Born of Ashes (Guardians of Ascension #4)(16)
Author: Caris Roane

He returned to the sofa, holding each boy on a knee. He ignored Julianna who now scowled. She didn’t like his children, but he didn’t care.

“Tell me what you did today?”

Kendrew, recently turned five, talked about the park, having a pastry and café au lait. Sloane, not quite three, looked at him and asked. “When is Mama coming home?”

He kissed Sloane on the cheek. “She had an accident, remember? A car hit her and took her life. She can’t come back to us, ever.”

“Why not?”

Kendrew became impatient and flicked his younger sibling on the cheek. “Because she’s dead, stupid. Dead people don’t come back. Ever.”

Sloane started to cry. Caz gathered him up close, holding him over his shoulder, the way Warrior Kerrick had so lovingly held his daughter, Helena.

Kendrew didn’t cry. He just stared off into space and sucked on his lower lip.

“Remember, mes enfants, life is very difficult and sometimes bad things happen to wonderful people. But your papa will always make certain that you are well loved. Do you understand?”

Sloane nodded against his shoulder.

“Kendrew?” The five-year-old looked up at him, his eyes wet, his lips pressed together hard. He nodded as well.

Caz drew the older boy up over his empty shoulder and hugged them both.

A sliver of fear, a prescience, a knowing, passed through him, that the bargain he had made with Greaves in haste and out of sheer boredom would cost him something very precious in the coming months.

He took deep breaths and held his boys harder still. Something had happened in Arizona that he still didn’t quite understand. How did the woman Fiona, breh to Warrior Jean-Pierre and former blood slave, know to give the warriors a warning that death vampires were in the forest?

It would appear he had a mystery to solve, and at that he smiled. Mysteries were a good thing to hedonistic, easily bored Fourth ascenders. As for the sense of approaching doom, he mentally set it on fire until it turned to ashes. A Fourth ascender could always direct his path away from danger.

He needed to consult with Rith, whom Greaves kept very close these days in his Geneva penthouse. At this point, Rith was more a lapdog than a useful tool in the war, but he had a well-developed Third ability to ride the future streams and had predicted a slaughter at the Convent, something Casimir hadn’t taken seriously since it was only one of several outcomes that had shown up in the future streams.

Yet the slaughter had happened, which was why Caz needed to figure out what had intruded to disrupt his moment of glory.

For just a moment, he pondered Fiona Gaines, the woman Warrior Jean-Pierre obsessed over in the growing tradition of the breh-hedden. Caz knew she had emerging powers.

But what kind of powers? How had she known to warn the warriors about the attack? He had read her powers previously, more than once. She had tremendous telepathic ability. However, beyond that, she was truly a disappointment. She could barely fold from place to place. She couldn’t throw a hand-blast. She had no preternatural speed. In some ways, her connection to the Warriors of the Blood was a complete mystery.

And yet, with all that lack of power, she had saved them all.

When Sloane’s crying ceased and when the boys grew relaxed against his shoulders, he lowered them to their feet and, taking each hand, walked them back to their bedroom, where their au pair stayed. She was a Second ascender, quite a gifted horticulturalist, great with children, and lovely to behold.

Greaves had recommended her when his beloved wife died. Of course, he’d abducted her and made a little mischief with the memories of those closest to her. He kept her partially enthralled all the time so that she would remain content with her surroundings. The effort required some energy because she was very powerful.

But enthrallment couldn’t answer for her character. A mean person enthralled was still very mean. Greaves had been right. The woman was, therefore, kind, loving, firm when necessary and never vicious, the perfect babysitter.

As he watched her draw Sloane onto her lap and stroke his unruly blond hair, he marveled at the airy waves of her long curly red hair. If not for the color, she would have looked positively angelic.

“Tazianne, I’ll be leaving for a couple of hours. Make sure the boys have their baths then put them to bed.”

“Very good, monsieur.”

He closed the door and headed out to hunt. At some point, he felt certain he’d solve the mystery of Fiona’s warning, but for now he turned his attention to the pleasures before him.

Time to hunt.

Some choices just suck.

—Collected Proverbs, Beatrice of Fourth

Translation into the modern vernacular

Chapter 4

At eleven thirty in the morning, Thorne held his tumbler of icy Ketel One in his hand and tried to keep the damn thing from shaking. He wasn’t sure if it was post-battle adrenaline or the fact that Fiona had communicated with Marguerite. He took a sip and let the fire burn down his throat. He drew in a deep breath.

Hands still shaking.

He leaned his hips against the pool table, which had somehow miraculously escaped damage in the last few months since it had been replaced. Must have been a record, but then with Marcus out of the picture but two nights a week, Medichi traveling the globe, and Kerrick anxious to get home to his wife and baby after battling till dawn, there was a helluva lot less testosterone being thrown around these days.

He sipped again, savored another burning slide, and finally his fingers were a little less shaky.

He’d rarely taken his eyes off Fiona from the time she touched down at the Cave. He was trying to figure out how to separate her from Jean-Pierre so he could talk to her for a couple of minutes, find out exactly what she knew about Marguerite.

The whole situation was eating him alive.

Damn but Fiona was another beauty, all right. She had dark wavy hair, though not quite as dark as Parisa’s or Marguerite’s for that matter, more reddish gold. Fiona’s eyes were blue, but much lighter than Alison’s, and on the silver side. If she hadn’t been a loving kind of woman, her eyes could have been called icy. But with a face that always measured everyone else with expressions of concern, ice was the last word he’d ever use to describe Fiona Gaines.

She was also tall, like the three other women who’d become brehs to their warriors. Was height some sort of indication the women were meant for the breh-hedden? None of the Warriors of the Blood was shorter than six-five. Jean-Pierre was no exception. So, Fiona, at close to six feet, was a match for him.

Marguerite, on the other hand, was a full foot shorter than Thorne, only five-five, so it looked like she couldn’t be his breh if height were a requirement. Of course, her lack of height hadn’t made one damn bit of difference in bed. He’d taken her every which way from Sunday over the decades. He took a sip of Ketel to keep from smiling. Marguerite was an experimental sort of woman, always game for the most outrageous gymnastics.