A series of whoops and shouts erupted below as Robert scored his first basket.
Marcus had not anticipated what seeing Lord Robert again would do to him. The memories it would stir. The longing to recapture the deep, abiding friendship and camaraderie they had shared in his youth. Robert had been the only real family Marcus had, though they bore no blood relation. When, upon her return to the present, Beth had innocently introduced the two of them, Marcus had damn near broken down and wept.
“You misunderstand,” Seth said. “Bethany was always meant to live out her life with Lord Robert in the past. Just as you were always meant to live out your life as you have. I did not in any way alter her fate. Nor can I alter yours.”
“Fate,” Marcus snarled. “How I detest the word. If everything that happens is fated, how can there be free will?”
Seth sighed as if the complaint were not a new one. “The day before I brought Bethany and Lord Robert forward to this time, I watched Lord Dillon engage his toddler son in a foot race.”
Sadness flickered through Marcus. He had not thought of Lord Dillon or Lady Alyssa in years.
“Lord Dillon clearly had the advantage. And yet I knew before the race even began that he was going to let his son win.” Seth fell silent for a moment, as though allowing time for his words to sink in. “Did my knowing ahead of time that Lord Dillon would throw the race in any way prevent him from making the decision to do so of his own free will?”
Marcus’s fist tightened around the curtains. “No.”
“So it is with fate. You were fated to travel to London in the fall of 1213—”
“And be transformed against my will.”
“Yes. Some things cannot be changed, Marcus, even when it appears we have the power to do so.” Great sorrow weighted Seth’s voice.
But not nearly as much as that which suffused Marcus. He shook his head, wanting to shout a denial.
It had been foolish to hope. Pointless.
His eyes fixed on Beth, followed her every move. His ears strained to hear every laugh, every teasing comment she made.
“I am weary of this life, Seth,” he whispered despondently. “So incredibly weary that I must struggle to find a reason to rise each evening.”
“Did you rest at all today?” Seth asked in the gentlest voice Marcus had ever heard emerge from him.
“No. I don’t want to. Not while they are here. Not while she is here. I don’t want to miss a moment of it.” He swallowed hard against the lump that rose in his throat. “I will only have her for a few more days, Seth. What will I do when she is gone?”
Below, Beth squealed when Robert growled and swept her up in his arms, then dangled her upside down in response to her taunts and teases.
“Eight hundred years,” Marcus continued softly. “I have lived for over eight hundred years, and the only happiness I have ever experienced was during the years I lived at Fosterly as Robert’s squire, then his knight, and this past decade I have spent living near Beth.”
“Your life span is that of a babe’s compared to mine.”
Marcus continued as though Seth had not spoken. “There were decades—entire centuries really—when the only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that I would see her again one day. That if I could just hold out another century—then another and another and another—I would be rewarded with her presence once more. I could see her smile. Hear her laugh. Feel one of her sharp, jesting punches to my shoulder. Have her hugs. Her friendship. Her affection.”
“You could have had more than that had you wished it,” Seth commented cautiously.
Marcus nodded. “That has been the sweetest torture of all, I think, knowing that she could have been mine.”
Beth, Josh, and Grant began to play a game of twenty-one while Robert took a few minutes to cool down in the shade.
“When I was Robert’s squire, she told me that she had once been smitten with her next-door neighbor. I did not realize until we met again all these centuries later that she spoke of me, here in this time. That she…”
“That she could have loved you?”
Just hearing it spoken aloud was painful. “Not like she loves Robert. Not like he loves her. She could have been content with me. But they belong together. They were made for each other. Even you have admitted that. And I love them both too much to ever betray them by acting on my feelings.”
Robert brought Beth some water and was rewarded with a kiss.
“How I adore her,” Marcus murmured. “She is my light, Seth. My candle in the darkness of this existence. When she and Robert return to the thirteenth century, that light will forever be extinguished. I will never see her again, will have nothing to look forward to, nothing to keep me going. What will I do?”
When next Seth spoke, he sounded infinitely weary. “You will do what we all do, Marcus. You will survive. And perhaps, in time, you will receive another, sweeter reward.”
Beth jumped up and down and cheered when the ball she had just thrown swirled around the rim twice, teetered, then finally fell through the goal.
Marcus shook his head. “There can be none sweeter.”
2
This one is very brief and originally took place at the end of chapter 12. Marcus, Roland, Richart, Étienne, Lisette, and Ami are battling the vampires when Sarah enters the fray.
Roland Warbrook’s clothing was saturated with the blood of his enemies when his wife burst from the trees across from him.
Fear trickled through him as she dove right in, plunging into a pack of vampires so thick it would rival the crowd at any rave. Her pretty hazel eyes glowed green as she fought, a first amongst immortals.
She was so small, only five feet tall, dwarfed by even the shortest vamp present. Yet even as he watched, bodies began to drop all around her. Next to her opponents, she appeared wispy, delicate, and took advantage of the false sense of security that instilled in the vultures circling her.
A bark of laughter escaped Roland as her taunts reached his ears. Amazing.
Pride swelled his chest… until a vamp’s switchblade nearly punctured a lung.
Richart appeared behind the vamp and cut his throat. “Stop drooling and pay attention!” he snapped, then vanished.
Grimacing over the lapse (and over having it brought to his attention by a much younger immortal), Roland did as ordered.
1
In the first draft, this scene took place after the “Where’s the shovel?” scene in which Bastien helped Lisette and Ethan patch up Zach. Lisette has just left Zach to begin the night’s hunt.
Lisette sped down a deserted North Carolina road, wind whipping her as the tension fell away.
She had loved motorcycles ever since David had taken her for a ride on the first one he purchased. She’d ridden with him on every one he had acquired since—including his precious Dodge Tomahawk, which had an estimated top speed of three or four hundred miles per hour—before graduating to her own.
As a mortal, she had always enjoyed riding horses. Now she enjoyed riding motorcycles. The speed. The freedom. The adrenaline rush when she tore up roller-coaster-like roads at speeds that would ensure the death of any mortal who tried the same without the benefit of her sharper vision and faster reflexes.