His name was a lie. It meant nothing #MMRomance #SciFi #MFRWhooks

In this scene from Surrender Love, Luc is en route to what he assumes will be just another day at the office. But a meeting will take place that changes his life forever. Here, he's musing in the back of his hoversine while his android driver ferries him through the city.

A Remembered Past

This early in the day, traffic in the city was as light as Luc's earlier mood had been. He ought to have used the travel time for work, but he became an errant student staring out the windows. Traffic slowed as the vehicle approached Cyr de Typhin Bridge. The massive stone lions guarding its entry hearkened back to the bridge's opening. Named for him in a different life, he never crossed it without remembering a past filled with glorious accomplishment and purpose.

As de Typhin, he had designed the city's layout, still in use as a blueprint. Tarth City Park had been his crowning achievement. But how many knew he'd built a secret warren of tunnels beneath the park and a bolt hole in the bridge's base? The human builders had long since died, taking their secrets to the grave. Luc refused to succumb to his usual melancholy at the thought and just enjoyed the job well done.

The vehicle floated across the bridge, past pillars displaying carved symbols, each representing one of his former lives. The Chosen, mortals who served the immortal Sempervians, had arranged the design. The day he'd stood at the entrance for the grand opening ceremony, he'd been told that within the week, Pietas had need of him elsewhere. De Typhin would have to "die" and be reborn with a new life on a different world, with a new persona and name.

After de Typhin met his abrupt and "tragic" end, the city hurried to rename multiple sites after him, including the churning Typhin River beneath the bridge. Its frothy water bisected the entire park which ran the length of the city. The so-called tragedy of de Typhin's short life had led to his work as another Tarthian hero, Ran Holding.

He still marveled at how he'd gone from city builder to cattle farmer and then from farmer right back to the city as the Grand Master of the Thieves' Guild on Kelthia. The Neene Saint-Thomas Thieves' Training Center, known affectionately as the Neener, bore that name. Landmarks throughout the city honored many Sempervians. By combining multiple lives over the previous centuries, they had made Tarth City a showcase in the Empire.

Except for the Chosen--the countless mortals who labored beside them--humans were still unaware they worked alongside immortals. Even when Dessy won a second life as Conqueror and established herself as her own long-lost daughter, no one guessed. She'd now been empress three times. Major sites around the city bore names from her past lives.

Luc's own second stint in a row as head of the Thieves' Guild drew no attention. Only one pair of mortals outside the Chosen had noticed, but his long relationship with them had won solid allegiance. They told no one, and likewise, he hid their awareness. Better no other immortals know someone had witnessed the passing of power from one life to another.

But in this beautiful city he loved so much, what had been named after former-thief, playboy, entrepreneur Luc Saint-Cyr? So far, a wing of the engineering college at Tarth Tech, for which he had paid dearly, and a library for the science department. Even the lofty Nizamrak Building did not bear his name. Oh, investors had tried to name it after him, but he was having none of that. The letters in Nizamrak meant something to him. His name meant nothing.

It wasn't even really his.