Page 78 of I Will Always Find You
“My love, this was never your fault,” Coriolanus said softly with unwavering conviction. “Coeus started all of this. From the very beginning, you were as much his victim as any of us.”
Olympius’ haughtiness and stony veneer, the armour he had worn for ages, both to assert his power and to shield himself from any emotional pain, cracked. And though he believed wholeheartedly that shame and guilt were nonsensical emotions for an immortal to wield, he did allow himself the right to be humbled.
With his voice quiet and stripped of pretense, he asked the Romani witch if he could ever find it within himself to forgive him.
Cassian walked over to the despondent immortal and rested a steady, reassuring hand on his shoulder.
“There’s nothing to forgive, Olympius. You didn’t commit these horrors. Whatever passed between you and your Maker, it doesn’t excuse what he became. He chose evil willingly, with every fibre of his immortal being. The blame is his alone. And no, Gian, I won’t invade your mind, nor do I have any need of your blood. I believe you. Both of you.”
Olympius gave a half-smile and nodded in thanks. Then he excused himself and went into the bedroom he shared with his eternal love, closing the door. His intention was to provide Coriolanus and Cassian with privacy to talk about their past.
“He can still totally hear us in there, can’t he?” Cassian smirked.
“Yes, but it’s a sweet gesture. He needs time to himself to process all this, anyway. Now, get over here!”
Coriolanus pulled his old friend into a great big bear hug.
“Cripes, Gian!” Cassian gasped. Since Aeneas—and nearly all his reincarnated forms—had been large and muscled, and Cassian was smaller, much like the difference between the two immortals, he had long ago learned how to adjust his body to fit a brawny man’s embrace. Still, Aeneas never possessed superhuman strength. Even carefully controlled, it was still enough to nearly snatch his breath.
“Sorry, I got carried away. I’m just so happy to see you. Come on, let’s sit and you can tell me how the hell you’re here in this centuryandthose other centuries. And Rufus! Tell me, is your husband my Rufus? Why didn’t he recognize me?”
“Whoa, whoa, Gian, one thing at a time. Is it okay if I call you Gian? I findCoriolanusa bit cumbersome to pronounce. And that’s coming from someone who speaks ancient Sumerian. To me, you’ll always be Gian.”
Coriolanus laughed and tussled Cassian’s hair. “You can call me whatever the hell you want. I’ve been calling myself Corey for a while now, but Olympius hates it. He’ll only call me Coriolanus. Honestly, a name’s a name to me, though I earned the name Coriolanus, so that’s the one I typically choose for myself, with some abbreviated versions now and then. I tried to see if Olympius might like being called “Ollie,” something more modern, and he blew a gasket. He can be very, well—”
“Difficult?” Cassian finished for him with a chuckle.
“Not exactly, though I get why you’d think that. Olympius has always been very inflexible. He’s brutally intelligent, almost too cerebral for his own good. I’m working on loosening him up a bit. Now, about Aric. Is he my son, my Rufus?”
Cassian began his tale, starting at the beginning, in Pompeii, where he met the love of his life, Aeneas. He explained to theimmortal the deal he had made with Hecate, which would save him from the cruelty of the Wheel of Destiny’s determination to separate him from Aeneas for all eternity. He told about the witch-goddess placing him in the Karmic Cycle of rebirth so that he could eternally match Aeneas’ destiny of continuous reincarnation as directed by the Wheel.
“That’s a clever way to beat one’s fate, my friend. I don’t possess the power to do something like that, and I doubt even Olympius could. Hecate is powerful, indeed.”
Cassian explained to his old friend that Rufus and Aric looked so much alike because the witch-goddess had ensured that both he and Aeneas would be reborn in forms closely resembling their originals, making it easier for him to find Aeneas, lifetime after lifetime.
“In fact, while Rufus was close to Aeneas’ appearance, Aric is a dead ringer. Even this body I’m currently in is spot on to my original. Meeting you again and learning the truth about everything—this current life has offered me so much. It’s kinda weird. Notweirdweird, but like,excitingweird, ya know?”
“So what you’re telling me is that Rufus was your Aeneas reborn, as Aric is?”
“Yes, every reincarnation has Aeneas’ soul. Their unique personalities have fluctuations of individuality, based on environment, but the core of who they are is always Aeneas.”
Cassian had no desire to speak of Alejandro, the one corruption to his beloved’s cycle; that was his burden alone to bear.
“So was Rufus his own man? Like a branch on the tree that is Aeneas? I’m not sure I fully understand.”
“Yes—and no,” Cassian stated hesitantly. “I’ll explain the best I can based on my experiences with Aeneas’ reincarnations. Each man possesses autonomy and is formed by their own choices and the events in their life. The goodness that lives at the coreof Aeneas—his compassion, empathy, and desire to help others—exists within every one of them.
“As I said, there’s only one soul, crafted from the Well of Creation, and it belongs to Aeneas. That soul is the constant, the one unchanging element. It’s the thread that binds all his incarnations. In each life, these men are my beloved. They aren’t distinct in the way you and I are, because none of them possesses their own unique soul. Still, that doesn’t render them any less real. They don’t pass into an afterlife of their own, for they aren’t separate from Aeneas; they reside within him. All are expressions of his essence, components of his heart and mind.
“In that sense, they are, as you said, branches of a single great tree: unique in form, yet rooted at the same source. Separate, but forever connected. That’s the best I can do to explain it.”
Cassian went on to describe how his karmic rebirth worked, how he eventually regained all his memories, and the endless searches that followed.
“So those young men you were up to that point of remembrance, they just blip out of existence? That seems unfair, even cruel, though I’m not judging you, Cassian. Please don’t think that. I get that you have no power to change it.”
Cassian admitted that he was conflicted about that part of his rebirth cycle. He felt bad for the families he had to leave behind, though at that point, they were basically strangers to him. With the young men, however, Cassian felt those individuals were entirely false, a mask put over his submerged persona, so they were never truly alive, never real or fully formed. Creations of the Karmic Cycle based on parts of his own personality.
“They’re all a cage I’m placed in,” Cassian stated emphatically, “until I’m strong enough to break free.”
