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into the oldest creature he had ever heard of. And he knew he grew stranger, more disconnected, stronger and yet more adrift, with every passing decade. They flitted by like weeks—he could recall, dimly, when a decade had seemed like a significant stretch of time, but now it was nothing, fluff blown from the hand. A mortal’s lifetime, be it fifteen years or fifty, was over almost before he felt he’d begun to know them.
    But there was Abby Irene, eyelashes fluttering on her crepe-paper cheek, lovely as a faded flower, lying alone in her narrow white bed. And perhaps the wampyr could still learn from the example of a mortal courtier.
    Or perhaps for his kind, letting go was simply another path to burn.
    Maybe that was where all roads led in the end.
    She did not awaken when he slipped from the room.
    Back in the library, Sebastien found Phoebe sorting books and frowning. He slipped up behind and kissed her nape beneath the gray-spiked spiral of her bun. She jumped, but not too high, and by the time she came down off her toes again she chuckled. It sounded strained, but her voice stayed soft and welcoming. “Werewolves, Sebastien?”
    “Prussians,” he replied, as if that answered everything.
    She grimaced. “What would delight them more than a cadre of lycanthrope shock troops, hearkening back to the pure Teutonic roots of the Germanic Empire? What could be more glorious proof of their divine right of conquest?”
    “Nothing,” he spat, jamming his hands into his pockets.
    She might be able to maintain a voice of sweet reason. The bitterness in his made up for it. She drew back, studying his face until he couldn’t bear to think what she might see there, and turned away. He needed to move. He knew very well that she followed him down the hall to the front parlor, farther from Abby Irene’s bedroom door. In truth, he welcomed her persistence.
    The curtains in the front window stood wide, the shade thrown up. He leaned a hand on either side of the sash, and stared out at the rain. The glass cast back no image of himself nor ever would, but after a moment, he saw from Phoebe’s reflection that she had come up behind him. She touched his shoulder. For a moment, he could not think what he should do to react, and so he did nothing at all.
    “What are we doing here, Sebastien?”
    “Letting Abby Irene die in London. Didn’t you read the papers?”
    “Law of unintended consequences,” she said. “We did what we felt we had to do. As much as you like to assume responsibility, you are not personally liable for the fall of British Empire, and neither is Abby Irene.”
    “Jack would not have approved of the Prussians. And neither does Abby Irene.” He shrugged, which made him able to feel the weight and warmth of her hand on his shoulder. He should feed soon, he thought, though his appetite no longer troubled him except in extremes of need or injury. “Human memory is too short. Every generation must fight the same wars over again as if they were new ones.”
    She smirked. “Perhaps we need wampyr to run the world for us.”
    “Oh, yes,” he said archly. “That would no doubt provoke innovation. We have had some positive effect before, Phoebe. We freed the colonies.”
    “We helped, at least.” Phoebe stepped close enough that Sebastien could feel her heat through the fine cloth of her blouse. Fashions for women were much improved by the retirement of the whalebone corset, he thought, and certainly the ladies of his acquaintance seemed much relieved by modern undergarments. Progress occurred. Just not always in the manner one would prefer.
    She said, “Having been instrumental in freeing the colonies—if we were, if it would not have happened just as inevitably without us—does not make you responsible for England and France exhausting themselves in war, Amédée Gosselin.”
    An even older name than Sebastien, and one just as abandoned. She used it now for a reason, as a reminder. No matter how the romances