“’The Women of the Horse shall rise’,” Lauren’s hands went back to the book, and the strand of hair she’d pushed behind her ear fell across her face again, “I – I don’t have any idea what that means,” she admitted with a noncommittal wave of her hand, but her eyes never left the page and her finger was back to following the line she’d left, her lips pursed in focused thought. “’Between the Warrior and the Queen, one of the two shall die’. I haven’t determined who the Queen is, but –,”

Now Bo’s attention had finally been arrested by something other than the heart-breakingly beautiful woman perched perfectly on the edge of Bo’s bed. This was the problem she was supposed to be solving, the riddle she needed to find the answer to. And despite the fact that Lauren had left her, Bo knew that Lauren still cared, and that Bo’s thoughts on the answers to this prophecy would trouble her.

“Yeah,” Bo interrupted, her words softer now, resigned, “they think it’s me.” She turned away, unable to look Lauren in the eye now, her stomach twisting into knots that, this time, had nothing to do with the woman that sat at arm’s length from her. Lauren’s outburst was immediate.

“Holy shit, Bo, then it’s coming true, don’t you see? We have gotta get you out of here!” Lauren stood up and drew close, then passed her. The tome dropped on the edge of the bed, forgotten, and Bo’s chest felt like it would burst with the pressure of the hurt, of the memories, of the wanting and the questions that suddenly seemed vastly more important than any this grim prophesy of doom could ever present her with.

“Why are you doing this?”

But Lauren had turned her back on Bo and walked away, her voice rising in pitch with every word she spoke and sending a shock of nerves and hurt and anger rising along Bo’s spine and electrifying the short hairs on the back of Bo’s neck. “Something is coming for you,” Lauren went on, unmindful of the curl of Bo’s lip or the glare that tangled Bo’s brows into a scowling line over her eyes, “the Morrigan –,”

“To get back at me?!” Bo demanded, incapable of pushing her feelings away any longer.