Embrace the Night

Page 186



only the day before.

Sara Jayne. If she had ever regretted her decision to spend her life with him, she had never admitted it.

As the years began to take their toll, he had begged her to accept the Dark Gift, but she had steadfastly refused. He had watched her grow old, watched her hair turn gray and her eyes grow dim while he stayed forever young, and yet he had loved her till the day she died, loved her wholly and completely. Toward the end, when he knew she had only hours left, he had begged her to pray for him, to ask whatever deity she believed in to be merciful to him.

They had shared 54 years together before she died in his arms. Even then Sara's last thought had been for him. Remembering how alone he had been when he first came to her in the orphanage, she had implored him to forgive her for leaving him behind, had urged him to find someone else to love.

He had buried her in the small graveyard behind the castle, in the coffin he had never used. And because he could not bear to leave her there, alone in the darkness, because he could not bear to face the world without her, he had taken care of his financial affairs, sold all his property save the castle, and then burrowed into the ground beside the casket that held her remains. He had slept there for over fifty years, sleeping away the years in the hope that the pain of her loss would have lessened when he emerged again.

It had been a futile hope; he had risen to a changed world, but his grief remained the same.

Now, gazing up at the stars, he imagined his Sara in heaven, smiling and serene, forever young, forever beautiful.

More than once, steeped in loneliness and despair, he had considered ending his existence; had he believed he had any chance at all of being reunited with Sara, he would have walked out into the sunlight years ago.

But he knew that nothing good awaited him when his existence finally ended. The best he could hope for was eternal darkness; his worst fear was that he would meet Nina in the bowels of an endless, fiery, unforgiving hell.

Upon rising from the earth, he had spent a month in the castle, but the emptiness, the loneliness, the knowledge that she was forever gone, had weighed heavily upon him. It had been torment of the worst kind to walk through the rooms she had brightened with her laughter and know she would never return, to know that she would never again be there, smiling to greet him when he rose each evening. He had arranged with a lawyer to handle his financial affairs as needed, and closed the castle.

He had spent his last night in Salamanca kneeling at Sara's graveside, bidding her a silent farewell as he relived the precious years they had spent together, and then he had fled Salamanca.

For a time, he had wandered from country to country, marveling at the changes that had taken place in the world while he had rested in the earth. Empires had crumbled, civilizations had disappeared, countries that had once been enemies had become allies. There had been much to learn, and for a time he had managed to bury his grief in the need to know. But the emptiness remained.

With a sigh, he shook his morbid thoughts from his mind. It was getting late, and the hunger was gnawing at his insides.