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“What if my young goes through the change?”
“If she does, she’ll be an adult. You can approach her then. And she may not.”
“I can’t lose her.”
As Darius said the words, he didn’t know who he was talking about: his mate, who had never been his, really, or the daughter who would never get the chance to be with her father.
If she was lucky.
After all, he had made a vow to his beloved and he would not shirk that or his duty to his progeny. And sometimes, the best path in life was the absolute hardest.
“Okay,” Darius choked out. Then he switched to the Old Language. “The daughter of mine blood and heart shall be raised human. Yet upon my honor, I shall never, ever be far from her. And may the Scribe Virgin save the soul of any who would e’er harm her…”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
One week later, Darius took the ashes of the only female he had ever loved up to the mountaintop mansion he had built north of Caldwell some sixty years before. As he re-formed by the barren, dry fountain in the courtyard, he looked up at the great gray monolith.
Tracing the darkened diamond-paned windows with his eyes, measuring the rooflines, counting the floors, he didn’t have the mental energy to picture the interior, all the untouched furniture draped in sheets, the unslept-in beds likewise covered, the unused porcelain and silver and crystal sitting on shelves, ready to be called into service.
And yet remaining untouched.
He was bored mourning that old pipe dream.
Besides, now he had two real people to grieve, not just some piece of real estate he had built for a community that didn’t buy into his utopian vision.
“This is home,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Or at least I had hoped it would be.”
Of course there was no reply. Which was what happened when you spoke to an urn.
Still, he took the container that he’d been clutching like a football, all tucked in against his ribs, and held it up. As if Anne could see anything.
Which was stupid.
Lowering it back down, he rubbed his thumb on the cold metal. The repository for his beloved’s ashes was made of brass and had a screw top, and he had picked it up—along with what remained of his mate—just after nightfall from Dr. Bluff, who had more than lived up to his promises. Elizabeth, which was what Darius had named the young, had been given over to a nurse and taken home, and he and Fritz were already staking out that property.
So the young was not alone in the human world—
The wind brushed up against him from behind, shoving at his body, as if nature itself wanted him to get on with what he had come to do. Taking the cue, he dematerialized up to the roofline, to one of the peaks in the very front of the mansion’s roof. The gusts were even stronger with the additional elevation, and he had to steady himself by gripping a lightning rod.
When he looked down to the courtyard, he had absolutely no impulse to pitch himself off. He had to stay alive; he had a purpose now. He lived for his and Anne’s young.
He had done so many wrongs to his female, and as she had said, the only way he could make up for any part of it was to do exactly as she’d asked. The fact that watching over their daughter was a sacred duty he would have performed anyway didn’t matter.
He was going to do this for his Anne.
“I promise you,” he said to the Milky Way overhead. “I will keep her safe.”
Regarding the twinkling stars in their curtain of velvet night, he thought about how cold and vast space was, and how, in the scheme of things, his little plot of suffering wasn’t even a blip on the universe’s radar. But the truth was, as every snowflake that fell in winter was a precious miracle, so, too, was each mortal’s minute galaxy of existence.
We are our own suns, he thought, drawing life out of darkness in the form of emotions and meaning out of randomness by virtue of our connections.
And so, when loss came—and it always did—and the center of that world lost its light, the tragedy was of unfathomable, universal impact.
Even when it only impacted one person.
Or… vampire.
Unscrewing the lid, Darius’s heart was in his throat. “I’m not going to let you down, Anne. I promise.”
Hitching a breath, he wept openly as he tipped the brass urn over—
The wind caught the ashes and carried them off, to the beautiful view of the mountains, to the moon… to the stars. As he watched them go, he pictured his mate’s beautiful face as she smiled up at him, her eyes sparkling, her hair flowing.
So alive that he’d felt like they’d had forever. Just because he loved her that much.
