Mel had decided that it was time for her and Ike to take a stroll around the neighborhood together.

"I think everybody needs a break after that one,” she had said. So with a sweet little closed-mouth kiss for O, she and Ike disappeared out the front door.

O flopped back onto the couch and grimaced at Lucy who had just come back into the room.

"Okay. Scale of one to ten, how bad was that, Luce?"

"O, honey. That was awful. Train wreck awful. Seriously, I couldn't look away!" Lucy flopped onto the couch next to him.

Amos came back into the room holding a squirmy baby girl in his arms. "Lila went down for her nap but look who woke up."

O held his hands out for baby Rudy, whose eyes had lit up at the sight of him.

"But," Lucy continued, a grin growing over her face. “You know, it seemed like she was into it. Into you. I think she might love you, O.”

"Are you guys talking about that marriage proposal bloodbath that just went down in here?" Amos asked and took a seat in a lazy boy across from them.

O made a face for the baby and she started to giggle in his arms. “I swear, Mel’s got my head on backwards. It's been a really long time since I made a mistake like that. Failed to distinguish the future from the present."

Amos crossed his arms and leaned back in the chair. "So all of that, past, present, future, that's all just floating around in your head constantly?"

O blew a raspberry on Rudy's neck and nodded at Amos. "All that. Plus there are prophecies, which can tell the future, but are often more metaphorical than anything else. There are people who are crying out for help, praying to anybody that will hear, but as far as I can tell, I'm the only one who can hear them. When I touch someone, I can see their life, their feelings, their spirit. There are ghosts and signs, and babies getting ready to be born. You'll never believe how chatty this one can be.” He held up their daughter and, much to her delight, made her legs dance around. “Damn near talked my ear off whenever I'd come visit her before she was born."

"Jesus Christ," Amos pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned forward. “I had no idea it was that constant for you. That’s horrible. God, O. Nobody deserves that. No wonder you're so fucking weird."

"Yeah," O looked up, completely unoffended. "It's kind of a miracle I made it this far, right?"

Lucy leaned over and wiped some spit bubbles off of Rudy’s chin. "If you can do all that, then why can't you find our mystery man? Why can't you see the outcome of the revolution?"

O bobbled a toy for the baby and was quiet for a while. "In something like the revolution, there's no one definite future. It depends on so many choices that so many people still have to make. If you asked for something more specific, like, will Solar survive the revolution-”

Amos snapped to attention. Solar, the leader of the Surgere, the rebel army that was the heart of the revolution against the king, also happened to be his best friend from childhood.

"I would tell you that, yes, he's going to survive to see the end of it, no matter what the outcome. There was only one path that led to him dying and that road ended a long time ago."

"What was it?" Amos asked, a small hoarseness in his voice.

O weighed his options, figured it was worth telling them. It would only make Amos feel good.

"If you'd chosen to keep guarding King Dalyer, if you'd turned away from protecting Lucy and let Dalyer take her for his wife, then Solar would have been killed in the battle she would have waged." O set Rudy down on the ground so that she could practice her crawling. Her parents didn't know that she was only a few days out from a true cruising. "But you didn't. You chose the right path. The hard path. You chose Lucy. And in doing so, you saved Solar."

If O hadn't known the hard-ass former bodyguard for damn near 20 years, he might have thought those were tears glistening in his eyes.

"I would have waged battle?" Lucy asked, pride and astonishment coloring her tone.

O nodded and reached for another slice of banana bread. "If Amos had turned from you, Luce, you would have burned the entire castle down, taken Zara, and started a full on Surgere war."

"Holy hell. Baby, I would have started a war!" Lucy called over to her husband.

He raised his eyebrows indulgently. "I heard, hatchling."

"Yeah," O said through a mouthful of bread. "A lot was riding on whether or not you two boned."

"You say that with pride in your voice. Like you had something to do with it," said Amos.

"I did!" O insisted. “You remember all those dresses the King demanded that Lucy wear? Who do you think arranged for all of them to be so small? Remember that? She had to squeeze ten pounds of soup in a five pound bag."

"Remember it?" Amos exclaimed. "I still daydream about those dresses."

Lucy rolled her eyes at the two men. “If we’re done discussing my soup, do you mind answering the question about why you can’t locate the man from your visions the way you can everybody else?”

“I don’t know,” O said and leaned back on the couch. Lucy exchanged a quick glance with Amos. Neither of them had ever seen him quite so solemn before. “The only thing I can think is pain.”

“What?” Amos asked, his brow furrowing.

“The only thing that consistently blurs or obscures my powers as an oracle is pain. After my injury, my powers were considerably weakened.”

“Injury? What injury?” Lucy leaned forward, her compassionate heart had her taking O’s hand in hers.

The front door opened and Mel and Ike tromped back into the house, both of them looking considerably lighter and more relaxed for their walk. But Mel’s face pulled tight at the tension in the room.

“What’s going on?”

O nodded his head for Ike to come over. “This is Rudy.”

Ike plopped down next to the baby and picked up her doll, made it dance around a little bit. Rudy’s smile for him lit him up in a way he never could have imagined.

O looked back at Mel and gestured for her to come sit with him. “I was just going to tell them about my injury.”

Mel’s brow darkened even further as she sat on the couch. She immediately put a protective arm around O’s shoulder. O sent out some feelings toward her. Hoped she would get the message. He didn’t want to talk about it. He wanted her to tell them.

Mel’s eyes searched his for a moment and they cleared in understanding. She gave him a little nod and a squeeze of her hand.

“Dalyer did it,” she told the group. “They fought a few months ago, in dragon form. He almost took O’s wing clear off.”