I was rather reluctant to tell him what I’d done, but Rose had witnessed it so I did. “We’re all human and preternatural,” I said. “No matter how long we live. And few humans can bear seeing a hand or an arm chopped off. It was the best way to paralyze him, to shift the power in the room with one or two strokes. And frankly I suspect most blood drinkers aren’t able to do that sort of chopping unless it’s in the heat of battle when we’re all butchers and fighting for our lives. I knew it would be a stalemate. It was a gamble, of course, but one I had to take. If Rhosh had fled …”

“I understand,” said Viktor.

He was in complete agreement. He had not wanted to play any role in the Voice’s game.

The Voice was listening quite attentively. I knew this. How I knew, I wasn’t certain, but I could feel the intensity of his engagement.

Viktor and I talked on a long time after that. He told me about his studies at Oxford and later in Italy and how he had fallen in love with Rose.

They were well matched when it came to gifts, Viktor and Rose. Rose had bloomed into a graceful and striking young woman. Her black hair and her blue eyes were not the sum of it. She had a delicacy of form and feature that I found irresistible, and her face was stamped with a mysterious expression that elevated her from the merely beautiful to a different and very seductive realm. But Rose had a vulnerability to her that shocked Viktor. Rose had been wounded and defeated in ways Viktor scarcely understood. This had apparently sharpened his attraction to Rose, his desperate need to be with her and protect her and make her part of himself.

It struck me how very strange it all was that she should come to be the mortal in this world that Viktor, given his origins, should love. I’d sought to protect her from myself, and my secrets. But this never really works. And I should have known that it would not. In the last two years, I’d kept away from her with the best of intentions, certain she must meet her challenges without me, and disaster had nearly destroyed her, yet she’d found herself in the arms of my son. I knew how it had happened, beat by beat, yet it still amazed me.

I knew what he wanted. I knew what she wanted. This Romeo and Juliet, so bright and filled with human promise, were dreaming of Death, certain that in Death they would be reborn.

Rose was cuddled up beside Viktor in the big leather wing chair by that time, and he was holding her with obvious affection and her face was white with exhaustion. She seemed about to faint. I knew she had to rest.