In two steps, Caius was standing by Yeul's side. "How long have you known of this?" He asked in a quiet, deadly voice.

The spymaster blanched at Caius's tone. "Last night," he reported. "The information was verified only twenty minutes ago. I swear," he added when Caius continued to glare.

Yeul pressed her hand over Caius's forearm and reluctantly the Guardian broke eye contact. "You believe Paddra will be attacked?" Yeul asked.

The creases smoothed away from the spymaster's forehead as he addressed the seeress. "At this point we can't be completely positive. The Silentknife Clan has fought with its sister tribe, the Warmaker Clan, in the past. But the Warmakers are still healing from their resounding loss at Paddra's hands - " Here he glanced flickeringly up at Caius and then back to Yeul " - and they do not have the proper strength to participate in the sport."

Sport. Was that what fighting and death were? Caius narrowed his eyes again at the spymaster, but the man kept his eyes steadfastly on Yeul and did not react.

"Then we are the target," Yeul murmured.

"The fact that the Silentknife Clan is the only one preparing for battle, and that this comes so closely after the incident with the assassin... yes, that is our conclusion," the spymaster said.

Yeul slowly lowered her eyes. "I cannot say if Paddra will be faced with war again in my lifetime," she said, "for I have not seen a vision confirming this."

Caius and the spymaster waited as Yeul took a measured breath. At length she said, "tell your men to be watchful. At the moment I do not think there is an immediate threat. Please notify me if this changes."

The spymaster bowed his head respectfully. "As you command, seeress. I will be vigilant; I will allow no enemy of Paddra's to take us by surprise, especially on the day of your celebration."

Yeul frowned. At once Caius knew that she had forgotten. "Celebration?" She echoed. "For what occasion?"

The spymaster looked surprised for a moment. "The... celebration to honor your birth."

"My..." Yeul blinked and Caius caught the quick glance she sent his direction. "Yes, my birthday," she affirmed to the spymaster. "Please take care that a surprise attack does not happen; many Paddrans could be hurt."

He bowed and swept out of the room.

Yeul waited until the footsteps faded from the air before murmuring, "I had forgotten."

"You forgot your own birthday," Caius said, his eyebrows raised slightly in mild teasing.

"Yes. It is an ironic thing." She turned to look at him. Despite the curvature of her lips, there was no joy in her smile. "It gives my people happiness," she told him, "and so I am happy."

His faint amusement faded. His eyes searched her face, examining the deceptive expression for the half-hearted tone he heard in her voice. He didn't find it. Eventually he said, "another memory."

She looked away. "It will be that," she agreed. "It will be that."

Yeul's seventeenth birthday came.

She twisted her hair into a knot behind her head, as she did for all the public occasions. Wearing her crown, she was paraded through the city in a carved chair, carried by the men in her guard. Caius walked at her side. The people filled the streets to watch her pass - cheering, calling, and throwing flowers and bright pieces of gold to her, their seeress. The ritual celebration of her birth lasted several hours, starting from sunrise, and often Caius glanced up at Yeul to see how she was faring. She sat straight-backed in her chair, a small benevolent smile fixed to her face.

In the afternoon followed a massive banquet, with enough delicacies to feed even the smallest child in Paddra. Throughout the feast crowds of people lined up to offer Yeul gifts - embroidered clothes, jewelry, and circlets of flowers were all accepted by the seeress with a smile and murmured, polite thanks. But Caius saw what her people could not: the slight droop in her shoulders, the pale shade of her skin, the beads of perspiration on her forehead from the burning summer sun.

The moon lit the sky when Yeul was finally carried back to her living quarters on the chair. Snatches of song and chants toasting the seeress could be heard from the high windows, even this late into the night. As the guards knelt and gently placed the seat on the ground, Yeul stood, scattering the small flowers that had tangled themselves in her woven ceremonial gown. Caius held out his hand and she gripped it as she stepped down. "Thank you," she told her bearers. "You may go."

She waited until the guards had turned away before sagging, her held breath rushing out in a sigh. Immediately Caius wrapped an arm around her waist, holding her up.

"I am sorry," she mumbled, resting her forehead against his shoulder. "I do not seem to have the energy to stand."

Beneath her thin clothing, Caius could feel her trembling with the effort. He understood why she disliked her birthday celebration so, and why she wished to forget them. "I will take you to your room," he told her in his quiet, low voice.

"Please."

He helped her slowly walk down the short hallway and into her room. She sank wearily onto her bed and Caius watched as her hands dug into the linen blankets, balling the fabric up in her fists. "Sometimes," she said tiredly, "I think - "

Suddenly her green eyes turned to glowing gold.

Caius stepped back, pausing respectfully until the light faded and Yeul began to blink. She seemed somewhat disoriented.

"That was strange," Yeul mused to herself.

"What was it?"

"A jumble of images. The moment I recognized what I was seeing, it changed. I saw many scenes - a setting sun, a dark ocean, a dead butterfly on a blade of grass - but there was no order to them." She glanced up at him. Her face, grey from the long day's activities, was mystified.

"I don't understand," Caius said, puzzled.

Yeul looked away from him and out toward one of the long slanting windows. A servant had lit the candles and lanterns in the room and the crown glinted on Yeul's head, looking bright against her pale hair. "And there were no people," she said in a half-whisper.

The words seemed to echo and fill the room, sounding more ominous with every passing minute. But to Caius, it seemed there was nothing he could say.

Very carefully, Yeul put down the silver utensils. "I cannot."

The cook, having only just placed the platter of food before them, stared.

Yeul raised her head. "I am sorry," she told the woman. "Thank you for this, but I am simply full from the celebration feast yesterday."

An easy lie, Caius thought at Yeul's side.

The cook accepted Yeul's words with a nod and a relieved smile before shuffling away.

There was a long moment of silence. Yeul glanced at her Guardian. "Please, eat."

Caius sat back, resolved not to touch his food until she did. "Have you stored the vision in the Oracle Drive?" He questioned, guessing that she must still be uncomfortable with the vision she received the night before.

"Yes. I have re-watched the contents and they remain vague."

"The goddess has not revealed its meaning?"

"No." Her delicate profile was troubled. "I have never received a foretelling without a definitive purpose before. It bodes... ill, I believe."

As soon as she finished speaking, Yeul became rigid. Her eyes flashed and she gasped a little, surprised at the images that Caius could not see.

She came out of the vision a minute later, looking pale and visibly upset. Before Caius could frame the words to ask what happened, Yeul turned to look at him. Her eyes were wide in trepidation. "Etro is... displeased with me," she said, her voice a faint breath of air in the suddenly too-quiet room.

Caius's pulse pounded in his ears. The thought seemed almost too unlikely to be true: the goddess, displeased with her servant? True, Yeul had broken her vows and had changed Paddra's fate, but the cause was just, Caius thought. Uneasily he wondered what Etro would do to punish Yeul's disobedience. Take away her visionary abilities? Kill her?

He had the heart of Etro in his chest. Caius focused on it, using the same sort of sideways nudge he used to make it glow. The muscle beat, strong and steady. He could sense no anger or disgust there - only his own anxious worry for Yeul.

Yeul abruptly stood, her seat rocking back violently. "Forgive me," she told Caius, but her head was bowed and her hair hung like sheets, hiding her eyes. "I must pray."

Without looking at him she turned and walked to the door, shutting it quietly behind her.

Yeul did not receive a response.

"The goddess is slow to hear my prayers because I sealed away the Ugallu," Yeul told Caius a few days later. "I have betrayed her trust. I deserve her scorn."

Caius tried, repeatedly, to tell Yeul that her actions were legitimate, that Etro's legacy continued to live on because Yeul changed time. He told her that she had protected her people and saved everyone she loved, and no one could fault her for that.

To whatever Caius said, Yeul simply nodded, put on her bland, public smile and turned away.

Slowly the seeress ate less and less. She sat by Caius at mealtimes for appearance's sake, to prevent any of the staff from becoming alarmed. And while Caius did manage to make Yeul eat at least a few bites at lunch and dinner, she spent every other waking moment in meditation and silent prayer in the Temple of Etro. And each evening Caius would have to coerce her to return to her room to sleep.

Caius began to wonder if he, too, should pray to the goddess.

After several days Yeul remarked to him, "my access to the timeline is restricted."

He raised his head to look at her. "You cannot See at all?"

"I can look at everything I've done in my current life," she amended, "but nothing else. Not the past or the future."

"And you have not had another vision since...?"

"No."

He glanced away. This was a grave sign. The goddess Etro had all but completely shut off Yeul's precognitive abilities. Again he wondered if the goddess was planning to kill Yeul. A rush of emotions - most powerfully, protective anger - brought heat to his face and he shuddered. Let it not be so.

"I'm sorry," he told her.

The minutes passed in silence. Yeul picked up the slices of bread and began to crumble them into tiny pieces. "I confess that I had always wondered what my life would be like if I were not the seeress," she said quietly. "If I were a normal girl. If I did not have visions, if I were not honored and respected so. If I did not carry the weight of the responsibilities that I do now."

He turned to study her. Her skin seemed perpetually blanched now, her hair without its usual luster. Her normally soft, low voice had dropped even lower to sound almost scratchy. It hurt to compare her to the girl she had been a week ago. "Yeul," he began.

"In a way, now, I almost feel as if I am experiencing that normalcy," she said, as if he had not spoken. "And I've discovered that it's comforting. The heaviness has dissipated a little, and I am... happy." Her eyes met Caius's shocked expression and she smiled. "It is another sin against Etro to feel this way, I think. But..." She twirled the remaining chunk of bread around and around in her fingers. "What do you believe?"

Caius thought about how he could reply. He supposed the real question was: where was his loyalty strongest? With Etro or Yeul? Etro was the goddess of death and chaos, the one who granted him life, the one who gave Yeul her power. But Yeul was the seeress, the girl who he had slowly come to know since he had become her Guardian. He knew her fears and he had been the only one who had seen the honest, pure smile behind Yeul's mask. She was his duty, his companion...

His friend.

"I would that you were happy," he murmured, wondering if Etro would regard his words as a sin as well. If she did, then he and Yeul would be destroyed together.

A small consolation.

Her smile altered a little, shifting to transform her face into something lighter. Brighter. "Thank you," she said and to Caius's relief, she slid the chunk of bread into her mouth.