Free Gates of Rapture (The Guardians of Ascension) by Caris Roane

consequence of having taken dying blood, an unheard-of emerging power, or possibly the results from having taken Havily’s blood.”
    “Alison is very wise. So it is possible that what you’re going through has nothing to do with dying blood.”
    “Yes, it’s possible.”
    He was still facing away from her, bent over slightly. “There is something I must know,” he said. “Why … why did you leave with Casimir five months ago? I’ve never understood. I mean I know you scented him, as you scent me, but how could you have chosen him, of all vampires?”
    She paddled a little bit more, her knees still up, her gaze fixed on the small waves she created in front of her. But how to explain? “I had to go because of a powerful intuition I experienced about Casimir’s future. Every cell of my body cried out that it was necessary, that I would not survive if I did not go with him; nor would you. What I believe, Leto, is that our fates, yours and mine, are intertwined with his, and I had to be with him to make sure we were all safe. When I left, it was with the certainty that if I didn’t leave with him, I would lose you both, that you would both die.”
    “You believe you left to protect me.”
    “Yes, though I have no way of proving it. Marguerite had the same experience with Casimir once. She prevented his death some months ago because she knew, in the same way that I do now, that Casimir had to live, that he has some critical mission to perform in the future.”
    “But you don’t know what it is?”
    Grace shook her head, her long hair pulling to and fro beneath the water and causing more ripples. “No. Neither Marguerite nor I know. However, I am convinced it was about saving your life.”
    “How do you know that?”
    She shook her head. “I just know. I think it’s my obsidian power at work.”
    “So Casimir is no longer your breh ?”
    “No, he is not. I no longer scent him, nor does he scent me.”
    He rubbed his face with his hands as though working hard to make sense of the incomprehensible. “So why do you think you stopped scenting him?”
    “It happened when he made the decision to enter Beatrice’s pools of redemption.” She explained about Beatrice’s unique gift to redeem souls through extensive baptism in graded pools.
    “I know of Casimir’s exploits,” Leto said. “He must have been in agony.”
    “I suppose you are making light of it, but he was in terrible pain, pushing himself hard as he went from one baptism to the next, working to change the future. We have both seen his death, but Beatrice said that if Casimir completed the program, he wouldn’t die. He’s so changed. More than anything in life he wants to be a proper father to his sons, to be worthy of them.” She told him about not sharing Casimir’s bed any longer as well. “Not for weeks.”
    She also spoke of her desire to fulfill her duty in the war against Greaves. “I just wish I was more powerful, like you and like Thorne, even like my twin, Patience.”
    At that, he laughed. “You’re kidding, right? Grace, you can fold between dimensions, three of them. And if you’ll remember, you appeared to me in Moscow Two, five months ago, in the form of what looked like a ghost. You took me away from Moscow in some mysterious preternatural stream of energy, back to your convent cell. You saved me from certain death. How is any of that not powerful?”
    She shook her head, wanting to explain. “I guess I didn’t mean preternaturally powerful. I meant a kind of internal fortitude. Warrior strength. My inclinations are more spiritual. I lived in a Buddhist monastery six centuries ago and more recently spent ten decades in a convent.”
    “I always thought you were unique, and perhaps if there hadn’t been a war, I might have done the same. And your brother speaks with such reverence when he talks about you. He has from the time he joined the Warriors of the Blood.”
    “But Thorne never really understood