Free To Curse the Darkness by P.G. Forte

than happy to continue keeping the truth about the twins’ birth a secret from him.
    Armand would have been happy with that too—very happy to have been allowed to live the rest of his life without ever being forced to realize, not just how much he’d failed everyone he loved, but also how very far beyond his touch Julie was, how hopelessly out of his league.
    It really didn’t matter how much he loved her—or how much he loved Conrad. If either of them ever learned the truth about all the mistakes Armand had made, they would both despise him.
    * * * * *
    Conrad was in the garden, lost in reverie, when Julie found him. “Grandfather?” she said hesitantly. “May I talk to you?”
    He turned to smile at her. “Of course, my dear.” The expression on his face, so loving and sorrowful, was heart-wrenching. “I’m sure you must still have a lot of questions.”
    Julie nodded, feeling his grief roll over her like a giant wave. She did have questions. She had a list of them, in fact. But the ones that most concerned her were probably not the ones he was expecting. All her life Conrad had seemed invincible, a bulwark of strength, a constant source of support. In the past few months, watching him interact with others within the nest, it had become clear to her that he provided that same sense of security, of being cared for and protected—no matter what—to everyone in the family.
    â€œWhat is it you would like to know?”
    What she most wanted to know was the reason for the cracks she could sense beneath his surface. She’d seen him deal with difficult situations before. She’d seen him weak and injured after he’d been taken captive. She’d seen him worried or heartsick on a number of occasions over the years. But she’d never seen him like this. For the first time in her life, he seemed on the verge of breaking. There had to be a reason for that.
    â€œLet’s talk about Georgia,” she suggested a few minutes later, when they were seated together on the garden bench. “Tell me how the two of you met.”
    She nestled against him as he spoke. The night had turned cooler and the fog was moving in, but she basked in the warmth that radiated from him, and through that connection she saw everything. It all played out in her mind’s eye as though she’d actually been there, as though his thoughts had a vibration and her brain had somehow learned to read and translate them as one would a code. Everything he said and everything he left unsaid was laid bare, and she knew then that she had not been mistaken. At heart, he was still every bit as strong as she’d suspected, still as steady and comforting as she remembered. But those cracks were real, and they were widening.
    He’d suffered so much over the course of his inconceivably long life, and Georgia had played a critical role in easing so much of that suffering. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that if there was anything capable of breaking him, it was the thought of having to kill the very woman he had always credited with saving his life.
    â€œI still don’t understand about this disease,” Julie said. “I mean, to start with, I don’t even know what it’s called.”
    â€œIt’s had several names over the years. Most of us refer to it simply as the blood plague. To those who invented it, however, it was mostly known as the bishop’s solution, or Vesco Inedia , which roughly translated means ‘to eat to the point of starvation’—a fairly accurate description of the fate that awaited those who were afflicted.”
    â€œWhy is that?”
    â€œThe disease interferes with the body’s ability to receive nourishment—leading to weakness, uncontrollable hunger and, eventually, madness. Typically, those infected took to preying upon others of our kind. It’s an instinctive response, which, under other