Silvan and Dageus both glanced up from their texts. Since Dageus had confessed everything two nights ago, they’d spent nearly every waking minute in the dusty chamber, determined to find answers.

“Well you didn’t,” she seethed. She’d been quietly fuming about for days, and like every other emotion she felt, she could only hold it in so long.

“Verily, m’dear, I doona think man should possess the power of the stones,” Silvan said softly. “I canna tell you how many times I’ve wanted to topple them, to destroy the tablets and the formulas.”

“Do it,” Dageus said intensely. “After we’ve gone again, do it, Da.”

“It would be outright defiance of them, you ken,” Silvan pointed out. “And what if the world—”

“The world should have the right to either prosper or destroy itself, by itself,” Dageus said quietly.

“I agree with Dageus,” Chloe said, reaching for her cup of cooling tea. “I don’t think man should have power he’s not capable of understanding and discovering himself. I can’t help but think that by the time we’re evolved enough to fathom how to manipulate time, we’d be wise enough not to do it. Besides, who can really say that any of the times the stones were used, the outcome was better?”

Dageus had explained to her the only conditions under which they were permitted to use the stones: were their line in danger of extinction, or were the world in great peril. He’d told her of the few occasions they’d opened a gate through time: once to relocate sacred, powerful objects belonging to the Templars, in order to whisk them from the grasp of the power-hungry king who’d destroyed their Order. Yet, who could say that, had man been left to his own devices, he wouldn’t have found another way that would have served as well?

Dageus met her gaze and they shared a long intimate look. There was such heat in his eyes that she felt it like a sultry caress against her skin. I doona ken how this may end, Chloe, he’d said to her that night.

When it ends, she’d replied firmly, it will end with me at your side and we will have freed you.

I love you, he mouthed to her across the chamber.

Chloe smiled radiantly. She knew that. Knew it more completely than she’d ever thought a woman could know. Since discovering what his “curse” truly was, she’d not wavered in her feelings for him, not for even a moment. What was inside him was not him, and she refused to believe it ever would be. A man who could withstand such a thing for so long was a man who was good to the very core. I love you too, she shaped the words soundlessly.