Until he came back and tampered with it.
Or did he?
Man, Nick could lose his mind with this. Because what Ambrose—his future self—had failed to tell him was the secret he’d learned last night.
The secret he now knew.
For the first time ever, he understood Tabitha Devereaux’s tattoo from his vision of their future fight, and why she’d placed it on her arm.
Not as a motto for herself.
A note to him to serve as a reminder …
Fabra est sui quaeque fati.She creates her own destiny.
That was why the Ambrose Malachai had stopped in the middle of battle to stare down at it. Why he’d screamed out in agony on the day he killed her.
I made myself the monster.
My choice.
Son. Friend. Boyfriend. Squire. Brother. Dark-Hunter. Malachai. Demon. Husband. Father.
Betrayer.
Destroyer of the world.
Or savior …
My choice alone.
As with all things. The future would be made by the very decisions he made today. Good, bad and indifferent. He was the master spinner of destiny.
And he, alone, would bear it out.
“He will kill you.”
Cyprian Malachai paused as those dire words hung in the air. A slow insidious smile spread across his face as he looked up from his homework to see the obsequious demon servant who stood on his left. “You don’t know my father at all, do you?”
The demon stepped back into the shadows, cringing if the truth were known. Not that he blamed the creature. It was always good to fear him as he valued nothing and no one. That was the curse of the Malachai bloodline that he’d inherited from Ambrose.
They loved nothing and no one.
Except for his father. Ambrose had been cut from a different Malachai cloth.
Nicholas Ambrosius Aloysius Gautier. The so-called Ambrose Malachai had been a unique creature unto himself. Out of all the Malachai born after their downfall and curse, he’d been the only one to ever know a mother’s love.
The only one to have a family and …
Friends.
Something that baffled Cyprian to this day as no one had ever liked him.
He’d never understood his father’s life or the loyalty of all those who’d died by Ambrose’s side when they’d faced off in final battle all those centuries in the future.
Even now, he could see them as that fateful day had dawned. Lined up for battle. Both sides stood ready at the head of their armies. Cyprian’s dark Mavromino forces had salivated for his father’sgood,Kalosum blood.
The Ambrose Malachai had stood strong at the front with his wife and her brother at his side. For the first time in all of history, the Nasaru and Arelim had ridden to fight with a Malachai and his generals at their head.
