Benedict waited, as if for a signal. And when no signal came, he drew closer, climbing up the steep cliff until he stood beside Rhosh. Rhosh could smell the scent of the hearth on his clothes, the scent of his old regular perfume, the scent of his clothes. Rhosh could hear the regular and powerful beating of Benedict’s heart.

“Rhosh, please, I beg you, don’t do it,” said Benedict. The everlasting boy was sitting beside him, and wonder of wonders, he had put his arm around Rhosh.

“Rhosh, they know you burned Garekyn Brovotkin’s house in London. They know everything. And if you do what you are thinking of, if you so much as burn any part of this place, they’ll take it as an act of war.”

Rhosh didn’t answer. He listened to this familiar voice, this voice he hadn’t heard for half a year, and he wondered that it could produce such pain in him, pain that was worse than the most searing rage.

“Rhosh, the elders want you dead.” He said the last word the way mortals sometimes say it, with mingled horror and a fear of even speaking the word aloud. “Rhosh, they haven’t settled all their questions of authority. Marius and the older ones, the very oldest of the older ones, want you destroyed, and it’s only Lestat who is holding them back.”

“Am I supposed to be grateful for this?” Rhosh asked. He turned and looked at his old companion.

“Rhosh, please don’t tempt them to overrule the Prince. Even the Prince has said that if you strike at the Château or the village, that will be an act of war.”

“And what do you care, my beloved old friend?” Rhosh asked. “You who said you’d never lodge with me again?”

“I’ll go with you now,” said Benedict. “Please. Let’s go, the both of us, let’s go home.”

“And why would you do that?”

Benedict didn’t answer right away. Rhosh turned and studied Benedict’s profile as the boy looked out over the valley below.

“Because I don’t want to be without you,” Benedict said. “And if you are going to die, if you are going to bring upon yourself the judgment of those strong enough to destroy you, well, I want to die with you.”

Tears. Plaintive youthful expression. Eternally innocent. Something sweet surviving through centuries of Amel’s alchemy, something trusting.

“I hope and I pray with all my soul that you can come back to them, be rejoined with them, be part of them—.”

Rhosh put up his hand for silence.

More tears. Tears so like the tears of that immortal child, Derek. Except that these tears were red with blood.

Rhosh couldn’t bear it. He reached out and pulled Benedict towards him and kissed the tears.

Benedict put his arms around Rhosh.