"A million children cry inside my head," Cassandra told him, her face ugly with held back tears. "I know them not, souls lost in the void, so much pain inside every one. It is not prophesy to have already fallen! This was not the curse he kissed me with, not the curse of futures and horses made of writing desk bones! Man has made such a thing of me that I cannot make the aching stop." Her sob with thick as it tore itself from her and she looked at him helplessly. "Make them all keep their silence, she begs this, this one blessing for one so cursed. Quiet all the souls that are not hers, or instead make the clocks turn on their hands so that she may deny her vows to the Virgin and lay with the Wolf-Slayer as it could have been. A maidenhood gifted to a god is so little price for peace, would that I had once known such a thing."