Forty Years.

The man covered his face with his hands and, not embarrassed by his emotions, cried. His shoulders were trembling, and his whole body was in tension, this shock was too strong for him.

Lina was standing, confused, tears were flowing down her cheeks, she wanted to go up to Armand and hug him, but she was afraid to even take a step. Two minutes later, she timidly starting moving towards him, but the man's reaction made her freeze.

His tears gave way to laughter, loud and sharp, like the one of some crazy man. The girl felt an icy shiver slowly penetrating her skin when the man's crazy laugh grew louder and louder.

She knew how Armand had been before, but they had been separated for several decades, and now, the man sitting in front of her on the floor seemed to Lina a complete stranger.

"Armand, I-," the girl took a step towards the man, but instead of a kind and loving smile, cold and angry look met her. Even Marcus never looked at her that way.

"Do not come near me," his voice was steady and calm, too calm for this situation. The girl's legs trembled, she stepped back and sat on the bed. The sob, which Lina had been holding for a long time, burst out, causing a second one, a third one after it, until she burst into tears, not having the strength to hold herself.

Armand silently looked at the once beloved girl, his face did not express any emotion, as if he were an outside indifferent observer and not the main participant in this dramatic scene.

Ten minutes later, Lina calmed down a little and was only sobbing with her nose, all the while the man did not move an inch and continued to look at her without saying a word.

"Finished? I suppose I can now hear what I have to?" Armand leaned his back against the door and put his hand on his knee. He looked relaxed as if he did not care at all what he could hear from the girl and asked her only out of politeness.

Lina took a deep breath and wiped away the remaining tears; according to the man's reaction, it was clear that her weakness would not provoke an emotional response from Armand. The girl straightened her back, tied her robe and raised her head,

"Firstly, I want to apologize," Lina began, to which Armand only grinned, "I know that my apologies may mean nothing to you, but nevertheless I apologize for hiding my identity from you. I'm very sorry that it happened."

"Tsk, she's sorry that it happened," Armand muttered to himself the last words of Lina, turned away and stared with all attention at the switched off TV as if there was a portrait of Mona Lisa instead.

His offended expression reminded Lina of moments when Armand was jealous of Marcus as a child and often pouted his lips if the girl played with his brother without him.

The corners of Lina's lips rose slightly, somewhere inside Armand still managed to keep his features, which she captured in the memory of her heart. This added confidence to her that at least he would agree to listen to her to the end,

"I am different from you and Marcus. Even if my body does not age, it is no different from the body of an ordinary person, so if it is seriously damaged, I can die."

"Oh yes, believe me, at our last meeting I noticed it very well," Armand snapped, the memories of the night when he dug the ground with his bare hands to bury Polina's body later were one of his worst nightmares, "Then how would you explain that you are here in front of me now all so... hmm, alive?"

The man's caustic comment did not produce the expected effect, Lina was ready for Armand to take her words with hostility, but she also knew that despite the outward coldness, he would listen to everything she said,

"I don't know how it exactly works. But my body needs a certain amount of time to recover. And if your body heals itself, then my body is healed by time itself."

"And how to understand this?"

Lina sighed, she knew that her explanation was clumsy, so she gave a more detailed explanation, "If I die at one point in time, I will live in the same place, but at a different time point. When I woke up, I found myself in one of the rooms of the Wewelsburg castle, in the same place where I died. That's just... almost forty years passed by that time."

Forty years.

The first forty years were the most difficult for Armand, vain attempts to leave this world led him to realize their uselessness, after which his soul was seized by apathy and indifference to everything that was happening around.

If only he knew that he could meet her again then, he would not have spent so many years of his life in vain.

The man got up, went to the table, poured a glass of wine and drank it in one gulp. By and large, this made no sense, because if he had gulped even a whole bottle, his body would have neutralized the effects of alcohol in a few seconds.

"And what has so delayed you for another forty years, huh? Nostalgia surged and you decided to find your old admirer? So how was it fun to tease me and play the role of an impregnable fortress?" Armand crossed his arms over his chest and looked at the fragile girl from his height.

"Everything is not what you think," Lina's blue eyes looked back at him, and something inside the man was squeezing, he had dreamed for so long to see this look that what was happening so far seemed to him somehow surreal.

"I wanted to find you as soon as I regained consciousness, but I had neither documents nor money. If Marcus hadn't found me before the police and helped to make up the documents, I don't know where I would be. And then Amelia told me that I can't meet with you, because our destinies strongly affect the course of events, and in order to delay the implementation of the prophecy, I had to wait for her coming of age, but she-"

"Stop!" Armand interrupted Lina's story, not believing his ears, "Did you just say 'Marcus'? He found you and knew all these years that you were alive?!"

Damn. The girl swallowed and froze. It was the most nonchalant and fatal mistake she could make.

She wanted so much to explain to the man that she was confused and did not start from the moment from which she should have.

"Yes, that's right," Lina whispered, and her heart sank.

Armand looked at her with such resentment and disappointment that she wanted to disappear at that moment, just not to see this look.