He remained silent and it wasn’t until he spoke again that she understood he did this to consider his options.
Then he declared the one he’d chosen. “This matters not.”
It was a surprising, dictatorial choice but Valentine couldn’t help but think he was right, it didn’t matter. With her eyes beholding the specimen of man before her, Valentine knew a woman could love a man in her world and be taken from him and offered to this man and she’d eventually forget her other man existed. She knew this even though she knew very little about Apollo Ulfr. What she did know was the depth of his capacity for love and her experience was only three men had its equal and they were all of this parallel world and they were all currently residing in this castle.
Unfortunately for him, the one woman he wanted, it was Valentine’s considered opinion, was the one woman in both their worlds he had no hope of winning.
“It does,” Valentine told him cautiously.
“It does not,” he returned immediately.
“Ulfr –” she started.
“Bring her to me,” he ordered.
“Ulfr, it’s my understanding you are at the cusp of war,” she reminded him.
“This is my concern, not yours.”
Valentine took in a delicate breath.
Then she told him what he needed to know.
“Ulfr, Ilsa of my world is married –”
He cut her off, “You have already told me that and –”
She interrupted him in turn, “To you.”
Ulfr’s body again grew tight and she heard him pull in a sharp breath.
Then he whispered, “To me?”
“To the you of my world,” Valentine explained.
Ulfr made no response.
Valentine continued, “This is not unusual. In fact, it’s highly usual.”
Ulfr’s eyes moved to study the sea but she knew he didn’t see it.
Then they came back to her. “This also matters not.”
Love.
Goddess, but this man could love.
Blinded by it.
“Ulfr –”
“It matters not,” he repeated.
“Ulfr,” Valentine leaned in, “it does. And it does not because she is deeply in love with her husband as you are with your dead wife. It does because the you of my world is not a good man. He is a bad man. A very bad man. Foul. Selfish. Criminal. Cruel. And the reason I had trouble finding her was because she is on the run from him. She will not want you, Ulfr. She will not want anything to do with you. If you bring her here to spend time with you, she’ll –”
“Bring her to me,” he demanded again.
She took a step toward him and, uncharacteristically losing control in defense of a fellow female (or at all), she hissed, “You must allow me to explain. He, the other you, who looks just like you and sounds just like you has not been good to her and when I say that, Ulfr, I mean in every way a man cannot be good to a woman. She fears him and she hates him with an intensity it will be impossible for her to grow to –”
“Bring her to me.”
“Ulfr!” she snapped and he leaned in threateningly, so threateningly, even Valentine reared back.
She might be a witch, a powerful one, but he was a man, a large one and a powerful one and she was human, not immune to being hurt and he was a man who knew what he wanted and would do anything to get it.
“This is my concern, not yours,” he growled. “Bring… her… to me.”
Valentine held his jade eyes.
Then she leaned back.
Then she whispered, “So be it.”
Apollo Ulfr leaned back too, his body relaxed and he stated, “Tomorrow. I will tell you the time and the place.”
Valentine nodded.
Ulfr did not nod back. He turned on his boot and walked away.
It was a good show and, even after that scene, Valentine enjoyed it.
Then, when she lost sight of him, she sighed delicately and turned back to the sea. Moving to the balustrade, she rested her hands on it and felt rather than saw the other presence who had been hiding in the shadows move out of them and come to her side.
“He will not succeed,” Valentine informed the sea.
“Love is powerful,” Lavinia of Lunwyn whispered in return.
“Indeed, love is everything but hate is the other side to that coin and it holds equal power.”
“Mm,” Lavinia murmured then asked softly, “But the distance around that coin is not far, is it, Valentine?”
This was true. The coin of love and hate flipped and it did so regularly.
Still.
Valentine stared at the sea and, again uncharacteristically, she felt unease therefore she shared quietly, “Ilsa is broken.”
“As is our Apollo,” Lavinia replied and that was the truth.
“But he does not love the Ilsa of my world. He loves a dead Ilsa,” Valentine reminded her friend.
Valentine knew Lavinia turned her head to look at her when she spoke again. “Three times, Valentine, three, love has spanned universes. You’ve seen it happen once and you know of the other two times. He loves a dead woman, he mourns her, unabated. But that does not mean he cannot find love again, a different love with a different woman who is yet the same. He has known beauty but his full story is untold. And she has not known beauty. Who is to say that he cannot guide her to beauty? A man such as him is capable of many feats, even those that seem impossible.” She paused and whispered, “Love has its own magic, Valentine, you know that too.”
Valentine looked to the other witch. “You don’t know how bad it is. I don’t see good things. He pines for a dead woman. The Ilsa of my world will not thank him for tearing her from her world, no matter that that world holds nothing but terror and flight, and forcing her to live with a man who physically is, even though he is not, a man she fears and detests all the while he wants nothing but his dead wife back, not her. She is not the Ilsa he loves and that is all he will see, until he comes to understand she is not the woman he so desperately wants returned and then what? Disappointment, if she is lucky. Anger, if she is not.”
“There are other possible outcomes,” Lavinia returned.
“Indeed, but there are also those two.”
Lavinia held her eyes.
Then she smiled and whispered, “We shall see.”
That was the truth too.
Valentine sighed and wondered why she cared.
She came to no conclusions; it was simply that, unfortunately, she did.
Then she looked back to the sea.
Then she said softly, “I have work to do.”
“You do, indeed,” Lavinia agreed. “As do I.”
She did. Troubled times lay ahead and if Valentine was not taking back trunks of jewels and gold, she would have nothing to do with it.
Valentine did not have a good feeling about what was to come for this universe.
Not at all.
And she’d been trapped in that universe during war and she had not enjoyed it even a little bit.
