The Wandering Tale of Grigori Verlaf

Prologue: Regrets and Wishes

Prologue: Regrets and Wishes

"What will you do?" she asks, her damnably green eyes trained on me with that fierce intensity her mother used to have. I look at her and I nearly wince at the way her bones jut out unnaturally, at the dark circles under her eyes and the way every vein is visible through her too-pale skin.

I wonder how anyone could look at her and not know that she's dying.

"I'll go wherever I'm meant to go, sweetheart, and raise hell while I'm there," I say, shooting her a grin to hide the pain it brings me to see her, once so strong, brought so low.

She laughs softly to herself, and she pulls herself up onto her toes, clinging tightly to my shoulder all the while, and she kisses my cheek, her lips surprisingly soft against my skin.

"You've been like a father to me," she says, and she can't know—can't begin to know—the way the words rip at my heart. "And Rinny will want to see her Uncle Grigori, I know."

I force a small smile. "I'll be sure to drop by between journeys," I say.

At that, she hugs me, and I can feel every brittle bone in her body as I gently return the embrace until she pulls away.

I study her familiarly strange face and wonder how she can look so like Erinia and yet be different. The eyes are different, bright green instead of passive violet. And the expression contains a fierceness, a pride, a love that I never saw on Erinia's face.

My eyes trace over the scar that stretches down her jawline on the left side, and I feel suddenly guilty. That is another difference—one that I caused.

"I'm sorry for the scar," I say, and I truly mean it.

She smiles at me, and the scar nearly disappears as her face rearranges itself to contain the new expression. "Don't be," she says. "It makes me look rather dangerous."

I can't help but laugh, and neither can she. But all too soon, the laughter dies and the two of us are left standing in the street below her rooms with nothing left to say.

She moves away first, and I know that she is eager to be gone—to be back to her Rinny and the little peace she can grasp for now. I don't begrudge her eagerness.

I'd be just as eager if I had something to return home to.

I watch every laborious step she takes up the stairs, and every one of them is a knife to my chest. She is so fragile now, so weak, so tiny, it seems as though she would blow away with the slightest breeze.

It's so easy to tell that she's fading from the realm of mortals and moving toward the realm beyond.

But it's so hard to believe that she's yet to see her twentieth year.

I watch her until she is gone, until I can protect her from herself no more, before I turn and walk away, every step reluctant.

I feel my shoulders slump and for once, I don't care. I know I am getting old. I know that one day, it will be my time to pass from this world, just as one day all too soon, it will be hers.

But I wish, suddenly, fiercely, that Starine could take me in her place.

I do not know how it has come to this point—not entirely. It has been a long time building, leading to this moment where I would sacrifice my life for the child of the man I have hated for so long.

But she and I are bound for as long as either of us has breath in our lungs and feet on the ground, and there is no way to take it back.

I was started on this path long before she was born, and I've been traveling it every day since.

I can still remember the day it began.