great lungful of air.
“Damn, Captain. You were up that cliff like a cat.”
Yuri followed.
“Here, Gregory. Touch here.” He pointed to the snow where the dagger had lain, sliding the dagger into his belt.
Gregory did so without hesitation, bowing his head as he read the memory upon this ground. His shoulders tightened and heartbeat accelerated. Mikhail’s own pulse kept pace, fearing the worst. When Gregory lifted his head, his eyes were sparking with blue flame, wild with otherworld energy vibrating through him.
“Tell me,” commanded Mikhail. “Everything.”
“It is definitely King Dominik.” Gregoravich stood, and Mikhail with him. “He…he bit the queen and injected her with his elixir. She is under his thrall.”
A fierce growl erupted from Mikhail’s gut and up his throat.
“They definitely took her to Izeling.” His expression grew sharper under the moonlight. “And they tossed Gavril over the cliff. Assuming we would kill him if he survived the fall.”
Mikhail suffered a pang of remorse for thinking ill of Gavril even for a second. “The king doesn’t know us.”
They stepped away toward the edge. Mikhail gripped Gregoravich by the forearm, asking low, “Did he hurt her?”
The pitiable look on his face told him enough, tightening every muscle in Mikhail’s body.
“He was not gentle with her, Captain,” he finally said quietly.
Mikhail vibrated with restrained violence, his voice low and lethal. “Yuri.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Lead the way. We need to find a way into that tower.”
A surge of fresh fire burned through his body, igniting his need for vengeance. To bludgeon. Claw. Maim. Until nothing was left of the infamous butcher king. It was time to wipe his kind from this world. Not just for the people of Varis, but for Mina. He would regret ever touching her.
Before Mikhail cleaved his skull in two, he’d make sure the bastard understood just that.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Moving robotically down the long crimson-carpeted hall and escorted by four militant Legionnaires, she focused on breathing, on calming herself. She’d been dressed in a red-velvet gown that dipped too low for her liking. Though she was unsure where it had come from, King Dominik possessed a large blood harem. One of his concubines was apparently her size.
She pretended the revealing garment didn’t unsettle her, even as fresh lust emanated from the Legionnaires marching her toward her destination. Especially the blond to her right whose eyes kept straying to her breasts.
She ignored him, glancing instead at the floor-to-ceiling paintings as they marched on. She’d never been to Izeling. And though she’d heard of King Dominik’s grotesque taste, she didn’t understand until now. Each painting depicted one more horrific scene than the next. An angelic woman in white clutching a tree in a storm. Her gown had slipped past her breasts and was drenched from the pouring rain while a godlike vampire laughed from the clifftop. His canines were sharp and ready.
Another painting depicted a nude woman racing bareback on a black horse across a snowy plain, a look of stricken fear upon her pretty face as she looked over her shoulder at whatever was chasing her. A third showed a feast of men laughing and clinking ale goblets, hovering around some unseen spectacle at their center. All that could be seen through a break of men was the painfully flexed arch of a pale, slender foot in the air. Terror and menace. That’s what this entire castle reeked of.
She swallowed the bile rising and kept her eyes forward. Soon enough, she heard low voices ahead. Dominik’s rumbling timbre she recognized as he said, “—how you did it, but it worked.”
Then the definite, melodious, and yet chilling voice of Queen Morgrid. “Easy feat, my son. For one adept at the dark arts as I am.”
The soldiers marched Mina up to the open double doors of a large parlor, ornamented in the same reds and blacks that covered the entire castle like a morbid, repetitive nightmare.
“Here she is, Mother. My blushing bride.”
Mina cringed and stepped inside, stopping before the gray wolf fur rug, her eyes on the queen not Dominik. She glanced for a second time at the wolf fur, for it was quite large. She sickened at the thought that it must be a hart wolf.