For Suze and Kate--thanks for letting teh husband and I invade your lives.

It was funny; really, how quickly things had seemed to fall apart. Both she and Amon had suddenly become very much incapacitated it seemed. Nagira was the one in the kitchen on the phone calling the shots, talking to Gróa's—dead dead Gróa—ex-husband, ensuring their safe passage into Europe or wherever the hell they were going next. Nagira had neatly woven himself into the fabric of their lives. It appeared as if he'd abandoned his own just as quickly as Amon had abandoned his to become a part of Robin's.

She'd sat in the kitchen with Nagira for quite some time. No tears fell to her great shock and mildly, to her consternation—why couldn't she cry for Gróa? Even though she hadn't known the woman that well, she'd still helped them immensely and been a good person at heart. Robin had innately sensed that from the very beginning. She'd known that she could trust Gróa from the moment she laid eyes upon her. And where had it gotten Gróa?

She was in her bedroom now, a pillow over her face, her arms folded over her chest like some sort of Old Kingdom mummy.

The three men that had been directly and indirectly responsible for Gróa's death were lying dead in the storage room and lying on the couch in the living room, pretending to be dead.

Nagira, caring older-brother type that he was, had pushed his magically never-ending pack of cigarettes across the kitchen table to Robin while he talked on the phone in broken English and fluent Japanese. Robin smoked one, then two, then three. After the third she felt sick to her stomach; hot and light-headed, so she stopped.

Amon hadn't been on the couch originally. He had gone to an armchair immediately after the incident in the bedroom—later he'd migrated to the couch with a very audible, exhausted flop and Robin hadn't felt or heard him move since. Semi-afraid, she stayed in the kitchen with Nagira. Something in her wouldn't let her go to Amon—couldn't let her go to Amon, because as much as her heart and her body pulled her in the direction of his obviously troubled soul, her brain screamed no no no no no he KILLED her.

But she asked him to, Robin. You heard her say it herself. She longed to die. He was right. Are you angry that he did it or even angrier that he was able to do it, whereas you could not have?

She looked at the man across the table from her, her feet bare and cold on the wooden chairs. Nagira's slightly lined face was partially hidden behind a negligee wall of smoke, his eyes staring into space as he listened to the voice through the phone. Something was happening; thank Jesus for Nagira being able to hold it all together whereas she could not, whereas she knew Amon was not. Amon was—the part of her that pulled towards his soul knew; it knew that something was wrong, that he would ordinarily would not have just lain down on the couch and let someone else take charge of the situation. It wasn't his style. Her mind pulled in multiple directions at once, a mish-mash of voices all shrieking at her in both triumph and defeat: You know, he was right—you can't do this. You're not capable enough to do this. You're not even an adult yet, let alone mature enough to be the Eve of Witches. But for once, he's not so mighty either! He's not the all-mighty, all-powerful warden he assumes to be! Not so much different now that he has to come down off his high horse and live with the rest of the dirty, dirty world, isn't he?

Robin cringed slightly; she wasn't quite sure where the voices inside of her where coming from. Her own inner voices had never been quite as malicious, had they? Especially not towards Amon. Nagira was nodded sagely, phone against his ear, cigarette dangling from his lips. Bloodied and haggard, he looked like the retro-stock broker from Hell; dress-shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, hair slicked back, shadow growing in but sideburns trim, shoulders squared and cigarette positioned in a masculine manner. He looked important. He looked capable.

He looked like exactly what Robin and Amon needed at the moment—a big brother.

Nothing was as it should have been. Robin's brain wondered feverishly, in a house and a life surrounded by death, if it ever would be again.

Nagira watched the girl-woman across from him and lamented. He lamented that a face should ever have to look that sad that early in its life.

And he looked to the unmoving lump that was his baby brother on the couch in the darkened living room, and his heart ached.

Neither one of them deserved this. They deserved to be somewhere far away, living together—possibly owning a vineyard or something ridiculous like that—something where Robin could feel feminine and needed, tending a house; where Amon could feel manly and useful, tending fields with his hands and providing. And they deserved to be normal human beings for two point five seconds, a normal man and woman who could meet and fall in love and court despite the age difference between them; build a future and be happy regardless of the fact that they had abnormal powers, that they were wanted, that they could kill and had killed.

Powers or no powers, they were human. And that had been the championing cause of Nagira's life—humans deserve to live. No matter what.

The pale, sad, blonde girl in front of him and his baby brother on the couch—eternally nine years old and crying, looking into a dying dog's eyes—were the most important things in the world to him somehow. And damnit, if he had to die to help them, if he had to sacrifice his own life to help them, it didn't really matter.

In the end they were much more important than he was anyway.

And he could have sighed with relief when Robin stood; the entirety of her small frame aching with the need to hold and be held, and slunk off towards the dark living room silently in bare feet. Amon did not stir.

Nagira listened to the vaguely crackly voice in his ear, half in broken English, half in broken Japanese. For one night he could take the burden away from them. For one night he would lead the running. They could sleep.

Robin crept into the living room, her whole body tense and taut with the effort of being so silent. She squinted in the darkness, the sounds of Nagira murmuring on the phone in the kitchen echoing out into the living room. The smell of cigarette smoke wafted out into the darkened room; it lingered on her clothing and her fingers, her breath, her being. Death lingered in the house as well and like the smoke it lingered on her being. Every inch of her smelt of smoke and death and weariness.

He appeared to be sleeping. Robin moved silently, stealthily. At the side of the couch, amazingly, he had not awoken to her presence. His arms were folded over his head as if he wished to block himself from something; a blow, a menacing being.

She sunk down to her knees next to the couch, next to Amon's still unusually un-alert body. His side rose and fell with the intake of his sleeping breath, the soft noises of a slumbering human body escaping him. Robin watched for a moment, awestruck, no matter how hard she tried not to be and then slowly lowered her head down onto the couch next to his chest, a giant sigh escaping her. Amon's body jolted slightly; alert and aware of the presence of another human in close proximity.

Another sigh escaped her as she sat on her knees, hands folded in her lap, head lying on the couch next to his body like a supplicant at a shrine. His hand awkwardly alit on her head, resting on her hair heavily. "Robin," he muttered, his voice sleep-tainted and groggy.

Yet another sigh escaped her, shuddering and heaving. "I'm sorry I woke you up," she whispered. "It's so late."

A deviation from the normal, Amon was seemingly slow to rouse from his slumbering state, as if he were drugged. "Huh?" he muttered, highly uncharacteristic of him. "Oh," he said, half-sighing himself. His hand patted her head clumsily, smoothing the maize-blonde hair. "It's fine." Amon's arms moved away from his head slightly revealing a still somewhat blood-stained face, deeply shadowed and drowsy, squinting and blinking. "Where's Nagira?" he croaked, coming awake in steps.

"He's in the kitchen," Robin replied with her face still pressed into the worn fabric of Gróa's couch. "He's still talking to her former husband. I'm not sure what's happening."

"Ah." Amon blinked at her squintily, as if the very scant light hurt his eyes. Gusting breath issued from his nostrils and his large form shifted on the couch. "What're you doing?" he asked confusedly. He sounded as if he was still three-fourths asleep.

Robin opened her eyes to stare at the darkness-obscured pattern of the fabric on the couch, her eyes burning distinctly. Crying, crying. Always crying—especially lately. There was a grain of truth to teenagers and their see-saw emotions. "I don't know," she replied dejectedly, face smashed into the cushions. She could feel him watching her and that only seemed to intensify the burning in her eyes. "I...I don't want to do this, anymore, Amon." There. She'd said it. She was a coward, then; and she was crying. Her tears ran down her nose, dripping desolately onto the faded material of the sofa. Amon snuffled a bit and cleared his throat.

"Robin." His voice was low and sleepy, more considerate than it had ever sounded to her. A shushing noise issued forth from his mouth and his hand came back to her head firmly. "Robin. C'mon. Get up off the floor."

"But I..." Robin made a soft mewl of shock and protest as Amon's hands settled on her folded arms and pulled her up, forcing her to slide halfway up onto the couch. Still she was uncooperative, mostly because she was ashamed that she was crying and in some ways desperately craving his attention but wishing that she had never sought it out at all. Her eyes were clamped shut tightly, not allowing her to look at him.

"Come here, you," he said, his usually commanding voice retaining its current drowsy lowness. "Get up off the floor."

Robin complied, mortified and comforted. Her body stretched out on the couch along his, the narrow space of the piece of furniture not allowing her any choice but to be pressed against him. Her face burned despite her current state. Amon's arms wound around her side, around the back of her head and held her to him. Powers that be help her, Robin couldn't help but cry silently into him then that the arms were around her then that it felt safe to do so, then that she felt that it was alright to be a girl for a moment and not the Eve of Witches, not someone who was running for their life.

"I'm sorry, Robin," he said above her head, his chin resting atop it. She sniffled and wept and held her arms tightly against her chest, not daring enough to hold to him as he did to her. The hand on her head smoothed her hair and he shushed her again. "Don't cry."

Teeth chattering against each other in the effort to suppress her tears, Robin glared into the darkness of his chest. "Why should I not cry? Everything we touch, everywhere we go is death. Today—yesterday—whichever, the days are all the same now—I was so happy when I went out with Nagira. We were...just like everyone else, Amon. Like it used to be. Like I could pretend, like I used to be able to, that I was just a girl like any other. I don't want to be the saviour of witchkind anymore."

Amon was silent.

"I'm not strong enough to do it," she went on in a whispering voice. The murmur of Nagira's voice on the phone continued in the kitchen. "It should have been someone else. I couldn't even bring myself to look at Gróa tonight. I would have kept her alive forever until she died a horrible and painful death because I couldn't bring myself to...to..." A soft desperate, choked noise escaped her. "You were right. This is wrong. Let's just go back to Europe—to the United States—to anywhere. I don't care anymore. I just want this to stop." Fresh tears leaked anew from her eyes at the prospect of living for the rest of her life like this, running constantly, constantly surrounded by death.

Amon's arms tightened around her exponentially, and he made a small noise. "Robin, we can't go back now. We've opened Pandora's Box, in a way. There are events in motion now that only going back through time would enable us to undo. It will not be like this forever. I promise."

Something in the warden's brain heard the unspoken question in the ward's brain and he replied applicably.

"I don't break my promises, Robin." His grip remained firm. "It is not going to be like this forever. I would rather die." He paused, swallowing. "And I don't want to die."

Silence reigned between them, Robin's tears falling quietly into Amon's bloody shirt, his hands holding him to her possessively. Nagira's voice drifted into the living room in accented English and fluent Japanese.

"And I would rather die than see harm come to you or my brother," he continued after the pause, his voice low, intended only for her to hear. "That means harm of the physical or mental variety. I am sorry that you had to see what you did tonight."

It was Robin's turn to be taciturn then, her nose buried in Amon's chest, against the mild crustiness of his shirt. She knew it was Gróa's blood and that disturbed her, but her need to be held and comforted outweighed her disturbance at the moment.

How selfish of you.

"I am not perfect, Robin," Amon uttered regretfully and for a moment, there—for a moment, Robin's soul froze because she could have sworn from the twang in Amon's voice that he was going to cry. "I'm far from perfect. But I know deep down that this is what was meant to happen. No matter how much I tried to ignore it, somehow I always knew that this was the path we would take."

Robin's head tilted up to look at his face in the darkness and her eyes beheld him gazing at her through sleep-slitted eyes in the gloom of the room. "We don't always want our destinies. I tried for years to avoid mine—the destiny of a Seed. It ended up happening anyway. And not a day goes by that I wish that it hadn't happened, but that's not going to change the reality at all, you know." Grey eyes blinked at her, a large hand slipping under the curtain of her hair over her neck. "We were born into this, Robin, and we can either wallow in self-pity—which I will admit I am often guilty of—or we can fight. And we can change. And we can adapt and we can win."

Her own eyes blinked back up at him, glossy and glazed from tears. "What if we can't?"

"Then we die trying. And we pave the way for someone else to continue the fight." His jaw set decisively. "While there is a breath left in my body, however, neither you nor Syunji will die. You two will outlive me at all costs. This I promise you."

"Don't promise that." Robin couldn't stop the nearly panic-stricken words from rushing out of her mouth. Deep down she knew that when Amon promised something, he meant it—and he wasn't about to change for anyone or anything. "I don't want that."

"Sometimes what we want isn't what needs to happen."

She frowned, tears stinging her eyes once again. "Why are you so bent on death?" she asked, fresh hurt and sorrow apparent on her face. Was it the death that surrounded them that was making him more morbid than usual, more fixated on the end of his own life than he'd ever been? "There's no reason for you to die. We can forget about all of this and go somewhere where the three of us can live, and just be—"

"Robin." Amon looked down at her sleepily, wistfully. A slight upward curve tugged at his lips, which only made him look sadder, sleepier, and older in the darkness. "No, we can't. I know you wish we could now, and I've wished the same thing many times before. It's not possible. SOLOMON will chase us to the ends of the Earth unless we do something. It was what we were born into—and you have a throne to assume, you know."

"I don't want it."

"It's yours." The curve in his lips remained. "Neither I nor Nagira can shoulder the entire burden for you. If I could, I would. I know you probably don't believe that but I would. Unfortunately it is yours and yours alone to carry. I will help you all that I can. Nagira will help you all that he can. But..."

"You did not even want me to do this in the first place." Her voice was accusatory and wounded, semi-betrayed. Part of her had been expecting him to be the typical Amon and agree with her, say that he was glad that she'd seen that he was right all along and then pack them off into the sunrise, off to oblivion in some distant land.

"But you did. And it is what I knew we had to do all along, and I'd been shirking away from it." His hand urged her back against him again via her neck and she complied without too much of an argument. "I couldn't come to grips with what I was, so I didn't want to come to grips with what you were and what you had to do. It is fairly obvious now."

Robin felt sick to her stomach; afraid and small. "No," she whispered, miserably.

Amon nodded, ducking his head a bit. The stubble on his chin rubbed against her forehead, rough and unfamiliar. "Yes. Robin. I will not let you back down from this because this—because it scares you," he said, sounding cut off and slightly disconnected. "It frightens me as well but we cannot run away from everything that frightens us. We must be strong. I am a monster. I can help you do anything."

Robin frowned, pulling away from him again, her forehead bumping his chin. She looked up at him, his face closer than it had been before. "You are not a monster."

He seemed to be laughing at her. "Whatever I am not and whatever I am, I can help you do anything. I am a bastard as well as a monster," he said lowly, looking at her, "but if you ask me for my help I will give it to you. You have it. Don't be afraid to ask for it. You are the one person in the world who doesn't have to think twice about asking for my help."

She was silent, stunned into muteness. When had she been granted special privileges above all else? And when had Amon become so resolute in this whole cause? Her brain spun, feeling helpless and small and confused and overwhelmed. "I can't understand how I became worthy of such a service," she said, skeptically.

Her warden uttered a faint 'heh' noise in the dark. "That's for you to figure out for yourself," he said, a token forlornly. "As much as I wish I could, I cannot tell you your self-worth. You must find that for yourself. When you find that, you will understand how you gained my service. Although I must admit that it's not as be-all and end-all as you seem to think it is."

The sound of a phone hanging up resounded from within the kitchen. Nagira had indeed ended the phone call, but it seemed as if he'd full well wanted Amon and Robin to know that he was ending it. Robin froze at the sound of footsteps emerging from the lit room and turned her head slightly downwards to gaze at the backlit figure of Nagira in the doorway to the kitchen, hands on his hips. Instead of the smart remark she would have figured he would have issued at having beheld them on the couch together, he simply said:

"Are you two going to go to sleep?" he asked conversationally. Amon turned one eye towards his brother, the other drifting closed.

"Perhaps. In a bit." He looked back to Robin, who looked away, blushing furiously. Nagira's silhouette nodded and shuffled back into the kitchen some.

"Well. I'll stay up for a bit and keep watch, and you two can get some sleep," he stated almost cheerfully. "Sleep well."

"Yeah." Amon replied, but his attention was still focused on Robin. "You should sleep."

Robin nodded, looking at some spot near Amon's neck. "You as well. But I thought..." Here, her blonde brows furrowed, her lips curving downward. "...I thought you said we weren't to sleep together anymore?" she asked. Eyeing him critically as his eyes drifted closed, Robin waited with baited breath for an answer. One eye opened almost lazily and looked at her, the slight upward curve returning to his lips.

"You'll notice that it's my fault again, in this scenario." Robin's mouth opened to protest and Amon's slitted eye opened wider as if in reproach. "No talking back. Just sleep. I'm still your warden, you know."

Robin curled into him again, her face pressed into the warm firmness of his chest, willing herself to ignore the slight dry crusting of Gróa's blood on the fabric. She let a heaving breath out from between her lips, finally daring to free one hand from their locked position against her chest to slip it tentatively over Amon's side. "I thought that was what made this highly inappropriate," she countered, quietly.

"It is," Amon replied, quietly, into her hair. "But at this point, wouldn't you say that our whole lives were inappropriate, according to most people's standards?"

Robin said nothing in reply, and silently thrilled when the firm yet soft touch of Amon's chin against her forehead pressed against her skin. For one hopeful moment, she'd wondered if he was going to kiss her—and God, how her heart had hoped—but after a still, tense moment of stillness, Amon's body relaxed, his chin settling in more firmly against her forehead. He sighed, seeming to sink back into the couch. His body went semi-slack, and he stirred once more then not again.

"Go to sleep," he said, simply.

And she did.

Nagira looked at the two figures on the couch, somewhat saddened that he had to awaken them. It was dawn and from what he could tell it had ceased snowing hours ago. He wasn't entirely sure, but he was almost certain that he'd heard some sort of giant machinery outside during the night—a plow, more than likely. There was only one road to Reykjavík and he imagined that the Icelandic authorities probably didn't like to leave it inaccessible for very long.

His eyes burned. He was desperately sleepy, but he'd somehow figured out how to work the dead woman's coffee pot. He'd since drank half of it and then left the warmer on for Amon and Robin, should they want coffee upon awakening.

It was a shame to wake them, though. They looked so clichéd-ly peaceful lying there on the couch together, the narrowness of the old piece of furniture forcing them to become mostly one entity while they slept. In some ways it amazed him to see them there together, but in most ways it did not. Robin had been obviously despaired last night, and had needed solace that Nagira could not have offered even if he'd tried. Amon had been lost in his own little world after he'd stoically and methodically held the pillow over Gróa's face (she hadn't even struggled or fought, simply succumbed to the lack of oxygen, having been what she really wanted). Whether or not Amon would have ever admitted it, he had probably needed Robin's own brand of comfort just as much as she had needed his.

Nagira started moving towards the couch. His foot hit a creaky floorboard and Amon's eyes snapped open, wincing slightly in the morning light. Body shifting slightly, he looked up at his brother over the top of Robin's sleep-mussed hair, blinking rapidly to clear the sleep-daze from his eyes. Nagira nodded at him.

"Sorry," he murmured quietly. "It's time to get up. It's dawn and I think we can make it back to town, now. Gróa's ex-husband is going to meet us at the hotel."

Amon stirred minimally, tensing his muscles and stretching in place like a cat, the tenseness and movement causing Robin to murmur in her sleep and move against him.

"There's coffee in a pot in the kitchen," Nagira informed Amon, and noticed that Robin's eyes were starting to flicker open then, too. Amon's hand disentangled from Robin's hair and rubbed at one of his eyes. He forced them open wide; forcing alertness on himself. "I'd recommend getting washed up at the sink in the kitchen, too, buddy. You're still covered in blood. There's probably some dried blood on Robin now, too. I'm gonna go get washed up in the bathroom and then we should probably try to go outside and dig that damn car out of the snow."

Amon nodded, Robin seeming to hide against him as if she was embarrassed at having been discovered in her position; silent, as if Nagira wouldn't see her if he couldn't see her face or hear her voice. "We'll have to clear a path to the road as well, more than likely," he said, business-like, apparently not concerned for once at how Nagira was looking at him and Robin. "Even after we dig it out I don't think it's going to be able to make it through drifts without some help."

"You're right." Nagira scrutinized his brother. "Can you see?"

"Yeah," Amon groused, "somewhat. It feels like I've been swimming in a chlorinated pool with my eyes open for days. Everything's very...foggy."

Nagira nodded, and then gestured vaguely in the direction of the bathroom. "Well, I'm gonna go clean up. You two should get some coffee and get clean, and suit up. I'll meet you guys outside."

"Yeah."

Nagira turned and walked towards the hallway, shooting one last furtive glance back at the figures on the couch before entering the darkened pathway. Robin was turning around and sitting up, rubbing at her eyes quietly, and Amon was scooting over and sitting up on his end of the couch, looking off in another direction. Entering the hallway, Nagira couldn't keep the slight smirk off his face as he pushed open the blood-spattered bathroom door, despite the grimness of the entire situation.

Ah, young love.

It had taken them the better part of an hour to mostly uncover the Mercedes enough to where it could move on its own power out of the blanket of snow that had settled heavily upon it. Despite the frigid temperatures and the slight wind, Robin was sweaty and hot from exertion inside her winter clothing. They'd then set to work clearing a modest path out to the road—which had indeed, as Nagira had mentioned, been plowed during the night.

Nagira stopped to survey their progress in clearing a path, his hair more than a bit un-gelled and wild, and a cigarette dangling from his lips. He'd opted to give Robin and Amon the two shovels he found in the cellar, and had settled for an awkward rake of some kind for his own use—it meant that he had to work twice as hard to clear the same amount of snow that Robin and Amon could clear somewhat easily with a shovel. "I think," he said, squinting back at the Mercedes, "we can probably get it to move through this now."

Amon looked over at his somewhat disheveled brother, being somewhat disheveled himself. His hair was pulled back into the messy knot at the nape of his neck to keep it out of his face while he worked, his shadow turned stubble was threatening to become passable facial hair at any time, and his forehead glistened with sweat. "There's still too much snow on the ground."

"We'd be digging for another hour to get this path clear enough to drive that sucker through without a problem," the lawyer said with a shrug, tossing his rake off to the side, where it alit upon a giant snow pile. "I'm fucking beat. I've got an idea."

Amon eyed him warily. "What?"

Robin's hands opened in shock when Nagira came to her through the still moderately deep snow and took the shovel out of them, tossing it off by his rake. "Robin's going to steer and we're going to push."

"That is not going to work." Amon frowned severely. "She can't control a vehicle on ice and we can't really push a vehicle on ice either."

"Quit'cher bitchin'," Nagira said good-naturedly. Robin moved along in mute compliance as he steered her back up the snow path towards the SUV. "Here's the deal. I'm going to turn the car on and put it in neutral and you're just going to steer, okay? Us big, burly men are going to push it from the front and see if we can't just get it out to the road that way."

From forty feet behind them, Amon threw his own shovel off to the side. "This isn't going to work," he called out in irritation. Nagira muttered something under his breath that Robin didn't fully catch, and stepped aside as he opened the door to the Mercedes. "If we can't push it any further," Nagira went on, apparently ignoring the man in black in the distance, "all you have to do is shift," here he indicated the shift knob in the center console, "from neutral to reverse and give it a little bit of gas. A little bit, Robin, not a lot. The gas pedal is the right one. Left is the brake. Keep your window down so we can holler back and forth, okay?"

Robin wasn't sure how capable she was going to be of handling the vehicle, but she remembered Amon's words echoing in her head—she couldn't shirk away from everything just because she was afraid of it. And she desperately, desperately wanted to escape the frozen wasteland of death. "Okay." She climbed up into the driver's seat and took the proffered keys. Nagira indicated the ignition key and she stuck it awkwardly into the ignition slot. Turning it, the SUV's engine came to life a bit shudderingly.

Amon's figure appeared in the rear view mirror, coming up along side the vehicle, stalking through the thick snow. "Let it warm up for a moment. The engine will just stall if you don't let it warm up—it's too cold out here. While Robin sat in the seat with the door open and the SUV running, Amon and Nagira grumbled to each other and worked at kicking snow out from around the tires of the car.

After a few minutes Nagira came around and shut Robin's door, and she located the button on the door console to roll her window down. Amon came up and stood beside his brother, looking into the interior of the vehicle at Robin's nervous little form sitting in the driver's seat. "Put your foot on the brake pedal and shift it into neutral," Nagira instructed. Looking down to ascertain that she was putting her foot in the right place, Robin did as she was told. A panicked look came over her face when the vehicle began to roll backwards slightly, and her knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. Her foot jammed on the brake pedal fiercely, eyes wide.

Nagira laughed, a welcome sound that had been absent for the last day. "Don't worry, Robin, you're not going anywhere. The ground is icy and you're on an incline. It's going to slide backwards when it's in neutral."

The brothers crossed around to the front of the vehicle, Amon grumbling to Nagira who replied back dismissively. Robin looked over the steering wheel at them through the windshield as they braced themselves the best they could in the snow and put their hands on the SUV's hood. "Alright, let off the brake," Nagira called to Robin and she did so slowly. She was rolling backwards again and Nagira and Amon were slipping about slightly as they pushed, but the car was moving backwards through the snow. She could feel the bumps as the wheels rolled over particularly thick areas of snow.

"Steer, Robin," Amon called from the front of the vehicle, looking up at her. "Cut the wheel. It's going to hit that big embankment."

Robin blinked and then looked behind her in confusion and saw that indeed the rear end of the Mercedes was about to hit the wall of snow they'd shoveled to the side in their efforts to clear a path. She began to turn the wheel to the left and panicked vaguely when the car slid, unresponsive, heading directly for the embankment. She froze.

"Other way, Robin!" Amon called. "Turn it the other way!"

Fully panicked then, Robin grabbed the wheel and began to crank frantically in the other direction. The car slid some more and thankfully went in the other direction, but not before it slid about a foot faster than any of them had anticipated.

The result was Nagira's sudden disappearance from the front of the Mercedes. Robin, still nervous and panicked, jammed on the brakes suddenly and the vehicle slid for a few inches before coming to a stop. Amon looked down to the side of him in what could only be described as mute bewilderment. For a moment Robin's mind raced—had she run him over? There was no possible way—

And then Amon burst into laughter, something Robin had never really heard, something she never would have imagined under the circumstances. Amon's impeccable mask of a face crinkled with the effort of it, lines around his eyes and mouth that were not normally present appearing. His teeth were white and perfect—no, Robin's brain took it back, upon closer observation—his lower teeth appeared to be a bit crooked, but just slightly. Was that a dimple she saw?

"I told you that this wasn't going to work," he said, in between booming peals of laughter. Looking to her side, Robin shifted the knob into the park position, and opened her door and clambered out. Rounding the hood carefully on the slick ground, she was greeted with the sight of Nagira on the ground flat on his stomach, rubbing his forehead. Amon was still laughing.

"Laugh it up, hippie," the man on the ground scowled, pushing himself up slowly and unsteadily. "Christ...who would've thought that bumpers were as sturdy as they looked?" He rubbed at his forehead in amazement, looking back at his hand as if he expected to see blood. "Fuck that hurt."

Amon was grinning, displaying his slightly crooked lower teeth. Robin wondered how they had gotten that way. Grinning thusly lent a strange slant to his eyes that was not normally apparent, and that was discernable as neither Japanese nor European. It simply looked foreign and cunning. "Good thing your head is both harder than a rock and completely empty."

Reaching out suddenly, Nagira gave his brother a slight shove, which did nothing to cease his chuckling—even if it did cause him to slip about a bit on the slick, snowy ground. "Are you okay?" Robin asked, concerned. Nagira had obviously slipped on the ice and fallen, hitting his head in the process.

He nodded. "I'll be fine as soon as I stop seeing stars. Man."

Amon was slowly but surely bringing himself back under control, his face settling back into the emotionless mask in measures. The smile lines around his eyes and mouth faded back into smoothness and his mouth eventually retook its characteristic downward turn. His eyes, however, still smiled somehow. He looked to Robin. "Ready to steer again?" he asked of her.

Back in the hotel, he took no chances. Almost immediately he packed up all of his belongings into his bag, not even bothering to change out of his dirty and blood-encrusted clothing. Only after he'd gathered all of his belongings to his satisfaction did he enter the bathroom with a fresh set of clothing and set about showering.

He looked in the mirror at his face. Nagira was right. He did look like a hippie. A tired, slightly gaunt, slightly dangerous hippie. For some reason, his usual fanaticism about staying mostly clean-shaven had packed its own bags and headed off on vacation.

Amon emerged from the bathroom clean, damp-haired, fully dressed, but still sporting a shadow that appeared determined to turn into a beard. He found Robin sitting on the edge of her bed with a plate of food in her hand, eating ravenously and staring occasionally and half-heartedly at the TV. She'd found a station that was in Icelandic but had English subtitles. A discarded cloth napkin was lying crumpled near her skirt-clad knee with some kind of yellow-white sauce on it. It looked like Hollandaise sauce.

He watched her for a moment, his probably ruined dirty clothes in his hand, and then cleared his throat. She looked back at him through a curtain of hair that was slightly limp and greasy from that morning's nervous exertion and lack of washing—it had been two days or so since she'd washed it, hadn't it? Her eyes were wide and startled and her mouth was in the middle of chewing something or another. She looked so perfectly candid, alive—typical of her.

"Where's Nagira?" he asked of her, tucking his dirty clothes into his bag.

"He's in the shower too," she replied after swallowing whatever she'd been eating. She turned back to her plate and scooped up another big bite of something, chewing.

"You should take a shower now, too." Amon's eyes wandered to the TV—it was international news. The language boggled his mind.

"You should eat," she countered around a mouth of food. She turned to look back at him over her shoulder almost—it seemed to his demented brain, anyway—slyly, knowingly, through her curtain of hair. "You're losing weight."

He frowned. "You eat enough for the both of us," he countered right back. "And I am not losing weight." Even though he was, he didn't feel compelled to admit it. "You're dirty. I think a bath would do you good."

"I will," Robin replied, turning her attention back to the TV. "Why didn't you shave?" she asked suddenly while groping blindly for her napkin.

For that, Amon didn't have a good reply. "I'm not sure."

"If I take a bath, will you eat?" she asked, looking at him with a raised eyebrow. An ultimatum. He mirrored her look, arching a superior eyebrow right back at her.

"I'll think about it," he replied mysteriously. "But that means you should go take a bath. You wouldn't want me to waste away into nothing, would you?"

Robin leveled a look at him that seemed to be several things at once via her eyes—amusement, hurt, irritation—and then set her plate on the edge of her bed with a sigh, dropping the silverware onto the uneaten remnants of her food. Still chewing a bite with relative vigor, she moved purposefully into the bathroom and closed the door resolutely behind her.

"Are you eating yet?" she called from behind the door. Amon rubbed at one of his eyes, a very, very faint smirk appearing on his lips. He turned and headed for Nagira's room to where his laptop still sat, connected. Before eating, he had some research to do.

He and his brother were sitting down eating when Robin finally snuck into the room a little over an hour later, skin still pink and warm-looking from her bath. In an effort to appear as if he'd eaten more than he actually had and appease Robin, he reached over immediately and shoveled a large bite of sole fillet into his mouth, chewing. He'd mostly picked at the food, instead immersed in the computer. Nagira had been eating with his usual slowness, smoking and staring and chatting throughout the meal.

As envisioned, Robin came over and eyeballed Amon's plate expectantly. "You've eaten less than I did," she said disapprovingly, and then went away shufflingly, flopping on Nagira's unmade bed. Her hand groped blindly for the remote for the TV and flipped it on. A second later, almost as an afterthought, she rolled over and yanked open the bedside table drawer, pulling out the perfunctory copy of the Bible. Flipping through it idly she settled on a page and started to read.

Amon looked at her pointedly, even though he knew she could not see him from behind the book, and took another large bite even though his food was mostly cold by then and somewhat unappetizing. What did it matter how much he'd eaten, anyway? He could feel his brother's lazy glance upon him, amused and almost taunting. He ignored it.

"I've been trying to locate information about Gróa's ex-husband," he said after he'd swallowed a bite of food. "I've been having difficulty doing so."

Robin turned a dead-skin thin page of the Bible, apparently unconcerned. "Ah."

Nagira looked back to Robin with detached interest and then turned back to his own food. Amon blinked and then looked over to her once more, taking another forkful of food into his mouth even though his stomach protested. "Yeah," he said, after swallowing the bite. "He seems to be a rather difficult character to find information on."

"Hmm." Robin's fingers were slipping under the next page, getting ready to turn it. Amon blinked.

"Do you care? Or have you resigned to give up?" he asked suddenly, bluntly. He recalled her words from the prior evening and worried that she may have just decided that it would have been easier to let him do all the work from there on out. She lowered the Bible and looked at him, an evenly smoldering glance that seemed heated in its indifference.

"I'm not giving up," Robin replied, steel under her voice. Obviously his words to her the night before had hit somewhere deep within, put the fire back into her fight, the mettle back into her conviction. "Which one of us is uncaring and resigned?" she asked quietly, her voice innocent but evil all at the same time. "You haven't been taking care of yourself."

A snicker came from next to Amon very quietly; Nagira was amused by the exchange.

"Regardless," Amon said coolly, determined not to let his ward's sudden superior attitude get to him, "you are showing no interest in the events it seems."

Silence reigned, punctuated by the sounds of Icelandic TV echoing through the room. Amon's fork clinked against his plate as he stabbed the remaining bit of the sole fillet, sticking it into his mouth. Nagira lit a cigarette.

"I'm interested," she said, diminutive, from behind the Good Book. "I am, however, currently helpless. There's nothing we can do right now. I'm taking advantage of it."

Amon was silent. Nagira was smirking. And Robin read the Bible. It was unspokenly obvious which one of them had won. And so the next thirty minutes wore on in desolate silence, the silence of Robin immersing herself in other things, the silence of Nagira wanting to say something so badly but biting his tongue, and the silence of Amon clearing his plate, somewhat disgruntled that he felt like he had something to prove to someone.

And he was fairly certain of who that someone was, but wasn't entirely willing to admit it. When he finished his plate—nothing left, even all the sauce scraped off by use of awkward fork—he set it down on the table next to him with a decisive clink of metal on glass and looked to his laptop screen firmly. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed Robin peer over the top of her beloved Bible at his plate in an approving matter then go back to reading her book.

"His name's Trygve," Nagira said to Amon after he'd finished his own plate mostly. He shrugged. "If you'd wanted to know that much about him you could have asked. Gróa's sister's name is Sigrún, and their child's name is Eirikur." Nagira looked immensely pleased with himself, almost glowing. "I know where they've been living and everything. I only talked with Trygve for, you know, two hours or so the other night. You could have asked me."

A frown issued forth from Amon as if he could just feel both of the bodies in the room exuding secret pleasure at having one-upped him, right after each other. Robin said nothing, only turned the pages of her Bible. Nagira looked at his brother inquisitively, waiting to see what he would do. Merely nodding, the ex-Hunter leaned back in his chair some, his stomach feeling vaguely ill and protesting at the sudden abundance of food within it. "I see."

The girl on the bed suddenly grew tired of the Bible it seemed and laid it aside. She blinked tiredly at the television set, her green eyes glazed and dim, wet hair in semi-disarray due to the pillow she laid upon. Robin folded her hands on her chest, under her small breasts and inhaled deeply, staring at the television for a moment as if she was seeing right through it. Her brain was working, something was chewing at her mind; Amon could tell.

And belatedly he wondered why she refused to wear a bra. It was distracting.

Years had passed, in her absence from the land of her birth. She'd not returned mostly out of shame and fear, unfamiliarity and awkwardness. Her homeland was a womb to her, enveloping, welcoming—but the feelings and the memories associated with it were not. The land welcomed her with open arms but the souls of her family and the memories contained there within sneered at her coming.

It was late. It was between night and dawn and she was marching down the richly-carpeted hallway of the hotel, her short legs stalking like they meant business, her sleeping child bouncing in her arms, a comforting weight; just as he had been when he had been within her own womb, bouncing and kicking as she had walked.

Her sister had been the one whose name had meant to produce; fertile. Her name was merely the name of a Valkyrie from Norse legend, a name that literally meant secret victory. And what a secret victory that had been—the child that should have been her older sister's bouncing sleepily in her own small arms.

Even as she walked she felt the swelling pride of a new life within her—barely a few weeks along, another child that would have been her sister's—her dead sister's. Already her body began to feel the warm and maternal protectiveness of pregnancy, the heavy, pleasant drowsiness of the filling out of the curves, the breasts, the hips, stomach.

She was marching, child in arms, towards the room of the girl who would someday bear the child—children—who would be the worthy progenitors of their race, the girl who would become the woman who would rule them and guide them and pick those around her who would help her to govern her society. In the growing shadow of SOLOMON's power, their collective—the woman with the child, her husband's, her children's, her fellows'—futures hinged on the survival, the decisions, and the education of this strange girl that she had never met.

Sigrún Guðmundsdóttir moved on authoritatively, confidently, nervously, towards room one hundred and thirty three. There she would find the man who was the brother of the one who guarded the Eve. The man who had spoken with her husband—her husband, who was also her ex-brother-in-law. The man was the one that had informed Trygve that the guardian had complied with her sister's dying wishes and speeded her along to Valhalla, to the Gods.

Sigrún couldn't feel bitterness or anger towards the guardian. He was everything they could have wanted in a guardian for the Eve, obviously not much given to his own moral indignations to things. He was not afraid to do what needed to be done.

And she, the Eve, she was a mystery yet to be discovered. She was their hope and their dreams. And she needed to be rescued and taken away from this place. Trygve had originally been set to go to Iceland to retrieve the entourage, but had been waylaid by business affairs. Sigrún and her child (children) had come instead.

Sigrún closed her eyes, pressing Eirikur's sleeping forehead against her neck delicately, savouring the intimate press of her child's flesh. The eve—Robin Lucretia Sena, her given name—needed to be pried from the womb of Iceland because its spirits and gods had rejected her just the way that they had rejected Sigrún—the same spirits and gods that were welcoming Gróa into their halls with open arms, with full goblets and plates.

A knock at the door immediately jolted Amon's slightly fuzzy senses into full alarm. He was up and reeling for the door in Nagira's room before he even knew it, somewhat unaware that his senses had allowed themselves to stretch that far in his semi-nightly watch over Robin. She slept on quietly in her bed, a maize-haired lump beneath her blankets. He moved through the rooms' adjoining doors silently and found his brother turning on the bedside light, squinting in curiosity.

"Someone's at the door," Nagira hissed, reaching into his bedside table for the gun that Amon had supplied him with. Amon's trusty fellow, the .440 Desert Eagle was already in his hands, ready to be fired regardless of the proximity to others, if need be. Tensed, he paused for a moment looking back at Nagira with warning in his eyes before cracking open the door to the hotel room.

The sight of what he saw in front of his grey eyes made his guard drop a notch.

A small, very blonde woman, fairer in skin and hair than any he had ever seen, stood in front of him with a chubby, cherubic sleeping infant in her arms. The weight and importance of her gaze caused him to open the door further of his own accord without even knowing why despite the fact that his senses were screaming in protest. Behind him Nagira waited anxiously, poised and ready to kill.

"You are Amon Novotne," she said, lowly, ominously, "and I am Sigrún Guðmundsdóttir. This is my child, Eirikur Einarsson, born to me of the man named Trygve Einarsson—my former brother-in-law, the ex-husband of my deceased sister, Gróa Guðmundsdóttir. I have been sent by my husband to receive you and ensure you safe passage to Portugal at all costs."

Amon's hand let the door fall completely open, completely ensnared and caught unaware by the woman's frank, business-like air. His hand gripped his gun uselessly and Nagira hovered in the distance behind him, gawking at the ethereally fair woman in front of them and the sleeping babe in her arms. He blinked, feeling severely ill-equipped and underdressed in a pair of slacks, without shirt.

"I killed your sister, Gróa Guðmundsdóttir," Amon uttered without thought. "I am the man who killed your sister."

Sigrún smiled sadly at him, displaying small and even teeth. "I am the woman who killed my sister in the first place—and you are not the man who killed her. You are the man who granted her passage to the afterworld, and for that you can never be blamed or hated. The afterlife is a coveted thing." She stepped into the room without asking, both men gazing at her in amazement—she was even shorter than her sister had been, and Gróa had by no means been an exceedingly tall woman. She had been even shorter than Robin, and that was saying a lot. "You are Syunji Nagira, the man who risks his own life and well-being to save witches. Well met."

"Cute kid," Nagira replied, in semi-shock himself. Everything was happening so quickly and the woman simply seemed to be taking charge of the situation. Something about her radiated power—and Amon, watching his brother and the woman, wasn't sure if it was the sense of knowledge and pervading sadness that issued forth from her or the invisible ripples of her power in the air that he felt. Something within him that was primitive and base cowered at her presence in the room—it was his Craft, small and fledgling, bowing down before the Craft of someone who was unfamiliar, assertive, and very powerful.

Sigrún inclined her head to Nagira with an almost coquettish air, and then she extended Eirikur's peaceful, sleeping form towards Nagira. "You may hold him while I go and awaken the Eve."

Nagira wordlessly took the child from his mother's outstretched arms, looking decidedly awkward when the baby mewled and squirmed in his arms at the sudden change of position. Sigrún, seemingly unconcerned, strode towards the open door that conjoined the two rooms and went through it. Amon was suddenly hot on her heels, his primitive fear overridden by the instinct to protect Robin at all costs.

The Icelandic woman's small hand flicked on the light, and they both stopped in the doorway to behold Robin sitting up in the bed, looking at the doorway evenly, if not a bit sleepily. She rubbed at one of her eyes and sat up, holding her blankets to her slip-clad form, appearing like a child awakening from a nap.

"I felt someone coming," Robin said almost apologetically. "In my dreams—I could hear you thinking. I could hear your...worries, as you came down the hall."

"My hopes?" Sigrún asked hopefully.

Robin appeared uncomfortable. "...I suppose those, as well."

"What of my husband?" Sigrún asked pleadingly, eagerly; sounding like a little girl begging her wise grandmother to tell her a story. Gone was the authoritive air that she'd worn in Nagira's room.

Robin once again squirmed, looking distinctly uncomfortable. Her green eyes darted to Amon's grey—which watched her intently—and then to some spot in front of her, unfocussed. "You...worried about Gróa. You worried about your husband. And...in the dream, there was another voice speaking to me...two of them, very small."

Sigrún was wordlessly excited.

"...Children, it seemed," Robin murmured confusedly.

Amon looked to the small woman in front of him, his own brow furrowed. "There is only one child with you, no?"

Sigrún turned to him, her face glowing. "Only one that is apparent," she said proudly. "The other one grows within me and it knows its mistress—I feel it within me. She truly is the Eve."

Amon grew defensive. "I never had a doubt in my mind."

Robin blinked, clearing her throat, drawing attention in the room back to her. Nagira had entered then, a stirring baby in his arms gurgling and reaching for its mother. "It was just a dream."

Sigrún smiled widely, gazing at Robin. "Then what dreams you have!"

The ring on Sigrún's finger glistened hugely and importantly in the light, sparkling and twinkling. She appeared unconcerned as to its size, unaware that it was even there. Amon had definitely noticed it and he knew that Nagira had as well—a whispered comment into his ear as Robin dressed in the bathroom and Sigrún busied herself with Eirikur—look at that rock.

And as she sat next to him gesturing and waving her hands as she spoke, Amon couldn't help but notice the sheer size of the wedding ring on the dead woman's sister next to him. The child Eirikur busied himself with latching onto locks of his mother's long, cornsilk blonde hair. Giggling at Amon, displaying a mouth already boasting a few tiny pearls of teeth, Eirikur placed the end of a plait of his mother's hair into his mouth and chewed.

Unused to dealing with children and not really certain what to do, Amon's gaze moved down to Sigrún's still-flat belly. Somewhere in there a child grew, and somehow that child had spoken to Robin. Amon looked back to Sigrún's face, animated in talking to Nagira. There was a slight resemblance to Gróa but it was only slight. Sigrún looked younger, healthier, happier—and undeniably more beautiful. There was something about her that Gróa had lacked. Gróa had seemed more worn and wearied; more like a slightly embittered mother figure than her younger sister. She was plainer and less mystifying, and Amon had the distinct feeling that she might have been a tad more practical than her younger sister, less given to the whims of destiny.

It made him feel like an immense asshole but Amon could see why a man would possibly leave Gróa for Sigrún. There was just something about her that won you to her side immediately.

It was the same something that Robin possessed as well. It had taken him a while to realize what a truly rare gift that power was, the power to make people love you. It worked almost infallibly, this he had belatedly realized as well. After all, it had worked on him in no time, before he was even conscious of the fact that it had. And then even after he had realized that Robin had somehow worked her magic on him, he spent most of his time and energy to combating it.

"...absolutely useless," Sigrún was saying as Amon's mind floated back into the conversation, and for a split second his defenses bristled as he instinctually felt that she had been talking about him fighting Robin's power over him. "Trygve has realized this. And that's why he's been slowly but surely forming alliances, banding us together. We cannot do anything alone, this is certain."

Nagira nodded sagely, looking at the woman and her child inquisitively. "So then your interests in little Robin and my brother are purely for strategy reasons?"

Sigrún looked taken aback. "No," she said slowly. "...I can't say that their combined power isn't a large reason of why we're glad you found us, but their survival is important as well. As a group, they will be better protected and not live in quite as much danger."

Amon's mind snapped fully to and realized that his fate was being talked about as if he wasn't even in the room, or as if he was as helpless as the child in Sigrún's arms. "Don't tell me there's no hope at all," he muttered under his breath, causing the two other adults' heads to jerk towards him. "Together we stand, divided we fall. Pink Floyd lyrics," he said to Sigrún's questioning look. "I'll decide for myself as to when and how my power will be used. And I'm sure Robin will do the same—and even if she doesn't, or she can't, I will not allow her to be used as some sort of pawn."

Nagira nodded. "I second that."

"We wouldn't dream of such a thing," Sigrún said while gently disentangling Eirikur's little fists from her long hair, wincing minutely. "Please believe that. Amon and Robin combined could probably do away with most of us if they truly pleased. After all, they've successfully eliminated everything that SOLOMON's thrown at them." She smirked evilly. "One wonders how many more little cronies they've prepared to throw at you, or if they're starting to scrape the bottom of the bucket?"

"Hardly." Robin appeared in the doorway to the bathroom, looking somehow clean and composed. On closer inspection Amon noticed that she had apparently scrubbed her face—either that or she had been crying—it appeared red and pristine, almost raw. Walking over to where they sat, her long reddish-brown skirt swished around her boots and she stopped next to Amon, placing her hands on her tiny hips. Her simple form fitting black t-shirt seemed to be elegant and commanding. Maybe it was just because she was standing above him. "I don't think SOLOMON's running low. I don't think anyone's even sure how many operatives they really have."

Amon nodded, finding himself settling into the position of backing up Robin's statements a lot easier than he would have originally figured it to be. Maybe that was because he knew that she was the one they really wanted, that she was the one that was really important—he was powerful, but he was nowhere near as powerful as she was. And unlike her he did not have the power to bear more little witches just as powerful as himself. "To get a good idea, I would start by just assuming that anyone under the influence of the Church is a SOLOMON operative. After all, whenever SOLOMON needs more manpower, that's where they turn. They take whatever and whoever they want out of the churches and the abbeys, the monasteries and the convents, the orphanages...not to mention the collection plates, as well." He frowned, rubbing at his chin, fingers sliding over the sandpaper facial hair there. "One also cannot forget to take into account the loose cannon factors—people who simply seek SOLOMON out because they want to and people that SOLOMON simply more or less yanks out of life."

Nagira made a dull chuckling noise. "People like you?"

"People like me." Amon's frown was concealed behind his hand and Robin squirmed next to him faintly. It was almost as if she sensed his discomfort at Nagira making such a deliberately personal statement about him in front of someone they didn't know.

The young witch cleared her throat timidly yet purposefully. "Amon's right. They aren't going to run out of people to send after us. And..."

"...what about in-fighting?" Nagira brought up, leaning forward in his chair. "I've been around the witch-world long enough to know that you guys can be downright vicious when it comes to power struggles." He watched Sigrún's almost embarrassed look and deduced that he had hit a soft spot. "Maybe these two were right to stay ronin all this time—it seems that whenever you guys start forming large groups the first thing you do is start fighting each other, not SOLOMON."

Amon nodded silently in agreement to his brother's statement. He'd Hunted witches for long enough to know that Nagira was right; sometimes, cruelly enough, it was even the best way to Hunt them. Sometimes it had been much easier to just step back and let them kill each other off, or trick them into thinking that each other was the enemy via disinformation and a few strategic killings. Then all one had to do was sit back and watch the bullets, Crafts, and general nastiness fly, and the body count rise.

Sigrún nodded sadly, shifting Eirikur in her lap. The baby made various jabbering noises and reached determinedly for Robin. His mother suddenly and unceremoniously handed the baby to Robin who accepted him with bewilderment, shifting the heavy baby weight in her arms. "It's true that witches often spend more time squabbling amongst each other for power rather than fighting the true enemy," she admitted. "But we are changing that. That isn't to say that there aren't those who are our enemies, those who wish to do us harm. But we are being as diplomatic as possible—Trygve realizes that we have nothing to gain by fighting amongst ourselves and everything to lose." She looked pensive, holding back words as she thought about them. "This isn't to say that occasionally we must fight to defend ourselves. When we are attacked, we must defend ourselves. But we never intentionally initiate conflict with others. That's not our goal."

Amon's hand moved away from his mouth and he looked over at their new Icelandic friend with a serious, discerning look. "What is your goal, then?" Robin, who had been up until that point engrossed with walking back and forth jouncing Eirikur in her thin arms and coaxing baby-grins out of him, turned to the conversation with interest in her green eyes. Amon forced himself not to let his eyes wander to the strange and somehow oddly appealing sight of Robin with a baby in her arms and instead riveted his eyes to Sigrún's pale blue ones. She blinked back at him and then smiled enigmatically, her child cooing in the background. Nagira lit a cigarette.

"I suppose you'll find out, won't you?" she said with a lilt in her voice.