Something made her pause before she walked out the door, though.
A wrinkle of intuition.
She turned back and completed a quick task, even though it was totally unnecessary, stomping back to the front of the cabin and shaking her head at herself moments later. Refusing to wait any longer for her missing husband, Roksana closed the door behind her and trekked out into the surrounding woods, her boots sinking into the few inches of snow that had fallen the night before. Even now, tiny bits of fluff fell from the sky, the cold biting the gloveless skin of her hands and exposed cheeks.
She’d only been walking for a minute when she heard Elias’s voice.
Followed sharply by Inessa’s.
The white cloud of her aggrieved exhale obscured her vision. No. No no no. What was going on? Inessa was here? Now?
She didn’t want her slayer mother anywhere near her husband. One slide of a stake into his chest and he would cease to exist. Already agony was searing her insides and she didn’t even know why they were meeting in the woods. Forcing herself to calm, Roksana called on her training to stay totally silent, creeping forward on the balls of her feet until she could make out the conversation.
“Once again you’ve come to bargain for my daughter’s life, have you? Maybe trade another year of your life away in my prison?” Inessa laughed merrily, freezing the oxygen in Roksana’s lungs. “No dice this time, son-in-law. We’re all full. Sweet of you to ask, though.”
Elias had imagined this moment hundreds of times, but he’d failed to anticipate how different facing Inessa would be now that his heart beat. Last time he’d stood toe to toe with the Queen of Shadows, he’d been in possession of human emotions. They’d been fierce. But his immortal ones fairly ran amuck inside of him, wailing, demanding an outlet. Blood seemed to pump to and from his heart faster than ever. He was no longer indebted to Inessa by duty and sacrifice, but by love for his mate. Love that increased many times over with every tick of time. His pulse beat in the rhythm of her name.
While watching his wife sleep, her naked body curled around a pillow, replete in her trust that Elias would keep her safe, he’d sensed Inessa’s presence out in the woods. And when she’d shown no shock at his solitary arrival, he knew she’d chosen to be heard.
“Once again you’ve come to bargain for my daughter’s life, have you? Maybe trade another year of your life away in my prison?” Inessa’s laugh was gleeful. “No dice this time, son-in-law. We’re all full. Sweet of you to ask, though.”
“She has done everything asked of her,” he rasped.
“Not everything.” Considering Elias, she dragged her tongue back and forth across the upper row of her teeth. “I must admit, I’m surprised she let you live this time. Such a head of determination my daughter had when last she left me. Perhaps you failed to keep our secret and turned her against me to save your own hide?”
Elias gave her a baleful look. “No, I have not told her.” His boot crunched in the snow when he took an involuntary step forward, his finger jabbing the bitter cold air. “But only because she’s lost so much already. I couldn’t save her friends. Couldn’t save her from that heartbreak. And I wouldn’t be the one to reveal her mother as a fraud and a murderer, too.”
Inessa preened as if he’d delivered a compliment. “Then she shall find out on her own,” she said with a minor shoulder lift. “If she’s to lead the Russian slayers one day, she’ll need to understand that hard and creative decisions will be expected of her.”
His voice shook when he responded, his arms aching to cradle his mate. To rock her in his lap and howl at the injustices done to her. “Like creating a weapon out of your own daughter, borne of pain and grief that you yourself inflicted?”
A flash of Inessa’s teeth, white as the snow that fell around them. “It would have served her well, were it not for her stubborn, pitiful heart.”
“Her heart is too beautiful and resilient for someone like you to fathom.” He bit off a humorless laugh. “She must have gotten it from her father.”
Inessa lurched at the insult, her fingers stretching and flexing like claws, but she quickly reined in her rage. “Did you come here merely to incite me, son-in-law, or do you have something useful to say before I make my daughter choose between us?” She clutched her hands together beneath her chin with mock playfulness. “Who do you think it’ll be?”
Refusing to let the uncertainty show on his face, agony nonetheless severed his vocal cords. He willed his body to knit them back together so he could make the vow he’d known for some time would be required of him. “I will not allow that choice to be put in front of her.”