There was no reconciling the two timelines. No way to make that equation add, subtract, multiply, or divide. And yet Xhex wouldn’t mislead him. No way. Even though she was a symphath, history had proven that he could trust her, and she had very clearly confirmed what he had known all along, what had captivated him—and given that what he felt now was infinitely better than the suffering? He would take it and run with it. After all, wasn’t that what faith was all about?

You believed what your soul told you even if the fallible mind struggled with the implications.

Peace. All he wanted was peace. And if he had to stop questioning and just believe to stay here in this relief? Then he was on that train, goddamn it.

Staring at his brother’s contact on the screen of his cell phone, it felt all wrong not sharing this with iAm. The other male suffered as he did. Hell, maybe that was why the poor bastard had let that sauce burn on the stove tonight. He was newly mated, to a female he loved with everything in him, but he had a basket case for a nearest blood relation.

The last thing iAm needed was a crazy-ass phone call from said basket case that was full of happy tears, proclamations of reincarnation, and suggestions that they double date. This was especially true given that the guy’s party line on his newest waitress was that the female was not in fact Selena. To iAm, she was Therese. From Michigan. Come to Caldwell to start a new life independent from whatever family she had left behind.

Any news flash to the contrary was not going to go well.

And iAm wasn’t the only one who didn’t need a conversation like that. Trez was not interested in anyone talking him out of this happiness. Trying to prove him wrong. Attempting to “reason” with him.

He was liable to go batshit, and not in an insane way. In a combative manner.

“Fuck.”

As he stared at his phone, he found such irony in the fact that his good news alienated him as much as his bad news had. He had a secret he knew he couldn’t share, and that made him lonely.

Maybe even when it comes to the owner of this key, he thought to himself.

His female had seen him in her dreams… but again, she did not recognize him in real life.

Before he became frustrated with the whole situation, he deliberately remembered the way he had felt as he had stood in front of that funeral pyre, those flames consuming the remains of his queen. How many times, during the burn, and then after it was all embers and ashes—hell, even before then, when his female had been on the lip edge of death, lingering, suffering… how many times had he begged for a different destiny? Promised all kinds of things, both within and without of his control, for her to come back, for his life to return to normal, for them to have years, decades, centuries ahead of them.

Instead of what they’d been granted. Which had been too short, and too tragic.

What if this was the fate he had asked for being delivered unto him? What if… this was the only way it could happen, the only manner in which his prayers could be answered?

The reunion with his queen granted.

But only him knowing it.

“I’ll take it,” he said out loud as he clicked his phone off. “I will fucking take this shit a hundred times during the week, and a thousand times on every Sunday.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

The following evening, Trez all but skipped down the formal front staircase of the Brotherhood’s mansion. As he descended the red-carpeted, tsar-worthy steps, he was glad no one was hanging around down in the multicolored, marble-columned foyer: Even though he was whistling, very nearly skipping, and liable to high-five anyone in range, he didn’t want anybody to catch him in his good mood.

In fact, his body was bouncy and buoyant, a buoy on gentle seas, and his feet were all Fred Astaire, light and nimble. Then again, the incredible weight that had been sitting on his rib cage like an elephant had disappeared. In its absence, he could breathe for the first time since Selena’s death—and hey, another bonus, his heart wasn’t bleeding out in his chest anymore, either.

And it was funny. Even though he’d been so very aware of how badly off he’d been—because, hello, he’d been in so much pain, he’d had no choice but to recognize the major-organ-failure equivalent of his damage—he nonetheless had a fresh perspective on his mental and emotional states.

Not until the removal of the pain had he understood the depths of it.

Plus, check it, he was actually looking forward to something.

Someone.

Was this what Rehv had been talking about when the guy had come and pressed the drug thing? Because if a person could get this effect by popping a pill every twenty-four hours? Man, sign his shit up. He just didn’t think it was that simple.

No, this optimism, this return to a normalcy he had never really had, was both complicated and simple. Soon, he was going to see his shellan, in the form she had been returned to him as. And what do you know, that solved so many of his problems—and the ones it created? Well, he’d spent all day lying in bed and thinking them over.

Yup, he was more than comfortable managing them.

As he hit the mosaic floor, he stopped and looked toward the cheerful sounds spilling out through the dining room’s archway. There was laughter and chatter, and the soft clinking of sterling silver on porcelain, and the occasional scrape of chair legs as someone got up or sat down. He could picture the people in there. See their faces, their smiles, their bodies in those hand-carved seats. Thirty of them, including the servants.

He had been avoiding mealtimes, not because he didn’t like who was in that grand room, but because he loved the people in there. And it was hard, when you were in a dark place, to be around those who were not. You didn’t want to bring anybody down, but you also couldn’t fake the happiness.

With his change in mood, he was tempted to go into the dining room, hug each and every one of them, and then plant himself at a vacant place setting. As he tucked into the roast beef he could smell, he would apologize for putting them all through what he had—because he knew the Brothers and their shellans, the other fighters, even Fritz and his staff, had worried about him. And then he would join the talking and the laughing.

Except… no. He couldn’t do that. This resurrected mood—natch—he was sporting was like getting rhinoplasty. Everybody was going to notice, and there was no not-explaining, not to the nearest-and-dearest crew.

It was better that he made a gradual reentry.

Yes, that was how this had to go. Especially as he started bringing Selena in her new incarnation around the Brothers. Thank God at least Xhex knew what was doing and could help frame the hellos.

Taking a deep breath, he headed for the door into the vestibule, and reminded himself that him knowing the truth was enough. Reality didn’t become more real just because he drew others in it—there wasn’t some kind of occupancy requirement to yup-this-is-happening. Besides, if anybody challenged his good news? He was liable to get defensive in a forty-millimeter kind of way—

Trez was just about to open the vestibule’s first door when something in the billiards room caught his eye.

Behind the lineup of pool tables, down on the floor, a couple dozen pages were laid out in a fan. There had to be at least twenty or so, and they were marked with splashes of bright red and green. Breathing in, he smelled paint, but not the stinky oil kind. It was sweet and— was no reconciling the two timelines. No way to make that equation add, subtract, multiply, or divide. And yet Xhex wouldn’t mislead him. No way. Even though she was a symphath, history had proven that he could trust her, and she had very clearly confirmed what he had known all along, what had captivated him—and given that what he felt now was infinitely better than the suffering? He would take it and run with it. After all, wasn’t that what faith was all about?

You believed what your soul told you even if the fallible mind struggled with the implications.

Peace. All he wanted was peace. And if he had to stop questioning and just believe to stay here in this relief? Then he was on that train, goddamn it.

Staring at his brother’s contact on the screen of his cell phone, it felt all wrong not sharing this with iAm. The other male suffered as he did. Hell, maybe that was why the poor bastard had let that sauce burn on the stove tonight. He was newly mated, to a female he loved with everything in him, but he had a basket case for a nearest blood relation.

The last thing iAm needed was a crazy-ass phone call from said basket case that was full of happy tears, proclamations of reincarnation, and suggestions that they double date. This was especially true given that the guy’s party line on his newest waitress was that the female was not in fact Selena. To iAm, she was Therese. From Michigan. Come to Caldwell to start a new life independent from whatever family she had left behind.

Any news flash to the contrary was not going to go well.

And iAm wasn’t the only one who didn’t need a conversation like that. Trez was not interested in anyone talking him out of this happiness. Trying to prove him wrong. Attempting to “reason” with him.

He was liable to go batshit, and not in an insane way. In a combative manner.

“Fuck.”

As he stared at his phone, he found such irony in the fact that his good news alienated him as much as his bad news had. He had a secret he knew he couldn’t share, and that made him lonely.

Maybe even when it comes to the owner of this key, he thought to himself.

His female had seen him in her dreams… but again, she did not recognize him in real life.

Before he became frustrated with the whole situation, he deliberately remembered the way he had felt as he had stood in front of that funeral pyre, those flames consuming the remains of his queen. How many times, during the burn, and then after it was all embers and ashes—hell, even before then, when his female had been on the lip edge of death, lingering, suffering… how many times had he begged for a different destiny? Promised all kinds of things, both within and without of his control, for her to come back, for his life to return to normal, for them to have years, decades, centuries ahead of them.

Instead of what they’d been granted. Which had been too short, and too tragic.

What if this was the fate he had asked for being delivered unto him? What if… this was the only way it could happen, the only manner in which his prayers could be answered?

The reunion with his queen granted.

But only him knowing it.

“I’ll take it,” he said out loud as he clicked his phone off. “I will fucking take this shit a hundred times during the week, and a thousand times on every Sunday.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

The following evening, Trez all but skipped down the formal front staircase of the Brotherhood’s mansion. As he descended the red-carpeted, tsar-worthy steps, he was glad no one was hanging around down in the multicolored, marble-columned foyer: Even though he was whistling, very nearly skipping, and liable to high-five anyone in range, he didn’t want anybody to catch him in his good mood.

In fact, his body was bouncy and buoyant, a buoy on gentle seas, and his feet were all Fred Astaire, light and nimble. Then again, the incredible weight that had been sitting on his rib cage like an elephant had disappeared. In its absence, he could breathe for the first time since Selena’s death—and hey, another bonus, his heart wasn’t bleeding out in his chest anymore, either.

And it was funny. Even though he’d been so very aware of how badly off he’d been—because, hello, he’d been in so much pain, he’d had no choice but to recognize the major-organ-failure equivalent of his damage—he nonetheless had a fresh perspective on his mental and emotional states.

Not until the removal of the pain had he understood the depths of it.

Plus, check it, he was actually looking forward to something.

Someone.

Was this what Rehv had been talking about when the guy had come and pressed the drug thing? Because if a person could get this effect by popping a pill every twenty-four hours? Man, sign his shit up. He just didn’t think it was that simple.

No, this optimism, this return to a normalcy he had never really had, was both complicated and simple. Soon, he was going to see his shellan, in the form she had been returned to him as. And what do you know, that solved so many of his problems—and the ones it created? Well, he’d spent all day lying in bed and thinking them over.

Yup, he was more than comfortable managing them.

As he hit the mosaic floor, he stopped and looked toward the cheerful sounds spilling out through the dining room’s archway. There was laughter and chatter, and the soft clinking of sterling silver on porcelain, and the occasional scrape of chair legs as someone got up or sat down. He could picture the people in there. See their faces, their smiles, their bodies in those hand-carved seats. Thirty of them, including the servants.

He had been avoiding mealtimes, not because he didn’t like who was in that grand room, but because he loved the people in there. And it was hard, when you were in a dark place, to be around those who were not. You didn’t want to bring anybody down, but you also couldn’t fake the happiness.

With his change in mood, he was tempted to go into the dining room, hug each and every one of them, and then plant himself at a vacant place setting. As he tucked into the roast beef he could smell, he would apologize for putting them all through what he had—because he knew the Brothers and their shellans, the other fighters, even Fritz and his staff, had worried about him. And then he would join the talking and the laughing.

Except… no. He couldn’t do that. This resurrected mood—natch—he was sporting was like getting rhinoplasty. Everybody was going to notice, and there was no not-explaining, not to the nearest-and-dearest crew.

It was better that he made a gradual reentry.

Yes, that was how this had to go. Especially as he started bringing Selena in her new incarnation around the Brothers. Thank God at least Xhex knew what was doing and could help frame the hellos.

Taking a deep breath, he headed for the door into the vestibule, and reminded himself that him knowing the truth was enough. Reality didn’t become more real just because he drew others in it—there wasn’t some kind of occupancy requirement to yup-this-is-happening. Besides, if anybody challenged his good news? He was liable to get defensive in a forty-millimeter kind of way—

Trez was just about to open the vestibule’s first door when something in the billiards room caught his eye.

Behind the lineup of pool tables, down on the floor, a couple dozen pages were laid out in a fan. There had to be at least twenty or so, and they were marked with splashes of bright red and green. Breathing in, he smelled paint, but not the stinky oil kind. It was sweet and—