“It was Petronia who had flung me back and now she dragged me out the window under the pergola and threw me against the wall again. This time I felt the blood flow from the back of my head. I was in a shock of pain. She pitched me over the railing. I dropped down, down towards the sea. I felt I was dying. I was full of innocent blood and I was dying. I was weeping and I was dying, and the bride, the poor bride, she was dead, and I had left her covered in her own blood, all the brides of Blackwood Farm betrayed, Ophelia Immortal never to be my bride betrayed, blood on her white dress, Rebecca never to be Manfred’s bride laughing.

“We were back in the palazzo and Petronia struck me over and over again, cursing me and herself that she had made me.

“ ‘Imbecile, you killed her. Imbecile, she was nothing but a tart, and for that you killed her! In a wilderness of killers, you killed her. She was nothing but a tart. You fool.’ Again and again, there came the blows to my face—pain, but pain isn’t death—then the kicks to my ribs. I clung to the floor.

“ ‘Stop her,’ roared the Old Man. ‘Stop her, stop her, stop her.’

“ ‘I take you to hunt a wedding, thick with killers, and you kill the bride!’ she seethed. She kicked at my face. I rolled over onto my back. She kicked at my groin. ‘Stupid, clumsy, fledgling, idiot, clumsy!’

“The Old Man roared: ‘Make her stop!’

“ ‘And the blood on her dress, how you did it! Moron, idiot, fool! Where did you think you were? What did you think you were?’

“Finally Arion pulled her off me.

“ ‘It was our doing,’ he said. ‘We left him alone. He was too young. We should have been with him.’

“She was crying. She was in Arion’s arms and she was actually crying.

“The Old Man sobbed.

“I lay there and dreamt of death.

“Oh, Lord, how could I have come to this? How could my senses have so richly misled me? How could my greed have led me to this abysmal pass? I am in a place of darkness beyond panic and beyond anxiety. Lord, this is anguish. Yet I cling to what I am. I cling to all that I am.

“And somewhere very far away, others were searching for me. Rebecca was right. And they must have been saying, ‘The gators got him, had to be. Poor Quinn. He’s dead.’

“And I was.”

CHAPTER 41

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