No, Lazlo. Not you, Lazlo.
Oleg looked up at the faces that were left.
Scheming Ivan.
Suspicious Pavel.
Stoic Rudov.
Soft Lev, staring back at him with wounded, hollow eyes.
Brother after brother, all waiting for him to die.
Oleg felt the fire gather on his back, creep over his shoulders, and ignite down his arms. “You will challenge me, Lazlo? Evenyouwill challenge me?”
Not Lazlo. Not the closest thing Oleg had to a true brother in the dark pit that was Truvor’s court.
He felt his throat go raw when he yelled, “You will challengeme?”
Lazlo shook his head, then held his arm out, dropping his axe into the mud. “Brother, there is no one left.”
Oleg felt a red mist fall over his vision.“You will challenge me?”
“There is no one left, Knyaz.”
Oleg roared in rage and pain and the fire swallowed him, burning his long braid of hair, his beard, his clothing, all of it. The fire burned around him, swaddling him like a child, wrapping him in heat and scorching the dirt and the blood and the gore from his body.
There was a red crown melting in his hands, and he shoved it onto his head, his body drinking in the pain as he smelled his own burning flesh.
“There is no one left,” she whispered. “Oleg, there is no one left.”
He turned and she was there. “No, not you.”
She was on fire, her golden hair dancing in the inferno. “There is no one left.” The blue flames began to lick along her skin and crawl up her slender neck. “Don’t you see? There is nothing left.”
“No!” he screamed. “No!”
Oleg woke to alarms blaring, smoke and ashes filling the air, and pounding on his outer door as the day chamber within his palace in Saint Petersburg burned around him.
Chapter 16
Tatyana
There was something very wrong with her husband.
The moment Tatyana arrived in Saint Petersburg, exiting Oleg’s private jet with her entourage, she saw it in the cool grey eyes that watched her.
The usual arrogance was stripped from Oleg’s face, replaced by a stoic mask she wanted to rip away.
And yet from the moment she stepped off the jet, Tatyana was surrounded.
Two protocol teams from Warsaw and Budapest, Hazar from Bucharest in their crisp ceremonial uniforms, and dozens of humans and vampires from Saint Petersburg were waiting on the tarmac for the arrival of the Poshani terrin who would become the knyaginya of the Kievan Rus.
There had to be over a hundred people waiting at the private airport, but all Tatyana could see was her husband’s stoic expression. All she could feel was a simmering heat behind the wall he had erected around his amnis.
A band was playing, and a children’s choir, their cheeks bright red in the cold night air, started to sing as Tatyana descended from the jet.
It was a folk song she had learned when she was a child, one common in winter programs, and the wide-eyed youngsters sang it beautifully. She waited at the foot of the stairs until they finished, then clapped her hands as the rest of the crowd joined in.
