So rather than take the paper from his brand new fiancé, he took the container of milk cartons like she expected and waited as she unfolded the newspaper to read the headline.

“100 NEW CASES OF INFLUENZA IN CITY”

Helena’s large, luminous eyes skirted over the headline, and she froze. Slowly, she lifted her head, lowering the paper. She swallowed hard; he watched the workings of her throat, one of his favorite parts of her. She showed her emotion there, in that smooth and pale column that was so easy for him to wrap his hand around.

She calmly turned to Adam, handing him several coins. “Thank you so much Adam. Good luck this weekend in your competition. I’ll be rooting for you.” She smiled warmly, and Adam nodded gratefully, tipping his hat.

“Yes ma’am,” he replied brilliantly and spun on the front doorstep to make his way down the walk.

Helena closed the door. William waited, watching her straight back. He knew what was coming.

She slowly turned to face him. “You knew.”

William didn’t bother denying it. There was no point now. The universe and its damned fate had caught up with him. He nodded, just once. He felt his eyes heating up, the magic in his core infusing every cell and striking his eyes with emerald light.

“He’s here, isn’t he?”

Again, he nodded.

Helena looked down at her slim waist and slowly lifted her free hand to place it gently over her stomach. She dropped the newspaper. “He’s killing people, William. Innocents.” She hesitated, then added in a voice tight with emotion, “Children.”

“Helena, if he succeeds in his efforts, many more will die.” William set down the milk and moved in front of her. “I had no choice but to hide this from you.” He pulled the paper from her grasp and tossed it to the floor. Then he reached for her hands, but they were colder than usual. “You must see that.”

For thousands of years, Helena had been reborn upon the Earth. Each time, she was resplendent. Each time, she embodied hope. Each time, William found her and fell in love with her all over again. He couldn’t help it. He – the Lord of Time and therefore all that ever happened – was powerless against her pull. And she was powerless too. And that was the sweetest torment of all.

But each time, she didn’t come alone. Every rebirth saw death follow after her, dogging her heels, chasing her to the ends of existence. This time around, death’s name was Victor Hush. Whereas Helena’s appearance changed from life to life, Victor’s remained the same. Tall, hard, blond hair, cold blue eyes.

William would never understand how Helena had been created. He would never understand why. She was vulnerable and mortal yet not entirely human; and she was unique. Over the years, he had come to understand that Helena was the physical embodiment of happy endings. Ultimate desires. She was the “good luck” of fortune and the positive outcome of Fate.

Helena was life in all of its goodness.

Victor Hush was the other half of Fate. He was made flesh the tragedy, the loss, the inexcusable and unexplainable wrongness that befalls so many on the planet. He was misfortune, ill deeds, and slithering nightmares. In the depths of the bottomless blue of his otherwise impenetrable gaze, mortality and ruin lingered. Because that was what he was: Death.

Helena’s appeal was strong to the world, but infinitely more so for Hush. She was one half of Fate, and he the other. Obtaining her would make him whole. In any other context, two halves would cancel each other out. But in this case, she was everything positive in life. And in this case, the positive aspect was more important than the life aspect. She was the fruition of desire, the happily ever after – which was where the life came in. Few wanted death. Almost everyone wanted life. When people looked at her, they felt they had a chance to obtain that, and in its most satisfying forms: sex, marriage, wealth, wonderful figures, great hair days. And if she ultimately chose them? They would gain every one of them.

In Hush’s much more straight forward case, what he desired was more death.

Lots more.

This was one of the reasons William would not allow it to happen. A whole Death was absolute Death, absolute wrong. What Victor Hush was doing to the world right now with this virus was child’s play in comparison to what he would unleash upon it if he were complete.

And perhaps what was selfishly more troubling to William Solan was that Hush was the other half of Helena. And William could not abide even the passing thought that there was a sliver of a chance she would be complete… with him.

 So he went down this road. Over and over again. Fate never gave up, never stopped sending her back into the world, so he couldn’t give up either. She was on an infinity loop of death and rebirth. And he was there to watch every scene unfold, his memory never erased, its wretched history as indelible to him as it was to the newspapers on the floor upstairs.

William was the Lord of Hours, the Lone King, his control over the uncontrollable stronger than any other’s, and yet he could not turn back the clock. He could not go back in time. He could not change history. It was for him as it was for everyone – finished. Wells had been right when he’d written his now famous book twenty years ago. Of course, he’d had help.

Helena faced William now like the intolerably brave woman she was, lifting her chin and looking him square in the eyes. In the calmest of voices, she asked him the most damning of questions. “How long have you known, William?”

He did not want to answer her. He would have given anything he possessed to not have to answer that question. But he forever would answer her. He would never lie to Helena. “Weeks,” he told her. He felt it come over him, the dread that was laced with stoic and horrible serenity. “Since the beginning.” He looked down and nodded at the paper, indicating the flu epidemic.

Helena glanced at the headline, then closed her eyes. And then she released his hands, and as they slipped from his grasp… so did everything else.