Sometime later, it felt like only a few minutes to Lilianna, she woke suddenly. Something was wrong. She realized with a strange sense of detachment that her body was no longer pressed to that of her husband. She turned her head slowly to face him. It was more difficult than it should have been. When she finally looked at Nottingham she knew why. The Periculum. Green and silver vines bound him to the bed, and she had no doubt that she was trapped in much the same way.

Instantly, she was afraid. Irons had told her the rules of the Blade when she had first gotten the Witchblade, and she had never forgotten them until she had been caught up in the man she loved. She wasn't the reincarnation of her mother, and therefore not the True Wielder. And Nottingham was a man. No man could ever be the True Wielder. Had she condemned him to death with her love?

She relaxed after a minute. The Witchblade had chosen him because of her love for him. It had been born with her. It wasn't really Sara's Witchblade, the one Irons had been obsessed with for most of his long life. If neither one of them was meant to wield the Blade, they wouldn't be where they were. She closed her eyes, curious to see what the Blade had to teach them and if they would learn whatever it was together.

The next instant she was standing in a field, in full armor except for one small change, she now wore a chain mail skirt over a leather one, both falling halfway down her thighs. Nottingham stood beside her, and when he saw her he smiled. She smiled back, relieved that they were together.

Nottingham was wearing his own version of Witchblade armor. He wore a breastplate that followed with excruciating detail the lines of his warrior's body, chain mail sleeves and leggings over black leather, and metal shin guards and gauntlets decorated with beautiful etchings. In his left hand was a helmet shaped like a dragon's head, and in his right, a claymore that resembled her own, only larger. A blonde woman appeared in front of them, similar armor to Lilianna's covering some of her body. She smiled and stabbed her sword into the ground.

Suddenly they were in the past. The very distant past. A tribe of warriors filled the valley, some practicing, some talking together, all participating in the rituals of daily life. It took only a second for the realization to sink in that most of them, both male and female, wore Witchblades. When it did, both Lilianna and Nottingham gasped. The valley was instantly empty again, and somehow they both missed the people they had never known.

"There was not always only one." The woman finally spoke. "In fact, there has never been a time when there was only one, but the others are hidden away where evil cannot reach them."

"But why?" Lilianna asked.

"Long ago, one of the Wielders' hearts was turned away from good when she was betrayed by her lover with another Wielder. Because she was powerful and somewhat justified, she gathered part of the tribe to her side and convinced them to fight against the others. Witchblade had been lifted against Witchblade before, but never on so grand a scale. The battle destroyed much of the land around it, and many innocents were lost along with the warriors who died. The Creator decided from then on that the tribe would be scattered, and only one, who had not fought in the battle, would be allowed to wield the Blade. She was one of your mother's former selves, and so only her line has since worn the Blade successfully. But the Creator knew that one day the tribe would be needed again and He allowed a prophecy to form. One day a woman would be born of love, holding the Blade inside her. She would find her true mate and he too would wear the Blade. And when that happened, the tribe would be rebuilt out of the worthy warriors of the universe. The two of you were Meant To Be. Each of you was a member of the tribe before that time, and you died in each other's arms, never having told the other of your love. Nottingham has since lived several times, waiting for you to be born. But your mother was never wise in love until now. And it only worked out this time because your half-sister came back from her future and changed things to how they are."

"Half-sister?" Lilianna gasped. "Where is she? Does my mother know?"

"No," the woman cautioned, "and unless your sister chooses it, she must not know. Things went horribly wrong before. Your sister may not even want to meet you."

"Why?"

The woman looked uncomfortable for a minute, "She, too, is an assassin, but the first kill she ever made was out of self-defense when she was only five. She watched her father die, and then was attacked with the Blade before it abandoned its wielder and became hers."

"Sara tried to kill her own daughter?" It was Nottingham who had spoken this time.

The woman nodded, "As I said, things went horribly wrong. Sara was driven mad when she learned who had fathered her child. Your sister calls herself Doe, an acronym for Daughter of Evil."

"Irons?" Lilianna breathed it with hate, and the woman nodded sadly.

"Who raised her after Irons and Sara were both dead?" Nottingham asked.

"You."

"Oh my god," Lilianna swore softly.

The woman continued, "You cared for her, and tried to stop her from going back in time, but she knew it was her destiny. It hurt her to see how evil her father was, for he did love her in his own way, and she had loved him with all her young heart. It also hurt her to know that although Sara is a good person and she loves you, she had never loved Doe. Doe thought that when she set things right, she might cease to exist if she took off the Blade, and she became frightened, scared that she would go to hell for having killed her own mother. And so she remains in this time, trying her best to keep things the way they should be."

"What's her real name?" Lilianna asked, aching for the sister she had never met, might never meet.

"Susanna Irons. Kenneth named her after his mother. Sara had originally named her Erin when she fooled herself into believing Susanna was Conchobar's."

"We have to find her," Lilianna said to Nottingham. He nodded his agreement.

"It is your choice, of course, but if you do be warned that she may hate you for having the love she was never given. We will speak again, but there is no time now."

The woman turned away, but Nottingham asked her one more question, "Rebuilding the tribe, where will we find the other Blades?"

"You will find them when it is time."

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Suddenly the woman was gone, along with Nottingham. Lilianna was left alone in an empty blackness. Elizabeth Bronte appeared beside her and smiled sadly at her great-granddaughter.

"There is something you must see, something you must set right. Your mother had yet another life that was changed, this one by her own hand. She does not remember what went wrong, and so it is up to you, my dear, to fix what is left that Susanna did not know about."

"There's more?" Lilianna asked, somehow not surprised.

Suddenly visions swept in front of her at an alarming speed, but she was able to absorb them all: Danny being killed and becoming Sara's Witchblade guardian, her fight with Gallo and the revelations she learned from him, the fact that she didn't kill the monster, but Nottingham did. Her forced pairing with "rookie" Jake McCartey, her major cases, each connected to the Witchblade and each leading her deeper into its world. Her meeting Gabriel, and Conchobar, Conchobar's death despite Nottingham's help. The Periculum, her discovery of the White Bulls and Dante's recruiting of Jake. When Lilianna viewed Nottingham's confession to her mother that he loved her "in unguarded moments", she fell to her knees in gut wrenching pain, but forced herself to keep watching. She watched as Irons manipulated everything and caused the deaths of everyone important to her mother. Felt ripped apart inside when Nottingham got himself killed because of the division of his loyalties between Sara and Irons. Watched as Irons activated Nottingham's clone, a "better" copy of the original, devoid of emotion. Saw the clone's evil, an evil that outweighed that of his master. Understood her mother's decision to change time after everyone important to her had died, and her immediate altering of the time line by not going into the Rialto and getting Danny killed.

From there things went similarly to the way they had before, Jake getting knocked out by Nottingham because it wasn't his time to die, Danny quitting the force when his wife threatened to leave him and take their daughter if he didn't, Danny not knowing that Susanna had visited Mrs. Woo and shown her what had happened to her husband in another timeline, using her jealousy of her husband's close relationship with Sara to make her believe in something she otherwise wouldn't have. Sara being partnered with Jake and having to work with him and hide the Witchblade from him at the same time. Sara meeting Gabriel during the "twin" case, and their subsequent friendship. Nottingham hovering in the background, often helping Sara against orders. But this time Susanna appeared in the background in several instances, using the power of the Witchblade to cleanse Nottingham's mind of Irons' brainwashing. Lilianna felt healed when she realized that Nottingham's "love" for her mother in the previous timeline was only Irons' manipulation of Nottingham's protective nature, a way of getting Nottingham to try and bring Sara into the fold that had originally backfired terribly. Sara actually realizing Jake's love for her this time and that she felt much the same way, but their union being put off by the arrival of Conchobar, who Susanna made sure still died. After all, it was Conchobar's destiny to either betray Sara or die. But this time, Sara did not discover the White Bulls, nor did her friends die. Irons, calmed by dreams Susanna sent him each night, put off much of his planning. And so Sara's life had been a little easier than it was the first time around. And then Lilianna had come back in time and Susanna, sensing it before it had even happened, had left the city only to come back a day later, also before Lilianna's arrival. Maybe her sister did want to meet her.

That meant that Irons still had the clones of Nottingham, that the White Bulls might still go after Sara, that Gabriel Bowman and others, including Joe Siri, the man who was more of a father to Sara than any other left alive, might still die. Lilianna had a lot resting on her shoulders.

"You understand what you must do, and that Nottingham cannot know about it until after, so that Irons has no way of knowing?"

"Yes, great-grandmother."

Elizabeth smiled sadly again, "Lilianna, may I ask you a favor?"

"Of course."

"Get my body out of his home, and lay me to rest in holy ground."

"I'll do my best."

"That is more than I could ever ask, my dear."