Page 37 of The Rusalka and Mr. Right

“You told me once that this beast owns your soul.”

“He made me. He feeds from my kind.”

“Yes, he spawns with his offspring. I know there are no true genetics in his case, but still. He’s an abomination that rises and falls in cycles of regeneration. How do we end the cycle?” Jakob flung a thick red leather-bound book open in front of me.

“By keeping him starved, too weak and too empty to live again,” I said. “With hundreds of rusalka feeding him, he rises every few hundred years. With fewer feeding him, it should take longer. Only Darya said that there are hardly any of my kind left, so Koshchei is desperate. He’s feeding without restraint, pulling their energy into his being to force his resurrection early.”

“How soon?”

“This Hunter’s Moon.”

Jakob’s face slackened and he ran his finger down the wall calendar in his library. “October the seventeenth. That’s in three weeks’ time, Marina!”

“I know!” Anger sparked and faded. Hopelessness took over. “He’ll drain the others to death or the point of death to rise, and then he’ll spawn with the only healthy rusalka left, the only one strong enough to breed. Me.”

“You will refuse!”

“And he won’t listen. Heowns my soul. Once he’s on this plane, he can bind me to him without my consent, force me to bear his spawn over and over until I die and he has a new fleet of handmaids.”

“Because... He owns your soul?” Jakob repeated slowly.

“Yes. That’s what gives him power.”

“What if your soul was given to another?” Jakob plopped a different book in front of me, small and deep blue.

Marriages, Bonds, and Unions of the Supernatural.

“Jakob, I... Who would do this for me? How could I ask them to? Don’t you realize that if Koshchei knows I belong to another, he’ll simply kill that person to reclaim my soul as his own?”

Fingers flipped faster and faster. “Eternal vows for the immortal soul. Look.” Minegold tapped his finger on one page that was blistered with tears.

My fingers traced along the final line of the short stanzas on the page, following his finger. “‘In life and death, to you I bind myself, heart and soul. Ever tethered and never to part, I name thee keeper of soul and heart.’”

My host cleared his throat several times. “Had I known... Had I known I would end up like this and Magda would survive, I would have had these vows said in our wedding, but I did not. Come to think of it, I do not think the rabbi would have deviated from the traditional words back in the 1920s. But you... You have a shot. This would prevent him from owning your soul, no matter what. If he doesn’t own you, he cannot command you?”

“Maybe, but... This is a lifetime commitment. Anafterlifetime commitment!” My eyes searched his. “Who would do this for me, Jakob? Not even you. You are gallant and loving, a gentleman knight in a vampire’s body—but your soul belongs to Magda, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t trade your hopes of reuniting with her to save me.”

He swallows several times before sitting down across from me. “I would. Magda would not wish me to see a woman enslaved so that one day we might—”

“No. No, thank you. This bond wouldn’t hold between us anyway,” I whispered, pressing one hand to his cheek. “My heart already belongs to someone else.”

“WHAT’S IT GONNA TAKEfor Big K to leave you alone? And how tall is he, by the way?”

“Oh. Uh. I haven’t seen him in so long. Very tall.”

“I’m serious. Restraining order? Barbed wire? You could stay with my parents for a couple of weeks.”

Marina gapes at me. “Your parents?”

“Yeah. I told ‘em about you tonight—man, technically last night. My mom asked if there were any nice girls around here—she’s dying from lack of information and the ability to interfere in my life.” I join Marina in my bed, wondering what the hell they put in tansie-whatever because her bruises and scrapes have faded to almost nothing. I look at the slender foot that’s poking out from the sheets and see that the reddened cut across the sole is already scabbing over.

That’s... odd.

But we have bigger things to deal with.

Marina puts her hand on my chest, nestling up to me in a way that makes me feel like I could conquer the world.

Damn, if I could be her hero... Her real hero...

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