“Tatyana le Tala!” Oleg shouted again, shaking her arm. “Blooded knyaginya of the Kievan Rus!”
Then Oleg wrapped his arm around her waist, lifted her up, and kissed his wife on her bloody mouth.
“How many dead?”
He sat on the wooden bench in the steaming air of his bathing chambers at the palace, staring at the cedar-planked floor as Tatyana poured warm, scented water over his head and combed the remnants of gore from his hair.
She stood in front of him and tilted his chin up to comb through his beard. “Of Ivan’s men, I don’t know yet. But at least a dozen guests.”
He cursed under his breath. “This was my fault. I allowed his cancer to spread because I didn’t want to… I don’t even remember now,” he muttered. “It was the wrong choice. I should have killed him decades ago. Maybe centuries.”
“You didn’t want a bloody power struggle in Moscow,” she said calmly. “You didn’t want a long, terrible, drawn-out battle that would likely have ensnared hundreds of vampires and humans as one faction fought against the other. You didn’t want other territories drawn into the aftermath. You didn’t want any of Ivan’s resentful children to seek revenge in a decade. Or a century. You didn’t want cycles of this happening over and over again for years.”
Oleg grunted, and part of him knew she was right.
But in that moment, all he could see was the blood and mud under his own feet. All he could smell was the burning flesh of Ivan’s sons. Vampires who shared his blood.
Tatyana finished combing through his beard and set the tortoiseshell comb on the edge of the cedar shelf.
He had already bathed her and combed through her hair, removing every bit of blood and guts from the golden locks that had been adorned with pearls and citrines at dusk.
“I see the weight resting on your shoulders.” She stood at his side and rubbed scented oil over his shoulders. “You will feel it. You will live with it because you must. But remember that you did not cause this. In the end, this was your brother’s doing. Not yours.”
“I knew he was dangerous and did nothing.” He closed his eyes. “Ludmila could have taken him out a hundred times?—”
“Then what?” She sat across from him and leaned forward, tucking the linen towel around her body. “What would have happened?”
Ivan would have been dead.
His sons would have jostled for power.
The long battle she had just described would have been his reality.
“The men who were loyal to Ivan—his little cult of Truvor—were the ones he brought to Saint Petersburg. So the ones he trusted are dead.” Her voice had become the pragmatic bookkeeper again. “That means those who are left in Moscow are probably—probably—loyal men and women. Meaning you won’t have to fear a repeat of this in a decade or a century.” She dug her fingers into his thigh. “This battle was painful, but you cut the cancer out.”
Oleg narrowed his eyes. “How do I know?”
“You will trust no one of Ivan’s blood until they prove themselves.” Her voice was clipped and more than a little fatalistic. “If they are worthy of your loyalty, they will understand why, and if they do not?” She gave a grim shrug.
The voice she used… it reminded him a little bit of her mother.
But he was smart enough not to say that.
Oleg looked his wife in the eye. “I knew I was the wisest of vampires to trick you into marrying me.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Really?”
“Truly. They will write sagas about the wisdom of Oleg, immortal king of the Varangians, who cleverly maneuvered the Poshani princess into marriage and then made her fall in love with him.”
She nodded. “I am so glad that we have turned this conversation around to boosting your ego, which does not needany help.” She spread her arms. “Because it already fills this entire bath chamber like?—”
He cut her off by pulling her into his lap and kissing her. Oleg placed his arms firmly around his wife, and when he wanted to let her breathe again, he released her mouth and rested his cheek on her shoulder, inhaling the scent of her skin.
She put her hand on his cheek. “Was I right to kill him?”
“Yes.”
It was not even a question. If there was anything that would cement her reputation among his people and her own, it was the public execution of a betrayer.
