I watched us leave the room, followed us down the corridor and through a utility room to a back door, the white tiled floor smeared with red as we cro...sed to the door. I remember her face, the terror in her eyes, the words she repeated over and over, "I'm sorry. Fucking psycho bitch. I'm sorry. Fuc..." The patio was smooth and cold, the garden shed ahead. She pulled open the door, tools, a mower, a dog cage. She led me to the cage, reached inside and pulled out a blanket, laid it across the top. “Okay, I guess the next part is for me and you, Ava,” he said.“Yes,” she said: “Marian.”“Yes,” he said.She was helping Lillian putting away the dishware from dinner and heard the door buzzer buzzing.She headed for the receiving room. She was right; it was her ex-fiancée.“Julian, so good to see you, really,” said Ava. “you just missed dinner.”“Oh, if I’d known I was welcome, I mean for dinner, I’d have come earlier,” I said.“You’re always welcome. You know that,” she said. “We always eat right. "Refugees from Rikken are arriving," Revandis said quietly, her eyes down upon her platter of food. She was eating slowly, something Verus knew surely foretold of ill. "No one bears word of my mother or father."Verus sighed. "You fear for them?" he said.The elven girl nodded. "Greatly, Verus, they are not soldiers, though all elves know the rudiments of fighting." She looked out the open archway onto the lawn of the courtyard. "They should not have been so close to the front lines of the. Trust me, I know he does. What Anna did wasn’t something that he could control. Anna manipulated Will, she used his weakness against him. Just forgive him, trust me, right now he needs you, he needs all of us and we have to be united to save him.”“I want to forgive him, but, I just can’t-”“Brook!” Lisa yelled, suddenly jumping up from her seat on the couch, “Quit being such a little cry baby! Will loves you just as much as you love him! Now get that denial crap out of your head right now! We.