“I know there’s no turning back for either of you,” I said. “And I know you both believe that you’re prepared for the road you’re taking. I know this. But you must know how much I grieve right now for what you might have been in the course of time, and what now you will never be.”

“But why, Father?” asked Viktor. “Yes, we’re young, we know this. We don’t challenge it. But we’re already dying as are all young things. Why can’t you be completely happy for us?”

“Dying?” I asked. “Well, yes, that’s true. I don’t say it’s not true. But can I be blamed for wondering what you might have been in ten more years of mortal life, or twenty or thirty? Is that dying, for a young man to grow into a man in his prime, for a beautiful young bud of a woman to become the full blossom?”

“We want to be forever as we are now,” said Rose. Her voice was so sweet, so tender. She didn’t want this to be painful for me. She was comforting me. “Surely, you of all people understand,” she pressed.

How could I? What was the point of reminding them that I’d never chosen the Blood. I’d never had such a chance. And what was the point of sentimentalizing the fact that had I lived out my life as a mortal man, even my bones would be gone now, perished in the earth, if I’d died in my bed at the age of ninety?

I was about to speak to them when I heard Amel inside me. He spoke in the softest whisper.

“Keep to your vow,” he said. “They are not dying. They are coming to you as a prince and princess to be part of your court. We are not Death. No. We have never been, have we? We are immortal.”

His voice was so resonant, so subtle in tone, that it shocked me, but this was in fact the same tone he’d used since he’d come into me. And yet it was the Voice that I’d been hearing for decades.

“Give them courage,” he whispered. “But I leave you these moments. They are yours more truly than they are mine.”

Inwardly I thanked him.

I looked at them, Viktor to my left, at eye level with me, and Rose gazing up, her face a perfect oval framed by her shining black hair.

“I know,” I said. “I do know. We can’t ask you to wait. We shouldn’t. We can’t live either with the simple fact that some gruesome accident might take you away from us at any random moment. Once the Blood’s been offered, there is no waiting, no preparing, not really.”

Rose kissed me on the cheek. Viktor stood patiently beside me, merely smiling.