Byzantine Heartbreak Read Free

Cáel’s reaction to the stuff.
    One day. Maybe. He just didn’t know the man well enough to invite him back. Not yet. Cáel was an interesting human, but the huge divide between human and vampire Cáel had yet to become even aware of, yet alone begin to bridge.
    Ryan dismissed the human from his mind and hurried to his office. There were far more interesting matters to occupy his mind that one simple human.

 
    Chapter Two
     
    Ryan found Nayara waiting for him in his office—but it might have been Nayara from out of his memories. She stood at the armoured glass windows, staring at the darkside of Earth, where South America had all but disappeared, the blank expanse of the Pacific Ocean stretched like a dark negative space across the view and Europe took up the horizon.
    She was wearing a long white robe with a richly embroidered hem that swept the floor. The simple robe was pulled in around her waist by a jewel-encrusted belt and over the top of the robe, around her shoulders, lay another brightly coloured and embroidered length of cloth. A mantle. It would have been covering her glowing red hair, but she had dropped it down around the back of her neck. Her hair was elaborately coiled and curled and held in place with clips embellished with more jewels. A cuff of gold encircled her wrist and rings adorned her fingers.
    She turned to glance at Ryan as he entered and he saw that her eyes were made up with dark kohl and powder.
    This was Nayara as he had first met her. A rich, beautiful upper class citizen of Constantinople and one of the most sought-after women in the city. She had fielded dozens of marriage proposals each year, until her constant company with Ryan and Salathiel had made it clear that she would never marry.
    “You have been back to Constantinople?” Ryan asked, surprised. He and Nayara were the only two travellers in the agency that knew the time markers for the city, but neither of them voluntarily jumped back there. He certainly did not. The memories were too painful. He was glad the city and the time period were not one of the more popular ones. They were rarely forced to take a traveller back there.
    “Rome,” Nayara replied. “A quick shopping trip for the costume and props department.”
    The wardrobe department could and did manufacture most of the clothes and accessories the travellers and their companions wore, but the items were modelled on authentic fashions, which sometimes had to be fetched from the past, along with notes and observations on the wearing and use of the items. Rome and that era were familiar enough to Nayara that she could barter and observe accurately. She also knew ancient Latin well enough to pass as a high-born native.
    “And how was Rome?” Ryan asked.
    “Crowded,” Nayara replied, turning to gaze out the window again.
    Ryan stepped to her side and stared out the window, too. He let the silence grow for a few moments. “It’s still turning, then?” he asked.
    Nayara glanced at him and grimaced. “I’m sorry. I have something on my mind.”
    “I can tell.”
    She sighed. “I’m not even sure what it is that is bothering me.”
    “Something about Rome?”
    She shook her head and looked out the window at Earth as it slowly rotated, always displaying its mysterious dark side, with the marvellous display of light clusters showing where humans congregated in small and larger numbers. The thickly congested Mediterranean basin was just appearing, with its vaguely kidney-shaped sea, surrounded by globules of intense concentrations of light that almost glowed.
    It could be hypnotic, watching Earth spin and tell its tale of humanity.
    Ryan deliberately turned his back on the window and faced Nayara instead. “Something about Charbonneau—Rob, I mean? And Christian and Tally? The baby?”
    Their brand new family— family... Ryan kept pausing to savour the word in his head, even though he could barely speak it aloud because it still seemed so unnatural. The first