“I wish I could love like a young girl again,” Lydia said a few nights later, in those twilight moments between sleeping and making love.

Lydia hadn’t said a word when I came home smelling like Denise Hardy. She had waited a few days before coming at the issue sideways.

“I think that’s what you’re missing, and it’s the one thing I can’t give you. My body is the same as it’s always been, but I can’t change how old my soul is. I could have put on a mask for some of the others, but you’d see right through it and be offended by the lie.

“I think this is why you love your witch so much. She loves like she’s younger than she is. She loves so completely, with her heart so completely in the present moment, it makes her reckless and foolish, in the best possible way.

“She looks at you and loves you for who you are right now, but I can’t look at you without seeing the man you will become. My eyes are always on the future, anticipating the pain and glory of what’s ahead.”

Lydia leaned over and squeezed me in a fierce hug. “I want to wrap myself around you and protect you from all the battles to come, but I know it would be wrong. I tried that with Stefan, and I did it too well. I encouraged his delusions until he felt like a god.

“After the first few years, he could kill as casually as he drank a cup of coffee. And I just kept making him stronger, more callous, eating away at his humanity, because I knew I would be rewarded for it. At the time, I thought I had perfected my craft. I turned a man into a weapon, and my Master loved me for it.

“Even my sisters started to accept me, as they enjoyed all the new privileges my Master was giving us. Walking into the Overlord’s harem as part of my Master’s entourage, watching the most honored succubi in Hell bow their heads to us.

“I accepted all the praise and reveled in every drop of approval my Master gave me. I was so arrogant, even when Stefan died, even when the Axis lost, I knew I had done my job to perfection, and my Master treated me like a queen.

“I spent the next few years sitting in his lap, comforting him, advising him, watching him defer to me the way he used to defer to Jacob.

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“I tried the same strategy on Jim, convinced that I could bring him to greatness the same way, but if Stefan was a fox, your grandfather was a lazy dog. He accepted my attention readily enough, but where Stefan was grateful, Jim took me for granted, like watching a woman bow and scrape for him was just the way things were supposed to be.

“Jim had always been treated like this, fawned over by women who were terrified of him. It was astounding to see how quickly he could break them; how he could remake their whole world until he was at the center, and they were nothing at all.

“So, when I arrived and started treating him like that, it gave me no leverage, because it was nothing special to him. Jim could not feel gratitude. All he ever felt was rage and hunger and self-loathing so deep, it took buckets of whiskey to keep his ego intact.

“Stefan was only half a monster when he came out of the womb, I just finished painting the picture. Jim was a different kind of monster, and I couldn’t change him at all.

“You think I’m different now, different from the demon you saw in that book, but I didn’t change because of my failure. I changed because of my success, feeling guilt, doubting myself for the first time, as I considered what I had turned Stefan into.

“Stefan wasn’t like Jim. There was still something human in there when I found him. Flashes of nobility and love. He was ignored by his real parents, raised by nannies and servants, but he never mistreated them. Generous and polite, using his status to reclaim his father’s estate - caring for his servants as they struggled through sickness and old age.

“Stefan saw himself as a new kind of nobility, but that status came with responsibilities, and he was determined to fulfill them.

“When the nanny who raised him was sick and dying, Stefan left a battle to be by her bedside and hold her hand when she passed. He had been using healing magic on her for years, extending her life by decades, keeping her in comfort like she was his real mother.

“I was haunted by those memories, in the years between Stefan’s death and the time Jim came of age. I was haunted by the vision of what Stefan could have been if I had encouraged the good in him, instead of rewarding him for cruelty.

“You’re different from both of them, a fusion of Anson and Tobias, a healer and a warrior, struggling to fill in the missing pieces of your soul by helping others.

“I saw the light in you the night we met, still shining through all the damage, yearning to break out and turn you into something better. I couldn’t encourage that directly, so I decided the best way to make you a hero was to make myself the villain and help you rise to the challenge.

“And you did, so quickly, refusing to compromise even for a moment, I worry now that you’re going too fast, racing to become a hero in a world where heroes are slaves, and kindness is just a thing you harvest, so your new kings can turn it into money.

“You won’t compromise, so you’re going to defy them. You’re going to spit in the faces of kings and princes and dare them to destroy you, and I can’t stop it, because I can’t change who you are, any more than I could change Jim.”