“He will not succeed,” Valentine informed the sea.

“Love is powerful,” Lavinia of Lunwyn whispered in return.

“Indeed, love is everything but hate is the other side to that coin and it holds equal power.”

“Mm,” Lavinia murmured then asked softly, “But the distance around that coin is not far, is it, Valentine?”

This was true. The coin of love and hate flipped and it did so regularly.

Still.

Valentine stared at the sea and, again uncharacteristically, she felt unease therefore she shared quietly, “Ilsa is broken.”

“As is our Apollo,” Lavinia replied and that was the truth.

“But he does not love the Ilsa of my world. He loves a dead Ilsa,” Valentine reminded her friend.

Valentine knew Lavinia turned her head to look at her when she spoke again. “Three times, Valentine, three, love has spanned universes. You’ve seen it happen once and you know of the other two times. He loves a dead woman, he mourns her, unabated. But that does not mean he cannot find love again, a different love with a different woman who is yet the same. He has known beauty but his full story is untold. And she has not known beauty. Who is to say that he cannot guide her to beauty? A man such as him is capable of many feats, even those that seem impossible.” She paused and whispered, “Love has its own magic, Valentine, you know that too.”

Valentine looked to the other witch. “You don’t know how bad it is. I don’t see good things. He pines for a dead woman. The Ilsa of my world will not thank him for tearing her from her world, no matter that that world holds nothing but terror and flight, and forcing her to live with a man who physically is, even though he is not, a man she fears and detests all the while he wants nothing but his dead wife back, not her. She is not the Ilsa he loves and that is all he will see, until he comes to understand she is not the woman he so desperately wants returned and then what? Disappointment, if she is lucky. Anger, if she is not.”

“There are other possible outcomes,” Lavinia returned.

“Indeed, but there are also those two.”

Lavinia held her eyes.

Then she smiled and whispered, “We shall see.”

That was the truth too.

Valentine sighed and wondered why she cared.

She came to no conclusions; it was simply that, unfortunately, she did.

Then she looked back to the sea.

Then she said softly, “I have work to do.”

“You do, indeed,” Lavinia agreed. “As do I.”

She did. Troubled times lay ahead and if Valentine was not taking back trunks of jewels and gold, she would have nothing to do with it.

Valentine did not have a good feeling about what was to come for this universe.

Not at all.

And she’d been trapped in that universe during war and she had not enjoyed it even a little bit.

That said, the work she had to do at that moment didn’t have to do with the troubles this world faced. It also didn’t have to do with Apollo Ulfr and his blind devotion to a dead woman.

It had to do with something else.

Something she was not doing for payment.

Something she was doing just for fun.

And also, since she seemed to be growing soft of heart recently (also unfortunately), something she was doing for love.

Then again, love was everything so she forgave herself her soft heart… this time.

Valentine turned back to her friend. “Until tomorrow.”

Lavinia lifted her chin and smiled.

Valentine lifted both hands then, moments later, in a mist of green, she disappeared.

She reappeared not in New Orleans, her home.

No, she reappeared in a living room in Seattle.

“Jesus, f**k! What the f**k? Who the f**k are you?” the man walking out of his kitchen carrying a bottle of beer and spying her in his living room burst out.

Valentine allowed herself an indulgent moment to study the extremely handsome Noctorno Hawthorne of her world.

Then she said words he would undoubtedly understand immediately.

“Cora needs you.”

His powerful body went statue-still and he glared at her but behind his blue eyes he was alert and he didn’t even attempt to veil his concern.

Then he transferred his glare to the ceiling.

Then he muttered, “Fuck.”

At that, finally, Valentine smiled her cat’s smile.