Ilona Andrews - Magic Binds

“I’m serious, Kate. Here the old powers rule. Elemental powers. It’s not too late to turn back.”

“It’s always too late,” I told him.

“Do you remember how to talk to the gods?”

“Don’t ask for anything, promise nothing, and accept no gifts.”

Roman sighed. “We shall go, then.” He headed into the woods. We followed, picking our way through the underbrush along a narrow trail.

“Why didn’t Chernobog tell you that he wanted to talk to me?” I asked. “It would’ve made things a lot simpler.”

“He did,” Roman said. “Sometimes he wants things and I talk him out of it. I thought we had agreed to let you be. You have enough on your plate.”

“Your god went around you,” Teddy Jo said.

“He did. I tried to tell him it’s a bad idea, I tried to tell Kate it’s a bad idea, and nobody listens to me. And so here we are.” He waved at the darkness in the woods.

“You didn’t try very hard to talk her out of it,” Teddy Jo said.

“I respect her,” Roman said. “She knows what she’s doing. If she says she wants to talk to my god, then so be it. Besides, if Chernobog wants to talk to you, he’ll find a way.”

Speaking of respect . . . “I have a bone to pick with you.”

“Oh?”

“Did you send my father a wedding invitation?”

“Of course I did.”

“Did you clear it with me?”

Roman bent an eyebrow at me. “You weren’t available.”

Around us black woods crowded the path: black trunks, black leaves, black roots. You’d never know it was noon and a few dozen feet above us, the world was bright and full of sunshine. Here darkness ruled. There was something primal about it. Something primitive and old. Things with narrow glowing eyes stared at us from the black brush. This forest gave me the creeps.

“My father called me, all offended on my behalf that the wedding dinner isn’t sufficiently feastlike.”

“Umm,” Roman said.

“Curran is also now offended because my father referred to him as a pauper.”

“Umm,” Roman offered.

“And then you called over to the Keep and offended the dress designers, so they hunted me down this morning and invaded my house.”

“You do need a dress.”

“You’re not a wedding planner, you’re a menace. Stop planning my wedding.”

“I’ll stop when you start.”

“There is nothing to plan.”

Roman turned to Teddy Jo on the trail next to him. “Do you see what I have to deal with?”

“What does this wedding look like in your head?” Teddy Jo asked me. “Is it like the family gets there and then this Russian shows up and marries you?”

“Pretty much.”

“No,” Teddy Jo said.

“It’s my wedding. It’s for me.”

“No, your wedding night is for you. The wedding is for everyone else.”

“I told her,” Roman said. “Weddings require preparation. It’s a significant, hopefully once-in-a-lifetime event where you swear to love and cherish another person, not casually but through thick and thin. It’s a promise that is meant to be kept forever. Honestly, Kate, do you want to get married? It’s a serious question.”

I sighed. “I want to get married. And maybe I would like to be there to pick the flowers and choose the dress and select the menu. But war is coming. My future is on fire and I have to put it out if I hope to have any future left . . .”

They weren’t in front of me anymore.

I clamped my mouth shut. The two men had disappeared. I stood alone. Ahead of me the trail nearly vanished too, all but melted into a bog about fifty feet wide. On both sides, black water slicked blacker mud. Massive black trees bordered the bog, their branches braiding high above me like the fingers of two hands interlaced into a single fist.

Apparently, Chernobog wanted privacy for this conversation. Calling for either Roman or Teddy Jo would do no good. This was his forest and he made this happen. I could stand here, at the edge of the bog, or I could move forward and get on with it.

I stepped into the mud. It squelched under my weight with a wet sucking noise. Step, another step, a few more . . .

Something watched me from the depths of the woods. My skin felt too tight from the pressure of its gaze.

When alone in a dark forest waiting for an audience with an evil god, the most prudent course of action is to be quiet and wait. “Prudent” wasn’t one of my favorite words.

“Hello? I’ve come to borrow a cup of sugar. Anybody? Perhaps there is an old woman with a house made of candy who could help me?”

“Marrying for love isn’t wise.”

The voice came from somewhere to the left. Melodious, but not soft, definitely female and charged with a promise of hidden power. Something told me that hearing her scream would end very badly for me.

I stopped and pivoted toward the voice.

“Marry for safety. Marry for power. But only fools marry for love.”

When a strange voice talks to you in the black woods, only idiots answer.

I was that idiot. “Thank you, counselor. How much do I owe you for this session?”

Mud squelched. Small twigs broke with dry snaps. Something moved behind the trees, on the very edge of my vision. Something dark and very large.

“Love fades. Love is beauty, youth, and good health. Love is sharing a moment in time. Bodies fatten, sag, and wrinkle.”

And she kept going with her spiel. That’s the trouble with ancient gods. No sense of humor.

A long sinuous body slithered behind the trees, enormous, taller than me, wide like a dump truck. It didn’t end; more and more of it kept coming, sliding through the bog. The voice was on the left, the slithering darkness on the right.

“Youth passes you by, and before you know it, the two of you are walking two different roads. Then comes pain, disappointment, and often betrayal.”

“Fascinating,” I said. “Is there a point to this, or did you go through the trouble of stealing Thanatos’s sword to discuss my impending marriage?”

Brush rustled. The massive creature slid behind me, circling the rim of the bog. Peachy. Just peachy.

I turned to follow its movement. A large bird sat on a thick tree branch above me and to the left. Her long feathers draped down into a silky plumage that shifted between indigo, blue, and black. Her head was human with a shockingly beautiful face framed by a mane of blue hair. A gold crown sat on her head. Her chest was human too, with perfectly formed breasts.

Sirin.

I stood perfectly still.

Of all the mythological birds in the Slavic legends, Sirin was the most dangerous. Like Veles, the god who was her father, she was born from magic and the very essence of nature and life, the arterial blood of existence, unbridled, uncontrollable, and as unpredictable as the weather. Sirin, burevestnik , the storm bringer. And seeing her always meant one thing: many people would die.

She looked at me with big blue eyes.

“Hello, burevestnik ,” I said. “Will there be a natural disaster or a battle in my future?”

She laughed, raising her wings, and peeked at me through the gap. “A battle. A bloody battle.”

The dark thing behind her slithered forward. A huge black beak came into the light, followed by a reptilian face the size of a car, its obsidian scales gleaming slightly. Two tentacles streamed from above its beak, like the mustache of its Chinese counterpart.

Aspid. One of Chernobog’s dragons. His tail was still lost in the woods somewhere behind me. He had to be hundreds of feet long. All of my skill with the sword wouldn’t be able to stop it. This was the old magic. The type of magic that existed when my father was young.

Aspid stared at me with big golden eyes, his head rising. Massive paws with claws as big as me sank into the black mud of the bog. I saw the beginnings of folded wings draped over his shoulders, the array of emerald, sapphire, and diamond scales on their surface catching what little light there was.