Weirdest of all, tears started spilling from Fiona’s eyes and the woman’s eyes at almost exactly at the same moment. Fiona wept and the woman wept. But why? Fiona gave a little cry and the woman shook her head back and forth. She put her hands to her mouth and cried out behind her fingers.

“What’s wrong, Carolyn?” Seriffe asked. “Darling, what’s wrong? This is … Fiona. Oh … dear … God. You have the same eyes. I didn’t see it before.”

Havily drew up beside the young mother. “What is it, Carolyn? What’s happening? Fiona, are you all right? Why are you crying? Why are you both crying? What did I miss?”

Alison just looked from one woman to the next then echoed Seriffe. “Oh, dear God. It can’t be!”

The young mother, Carolyn, the one with the silvery blue eyes, finally said, “Mother? Is that you? After all these decades, you didn’t die? You ascended? Oh, God, Mother is that you?”

“Carolyn? Carolyn Gaines of Boston?”

She nodded.

“You didn’t drown in a yachting accident?”

“No. I ascended in 1913.” She gestured with a graceful hand to the toddler in Alison’s arms, to the older boys beside the colonel, then to Seriffe himself. “This is my family. The colonel and I … we married a few years ago.”

Fiona’s gaze hadn’t left Carolyn’s beautiful silvery eyes, her light honey-brown hair, the slight angel-kiss in her chin. “My daughter,” she whispered. “Dearest Creator in heaven … my daughter.”

She lost all sensation in her feet and before she understood what was happening, she fell into a black abyss of shock and disbelief and something more, something wonderful, something, yes, very much like … joy.

***

Parisa Lovejoy, newly appointed Guardian of Ascension, tried on the ceremonial royle robe. It had been designed for her based on portraits of Luchianne, done by historical artists about five hundred years earlier. The renditions had been created as a combination of Endelle’s descriptions and anecdotal evidence provided by scholar Philippe Reynard.

Despite all that she had been through with Antony, especially the role she had played beside him during the recent Grand Canyon battle, she felt ridiculous wearing the floor-length garments. Viewing herself in the mirror, she looked like something out of ancient Rome. Who are you, what are you doing wearing such elegant robes, how can you be this person, this woman?

She felt panicky. To go from librarian, to the bonded breh of a Warrior of the Blood, to a Guardian of Ascension, to an ambassador of Second Earth with royle wings was all way too much. To say the least, she felt inadequate.

The outer garment was deep purple with a soft but very large curled collar. Heavy wide sleeves were embroidered all around the bell-like cuffs with an intricate pattern of swirls meant to represent wind.

She turned to the side and lowered the outer robe to her waist. The shimmery gold silk of the under-robe felt right to her, though. It was cut in a T down her back, similar to her weapons harness, and was intended for wing release.

She let the outer garment fall in a purple puddle to the floor. Beneath all the gold silk was a fine mesh that secured the fabric of the skirt to her soft leggings. It had felt so strange when she’d first put the garment on, but she understood the purpose. When she was in flight, the mesh would keep the gown close to her body. Nothing had been left to chance.

Antony appeared behind her in the mirror. She turned to him. He wore a similar getup, leggings and all, but he looked magnificent. His hair was pulled back tight in the cadroen, which of course showed off his high strong cheekbones and his overall beauty. Her lips parted as she looked at him. And he was all hers? What miracle had brought so much man, so much warrior into her life, to savor, to love, to enjoy forever, God willing.

The gods had smiled on her. There could be no other answer.

Antony smiled. Her heart ached at the sight. She put her hand on his cheek. “I love you,” she murmured.

He put his hands on her arms and drew a deep breath. He released it slowly. “Why are you fretting?”

“I thought I would be a warrior. I was going to enter the training program.”

“I know.”

“I still want to. My heart yearns for that, to be a warrior like you. But I think what I’ve come to realize is that every ascender is a warrior, no matter the occupation.”

Antony kissed her. “So much wisdom for one so young. And remember, nothing is fixed. Right now we both have this job to do, but it’s conceivable you could enter the program later.”

Her spirits lifted. “That’s true, isn’t it? I keep forgetting that the ascended life has the potential for immortality.”

She looked down at the purple linen pooled around her feet. “How am I worthy of any of this?”

He shrugged. “We aren’t. Neither of us. No ascender can be, and the minute you think you’re worthy, you’re in trouble. Besides, I think you need some perspective about what’s going to happen. Madame Endelle is sending us on a one-hundred-day tour of one hundred Territories. By the time we return I have no doubt we will both want to burn these robes, and we’ll have a whole new set of really bad words to describe Her Supremeness.”

“Oh, God, you are so right. We should plan a bonfire ceremony before we even leave. Why don’t you hire a contractor to build a pyre near the pool?”

He chuckled and pulled her into his arms.

Parisa now stood on the purple robes but she didn’t care. She pressed her nose into his neck and sniffed long and loud. He smelled sooo good, sage and earth and man all in one. Certain unfortunate thoughts began swirling through her mind. She felt him tense.

“Stop that,” he whispered. “The scent of tangerines is so thick in my brain right now I can hardly think.”

He pressed his hips against her and let her feel his response, but she already had. One of the results of the breh-hedden was the strange way in which she could feel his physical body, in an external sense. She could feel what her hips felt like pressing back at him, the pleasure she gave. She could feel from his perspective what it was like to have her large breasts smashed against his chest. She could feel his body respond, his cock thicken, lengthen, harden.

Shivers chased over her body in response, and in further response, his own body quivered. It was such a hot, dangerous back-and-forth. Oh, yeah.

She drew back and looked up at him, but didn’t break contact. “So how much time do we have?”

He growled. “We are not due at the palace for Endelle’s costume approval for half an hour.”

She shivered, he quivered. She started to fold off the clothes but he stopped her and laughed. “Allow me, please.”

She giggled. They so did not have time for her to practice more of her folding skills, which still sucked.

Within a split second she was flush against him flesh-to-flesh. She sighed and melted into his arms. The breh-hedden lit her up, and he was fire on her skin. The apertures down her back wept, and her fingers felt the ridges of his wing-locks. She flicked them gently and he writhed heavily against her. He turned her in the direction of the bed. She heard the swish of the comforter and top sheet. The next moment she was flat on her back and he was entering her, all those weighty inches of him, pushing into her, making her back arch, her wing-locks seep and make a mess of their bed. The silk sheets would have to go. Silk didn’t like moisture. Maybe a terry-cloth sheet … at least for times like these.

***

An hour after the meeting with Endelle, Medichi had his woman under the curve of his arm. He stood on the lip of the Grand Canyon, in about the same spot he’d been more than two weeks ago when he’d chased a rogue death vampire down, down, down to the raging river below, when he’d flipped him into the water then hauled him onto the rock that had broken him, when he’d pierced the bastard’s mind and taken the one piece of information he’d needed to find Parisa.

Now he was back, to look, to remember, to ponder.

Parisa shuddered. “Why did you bring me here?”

The recent battle was still fresh, for both of them.

But so was the miracle that had followed, their miracle, which had emerged because they’d each had the courage to swallow their fears and to complete the breh-hedden.

“We were born here,” he said, not looking at her. His mind was fixed in the distance, the vastness of the canyon, the beauty, the impossibility of it all, the breadth of time that had carved out the abyss, and his wings that could breach it all.

“Yes,” she whispered. “We were born here, that part of you and me that became an us. You’re right, we were.”

He felt how solemn she was. He knew her mind now, all of her intricacies, her fears, her shames, her triumphs, her loves, and just how much she admired him. He thrived on that, her respect for him, her willingness to stand beside him because she believed in him.

He held her closer. Fear rode him for a brief arctic moment. A shiver passed through him. Bad things were coming, terrible things for the Warriors of the Blood, for those women bonded to them. He knew it in the hard hateful way that he had started knowing things.

But at the same time, peace descended.

This was life, ascended life, good, bad, indifferent, terrifying.

But it was also grand, huge, magnificent, full of unbelievable joys and, yes, on occasion triumphs.

He let these pleasures flow through him. He looked at Parisa, and she turned from admiring the beauty in front of her to meeting his gaze. Her smile reached her beautiful amethyst eyes, so much the color of the banding on their shared wings.

“I love you so much,” she whispered.

He drew her into his arms. He kissed her, his tongue plunging and savoring. He loved all the connections he had to her, his tongue, his cock, his fingers, his arms wrapped around her, his body pressed to her, his wings, tip-to-tip, his fangs, but mostly his mind. God, yes his mind.

He felt her chest rise and fall in a deeply drawn breath and sigh. He felt her pleasure that he held her.

He pulled back from her then kissed her. “I love you more than I can say.”