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Chapter Text

Charleston, South Carolina 1996

                The late afternoon crowds were really setting Gale Hawthorne on edge as he made his way from his auto repair shop to the nearest fancy grocery store his wife Madge admired so damn much. It was the end of the summer so everyone was trying to get their last bit of tourism in before school and real life happened. It seemed like every car within a ten-mile radius wanted to break down due to some hard to source part and the insurance companies he had been dealing with made him want to pull his hair out. All he wanted was to go home, put his feet up, and watch some of the Olympics coverage. Maybe Madge would be home early; if she was all he’d want to do was strip her down, make love to her for hours, and then find out what the hell she wanted for her birthday. It was a big one this year – thirty. When Gale was thirty he was busy fighting for his family’s survival in the wilds of northern Scotland with no idea whether or not he was going to survive the next winter, but sure – thirty’s now the new twenty and the current twenty would be aghast to know that by that age they’d already be on their third or fourth child.

                As he walked through the horde of excitable people he felt a tingle that started at the base of his neck and worked its way down his arms. The Presence, a brush of someone’s Quickening that alerted one of his kind that another was nearby. Being summer he had no reason to wear a trench coat; his preferred claymore nestled in the trunk of his several blocks away. Gale whipped his head around, his hair (a nuisance to Madge that he insisted on growing out long enough for a ponytail) occasionally hitting him on the face as he scanned the crowd for someone else standing just a bit oddly, looking just as perturbed. It seemed like a crowd of normal mortals, maybe it was just another passing by; not everyone needed to behead the first Immortal they lay eyes on. Hell, with the way technology and population rises have been going it’s going to get to a point where new rules will have to be enforced on top of the Prime Rules just so swordplay doesn’t break out in the streets.

                Gale stood still, ignoring the people who looked at the tall slender man funny as they went about their business. After almost twenty minutes of running through those he knew in the area and those who would have any current business with him he allowed himself to relax; he’s in a port town, after all. And the gods knew it was the tourist season from hell; who knows who got dragged into the muggy South in the dead of August for fun and relaxation. Maybe a cigar is just a cigar, as they say. Still, it was better to get off the streets and home where he can keep his sword close and his eyes alert. But first – groceries.

                The Presence made itself know while he was contemplating tiny pickles and while he was juggling a bag filled with bread, cheese, wine, and strawberry ice cream about an hour later. Standing stock still on high alert at the grocery store drew the attention of management and he almost lost a bag in the parking lot, yet he could see nothing. Now, settled in his lovingly restored Thunderbird with his heart seized in irritated paranoia, he could appreciate that the Presence was fainter than it’d be if the Immortal was right on top of him. Maybe it was a shitty fucking coincidence that would turn any other man’s hair gray. That said his beloved ma didn’t raise him to be that free and guileless so he floored it out of the parking lot and broke quite a few laws to get to the little bungalow he and Madge had called home for the last five years. He can get to his secondary sword, maybe power up his computer and email a few friends nearby to see if they’ve been creeped out in grocery stores lately, and maybe by the time he did all of that the creepy feeling would go away.

                Their house, on 1212 Hunter’s Lane, had Madge’s Toyota in the front drive and the mailbox was empty. There was no Presence and for a minute Gale allowed himself to “unclench”, taking a less aggressive grip on his groceries before making his way to the front door. The smell of lilacs, vanilla, and home greeted him, making him relax even further as he heard the soft sounds of their cable blasting mid-day Olympics coverage in the den. “Madge?” he called out.

                No response; but that was typical. Often Madge would have the TV on as background noise only to forget she had the TV on and have her headphones on with the CD player blaring her beloved punk rock bands as she wove her sordid romance novel travesties that kept him able to keep his relatively low paying hobby job. He allowed the indulgence because in theory she paid the brunt of the bills and in practice she did a thing with her tongue that made his complaints on waste useless. With almost an hour of no Presence Gale relaxed even further; he was even humming to himself as he sorted their groceries and pulled out the steaks he was thawing for their dinner. By the time they were seasoned he all but forgot about the Presence; wooing his wife away from her soft-core porn with meat, her beloved 1991 Cabernet, and maybe some material for whatever chapter has her lost in The Kinks or whatever trash she loved since her childhood recital days.

                Gale popped the cork and poured that favored wine into a glass, checking it for sediment to the light before making his way from the kitchen to Madge’s office down the hall. It was a small room littered with books and pictures and good lighting and a stereo system that probably costed more than anything this neighborhood needed. Sure enough, he noted her golden blond head bent over her computer, her headphones on and the state-of-the-art stereo on track five of The New York Dolls. With a smirk Gale reached for the cord and yanked the connection of the cord, filling the office with the plaintive wails of David Johansen caterwauling about chit-chatting with Diana Doors. “Babe, off the computer!” he smiled, twirling her chair around as is his wont.

                There was resistance and Gale barely registered why as he dropped that expensive glass of Cabernet, its rich red mingling with the brackish blood that squelched the ivory carpet Madge insisted on having in her office. Its source’s head was at a funky angle, big greenish-blue eyes glassy and bright with fresh death that came from a large congealing cut clean through the throat; so deep Gale could tell that only the barest scrap of sinew kept celebrated-yet-shy author Margaret Hawthorne’s head attached to her body. Bile came up Gale’s throat just as the Presence made itself known, rendering the shock and grief and horror and despair in second to last place with the same primal fear he felt in the square. Gale Hawthorne stopped being friendly kept man Gale of Thorne and Smith’s Auto Repair; he became Gale Smithson of the Hawthorne Clan whose prowess with the sword was second only to his knowledge of traps; and this was a trap.

                Backing out of the office, away from Madge reminders of the problems of 1933, Gale rebounded off the doorway frame before he rushed to their bedroom that still smelled of lilac and home even as he nostrils took in fresh death in a summer with faint air conditioning. He threw open the trunk at the foot of the bed and brandished his sword, the more ornate mortuary sword he kept for sentimental purposes in lieu of the claymore he stupidly left in his car. This time the Presence lingered and, giving nary a fuck about his neighbors or propriety or the fact that mechanics in their mid-thirties shouldn’t have seventeenth century implements of death in broad daylight he stepped outside and ran to the streets, spinning around wildly with hair his wife will never complain about whipping his face.

                Just as his sense of self-preservation retreated back towards overwhelming grief he heard an engine rev. With wild eyes, he turned to see a late model Mustang convertible within his line of sight. The man in the car was blonde with sun glasses and a smirk that Madge would’ve called handsome were her head fully attached to her body. The time it took Gale to realize that this was the Immortal he felt before, that he might be an Immortal he knew, that this Immortal might have been responsible for his wife’s blood on the carpet, was the length of time it took that vehicle to go from zero to sixty, plowing directly into Gale Hawthorne’s solar plexus.

As he sailed through the air, organs dying and synapsis failing his life flashed before his eyes. Madge in white, smiling on their wedding day. The first time he drove a car, sneering that these things would never rid the world of horses. The beautiful ladies who inhabited Miss Belle’s whorehouse, one of who was actually a cousin a few times removed from Madge to her embarrassment. The hoop skirts and fans and umbrellas of southern belles. The smell of death and shit in battlefield after battlefield after battlefield. His adopted father’s head flying off his shoulders as he stood accused of theft towards the crown. Running through the fields with his sisters and the brother who would carry the name Hawthorne in spite of future shame. Soft blankets and bulbous breasts.

He landed with a sick thud, the last thing he saw before his world faded around him was the Maryland license plate of the car that hit him and the swath of dandelions that edged his neighbor’s yard.

Chapter Text

Baltimore, Maryland 2017

Dreams are often the brain’s way of sorting through the crap of the day, or month, or year, or decade. For Immortals dreams often took on wildly fantastical portents, some more so than others based on how long they’ve been alive. For some reason that she had been loathed to share with others Katniss Everdeen’s dreams stayed rather consistent over the past four hundred years since her First Death. When life was chaotic she dreamed of the fires that took over her village, snuffing the life out of her father and so many others in so little time. When life was sad she thought of her ma, whose vibrancy was lost the day of the fire, of a slew of lovers and friends lost through time, of the last time she saw Primrose, one of many who surrounded the bedside of a senile woman whose flaxen hair she used to braid in two. Happy times were random jaunts with Johanna or Finnick or even her teacher through Europe and parts of the African continent, often avoiding arrest or jail. Horniness brought in a stream of random handsome men, some she knew quite well and others she knew in passing shifting through a variety of erotic scenarios that her best friends would find rather prudish and sad. Then, there were the dreams when life was good and peaceful; those disturbed her the most.

She had this dream ever since she was a little girl. She would be dressed in a long white dress that kissed her ankles and she’d be walking through a verdant meadow filled with every flower imaginable. She would reach a place on a hill overlooking a quiet village and she would sit in the rich soil. Her fingers would play in the grass and soil; she could tell she was home though this place never looked like anywhere she settled through her years. It smelled of sun and spices and freedom. Often there was someone resting on her lap whose face she could never see but she knew the person was male with smooth hair and large hands that would caress her thighs in a way that spoke of gentle possession and intimate carnality. These dreams were rare but they pre-dated her First Death and were a constant through so many changes that she couldn’t help but wonder if this particular dream was prophetic or some amalgam of girlish gossip and swooning romance that seeped unwillingly into her bones.

She woke up from that dream with her lover’s arm around her, the bite of cinnamon and dill escaping the front of her mind as she grew aware of the morning erection near her ass. A quick peek at the clock told her it was close to seven; more than enough time to see if the now-distracting implement would like attention. Gingerly she rotated around and took in the man whose bed she’s been sharing for the past eight years. Thresh Jacobs was a winsome PhD candidate doing a walking tour of Annapolis when she ducked into his tour group that summer. His quiet nature and command for American indigenous and slave history belied his deep voice and imposing frame that drew as many admiring stares as it did cautious scowls. Like most of her relationships with mortals Katniss didn’t mean for it to happen; she went from trying to charm her way through the crowd to avoid a persistent stalker to accepting a charmingly nervous dinner invitation to moving into his tiny grad-school apartment to moving into a bigger row home and christening every room of the place when he successfully defended his thesis and became the first doctor (PhD) in his family.

With a smile, she started her kisses at his neck, enjoying the rasp of his scruff. He shifted with a grunt as her tongue lathed his Adam’s apple and her hands wandered to his shoulders and down his arms. By the time she got to his jawline he was awake, his dark brown eyes peering down at her with amusement. “Good morning,” Katniss smirked after a successful nip at the cleft in his chin.

“Morning,” he said, his deep voice shooting down to her core. “What time is it?”

“Time for you to kiss me,”

He obliged, rolling them over so that his body hovered over hers. As his lips trailed warm lava down her body the idyll of her dream faded to the enjoyable present, the smell of nature and calm being replaced with growing arousal and the faint whiff of the tidy life she built with this beautiful man. His head moved back up from its journey to capture her lips, kissing her roughly as she wrapped her legs around his trim waist, grateful they slept nude after last night’s session. “Fuck, Kat,” he breathed as he sheathed himself inside of her. “Have I ever told you how unreal you feel?”

Katniss moaned as he began the practiced pace of a lover familiar with his territory. She enjoyed Thresh; he was the kind of lover who took his time to know what she liked and was as intent as she was on discovering new things about each other sexually as well as emotionally. She writhed in tandem to his thrusts, her fingers digging in deep to the corded muscles of his neck and curling into the tight coils he insisted on growing out for the winter. The sunny hill was obliterated as he angled her hips closer, grinding into that deep part of her body that made her see stars. He covered her in kisses and words of love as she came tightly around him, taking him with her only after she climbed the peak a second time, making satisfied mewls as he collapsed on top of her with an incredulous laugh. “Well, hell of a way to wake up,” he gasped.

“I’d say,”

They kissed, luxuriating in the early morning wake up. In the distance Katniss could hear their coffee maker begin a pot of coffee, signaling the technical start to their day. “I don’t want to go to school,” Thresh groaned as he rolled off her heated body.

“Yes, well, you were the one who wanted to shape young minds,” she said.

He gave her an incredulous look and tossed a pillow her way, which she ducked giggling. “And what are you going to do while I’m out shaping them minds?”

“Finishing up that stupid article,” she smiled as Thresh made his way to the small bathroom attached to their bedroom. “My day doesn’t start until eleven!”

“If you weren’t so cute I’d hate you,”

Katniss laughed, though they both knew that her morning wouldn’t be spent luxuriating in bed. Instead, as his shower began she changed into her running gear and did a few stretches to loosen her muscles and prepare her mind. Then she popped toast in the toaster, fixed Thresh’s thermos with the brewed coffee along with a heavy dose of milk and poured herself some cereal. By the time she was halfway through her bowl Thresh was showered, shaved, and dressed in slacks that made his ass holy, a blue striped shirt, and a staid burgundy tie. She pounced, delighting in the contrast of milk and the mint of his toothpaste as they kissed; making her wonder if there was enough time to throw him on the bed and begin another round. With a laugh he pulled away, tweaking her nose in a way that would make anyone else lose a hand. “Where are you running?” he asked.

“Around Patterson,”

“Say hi to the drunks for me,”

She watched him take his thermos and his satchel and head out into the world. One of the things she loved about Thresh was his ambition to change the world one mind at a time; he taught eleventh and twelfth grade history at one of the nearby magnet schools during the day and every Monday and Wednesday taught night classes at the nearby high school for teens who for whatever reason couldn’t go to school during the day. It did not earn him much, and with his intellect he could have done so much more, but he loved those kids more than anything…

She pressed a hand to her stomach at the thought. Her kind could not have children; it was one of the blessings or curses of their long lives. It was very rare for her to wish that it were not so, but the idea of a little child with Thresh’s eyes and kind soul pulled at her. He was surprisingly fine with her infertility and would, on occasion, talk about the scores of children who needed the good stable home they could give them. Talk like that would inevitably lead to marriage and after close to nine years Katniss knew it was the next step; but most of the time it was moments like this, when she wished her body could be filled with life, that she pushed the overtures away.

The melancholy lasted about five minutes before she was able to shake herself clear and grabbed her bottle of water, keys, and iPod. She took a leisurely walk towards the park and started her run, the rhythmic pulse of technopop driving her tempo as she allowed her mind to go blank. Her normal run took her around other morning runners, dog walkers, and the homeless that Thresh smirked about. One drunk, a rather bedraggled man with a low hat covered in newspapers, she often used as a mile marker and she successfully passed him at least five times before she felt the need to slow down to a jog. She took out five dollars and went to the old man with what she hoped was an ingratiating face. “You did good, sweetheart, four miles!” he crowed with a sarcastic smirk.

“That was five,” Katniss huffed as she started to stretch.

“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

She glared but began to grin as the man still remained smug. “Be glad you’re cheaper than a gym,” she groused.

He gave her a salute. As she turned to walk back home a small blur bumped into her, nearly causing her to fall into the old man. “Sorry!” the blur trilled as she kept running.

Katniss scowled but righted herself. “Think you got robbed, sweetheart,” the old man laughed.

“What?”

She patted herself down only to realize that she was short her phone. “Fuck,” she growled.

Against the old man’s pleas, she took off after her mugger, primed after her run and pulling on over four hundred years of endurance training to overtake what turned out to be a young woman whose hair was in two long curly plaits and was dressed like someone’s poor impression of a punk. Katniss chased her down a few blocks before she got a reprieve from a woman in a bad wig walking out of her rowhome whose yippie dog’s leash tripped the thief up. “The hell’s wrong with you!” Katniss heard the woman scream at the girl as she righted herself. “You almost stepped on Biscuit!”

“I’m sorry!” the girl, and it was definitely a girl, gasped.

“Don’t apologize to me, apologize to Biscuit!”

“And me,” Katniss breathed as she picked up her phone which got dropped in the fall.

The girl froze and Katniss took stock of her assailant. Smooth caramel skin marked with dark freckles around a petit nose with large brown eyes framed with thick lashes, this young girl should be drooled over in a high school if not a college instead of trying to catch her breath in clothes that barely fit her petite frame with jeans that were ripped at the knee showing blood and a rapidly swelling bruise. The cynical part of Katniss, which often sounded like Johanna Mason, chided herself for being taken advantage of by an actual street waif. “Who are you?” the dog lady sneered.

“Your Biscuit is shitting on the sidewalk; you should pick that up,” Katniss said. She took the young girl by the arm and started dragging her in the direction of her own home as the beleaguered woman fussed over her dog. “And you stole my phone,” she hissed at the young girl. “Shouldn’t you be at school?”

“Shouldn’t you be at work or at some yoga class or some shit,” the girl snapped back, though her voice seemed too sweet to pull off the snooty rebel act very well. “You got your phone back, ok? I’m sorry, can you let me go?”

“No, you’re hurt and I’m not an asshole,” Katniss said. “What’s your name?”

“None of your fucking business,”
Katniss withheld a laugh; it was only too many years of experience that made her take the young girl seriously. “Well, Ms. None of your fucking business, I’m Katniss and you need to do better than steal phones from people in broad daylight.”

“Oh, broad daylight’s the problem.”

“Be lucky I didn’t leave you to that dog woman or call the bloody cops!”

They marched back to Katniss’s neighborhood. The third floor housed their place, the second was rented out to an annoying hipster couple who argued too much, and the bottom floor was a little coffee shop with terrible lattes; often Katniss drug her laptop there to do her work when she needed people to stare at instead of walls. Thresh was somewhat uncomfortable that Katniss owned the entire building while he was barely pulling a pension, but the location was good and the rent Katniss received more than made up for any shortfalls in their salaries without her diving into the various accounts under her name. Katniss marched the young girl past the shop and up the stairs. It was on the second landing that she felt the Present and the girl almost knocked into her as she stopped. “What?” she frowned.

Katniss started a catalog of potential adversaries and friends. Johanna was in the wind somewhere, Finnick and Annie were likely in the Seychelles this time of year, and any other friends were in Europe or other parts of the country. She was not a fan of the Games, been out of them since she settled down with Thresh and this was the first Presence she felt since she moved into the neighborhood. Were it not for the mortal witness she would have ran down the stairs and waited in the coffee shop. Instead, she tightened her grip on the young girl and went forward.

Her sword was under the bed; if this were an honorable headhunter perhaps he or she would allow her to retrieve it. As Katniss and the girl rounded the corner she mentally went through her catalog of sword forms. It was only when she had sight of her door did she relax. Sitting by her door, was the last person she expected; her erstwhile teacher, occasional lover, and clansman Gale Hawthorne. “The fuck…” the girl said, freezing up next to her.

It was that action that stopped Katniss from yelling at the man she had not spoken to in over twenty years. He was dressed in a hunter’s garb, trench coat to disguise his sword and he was bleeding profusely on the floor. He looked at Katniss with glassy gray eyes that were twins to hers and laughed, causing a dribble of blood to escape to his chin. “Hey there, Catnip,” he wheezed before promptly passing out.

Chapter Text

Northwest Highlands of Scotland – 1613

                The first time Katniss Everdeen of the Hawthorne clan felt the Presence she was living as a wildling several miles from her home. It was the middle of the day and Katniss was high in the trees with bow in hand, stalking fowl. She almost fell from the tree when the dizzying rush entered her system, a tingle from the base of her head down to her toes. As she was getting her bearings the sounds of a horse broke through her confusion. She scrambled to a lower branch to see a man on a brown steed, dressed in her clan’s tartan. He was tall, taller than many, with a rich mane of black hair and skin nearly as dark as hers; if it were another time and place they would be considered cousins, more so than the golden blond and russet clansmen she considered family. She watched the man slow to a stop not far from her perch and look around. “Come out now,” the man bellowed. “I know you are out there! I am Gale Hawthorne, of the Hawthorne Clan!”

                Katniss frowned. She had only been away from her clan for a few months at that point and while not a sociable lass she was quite familiar with the men, most of them a motley crew with ruddy skin and bright brown to fair hair and eye. “You lie,” she murmured to herself.

                Unfortunately, the comment was loud enough and the man, the so-called Gale’s, head jerk in her direction. She watched him scan the tree line until his eyes came to a stop where she stood crouched on the biggest branch she could use. He tilted his head, obviously taking in her dirt-matted body and indecent state of dress, adorned only in a boy’s kilt she stole from a nearby village and a tunic. “What’s your name, lad?” he asked.

                Katniss said nothing; this was not the first stranger she came across in her time in the woods. She watched the stranger dismount his steed and place his hands on his hips. “I’m not going to take your head, you can come down,” he said.

                He removed his scabbard and tossed it towards the ground with a . “I’m just passing through, checking on my clan, making sure the Hawthorne name thrives. Surely you’ve heard of me?”

                There was silence for a moment before Katniss decided to humor the stranger. “Aye, sir,” she scoffed. “Gale Hawthorne of the Hawthorne Clan is the stuff of legend for wee babies still at their mother’s tits. Great Gale Hawthorne, who threw off the Stuarts and was second in line before disappearing in the mist like all grand legends.”

                The man exhaled a laugh and shook his head repeatedly. “You’re a lass!” he exclaimed. “A mouthy lass! Come on down, I swear on my mother that I will not be takin’ your head. You cannot stay there all day, ye know.”

                With a scowl Katniss made her way down the tree. A few feet from the ground she glared at the man and jumped down, a skill that impressed as often as it exasperated. On the ground the man had several heads above her and was lean in build. They took a moment to appraise each other, until Katniss grew uncomfortable and fiddled with her bow. “What is your name, lass?” Gale asked.

                “Katniss Everdeen, of the Hawthorne Clan,” she murmured.

                “Catswot?”

                “Kat-niss, Katniss,”

                “Everdeen, you say. Aye, I remember that was a tiny clan in my day, guess ye died down into the Hawthorne line. How old are you?”

                “Rude question,”

                “I’ve been around for nearly two hundred years, lass. How old are you? You look like a child…”

                “I am one and twenty,” she snapped.

                Gale’s eyes widened. Katniss fidgeted as the man took another assessment of her. “There was talk in the village,” he said slowly. “Of a foundling girl who was very skilled with a bow, could take down stag like a man. There was much talk as she had my coloring and that damn near drove me out of the village. They said that she was trying to lead the chieftain’s son to the devil, that he died and they thought she died too. They said she rose from the dead and ran through the town screaming a few months ago. Is that you, lass? Did that happen to you?”

                Katniss said nothing, but her grip on her bow tensed. “That was your First Death, lass,” he said. “You had quite a struggle, getting out of your own grave. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”

                “First Death?”

                “Oh lass. You probably realized it more than once since you’ve been out here, but ye cannot die; not by any conventional means.”

                He slowly stepped forward, his eyes filled with a friendly compassion. “You are different now,” he said softly. “You are no longer one of them, and I’m so sorry for that, I am. You know you could never go back, not in this lifetime.”

                Katniss looked at the stranger, whose eyes almost looked like her own. She remembered the ground, the earth oppressive and lacking air with her body tightly held in the woven cloth used to bury their dead. She must have passed out a few times before her arms were able to feel the cool night air, or maybe she died and lived and died again.  She was weak with hunger and thirst by the time she was able to get back to the village, by then the sun was up and the women were doing their chores with their babes at their breasts and children underfoot. She shuddered to remember the screams, the stones and offal tossed at her, the cries of demon and witch that taunted her as she stumbled away, the stricken face of her sister Prim and the family that had took her in as one of their own and raised her since she was found in the woods one and twenty years ago.

She tried to sneak back in during the night, tried to see her sister one last time, but it did not take long to realize that even her appearance meant trouble for Prim when it came to her future marriage prospect to her betrothed. She instead set her sights on a village nearby for a bow and some clothes that suited her frame and worked for hunting and had been alone ever since.

They appraised each other before Gale sighed. “Do they know you in Elgin?” he asked.

“I have only been about a day or so in any direction,” she said. “My da did not want me and my sisters far from our ma and this place is home.”

Gale nodded. “It will be a rough ride from here,” he said. “If you come with me, I will protect you; teach you all I know about what you are, make sure you can stand on your own. Maybe I can even get you trained up with a sword.”

He walked towards where he threw his scabbard. “I have my bow,” Katniss said. “My da said I was the best shot he’s ever seen, even for a girl.”

He tossed her a rueful look and strapped his weapon to his waist. “A bow will not keep your head on your shoulders. Can you mount my horse?”

Katniss glared at the man before demonstrating her skill. Gale looked up at her with a grin she would later come to both love and be aggravated by. “Are you sure you aren’t a laddie?” he asked, mounting the horse behind her.

For the first time since she died she laughed, the sound odd to her ears. “If I were I’d be bigger and better than ye,” she smirked.

He barked and took the reins from her, wrapping his arms around her and dwarfing her slender frame. “I do not doubt ye, Catswot,” he purred behind her. “We have a while yet before we reach Elgin, I have much to tell ye about who ye are.”

Katniss felt soothed by the warmth at her back and the cadence of the horse beneath her. Still, the talk of her from the village brought back the time of earth and screams from those who were once dear to her. “Am I damned,” she asked. “If this is true, sir are we damned?”

Gale laughed and rested his chin on the top of her head. “No lass,” he said. “We are but players in a grand Game with a few simple rules and only one goal: There can be only one.”