Page 136 of Golden Eagle

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Sasha dreamed of the clearing.

A carpet of snow, and the reaching fingers of bare trees, and ravens, high and silent in the white-gray sky. It was the forest north of Stalingrad, where Rasputin had died.

Thestaretswas there now, a blackened, smoking ruin like a scar on the snow. Other bodies, too. Kolya, Ivan, Feliks. His wolves, the wind stirring their fur, lifting the scent of blood to his nose.

And there was Nikita, skin nearly white as the snow beneath him, a crumpled doll with a slick, red mouth.

Sasha walked toward him, and pulled up short when a voice said, “This is a dream, you know.”

He turned, and there was Val, as he’d appeared that day, all those years ago. Hair pulled back at the crown and spilling like a rustling banner over one shoulder; cloak of shining sable on his shoulders, over red velvet, and dyed-red breeches. Shining leather boots up to the calves in the snow. His eyes glowed, bright blue gems in the colorlessness of the unnatural twilight.

“Why are we here?” Sasha asked.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Val said, striding toward him through the snow, boots throwing off little clumps of it, “but you’re the one who picked the time and place, I’m afraid.”

“Oh.” He glanced across the grisly tableau again, feeling faintly sick. “Why would I want to come back here?”

“I’m not sure it’s a matter of want.” Val reached him, and took his arm gently in one hand, steered him over to a felled log. He dusted it off with one bare hand and then sat, inviting Sasha to sit beside him with an elegant gesture.

Sasha plopped down. Inelegantly.

“The mind is a funny thing,” Val said, looking out across the clearing with a neutral expression. “We forget so many little lovely things we’d like to remember, but our minds take us back, again and again, to the worst moments of our lives. Mia calls that ‘trauma,’ and I suppose she’s right. It’s easy to forget joy, but we never truly leave our trauma behind.”

He turned to Sasha then, expression kind. “I imagine this was the worst day of your life. And it’s a memory to which I am tied for you. It’s only natural.”

Sasha swallowed, and glanced toward Nikita’s still form, his arms out-flung. If he squinted, he could imagine Nik had laid down to make a snow angel, and not that these were the last, frigid moments of his life as a human.

“He doesn’t trust me,” Val said, a statement of fact.

“He doesn’t have a trusting nature.”

“No. Neither does my brother. It’s a shame they fought the one time they met; I suspect that, under different circumstances, they’d quite like one another. As much as either of them is able to like anyone or anything.”

Sasha huffed a quiet laugh.

“They’re both incredibly stubborn, for one,” Val continued. His voice grew more serious. “People use that word:stubborn. They think they understand it. Mules are stubborn, and babies stubbornly refuse to keep tidy. Spots on fine silk are stubborn, and so are illnesses that linger.

“Vlad, though…it takes a very remarkable kind of stubbornness to keep to causes the way he does. To hold onto the grudges he has. To resist the enemies that he did. It isn’t something that can be beaten out of him, though. You can’t break that kind of stubborn. My violent brother will die with a sword in his hand, and smile when he reaches Valhalla because at least he died defending that which he holds dear.”

“Valhalla.” A word from books; from legend. “That’s for dead heroes.”

“For dead warriors. For dead Viking warriors. I think Vlad’s the truest example of that.” He smiled when Sasha glanced at him, and it seemed self-conscious. “We’re half-Viking, he and I. On our mother’s side.”

“Really?”

“Where do you think I got this?” He raked a hand through his hair, and it rippled, molten gold, catching sunlight that wasn’t even there. “I don’t know what happened to Mother,” he said, some of his brightness dimming. “I’ve searched for her, some, but never found her.”

He shook his head and took a breath. “I’ve gotten off track. I think your Nikita is that kind of stubborn. Once he’s convinced of the right course of action, he can’t be swayed from it. He has few soft spots. The largest of those is you, obviously.”

Sasha felt heat suffuse his cheeks.

“Look at you blushing. It’s adorable.”

No, it was miraculous – that Nikita loved him back the way Sasha loved him. That they could take down the barriers between them and justbe, now.

“When it comes to you,” Val continued, “he can hardly get out of his own way.”

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