Page 149 of Tin God

His hand lifted; then he clenched his fingers into a fist. “Your other mate.”

“Who died.” She sat back on her heels and looked up. “Except he didn’t. His amnis lives in me. In Beatrice, his daughter. Even in Giovanni, because he is mated to Beatrice.”

“In me.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Our bodies and souls containworlds, my Benjamin. Nothing ever truly dies. We are made of every life that came before us.” She smiled. “Do you realize that in the past five hundred years, over thirtythousandpeople had to meet, mate, and keep each other alive for you to even exist?” She put her hand on his and squeezed. “Did you know that?”

Ben blinked. “What? No. That’s?—”

“We areworlds, Benjamin. Were I to hunt down every drop of Temur’s blood, I would be destroying worlds.” She took a slow breath and looked up to meet his eyes. “And you told me once that you didn’t want me to destroy the world.”

He put a hand on her cheek, stroked the skin there with his thumb. “See?” he whispered. “Only dead things don’t grow, and you’re the most alive person I know.”

“I’m not going to hunt them again,” Tenzin promised herself. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t protect what’s mine. If you are in danger, if Chloe or Arthur or Giovanni or Beatrice or Sadia are threatened…” She shook her head. “I will still kill those who need to be killed. And I will never apologize for it.”

He leaned forward and pressed his forehead to hers. “I would expect nothing less.”

Epilogue

Seward, Alaska

Brigid sat at the old man’s bedside, watching his eyes flicker behind his lids as he dreamed. She was wearing heavy sweatpants, an oversized T-shirt that smelled of her husband, and her singed head was covered in a black cap pulled over her ears.

A nurse walked into the room, checking something on a chart before she glanced at Brigid. “You the one who brought him in?”

She looked up from staring at Walter’s sleeping face. “No, that was a friend of mine.”

“He sleeps a lot.” The nurse looked up. “But he’s doing better. I think he had family visiting today.”

“Good.” Brigid managed to crack a smile when she thought about a baby somewhere in the south. A baby who would grow up knowing one of the toughest men she’d ever known. “That’s excellent news.”

“He might not wake for a while.” The nurse looked at her. This was a clinic that Oleg ran; the nurse knew what Brigid was. “Might not be until daylight.”

“Then I’ll come back tomorrow night.” She would come back as often as it took to speak to Walter herself. “Or the next.”

She had time.

The nurse glanced at the angry red wound on Brigid’s hand where Zasha’s sword had burned her palm. “You want me to take a look at that while you’re waiting?”

“It’s fine.” She closed her fingers around the smooth scar.

Carwyn had given her blood. That burn was as healed as it was going to heal for now. The rest was just a matter of time.

“You family too?” The nurse looked at her, clearly suspicious of the pale Irish vampire waiting at the old man’s bedside.

“Not family,” Brigid said. “In fact, I don’t really know him that well.”

“But the boss said it was okay for you to wait?”

“Yeah.” She looked back at Walter’s sleeping face. “I’m here to give my report.”

New York City

Tenzin staredat the wreckage of their penthouse. Though the majority of the rubble had already been cleaned up and their remaining belongings had been packed away in boxes in storage, it still felt like the aftermath of a battle.

She touched the edge of the scars that crawled up her neck, sliding the tips of her fingers over the smooth, swirling red marks that were evidence of the fire on Zasha’s island.

Their insurance was rebuilding the top two floors of the building, including the roof garden that had been destroyed. Walls were already up, though they were bare, marked with pencil, and plaster dust was everywhere.

---