^*^*^*^*^*^*^

What happened before: 

There was a second flash and they were in the future. People were running away from the chamber to those who waited to help them get to safety. Karstien collapsed to his knees too weak to even stand. Every trace of dark magic was gone from the oracle's flesh. As Fleur's heart stuttered its last beat, the Relic of Time fell silent. Instead of exploding, it simply collapsed into a heap of golden dust and charged glass shards with its clock face toward its oracle.

Yuri began doing CPR on her body as he had on wounded human warriors during the last war, trying to save Daisy when magic wasn't working. As his body worked the mechanics of resuscitation, his soul pulled her into the Room of Light with the last of the blood magic.

He was horrified at the state of it, the walls were cracked and charred, the clear floor strewn with debris, below them was a vortex of darkness like a great whirlpool, and above them, he could see the starry sky and the golden-white of the celestial veil moving like a curtain in a gentle breeze.

"This is cheating, Yuri, I know because I did the same thing when Kaleth died." Fluer's voice came from behind him.

"Why isn't your room within the veil?" He gaped at the view above.

"I no longer deserve a place with the oracles and celestials, my soul is tainted. My purpose is done, and I can now be discarded like all things that have no further use by the House of Adamos" Her voice was so calm and matter-of-fact, he turned to face her.

He was unprepared for what he saw. Her normally beautiful lavender gown was a shredded, soiled gray rag, her hair was matted and filthy, her scars shifted from pale to dark but were mostly a mottle gray like a corpse's skin, and her eyes... Her beautiful lavender eyes that he had loved more than anything about her, had dulled to the color of smoke at sunset.

"What happened to you?" He demanded in horror.

"You won't let me die!" She screamed at him.

"I... can't."

"Do you hate me so much that you won't even let me die in peace?" She sobbed out. "Don't you understand? You're free now. No more duty. No more taking care of crazy Daisy because your father told you to. Like he t-told K-k-kaleth to..." She sank to her knees and began to beat her fists on the glass floor. "Lies.... Lies... Lies..."

Yuri bent down and seized her hands to make her stop. "Please Daisy, I love you."

"Stop it. Stop saying that." She whispered brokenly then she jerked away violently and shrieked, flinging her words at him like daggers. "Stop saying that lie! I know the truth, I overheard Adamos order you to love me. I heard him say he would make Kaleth do his duty."

Yuri's mind raced, and Daisy smirked at his confusion. "Karstien came to the Tear site with Odini and Regulus, you fought with your father about me, about what I was. What I really was... not a special kind of oracle, but a concubine... breeding stock... the Whore of the House of Adamos. You never loved me, I was just your duty until I gave you a son. Kaleth never loved me, I was a mistake of misused magic that he was forced to endure for centuries. I... I wish he had forever killed me when he had blood magic poisoning, it would have saved me from so much suffering. But that's what Adamos wanted wasn't it? For me to suffer, for me to be broken, he said I was made that way, I heard him say it and Karstien told everyone that the truth would break me. He was right, I am at my end and all I have are my scars." 

She yanked the stone from around her neck, threw it at Yuri's chest, and hissed, "Every moment of my life from the second I put on your wretched stone has been a lie. And. I. Am. Done."

She turned her face up toward the Celestial Veil and screamed as loud as she could. "I'm done, Adamos. Find someone else to birth Yuri's heir because I refuse." 

Pieces of the walls broke and fell into the vortex below. Cracks began appearing in the floor. She wrapped her arms around herself and stared down at the vortex, whispering, "Release me so I can die now."

"I won't, I love you." Yuri repeated.

She shook her head slowly, "Your family is saved. The timeline restored. The Devourer remains defeated. You don't have to pretend any more, or have you lied to yourself for so long that you have begun to believe the lie?" She laughed, it was a cruelly mirthless sound. "Remember the truth Yuri, think back to when your soul told me the truth, when your cruelty spoke more than words. You hate me."

He held out his hands to her in a helpless gesture. "Daisy, you cannot say how my soul feels now. So much time has passed. I regretted my actions then, and every year since then, even when I couldn't admit my feelings, I loved and still love you."

"Then why lie? Why use the memory obscuring magic to hide things from me, like Kaleth did."

"You know about the obscuring magic?" He looked around alarmed as more pieces of the floor and walls fell away.

She smirked again, her voice was cold. "How do you think I hid the fact that I knew the truth when I did the soul shield enchantment? I had known for months that your feelings, Kaleth's feelings, Karstien's friendship, and even Adamos' concerns were all lies to save your house and the remnant. That's why it was so easy to pick up the mantle of the Dark Oracle; I hated you all because I heard the truth in Adamos' own voice and your own casual words confirmed that you have lied to me for over a century about remembering."

"How did my words confirm it?" he demanded. In his exterior mind, he was aware that they had been moved to the Healer's Hall.

"Magic doesn't make up for poor skill." She quoted.

"What?"

"One day on the Tear, you said it. Gabe and Regis laughed that Regulus would be happy that one of his students had learned one of his teachings. You have said it since you were restored, if you had true amnesia, you wouldn't have remembered your mentor's favorite teaching." She cocked her head to one side, listening then snorted derisively. "Keeping me here doesn't mean I will chose to live after the surgery."

"Please Daisy, think of your and Kaleth's children..." Yuri begged.

She narrowed her eyes at him, "Were you ever really Kaleth's friend? Did you tell him what we did in the past? You knew he was going to die, you could have stopped it."

"I loved my brother! I didn't tell him, but he knew what happened in the past. And you know why we couldn't stop his death, you yourself came back through time to tell us to let it happen," Yuri reminded.

"Well, now... it's all on the table." Fresh tears fell down her face. "The one I loved for four centuries and grieved for one, knew I was just a breeding whore for his house. Part of me had hoped he didn't know, that he might have actually loved me." She choked on a sob. "Thank you for confirming it."

"Daisy... I didn't... that not what I meant...Kaleth loved you."

"Whatever... You can go, Yuri, you're free now." She whispered as the room shattered around them and the sound he heard was a medical alarm signaling a patient dying.

Yuri shouted for her and there was a second flash of white light. Blinking, Yurieth looked up and saw his father with tears running down his face.

"Son, I am so sorry."

Yuri roared and charged at him, trying to strangle him, "You did this. You destroyed her!"

Strong arms pulled Yuri off Adamos, shoved him back, "Enough, brother."

"Kaleth?" His youngest brother stood there in his Celestial Armor with their mother beside him.

Yuri raged, "How can you defend him? Didn't you see what happened? What she will die believing?"

Yllumina stepped forward, tears were running down her cheeks, "We saw it, Yurieth... It wasn't meant... We don't know how she came to believe this... to be that broken... We are sorry."

"Daisy won't die," Kaleth said calmly. "Her will is too strong."

Yuri stared at his brother like he had lost his mind. "Her will? Her heart is broken beyond repair. She believes you never loved her, not for a moment. That you used magic to trick her. That we all did and she is correct, because it is true, we all used magic to deceive her. She calls herself our concubine, the Whore of the House of Adamos! Are you deluded enough in your exalted state to believe she can ever recover from that?"

Tears leaked from Kaleth's amber eyes into his golden beard. "No. She may never believe in my love for her again, but you still live, you still have a chance to change her mind. Prove to her that she is your hope, that she is worthy of love above all and that you will love her for all time. Take care of her."

"Yurieth..."

"Don't, father, I have nothing left to say to you." Yuri snarled at Adamos.

Yllumina touched Yurieth's arm. "Hope endures as long as love lives, my son, don't let them convince you that it died."

Suddenly Yuri opened his eyes, he was laying on a bed in the Healer's Hall. 

When he asked about her, they told him they didn't know if she would survive.

Months later...

Yuri had slept fitfully. It had been eight days since he last visited Daisy. He had been shocked to see Vole in Asha's office. The young mariner seemed older, empty, pained, and it only took a moment for Yuri to realize his sealed one Mara had gone into the Light. Vole had said nothing more than to accept Yuri's condolences and had congratulated him on being named Lord of the House of Yophriel. For Yuri, it was a first step in building a life beyond being the Huntsman of Adamos. He still hated himself for how he treated Daisy when she was Fleur, as he had since being restored. But the trip back to that time and the way she had looked at him then... It made his guilt more acute, like a fragment of a thorn buried too deep to dig out but painful with every step.

The sound of humming relaxed him into a deeper sleep. He dreamed they were back in her crumbling Room of Light, laying on the floor, with his head in her lap. He couldn't move.

Her fingers kneading his short, silver blond hair with the tune, as she had often done while he recovered from being in the Dust.

She stopped humming, as a tear tracked down her cheek, "You look so different here."

"I am different here. The man who hurt you died before he became a ghost. The ghost who revived only remembered how much he loves you." Yuri declared quietly, then he begged. "Please, don't leave me."

"I... I can't live like this. I've lived too long already. I have to go. I need to forget... I... I can't forgive you if I don't forget." She cried as she said it, "I love you, Yuri. Find happiness. Find hope."

"But you are my hope," he whispered.

"I'm sorry." Then she pressed her tear-wet lips to his.

Yuri inhaled deeply as he woke, he could still taste her tears on his lips. His heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out of his chest...

Another year passed and try as he might, Yuri couldn't convince his heart that Daisy/Fleur, his hope and beloved sealed one, was dead. The more he thought about that last night, the more he was sure it wasn't a dream or a vision. He needed to believe she had really been on Arborea, but where she had gone after, he did not know. He even quit speaking to Gabe, when his brother had discovered the research board Yuri had made for that night and questioned his sanity. He began seeing her, his memories projecting images of her as both Daisy and Fleur in the gardens and forest around the Academy for Huntsman and Foresters. When he asked Asha, she only offered one solution. It was the same change Daisy had made after Kaleth's death, to live in a place that held no memories of the dead. So, he set an appointment with the King.

Karstien grinned at him as he came in. "Here to plan the next hunt on Meridian or Olympia?" The King asked hopefully. The twice-yearly hunts for the descendants of the mutated creatures that had been released on most of the colony worlds was his escape from the bureaucracy of ruling the Kingdom.

Yuri gave him a half-smile and shook his head, before his expression became somber again. "No, I have something else I wish to accomplish. I actually came to talk to you because Arborea is becoming too crowded, and many times in the last several years, we have had visitors stumble into our training areas. I want to move the Academy."

"Sure, where to?" Karstien seemed unsurprised by the request, "There are some excellent locations in the northern mountains. Or you could have the space war base on Sword Island. With the space fleet no longer using the Chronos FTLs after the loss of the Relic of Time, the number of Atlantians joining the space exploration fleet has dropped greatly, no one wants to wait out the trips when the portal system will take them to the colonies in seconds."

"I was thinking more remote. I want to move the school to Meridian 4." Yuri sipped his coffee, he had started drinking it black since Daisy's death, the bitterness suited his moods.

"Meridian instead of Atlantia?" Karstien eyed him curiously. "Is it just the isolation and terrain, or is it something else?"

Yuri nodded, admitting, "Asha and Gabe think I need to live somewhere where I have fewer memories of her. Short of finding another habitable system, Meridian is the only choice."

Karstien blinked a few times and nodded curtly. "Very well. I'll make the arrangements. With your Academy there, the farmers, miners, and lumbermen may feel safe enough to return."

"Thank you, my king."

"I just want you to be happy, Uncle Yuri."

"Karstien, a person must have hope and love to be happy. I have lost mine."

^*^*^*^*^

Thirty years after the death of the oracle...

The Huntsman of Yophriel opened his eyes, it was two hours before dawn and again he had dreamed of his lost sealed one singing. Rolling onto his side, tears ran down his face unbidden. About ten years earlier, Yuri had woken to the sound of Daisy screaming in pain like she had the day Kalen was born. Since then, he had heard her singing in his dreams every morning. It was slowly driving him insane. Serapha could find no reason or source of the malady and heavily dosing himself with sleeping potion, only meant he slept through the music. His new cat Diva purred and butted his wet cheek with her head. His old cat had disappeared the night he heard Daisy's screams. Her purring usually helped him settle back into sleep but not this morning. He went to the kitchen and made coffee, black and bitter as his heartache. Looking out the window at the moonlight mountains, he whispered, "I miss you."

The next morning, Yuri woke as he did every day, to Daisy's soft song and murmured, 'Sweet dreams.' This time he fell back asleep and dreamed about his mother.

Yllumina wore the frown she had always gotten when he had disappointed her. "Why did you let them convince your love died and give up your hope?"

Yuri shook his head slowly, "Mother, Daisy went into the Light."

Mina held out her hand, in its palm was Daisy's widow's token, "Did she?"

He stared at the ring. Daisy as Fleur had told him she was no longer worthy to wear it. She had refused it when Regis had tried to give it back, but she had put it back on during the thirteen days of the Cataclysm, telling Regis she needed to remember who she hated and why she had to succeed. He realized it wasn't with her clothes or oracle stone in her empty healing chamber.

His jaw dropped as his mother smiled. "Hope endures as long as love lives and yours lives. Find your hope, my son."

Yuri jerked awake when Yllumina tossed the ring to him. He had instinctively reacted to catch it. Getting up quickly, he went into his office and tapped his memo board, swiping through the screens. The calendars of classes, lists of students, notes on creatures and eco-studies flashed by until he found it. Opening the file, he looked at all the notes he had on Daisy's death. Remembering every moment, he realized he had missed the detail of the ring Kaleth had made for Daisy. He needed to ask another about it, one who like he and Daisy had perfect recall of every moment. Someone who had the power and influence to make Daisy disappear, someone who hated Yuri more than any other.

High Lord Shadz of the House of Odini had vowed to make Yurieth pay for the pain he caused Daisy when she was Fleur, not in that lifetime but in the next. Yuri trembled, if his niece were not Shadz's sealed one, he would torture the Master Mage until he got the truth then kill him. Dressing quickly, Yuri went to the portal and set the control crystal for the Crown City Azimuth on Aetheria.

In the darkness, he looked around the Academy for Huntsmen and Foresters and wondered if Karstien knew. His nephew, the King of the New Aetherian Empire had let Yuri move his school to the second furthest habitable system and now Yuri had to wonder why. Above the horizon, the wasteland world of Meridian 3 rose like a golden gem. Yuri had always promised himself he would make it green again in memory of the friends he lost but first he had to find Daisy, he had to find his hope.