Everything in the room seemed to freeze as if time itself had stopped. Silence fell around her as normal nightly sounds just stopped. It had happened a few times before in her life. Always right before She came.

"Arie."

Arie didn't move, didn't even look at the person who had spoken; couldn't.

"It has been a long time since you were so mixed up that your Gift summoned me. What's wrong girl?"

This time she looked up at the ancient face of her half sister. Just like the first time she had ever met her goddess sister, Arie's face had been tear streaked, eyes were red and puffy, and her throat felt swollen shut.

"I, I." Sobs broke her attempts at words, but her sister nodded in understanding.

"Ah, you've been holding for a long time. Think it's time to let it go girl before it eats you whole."

Arie shuddered, "What do you mean?"

The Graveyard Hag looked her over with her one free. "You are not blind Arie. Surely you've noticed your anger at your grandparents was effecting your healing? That anger of yours has been allowed to fester into hate. It cannot be allowed." There was a cold amusement in her sister's eyes.

Arie had a sneaking suspicion that recent events suited her sister too perfectly, and she had been close enough to come to her immediately. "You planned this?" She watched the flicker of amusement in the goddess's eye and that was all the proof she needed her sister had had a hand in the past few days. "You planned all of it! My magic getting outed and him finding me by the tree, him guessing who I am!"

Her sister's eye crinkled with amusement and she chuckled to herself. "Yes, well, most of it. The young knight took things a little farther than I wanted, and I will see that he gets his just rewards for that. But you were never in any danger, Arie."

"Never in any danger," she repeated, anger beating in her blood. "I've been burned out of my home, chased by a blood thirty crowd who would have killed me because of my magic alone, and I was in no danger now," her voice was strangled from stress, but still loud enough to wake the sleeping knight beside her. Though neither Kel nor Jess so much as stirred.

The Graveyard Hag grinned flashing her missing and crooked teeth. "Relax child, you are fine. Besides, it's better that he knows. You should have told him you are your mother's daughter, and his granddaughter."

Arie looked down at her clenched fists. They were callused from years of hard work picking herbs in the forests and she was scarred from her early years of learning to use knives. "I'm not my mother, who is gentle and sweet tempered. I am not a noble woman, nor could I ever live that life. Besides, he let her die." Greif twisted her heart in knots. The memory of her mother struggling to breath while Arie watched helpless to do anything. No, she slammed that thought back into her mind where she wouldn't have remember it. Arie unclenched her fists only to see them shake.

Beside her the goddess rolled a pair of worn dice in her withered hand. She clicked her tongue thoughtfully. "Is that what he really wants in a daughter or granddaughter? A dutiful woman who look pretty and does as she's told." She tossed the dice up in the air and caught them with surprising deftness. "As to him letting her die, he didn't sound like a man who had turned his back on his daughter. Was he even there when you first ask for help?"

"What difference does it make if he was there or not," snapped Arie. "As far as I can see, the fact that he refused to even meet with me makes him guilty."

"Does it," The Graveyard Hag asked thoughtfully. "There is no other option as to why things turned out the way they did?"

Arie stiffened at that tone her sister used. The few times in the past Arie had heard it always meant Arie had missed some small detail. But she shook her head in defiance, if there was something she missed she wasn't ready to see it. Her sister sighed tossing the dice to the floor in between them.

"Even," the goddess whispered. Sure enough the number the dice added up to was even. She cackled in elation and swiped the dice up in her boney fingers. Rolling the little cubes between her fingers she watched Arie with her one good eye, seeming to stare into Arie's very soul. "Do not hold on to your anger, child."

Arie clenched her teeth against the words she wished to hurl at her sister. She wanted to rage against the unfairness of everything thus far. Fighting the urge to demand what she had missed that could make up for everything. But she bit back the angry words, knowing her sister was still a god and not one to be trifled with. The silence afterwards seemed to stretch for hours before The Graveyard Hag broke the silence.

"It was not your fault either that she died, Arie." She threw the dice again not looking at Arie.

The grief Arie had been wrestling with seemed to twist sharply like a knife to her heart. She let out an anguished cry, and tears burned in her eyes. Without any real thought on her part, Arie's body moved toward the window and she looked out on the glittering city. Her hands and legs trembled.

"You don't know that," she croaked out.

"But I do."

Arie laughed bitterly, "So as one of the Great Gods you know where Ark is hiding so I can stick a knife in his back?"

The Graveyard Hag raised her eyebrows at Arie's back. "Even if I knew, I could not sa-"

"Horse shit, you don't follow the rules unless it suits you," Arie snarled turning to her sister.

Now the goddess sighed gave her a long hard look, then she sighed. "Now you are being rude while throwing a tantrum." With a swiftness and strength that Arie had not expected, her sister reached out slapped her. Arie's cheek stung from the blow, but she did nothing. "You may choose to believe me or not, but don't go thinking that gives you the right to call me a liar. There are rules that bind me and mine. Humans are not bound by those same rules since you are half Chaos. If you don't believe me you can ask the willful Wild Mage, Diana.

Arie winced at the rebuke and hung her head in shame.

The goddess grunted and gently patted Arie on the shoulder. "Keep in mind the other things I've said." Then she was gone as if she had never been there in the first place. Then everything around her seemed to return to normal. Sounds drifted from the open window and the occupants of one of the beds stirred.

"Arie," Kel murmured sleepily

She jumped startled by the sudden voice. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you." She quickly turned away and wiped away the evidence she had been crying.

The lady knight threw off her blankets and walked over to her. "What happened, Arie? Are you hurt?"Her gaze scanned Arie quickly. Her gaze lingered on her wrists and the top of her shirt. Places that were often bruised if a man attacked a woman. "Did he attack you?"

All Arie could think was she didn't think Imrah would assault her in such a way. Her confusion must have been plainly written on her face.

"Sir Jorrey."

Arie snorted in disgust, in the past few minutes she had actually forgotten the threat that was the knight. "No, he did nothing. I received word from my sister that was, unpleasant. I suspect Sir Jorrey," her voice filled with contempt when she said sir. "Will not attack me in the open. He'll probably use someone else to do it, like he tried to do with the lord here.

There was a hard glint in Kel's eyes, that spoke of experience with such under handed tactics. "If you would like I can have someone accompany you during the day. Neal will watch your back while you're working with him."

"No, but thank you. I can protect myself and I wouldn't want to give him the satisfaction of changing my life because he might do something." She saw the worry still in the other woman's eyes and added, "I will still be careful though."

Kel's gaze bore into for a long moment then she nodded. "You should get some if you want to be able to last during practice in the morning.

Arie groaned, she had completely forgotten about that too. She sighed and glanced at her bed. Sleep would be necessary if she was going to do anything useful tomorrow. So Arie stripped out of her dress, folded it, and laid it at the foot of her bed. She checked to make sure Jess was sleeping soundly before she herself crawled into bed. Arie didn't even remember her head hitting the pillow before she fell asleep.