She snorted. “Right, like that’s going to happen.”

“I deeply regret not tasting you… really tasting you the night I had you on my boat. That was foolish of me. Tell me, do you plan on turning, Beatrice?”

She couldn’t help the smile that flickered across her face at the thought of being as powerful as the monster across from her.

“Ah, I see you smile. Excellent idea, if you ask me. And refreshing. So nice to see a human that’s not attached to breathing or breeding. Very forward thinking of you.”

“I don’t really give a shit about your opinion. I really doubt that comes as a surprise.”

He chuckled. “Enough chatting. It’s quite addicting talking to you, you know. I do love good banter. But I’ll return to my original point, I promise to leave your father and all your relations in peace as long as I get that manuscript and the journals.”

“And what about Ioan? What about him?”

Lorenzo merely shrugged. “Was he your lover? Your father? Your child? Leave Ioan’s vengeance to his family; it is no concern of yours.”

“But Gio would never—”

“Giovanni”—he stepped closer and let the blade run along his skin, drawing a line of blood—“will do what you want. You know you could persuade him to give it to me if it meant he could go back to his quiet, uneventful life. He can bury himself in his books and research again, just like you know he wants to.”

Beatrice would have been lying to say the idea was not tempting. On one level, she knew she could probably convince Giovanni if she really tried. But…

“I don’t make deals with the devil, Lorenzo. Even when the devil looks me in the eye.” She stepped forward and let the blade cut deeper into his skin. His lip curled in disdain.

“Fool.” And she gasped when his cold hand reached up and grabbed the back of her neck.

The next thing she remembered was looking into Giovanni’s tormented green eyes.

It was the idea of mental manipulation, even more than physical harm, that Beatrice feared the most. The period of her teenage years when she was afraid she was losing her sanity had been the most frightening of her life.

Until she was immortal, Beatrice knew she was vulnerable.

The morning sun poured over the garden, lighting the gleaming limestone pillars and flashing across the streams that cut through the grass. The air was lush with the sound of morning birds, and brilliant fall leaves lay scattered along the lawn as servants spread across the silent grounds, raking the paths in their orange robes.

Beatrice sat on the damp ground under a weeping maple and watched the sun rise in the East. She sat for hours, watching it track across the garden and memorizing the way the shadows shifted and the light danced on the rippling water. She let her mind roam to the waterfalls of Cochamó and the rainbows in the mist. She let herself remember the sunset over the Pacific and the searing heat of hiking in the desert with Dez as the light painted the rocks red.

She spent hours staring into the bright garden and never closed her eyes.

When she felt the soft touch on her shoulder, she turned to see Nima standing with a cup of cardamom tea. Though she had hardly spoken to the woman in the weeks they had been at the palace, her quiet human company was welcome. She sat next to Beatrice on the ground, surprisingly flexible for one with such a wrinkled face. Her dark eyes looked over the sun-lit grounds.

“I have painted many gardens for Tenzin over the years,” she said in quietly accented English, “but it’s never exactly the same.”

“There are photographs.”

Nima nodded her silver-grey head. “Yes.”

“Still not the same, though.”

“No.”

Beatrice sniffed, swallowing the lump in her throat, before she gave up and let the tears fall down her cheeks.

“Sorry,” she sniffed again.

Nima just smiled. “I understand the grief.”

“But I know I’m ready.”

“Tenzin said you would be. That was one of the reasons she asked me to be here. I don’t usually like to leave the mountains.”

Beatrice frowned, curious why Nima’s presence was important, until she looked into the old woman’s eyes and understood the quiet sadness that lived there.

“You said no, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” she breathed out.

“And I regret it every day.”

“But why—”

“By the time I really understood the regret, my body was old. I would not choose it now. It is not vanity, simply… not what I wish for eternity.”

“Was she angry?”

“Yes.”

“But you are still together.”

Nima smiled and nodded. “Yes.”

“Someday, she’ll watch you die.”

“And that is the sadness I live with.”

Beatrice swallowed the lump in her throat. “So I’m making the right decision?”

Nima smiled. “I can’t tell you that, but I think you already know.”

Beatrice looked over the sun-washed garden again and closed her eyes. “Yes, I know.”

“It is still understandable to grieve.”

“Thank you for being here.”

“You’re welcome.”

Nima tucked her feet under and sat next to Beatrice as the sun rose to the apex of the sky. The two women sat silently in the sunlight, listening to the chirp of the birds and the buzzing bees. They watched the wind tease the orange, red, and purple leaves from the trees, and the clouds drifted across the sky, their slow-moving shadows falling across the earth.