Carling sat in her favorite armchair by a spacious window. The chair’s butter-soft leather had long ago molded to the contours of her body. It cradled her like an old lover. Outside the window lay a lush, well-tended garden that was ornamented with the subtle hues of the night. Her gaze was trained on the scene, but like her face, the expression in her almond-shaped eyes was blank.
“Why would you say such a thing?” Rhoswen asked. There were tears in the younger Vampyre’s voice as she knelt beside the armchair, her blonde head turned upward to Carling like a flower’s to the sun. “You’re the most wonderful person in the world.”
“My sweet girl.” Carling kissed Rhoswen’s forehead since the younger woman seemed to need it. Although the distance in Carling’s gaze lessened, it did not entirely disappear. “You know, those are painful and rather disturbing words. To believe that of someone such as I—you must acquire more discernment.”
Her servant’s tears spilled over and streaked down a youngseeming, cameo-perfect face. Rhoswen threw her arms around Carling with a sob.
Carling’s sleek eyebrows rose. “What is this?” she asked, her tone weary. “What have I said to upset you so?”
Rhoswen shook her head and clung tighter.
Carling patted the younger woman’s back as she thought. She said, “We were talking about the events that led up to the Dark Fae Queen’s coronation. You persist in believing that I did a good thing when I healed Niniane and her lover, Tiago, when they were injured. While the results might have been beneficial, I was merely pointing out what a selfish creature at heart I really am.”
“Two days ago,” Rhoswen said into her lap. “We had that conversation two days ago, and then you faded again.”
“Did I?” She stroked Rhoswen’s pale hair. “Well, we knew the deterioration was accelerating.”
No one fully understood why very old Vampyres went through a period of increasing mental deterioration before they disintegrated into outright madness and then death. Since it was rare for Vampyres to achieve such an extreme old age, the phenomenon was little known outside the upper echelon of the Nightkind community. Vampyres lived violent lives, and they tended to die from other causes first.
Perhaps it was the inevitable progression of the disease itself. Perhaps, Carling thought, in the end, our beginnings contain the seeds of our eventual downfall. The souls that began as human were never meant to live the near-immortal life that vampyrism gave them.
Rhoswen’s tear-streaked face lifted. “But I don’t believe you have to deteriorate! In Chicago, and later at the Dark Fae coronation, you were fully alert and functioning. You were present for every moment.”
Carling regarded the younger woman with a wry expression. Extraordinary experiences did seem to help, as they jolted one into alertness for a time. The problem was it only helped temporarily. To someone who has witnessed the passage of millennia, after a while even the extraordinary experiences became ordinary.
Carling sighed and admitted, “I had a couple of episodes I did not share with you.”
The grief that filled Rhoswen’s expression was so epic it was positively Shakespearian. Carling’s sense of wryness deepened as she looked upon the face of fanatic devotion and knew she had done nothing whatsoever to merit it.
She had squandered an almost unimaginably long life in the acquisition of Power. She had played chess with demons for human lives, counseled monarchs and warred with monsters. Throughout the unwinding scroll of centuries, she had ruled more than one country with unwavering ruthlessness in her slender iron fist. She knew spells that were so secret the knowledge of their existence had all but passed from this Earth, and she had seen things so wondrous that the sight of them had brought strong, proud men to their knees. She had conquered the darkness to walk in the full light of day, and she had lost and lost and lost so very many people and things that even grief failed to move her much anymore.
All of these fabulous experiences were now fading into the ornamented night.
There was simply nowhere else to take her life, no adventure so compelling she must fight above all else to survive and see it through, no mountaintop she had to scale. After everything she had done to survive, after fighting to live for so long and to rule, she had now become . . . disinterested.
And here was the final of all treasures, the last jewel in her casket of secrets that rested on top of all the others, winking its onyx light.
The Power she had worked so hard to accumulate was pulsing in rhythm with the accelerating deterioration of her mind. She saw it flare all around her in an exquisite transparent shimmer. It covered her in a shroud that sparkled like diamonds.
She had lost track of when it had begun. Time had become a riddle. Perhaps it had been a hundred years ago. Or perhaps it had been the entirety of her life, which held certain symmetry. That which she had fought so hard for, shed blood over and cried tears of rage over would be what consumed her in the end.