Page 34 of Cry of the Firebird

"Oh, I know it. I was selfish enough to think I was doing him a favor by leaving. When I got back, I saw how much I hurt him and promised to never leave again," Anya said.

The nightmares had disappeared as soon as she was back at the farm, and now she knew it wasn't just because she was home. If the wards helped keep her PTSD symptoms in check, it would explain why they had come back with such a vengeance once Eikki was dead.

"Your grandfather had good reason to panic," Izrayl replied. "In Moscow, the heart of the Darkness's power, you were ripe for the picking. An untrained person with a touch of magic would be a prize worth fighting over, even if they had been told by Eikki that you didn't have any. It's not only that; Eikki was neutral, and they wanted him on the Darkness's side. They could haveused you to press him into service. That's why Eikki reached out to us and called Trajan back to his duty."

"What duty?" Anya and Yvan asked at once.

"To watch over Ilya's family," Trajan replied, glaring daggers at Izrayl.

"You were meant to be protecting Anya, so where the fuck were you when Vasilli attacked us?" Yvan demanded.

"I had gone to feed if you must know." Trajan's eyes flashed red, and Yvan backed down. "I thought Anya would be safe for a few days under the farm's wards. When I got back two days later, the place was burning with no sign of her and the stink of Vasilli's magic everywhere. Her trail led to the forest and disappeared, so I knew she must have made it into Skazki. I panicked and sent out messages to Izrayl and Cerise to meet me here so we could track Anya down. And then you turned up."

"I had nowhere else to go. There was no one I could trust with Vasilli tracking us," Yvan replied. "What else was I meant to do? Leave Anya in the woods? I could never do that to one of Ilya's kin."

"You knew Ilya, but you've never told me how," Anya pointed out.

"We've been a bit busy, Anya, and I didn't want to scare you more than?—"

"Well, we aren't busy now. I want the whole story right now, so out with it, Tsarevich. Eikki had your egg. How does my family know you, and how do you know Trajan and Izryal?" she demanded.

Anya's brain was spinning, but she didn't want any more secrets and confusingly vague comments that they kept giving each other because of their history.

"I would like to know that too," Cerise said, tapping her scarlet nails on the table. "More to the point, I want to know precisely how deep the shit is that I've just landed in."

Yvan refilled Anya's vodka without looking at her. "It all started when I met Izrayl for the first time. It was after the quest for the firebird, and I was living back in the palace. I was out hunting when Izrayl first found me. He scared me half to death. Of course, I knewvolk kroviexisted, but I had never actually thought they lived in our forest."

"Vasilli had been stealing our children to use their blood in his magic," Izrayl growled, his eyes growing feral. "We knew the youngest of Vyslav's sons had more sense than his father, so we approached Yvan about it."

Yvan leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. "Since Vasilli and Dimitri had disappeared after killing me and lying to my father, I had been worrying that without anything to check him, Vasilli would fall deeper into his fascination with dark magic. I also knew that he would be too powerful for me to stop alone and that I would have to find someone with the power to match him."

"The only person we ever knew in history powerful enough to take on Vasilli was Yanka," Izrayl continued when Yvan had been silent for too long. "It took us six months to find any trace of her, and she was apparently dead. That was when we crossed into Russia and found Ilya, her son. We first met Trajan there too."

"I was visiting Ilya for the first time since we met in Greece," Trajan explained for Anya's benefit. "He had seen me feeding off someone on a beach and had never met one of my kind before. We became friends easily, and he offered me a place to stay whenever I wanted it."

Izrayl shot him an annoyed glance. "Stop interrupting! As I was saying, even though Ilya was ridiculously talented, especially when it came to prophetic visions, he didn't have half the strength needed to fight Vasilli. He told me he'd had a vision, a terrifying prophecy, that only the firebird and one ofIlya's bloodline could defeat Vasilli, but it had to agree to do it willingly. The bird was stubborn as shit and hated that it was still captured. Before we could convince it to help us, Vasilli had attacked the palace and bound the firebird's power until Yvan interrupted the spell and died along with the firebird."

"I'm interested to know how my egg ended up with the Venäläinen's," Yvan said. He was looking queasy and frustrated. Anya could understand not wanting to dredge up a painful past, so she reached under the table and took his hand. He didn't move it away, so Anya left it there.

Trajan rested his arms on the table, his gaze swapping silent confirmations with Izrayl, who nodded. "Izrayl went to Ilya to tell him what had happened to you, and it was right when I had come to visit him. Ilya convinced me to help him find the firebird's egg, and as payment for releasing me from Eris's servitude forever, I led him to the Greek Otherworld to the temple where a firebird's ashes go to be remade. On that trip, Ilya spoke again of his reoccurring vision he had of the firebird fighting Vasilli. He had seen it fighting with a woman who looked exactly like Yanka. But with Yanka already dead, we assumed it would be a future descendent of his."

Anya's stomach fluttered nervously as Baba Yaga's words came rushing back to her.You look like her, you know. Yanka. The same eyes, same white hair. Same magic, I wonder?

"And then what happened?" she asked, her voice cracking.

"Ilya was murdered. I never found out who did it, but he must have seen it coming," Trajan continued. "He had charged me with hiding his son Ahti and his mother, and when I returned to the farm, he was dead. Ahti was sixteen, so Ilya had a chance to teach him the gates magic. Ahti returned to the farm and took Ilya's mantle as the gatekeeper."

"Then many, many years later, you were born," Izrayl's voice rumbled. "Eikki knew about Ilya's prophecy, and even as ayoung child, you looked like Yanka. Naturally, he grew worried and crossed over to tell us about you."

Trajan nodded. "Eikki didn't have copies of Ilya's prophecies, so he was never sure of the vision's precise details, but he was cautious about it. He took one look at you in your crib, born with Ilya's white hair and green eyes, and decided to tell your parents everything. They didn't believe him, and your father didn't have a drop of magic in him, so he never understood Eikki's concern. He wanted to raise you like a normal human. He insisted on keeping you as far away from Eikki as possible. It wasn't until you were nearly six years old that they decided to visit the old man, the first time since you were a little baby."

"And then they crashed the car," Anya whispered, her hand going to her chest where a ball of pain was growing.

"When your parents were killed, he blamed himself completely. Eikki decided he wouldn't let the same thing happen to you. I believe guilt stopped him from teaching you, rather than the threat of Ilya's prophecy. Eikki asked me if there was a way to suppress the magic already inside of you. That was when I made the decision to come and see you for myself."

Trajan smiled a little at the memory. "He was concerned about your lack of fear of me. Not only were you unafraid, but you also took an instant liking to me. I tried to tell him he had to teach you to protect yourself, that the line of gatekeepers couldn't end with him, and that it could be your destiny to stop Vasilli once and for all. He has caused havoc for far too long now. If he and Ladislav got hold of the firebird's magic or yours, the Darkness would start a war with the Illumination for dominance and tear the worlds apart again. The Illumination has had the upper hand on them for centuries, and they would love a chance to change that."

"What do you mean, tear the worlds apart again?" Yvan asked. "What has Vasilli been doing all this time?"

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