“I thought I’d clear if you’re finished,” Margaret said.
“Of course. Did you make Blaise suffer intentionally?” Isabel asked a moment later.
Margaret paused in her action of clearing dishes, listening. Usan’s blue eyes pierced Isabel from across the table when he heard her quiet intensity and yes…anger.
He sighed. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? How sin compounds sin? The answer to your question is yes, Isabel. I know how that must sound to you. You imagine me as being cruel and capricious, and perhaps I was. Suffering was a requirement for my means, one of the main ingredients in my alchemical stew. I was luckier than some of my brethren, for Blaise encountered his main source of suffering of his own free will.”
“He fell in love with a woman—Elysse de Gennere.”
Usan nodded. “Yes, and unlike you, Elysse spurned him for his unique nature. She ended her life, believing she was tainted by sin for giving herself to Blaise.”
“Stupid woman,” Isabel breathed, infuriated at a female long dead because she’d hurt Blaise to his very core.
“Do not be so harsh on her,” Usan said, leveling her with his shockingly alert gaze. “Elysse had as much to do with Blaise’s soul as you, or I…or even Morshiel.”
Margaret made a little sound of disbelief and distress. Isabel glanced at the older woman and noticed her pale face. She straightened and cleared her throat. She was irritated at Usan for allowing Blaise to suffer, but she understood, on some basic level, that Blaise’s suffering was what made him what he was today.
As far as she was concerned, Blaise’s suffering had served its purpose. It had been a necessity once for him to feel alone in this universe, damned…tainted.
But no more.
She must convince him of that. She must, or he would never embrace the future.
It was time to face one of the many miracles she’d learned from Usan’s concentrated information stream. After his explanation about Magia’s lost soul, she understood better why Usan thought the news so miraculous.
“How will we convince Blaise that the child I carry is his? How can I bring him back to me, and not just as his wolf-self…as Blaise?” Isabel demanded.
“Child?” Margaret squawked. “Lord Delraven’s? A baby? And when did you discover Royal was Lord Delraven?”
“Usan told me, but I believe I must have known deep down all along,” Isabel shared a quick smile with Usan. “And yes, Margaret. A baby.”
She picked up her glass of milk and drained it in one.
Four nights later, Blaise hovered in the shadows of the platform at the Aldgate East Underground station. He watched as the train slowed and four young people clamored through the doors, leaving him alone on the platform. He had completed his business in the surface world and longed to return to Sanctuary, to Isabel’s side, even if it was only in his wolf-form. He’d received the much-awaited news that Isi had sufficiently recovered to talk. Once he understood the secret Isi carried from Saint, he would know better how to act in regard to Isabel.
He leapt into the tunnel the moment the train roared past him, the zipper of his coat clicking on the metal.
Blaise had confessed his transgressions with Isabel to Aubrey, and explained the necessity for keeping a distance between himself and the temptation of Isabel. Like Usan, Aubrey had initially questioned why it was necessary to avoid her.
“Why do you not permit yourself some moments of happiness?” Aubrey had challenged.
“I cannot consider happiness until I understand what is happening. I cannot endanger Isabel further and claim ignorance as the cause. It is all too strange. If you had seen Usan’s shock when I told him about Isi coming to London, you would understand,” Blaise had replied. “I will not be easy until I speak to Isi.”
Blaise followed the tunnel east. Just before he reached the Whitechapel stop, he opened a nearly invisible door carved into the side of the tunnel and ducked behind it. He started to descend down flight after flight of stairs, the sound of his boots hitting metal in the long, nearly pitch black shaft making him feel like the only being left on the planet.
His loneliness had become like a toxin in the air he breathed. For the majority of his existence, he hadn’t noticed it because it was all he knew. His loneliness did not kill him, and it was an invisible thing, so he grew accustomed to it. Elysse had entered his world, and for a brief period of time, he’d recognized the gloom of his life.
It had altered him forever.
With Isabel, the experience had amplified a thousandfold. It’d been as if he basked in the warmest of sunshine and breathed the purest air. For a few short, precious moments, he’d shared in her light, her vibrancy. He’d experienced himself as unique…alive.
He knew he’d been alive only because it felt like death to be separated from her.
He would never forsake those moments, even if it did mean that he now knew the desolation of being without her. He’d reflected upon it much during these past days of enforced isolation. It amazed him to realize he would have changed what had happened with Elysse if he could. But Isabel?
No. If time were turned back, he wouldn’t be able to resist her, even knowing what he knew now. He hadn’t just consumed her blood, sweat and sex. He’d been transformed by the preciousness of her existence.
Five minutes later he knocked quietly and opened the door to a bedroom suite within Sanctuary. At first, he only saw Aubrey sitting at the edge of the king-sized bed, but then he saw that Isi was sitting up and conscious.