She jerked awake, and the memory of the waters and storm flowed away from her. Find the deepest place and rise.

Jean-Pierre’s arm covered her. He lay on his side facing her, his long hair hiding the lower half of his face. Part of his lower lip was visible. She wanted to kiss it, but what else was new?

She sat up and took a few deep breaths. Dreams were an important part of ascended life. She knew that. But what did it mean that a storm would come from the east and try to drown her?

She wasn’t a fan of symbolism. She preferred things to be open and straightforward. And what could it possibly mean to find the deepest place and rise? The deepest place of what? The bottom of White Lake?

That made no sense at all.

“What is it, chérie? I can hear your thoughts.”

“You can hear my thoughts in your head?”

He laughed and turned over on his back. “Non. It was just an expression. You are thinking very hard.”

“I had a dream about White Lake.”

A pause. “I am not surprised. White Lake is a place of great power, and yours are emerging.”

“I was drowning.”

At that, he lifted up on his elbow. “Drowning, chérie?”

“Sort of. I was beneath the waters and drowning. Do you think it’s just a leftover from my captivity?” She turned to look at him. She stretched her preternatural vision and there he was, sitting in a glow of light. So gorgeous. Her heart hurt, as it seemed to be doing a lot lately, just looking at him.

He opened his left arm wide. “Come to me.”

It was the easiest, most natural thing in the world to fall into that arm and let him pull her against his big warm body. They were still in the same bed, in the toile bedroom, beneath a sheet and cuddled together. “Jean-Pierre, would you tell me something?”

“Anything, chérie?”

“What happened all those years ago that such a good kind man, such a noble man didn’t marry again? I’ve met a lot of fine women since I’ve been here on Second Earth, several who would have made you a good wife, a warrior’s wife. For you to have remained unattached all these decades, I know something went wrong for you.”

“It was a long time ago.” His arm was no longer lax around her. The muscles rippled as he flexed and tried to relax only to flex again.

She had touched a nerve, but that was not always a bad thing. “Truth, Jean-Pierre, remember? You wanted me to speak the truth.”

“La vérité,” he murmured.

“Yes, the truth.”

* * *

Jean-Pierre tried to still the rising beat of his heart. He tried to take a deep breath, but could not. Fiona had awakened from a dream, perhaps even a nightmare, and now wished him to speak of the unspeakable, the unforgivable. To his surprise, the words flowed from him.

“She betrayed me, my wife. I … loved her so very much.” Fiona lay very still beside him, only her fingers moving as she plucked at the sheet over his chest.

“What was her name?”

“Isabelle. Very pretty. She was beautiful in a flirtatious way, a pointed chin and such dancing eyes that crinkled almost shut when she laughed. She laughed a lot. She could flirt with her fan better than any woman I knew. And such flirting, so long ago, was an art.”

“She was enchanting.”

A faint chuckle left his throat. “Oui, she was enchanting. But not with me. I mean I was enchanted but she always spoke the truth to me. Hard words to hear at times. I believe she corrected a great many of my flaws in the years we were married. I was lazy and she pushed me. I grew more disciplined. I was sometimes thoughtless in my speech, in my words—”

At that, Fiona tilted her head up to look at him. “I would find that very hard to believe. You are always so careful around me and with me. I think it one of your finest qualities.”

He chuckled again, but gave her a squeeze. “You would have to thank Isabelle for that. I sometimes said the most foolish things, hurtful words. No, she made of me a better man. I am convinced of that.”

He didn’t want to say more, so he remained silent.

“Were you together long?”

“Eleven years. We married very young by today’s standards.”

Again she twisted to look up at him. “How old were you?”

“I was nineteen and terribly in love.”

“How old was she?”

“Seventeen.”

“Did you have any children?”

“Our second greatest failure that we did not.”

She went back to plucking at the sheet. He could feel the question coming but he wished with all his heart she would not ask it. But perhaps it was necessary. She would need to understand him better. So he waited.

“What was your greatest failure, Jean-Pierre?”

He sighed before he could speak. “That for some reason our love was not strong enough to prevail against the winds of the revolution.” He took a deep breath and spoke the terrible words, “She betrayed me to the devil Robespierre. She signed documents indicating that I had acted against the will of the people. She sent me to the guillotine.”

When she remained silent, but still plucking, as though her fingers reflected the workings of her mind, he said, “She was not herself the entire month before she did this thing. I would say she was hysterical. I believe now that she knew what she would do, and during that time she wrestled with her conscience. I will give her at least that much, that she seemed to suffer before she betrayed me. I often wondered if she heard rumors of one of the condemned disappearing before the blade could complete its work.”

The plucking fingers pulled harder. He caught her hand and stilled it. “Say what it is you do not want to say.”

This time she pulled back to recline her head on his arm so that she could look at him. He pulled back as well; otherwise they would be almost nose-to-nose.

“What if … what if she had a reason for what she did?”

“Do you think I have not thought of that?”

“Maybe she was protecting other members of her family? Maybe her only choice was her life or yours?”

“I would never make such a choice against her.”

She put a hand on his face. He saw her eyes well with tears. “I’ll tell you what I know. If Isabelle knew you as I know you then she could never have betrayed you without a profound reason. Something enormous must have been at stake. I’m convinced of it. Otherwise it makes no sense to me.”

“Of course you would speak with such grace. Of course. But I will never know. How can I? She did not ascend.”

“Do you know for certain?”

“I have visited her grave in a small church in Sussex, in the south of Britain. She emigrated the same night that I went to my death.” He sounded bitter. He supposed that he was.

“How did you know she’d done even that much? Did you follow her?”

“Oui. That first week. I kept at a distance. I watched her board the small ship to cross the channel. That was all I needed to see.”

“How did you know she died? Or when or even where she lived?”

“She kept her married name, my name, Isabelle Robillard. A few decades ago I went through the death certificates in Britain and found her in a place called Rottingdean in the south of England.”

“Then she didn’t remarry?”

“No, she lived less than a year.” He could hardly bear to think of it, that she had sent him to his death and he had lived all these decades, yet she had died but a few months later in a land not her own. He wanted to think of it as a form of justice. Instead, it was only pathetic. And very sad.

He felt Fiona’s finger on the side of his face. It was wet.

Fuck. He had not meant to weep but he so rarely spoke of her, of his beautiful vivacious wife, whom he had loved with all of his heart, so passionately. She was his first love and should have been his last in every good sense.

Fiona inched toward him and kissed his cheek all the way up to the corner of his eye. He turned into her and kissed her on the mouth, hard.

She opened for him, a flower blossoming so that he could penetrate her mouth. The faint whimpers, and that she spoke his name so sweetly within his mind, a very soft Jean-Pierre, Jean-Pierre, gave him permission to do what was in his heart to do.

He pushed her onto her back and took her, perhaps not as gently as he should have, but she clung to him, and shed her beautiful croissant scent, and cried into his hair, and dug her nails into the flesh of his ass.

What he knew for certain, as he spent himself inside her yet again, was that his heart reached for her much too often. He needed to be more careful, to restrain himself, but with her lovely cries and her sweet kisses and the tenderness in her eyes when she held his face as he came, mon Dieu, what was he supposed to do?

The use of the word obsidian, in the mythical triad known as obsidian flame, has a long history. Ultimately, the word became synonymous with truth, as in cutting to the truth, or bearing the weight of truth. The concept in my opinion is more poetic than scientific.

—Treatise on Ascension, by Philippe Reynard

Chapter 17

The following morning, Fiona sat across from Seriffe, in his office. He leaned forward in his chair, elbows on the desk, head in his hands. In the five months she had been on Second Earth, for most of that time living in his home, she had never seen him this distraught, this sad.

“I knew Greg,” he said. “Carolyn is best friends with his wife and now that poor woman is left to raise her kids without their father. Shit. I brought him on board, you know. Maybe two decades ago. He was a good fighter, the best of men, honorable, hardworking. Jesus, I can’t believe he’s gone. He was fucking careful in the field.”

Jean-Pierre stood off to the side, his arms folded over his chest, sentinel-like. Fiona glanced up at him. His gaze was solemn, his nostrils flaring. His jaw shifted a couple of times, back and forth.

She turned her attention back to Seriffe. She had no words for him. What could be said? The funeral would be held in a couple of days, a weekly ritual now. Too many Militia Warrior deaths. The Grand Canyon battle, just a few months ago, had taken the lives of over a thousand Militia Warriors, many of them based in Phoenix. But a good number of them had been flown in from around the world.