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“No!” the Scribe Virgin screamed.

Chapter Fifty

Jane was out of time. And she knew it in the same way she knew when a patient was taking a turn for the worse. Her internal clock went off, her alarm starting to beep.

“I don’t want to let go of him,” she said to no one.

Her voice didn’t travel far, and she noticed that the fog seemed more dense…so dense it was starting to obscure even her feet. And then it dawned on her. They weren’t obscured. With cold dread she realized that unless she did something, she was going to dissolve and take her place within the wall of ambient nothing. She would be forever alone and lonely, pining for the love she’d once felt.

A sad, shifting ghost.

Now she was finally struck by emotion, and it was one that brought tears to her eyes. The only way to save herself was to let the yearning for Vishous go; that was the key to the door. But if she did it, she felt as if she were abandoning him, leaving him alone to face a cold, bitter future. After all, she could imagine how it would be for her if he died.

In a surge the fog grew even thicker and the temperature dropped. She looked down. Her legs were disappearing…first up to her ankles, now to her calves. She was leaching out into the nothingness, dispersing.

Jane began to cry as she found her resolve and wept for the selfishness of what she had to do.

How did she let go of him, though?

As the fog crawled up to her thighs, she panicked. She didn’t know how to do what she must—

The answer, when it came to her, was painful and simple.

Oh…God… Letting go meant you accepted what couldn’t be changed. You didn’t try to hold on to hope in order to coerce a change in fortune…nor did you battle against the superior forces of fate and try to make them capitulate to your will…nor did you beg for salvation because you assumed you knew better. Letting go meant you stared at what was before you with clear eyes, recognizing that unfettered choice was the exception and destiny the rule.

No bargaining. No trying to control. You gave up and saw that the one you loved was in fact not your future, and there was nothing you could do about it.

Tears fell from her eyes into the swirling mist as she released all pretense of strength and let go of her fight to keep her tie to Vishous alive. As she did, she had no faith or optimism, she was empty as the fog around her: An atheist in life, she found in death she was the same. Believing in nothing, now she was nothing.

And that was when the miracle happened.

A light fell from overhead, sheltering her, warming her, suffusing her with something that was just as the love she had felt for Vishous had been: a benediction.

As she was pulled upward like a daisy plucked from the ground by a gentle hand, she realized that she could still love who she loved, even though she wasn’t with him. Indeed, their divergent paths did not dissect and desecrate what she felt. It layered her emotions with a cloak of bittersweet longing, but it didn’t change what was in her heart. She could love him and wait for him on the far side of life. Because love, after all, was eternal and not subject to the whims of death.

Jane was free…as upward she flew.

Phury was about to lose it.

But he had to get in line if he was going to go mad, because all the brothers were on a thin edge. Especially Butch, who was pacing around the study like a prisoner in solitary confinement.

No sign of Vishous. No calls. No nothing. And dawn was coming like a freight train.

Butch stopped. “Where would you do a funeral for a shellan?”

Wrath frowned. “The Tomb.”

“You think maybe he’d take her there?”

“He’s never been too keen on the whole ritual deal, and with his mother having forsaken him…?” Wrath shook his head. “He wouldn’t go there. Besides, he’d have to know that’s one of the places we’d look for him, and he’s so damned private. Assuming he’s putting her down, he wouldn’t want an audience.”

“Yeah.”

Butch started up with the pacing again as the grandfather clock rang in four thirty A.M.

“You know what?” the