Sadness flickered through Marcus. He had not thought of Lord Dillon or Lady Alyssa in years.
“Lord Dillon clearly had the advantage. And yet I knew before the race even began that he was going to let his son win.” Seth paused. “Did my knowing ahead of time that Lord Dillon would throw the race in any way prevent him from making the decision to do so of his own free will?”
Marcus’s fist tightened around the curtains. “No.”
“So it is with fate. You were fated to travel to London in the fall of 1213—”
“And be transformed against my will.”
“Yes. Some things cannot be changed, Marcus, even when it appears we have the power to do so.” Great sorrow weighted Seth’s voice.
But not nearly as much as that which suffused Marcus. He shook his head, wanting to shout a denial.
It had been foolish to hope. Pointless.
His eyes fixed on Beth, followed her every move. His ears strained to hear every laugh, every teasing comment she made.
“I am weary of this life, Seth,” he whispered despondently. “So incredibly weary that I must struggle to find a reason to rise each evening.”
“Did you rest at all today?” Seth asked in the most gentle voice Marcus had ever heard emerge from him.
“No. I don’t want to. Not while they are here. Not while she is here. I don’t want to miss a moment of it.” He swallowed hard against the lump that rose in his throat. “I will only have her for a few more days, Seth. What will I do when she is gone?”
Below, Beth squealed when Robert growled and swept her up in his arms, then dangled her upside down in response to her taunts and teases.
“Eight hundred years,” Marcus continued softly. “I have lived for over eight hundred years, and the only happiness I have ever experienced was during the years I lived at Fosterly as Robert’s squire, then his knight, and this last decade I have spent living near Beth.”
“Your life span is that of a babe’s compared to mine.”
Marcus continued as though Seth had not spoken. “There were decades… entire centuries really… when the only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that I would see her again one day. That if I could just hold out another century—then another and another and another—I would be rewarded with her presence once more. I could see her smile. Hear her laugh. Feel one of her sharp jesting punches to my shoulder. Have her hugs. Her friendship. Her affection.”
“You could have had more than that, had you wished it,” Seth commented cautiously.
Marcus nodded. “That has been the sweetest torture of all, I think, knowing that she could have been mine.”
Beth, Josh, and Grant began playing a game of twenty-one while Robert took a few minutes to cool down in the shade.
“When I was Robert’s squire, she told me that she had once been smitten with her next-door neighbor. I did not realize until we met again all of these centuries later that she spoke of me, here in this time. That she…”
“That she could have loved you?”
Just hearing it spoken aloud was painful. “Not like she loves Robert. Not like he loves her. She could have been content with me. But they belong together. They were made for each other. Even you have admitted that. And I love them both too much to ever betray them by acting on my feelings.”
Robert brought Beth some water and was rewarded with a kiss.
“How I adore her,” Marcus murmured. “She is my light, Seth. My candle in the darkness of this existence. When she and Robert return to the thirteenth century, that light will forever be extinguished. I will never see her again, will have nothing to look forward to, nothing to keep me going. What will I do?”
When next Seth spoke, he sounded infinitely weary. “You will do what we all do, Marcus. You will survive. And perhaps, in time, you will receive another, sweeter reward.”
Beth jumped up and down and cheered when the ball she had just thrown swirled around the rim twice, teetered, then finally fell through the goal.
Marcus shook his head. “There can be none sweeter.”
If you would like to know more about Marcus and whether or not he will find love and happily-ever-after for himself, you can read his story in Night Reigns, Immortal Guardians Book 2.