High above the garden, a silent war ended. Dawn was chasing away the last of the routed stars. Their time was over. The sky belonged to the light, now. The sun was rising, erasing the impurities of the previous night with a gentle, cleansing fire. I felt its warmth melt deliciously over my skin, sinking slowly into my flesh and easing the stiffness there. I sighed and curled my toes in pleasure as I lay with Adrian White, the man who called himself Reaver, in our strange, verdant marriage bed. Morning had discovered us.

"Close your eyes and rest," he murmured hoarsely as he untied my numb, bloodless hands and lifted me off the damp grass. He pulled my tangled hair away from my face and let it fall behind his arm, shifting my body so that I could lean into his shoulder. I felt the pounding of his heart through the lean, powerful muscle that warmed my cheek, and I placed a comforting hand over his chest. He was shaking with the violence of his purged darkness. I saw him more clearly than ever, now, and I knew that his pain was strong enough to burn a world to bitter ashes. His self-control was all that stood between Albion and ruin, and this morning it was easier for him. I could feel it as easily as I could feel the strong, rapid pulse of his heart beneath my palm.

"You were very brave to give yourself to me like this. Never in my life have I taken anyone so fiercely. They are all so very fragile. Not like you. You are…" He let out a shiver of breath. "You are a force of nature, Rose. Mark my words: someday you will rule the world."

I opened my eyes and raised my head. He was serious, which only made the idea more ridiculous. "Not likely," I laughed. "I'm trying to restore my portion of it to its people."

"Only because you assume that people want to govern themselves. They're dreadful at it. I've seen it."

"We shall see. Time changes people," I said, smiling. But my smile twisted almost immediately, and I winced, holding my breath in order to keep from crying out in pain. My hands! My hands throbbed horribly as the blood returned to them. A warm trail of it tickled its way down my arm. My wedding dress was in shreds and stained pink in places, and dozens of reddish marks from Reaver's lips and teeth dotted my skin like flower petals in a field of snow. A thorn from the rose bush had broken off and embedded itself deeply beneath the skin of my wrist at some point while I had twisted and thrashed under the sweet onslaught of my husband's lust. He noticed. Lifting the injured wrist to his lips as he walked, he bent over it slightly and sucked the thorn out of the wound, holding it between his teeth before elegantly spitting it over his shoulder. My eyes followed his tongue as it ran slowly over his upper lip. When he noticed my attention, he grinned wickedly.

"Oh, Rose, you are an angelic creature. Even your blood is sweet."

I tried to find my voice. Even after so many hours together, I felt a rapacious hunger rising again within me. But was it mine, or his? The line between us had become blurred beneath the moon and I was still adjusting to the day. "How lucky for me," I said softly, "that there are no such things as vampires."

Reaver brought my wrist back to his mouth and drew deeply, moaning appreciatively, and I stared at him, horrorstruck and embarrassed. When I stiffened, his eyes sparkled with mischief, and he turned my wrist so that I could see it. The wound had healed already. He had been teasing me.

"Vampires may be a myth, but men of the night do exist, ma petite belle."

By the time we reached our bedroom, I knew: the hunger belonged to both of us.

My body was tired, but I needed more. As I watched the flex and release of the muscles beneath his smooth skin with each step, I felt the hunger rising like the head of a beast within our minds. I could almost touch it… My heart was flying. My eyelids grew heavy and I reached up through the fog of my desire to cast away the final traces of fear behind them. With my cheek resting against his chest, I spoke into his heart.

"More…" The word was a soft breath over his skin, but it carried with it all the power of my longing, and goosebumps rose in its wake.

"Thank the Light," he groaned, stumbling as he caught his boot in the threshold of the door. "Rose, why don't you stop time for a while? A long while. Do you have the strength?"

I pulled myself higher and brushed his lips with mine. "For you, always," I whispered. He leaned in for a kiss, but I smiled and covered his mouth with my hand. His brows drew together and he made a muffled sound of indignant protest. "Just a moment," I promised. "I have an idea."

I uncovered his mouth, and he smirked, lowering me to my feet. "Scheming again, are we?"

"It's possible. Do you feel lucky, Adrian?"

"Certainly not!" He threw his head back and laughed. "Ahhhh, I worked for this. Luck had nothing to do with it. You seem unusually fond of games, lately. What is this idea of yours?"

"I wager anything you should name now or in the future that I can finish you before you are able to give me even one climax," I said, forcing my face to remain smooth and unreadable, though I was dying of laughter on the inside. The word "climax" in its sexual incarnation had never left my lips in my entire upright, righteous life. I was shocked to discover just how much I was still afraid of the word, despite having become the bride of the world's greatest libertine. I wanted to sit down and laugh until I cried. But I had a part to play and a work of love to perform. Just as he had given to me beneath the moon—and it was giving, for though my body was hostage to his whims, his heart was in my hands—I knew that must give to him under the sun.

He stared at me, his head cocked to one side. "Surely my ears must be deceiving me. I thought I heard you suggest that my stamina, which is a bonafide legend, might be—no, that sentence does not even deserve the consideration it would take to finish it. Also," he purred, "we both know how sensitive you are. Pleasing you requires no effort, at all! It takes a bit of the fun out of it, to be perfectly honest."

"All the more reason for you to accept! I am offering you the chance to experience a challenge. We both know that I am a lady of my word."

"I cannot argue with that." He kicked off his boots. One hit the wall, but the other got stuck around his ankle. He pulled it off and sat down on the bed, reclining on one elbow. His eyes, so blue they were almost black, held mine possessively. He lay like a serpent waiting for its prey to approach with absolute patience. One of his hands rested near the top button of his grass-stained trousers. His forefinger slowly circled the button, attracting both light and my attention, as he doubtless meant to. He twisted it between his fingers and stroked it, his eyes locked on mine.

"Ah-tut-tut," I said, mimicking him perfectly and holding up a finger, "you may keep your pants on the entire time."

"This seems potentially…messy," he said dubiously.

"Oh? Surely your legendary stamina will protect you. They are beyond saving, anyway."

"I never thought I would hear that phrase cross your lips, Rose. You do not believe anything is beyond saving."

"Hush, now," I said. "Close your eyes. Lie back. No more talking."

"Mmmmm…" He smiled, satisfied, and rolled slowly onto his back. His lashes cast shadows over his sharp cheekbones. His chest moved evenly. I could feel his fatigue as well as I could feel my own, but desire overrode even that.

I pursed my lips and blew out a slow stream of breath, closing my eyes and letting myself feel the currents of the air around me. My hand brushed the ragged edges of my ruined gown and met bare skin over my abdomen. All things must grow, came the unbidden thought. To cease to grow is to die. Why, then, am I frozen? Garth will know.

I felt my heart begin to slow with my breath. A haze of golden mist settled over my skin like luminous down.

Slower…

I could hear Reaver's breathing deepen with mine and I opened my eyes. My shadow on the wall had ceased to move with the rise and fall of my chest. Time ceased to flow beyond the confines of my body.

Slower…

I lifted my arm and watched in fascination as it moved languidly into the air despite the quick command of my mind.

S...l...o...w...e...r...

Reaver's long breaths matched mine almost perfectly. His body was shrouded in the golden light that veiled my own. I watched as the light faded away, leaving the spell in place and my vision clear. I flexed my fingers. They bent so slowly that I saw them blur in the air for a moment, and I marveled at the myriad flashes of color as light bounced over the tiny facets of the texture of my skin. They shimmered like fiery diamonds in the shafts of dawn that streamed through the windows. I saw dust motes frozen in midair, illuminated like fibers of silver and gold. How lovely they were… All of that magnificence and more swam around us every moment of every day. We simply could not see it.

I turned back to the bed, my hair slowly flying out behind me like a long shadow. I moved as though under water and found that if I jumped, I could almost float. I alighted on the bed beside my husband, feeling the mattress dip belatedly below me. The scraps of my dress still fluttered in the air like tattered wings, and when Reaver's eyes opened dreamily, I felt myself gasp, the air filling me like warm wine. I was heady with it.

His eyes… How could I have failed to notice their absolute perfection? Countless shades of blue and gray exploded like a burst of stars orbiting a black sun. I watched in fascination as that darkness grew, forcing the streaks of star-shot color to retreat. I watched, knowing that his pupils were dilating because he saw what I saw.

It was beauty in the raw.

Lights of every hue danced over his skin as he moved, and when at last he touched my face, he drew a startled breath and I cried out with the intensity of the feeling. Every nerve ending beneath his fingertips was alive with its own ecstatic voice. I threw my head back in delight and my hair drifted over my shoulders to brush his chest. His abdominal muscles rose like hills beneath the luminous plane of his skin as the glossy strands touched him, and the breath from his released gasp caressed my parted lips like a long, achingly soft kiss.

I moaned desperately, forgetting my wager, lost in sensation, and felt the slow rumble of his throat in my chest as he did the same. We reached for each other, and when our fingers slid together, we both cried out again. It was almost too much. It was pleasure and torture, exquisite in its simplicity.

"Rose," he cried in a strangled voice. "Oh, Rose… Please… I can't take it…."

"Adrian, I…oh…gods…!" I arched my spine with a shiver as I felt his hands slide over my body until they reached my back. Then we were falling…falling…slowly, as though through the sea… His back sank deeply into the soft down of the blankets, followed slowly by his head and hair, shining strands of black, red, violet, blue….and then my body met his, and we both closed our eyes and screamed.

The feel of him! He was warm, smooth, hard with lean muscle and yet somehow softer than anything I had ever felt in my life. His heartbeat drove relentless tremors into my breast, sending tingles of sensation to every part of me. My fingers and toes curled reflexively, and I bit into the pillow as the rise and fall of his chest gently rocked my body against his.

The buttons of his trousers were like ice against my skin, and I winced in surprise and pain, reaching for them slowly, too slowly… His hand followed mine and grazed the tips of my fingernails as he moved to the button below the one I managed to find. The metallic surface of the button was mesmerizing, but the pleading look in his eyes when I lifted my head brought a flash of heat and numbness to my limbs. I saw shock, need, vulnerability, love, lust—a whole host of emotions—and before I knew how to put a name to what I had seen, he was free, lifting his hips with enough force to launch me several inches into the air for a moment while he slipped the only remaining fabric between us away. I shrugged out of my ruined gown before I landed again and cast it away in shredded strips, chilled by the breeze of it as it fluttered slowly through the air. I fell into his arms and the impact sent a long jolt of excruciating pleasure from my core to the top of my spine. Our breaths came in hard, ragged sighs from open mouths, our eyes wide as we struggled to cope with the intensity of what we felt.

"I'm going…to take you, Rose… I have to…I have to…"

His breathless whisper was like music. I could hear the depth of his voice behind it, and I ran my fingers helplessly over his chest, making him thrash beneath me. His hair spilled back and forth over his brow, his eyes closed tightly, his lips parted. His hands tightened on my hips, and all at once, I was floating again.

Our screams were a soundless explosion of mingled breaths, and they went on and on. The sudden heat of his sensitive tip stroking my entrance was silk and oil, feather and stone, throbbing in time with his heart.

"I can't," he gasped. "Oh gods, Rose…you can't know how this feels."

"You can," I panted, trying to open my eyes and breathe at the same time while he moved against me. "I can…I know…"

As if in a dream, I saw my hand drift through the air, falling slowly, wrapping itself around the object of my desire. He drew in a sharp breath as my fingers closed around its shaft, smoother than the surface of a pool and stronger than steel. His back arched so violently that I nearly lost my grip, and his groans, long and full of torment, brought a ringing to my ears, stopping my breath.

I did all that I could to keep my eyes locked on his as I helped him to penetrate me. Tears blurred my vision. It was sweet torture, the hard, gliding, blazing, throbbing smoothness inside me, pounding with his blood, rocking with his hips, which seemed no longer under his control. His moans mingled with my gasps, and we were lost, enslaved by our union. His fingers found their way into my hair, and he tugged me against his chest, bucking harder even as our screams grew louder and more desperate. I was nearly weeping with the overwhelming need to stop, to escape this insanity, knowing that I did not want to.

"Rose," he groaned through his teeth, his eyes blazing. "Rose…don't stop…"

I kissed him, savoring the taste of his hot mouth as we came together over and over. I was losing control. Time was beginning to speed back toward its natural state. I fought against it with all of my power even as he nuzzled my neck, moaning against my skin, driving himself into me with such power and vigor that I felt my body melting under his touch. With a grunt of satisfaction, he managed to get to his knees and throw me onto my upper back, flinging my legs over his shoulders. He bent over me, thrusting downward, now, far more deeply and relentlessly than before. The spell was nearly gone, and the sudden shift in speed ripped moans of ecstasy from both of us. We were shuddering and gasping for breath, sweat dripping from our bodies. I felt the warmth of his seed, but we could not stop. We could not be sated. There was no need for words. I saw it in his eyes, so dark, now that time had begun to return to us, and in those eyes I saw my own reflection and heard its demands as clearly as he did.

I need.

I want.

I WILL.

And he gave. He gave all that he had, and we knew not whether hours, days, or months passed in our private world. We knew only that when we fell into oblivion, we fell together.

When I opened my eyes, my breath caught sharply in my chest—and stayed there. I tried to draw more air into my already overcrowded lungs, my mouth forming a small, horrified O as I hitched in tiny, tremulous gasps. Sips of cold air stung my throat. I seemed to have forgotten how to exhale. Clouds—real clouds, heavy with rain—obscured my vision, and a sense of shuddering imbalance paralyzed my body. I could feel cold stone beneath my toes as I stood poised on them like a dancer at the very edge of a rocky cliff. My numb fingers clutched a handful of roses whose withered crimson petals fell like drops of blood into the pale abyss before me.

"Rose!"

The shock in the familiar, otherwise musical voice very nearly made me lose my balance, but a pair of slender arms wrapped themselves around my midsection and pulled me away from the cliff. I sat down with a light thump, feeling soft breasts against my back. Deep red fabric pooled around me, and I gently pushed away from my rescuer and gained my footing again.

I rounded on her, my chest heaving, lips buzzing from the rush of oxygen-rich blood that raced through my trembling body. "Who are you, really? Why are you in my mind?"

"I thought we'd covered that last time," she said dryly, drawing her dark red lips together in an attractive pout. "A fine way to thank your savior, by the way. You have no manners, at all. Your husband is a terrible influence."

It was the Red Rose. I gazed levelly at her beautiful face, trying to catch my breath. She looked calmly back, her long, dark hair whipping in the wind. "This is not real," I panted. "I'm dreaming again, and you haven't saved me from anything, though it is clear that you'd like me to believe that you would if you could. What do you want from me?"

"I want your belief, Rose," she answered shortly. "I gave you our aunt's diary to prove my reality to you, and you carried it with you into your world and accepted it for what it was. But you did not believe. Your…abacus of a mind made its own conclusions based on logic. Logic has no place, here. That is why you need me. You cannot think your way out of what is coming, Rose."

"And what is coming?"

"It is more a question of who, actually."

I suppressed a sigh. Impatience would do no good here. Impatience, I thought quizzically. That is not like me… "Who is coming?"

She shivered a little in the wind, wrapping her arms around herself. "The Empress," she murmured, then shivered again.

"The Empress?" A thousand questions rose like a tidal wave in my mind, clamoring like a nest of hungry chicks for comfort and nourishment—for answers.

The Red Rose stared off into the cloudy distance, where a storm was rumbling into life as the plumes of gray mist collided. "Someone greater than you or I, or any Archon who has ever lived in any of the thousands of worlds we inhabit. She exists in the past, the present, and the future, simultaneously."

"We all do," I said softly, tearing a heavy layer of my voluminous skirt away and wrapping it around her shoulders. I did not entirely trust her, but I could not let her suffer. "Don't you know that?"

"Not like her. You don't understand, Rose. Not yet. But you will." She shook her head slowly, pulling the fabric tightly around her body. "The Empress moves through time and space at will. She can be anywhere in the universe at any time, whenever she desires. Hundreds of realities have already been displaced with only a thought. They are beyond our aid; we cannot enter those worlds." There was fear in her eyes, and I felt a wave of empathy wash over me. Her pain was genuine, and it was terrible. "All that she imagines—no matter how improbable—comes to be, when she wishes it."

"What is the nature of this woman? How do you know about her?"

"I have seen her. She was an Archon, a Queen, but she became something…Other."

I was horrorstruck. "She came to your world?" I whispered. We cannot enter those, she had said. Was she trapped with me? Had she lost her own world?

"No. Rose…I have Seen her."

"I believe you," I assured her, smoothing the fabric over her shoulders. "But are you so certain that you have Seen the truth? That which we do not understand is nearly always frightening. It is human nature."

"The Empress is a monster, Rose. She is virtually unstoppable. She is a threat to all worlds—all life. Do you remember what legend says about the Spire?"

I did. And that was precisely why I wanted it destroyed. "A wish was made deep within it, and Albion was utterly destroyed," I answered. "Some say it paved the way for a new era, free from corruption. Others say that it murdered countless innocents and destroyed the most advanced civilization the world has ever seen."

"Exactly. Now, imagine a woman—an all-powerful being—who considered all of creation corrupt. What do you suppose she would do, given the power?"

I closed my eyes for a moment, giving the question the consideration it deserved. The possibility was unspeakable, but it was only a possibility, nonetheless. I could not operate on suppositions. I knew all too well how easily they could bring about ruin. I opened my eyes again and sighed. "That is beyond my ability, as I know next to nothing about her. If she feels that way about us, why has she not destroyed us already?"

"I don't know. But I have an idea that it has something to do with the presence of the Tattered Spire in all of the Albions in our multiverse. Their combined power may be working against her, somehow. Perhaps a backlash of power of that magnitude would destroy her. I don't know. What I do know is that the Spires may be our only hope. I also know you plan to destroy yours." Her eyes, hypnotic with the force of her certitude, narrowed piercingly. "That is something you must not do."

I shook my head. "But by your reasoning, if she can be in all places at all times, she has the ability to harness the power of all the Spires and bend them to her own will—including the very first one, the fully completed one, in every universe. Have you considered that she might wish us to keep them? They might easily serve as a conduit for her power. Perhaps she draws her strength from them. Her ability to travel through time at will means that even if we preserved the Tattered Spires in every world, we would be not be the safer for it, and the same applies to their destruction. No matter what we choose, if the Spires have anything to do with her abilities, she can travel to a moment fitting to her purposes and do as she pleases."

"No. No, she couldn't. The Spire is an unnatural object made of pure Will. It exists in every world, but it was only constructed for the purposes of one. Yours, Rose. The Theresa of your world did it in order to find and guide you, so that you could put an end to the Shadow Court and free her from her immortality. But the Spire is so powerful that its existence echoed through the worlds. Each Lucien built one, but yours was the first. The Spires have a life force of a sort, and yours is the mother of them all. They live and die by your choices."

"My…" If that was true, then Theresa's existence was not the same in every world. She may not have been divided, at all, except in my world. And the Red Rose's. She was a broken soul, she had said. I knelt and laid a hand over hers. Her mind was a blank wall, but I did not attempt to intrude. If she was real, then I hadn't the right to force her to open her thoughts to me.

"Why did you kill her?" I asked in a soft voice, squeezing her hand gently. It was cold and pale. Much of the glow she had carried during our first meeting had been lost. Wrapped in the torn skirt of my dress, she looked fragile and lonely in her crimson gown, like a porcelain doll without a child's love.

"She asked me to," she whispered, looking up at the brooding sky to keep her tears from spilling over her cheeks. "She wanted to see her brother again, and she knew that she could not cope with Empress. After her warning, she told me that I had to take up her mantle. For you, because of the burden you carry as the Seer of the Mother Spire. I did what I had do to. No more, no less. I am speaking to you from the Tattered Spire of my world. This is my burden, now. In looking into you, I have become a part of you."

I thought of Reaver, and the way I had seen into his heart and felt his life in my own body. His thoughts, his feelings, his desires, his fears…they were mine, too, now.

"What must I do?"

She stood without releasing my hand, and even in the rising gale I heard the whisper of fabrics from different worlds as they rustled together and the crunching of sparse grass between slabs of porous stone beneath our feet. She led me back to the edge of the cliff and fixed me with a solemn gaze. "Trust in me, Rose. Where we go, you must abandon logic and embrace a new kind of reality. Our lives and the lives of every soul in our multiverse depend on it. We all have our roles to play. A Hero does not retire."

Thank you all for your patience and for taking the time to review and favorite/follow this story! I am especially grateful to everyone who has left feedback so far, because it has helped me to decide my approach and also inspired me during difficult times. You are all wonderful. :) Thanks to WhatIfStoryTeller for adding this story and its prequel, My Other Name, to the community "Mortals and Immortals"! It is a very interesting selection of stories concerning, as the title suggests, pairings between mortal and immortal characters and the consequences of these pairings. Give it a look! As always, I cannot thank Angelacm enough for her constant friendship, support, and enthusiasm, without which I would very likely never get a thing done. Kami2015 has also been a huge help, reminding me that this story is worth telling. I have received so much support from so many people, it will take another giant list to thank all of you. :)