Chapter Forty-five
“I honestly don’t know when,” said Katrielle with a shrug. “It can take a Nomad lifetimes to reincarnate, and it can take a single afternoon. The three of them might already be reborn and celebrating an Addams Family reunion. Or they might not come back until long after we’re all dead.”
Roman sat back in his chair and touched his lips thoughtfully. His wristwatch glinted in the café’s overhead lights. They were becoming regulars here. Of course, the waitress most likely believed he’d simply come with a different woman this time. Maybe he was philandering.
That thought made him smile. Because he had a wife who would literally kill him.
“You’re smiling. Thinking of Evie?”
“Of course,” he shrugged.
“She’s well, then. I heard she was quite injured during the fight.”
“Nothing I couldn’t take care of,” he said softly, recalling exactly how he’d taken care of it. By killing a few sons of bitches, drinking them dry, and then forcing his wife to sink her fangs into his own neck and take her fill. It had been a good night.
Crap, he thought. Now he was uncomfortable in the chair.
Across from him, Katrielle laughed softly. “You know,” she said, her blue eyes glinting, “I’ve always been a little envious of the love you two share. It’s pure.”
Roman regarded her closely. He leaned forward over the table, folding his hands. “You’re thinking of Bantariax.”
She shook her head. “Now it’s your turn to read minds, I suppose?”
“You know damn well I can’t read yours.”
She grinned. “Fair enough.” But her smile slipped a little, just enough for him to notice. “Okay then… yes. I was.”
“Can you still feel him?”
She shook her head. “No.” Roman could almost feel her heartache from across the table. “I have no idea where he is, Roman. Something happened to him, somewhere, some-when. And I have no idea what it was. But he’s cut off from me. I think he only managed to break through that small amount because of Eva. Once she was safe, he was gone again.”
Roman waited a while before he spoke. Finally, he said simply, “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Me too.” But then she rolled back her shoulders and sighed. “But that’s not why we’re here, is it? You need to know, Roman, that it isn’t Amunet, Ahriman, and Arach you need to be thinking about right now.”
Roman frowned. “Why’s that?” Those three were very much the ones on Roman’s mind at the moment.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed William Solan’s absence of late.”
Roman sat up straighter. He remembered the clock tick during their meeting. Warily, he said, “Yes.”
“And I know you noticed the clock. You were just thinking about it, weren’t you?”
“Not much gets past you.”
“I take after Mimi Tannym,” she said with a smile. The smile was gone in the next instant. “Roman, William’s powers have returned.”
A darkness swept through Roman, thick and sludge-like. He felt cold inside. “How?” And then he added, “Why?”
“Because the contract that originally took them from him has been broken.”
“Okay,” he said, “I know you’re going to explain that to me.”
“Yes, but only because we’re short on time. Remember that firstborn son I mentioned the last time we sat in these chairs? The one born to Amunet and Ahriman when Amunet was in her second human form?”
He’d been wondering about that child. He nodded. “I do.”
“Well, he grew up big and strong, Roman. But he grew up wrong. His parents are so one-sided, their pureblood son is, in a way, incomplete.”
“Like he only has one arm incomplete?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. You mean he needs a mate.”
She nodded.
He was afraid she was going to say that. “Go on.”
Thousands of years ago, William Balthazar Solan fell in love with a woman named Helena. Well, at the time, her name was Helen. I’m sure you’ve heard stories of her. She was very – very – beautiful.”
“The Helen?” he asked incredulously. He’d been alive at roughly the same time she was supposed to have existed, but not once in that lifetime had he come across her. He’d always figured she was pure legend.
But when Katrielle didn’t say anything, he raised a brow, took a drink of his table water, and swallowed it down with the rest of the heavy truth she was laying on him.
“There’s a very good reason she’s so beautiful. Helena is a pureblood as well. In a manner of speaking, that is.”
“She’s a Nomad?”
Katrielle shook her head. “She’s not even human. Hell, she’s not even supernatural. She’s literally a creation of Fate. Pure Fate, Roman. Capital ‘F’.” She licked her lips. “Helena is the embodiment of it.”
Roman blinked a few times, his brow furrowing. “To be honest, I’ve never thought of fate as being particularly… well, beautiful,” Roman said as he tried to wrap his mind around the idea of a walking, talking being composed of such a thing.
“No?” Katrielle asked. Now it was her turn to raise a brow. “Is your life so bad, Roman? Or did you become king of the kings and marry the woman of your dreams? In fact, did you make mad, passionate love to her just hours before meeting me here?”
Roman hastily cleared his throat, but he was gentleman enough not to deny what she was saying. “Very well,” he admitted quietly. “I see your point.”
“There is good fate – fate like yours – and there is bad fate,” she told him. “Helena is the former. She embodies the end result of what everyone longs for. The perfect life consisting of the perfect happiness. And hence, she is perfect. And believe me, she gets people’s attention.”
“I can imagine,” said Roman. A perfect woman who was everything a person desired. Oh, he could imagine that quite well.
“The firstborn of Amunet on the other hand is the embodiment of fate’s dark side. Of course he can look like anything he wants; he’s a Nomad, and the most powerful in existence. Never mind his parents, Roman. Believe me, he is where the true strength lies.”
Roman swallowed hard. Why was it, the old witch always managed to make his throat tight with trepidation?
“But his outward appearance belies what’s underneath. For what is the worst fate you can imagine, Roman? What is the worst fate anyone can imagine? What is the one thing everyone is afraid of? The thing nearly everyone desires least?”
The word formed on Roman’s tongue in a heartbeat. But it sat there, heavy and wrong, and it was several more heartbeats before he could give voice to it.
He parted his lips and pushed it through is teeth. “Death.”