"Oh." Nestled inside the black leather and velvet was a ring like no other. Gold rope-like bands were intertwined and decorated with Xs covered in diamonds. "Bonds," I murmured, "secured by crosses." Gideon Cross . "Not quite. I see the ropes as representative of the many threads of you, not bondage. But yes, the Xs are me holding on to you. By my fingernails, it feels like." He finished his glass of wine and refilled both our glasses. I sat unmoving, stunned, trying to take it all in. Everything he'd done in the time we'd been apart-the photos, the ring, Dr. Petersen, the replicated bedroom, and whoever had been following me around-told me I'd never been far from his mind, if I'd even left it at all. "You gave me my keys back," I whispered, still remembering the pain. His hand reached out and covered mine. "There are a lot of reasons why I did that. You left me wearing nothing but a robe, Eva, and without your keys
" He hesitated before answering. "That's a good question, and you are not the first one to ask it. The others -- the majority of our kind who are quite content with our lot -- they, too, wonder at how we live. But you see, just because we've been... dealt a certain hand... it doesn't mean that we can't choose to rise above -- to conquer the boundaries of a destiny that none of us wanted. To try to retain whatever essential humanity we can." I lay unmoving, locked in awed silence. "Did you fall asleep?" he whispered after a few minutes. "No." "Is that all you were curious about?" I rolled my eyes. "Not quite." "What else do you want to know?" "Why can you read minds -- why only you? And Alice, seeing the future... why does that happen?" I felt him shrug in the darkness. "We don't really know. Carlisle has a theory... he believes that we all bring something of our strongest human traits with us into the next life, where they are intensified
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