So this was it; his turn. At Ghost’s signal, he stepped forward in front of the man he’d only met moments ago. Was he really about to oath to the complete stranger who had once--once upon a time, in a deep sleep--spied into his soul?

It would mean staying in Rome for awhile. But wasn’t that why he had come here? What did he intend but to pledge to Azrael and make a home for himself? And if that had always been the plan, why did Verite feel so apprehensive now? It may have been the formality of the ritual, the solemnity of the room. A room filled with strangers, those who may or may not want to murder him if they knew who and what he was, and who were currently stirred up for rebellion, it seemed. It may have been because he expected to exchange more than five words with the mysterious man who spoke with the dead before swearing fealty.

But in the end, it didn’t matter, because he knew as he moved forward and met the pair of glacial eyes that he was going to do this—it was a leap of faith. It was a new beginning. And, Ver surmised as the master vampire’s lips brushed his own, it was undoubtedly the hand of fate. Why else had this man ever sought him out (much less found him) and appeared in his death dreams like an angel or prophet? The timing, the subject matter they’d discussed in guarded whispers between two minds, the very feel of Azrael’s presence in what would have otherwise been a void of complete solitude from which he may not have otherwise emerged--all woven together in a tapestry that appealed to Ver’s very strong sense of serendipity.

The blood-tasting mind-melding experience was likely to be unlike everyone else’s in the room, if only because Azrael had swum through his memories once before, about one hundred years ago. So when the elder’s mind once again reached into Verite’s, it was something familiar, like a long-lost friend. Like the only familiarity Ver had left in this world since that time long ago. It was almost vexingly comfortable for Az to slip into the well of his mind like a second skin. At other time, in another place, it may have even pissed Verite off that Azrael had that kind of power over him. But not tonight; tonight it was only apt.

Just over a century ago, Verite lost his soulmate, and was plunged into a bottomless sleep that was destined to last exactly one hundred years—one lifetime. A fitting sacrifice for a loss so great as the half of one’s soul. It was the appropriate amount of time for his mind, body and soul to reconcile and decide to survive the catastrophe, to put things back into place so that they at least operated, if not at the maximal level they should have. Only a few years into his sleep (though Ver of course had no concept of time), Azrael made his cameo in the timeless void by walking the line between awake and sleep, alive and dead, looking for answers about the Sabbat.

But as strong as Azrael was, and despite his skill for straddling the veil between this world and the next, there were parts of Ver’s mind at that time that were shut down even to himself, protecting the secrets of his race—a trait inherent to their kind as well as learned from birth. It made it easier to guard some of his deepest secrets, his heritage and history from Azrael. Despite the fact that Verite had ultimately ascribed Azrael’s presence to the visit of an angel, when it was happening, he actually refused to cooperate fully with Azrael’s curiosity. He’d just lost his soulmate; he wasn’t going to betray his race, too. Because of that, when he arrived in Rome, he knew he might be turned away much as he had shunned Azrael so many decades ago. But the man was welcoming Ver to his hearth, instead, cementing in Ver’s mind the fact that Azrael was a man who deserved incredible respect and loyalty, which he intended to supply for as long as the master let him stay in this city.

As with the first time they met, Ver kept his darker, older secrets out of the picture but let his foremost thoughts surface, private and personal though they were. Everything past the surface level of his mind was Cal, even now. That alone was a secret Ver would prefer to keep—how very acutely he felt the absence of half a soul, how much it affected him moment to moment. It only made sense that Azrael was able to see and feel him all over Ver’s mind like a permanent stamp, like—fittingly—a ghost. Azrael would see their times together, seemingly random and out of order, like a movie montage.

When Verite came upon the Book of Shadows, embossed with three letters: CAL. Not his name, in fact. But his initials. How Cal had laughed, gotten that look in his eyes and not corrected Ver. That look…

It didn’t take long to figure out they were soulmates. Nothing ever felt so right, so much of the time. So inexplicable, so comfortable. They laughed together and wept and suddenly knew things about one another the other had never told. Within weeks of meeting. They brought out strong sides of each other—both good and bad. Ver trusted him, with everything, his every secret, within one year. And then Cal taught him magic.

His days learning and practicing the magic arts were like a blur. He had to coax that side out of himself, and then train it. They were long days, excruciating, and at first paired with the simultaneous struggle to maintain his normal life. At the time, shielding as a vampire but drifting on the periphery of two Courts. Like that guy with two wives and two families, needing to keep up the balance each and every day and burning the candle at both ends. When Cal came along, the solution seemed so simple: stop trying to hide as a vampire in plain sight. Hide as a witch. And he did.

Of course, Cal was the only other witch he knew, so this pitched them into a somewhat codependent atmosphere that intensified dangerously before they learned to manage it. They learned how to have public lives that seemed normal. They went grocery shopping at the market together. They created a mentor-student ruse for public introductions. They got invited to dinner parties, which were attended selectively.

When Verite pulled back from Azrael’s throat, as his eyes defrosted from white ice to water blue again, he knew he had let a little more slip than he intended. But in that moment, it was all right. As he stepped back into the crowd, he felt an intense emotion of rightness in tonight’s strange events. And he felt incredibly close to Azrael, trusting beyond reason or logic. If Azrael was to get to know him better with time, through clues, was it so bad? After all, Azrael was officially the only person in the world who knew anything about Verite. And it made him feel that much less alone.

Taking his place with Faith and Ghost, Ver indicated to Jessie the Cowboy that he should go next; no reason, Ver just got good vibes from the guy, and he was part of their little group in the corner. When attention was redirected to the new oath-taker, it occurred to Ver to be glad that even if Azrael suspected Ver might have some ties to France so important they needed to be hidden deep down, at least he hadn’t been caught picturing Marcus naked. Thank God for small favors?