And then, “What the fuck.”
Beth looked up in alarm. Xhex had come back in from the hallway and she was standing in the open doorway, staring at her mate like she’d seen a stranger.
Because… well, maybe she had, too.
“I don’t know what just happened,” Beth said numbly.
When she glanced back down… John Matthew had returned, his eyes rolling into place, the pupils struggling to focus as if he’d woken up from a coma. And as his mate hustled over and took his hand, he looked at Xhex.
The female was pale to the point of being stark and she was shaking her head like she was utterly dumbfounded.
“Your grid,” his mate said. “Your grid…”
As a symphath, Xhex could apparently sense things other people could not, and Beth had heard about the way they categorized a person’s emotions and consciousness. Not that she completely comprehended it.
“The shadow is gone,” the female murmured as she stroked her mate’s face. “It’s just… him now.”
Beth’s eyes went back to the displays of photographs on the desk and she held L.W. a little tighter. Was it possible her father had found a way to stay with her after his death?
What a miracle that would be, if it were true.
“I have to go back home,” she heard herself say urgently. “Right now.”
When Xhex looked up, she started for the door. “I need to know if this is true. I have to know for sure.”
Except she already had her answer. In her heart, in her soul, she was absolutely certain that when she got back to the mansion her father had built so that the Brotherhood and their mates and families could all live together under one roof, so that they could be safer together, so that they could support each other through the good times and the bad, she was going to dematerialize up to the rooftop…
And find the urn her father had put up there.
And know that he had always been with her.
Her mom, as well.
In truth, she had had… the very best parents in all the world.
* * *
Curiously, it had not been hard to leave his daughter.
As Darius arrived in a hazy landscape of white nothingness, he was at peace in a way he couldn’t remember ever having been before. The thing about parenting was, even though you never felt you had done enough or done anything really well, there was a time to let go… there was a moment when you finally had to release your young to proceed out on their own. And if that time presented itself when you knew what you had brought into the world was in a good place? It was easier than you thought.
Granted, his parenting had always been distilled through another: first, his loyal butler, and then, after a miracle, John Matthew. But he hadn’t let such barriers get in the way of his love or his duty. And Beth was truly living her best life…
After debating the when of it all for so long, he had not been prepared for tonight to be the night necessarily… except something about seeing his daughter and his grandson sitting on the lap of the great Blind King, with Wrath’s powerful arms wrapped around the two most precious things in Darius’s world, had made him realize that for better or worse, there was nothing more for him to do.
She was, literally, in the very best hands.
And it was time for him to leave her.
Just as the confirmation struck his heart, a white door appeared directly in front of him, and he took a deep breath and recognized what was being offered to him.
The Fade awaited on the other side of it.
Yes, it was time. Yet he had had to straddle the divide to communicate directly to his daughter just one time. Only once. And thanks to the Virgin Scribe, Elizabeth had known it was him, and she had responded in the way he had always hoped she would if they stole a moment together.
She loved him. Even though she had never known him.
So now… he could go in peace. All he had to do was reach out and open things.
Still, he hesitated at the door that had come for him.
Staring at the mystical portal, memories flickered through his mind, the images of the past from as long ago as over twenty years to as recent as the night before. As he watched the slideshow, he wondered dimly if he were dying now for real, if the whole life-passing-before-your-eyes thing was turning out to be the final truism he learned on earth.
Except no, he had died in actuality a couple of years ago. On a rainy night. When a second sun had consumed his mortal body.
Vishous’s vision from over two decades before had proven to be correct. A car bomb and its brilliant blast of light and heat had blown him and his newest BMW to high heaven, and he had died. Then again, V was never wrong, was he—although in this case, the brother hadn’t been completely right, either. Or maybe he just hadn’t been shown what came next: the Scribe Virgin coming to Darius and offering him a deal, a token of faculty traded for the chance to be with his daughter, to make sure she was safe.
To live up to his role as father, and his vow to the female he loved.
Of course he’d taken the bargain.
And so he had stared out from behind another’s eyes and watched over his young.
Until now.
Focusing on the door, he told his hand to reach out. When his arm didn’t move, he repeated the command.
But he was too afraid of what was on the other side. If Anne wasn’t there—or if she was, and she didn’t want him—then eternity was just going to be an infinite suffering, all the worse for being never-ending—
Click.
The sound seemed both utterly foreign and entirely prosaic, the kind of thing that happened countless times in a night, the inner workings of a door unlatching.
His thought, as the portal opened before him, was that this wasn’t how it was supposed to work. He was supposed to open the—
“Anne?” he choked out.
From out of a swirl of fog a figure appeared unto him, and for a moment, he worried that he was wrong, that it wasn’t her, that—
“Hi.”
The familiar voice was just as good as the smile he had seen only in his memories and his dreams: Sure enough, yes, yes, it was her, it was his beautiful, dark-haired female.
Anne was standing on the other side of the threshold, a white robe draping her, her body whole and healthy, her face radiant and shining with something that he had mourned as he had never thought he would see it again.
Love. Pure, abiding, soul-deep… love.
As she held her arms out to him, Darius exploded into action, leaping over the divide, jumping at her.
Their embrace was solid, even though she seemed to be part of the ether, and as he held her tight, and felt the warmth of her, and smelled her scent, he closed his eyes to savor the way her arms wrapped around him.
They stayed like that for an eternity, and if this was all that the Fade provided? He was soooooo good with the way the Scribe Virgin had set up the world.
So good.
Except Anne pulled back.
And as he opened his mouth to tell her something, emotions ramrodded him as he looked into her eyes. From out of a choked throat, he asked the one thing that mattered most:
“Did I do a good job?” he said in a guttural voice as he started to choke up. “God, did I take care of her well enough—”
Anne captured his face in her hands. “Oh, yes, Darius. You did a perfect job. You did just what I asked and more than I could have hoped for. You were a magnificent father and protector. Thank you—thank you.”