Before Blue Twilight Page 4

  "Do it now. "

  I pushed her hair from her tear damp face, and shook my head. "I need to be with you afterward. I need to help you understand what you'll be experiencing, to explain to you, to hold you through it all. It's like a death, Elisabeta. A death and a rebirthing. You cannot go through such a change alone. I won't have it. "

  "Then stay. Stay and do all those things. Stay with me for always as you promised to do before the priest!"

  I lowered my head as grief made my voice catch in my throat. "I cannot. I simply cannot. "

  She trembled and wept, and I tipped her face to mine and kissed her, tasting her tears. "I love you, 'Beta.

  Who knew a man could fall so deeply in love so suddenly? You. . . you've stricken my heart like a bolt of lightning. Nothing could keep me from you. Not ever. "

  "Let me come with you," she whispered against my neck.

  I closed my eyes in sweet agony. Gods, it was tempting. To have her by my side. . . but I knew better.

  "You're not strong enough. You must conserve your energy, rest, and be well until I return. The battle will be fierce and I expect, over within a day or two at most. "

  "What if it's more?" she asked me. "What if you stay away too long and I die in your absence?"

  Chapter Nineteen

 

  "If it's more than two days, I'll return for you. You have weeks, perhaps months yet, 'Beta. I promise. "

  "I love you," she told me.

  "You are the princess of this keep," I told her. "There is no queen. Anything you desire, you have but to ask. The servants love you already. "

  I heard horses below as soldiers made ready. "I have to go. "

  "I love you," she told me, again, and kissed me desperately. "With all I am, I love you!"

  "And I you. " With deep regret, I withdrew from her arms to don my battle gear, my weapons. She walked with me down the stairs and out into the courtyard, and bless her for it, her eyes were dry as we joined the others there, her chin held high. Queen-like, she was. Glorious.

  I kissed her once more as I mounted Soare, and I felt her eyes on my back as we all rode away to face battle.

  It was fierce, the combat. We fought for three days straight, and all that prevented me from returning to her after the first two as I had promised, was the certainty that it would end on the third. We had but to press on to achieve our victory. For me to pull out then might have ensured defeat. And so I broke my promise to my bride.

  When I returned, it was to see the chapel doors thrown wide, servants, villagers, everyone who hadn't been with us in battle, filing in and out, wailing and weeping aloud. Flower petals lined the path outside.

  Frowning, I dismounted and hurried forward, asking first one person and then another what was happening. Was this a service for all the fallen soldiers? It couldn't have been for we had only just returned with their bodies.

  But each person I approached only looked at me in something like shock, and then backed away, crossing themselves and muttering prayers.

  Baffled, I shouldered my way through the crowd, and into the chapel. And then I died inside, for I saw her.

  My beloved Elisabeta lay on the same bier where she had wept for me only four nights prior. Her golden hair spread around her, and the finest gown she had ever owned covered her slender frame.

  A cry like that of a wounded animal was wrenched from the depths of my soul as I ran to her, gathered her into my arms, and felt no life in her. She was cold. Stiff.

  "No! No!" I cried. "By the Gods, it cannot be. "

  "Come, my son -"

  The priest was there, his hand on my shoulder, but I whirled on him, on all of them, screaming at them to get out. To leave me to my grief. And they did, all except one mourner who waited silently, in the shadows a good distance from me. For hours she waited there, while I wept and held Elisabeta's body in my arms, and railed against the Gods, against Fate for having given me such bliss only to rip it from my hands.

  Eventually, the rage ebbed and I knew what I must do. If my beloved would leave this life, then I would go with her. I'd no desire to live without her. And perhaps, somehow, we would be together again on the other side.

  My decision made, I moved to return to the cliffs where my life would end, after all.

  Chapter Twenty

 

  "It's nearing dawn," a woman's voice said. "You weep over her body any longer and you'll burn with the sunrise. "

  I gently laid Elisabeta's body down, and turned to face the woman.

  I knew her. I had given her the Dark Gift long, long ago, when she'd been a princess in Egypt, rejected by her father, the Pharoah, and sent to the temple to be raised by Priestesses of Isis.

  "Rhianikki," I said.

  "I go by Rhiannon now. " She stepped out of the shadows, her long jet black hair reaching to her waist, a gown of fine gold fabric draping from her shoulders to her feet and leaving her slender arms bare. She nodded to a spot beyond me. "It's a beautiful likeness, isn't it?"

  I turned to see a painting, a portrait of my Elisabeta hanging on the chapel wall. It so captured her beauty and her spirit, it took my breath away.

  "She had the artist working day and night from the moment you left. It was to be a wedding gift to you upon your return. "

  I could barely raise my head, my grief was so powerful. "What happened to her?" I asked.

  "She was told you had died in battle. That uncle of hers, I believe. She didn't believe it until the second day had passed without word. It was only twelve hours ago, at dawn on the third day, that she threw herself from the tower, in order to join you, her prince. One of the servants heard her cry out that were you alive, you would have returned to her by then. She'd barred the chamber door from within; no one could get to her in time. "

  It was more than I could bear. I dropped to my knees. "Then it was my broken promise that cost her life. " Shaking my head, I said, "Why did you tell me I would find her here, if she was only going to leave me again, Rhiannon?"

  She sighed and lowered her head. "It wasn't supposed to happen this way. I did not foresee this, my friend. "

  I nodded, believing her. "No matter. I will join her, soon enough. "

  Rhiannon came to me, placed her hand on my shoulder. "Always you've been so morose. Always.

  Hating your eternal life, resenting it, mourning your loneliness. There's nothing in the world so tiresome as a vampire unable to embrace his nature. At least now you have reason for your constant melancholy. "

  I lifted my head, knew she was leading up to some argument as to why I should live on. "I won't go on without her," I said, hoping to forestall her words.

  "Yes," she said, "you will. Shall I tell you why?"

  Blinking the salty dryness from my eyes, I nodded, and managed to get to my feet again. "I don't suppose I have a choice. Go on, tell me why I would put myself through the hell of living even one more day without her?"

  "I have had a vision," she told me. "I don't get them often - less and less as I grow older and more powerful. But this one was real and it was strong. Do not even think to doubt its veracity. "

  "No one dares to doubt or question the immortal princess of the Nile, do they?" Bitterness, not humor, laced my words. "Go on, if you must. I cannot walk into the sunrise until it comes, and there is still an hour of hell to endure before then. So go on, tell me of this vision. "

  "She will return to you. "

  My head came up, my heart leaping in my chest.

  "Oh, it will not be easy. For first and foremost you must remain alive until she does. If not, there's no telling whether the two of you will ever find one another again. So you cannot, you see, walk into the sunrise. You must live, in spite of your pain. For her. "

  I shook my head. "I would do anything for her. But. . . for how long?"

  Even the most hard-hearted vampiress in the world could not hold my gaze as she whispered the le
ngth of my sentence. "Five-hundred years. Or thereabouts. "

  I stumbled. She caught me, kept me from falling.

  "You will find her in a place called New Hampshire. In a village called Endover. That is where she will return to you five centuries hence - if you can endure that long. "

  I faced Rhiannon squarely. "I've never heard of such a place. "

  "That's because it doesn't yet exist. "

  I held her gaze, probed it. "Are you certain?"

  "I am. "

  Sighing, I returned to my beloved, to her body, the shell that had once housed her. I leaned over her, and I kissed her still, cold lips. "I will try, my love. I vow, I will try. Though living that long without you might very well do me in. If I can last, for you, I will. "

  I closed my eyes on the hot tears that welled in their depths, and I moaned, "Come back to me, Elisabeta. "

  From somewhere beyond the walls of the chapel, I swore I heard her voice whisper, "I will. "

  The End