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"It's nearing dawn," a woman's voice said. "You weep over her body any longer and you'll burn with the sunrise."

I gently laid Elisabeta's body down, and turned to face the woman.Advertisement

I knew her. I had given her the Dark Gift long, long ago, when she'd been a princess in Egypt, rejected by her father, the Pharoah, and sent to the temple to be raised by Priestesses of Isis.

"Rhianikki," I said.

"I go by Rhiannon now." She stepped out of the shadows, her long jet black hair reaching to her waist, a gown of fine gold fabric draping from her shoulders to her feet and leaving her slender arms bare. She nodded to a spot beyond me. "It's a beautiful likeness, isn't it?"

I turned to see a painting, a portrait of my Elisabeta hanging on the chapel wall. It so captured her beauty and her spirit, it took my breath away.

"She had the artist working day and night from the moment you left. It was to be a wedding gift to you upon your return."

I could barely raise my head, my grief was so powerful. "What happened to her?" I asked.

"She was told you had died in battle. That uncle of hers, I believe. She didn't believe it until the second day had passed without word. It was only twelve hours ago, at dawn on the third day, that she threw herself from the tower, in order to join you, her prince. One of the servants heard her cry out that were you alive, you would have returned to her by then. She'd barred the chamber door from within; no one could get to her in time."

It was more than I could bear. I dropped to my knees. "Then it was my broken promise that cost her life." Shaking my head, I said, "Why did you tell me I would find her here, if she was only going to leave me again, Rhiannon?"

She sighed and lowered her head. "It wasn't supposed to happen this way. I did not foresee this, my friend."

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I nodded, believing her. "No matter. I will join her, soon enough."

Rhiannon came to me, placed her hand on my shoulder. "Always you've been so morose. Always.

Hating your eternal life, resenting it, mourning your loneliness. There's nothing in the world so tiresome as a vampire unable to embrace his nature. At least now you have reason for your constant melancholy."

I lifted my head, knew she was leading up to some argument as to why I should live on. "I won't go on without her," I said, hoping to forestall her words.

"Yes," she said, "you will. Shall I tell you why?"

Blinking the salty dryness from my eyes, I nodded, and managed to get to my feet again. "I don't suppose I have a choice. Go on, tell me why I would put myself through the hell of living even one more day without her?"

"I have had a vision," she told me. "I don't get them often - less and less as I grow older and more powerful. But this one was real and it was strong. Do not even think to doubt its veracity."

"No one dares to doubt or question the immortal princess of the Nile, do they?" Bitterness, not humor, laced my words. "Go on, if you must. I cannot walk into the sunrise until it comes, and there is still an hour of hell to endure before then. So go on, tell me of this vision."

"She will return to you."

My head came up, my heart leaping in my chest.

"Oh, it will not be easy. For first and foremost you must remain alive until she does. If not, there's no telling whether the two of you will ever find one another again. So you cannot, you see, walk into the sunrise. You must live, in spite of your pain. For her."

I shook my head. "I would do anything for her. But...for how long?"

Even the most hard-hearted vampiress in the world could not hold my gaze as she whispered the length of my sentence. "Five-hundred years. Or thereabouts."

I stumbled. She caught me, kept me from falling.

"You will find her in a place called New Hampshire. In a village called Endover. That is where she will return to you five centuries hence - if you can endure that long."

I faced Rhiannon squarely. "I've never heard of such a place."

"That's because it doesn't yet exist."

I held her gaze, probed it. "Are you certain?"

"I am."

Sighing, I returned to my beloved, to her body, the shell that had once housed her. I leaned over her, and I kissed her still, cold lips. "I will try, my love. I vow, I will try. Though living that long without you might very well do me in. If I can last, for you, I will."

I closed my eyes on the hot tears that welled in their depths, and I moaned, "Come back to me, Elisabeta."

From somewhere beyond the walls of the chapel, I swore I heard her voice whisper, "I will."

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