It was the Primale, and he was dressed the way he’d been that night he’d met her at the top of the stairs and looked at her as if he hadn’t seen her for a week. But he wasn’t in the Brotherhood’s mansion. He was racing down a corridor that was marked with streaks of blood and black heel prints. Bodies were crumpled on the floor on either side, the remains of vampires who had been living just moments before.

She watched as the Primale gathered a small group of terrified males and females and put them into a supply closet. She saw his face as he locked them in, saw the dread and the sadness and the anger in his features.

He’d scrambled to save them, to find a way to safety, to take care of them.

When the vision dimmed, she palmed the bowl once more. Now that she had seen what had transpired, she could call it up again, and she watched his actions once more. Then again.

It was as the movie had been back on the far side, only this was real; this was past that had transpired, not a constructed fictional present.

And then there were other things she saw, scenes tied to the Primale and the Brotherhood and the race. Oh, the horror of the killings, of those dead bodies in luxurious houses…the corpses too numerous for her to comprehend. One by one, she saw the faces of those who had been killed by the lessers. Then she saw the Brothers out fighting, their numbers so small that John and Blay and Qhuinn were being forced too early into the war.

If this continued, she thought, the lessers would win…

She frowned and bent down closer to the bowl.

On the surface of the water, she saw a blond lesser, which was not unusual… but it had fangs.

There was a knock, and as she jumped from being startled, the image disappeared.

A muffled voice came from the other side of the temple door. “My sister?”

It was Selena, the previous sequestered scribe.

“Greetings,” Cormia called out.

“Your meal, my sister,” the Chosen said. There was a scraping sound as a tray was slid through a trapdoor. “May it please you.”

“Thank you.”

“Have you any inquiries of me?”

“No. Thank you.”

“I shall come back for the tray.” The excitement in the Chosen’s voice lifted it nearly an octave. “After his arrival.”

Cormia inclined her head, then remembered that her sister couldn’t see her. “As you wish.”

The Chosen left, no doubt to prepare herself for the Primale.

Cormia leaned back over the desk and looked at the bowl, instead of into it. Such a fragile thing, so thin, except at its base, where it was heavy and solid. The lip of the crystal was sharp as a knife.

She wasn’t sure how long she stayed like that. But eventually she shook herself out of her numb trance and forced her palms back onto the bowl.

When the Primale came to the surface again, she wasn’t surprised-

She was horrified.

He lay sprawled out on a marble floor, unconscious by a toilet. Just as she was about to leap up to do only the Virgin knew what, the image changed. He was in a bed, a pale lavender bed.

Turning his head, he looked straight out of the water at her and said, “Cormia?”

Oh, dearest Virgin Scribe, the sound made her want to weep.

“Cormia?”

She shot to her feet. The Primale was standing in the temple’s doorway, dressed in whites, the medallion of his station around his neck.

“Verily…” She could go no further. She wanted to rush forward and put her arms around him and hold on. She’d seen him dead. She’d seen him…

“Why are you here?” he asked, looking around the barren room. “All by yourself.”

“I’m sequestered.” She cleared her throat. “As I said I would be.”

“So I’m not supposed to be here?”

“You’re the Primale. You can be anywhere.”

As he walked around the room, she had so many questions, none of which she had any right to ask.

He looked over at her. “No one else is allowed in here?”

“Not unless one of my sisters joins me as a sequestered scribe. Although the Directrix may come in if she is granted leave by me.”

“Why is the sequestering necessary?”

“In addition to recording the races’s general history, we… I see the things the Scribe Virgin wishes to keep… private.” As the Primale’s yellow eyes narrowed, she knew what he was thinking. “Yes, I’ve seen what you did. In that bathroom.”

The curse he let out echoed up to the white ceiling.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yeah. I’m fine.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Are you going to be okay here? All by yourself?”

“I’ll be fine.”

He stared at her. Long and hard. The sorrow was in his face, in its deep grooves of pain and regret.

“You didn’t hurt me,” she said. “When we were together, you didn’t hurt me. I know you think you did, but you didn’t.”

“I wish… things were different.”

Cormia laughed sadly, and on a whim murmured, “You’re the Primale. Change them.”

“Your grace?” the Directrix appeared in the open doorway, looking confused. “Whatever are you doing here?”

“Seeing Cormia.”

“Oh, but…” Amalya seemed to shake herself, as if remembering that the Primale could go wherever he chose and see whomever he wished, as sequestered was a term that restricted all but him. “But of course, your grace. Ah… the Chosen Layla is prepared for you and in your temple?”

Cormia looked down at the bowl in front of her. As Chosen had very short fertility cycles here on this side, it was very likely Layla was either fertile or about to become fertile. No doubt there would be words of the pregnancy to record very soon.

“Time for you to go,” she said, glancing up at the Primale.

His eyes positively bored into hers. “Cormia-”

“Your grace?” the Directrix cut in.

In a hard voice, he said over his shoulder, “I’ll be there when I’m good and damned ready.”

“Oh, please forgive me, your grace, I didn’t mean to-”

“That’s all right,” he said wearily. “Just tell her… I’ll be there.”

The Directrix quickly ducked out, and the door shut.

The Primale’s eyes refocused on Cormia, locking in. And then he came across the room with a grave expression on his face.

As he sank down on his knees in front of her, she was shocked. “Your grace, you shouldn’t-”

“Phury. You call me Phury. Never ‘your grace’ or ‘Primale. ’ Starting now, I don’t want to hear anything but my real name from you.”

“But-”

“No buts.”

Cormia shook her head. “All right, except you shouldn’t be on your knees. Ever.”

“In front of you, I should only be on my knees.” He put his hands lightly on her arms. “In front of you… I always should be bowed.” He looked over her face and her hair. “Listen, Cormia, I need you to know something.”

As she looked down at him, his eyes were the most amazing thing she’d ever seen, hypnotic, the color of citrines in firelight. “Yes?”

“I love you.”

Her heart clenched. “What?”

“I love you.” He shook his head and eased back so he was sitting cross-legged. “Oh, Christ… I’ve made such a mess out of everything. But I love you. I wanted you to know it because… well, shit, because it matters, and because it means I can’t be with the other Chosen. I can’t be with them, Cormia. It’s you or it’s nobody.”

Her heart sang. For a split second, her heart was flying in her chest, soaring on gusts of joy. This was what she had wanted, this pledge, this reality-

Her brilliant happiness dimmed as quickly as it flared.

She thought of the images of the fallen, of the tortured, of the cruelly killed. And the fact that there were now how many fighting Brothers left? Four. Just four.

Centuries ago their numbers had been in the twenties and thirties.

Cormia glanced at the bowl in front of her and then at the quill she’d used. There was a very real possibility that at some point in the not-too-distant future there would be no more history to write.