"But the pain is so awful," I muttered, lowering my eyes.
"I know. I feel that pain every day, when I look at you and you turn away from me," Thurlow said. "It was of my own doing, long ago and in my first life," he added. "It was my lot to love you this time. To feel something of the pain I dealt before. I beg you to release me from that pain, love. Come to me. We will find a way through all of this, I promise. I and the others will stand with you in this. I will help you get through this and help your mates who also suffer. Belen has given permission, love."
"Permission for what?" Thurlow was releasing the pain back to me—I could feel the beginnings of it now.
"To allow you to feel the love and power of the light side beings. Belen and I are only two among many. We will give you hope, Lara'Kayan. You must trust us. That is what we ask."
"You ask me to trust you?" I didn't understand.
"That there is love, though love is lost. That there is hope, though hope is lost. That there is faith, though faith is lost. That nothing is ever truly gone from us—everything we lose we will find again. Somewhere. Time is meaningless, rhizha' sarroulis. And it is the only thing standing between you and what you think you have lost. Therefore, if time is meaningless, then it is not truly lost, is it?" Thurlow smiled at me, revealing a small dimple in his left cheek. I reached up to touch it. He caught my hand, kissing the palm before he let me go, his eyes closed in pleasure.
He'd called me rhizha' sarroulis. I knew what it meant, although I'd never heard the words. It meant soul's completion. That I was part of him and he a part of me. Only the light gods used that term. When I continued to stare up at him, Thurlow leaned down to kiss me. And then kissed me again. "I will get you through this," he muttered against my lips. "I promise."
* * *
Thurlow had to work to keep that promise—he and Kifirin both when Thurlow returned me to Cheedas' kitchen. My body was still huddled in the floor, my arms wrapped around Cheedas' shoulders. Tony, Drake and Drew found us there.
"Lissa," Tony knelt beside me while Thurlow and Kifirin crowded close, "baby, you have to come."
I tried to keep everything Thurlow said to me fresh in my mind when Tony folded us to Rolfe's estate, but it was so terribly hard. There shouldn't have been tears left to cry. There were. Someone had gone to tell Giff that Rolfe was gone. She'd taken the news calmly, they'd thought—her uncle Markoff had been the one to tell her. She'd gotten Yoff up and went to the kitchen to feed him. Or so she'd told her uncle.
She'd fed Yoff poisoned chicken, and then ate some herself before going to her bedroom to lie down. Giff and her tiny baby had died, poisoned with a plant poison that paralyzed the respiratory system. It appeared at first that she and Yoff had fallen asleep. I stared at their lifeless bodies, curled up on the bed Giff had shared with Rolfe. Yoff was so tiny and now, he would never grow. Would never become a winged vampire someday, as his heritage promised. I wiped tears away as I listened numbly to the rest of the story.
Markoff hadn't suspected anything until Roff had arrived, and then he and his brother had been unable to rouse Giff. Had she known that Rolfe might be suicidal, and had taken her own measures? We might never have the answer to that question. Now, I wanted to huddle in the floor and scream. Scream for little Yoff, who'd never had a chance to live. Scream for Rolfe, who thought he'd committed a crime when he hadn't. Scream for Giff—once innocent Giff, whose little brother had been taken away, pushing her down a path toward all of this. Instead of huddling in the floor, however, I misted to the Green Fae village, Kifirin and Thurlow right behind me. They could find me—travel alongside me, even—whenever they wanted.
"What do you want?" Redbird snapped when she answered the door. She shrank back when she found Kifirin standing beside me.
"Not that it makes any difference now, since you've stolen his mind and heart, but Toff's sister and his tiny nephew died earlier. I don't suppose you'll ever tell him he had family that cared, will you?" I wiped tears away.
"He is only a child himself," Redbird huffed.
"A child that should still be with his birth family, instead of you," Thurlow pointed out. "Someday, you will regret every action that brought you to this point. Someday this will bring pain to you that is unimaginable. Everything that you hold dear will be drained away." I stared at Thurlow—he now had stars in his eyes as well.
"Who are you?" Redbird sounded insulting.
"I am a servant of the gods of light," he said. "Kifirin does not rule over the Fae houses, we do. You should learn to listen when it is prudent. Come, rhizha' sarroulis." Thurlow took my arm and folded me away.
* * *
"Roff, honey?" Roff was leaning against the glass inside my arboretum. I seldom had time to visit it anymore, although it was beautiful and a place of peace.
"Lissa." Roff's voice was soft—barely a whisper. I still heard my name when he said it. I was frightened that Roff would now blame me. Giff had. What would I do without my winged vampire? Roff had supported me through so many things. Been the voice of reason, so many times. Would he now see this as my fault? My heart ached—both for Roff and for myself.
"Roff, if there was any way I could undo any of this, and make it turn out right for you, I would," I was weeping again. "If there was any way I could take this pain away from you, I would. If there was any way I could replace what was lost to you, I would."
"Lissa." Roff rustled his wings and drew them tighter around him. "Lissa, Giff knew what was coming. She took matters into her own hands before the Council took away her freedom." He turned to me, then, his face filled with pain.
"But Yoff." I sobbed when I said his name.
"I know. I don't understand this either." Roff came to me. Put his arms around me and then wrapped his wings around me. We stood like that for a very long time, both of us leaning on the other, weeping for what we'd lost. What we couldn't replace. Upon becoming vampire, Roff could no longer birth children. Not as he had while comesula. All his children, taken away in one tragedy after another.
* * *
"I won't even try to provide platitudes—only the heart knows what pain is," Flavio told me two days later as we buried Giff, Yoff and Rolfe's few remains in the same grave. All the Saa Thalarr had come, standing together to bid Rolfe farewell. Kiarra sang. It was the first time I'd ever heard her sing. Now I knew why they all begged her to—it was heart-wrenchingly beautiful.
Thurlow hovered, as did Karzac, Gavin and the others. Roff stood with me throughout the service. We both wiped tears away as Aurelius delivered the eulogy. Norian had been in and out—he and Lendill were still tracking Black Mist, but not much was happening.
The most surprising thing, I think, was that Shadow came to the funeral. I hadn't seen or heard from him since Cloudsong. With Roff's help, we'd decided to bury Rolfe, Giff and Yoff at what we termed The Line on Le-Ath Veronis—the spot where a vampire could go and look upon daylight to the north and still be in enough darkness to survive. Flowers had been planted there by vampire gardeners and they grew in profusion.
Many vampires had known Rolfe, and they all came to the funeral to pay their last respects to the giant of a man. Wlodek gave some history on Rolfe before Aurelius delivered the final words, saying that Rolfe had come to him, already a vampire, from the wars that Alexander the Great waged against the Persian Empire. Greek in origin, like Wlodek, they'd often spoken in Greek together when no one else was around. Called Deimos, back then, he was a warrior for Alexander, his height making him visible from a distance in any battle. I'd never known those things about Rolfe and he'd never volunteered. It made me feel self-centered and selfish that I'd never asked him about his life.
"He would have steered you away from the subject of his life, even if you had asked him," Wlodek told me quietly afterward. Everyone had come back to the palace by hoverbus later, where the vampires were served real blood that I'd had shipped in for the occasion. It wasn't something we did often, but it was done at times. The kitchen served food for the others. When the guests left us, I misted to the top of my palace to gaze over the city named after me. That's where Griffin found me.
He didn't try to sit anywhere near—he knew that wouldn't be welcome. We remained silent for a very long time. Finally, he spoke. "Lissa, every selfish act comes with a price." I turned sharply to look at him. "No," he held up a hand, "it wasn't your act of selfishness. It was mine. But the price wasn't mine to pay. You remember that old phrase; the sins of the father are to be laid upon the children?"
"From The Merchant of Venice? I didn't know you quoted Shakespeare." I was holding back most of my sarcasm.
"I don't normally quote anyone, I'm too old for that," Griffin muttered. "But I think I've finally lived long enough to learn my lesson."
"And what lesson would that be?" I hoped there was a point in this somewhere; otherwise, I was being subjected to this for no reason. I hugged my arms around my knees.
"That adversity can build or destroy. Sometimes it can do both. I thought I was mighty, Lissa. I could see into the future. Change things here and there, to make it turn out better. And then the Nameless Ones and The Powers That Be named me Oracle, because of what I could do. But that was before I came back in time and snatched up my daughter, whose birth I'd manipulated, to perform one last mighty act in an effort to save the worlds. She didn't fail us, my daughter. Handed over her life so those worlds could live. That was the day she surpassed her father. Became something that he holds no hope of ever being." Griffin shook his head.
"I should have left it at that and taken my lumps when the Green Fae decided to go against their teachings and snatch a child," he went on. "Who knows what Wyatt might become if they'd kept him? Perhaps Wylend would have destroyed them, turning from light to dark, as Karathians sometimes do." Griffin breathed a ragged sigh. "I might have kept Wyatt away from the ball altogether, allowing a different child to be taken. All those possibilities stretched out before me, each one ending in a tragedy for someone else, never for me. I chose the one for you, thinking it was the least harmful. But as you most likely have guessed, I did not examine the minute ripples that were sent out from that single event. Did not look to see these three deaths, or the six-hundred-million others. These are on my conscience now, Lissa."