Lilianna practiced with Monroe and Nick every day that they could spare the time. Nick's schedule was more busy than Monroe's, between police work and his lady love. When only Monroe was available, Liliana asked him to come and see her clocks. They were all in good working order, but a cleaning by an expert wouldn't hurt. He was the first person other than herself to come into the home part of her house, not just the business part.

She paid him his normal rate, and he was delighted to get his hands on her time pieces. Her clocks were not as nice as his for the most part, but she had a lot of them, and some were rare or old. She searched for them at flea markets and second hand stores, and lately, on ebay and craig's list. She liked old clocks almost as much as Monroe did.

She also liked the wolf. It seemed like a good way to spend time with him, to build trust with a shared passion, when she wasn't actively trying to slice him open.

She still wasn't very good at talking to him, but when it came to clocks, he was delighted to do the vast majority of the talking himself. She listened and nodded occasionally, as he told her all about each one of her clocks, and that was enough for him.

She had concocted a plan to save the wolf. She needed him to trust her, and there was very little time.

As the wolf left her home, she reminded him to take the nail from the crocodile's hand.

He smiled and said, "Sure, whatever you say, Lilly."

He called her Lilly, like Nick did. She smiled. She liked that her friends called her by a different name than her customers.

Her friends.

Liliana had friends.

She smiled to herself as the gentle wolf drove away. She hadn't had friends since she left the circus. The life had been chaotic, but the camaraderie of circus folk was deep. She hadn't realized that she missed it, just as she hadn't realized how much she missed flying on the trapeze.

Liliana considered how her life had changed since the day a Grimm walked into her shop and accused her of murder. It was almost as if she had been asleep for years. Her new friends woke her up. Her friends reminded her to live, not just exist.

Now, she had to make sure that her friends survived the night.

Liliana didn't own a car. Most of the time, it wasn't a problem.

Today, it might be.

She stepped out her door thirty seconds before an empty cab turned the corner in front of her place.

Liliana waved the cab down and got in.

"Wow," the cabbie said. "That was amazing luck. I just dropped someone off around the corner. I hardly ever end up in this neighborhood."

"It wasn't luck," Liliana said. "I saw you coming."

She told the cabbie to take her to the probation office.

She arrived an hour before the end of the lowan king's shift. Leo Taymor was a distant relative of her father's. She had paid his father and predecessor her respects when she moved to Portland, out of courtesy. When the torch of leadership passed to Leo, she paid him the courtesies as well although she wasn't sure he deserved it. In any case, he knew her. So, she should be able to convince him to give her a ride to the lowan games.

Leo was nothing like her father, Simon. Simon had been wise and honorable. He had also been fierce and stern, a solitary hunter where most lowans clung to the security of a pride. Simon had preferred the company of actual lions to the company of his own people, but he had still paid proper respects to the lowens whose territories he passed through, and taught her to do the same. She remembered adoring her father, while simultaneously being a little frightened of him.

Leo Taymore, the lion king of Portland, didn't frighten her, nor did she feel he was worthy of the respect a lowan king should have commanded. He was a petty little man with delusions of grandeur who abused what little power he had. But her father had taught her the formal courtesies that lowan society expected, and she still followed them. She was spinnesehen, but she was still a lowan's daughter.

She found a comfortable, out-of-the-way spot in the concrete structure of the parking garage and waited. She had seen that Leo would come out soon, and that he would go directly from here to the lowan games with just a brief stop at his home. She intended to ask him for a ride.

It raised her eyebrows to see someone coming she hadn't expected. The prince.

She didn't see him in the future with her fourth eyes. She saw him right then with her human eyes. He parked his car practically under her perch in the roof structure. She looked forward in time to see why the prince had come.

Ah. Hmm. Well, that changed her plan a bit. The lowan king would not be in the mood to grant her favors after the prince spoke to him.

The prince came to warn the lowen king not to use unwilling conscripts in his games. The warning would be too late to save Monroe, but it was still good that the prince would put a stop to this mockery of the honor games her father fought in his youth.

She considered introducing herself to the prince. She had foreseen his death, but hadn't yet decided if she would intervene to change his fate.

He apparently knew about the games, but thought only addicts and the violent gang boys of the streets were being forced into them, the elements of Portland society that the police captain would not be unhappy to see disappear. Now that the prince knew the lowen king had overstepped his bounds and taken the innocent, he was doing what he had to in order to stop it.

That showed a sense of justice, perhaps even honor. Liliana decided that her father would probably have respected this prince.

On an odd impulse, she dropped from her perch and walked to the prince's car.

The prince was alone.

She approached the passenger side of his car, and knocked on the window, startling him. She showed both her empty hands to the man who watched her warily with one hand on the gun under his jacket.

He kept his hand on the gun as he pushed the button to roll the window down.

"What do you want?"

"I want to speak to you, and to offer proper courtesy. I was not aware until recently that a prince resided in Portland. I know you have come here to speak to the lowan king, but Leo will not come out for fifteen more minutes, so we have a little time. I have no wish to interfere in your business here. In fact, I support and respect what you are doing." It was a lot of words. More than Lilliana had spoken in a row in quite a while, but she knew she had only one chance. If the prince decided she was a threat, he would almost certainly try to kill her, and that would limit her future options. "May I sit with you for a brief time and talk?"

The prince nodded, and pushed the button on his door handle that unlocked the passenger door. His other hand stayed on the butt of his gun.

Liliana opened the door, sat down beside the prince, and closed the car door. "Thank you, your highness," she said. She realized that she knew his rank and job, but didn't know his name, or much of anything else about him, except his connection to her favorite Grimm. She fiddled with the ends of her skirt, running the fabric between her fingers, and watching the movement.

"Why are you here?" he asked.

"I also came to speak to Leo, but when you finish speaking to him, he will not wish to speak to me, so I will have to change my plans."

"I'm sorry?" he said, as if it were a question.

Maybe he was asking her if he should be sorry for forcing her to alter her plans?

She shook her head. "No. You should not be sorry. Leo is conscripting innocents. He has no right. Your mission here is honorable."

The tall prince raised dark brows at her. "Honor is not a word I hear very often."

"I was raised to respect men of honor, even if they were enemies."

"Are we enemies?" he asked, hand tightening on the weapon under his jacket.

Liliana looked at him directly with her human eyes for a fraction of a second, then back down at her hands. "I have not decided yet."

His lips twitched a little at the corner in something that almost looked like a smile. "I'm not used to that much honesty."

Liliana smiled a little, too. "I always speak the truth. If we become enemies, I will tell you." She shrugged. "Or I will simply kill you, but I will never tell you I am an ally if I am not." Liliana watched the digital clock on the prince's dashboard to keep track of time. She didn't want him to miss his appointment with Leo.

The prince smiled full out, but it didn't reach his eyes. "Fair enough." His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. "Why would it matter to me if you were my enemy or my ally?"

She considered the question. This prince asked very good questions. "If I decide you are an ally, then I will save your life. If I decide you are an enemy, then I will not."

"Is my life in danger?"

"Not yet. You have a few months yet to live. I will have to decide before then."

He smiled again, clearly a little amused by the conversation. "Well, I hope you decide in my favor then." He wasn't taking her very seriously, but he wasn't blowing her off completely either. She seemed to intrigue him.

It was her turn to ask a question. "You sent the reaper away who came to kill the Grimm. Why?"

"How do you know that?" His amusement vanished, and anger touched his voice.

Lilliana shrugged. "I am spinnesehen. I know it the same way I know that you will die in less than half a year. I know it the same way I know that you are both a prince and a police captain. I know it the same way that I know what you intend to say to Leo when you see him."

"Spinnesehen. A spider who sees. I have heard of your kind, but never met one." If he knew about her people, then he knew that she really might have foreseen his death. His body language shifted. He now took her far more seriously.

"Now you have met a spinnesehen. I am Lilliana." She nodded a sketchy bow in his direction.

He nodded back to her. "I am honored." Old world manners. "A spinnesehen could be a very powerful ally to have."

"Or a powerful enemy, highness. I still have not decided." Lilliana cocked her head to one side. "Why did you send the reaper away who came to kill the Grimm?"

"My reasons are my own."

Lilliana looked at him and opened her third eyes, looking deeply into him. On the surface was control, tight, careful, unrelenting. Under that was a powerful desire for justice, balance, order. There was a coldness, a ruthless logic, but what lay beneath that was far from cold. His center was filled with the fire of bitterness and rage. This prince had been a victim. He had been weak and he had been hurt, deeply. Humiliation. Someone had treated him like dirt beneath their shoes. He had an iron determination to never be weak again, to never be anyone's victim. He craved power and respect like other men craved love and comfort.

An angry beast lived in his soul, an ugly distortion of the handsome face the world saw, but he kept the beast under tight control, like everything else.

Her view into his heart told her a great deal about who this man was, but not why he watched over her Grimm. His mind was like a mirror, reflecting distorted images back at her. Shielded. Even his thoughts were carefully controlled.

He pulled the gun from under his jacket and pointed it at her forehead, right between her fourth set of eyes.

"Stay out of my head."

Lilliana nodded respect, and closed all but her human eyes. "As you wish." She waited for him to lower the gun, but he hesitated, still pointing it at her, as if she suddenly seemed like a far more dangerous threat, now that she had shown him her inhuman face. He seemed to be considering whether or not to kill her right there and then.

Loss of control and powerlessness were the things this prince feared most. She had the power to see into his thoughts, to know his secrets, and he was powerless to stop her. She had frightened him. And that made him very dangerous. "I am not the one who threatens your life, dark prince. I seek a reason to save it," she reminded him.

He blinked, and lowered the weapon. "My apologies."

"Accepted." Lilliana looked at the clock and sighed. "Leo will exit his office in four minutes. You will want to be standing there before he comes." She pointed to a concrete roof support pillar that would hide the prince's presence from the lowan king until he was close.

She opened the passenger door of the car and got out. The prince got out on his side as well. "Have you made your decision?" he asked curiously, gun still in hand.

"No," she answered. The prince was complex. There was coldness, darkness, anger, violence, ruthlessness and pain in him, but there was also a strong personal code of honor and a powerful desire for justice and order. He was both a very good man and a very bad man. She had never met anyone so layered and balanced between darkness and light. He was not pure and bright like her favorite Grimm, but he had his own kind of compelling dark beauty. "May I ask your name, dark prince?"

His eyebrows shot up again in surprise. He probably wondered how she could know secret things about him, but not know the most basic, his name. "Sean Renard."

She bowed slightly, and walked beside the very tall prince to the concealing pillar, with no more fear of his weapon. He would not shoot her. She was certain of it now.

The top of her head barely reached his chest. She hadn't realized until she stood beside him that he was even taller than Monroe. She looked up at him directly for a moment, but only with her human eyes, so as not to frighten him again. "Did you send for more reapers to come to Portland to kill the Grimm, Nick Burkhardt?" she asked, with very little hope that he would give her a straight answer.

His jaw tightened. "No. I didn't."

Her own eyebrows went up. That was certainly a straight answer. "May I look to see if you speak the truth?" She raised her hands to placate him. "Nothing more?"

He nodded permission.

She opened her third eyes, the ones just under her human eyes, and looked at him.

He repeated his answer. "I absolutely did not order reapers to come to Portland to kill Nick."

It was truth, very vehement truth.

And they were out of time.

"I will speak with you again another time, Sean Renard." She bowed.

"Wait." He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed hard to hold her there. "Are reapers coming to kill Nick?"

She looked at his large hand, squeezing into her slender shoulder hard enough to bruise. She could cut that hand off at the wrist, but that seemed like a bit of an overreaction.

The prince let go, and held his hand up in apology.

"Not yet. But soon," she told him. "Death will come for Nick before it comes for you."

"Damn!" he cursed softly. She didn't need her other eyes to know that the prince hadn't even known that the reapers were coming, much less ordered it. And he wasn't happy about it.

Lilliana cocked her head to one side and opened her fourth eyes, to look into Nick's future. The moment of his death was still there, still with only a bit of flickering, uncertain, but unchanged.

The prince knowing ahead of time that the reapers were coming made no difference.

"You cannot stop them this time," she told him.

He started to ask her something else, but turned to look the other way as Leo's footsteps echoed in the concrete parking structure.

Liliana shook her head in disgust. The lowan king moved with the stealth of a hippopotamus. Her father would have been appalled. She had left a line dangling from the alcove in the concrete structure that she hid in earlier. She scrambled up the line and into her hole, not wanting Leo to see her with the prince.

The prince turned back around as if to say something to her, but she wasn't there anymore.

She watched as the prince tried to convince the lowen king to stop using innocent conscripts in his games. He refused, showed defiance, and the conversation turned violent.

Leo still didn't have the good sense to agree to keep his word and limit his contestants, nor to shut the games down. He was a fool. The lowen of Portland would be better off when this was over and they could choose a more worthy king.

This left Lilliana with a bit of a dilemma, though. She had no way to get to the games herself.

She closed all but her fourth eyes and followed Leo forward into his future. She saw where he went, to the remote rural location where the arena and the caged combatants waited. She considered her options.

Lilliana did not know how to drive. Even stealing a car would not get her there.

If she didn't get to the games, Monroe would die.

There was only one answer left. She had to ride with Nick. But if she did that, she risked altering the future in a way that would get Monroe killed.

Nick would get to the games only minutes before Monroe died, and only if Monroe did as she told him, and helped the injured crocodile wessen who was the lowen's current champion.

She closed her eyes, looked, and nodded.

Monroe's compassion made him want to help the injured gladiator, anyway. He would remember her advice that had seemed like nonsense before, and act. The wolf would survive until she and Nick got there.

After that, seconds would make the difference one way or the other.