Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 38711 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 194(@200wpm)___ 155(@250wpm)___ 129(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 38711 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 194(@200wpm)___ 155(@250wpm)___ 129(@300wpm)
“Ouch.” She laughed a little.
“I’m digging this hole deeper, aren’t I?”
“Oh yes. What kind of chocolate was it?”
“Ferrero Rocher,” he said. “With hazelnuts. Golden wrappers. Sixteen in a pack.”
Chocolate was expensive in the Post-Shift world. He had spent everything he’d had on it.
She sighed.
“Were they good?”
Andora nodded. “They were. But it doesn’t make up for the hair.”
“Tell me what I can do,” he said.
She glanced at him.
“I’m serious. Whatever I can do to say I’m sorry, I’ll do it.”
“Mmm, it’s so lovely.”
“What?”
“The sound of your groveling.” She grinned at him. “I’m quite enjoying this.”
He didn’t know what to say to that.
“I have something in mind. Let’s get through this first.” She closed her mouth, then changed her mind. “Did they punish you? Your parents?”
“They didn’t have to,” he said. “I was miserable enough already. My sister had spilled the beans about the bow, too. Within a week, they got a place for my brother, and he moved out on his own. The school never called my brother again. I didn’t get in as much trouble from that point on, but when something did happen, my dad would come in his black robes to glare at the principal.”
He chuckled softly at the memory.
“My dad talked to me for a while and told me I wasn’t worthless and that what happened was his fault for not paying attention. My uncle, the White Volhv, made a warding circle out of gold and hung it on the wall by my bed. It cost our family an arm and a leg, but the Nav dreams stopped after that.”
“And that’s how your father betrayed his god,” she murmured.
He nodded.
An ancient conflict existed between Chernobog and Belobog. They were brothers and rivals. His father had done the unforgivable. He wasn’t the one who’d gone to the White Volhv for help—it was his mother. But he had allowed the warding circle that was made with Belobog’s magic to be hung in Roman’s bedroom to sever the connection between Chernobog and his future chosen.
“Why do you think he did it?” she asked.
“My father seems arrogant and abrasive.”
“Yes, I’ve met the man.” She made a face.
“’Seems’ is the key word here. There is a reason my mother can’t quit him. He is a lot like my brother but a lot like me, too. We both got something from him. So, when it came to the circle, some of it was out of love. He honestly believed that doing Chernobog’s bidding would kill me. And some of it was stubbornness.”
Andora sighed. “You don’t say.”
“There are many Black Volhvs. We’re not unique like Vasylisas. When a pagan community gets large enough, it gets one. But of all of the Black Volhvs serving Chernobog across the world, my father was his favorite. He wielded a lot of power, and he’d done things in his god’s name that haunt him still. In his mind, he’d asked for very little. Chernobog wanted one of my father’s sons to serve him. Fine. He obliged, chose a son he thought was best suited, and offered him to his god. The least his god could do was to respect my father’s choice. And when Chernobog didn’t, my father dug his heels in.”
His father had served faithfully for many decades, so Chernobog hadn’t killed him. He had simply stopped speaking to him. If a Black Volhv managed to survive to a ripe old age, they gracefully retired, letting their successors do more and more of the work, but they never lost their connection to their god. They were honored and feared, up to the moment of their death. Instead, his brother had been forced to take over everything at once, and then it all went sideways.
Nobody outside the family knew what really happened. Except, apparently, for Andora, who had a direct line to Morena and probably to Chernobog as well. Even Roman himself hadn’t known for years that his father had been cut off. He’d learned about it during that desperate late-night phone call that had ended his military career and brought him back to Atlanta for good. This was a secret he was determined to keep. Grigorii Semionovich Tihomirov would live the rest of his life as the Black Volhv, if in name only.
“There is not much left to the story,” Roman said. “I kept my head down, made it through school with half decent grades, and then enlisted as soon as I could. The next… Well, you know what happened next.”
Ahead, the snow sheathing the Glades glittered like diamonds. Thin wisps of magic swirled just above the ground, picking up stray snowflakes and spinning them into miniature tornados. No escape.
“This is going to be hell,” she said.
“Nah.” He grinned. “Hell is for Christians and the Norse. For us, it’s just another day in Nav.”
Roman squared his shoulders and pulled the tree into the open.