But I had more to say. And why should it be delayed?

I stood up, stretched, feeling something like a silent nudge from the Voice, but no annoying nonsense, and I went to the mantel and placed my hands on it, and looked down in the dancing gas fire.

It was almost dawn.

I tried to think, for decency’s sake, of what life might be for these two if we denied them the Dark Gift. But this was pointless. Really pointless. I didn’t know that I could live with such a decision, and I was certain that they could not mentally or spiritually survive such a denial.

Yet I felt compelled to ponder. And ponder I did. I knew what Rose was suffering now, blaming herself for all her many misfortunes, none of which had ever been her doing. And I knew how much she loved Viktor and how much he loved her. Such a bond would strengthen both of them through the centuries, and I had to think now in terms of our tribe, our species, being something not accursed, no, never accursed—a tribe that must no longer be left to sink or swim in a sea of self-loathing and haphazard depravity and aimless struggle. I had to think of us as these two young ones saw us—as living an exalted existence that they wanted to share.

In sum, my change of heart towards my own nature, and the nature I shared with all the Undead, had to begin in earnest right now.

I turned to face them.

Rose was quite awake now, and they looked at me not with desperation but with a quiet trusting resignation.

“Very well then,” I said. “If you would accept the Dark Blood, so be it. I don’t oppose it. No. I do ask that the one who gives it to you be skilled at the giving. And Marius would be my choice for this, if he is willing, as he knows how to do it, passing the blood back and forth over and over, creating the most nearly perfect effects.”

An immense change came over them silently, as they appeared to realize the import of my words. I could see that Viktor had a multitude of questions to ask me, but Rose had a quiet dignified expression on her face that I hadn’t seen in her since I’d arrived. This was the old Rose, the Rose who knew how to be happy, not the quivering battered one making her way through the events of the last months with fragile and desperate faith.