She stood at the edge of the cliff, looking at the sea crashing against the dark, volcanic rocks below her isolated island. Her only love, Nikolas, disappeared, swallowed by the sea. She sees his face as she gazes at the dark blue waters of the deep Mediterranean, and she waits. To the world, she was known as Elder Agatha, respected Abbess of this isolated and desolate convent, high above a steep rock formation on this remote island―a dedicated servant of God. But in her own mind she was still Anna Bouras, married not to Christ, but to Captain Nikolas Theophilos, an officer of the
Royal Greek Navy, and the father of her child. Fate had taken this child that Nikolas had never even known he had, the same child that Anna had never been allowed to see or hold, or even touch, alive or dead―kept from her by Satan with a human face, in the form of Dr. Vassili Tsipras.
It had been ten years now since Anna had seen or heard from her beloved Nikolas. And almost nine years since she had heard that he was dead, but still she refused to believe it. In her heart, she knew that Nikolas was alive somewhere. He had to be. She could not accept the alternative. She would not. As long as she was alive, then she knew that Nikolas was alive somewhere. He had to be, because otherwise she would never be complete, and that could not possibly be God's plan for her.
Somewhere, Nikolas was out there in the world. Why he had not come for her, she did not know and could not understand, but she always felt his presence there in her heart. She knew that, plus she trusted God. The cumulative effect of those thoughts was the only thing that kept her going, and she would never give up, nor would be happy until the day he came back for her.
* * *
It had been seven years since the end of the war, three years since Nikolas had regained his memory, and more than ten years since he had seen his Anna. Somehow, somewhere, he knew that he would find her. He stared out to sea and he thought about her. He had somehow survived the war and the Wehrmacht invasion of Crete―the largest bombing and paratroop invasion the world had ever known, in April 1941, and he had to believe that she was alive too, and that when he found her she would again be his. He knew the odds he faced, but it was all that kept him going, serving as the main hope he had to live for.