“Damn right he has,” Carwyn muttered, obviously still unhappy with the water vampire who controlled the city where his son had been killed.

“—to catch whoever took Ioan.”

“We know who took him,” Deirdre said with a sigh. “We know who it is, Gio. Why are you wasting time?”

Giovanni’s shoulders tensed when he heard her hollow voice; he braced himself for her recrimination, but her empty gaze was fixated on a canvas she had painted of Ioan, which hung on the wall near the small fireplace in the corner of the library. He looked at the painting, which had captured his friend’s lively smile and the wicked humor he had inherited from his father.

“Deirdre—”

“I’ll not be leaving the mountain, Gio. Not right now. There is too much to do and too many defenses to shore up. Our people need me here, so I’ll depend on you and Father to kill him for me.”

He nodded. “I understand.”

“Though I’d rip his heart out of his body and feed it to the dogs,” Deirdre said in a low voice, “just to rip it out again when it grew back.”

The intense guilt from his son’s actions almost threatened to overwhelm him, but Giovanni stood, stoically meeting Deirdre’s vicious gaze.

“Kill him, Giovanni di Spada. I will not have you take his sin on your shoulders, but I do expect you to rid the world of this monster.”

“I will,” he whispered, as he fixed her burning blue eyes in his mind.

“I demand it of you.”

“The right is yours, Deirdre, and I will honor it.”

“For me, for Ioan, and for your woman as well.”

He saw Beatrice’s lip twitch minutely when Deirdre called her “his woman” and the grieving widow must have seen it as well, because she turned to Beatrice.

“Do I offend your modern sensibilities, Beatrice De Novo, to call you ‘his woman?’”

An embarrassed flush rose in Beatrice’s cheeks, and she opened her mouth to speak, but Deirdre continued, scorn dripping from her words.

“This immortal,” she said, pointing to Giovanni, “who has never claimed a human woman in five hundred years, is not worthy of calling you ‘his?’ This vampire who wields the fiercest of elements with iron control is the one you dismiss?”

“Deirdre,” Giovanni cautioned, but she brushed him aside with a careless wave.

“You foolish girl!” she bit out. “Why do you hesitate?”

“I know you’re grieving,” Beatrice said as she glared at Deirdre, “but our lives are none—”

“Do you think you have forever?” Deirdre finally choked and blood tinged tears rolled down her face. “Not even we had forever. And I only seek to live now that I may care for my people, otherwise I would join my husband in the grave.”

“Daughter, that’s enough,” Carwyn murmured as he walked across to gather her up and hold her as she shook with silent sobs.

Giovanni watched Beatrice from across the room, noting her pale face as she watched Deirdre’s grief. The fear in her eyes matched that which slashed at his own heart, and he fought back a wave of hot panic at the thought of being parted from her.

Deirdre finally wiped her eyes and pulled away from her father. She gave Beatrice a hard look, but before Giovanni could rebuke the widow, some unspoken communication seemed to pass between the women and the tension drained from the room. Deirdre turned to him with a veiled expression.

“Giovanni, forgive my outburst. I will leave you so that I may see to my family.”

“Deirdre...”

“And you, Beatrice, thank you for helping to find those who killed my Ioan.”

“Of course.”

Carwyn and Deirdre walked out of the library to join the vampires who surrounded a bonfire lit in remembrance of their kinsman. Giovanni watched them through the window until he heard a quiet sniff behind him, and he turned. “Beatrice?”

“Is that what you want?” Tears were in her eyes, and her arms were folded across her chest.

“What—”

“Is that what you want for us? For me to give up my human life and be tied to you like that? So connected that either of us would want to die if something happened to the other?”

Yes.

No matter how painful Deirdre’s loss was, Giovanni had also seen the incredible joy her bond with Ioan brought. “You know my feelings for you. And what I want.”

“To become a vampire. Like you. To live in the dark and watch all my family and friends die around me.” She dashed the tears from her eyes. “But I’d have you, right? And what if I lost you? Or what if you left me again?” Her eyes flashed out the window toward Deirdre. “What then?”

“I won’t leave you again,” he said gently, walking across the library. “And you see only the sadness, but what if we could have a thousand years together? More? Even if we had only one hundred years together, isn’t that more than a mortal man could give you?” He stood in front of her, gripping her shoulders and willing her to see the devotion in his eyes. “What if we had ten? Or only one? Do you think Deirdre regrets any of her time with Ioan because of her grief now?”

“I don’t know,” Beatrice whispered. “It’s too much, Gio. Everything’s changing so fast. This is not my world. And it’s so much bigger than anything I could have imagined.”

He shook his head. “We live on the same Earth, Beatrice. The world has not changed, only your perception of it.”