The curve of her lips just before she smiled.

“I love you, Jacopo.”

He met Livia’s angry glare, and he could see the moment she truly began to panic.

“Stop!” she cried, giving up the water and snatching a blade from one of her guards. “Go no farther or my men will kill you!”

Giovanni came to a halt, but her guards no longer tried to approach him. The flames churned out, swirling and pulsing along the ground, reaching up the steps and curling around the legs of each vampire who screamed and fell away.

Livia’s eyes narrowed. “If you do this, you will kill everyone in this room. Including your precious wife and friends.”

Just then, the sound of the wind grew still. The room was utterly silent, and Giovanni knew that Beatrice had pulled the water over them. They were protected.

His mouth turned up at the corner, and Livia’s eyes widened in terror as she loosed a feral scream. Giovanni whispered, “Enough.”

Then he lifted his burning arms and released the fire.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Castello Furio, Rome

November 2012

Beatrice had no idea how long she screamed, or how long the fire raged around them. The barrier of water she had erected held against the flames, just like he knew it would. The angry, red glow lit up the room and pressed against them as they huddled in their watery cocoon.

Was it minutes? Hours? Suddenly, the room blacked out.

She rose from her knees, lifted her arms, and brought a fall of water. It fell over and around them, rushing along the floors, pulling black ash from the room as the river returned to its course. Beatrice walked forward and surveyed the room that had been burnt beyond recognition. Slowly the river receded and floating just along the edge of the room was the pale form of her mate.

“Gio!”

She screamed and pulled the water back before he could be swept away. The river answered her and brought his body to her hands. She clutched his naked form; it was cold and limp in her arms. There was a rush of energy, then Tenzin and Carwyn stood at her side.

“God in Heaven,” Carwyn breathed out.

“He’s alive,” Tenzin said. “How could he be alive?”

“No,” Beatrice shook her head and pressed her hands to his temples. Every hair on Giovanni’s body had burned away. His skin was smooth and unmarred, but he was cold. Colder than she had ever felt. “I can’t feel him. I can’t feel his mind. What’s wrong? I can’t feel him!” Her voice rose in hysteria.

“Shhh,” Tenzin soothed her. “He must be alive. He is here. He is unmarked. He must be—”

“I can’t feel him!” she screamed again, clutching him to her chest. She bit her wrist and held it to his lifeless lips. “Please. Please, Gio, please.”

A drop of red blood fell into his mouth, but he did not move to swallow it. She pressed on his throat, willing him to taste her blood. His blood. The blood that ran between them. But there was nothing.

Beatrice rocked him in her arms as the surviving vampires crowded around them. She felt Carwyn’s hand on her shoulder and flinched.

“Darling girl—”

“Get away! All of you!” She pulled Giovanni’s body toward the scorched stone steps and held him close, still rocking him back and forth and whispering in his ear.

“Come back to me, Jacopo,” she said. “Remember, you said you would always find me. I’m here, love. Come back to me. I need you to find me now.”

She could feel the eyes of the room on her. She could see the worried stares of her friends, but she ignored them and placed a hand over his heart. “They don’t understand. They don’t know. I can feel your blood in me. It hasn’t cried out, so I know you’re still there. You just need to come back to me. They don’t know. But you do. Ubi amo; ibi patria. Hundreds of years. Thousands of miles.” She choked back her tears. “Pain. Loss. It’s so clear to me now. You are my home. You just need to come back to me, Jacopo.”

He didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t make a single movement. He lay still and cold and lifeless in her arms. But a faint hum of energy sparked under Beatrice’s hands, and Giovanni’s heart gave a single thump.

“Anything yet?”

“She’s stayed with him all day, but no.”

Beatrice could hear the whispers outside her room, but she ignored them.

“No movement at all?”

“She says she can feel his mind, and his amnis is a little stronger, but he hasn’t moved or opened his eyes.”

The sun rose in the sky, she could feel the pull of the moon, but Beatrice lay still and silent next to her husband, willing him to return to her. Willing him to heal from whatever black void had taken over his mind.

“Blood?”

“She’s tried, but it just lays on his lips. She keeps trying to force it down his throat, but nothing.”

Beatrice and Giovanni lay in their bedroom of the house in Rome as the city continued its maddening march.

A day.

A week.

Emil Conti was slowly pulling the immortals of Rome back from the madness of Livia’s rule. The immediate and vocal support of Terrance Ramsay in London, Jean Desmarais in Marseilles, Oleg in Russia, and many other prominent immortal courts helped to ease the transition. Even more unexpected was the public support of the fabled Elders of Penglai Island.

“Any change?”

“No, and she told us to stop asking.”

Lorenzo had disappeared again. This time, no one claimed to support him. Whatever connections he might have held, whatever sneaking influence he’d clung to, had been severed by the knowledge that the devious vampire had willingly supported Livia’s quest for an elixir that could render even an ancient immortal helpless.