oooh! New chapter. The reviws I have gotten lately make me feel real warm and fuzzy inside. I want to thank all of you. Without you, this story would rot on my desktop.

Disclaimer: My word, I only wish I owned the characters.

- - - - - - - - - -

Uriel's feet laced in a grapevine pattern as he paced. Fate's eyes remained calm as she wove the red cord of fate into the grand design upon her loom. He was twiddling his fingers and sighing audibly.

" Uriel, desist your pacing please. It's hard to concentrate when you are moving about so much." Her voice was effortlessly level and logical. That's who she was. Black hair bound into a long pony tail by gold cord framed her pale lithe face. Though outrageously gorgeous, she was one of the lesser beauties of Heaven.

" Fate, this whole affair has made me a new man. I'm nervous all the time and I can't stop watching them, even for an instant." He sat beside her and watched her thin fingers observe the threads.

" When I told you of this, I had only the slightest inkling you were observing them. I did not know you were going to interfere."

" Yes you did." He replied, looking at her face in slight contempt. Her finger ran over a knot and she gasped. Uriel jumped, holding his hand to his chest.

" Uriel, come and see this."

" It's rather ironic when you say such things."

His blind companion frowned and grabbed his hand, placing it over the knot. He moved his fingers over it, feeling it's massive size and complexity.

" Do you have any idea what that is?" She asked gravely, ruefully rubbing the balled up threads in her perfect tapestry.

" Not entirely, no."

" It's a knot in the threads of time. A screw up in the set pattern of life, if you will. I don't know if it has to do with them, Uriel. If it does, it is one major world altering event even I can't fix. He is going to tell someone. About you and the Golden box. It's all here." He hand moved across the woven design grandly and Uriel grabbed her shoulders.

" Fate, please, tell me you can change this?" He looked into her sightless eyes hopefully.

" I told you, I cannot." Her voice was definite and his body was weary .She placed her hands upon his face and felt his facial expression. Silently, she began picking at the knot methodically, trying to work it into something less than the catastrophe that in reality it was. He watched her fingers move the strings into a skull shape with pointed teeth, it's nose the tiny knot produced from her work on the larger.

" Did you fix it?" He asked, kneeling next to her.

" I've- I've done all I could possibly do. But, still..." Her eyes retained their blank calmness, though her voice was beyond level. He held her hands and pressed them to his face.

" Tell me, what is going to happen."

" If I had not lessened the knot, a minor apocalypse would have occurred, leaving all of Paris in ruin, and some of our greatest angels soulless drifting shadows. But, now that I have woven most of the knot out, the damage of this horrid event will be hardly a scratch upon the surface of time. Of course, it's not a pleasant scratch."

Turning away, she felt her way to her bed. Uriel followed her, his eyes beginning to show great fear and realization.

" Fate. Fate, tell me... What kind of scratch is it you have created?"

" Death, Uriel. Death. Three people will die." Her body fell upon the bed in a stupor, limbs carelessly laying about her.

" But-"

" Uriel, in exchange for over two thousand lives, I would say three is not a great sacrifice."

Savagely, he ripped her off of the bed and shook her.

" Who will die, Fate? Who will die?" Fate's hair came loose, curls falling down her back in a effortless fashion. She pushed him away, planting her feet and "looking" him in the eye.

" You listen to me. Life is full of sacrifice. Mortals sacrifice each other ever day for their own wants. The drunken male sacrifices a whore's medical safety to sate his animalistic and perverted pallet. The whore, in turn, uses that drunken male to fill her cup and buy her room when the dawn draws itself over the horizon. Life is give and take. If you want, you must sacrifice. Equivalent exchange."

Shoving his chest, she sat back at her loom and prodded the knot again.

" It was the best I could do. You need to understand that. You'd be a shadow if I didn't fix it."

" Erik will die, won't he? And Christine. But who is the third?"

" I did not say it was them, Uriel."

" You did not say it wasn't either. And I can only assume. Who will be the third?"

She said nothing. Picking up the red cord, she began to weave again. Uriel walked towards her chamber door in a silent, bubbling anger.

" Don't let them consume you, Uriel. It's a dangerous game you are playing."

He paused, like a lone actor in the proscenium, about to recite his Shakespearian soliloquy. She remained transfixed upon her tapestry as he gazed at her.

" One day, that rug will consume you."

" It already has. I'm just trying to protect the one I care deeply for."

" That is forbidden, and you know that." Her fingers stopped, arching mid-weave.

" Uriel, to be horribly honest, I could really care less. Feelings don't go away because they seem forbidden. Watching those two, you should have learned that by now."

" Their love his not forbidden."

" You are better off saying that his vast deformity is just a hallucination by all with eyes. Don't fool yourself."

" I am no fool."

" As long as you are aware, there is no need for me to say anymmore."

His face set in a deep frown, he went back to his own chamber to watch the string of atrocious events he was sure he had caused.

- - - - - - -

I don't really put fight scenes in my stories. I think one will appear in this one though! oooh,Ii can't wait to write that! please keep reading! I love all of you!

Bella