A late spring storm howled across the open plain. With nothing but a few hills between it and the pole itself the weather there could be unbelievably harsh. Not that much snow fell, but the wind whipped what snow there was into a blinding blizzard that might well continue for days.

Inside Flame Song's underground home a different sort of storm was howling. Firedart was lying on the floor, flailing and screaming. The six year old boy was very often more of a handful than both of their other children put together. Flame, who had been trying to talk the child out of this latest tantrum gave Aidan a glance that said "help," so he got up from where he'd been sitting and helping Littlespark draw, and want over to the screaming boy. He didn't bother with talking, he just picked him up by the waist and held him at arm's length. Dart continued to scream and flail.

"Dart. If you don't stop screaming right now I am going to lock you in your room." Pheonixflare, who was already in said room, lying on his bed, flattened his ears at that. He didn't want his screaming twin locked in with him, and he didn't want to have to sleep somewhere else either. But Firedart's howling cut off. He glared at his father and then deliberately hit his arm, as hard as he could. Aidan glared right back. "You do not hit people! I am going to lock you in now, and you can't come out until you apologize."

Aidan gave Phoenixflare an apologetic look as he carried his brother into his room. With a sigh Flare got to his feet and padded on all fours out the door. Aidan deposited his more humanoid brother on on his bed and went out and shut the door. Only just in time, because Firedart tried to get to it first and get out. He puled on the door and started screaming again. Aidan held onto the latch, keeping it closed. The door didn't actually lock, so he was stuck there until Dart calmed down.

"Sorry Flare. You can sleep in our bed tonight if you like, or out by the fire."

"I'll sleep in your bed," he said. "It's okay. I just wish he'd figure out that screaming doesn't help already." His ears were still back.

Flame Song gave her youngest son a hug, and went with him into her and Aidan's bedroom, where she tucked him into their large bed. Aidan continued to hold on to the latch. Firedart was still tugging at it, and it sounded like he'd gotten one foot braced on the door frame. Aidan had the sudden thought to let go and let him fly backwards, but he didn't seriously entertain it. He didn't want to be cruel to the boy, but he wasn't going to let his son get away with tantrums and hitting either. So he just kept holding the door shut. He was stronger and had more endurance than trained warriors twice his size, so he wasn't going to be worn out by a small child, however loud. It went on for quite a while all the same, but eventually the screaming and the pulling stopped.

"Are you ready to apologize?" said Aidan through the door.

"M'sorry," came the mumbled reply. Aidan opened the door. Firedart was sitting on the floor, his face still a little red and his cheeks tear-stained. Aidan picked him up again, but to hug him this time. "That's better." The boy sniffled and leaned against Aidan's chest. Aidan held him for a little longer, then set him down on his bed. "Now it's bedtime." Protesting against going to bed was what had started the whole mess, but Firedart was too worn out to put up any further protests, and soon Aidan had him tucked in. The house was blissfully silent. Phoenixflare, of course, was sound asleep by now, and Littlespark had gone to bed not long after. So when Aidan left the boys' bedroom and eased the door shut, he found Flame sitting alone by the fire. She smiled up at him. "At least he does it less often now. Maybe by the time he's twelve he'll have grown out of it entirely."

Aidan chuckled. "I can hope he grows out of it a little sooner than that. I sometimes think that if we'd had him first, we'd just have the one. I love him, but he is quite a handful."

Flame leaned against her husband's side and nodded. "Yes he is. Though I suppose Flare makes up for it. He's..." she trailed off.

"Hmm?"

Flame sat up and shook her head softly. "It seems odd to say it, but he unnerves me a bit sometimes. I sometimes feel that he knows more than I do. He's so adult, and yet he's still so young..."

"Have you known any other Phoenix Children?" he asked.

"Only as adults, and then not very well. I've met a couple, is all. They were like that too, but they were hundreds of years old. Thousands even. You expect it from someone like that. From your own child..." she shrugged. "But I love him all the same."

"I know what you mean. And I love him too. And he loves us, and that's really all that matters."

Flame smiled over at him. "Yes. I love you too, you know."

"I know."

Flame laughed. "Aidan!"

He grinned impishly at her. "I love you too."

She shook her head. "You're hopeless."

"No, I'm hopeful."

"Oh? And what are you hoping for?"

"Well for starters, I was hoping I might get a kiss."

"Just a kiss?" There was a twinkle in Flame Song's eyes as she said it.

"I said for starters," replied Aidan, with a matching twinkle in his own eyes.

"And what then?"

"Oh, I'm sure I can think of something..."

Flame smiled and put her arms around him. He slid his arms around her as well and kissed her deeply. When Flame came up for air Aidan lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it softly, first on the back and then on the palm. Then he kissed her wrist slowly and gently, lingering over the spot where her blood rushed close to the skin. Her breathing quickened and her heart began to race as he worked his way upward, taking his time, drawing the moment out.

At first they were both far to distracted to hear the faint hum that was building in the room, but gradually it became too loud to miss. Aidan reluctantly broke off what he was doing. “Do you hear that?”

“Yes,” said Flame Song. “And look.” She pointed to the corner of the room where a soft glow was building in accompaniment to the hum.

"A portal," said Aidan as the glow turned into a rainbow shimmer that hung in the air just off the ground. He got nimbly to his feet, and his hands went to the pair of daggers he always wore at his belt. Maybe whoever was making the portal was friendly, and maybe not. Flame too had risen to her feet, and Aidan could tell by the faintest possible blurring that hovered around her that she was prepared to shift back into her firecat form if needed.

The portal stopped growing, and an instant later a man stepped through.

He was a tall man, lean and dark haired. His face was stern, and could have been cruel, but it wore at the moment an expression of worry and concern. He was wearing white cleric's robes, and a holy symbol hung around his neck. And he was quite familiar to the pair, though more so to Flame Song than to Aidan.

"Radu?" The blurring faded and she resolidified completely, looking surprised but pleased.

He smiled at her. "Yes. I'm glad to see you remember me. I'm very sorry for intruding on your home like this but..."

Aidan cut him off, and Flame was startled to see that he'd drawn his daggers. "There's a Radu on this world too, and moving from place to place on one world is a lot easier than moving between worlds," he said. Flame took a step back, looking suddenly a bit abashed.

"But he is wearing cleric's robes," said Flame.

"Just because they look like it doesn't mean they, or the symbol, are actually blessed," said Aidan.

Radu looked between them, something that might have been frustration on his face. "I am sorry. If there is any way I can prove that I am not the one you apparently fear..."

Flame said, "Maybe if you could tell me about when we met?"

Aidan suddenly chuckled. "There's a better way than that, and one that our Radu couldn't possibly fake." He sheathed both his daggers and took a few steps forward. "If you would hold out your hand, sir."

Flame, realizing what he was doing, protested. "I'm sure we could come up with some better way. You don't have to..."

Aidan shrugged. "This is the one thing that's impossible for a vampire to fake. And I don't want to take time to play Twenty Questions while somebody who might or might not be a vampire lord stands in our living room." He flicked a glance towards the doors that led off of the room, three of which held their sleeping children behind them.

Flame caught the glance and quieted.

Aidan turned back to Radu. "Your hand, if you please." Radu looked puzzled by this exchange, but he held out his hand. Aidan simply brushed his own fingertips against it. Then he yelped and drew them back. "Holy cow! Er... holy something anyhow. He's the real thing and then some. Ow!" He sucked on his fingers. He had expected a little jolt of pain. He'd had to touch a cleric more than once, and was more or less used to the sensation, though he didn't like it. But this! He looked at his fingers. They were actually burned.

Radu looked at Aidan. "I don't understand..."

Aidan grinned, showing his fangs. "I'm a vampire. Holy power and I don't really get along. Though..." he shook his fingers again, still feeling the pain of it. "I don't think I've ever touched somebody as strong as you. If I'd known how much that was going to hurt I might not have done it. Ow."

Radu went a little wide-eyed. "But you were not such when last we met."

Aidan shrugged. "Life goes on. Things change. And it wasn't exactly my idea at the time. But here, now that we know you're who you say you are, come and have a seat." Aidan dropped down into a chair and gestured at the couch. He and Flame were no longer tense, but now Radu looked a little nervous. "Oh relax, I won't bite you," said Aidan. "I don't think I could if I wanted to! There's nobody in the world safer from vampires than you are."

Radu smiled, a faint little smile, and seated himself gingerly. "Would that it were so. But it is about a vampire that I have come to speak with you two. He cannot harm me directly, but he is preying on my followers, and all attempts to stop it have failed. This is my last desperate measure. I remembered you two, from when I met you many years ago. And I remembered also your promise to repay me. I.... it goes against my nature to call in such a debt, but I feel I must, for the sake of my people. Something must be done before any more of them die."

"I'm afraid you've lost me," said Aidan. "We do owe you, and we'll do what we can for you, but surely there are people on your world who would be more use?"

Radu shook his head. "Everything I try is countered before I can even do it. Warriors' skills and mages' talents will do me no good here. Whenever we bring them to bear, they are already gone, striking at us elsewhere while we try to hunt them down. They know our every move before we make it."

"They?" Aidan arched one eyebrow inquisitively.

"I should probably start at the beginning," said Radu. "Somewhat over a year ago my people started disappearing. The first I thought nothing of. My world is not a kind place, much as I work to make it kinder. And he had merely vanished, and his belongings vanished with him. Perhaps he had decided to leave my order, and simply didn't wish to tell me so." He sighed. "The second also I thought little of. But by the third within two month's time I began to suspect. And the fourth... He vanished too, but this time he did not vanish without a trace. There was... blood in his house. They had..." He stopped, shook his head. "I shall spare you the details. But I knew then that something was hunting my people. And I knew because they wanted me to know it. Each death revealed more to me about them, about what they had done to those they took, and each revelation was mocking me, my inability to protect my people. The last few..." He closed his eyes, and his face showed the pain that roughened his voice. "The last few have been returned to us alive. One will live, though I am not sure he will ever be entirely sane again. The others, it was merciful that they did not survive."

He looked up at them then. "And no doubt you wonder why this sends me to you. The one who lived was at last able to tell me what we faced. We were being hunted by a pair. Only two, but they have great resources at their hands. The one is a vampire. You no doubt know more about the strengths and weaknesses of that condition than I, but he is formidable all by himself. And he is an aerian as well. The other is a woman, utterly cruel and evil, who is a shape-shifter, and takes the form of a white-furred giant cat."

Aidan and Flame exchanged startled glances. "Us?"

Radu nodded. "As it seems the one who bears my name in this world is evil, so the ones who bear your names in my world are. I thought of you, when I learned who they were. It was impossible not to remember you, as I have never seen another giant cat such as the shape you often wore when I knew you." He inclined his head towards Flame. "And that is why you can help me. I had thought to ask Flame Song to assist, to pretend to be her double and discover how they are able to know all my plans. Now that I know you are a vampire as well, you might also help. If you could separate the pair, trick them even for a few minutes, it might be enough. I know that it is dangerous, and I would not ask you to do it, but... I cannot let my people die while I stand idly by. I have tried everything else, this is my last desperate measure. Will you help me?" His expression and tone were pleading, beseeching.

Aidan looked at Flame. She looked back and sighed. "We gave this sort of thing up for the children's sakes. And they're still here. I don't know if I can..."

Aidan nodded. He looked at Radu. "We both owe you our lives. But... We have a family now. We have children and we can't help but think of them before anything else. Were it merely risking our lives, we would. But risking leaving them orphaned..." He shook his head. "They are already at risk enough because of..." He stopped and his eyes went wide. "You're a cleric," he said, suddenly intent. "Do you know anything about demons?"

Radu blinked at the sudden change of subject. "Yes... I do not deal with them, but I have studied a bit of demon lore."

"Do you know of a way to kill one? And I mean truly kill one, so it won't come back? I've killed the damn thing twice now, but it never lasts."

Radu blinked. "There is a demon after you?" He looked around, then blinked again. "I see that there is. Whoever set your wards was very good."

"Yes. He was very good, but he wasn't a cleric. He said it was theoretically possible to kill one, but he didn't have anything that he knew for certain would do it. And he has his own concerns, he can't camp out here hoping to figure out how to pick the thing off for us."

"Let me think. I assume you mean to exchange favors, that you will help me with my problem if I help you with yours?"

"Yes."

Flame squeezed Aidan's hand. Risking their lives, risking orphaning their children... it still frightened her, but the prospect of having Asmodeus gone forever, of not having that sword hanging over their heads waiting to fall, was wonderful. Possibly wonderful enough to be worth it.

Radu was silent for a long time. Then he shook his head. "There is a way. But you won't be able to do it yourselves. Not unless Flame has improved greatly in her sword skills since I last knew her anyhow."

Flame shook her head. "No. I'm still not any good with weapons."

"Then you will need a champion of some sort. There is a kind of spell. It is something not often cast because it melds the earth power with the sky power. Which is to say that it uses the sort of magic used by mages and the sort used by clerics, both together. I've heard it called 'The Sword of Heaven,' though I have never heard any reliable accounts of one actually being used. The theory, though, when I encountered it, seemed sound. But you would not be able to so much as touch it. It will be a very powerful holy symbol of sorts. You would be burned by holding it. You might find it painful to even be near it."

Aidan considered. A champion. There were a few he knew... but would any of them fight a demon on his behalf? One of the Queen's Own might, but he wasn't particularly close to any of them, and most of Flame's friends had retired by now. Then he had a thought. "I assume you start with a regular weapon, and put the power into it somehow?"

Radu nodded.

"Do you have to cast the spell on the whole thing? Some swords are actually two pieces, the hilt isn't the same metal as the blade."

Radu blinked. "I... never thought of that. No, there's no reason why I can't cast it just on the blade itself. Though... I said it may be painful merely to be near. Holding the hilt may still hurt you greatly, even if you're not actually burned."

"Pain I can deal with," said Aidan. "Just one more question then. Does it have to be a sword?"

"No. Any weapon will do. Though for your purposes obviously it has to be one that is made in two pieces."

Aidan nodded. He drew his left-hand dagger. That was the one he favored, as he was left-handed. It had a blue stone set in the pommel. Just glass, really, but it looked good. The right-hand one had a red stone. He held the blade out. It was just over a foot long, not counting the hilt. "I believe this is made in two pieces. Will it do?"

Radu nodded. "Yes, it should."

"And what will you need to cast this spell?"

"Mostly just a lot of time and preparation," said Radu. "I don't have the full text of the spell itself, only an old treatise on the basic principle behind it. So I will need to create the runes before I can even begin the casting itself."

Aidan nodded. He looked at Flame then. "This is your decision too. I'm willing to risk it but..."

Flame sighed. "It worries me. But having this always around, having to worry about the protections failing, not being able to be safe in the southlands, having to worry about every stranger we meet! I'm long since sick of it." She shook her head. "I'm willing. I want our family to be free of this. And we've survived things that are this dangerous before. We can again."

Aidan turned back to Radu. "Very well then. Do we have a deal?"

Radu smiled. "We do. And I will refrain from asking you to shake hands on it."

Aidan laughed.

Flame said, "We can't go right away. We can't just leave the children, we need to make arrangements to have them taken care of. And we're going to have to go to Snowcap for that, so it will take some time. Give us a couple of weeks?"

Radu nodded and got to his feet. "I wish it didn't need to be so long, but I understand. Two weeks from this hour I shall return. And... thank you. Even if this doesn't work as I hope, thank you all the same."

He stepped back into the portal, which had hung there the whole time, and it and he both vanished.

They sat, a little tense and a little sad as well, in the main room of their house. The children were all there, and Corinne, from Snowcap, was there as well. She would be caring for the three children while Aidan and Flame were gone. It was easier and safer for her to come to their warded home than for them, though they were warded as well, to stay with her.

Right on schedule the hum of portal magic began to build up in the room, and the rainbow shimmer opened up in the air in front of them. Radu stepped through. They each hugged the children, and both were trying not to think of the danger they were going into, of the possibility, however small, that they might not come back.

Their farewells said, they followed Radu through the portal. They emerged in a small, unadorned chamber with a bed in one corner, and a window that looked out over a sweep of forested hills. It was night, though the moon was up, casting stark shadows on the landscape below. "This is my room. I have told no one what I plan. I have tried to avoid even speaking of it, lest something be listening in, but I've swept this room for spells a dozen times, and found none, so hopefully it will be safe. The pair live in an abandoned castle a few day's journey from here. They have lived there for some years. I think it best if you make your own plans for how to find what I need. Even here I must fear the risk of them somehow being overheard, though I cannot imagine how, but they have been overheard in places I thought as secure. And that is what I need most, the knowledge of how they are doing that.

"You will need to leave here as quietly as possible. My people, as I said, know nothing of this, and seeing one of you would only terrify them. I have marked their castle on this map" He handed Aidan a small rolled paper. "Find what I need, and then return. When you come back I will need a way to know you from your doubles. A password, perhaps?"

Aidan nodded. "How about 'palindrome.' It's not a word likely to come up in normal conversation."

Radi smiled and nodded. "Excellent. I will show you to the door then."

They went quietly down deserted hallways and out into the field in front of the monastery. Radu gave them a whispered farewell blessing, though not a literal one, for Aidan's sake. A moment later they were both aloft, Flame having taken aerian form to fly with her husband.

"Do you think we can do this?" asked Flame after a time.

"Maybe. Getting them separated will be the really hard part. But convincing them that we're them... possibly."

"I don't know if I could. I mean... you're pretty good at acting, but I've never been any good at it."

"Well... maybe we can do it another way. What if we let them know who we are, but make them think we didn't want to?"

"Huh?"

"Radu said that even in supposedly secure rooms they were finding out what's going on. They may well already know that we're coming! I don't know how they'd listen in on this conversation, given that we're in the air, but since we know they've been spying on the monastery, they might have heard Radu talking to us, even if he doesn't think they could have. If you were evil, and you knew about this, what would you do?"

Flame blinked. "Uh. I have no idea."

Aidan laughed. "Maybe it doesn't speak well of me that I do, but I can think of several things, and the very first one is attempting to reverse the trick. They will want to separate us, and get one of us to take one of them right into the middle of Radu's people. I'd bet on it."

"But what good will that do us?"

"Lots! Think about it. If we can hand one of them over to Radu, unsuspecting, then Radu can find out what he needs. I know that there are clerical spells to pry the truth out of somebody. They just haven't managed to catch one of them before because they knew it was coming."

"So... we would be tricking them into thinking they were tricking us?"

"That's right!"

"But that's not going to work. I mean both of us are here. Even if we separate, we'd both be going back by the same route, and we'd end up running into each other and spoiling it, or something. So they wouldn't try and take us both back..." She trailed off, not wanting to complete that train of thought out loud.

Aidan did it for her. "No, they'd try to take just one of us back. And keep the other captive, most likely." Or kill the other, he thought, but he didn't say that out loud. "What I'm thinking of doing is going in by myself. I'm better at sneaking than you are anyhow. If they don't know we're coming then I can get your double alone, and try and get what we need from her. If they do know we're coming, then they're going to catch me. And I will bet you anything that once they do my double is going to want to pretend to be me, and you'll be able to lead him right into Radu's arms."

"How do you know your double is going to do that?"

Aidan grinned. "Because if I were evil it's what I'd do. We saw this when we were here last time. The people here are really very much like their counterparts on our world. Brianna was the same kind of person as the Brianna I knew. She said a lot of the same things, thought in a lot of the same ways. She was just shy and peaceable rather than aggressive the way our friend tends to be. My opposite..." he considered. "He'll think like I do, except there will be one thing in which he's totally different. And yours should be the same way. Apparently the one thing for them is that they like killing people."

"I still don't like this. It means you're going to have to let yourself get caught."

He chuckled. "I'll do all I can to avoid it. As I said, hopefully they won't know we're coming, and I'll get what we came for, and that will be that. But even if they do catch me, they probably won't keep me. I'm the world's best thief, recall. Few indeed are the cells that can hold me."

Flame smiled at him. "I thought you were the world's best retired thief?"

"Uh... yeah." Aidan went a little red and Flame giggled.

"You haven't been going back to your old ways, have you?"

"Well, not recently..."

"Define recently?"

He grinned. "This week?"

"Oh you!" She laughed.

They passed the rest of the night in light-hearted conversation. They flew on for some hours after the sun rose, before landing in a clearing and resting. Aidan was out cold almost as soon as he lay down, despite having to sleep on the ground. Flame was up a little longer, getting her dinner, but she soon joined him in slumber.

They went on again once the sun set. They were flying south along the foothills. To the east lay the Aerie Mountains, to the west the settled lands of Tara, but their destination lay in the forested land between them They stopped again that day, but the third night saw them there somewhat before midnight.

They landed in the woods a short distance from the castle. It sat on a low hill overlooking a stream that ran out into the farmlands only a mile or so away. There was forest all around it, giving the impression of isolation, but from the air they had been able to see that a good-sized village lay not far off to the west.

"Right. We're here." Aidan looked at the darkened hulk of the castle. It seemed completely deserted.

"Are you sure about going in alone?" asked Flame.

"We can't go in together, that would defeat the whole point of this," said Aidan. "And yes, I'm sure. If I don't see either of them I'll come back, and I'll give you the same password. Though..." He shook his head. "Not knowing how they find out things is frustrating. They could be listening right now. So I guess... even if you get the password, be suspicious, love. And if you don't get the password, then you'll need to talk him into coming back to Radu's with you. Though I suspect that won't be hard."

She nodded, looking worried. But he grinned at her. "Don't worry. Odds are they have no idea that we're coming, and they won't know what hit 'em!" He gave her a quick but intense kiss, then vanished into the darkened sky. She looked in the direction he'd gone for a long time, unable to keep from worrying about what might happen.

Aidan landed on the least crumbled of the upper towers. He stood still and listened. His hearing was very good, and he was quite certain that there was no one in this tower, and no one in the courtyard, and no one near any windows. But stone could muffle sound, and there could yet be someone somewhere in the central areas of the castle. So he began to descend, making his way in perfect silence. He crept down dusty stairways, through empty halls, and across rooms where ancient furniture was slowly rotting away. Eventually he saw a dim glow ahead that was too warm to be moonlight. He went even more slowly and cautiously then. He crossed what must have once been the great hall, still hung with banners that were too moth-eaten to tell what they'd once shown. On the far side he found a broad stair that went down below ground level to what had once been the cellars and dungeons, and here there were signs of life. A long hallway was swept clean of dust. Most of the doors leading off of it were heavy and barred, it had obviously once been a dungeon, but there was a door at the end that had light leaking out around it. He stopped just outside the hallway and listened. It was long, and the door was thick, but he thought he could hear someone inside it. He began to move slowly forward, one step at a time.

He passed first one barred door, then another, and then suddenly a flash of intense light filled the hall, blinding him. He bit back a cry and tried to blink his eyes clear. When he attempted to raise one hand to rub at them he found that he couldn't. He was frozen in place, unable to move at all. He could blink, and that was it.

His vision started to clear enough that he could dimly make out the door at the end of the hall opening. He blinked again, and the blurry form that had stepped through it resolved into... himself. He had been expecting it, but it was still something of a shock. Though he hadn't seem himself in the mirror in many years now, he knew well enough what he looked like, and his identical twin was now walking down the hallway towards him.

Behind Aidan's double a second person emerged from the room. Seeing her was, if anything, even more shocking than seeing himself had been. She was his wife, and yet she wasn't. Where the Flame Song he knew dressed simply and practically, this woman was wearing a green velvet gown, with her hair done up in curls that spilled over one bared shoulder. And where his wife always looked open and friendly, this woman's expression was closed, hard, and at the moment sardonically amused.

"So you were right. Amazing. I almost hadn't believed it, but here he is, just as you said." She sounded exactly like his wife, as far as her voice went. The tone she was speaking with though... that was utterly different. His wife had never had that sardonic, sarcastic sort of tone.

"Of course I was right. And now that we've caught 'me', perhaps I should go see about finding 'you.'" Aidan blinked at the other's voice. Did he sound like that? Probably.

"You should probably swap shirts with him before you go," said this other Flame Song. "And take that medallion, and the daggers too."

"Right." Aidan's double nodded. He lifted his hand and made a gesture, and Aidan's shirt and vest started removing themselves. If Aidan could have fallen over he would have. His twin was a mage? How was that possible? He didn't even have the least spark of magical talent.

The other was soon dressed, and draped the medallion around his neck. Aidan noticed that he was already wearing a black iron torc that matched the one he could never remove. Was he hunted by demons as well? But he was a mage... would that make things different?

But he didn't have any more time to think about this new surprise, because his double walked up to him and touched him on the forehead, and everything went black.

Flame found herself pacing back and forth in the little clearing where she waited. It had been far too long. Had something gone wrong? What should she do if he didn't come back by morning? She looked up at the sky, and at the looming castle, but there was no sign of life in either place. She looked back down again and paced some more. She was wearing a flat track in the grass. Then she heard a soft whoosh overhead and looked up to see Aidan diving down out of the sky. She wanted to run up and hug him, but she was acutely aware of the fact that this might not actually be her husband.

"Aidan! What happened?"

"Nothing. I searched the whole place, top to bottom. There's nobody living there. We must have gotten the wrong information from somebody."

Flame had a hard time not showing her disappointment. He hadn't said the password, so this was not her Aidan, it was the other, the killer. That was an eerie thought, because she could see literally no difference at all between them. But if this was the evil version of her husband, then she knew what she had to do. She only hoped that her real Aidan was all right.

"Well..." she pretended to be a little uncertain. "I suppose we could go back to the monastery and get fresh directions. Radu might know somewhere else we could look. Or maybe something else we could try."

He flashed her a sharp, bright smile. "Sounds like a plan. Lead on then."

She had an irrational surge of anger at that, which she quickly stifled. Here was this murderer, pretending to be her husband, and grinning happily as though it were all a game! Maybe to him it was.

"Right," was all she said, and she spread her wings and took to the sky. She was happy enough to fly in the lead, it meant she wouldn't have to look at him.

They flew in silence for most of the night. As dawn approached Aidan said, sounding a little nervous, "Shouldn't we be looking for a place to stop?"

Flame glanced back at him, a little puzzled. Then she realized that his sun medallion must have been taken from her husband, just so she wouldn't notice the difference, and that he didn't actually have any idea what it did. She had a momentary desire to just insist on flying on without any explanation, but that was all too likely to give her away, so instead she said, "You're tired then? I suppose we could stop. It would be nice to sit and watch the sunrise. That always makes me rather glad that you have that protective amulet. It would be pretty sad to have to hide from the sunlight all the time."

She looked forward again, so she didn't see the expression that crossed his face at that. It was shocked disbelief mingled with hope. To see sunlight again after so long... he hadn't thought it possible. Could it truly be? After a few moments he recovered and said, "Yes, I think I am tired, and I would like to watch the sunrise."

Flame circled down to land on an open hilltop. Aidan followed her, still not quite able to believe what she had said. It was still dark when they landed, but the first hints of the coming dawn were starting to show over the eastern mountains. As the sky lightened Aidan started looking nervous. What if it wasn't true? What if she knew who she was and just wanted to kill him with sunlight? He looked around. There were a few trees sharing the hilltop with them. He went over, trying to seem casual, and leaned against the tree trunk where at least he could quickly be out of direct sunlight.

Flame hid a smile, guessing exactly what was behind that move. But she was happy enough to sit at a distance from him.

Slowly the light to the east grew. Colors started to show, faint purples blending into lighter pinks, and a hint of gold touched the clouds that hung over the mountains. As he realized that this early light, which ought to have been profoundly uncomfortable, wasn't hurting him at all, something like wonder crossed Aidan's face. He stepped away from the tree and looked directly at the spot where the sun's rays were spilling around the distant peaks. Soon the sun itself edged above the mountains. Aidan squinted, then closed his eyes against the brightness, but he lifted his face to the light, feeling its warmth against his skin for the first time in almost a decade.

"Sunlight," he whispered softly to himself. It had been so long... Had it really been worth it, to deny himself this for so many years?

Flame Song found herself watching him rather than the sun. The expression of awe and wonder on his face was one she'd seen before. It was the same expression that her Aidan had had the first time he'd worn the sun medallion. Perhaps he wasn't entirely a monster. Perhaps he had more in common with her husband than just his face. But she knew that Radu wouldn't lie, she knew that this man had tortured and killed people. How could he be standing here, looking as he did, and have done such things?

When the sun had been fully up for several minutes, she said, "I'm feeling fairly rested, really. How about you? Shall we go on?"

He started. He'd been so lost in the sunlight that he'd forgotten she was there. "Yes, of course. Let's go on."

She led the way once again through the brilliant blue sky. It was probably good that she was taking the lead, because if Aidan had been in front they'd probably have ended up just wandering aimlessly. Every time she looked back at him he had a dreamy sort of expression on his face, and he didn't seem to be paying the least bit of attention to their course or the scenery below. Eventually, however, he started yawning. Even with sun protection, vampires weren't meant to be awake during daylight.

"Time to stop, I think," said Flame. "We can have a good nap and go on after dark."

"Sure," he said absently.

When they landed he laid back in the open meadow and looked up at the blue sky, dotted here and there with clouds. That dreamy expression was still on his face, even after he drifted off to sleep. She looked at him for a while. She wished she could talk to him, ask him why he'd done the things he'd done, find out if he really was as much like her husband as he seemed. But any of those questions would give away that she knew who he was. So she simply sighed and curled up to sleep a few yards away.

She awoke just before sundown. She had heard something, and when she lifted her head she saw that Aidan was already awake, and was watching the sun begin to sink below the horizon with something like regret. She had returned to firecat form to sleep, and so she rose and stretched, working her paws through the grass. She was hungry, and that suddenly brought to mind another problem.

"Aidan?"

He looked over her, and gave a sudden start. Something like fear flickered over his face for a moment before being banished. "Yes?"

"I can't remember, when was the last time you fed?"

He blinked. "Uh... a couple days ago, why?"

"I'm hungry, so I'm going hunting. I thought I might catch you something while I was at it."

"Oh. Uh, sure. Go ahead."

She nodded and padded off into the woods. It was wonderful to be able to put everything else out of her mind for a time and simply hunt. She spent much of her time looking human these days but she was not, and she loved the chance to indulge her true nature. It was spring and the forest was bursting with new life. She caught a baby rabbit almost immediately, too young and stupid to even know it should run. It was hardly more than a couple of mouthfulls, but it was a start. A half an hour or so later she had more than satisfied her own hunger with a lucky catch of a newborn fawn, and so she began her second, more difficult hunt. She had to take something alive. She had done it many times before, though, so it didn't take much longer to pounce on another rabbit, this one an adult. She pinned it with velvet paws and then took the trembling creature carefully in her jaws.

Aidan gave another start when she came out of the woods only a few feet away from where he'd been standing. There was that momentary flash of fear again as he actually took a step back from her. But he saw the struggling rabbit in her mouth a moment later, and stepped forward again. She lifted her head, offering it wordlessly to him, and he took it from her. His expression was hard to read. It was something like surprise, something like wariness, and something also like gratitude and warmth. She wondered for a moment what her double must be like, that he reacted so strangely to her.

He lifted the rabbit and fed without turning away as her husband usually did. She didn't mind the sight of blood, but the fact that he didn't wish to spare her the way her Aidan did reminded her that this was not her husband. She shouldn't be feeling sympathy for him, he was a cold-blooded killer. She turned away until he was finished. "Come on. We should get going."

The rest of the journey passed without incident. They arrived at the monastery a few hours before sunset on the third day. Flame led the way, simply striding confidently up to the door she and Aidan had left by and opening it. It wasn’t locked, and they passed inside. Almost immediately they found themselves frozen in their tracks as the net of a clerical spell fell over them. The mirror Aidan let out a cry of pain and Flame realized that the clerical magic must be hurting him.

Radu, with several other people flanking him, hurried up to them. "Speak the password," he said. They both said "Pallindrome" at the same time.

Flame looked over at Aidan in shock. "No! Don't let us loose!" she said as Radu raised his hand to release the spell.

"What?" Radu looked at her, puzzled. Aidan was giving her a puzzled look as well.

"He's not my husband," she said. "I don't know how he got the password, I never told him it, but he's the other one."

"What?!" Aidan's puzzlement increased to shock. "How...?"

Fame suddenly found herself able to move, though Aidan was still pinned in place. "You were trying to trick me, weren't you? Well turn about is fair play." She used one of her own husband's expressions, and Aidan's face darkened with rage. He glared at her, unable to do anything else.

"Thank you for your quick thinking," said Radu. "And now I am going to find out what's going on here. Come." He turned and strode down the hall. Flame followed, and Aidan was bodily dragged after them by the invisible net of Radu's magic. Radu descended a flight of stairs to a stone-walled basement. He opened a heavy wooden door with a tiny barred window in it. There was a heavy lock on the door, and a bar could be placed on it from the outside as well. He propelled Aidan into the cell on the far side.

"What are you going to do with him?" asked Flame.

"Question him with a truth spell," said Radu.

"But isn't that going to hurt him more?" asked Flame

Radu sighed. "Yes. But much as I dislike causing pain, I need to know. And after what he has done to my people I find that I will feel little guilt about it."

"I suppose." Flame felt uncomfortable with the thought, for some reason, but Radu was right.

Aidan was still glaring at the both of them. Radu lifted his hand and cast the spell. Aidan made a pained sound, but then he gritted his teeth and glared even more fiercely.

"Tell me. How have you been discovering what I plan?"

Flame could see him struggling to keep silent, but slowly, reluctantly, he said, "It was a spell."

"But I cleared every room of spells a dozen times, at least! How could it be a spell?"

"Because the spell wasn't on the rooms." He was giving the least possible information.

"What was it on then?"

"It was on you."

"What? How is that even possible?"

Aidan suddenly laughed. "Well the cat's out of the bag now, so I suppose I shall tell all. I think it's quite possibly the best spell I've ever crafted, I'm really rather proud of it. The nicest thing about it is that it was designed to mimic the aura of the person wearing it. Impossible to spot from the outside, and nearly as hard to spot from the inside. You'd only notice if you were looking for it. And it's a tiny little thing, very low-powered. All it does is listen. But every word that's been spoken in your hearing for the last year has been carried to my waiting ears."

Radu looked stunned. "How could you cast a spell on me without my noticing?"

Aidan grinned, showing his sharp fangs. "You're so trusting. I had it all prepared when I first came here. I did come here, you know. Just one supplicant among many. I was so grateful for the way you solved my little problem that I fell at your feet. And you weren't looking for magic, you were too busy being all humble and telling me to get up. But all it took was a touch to place it on you."

"And I suppose your Flame Song is listening to us right now then?" asked Flame.

Aidan laughed again. "Oh no. This was my magic, she couldn't use it. It only reports to me. I know better than to give her such leverage now. But even if she could listen in, she's going to be far too busy playing with her new toy for the next little while to bother."

Flame's heart sank. Did that mean what she thought it meant? "Toy?" she asked.

"Your Aidan, my double. She gets the chance to corrupt me all over again! I'm sure she's having a great deal of fun doing it. She certainly did the first time around. She'll play with him until he comes around to her way of thinking, or until she breaks him."

Flame turned to Radu. "I need to go back, I need to rescue him."

He nodded. "Soon enough. But you shouldn't go alone, and you shouldn't just run off right now. She's still fairly formidable, even alone."

"I suppose..." Flame didn't want to wait.

"Hey!" Aidan interrupted. "Your spells are still on me, mister high-and-mighty, I-don't-like-hurting-people, Blessed Saint Radu. Are you done?"

Radu gave him a level look. "Yes." He shut and barred the door and then gestured, and Aidan staggered, suddenly released. He straightened and took the chance to glare at them again through the little window.

"He's not going to be able to get out of there?" said Flame.

Radu shook his head. "No. The whole chamber is protected with clerical magic. Neither he nor his magic can touch the door, the walls, the ceiling or even the floor. Though I did put that one on the outside of the stones, so he'll be able to lie down if he so desires." He turned to go. "Come. I'll tell my followers about you, so you shouldn't scare any of them too badly. You can stay here tonight and set out, rested and with what help I can spare, in the morning."

Flame followed Radu, her steps suddenly heavy with weariness. She was tired, so very tired. When Radu showed her into a simple room much like his own she went directly to the bed and collapsed into it. She didn’t even bother to undress or to shift back into her natural firecat form as she often did to sleep. She fell into a deep sleep like falling into a slow-moving river the moment her head touched the pillow.

She awoke gradually with the feeling she’d just heard somebody calling her name. Everything was very still, and she felt oddly detached from herself, as if she was still dreaming, but she knew she was awake. The call came again, but it wasn’t a call with words, it was more like a feeling. Someone she knew was calling her, summoning her, and she must go. She made her way through empty corridors. Most of the illuminating torches had gone out, but the call guided her unerringly through the dark. She came to the stairs that descended to the basement and went down them. Somewhere in the back of her mind a little bit of her that was more awake was telling her there was something she ought to remember about the basement, but in her dreamy state she couldn’t think what it might be. Then she reached the bottom of the stairs and snapped abruptly and horribly awake. The space in front of her was lit only by the dim light that spilled down the stairs, but it was more than enough for Flame to see the gruesome scene before her. The door to Aidan’s cell stood open. A man in cleric’s robes was sprawled in front of it, and a puddle of blood covered the floor around him. A bloodied dagger lay on the floor a few feet away from the body. She took one step forward with the thought that the man might not be dead. As she did a dark shape dropped from the shadows of the ceiling behind her. He touched her with one hand and at his touch she was frozen, completely unable to move.

As she had known it would be, when he came around in front of her it was Aidan. He snapped his fingers and a ball of fire appeared just over his shoulder. By its light he looked at her closely.

"It's strange... You look so very much like her, and yet you're not like her at all. The way you treated me... You knew I was your enemy, and yet you were kinder to me as we traveled than she has ever been. I don't understand it." He reached up and stroked her cheek. She shivered at his touch. "You're beautiful. Perhaps even more beautiful than she is. There is always hardness and... and pain with her beauty. But you..." He slid his fingers down from her cheek, along the side of her neck, and traced them lingeringly over her throat. "I find that I want you. As I have never wanted anything, not even my Flame when she first seduced me. And I don't even understand why that should be. Why should your softness be more beautiful? But it is..."

Flame closed her eyes tightly. That flicker of sympathy was still there for him, and what he had said made it burn even stronger, but overriding that was fear. She didn't want to see what she knew must be coming. So she felt rather than saw his arms encircle her. She felt the soft touch of his lips on her neck and then the sharp prick of his fangs as he broke through her skin to reach the rushing blood beneath. She had known such kisses before, of course. Her Aidan was a vampire as much as this man was, and she had taken great pleasure in sharing that special bond with him. But this was a different, darker experience. Where her Aidan's mind was usually clear, and calm, a warm, loving embrace, this touch was like being dropped into a raging ocean storm. A dozen different emotions churned together, tossing her, and him as well, like a ship at sea. There was physical passion, of course, and that was foremost in those first few moments, but beneath that she felt rage, hatred, fear, depression, self-loathing, confusion, and other, less easily named things, all tangled together, all fighting against each other, but also all battering on her. It felt as if the darkest of these feelings were directed at her, that she was the one raged against, feared, hated.

She shrank back from the assault, and a kind of twisted joy surged in him at her shock and fear. He reveled in her terror, in the distress of this, the object of his hatred. Or was it only that she was the mirror of the true object of this storm of darkness?

While all this was surging between them, unchecked emotions pouring back and forth across their bond, they remained locked in their embrace, Flame standing frozen, Aidan with his head bent to her neck. He drank deeply of her blood, relishing the flavor of her fear. Gradually Flame began to weaken. Her pulse became weaker, her breathing more shallow. I’m going to die, she thought, and somehow the thought was liberating. If death was near then there was nothing else she needed to fear. And with the fear any hatred she had for this dark mirror of her husband fell away as well. Instead she found herself regarding him with pity and compassion. He was so like her Aidan. What had his life been like, to make him what he had become? She remembered what he's said about hardness and pain, and what he had said also about how his wife would play with her husband until she broke him. Had she then played with and broken this man?

Aidan, joined to her mind by the blood-bond, couldn’t read her thoughts, but he could sense her emotions, and the sudden shift confused him. His exultant delight in his revenge faded. He realized with a kind of shock that he was killing her, that she lay on death’s door at that moment. Somewhere in his heart a tiny spark of caring flared to life. He was killing her and she must know it, yet he felt no hatred from her, only this strange compassion. Suddenly two impulses were at war in him. He had always taken as his hunger and his passion demanded. He was unaccustomed to exercising self-restraint, and yet he didn’t want her to die. He struggled for the self-control to draw back. Flame felt the shift, felt the struggle change. Now his emotions were not tossing her or him, they were all at war with his hunger, the fear now not fear of her, but fear for her, and the hatred vanished in the face of what might almost be the very smallest possible grain of love. She reached out to him then with warmth and encouragement, wanting to live but wanting nearly as much to see Aidan win over his inner darkness.

How his struggle might have ended they would never know for at that instant Radu leaped down the stairs and hurled Aidan bodily away from her.

She collapsed on the floor; whatever spell had held her in place broken. Aidan got to his feet and faced Radu with a snarl on his face. His lips were stained with blood that he didn’t bother to wipe off. He advanced and swung a fisted hand at Radu’s midsection. Radu just managed to step back and avoid the blow. He saw as Aidan’s fist whipped past that the vampire in fact held a knife, the blade turned to lie almost invisible along his forearm, the sharp edge facing outward. Had he not avoided the blow it would have gutted him. But even as he realized the danger he was in Aidan reversed his momentum and slammed the knife point first into Radu’s abdomen. He doubled up, clutching at the hilt of the knife that stood out of his stomach. Aidan stepped back, a hard look in his eyes. Flame Song, barely holding on to consciousness, could distantly feel his rage echoing down the fading link between them.

He turned and his eyes fell on her still form sprawled on the cold floor. Another shock of realization swept though him. He bent over her and his fingers felt for a pulse. He breathed a sigh of relief when he found one. It was weak and unsteady but there. Surely in this monastery there were healers enough to save her. He rose and quickly began to ascend the stairs. Halfway up he stopped and looked back, surveying the three bodies scattered on the floor, blood pooling around two of them. Flame Song, slipping into unconsciousness, was still faintly linked to him, and the last thing she knew was his sudden feeling of regret and his surprise that any such emotion could find its way into his hardened heart.

As Aidan was winging his way into the night, leaving the bloody scene in the monastery basement behind in body, if not in mind, his double was sitting in a dim cell in the basement of the half ruined castle. He had awoken there some hours after having been knocked out. He checked himself over, not for harm but for hidden items. They'd gotten his obvious boot dagger, and of course the ones at his belt were gone, as was the one that went down the back of his shirt. The one concealed in his belt was still there, though, as well as the less obvious boot dagger, and the hidden pocket in the other boot still held his lock picks. He grinned at that. He would be out of here in no time.

But when he took at look at the door his confidence went out like a light. There was no keyhole, there was instead a metal plate with a hexagonal indentation in the center. A mage lock. The two sides of the latch were actually one solid piece of metal until it was opened with the matching "key," a hexagonal rod with a particular spell cast on it. You might get it open with some other spell, and there were tools that could short out the magic, if you knew what you were doing. Aidan had used them before, he even owned a few, but he hadn't known he would be facing a mage, so he hadn't brought them. He surveyed the rest of the room. It was spacious, for a prison cell, but floor, ceiling and walls were made of solid stone, and there were no windows to the outside. In fact the only features to the room were the door and a selection of iron rings driven into the far wall, which he presumed were for chaining prisoners to. Otherwise the cell was totally bare. He sat down and sighed. He wasn't going anywhere. He could only hope that Flame Song was faring better than he was.

After three days he was still alone in the cell, and he took that as a good sign. It meant that they probably hadn't caught Flame Song. He hoped that would succeed and come to his rescue quickly. Here I am, needing rescue yet again, he thought with a sigh. I hope someday I am finally done with this sort of thing and can actually live in peace.

The other Flame Song had looked in on him several times. There was a small window in the door which allowed her to get a good look at him. So far she hadn't said anything to him, only looked. He ignored her for the most part, though if he were being honest with himself he had to admit that she unnerved him thoroughly. The way her expressions twisted the familiar features of his wife's face was disturbing.

Her visits were the only variety in his confined existence, though he did not at all look forward to them. But there was no delivering of meals, and the traditional prisoner’s fare of bread and water would have done him little good had it been provided. His nutritional needs were quite different, and they were beginning to become a problem. He usually fed about every other night, and as he hadn’t fed the night he’d been captured, it had now been four full days since he’d last eaten. Hunger was a constant gnawing presence in his stomach and he was beginning to wonder how long he could hold out. The longest he’d ever gone without food before had been six days, and by the end he’d been in a sorry state.

He was sitting on the floor and counting the stones in the opposite wall out of sheer boredom when he heard two sets of footsteps approaching his cell. His keen hearing could distinguish them clearly. One set belonged to Flame Song, the other was a heavier tread that he’d heard dimly overhead before. He presumed it must belong to some servant or companion of his captor. Both sets of feet halted before his door. Then the door swung inward. The figure framed in the doorway was a large one, nearly twice Aidan's height and probably twice as broad as well. Large mobile ears framed an upstanding crest of spiky hair, and below that yellow eyes were set above a blunt muzzle lined with sharp teeth. A gnoll. Its gender was impossible to tell, he had no idea what to look for. Somewhat to Aidan's surprise it was dressed in a loose shirt of cream colored linen and a pair of trousers that had to have been tailored specially for its oddly shaped legs. He had seen such creatures before, but they were usually dressed in rags or mis-matched pieces of rusted armor. And they were also usually matted and filthy, but this creature was neatly groomed.

The gnoll stepped into the cell and closed one large, clawed hand around Aidan's arm. Aidan could have shrugged it off, and might even have been able to fight the thing and win, though it bore a wicked-looking axe at its belt and he was unarmed, but he wasn't quite sure if he could or not, particularly weakened with hunger as he was starting to become. And besides, he still had his mission. Flame had quite likely succeeded, but she might not have, and he might well get a chance to find out how the pair had known of Radu's plans.

So he came along meekly enough as Flame led the way through a large chamber that was cluttered with some very alarming implements which Aidan recognized, and some he didn't but which he suspected might be even more alarming. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that she has a torture chamber, he thought, a little shocked all the same. That room led out into a corridor, which ran to the base of the same flight of stairs he'd descended when he arrived. She led him down the hall he'd been trapped in, and into the room at the far end.

Once they were inside the gnoll released him and left without a word, shutting the door behind it. Aidan surveyed the room. Whatever it had originally been, it was now as lavish as anything he'd seen in the Queen's castle. Deep red was the predominating color, with accents of gold and emerald green. Dark walnut furniture with black iron fittings completed the look. A full-length mirror that covered half of one wall reflected the room, and Flame Song, but neglected to reflect Aidan. All this was peripheral, however, because the dominating feature of the room was the canopied bed, in red velvet and dark walnut to match the rest of the room. Or perhaps the rest of the room was decorated to match it. Aidan looked over at Flame Song. She was looking back with a smile that could only be called predatory. That combined with the bed gave him an uncomfortable suspicion. She was eying him from head to toe with a look that he couldn't even imagine seeing on his wife's face, and especially not when it was directed at someone other than her husband.

Apparently she liked what she saw. Aidan was still without his shirt, as his double had taken it in order to impersonate him. He was wearing only his trousers, his boots, and the black iron collar that he never removed. His shirtless figure was slightly built and very lean, but well muscled nevertheless. His face was clean-shaven despite three days without access to a razor. He’d discovered since becoming a vampire that his hair no longer grew, which was convenient since it would have been difficult to shave without the use of a mirror.

His wings were folded very tightly against his back, the aerian equivalent in body language of folding one’s arms closely. He was downright unnerved by the situation, but tried to return the mirror Flame’s appraising gaze without flinching. She was dressed in a clinging low-cut gown of green velvet. Her hair was loose about her bare shoulders and her intense green eyes bored into his own. She stepped closer to him and he involuntarily backed up a step. She laughed, a low, throaty sound, and moved in closer. Aidan took only two more steps before he found his back to the wall. She had him cornered and she took advantage of it. She ran her fingers down his bare chest, stopping when she reached his belt line and lingering for a moment before going up again. He pressed back against the wall. He had no idea what to do about this. He had expected to be quizzed, or to be attacked or even to be killed, but he had not expected to be seduced. Threat of injury he could deal with, but this?

She laughed again and said, “You’re quite handsome. I’d say you were more handsome than my Aidan, but you’d know I was lying.” She ran her hands through her hair and tilted her head back in a sensual motion that emphasized the line of her neck. He realized he was staring and broke off his gaze. Inwardly he was repeating to himself, this is not my wife, this is not my wife. She stepped close again and kissed him. He turned his head away and she began kissing his cheek and neck and nibbling on his ear. Despite himself his own body was responding to what she was doing. He could hear the beating of her heart, smell the heady scent of her, and it was impossible to ignore. He stepped to the side, trying to break free. She let him, smiling in amusement at his flushed face. He got away from the wall and moved closer to the middle of the room.

She advanced on him again and again he helplessly backed away. His head was in a whirl, he couldn’t think straight. “I know you,” she said, that seductive smile still on her lips. “I know your every weakness, your every want and desire. I know you want me. There’s no point in resisting. You can’t deny your feelings. Listen to them, they are telling you what you really want.” With every word she stepped closer and he backed away. It was only when the edge of the bed bumped against the back of his legs that he realized she’d been maneuvering him into position.

She advanced on him and the only place to go was onto the bed, which he did not want to do. He stood frozen by his confusion as she pressed her body to his. She kissed him again on the lips. Her arms went around him and she whispered again, “I know what you need.” He tried to calm himself, tried to remember who she was, who he was. This wasn’t right! Then she lifted her hand to her own neck and one long manicured fingernail dug into her throat. She broke the skin and a few red drops oozed out. Aidan stared. Huger rose up in him and mingled with the storm of emotion that enveloped him. Four days was a long time. His hunger was terribly, horrifyingly strong, and for him blood was more than simply food. The hunger he felt was a mixture of ordinary craving and passionate desire. He tried to force it away, but it insisted. The scent of blood seemed heavy in the air, despite the few drops that caused it. He wanted… he needed… and at last he denied his hunger no longer. With a low moan he fell on her neck, his fangs opening deeper wounds from which her blood freely flowed.

He was immediately aware of her mind touching his. Or no, not touching, engulfing, drawing him in. Her emotions were strong, and the blaze of pure physical passion that poured from her was impossible to resist. He was pulled down into it, his own passion rising. He lost all thought, all memory, all consciousness of right or wrong. He knew nothing but the intensity of the feelings that spiraled upward in a feedback loop of pleasure.

What they did then was not making love. Love didn’t enter into it. The emotions that lay beneath the sea of the dark Flame Song’s passion were not caring or tender, they were instead a twisted mixture of sadism, contempt, and an overpowering desire to control. The pleasure they shared was tainted and dark and when at last it was over and Aidan came back to himself he turned away from her, curled up into a ball of misery, and wept.

He could still sense her very dimly, and what he sensed then was another flare of pleasure, strong and bright, at the pain and misery he felt. She enjoyed his pain nearly as much as she had enjoyed their physical union, possibly more. He shuddered and curled up tighter.

She rose from the bed. She watched him for a while, and Aidan was sure the look of sardonic amusement he’d first seen on her face was back. He stayed where he was with his eyes shut, tears trickling down his cheeks, but he heard her move away from the bed and could tell by the change in her footsteps that she had shifted into her firecat form. She must be feeling some weakness from blood loss, but she obviously wasn’t going to show it to him. Her soft padding steps went out the door and it shut behind her.

Gradually Aidan began to pull himself together. He found his trousers and pulled them on. He was looking at the mirror and wishing he could see if he looked as bad as he felt when the door opened again. He looked up to see the gnoll's canine face regarding the empty mirror with something like curiosity. It advanced into the room and took him by the arm again. He didn’t resist. Perhaps he might have successfully escaped then, with Flame Song’s interest elsewhere, but he was too worn and numb to even think of it.

He welcomed the cool darkness of his cell. His mind was still reeling from what had happened. How could he have done that? How could he have let it happen? He had sworn that he would never again hurt his wife like that, and yet at the first temptation to do so, he had given in with hardly any resistance at all. Hunger was no excuse, he had gone longer than that before, he had known it was possible, but he'd done it anyway. He pictured the scene again and thought of all the things he could have done. There had been a hundred ways he might have avoided it, however determined this twisted version of his love had been. His heart ached from it and he began to cry again. He knew this time that he would not lose his love because of this, but somehow that was even worse. He would hurt her, and she would just forgive him again, even though it broke her heart. Was that why I did it? His guilt reached a new high at the thought. Did I give in because I knew there wouldn't be any consequences? Am I really that weak?

All that night and into the next day his thoughts spun and churned. He normally would have slept during daylight, but his pain and guilt wouldn't let him. He thought over not only this fresh betrayal but also his one night with Shauna, and he thought too of every other weakness, of every wrong done, of every excuse that justified them. He turned his long list of faults over and over and over in his mind. He dozed fitfully for a time, but when the sun set he woke with the same litany of failures running through his head. That second night was long, and painful. He examined his many excuses with pitiless honesty. He thought of his justifications, of the reasons why, in the heat of the moment, he allowed himself to put wrong and right from his mind. He examined each one and found it wanting, rejected it. And when the sun finally rose he had reached a state of calm. He had never faced himself like that before. He had always blamed the outside world, and fought and railed against it for all his problem. But each and every problem, from his pain and grief at his betrayal, to his imprisonment here, to even the attacks and threats of the demon Asmodeus, all these things were not the fault of some distant god of fate. They were his fault. They were things that happened because of his choices. They were the consequences of his actions. They might not be just, or fair, but they were still his responsibility, and no other's.

Finally understanding, he was able to let his pain fall away. He took responsibility for what he had done. He would face the consequences of it, hard as they might be. He would no longer believe the excuses he told himself that said his actions weren't his fault. They were, always. He knew he might still sometimes listen to those excuses, might still fall short in his actions, but he would no longer place the blame on anyone but himself. And with that knowledge came peace, deep and profound and still. As the sun slipped above the unseen horizon he slept, deeply and peacefully and without dreams.

So when the door opened showing the dark Flame Song and her gnoll servant standing in the hallway he didn’t react with the fear and confusion that might have otherwise filled him. The calm he’d found was deeply rooted and not easily upset. He felt he could accept anything that came. What did come was a little bit surprising, though he might have anticipated it had he thought. Flame Song wanted to break him, to bend him to her will. And so she had played on his weaknesses, his hunger, his low resistance to temptation, and gotten him to do something that ran against his nature, something wrong, even evil. She wanted to humiliate him and make him think he was helpless in her power. And now that she’d gotten him to give in to her in one way, commit one evil, she was trying another tack.

The gnoll held a girl with her hands tied behind her back. She was young, about fifteen or sixteen years old, with blond hair and brown eyes that were wide with terror. The creature propelled her into the cell. She stumbled and fell but couldn’t catch herself with her hands tied. Aidan darted forward and caught her before she could hit her head. He looked up at the mirror Flame Song questioningly.

She smiled down at him with a malicious gleam in her eyes. “I thought you might appreciate a meal, so I’ve brought you one. Enjoy.” And with that she turned and left, the door shutting firmly behind her.

Aidan gently put the girl down on the floor. She continued to stare at him with that look of wide-eyed terror. He dug out his tiny hidden belt dagger, having left the less obvious boot dagger and the lock picks with his boots, which were presumably still in Flame Song's bedroom. With one quick slash he cut the rope that tied her. He re-sheathed the knife and stepped back to give her some space, going to stand in one corner. The girl didn’t get up; she just scooted to the opposite corner of the room. She pressed against the wall as if she would melt back into it to get away from him.

"It's all right, I won't hurt you, I promise," he said softly, gently.

She just pressed back against the wall harder, hugging her knees in a fetal position.

“Here now, you’re over there and I promise I’ll stay over here. In fact,” he said as he again pulled out his hidden dagger, “I’ll let you have this. If I take even one step in your direction you can peg me with it.” He put the dagger on the floor and slid it across the room. It came to a halt a foot in front of the girl. She looked at it for a moment as if it might bite her, and then snatched it up.

“Why did you give me this? You’re Aidan, right? Aren’t you going to… to…” she couldn’t finish the sentence, though Aidan was sure the unspoken words had to do with his vampirism.

He sighed. “No, I’m not. And I’m not Aidan either. At least not the one you’re thinking of. You could say I’m his twin.”

“You’re not Aidan?” She was still terrified, but she was also a little bit curious.

“No.”

"Then who are you?”

“Well, that’s a rather complicated question. My name is actually Aidan. I’m from another world, one that’s a kind of mirror of this one. So I’m a mirror of the other Aidan.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t have to trust me, in fact it would be better if you didn’t. I’ll just stay over here and you can stay over there and we’ll both be safe.”

He sat down in his corner and leaned his head against the wall. He could sense the sun, still beneath the horizon but steadily rising towards it. Sunrise was only an hour or so away. They sat, each in silence, Aidan feeling calm still, but also saddened, and weary. The girl obviously feeling nervous, but at least no longer looking utterly terrified. Eventually he sensed the sun meeting the horizon, though no hint of its light reached into the cell. With the sun rising higher in the sky a deep tiredness and lethargy stole over him and it wasn’t long before he fell asleep.

Sometime during the day he came halfway awake, dimly aware of a presence looming over him. It took a moment for his brain, still fogged with sleep, to realize who it was. The girl, whose name he still didn’t know, was standing over him, no doubt with his dagger clutched in her hand. He remained still, keeping his eyes closed and waiting to see what she would do. She stood there for a very long time before she turned and retreated to the far corner. Aidan relaxed and went back to sleep.

Aidan awoke again as the sun disappeared below the horizon. He yawned and sat up, looking over at the girl still sitting in the opposite corner. Her head leaned on her drawn-up knees and he realized that she was asleep. He got to his feet and stretched. The sense of complete calm was still with him. It was a bit strange to be in such dire circumstances and feel so at peace, but he was. He stretched out his wings, though he couldn't quite stretch them to their full span unless he wanted to stand in the exact center of the room and stretch them out towards diagonal corners, which seemed like far too much effort. He did wish he was out of this confining cell and back with his wife, but since he was stuck here he might as well make the best of it. I’ve come a long way, he thought, suddenly remembering his helpless despair all those years ago when the Tyrant Tara had held him prisoner. But there’s still a long way to go.

He glanced again at the girl and found her awake and staring at him. He folded his wings and smiled at her. “You know, I don’t even know your name,” he said.

“I’m Celia,” she said. “Are you really from another world?”

“Yes,” he replied, “I am. Not that it’s much different from your world, really.”

“Are you…? I saw you sleeping and it looked like you weren’t breathing. Are you a vampire?”

He sighed, needing to deliberately draw breath in order to do so. “Yes, I am.”

“But you said you wouldn’t hurt me,” she said, fear returning to her voice.

“I did, and I meant it. I won’t touch you. I promise.”

“I thought vampires had to have blood every night.”

He shook his head. “Not every night, no. I can go some time without feeding. And when I’ve given my word, I keep it. I won’t touch you.”

There was a long pause, and Aidan could tell Celia was thinking. At last she said, "I thought that all vampires were evil people."

Aidan chuckled softly. "Vampires are like anybody else, some are good and some are bad. The bad ones just tend to be more famous."

"Oh. But if you're good, why did you want to be a vampire?"

Aidan laughed. “I didn’t exactly have a choice. It was the last thing I wanted.”

“Oh.” She was silent again for a while, then opened her mouth to ask another question. Before she could they both heard footsteps and voices in the room outside. A moment later the door opened and someone was literally thrown into the room. Aidan and Celia both gaped, for it was the mirror Aidan. He picked himself up gingerly from where he’d landed. “You big oaf,” he muttered at the gnoll, who was already closing the cell door.

Celia stared at the mirror Aidan, the terrified look back in her eyes. She got to her feet and, staying as far as she could from where he stood in the center of the room, she made her way around until she was standing by the other Aidan’s side. “You were telling the truth, you really are his twin,” she said.

“Yes,” he replied, and put his arm around her protectively.

His double looked at them wordlessly. Then he crossed the room to the corner Celia had jut vacated and sat down. He looked downright depressed. Aidan, rather puzzled by his double’s presence, asked him, “What are you doing in here?”

“I’m in the dog house with Flame,” came the reply. “I’ve gone and ruined her little game, and she’s not at all happy about it.” He sighed. “There are days when I wish fervently I’d never met her, and this is definitely one of them.”

Aidan smiled wryly. “I can second that motion. I wish I’d never come here.” Then a thought occurred to him. “How was my wife? I presume she got the secret of how you’ve been spying on Radu from you."

"She..." a haunted look came into his eyes. "You... you probably will want to kill me. I didn't really think that..." He trailed off. Then he said, very, very softly, "I'm sorry."

Aidan's eyes blazed and he got to his feet and stepped forward with anger in every line of his body. "What did you do to her? If you killed her, I won't just want to kill you, I'll do it!" His fangs were bared, his wings half spread, and Celia shrank away from his sudden rage.

His twin flinched. "She lived when I last saw her, and I think that she'll survive, but not because of any action of mine." He put his head in his hands. "I'm sorry," he said again. "I had almost forgotten what regret felt like. But I hurt her, and I didn't want to, I didn't mean to. I could almost kill myself because of it. What have I become? Regret... gods, suddenly I feel like I could drown in it, and what I did to her feels like the worst of all that I've done." He looked up at Aidan, and Aidan was startled to see that there were tears on his twin's cheeks. "I'm so very sorry."

Aidan's expression softened, his anger draining away. "I guess I won't kill you then."

The other sighed softly. "It might be better if you did. Maybe like Van Helsing with Lucy, it would purify my soul. Though probably not. I've done much worse than she ever did."

Celia spoke up in the silence that followed. “I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”

"His wife," said the mirror Aidan. "Flame Song's twin as he is mine. And as he's a good person and I'm an evil one... well, my Flame Song is the most evil person I've ever met, and I think that his Flame Song is the most good. And I hurt her... After the kindness she showed me." His eyes teared again. "I came close to killing her, and she still just felt sorry for me."

"She is the best person I ever met too," said Aidan, sitting back down. "She is everything to me. Without her I'd probably have died in a gutter, good for nothing and amounting to nothing."

"Heh. And without my Flame I'd probably be living a perfectly wonderful life somewhere, probably teaching magic, mortal yet and without any stains on my soul." He put his head down again, a picture of utter misery.

"What did she do to you?" asked Aidan softly. His twin looked up at him, his eyes dark.

"What didn't she do? But mostly she did what I am sure she has tried to do with you. What she's doing right now with this girl here." He gestured at Celia. "She got me to take one step into the darkness. And then one step more. Every one of them seemed like it wasn't that bad. And she made them sound so good! I can remember... Gods. I can remember what it was like to feel uncomfortable, to know that something was wrong. But she convinced me that it wasn't all that wrong, and so I did it anyhow. One thing at a time, until I reached damnation.

"I was a good person once. Or at least not a bad person. I was only nineteen when I met her. It seems like an eternity ago. More than a third of my life spent with her now. I was a student, and as students often are, I was bored. Magic had been fascinating to me at fist, but after a few years it became easy, everyday, boring. I wanted more. I wanted excitement and adventure!"

Aidan had to laugh. "I suppose we are opposites then. I have spent the last decade trying to find peace and having excitement and adventure despite all I could do."

His twin smiled a little at that. "Well, I don't know if you could call what I found adventure. But it was definitely exciting. She reeled me in like a fish on a line, and I eagerly took the bait. And at first it wasn't much. A half a step outside the law, a harmless little lark, nobody hurt. Pushing the limits, discarding the "arbitrary" rules that were holding me back. A gift of a forbidden spell book..." He trailed off then for a moment, his eyes suddenly darkening with remembered pain. He shook his head. "What harm is there in merely learning about the forbidden magics? And surely it's not that bad to try just one spell... I could have so much power and the price was so tiny! It hardly took me a year to descend from an innocent to a monster." He shook his head. "And then I kept on going. And she did too. She... plays games. That's what we were doing, playing a game." His voice was bitter. "And I wanted to play it, wanted to match her, to show her... I never even thought of the people we played with. They weren't important. All that mattered was trying to get an edge over her, trying..." He trailed off again. "That's what I was trying to do when I became a vampire. I thought it would finally give me the edge to get out from under her. But it didn't. All it did was give her another way to manipulate me."

Aidan blinked. "You turned yourself into a vampire deliberately?"

"Yes. I assume from your tone that you didn't?"

"No! I would have given just about anything to have avoided it! Even now I'm still not sure if I'd turn it down or not, were I given the chance to be mortal again. It was only because Flame Song was there, because she loved me and didn't want me to go, that I didn't kill myself just to end my misery. And because of my daughter. I didn't want to leave her fatherless."

"You have a daughter?" The look in his twin's eyes was surprise mixed with pain.

"Yes. And two sons now as well. She's nine and they are both six, they're twins. I take it you don't have any children?"

He was silent for a long time. Finally he said "No. Not... No, I don't."

There was a long awkward pause. Aidan tried to think of something to say. He got the feeling he didn't want to know what lay behind the pain he could see in his double's eyes. Eventually a thought came to him. "I can't pick this lock, but you're a mage, couldn't you open it and get us out?"

The other Aidan shook his head. "No. I was a complete idiot to do it, but Flame can be very persuasive, and this chamber is sealed very thoroughly. There's no way to cast any kind of spell from inside it. I've tried, believe me. I did a little too good of a job making it."

Aidan sighed. "Oh well. I wish I'd brought my full set of picks, I could have had it open within ten minutes of getting chucked in here. But... oh well."

"Picks?" The other raised an inquisitive eyebrow, which gesture reminded Aidan all over again of how odd it was to be sitting here talking to himself, so to speak.

"Yup. I'm the best thief in all of Tara." He grinned. "Er, retired thief, that is. But I didn't know I'd be dealing with magic when I came here, so I just brought the regular ones. And they're gone now anyhow. I... left them behind somewhere."

"I don't think I would even know where to start, if I had to pick a lock. I'd just magic it. That's what I don't get. Both of our partners are shape-shifters, and seem to have all the same abilities, but we... I mean how is it that I'm a mage, and you're not?"

Aidan shrugged."Don't ask me. We seem to have a lot in common, but there are plenty of differences too. My life story is more or less an exact opposite of yours, I think."

"Tell me about it." The mirror Aidan was suddenly curious about his twin.

Seeing no reason not to, Aidan said, "Well, I was born on Earth. I assume you were too, you talk like it. I was sucked in by a portal and taken to my version of this world when I was fourteen. I thought all my dreams had come true for a while, but... I'm no hero. This wasn't a storybook, and I wasn't the lost heir, or any of that nonsense."

The other chuckled softly. "I thought I was going to be the hero. The dashing young mage who always saves the day. And here I am, the dastardly villain instead." He sighed and shook his head.

"Funny how things don't go how you plan." Aidan smiled. "But once the wonder of being able to fly wore off, I didn't know what to do with myself. I wandered around for a while and ended up in Aerievale. I was an aerian now, so why not? But the only skill I had was stealing. And that doesn't get you much of anywhere. But it was what I knew, and in a way I loved doing it. I still like the chance to use those skills legitimately, when it comes up. Back then though... I didn't care about the law, except for not getting caught, and I certainly didn't care about morality, or about anyone else. I was out for myself! Then I stole something I shouldn't have." He tapped the torc at his neck. "I don't know how you got yours, but mine was swiped, and I was stupid enough to put it on. Or lucky enough, I'm still not sure. They might just have taken it if I hadn't. Or they might have killed me to be sure they got it, I don't know."

"They being the demons."

"Yes. They couldn't magic me, and they couldn't kill me, but they could still hurt me. They carried me off and I guess I can thank whatever gods watch out for thieves and idiots that they're really not very good at torture when they can't use their powers, or it would have been a lot worse. But Flame Song happened to find me, and she pulled me out of there and saved my life. She's saved me I don't even know how many times by now."

His twin was giving him an odd look. "I didn't think that yours could possibly be the same as mine, but it sounds like it is. You've been running around wearing that thing, with no magic to use it, for ten years and you're not dead?!"

Aidan shrugged. "A little more than ten years, actually. But yes. I have a very good ward that a friend cast for me, and it's been sufficient to at least keep my troubles down to a survivable level. Remember what I said about looking for peace and not getting any?"

"I suspect that's the understatement of the year. Gods."

"What about yours?"

"What about it? I made it, I used it, I don't really care for it now but I'm stuck with it."

This time it was Aidan's turn to give his twin an odd look. "You put the spell on that thing and put it on, knowing exactly what it would do?" He didn't say it, but his tone added "Are you insane?"

He shrugged. "It seemed like a good idea at the time. And I could say the same to you. You picked up an unknown magical item and put it on? That's probably every bit as crazy."

"Heh. There is that."

There was another long silence, but it was more comfortable now. Celia had been listening with wide-eyed curiosity, but now she leaned her head on Aidan's shoulder, and closed her eyes, looking tired.

It was still night, and Aidan was still wide awake. And somewhat hungry, but he found that easier to ignore than it had been in the past. Amazing how much of what the body feels is the result of the mind, he thought. He leaned back against the wall and sighed. "I am getting very sick of this room," he said softly, mostly to himself.

"Heh. You don't know the half of it," said his twin, with a bitter tone to his voice. "And I really don't know how you can be so calm and happy looking sitting here. We might well just be left to rot forever. Flame might actually get bored with us and just leave us. Or more likely she'll decide to play with us, since she can't play with the cleric's people any more, and that will be even worse."

Aidan shrugged. "I am calm and happy looking, as you put it, for two reasons. One is that I trust my Flame Song. She will come for me. She always has before. It may take her a while, or she may be here tonight, but eventually she will come. The other reason is because..." He considered how to say it. "Because I've had an epiphany of sorts, I guess you might say. I guess there's a reason monks live in cells. When there's nothing to do but think you can get some pretty good thinking done."

"An epiphany?" He raised one eyebrow again, and Aidan chuckled.

"Yes. Or something like it. Your Flame Song... she tried to break me. She hasn't, but I guess she managed to bend me a little. I did something I regret very greatly. After, that was when I started thinking. And what I was thinking about was, well... How can I explain this?" He paused. "Have you ever promised yourself that you'll never do something, and then next thing you know you've gone and done it anyhow? Even though you were so sure you wouldn't?"

His double let out a little, bitter laugh. "A thousand times."

"Do you know the reason why it's so easy to give in?"

The other shook his head. "Because I'm a fool, I suspect."

"It's because when you promise, you leave a loophole. I know, I've done it myself. You say 'never again' but what you actually mean is 'never again unless I have no choice, never again unless it's impossible to resist.' They call it 'extenuating circumstances.' You have an excuse. You were never going to do it, but this or that happened, and you just didn't have any other choice, you had to! That's the one reason. The other is the one you already know about, the single tiny step that ends up leaving you miles down the road. You say you're not going to do it at all, but somewhere in the back of your head is the idea that even if 'it', whatever it is, is very bad, just a little tiny bit of it isn't bad. You can do that one little thing, and it's so small it can't possibly be a real wrong. You tell yourself those excuses, and if you repeat them enough they sound true. But once you've done one little thing, you've moved a step, and from where you stand now the darkness is that much closer.

"My epiphany was to realize that there are no extenuating circumstances. There are no excuses. And the things I do are nobody's fault but my own. I could blame your wife for what she tempted me into, but that wouldn't do away with my regret or my guilt, because somewhere in me I would know that it was only an excuse. Yes she tempted me, but I'm the one who gave in to it. I could blame my hunger, say that I had to, that I had no other choice, but I had a choice, there is always a choice, even if the choice is to die. And when it comes right down to it, there are some promises it's worth dying to keep. I have made myself a new promise, and it's not 'never again unless I have to,' it's 'never again even if I have to.' I will die first. Knowing that, knowing that I really could do that if it came right down to it... it makes everything else seem unimportant. It doesn't matter what your Flame Song does to me. She can hurt me, but she can't bend me any further. Never again."

"How can you say that? How can you say you'd rather die than do one tiny wrong?"

Aidan smiled. "It's a matter of priorities. My family is what matters the most to me. They are more important than anything."

"But surely they'd rather you were alive, having given in, than dead! Can it really be worth it? What if it was something really small? How could that be worse than dying?"

"Let me relate it to something a bit more immediate, and maybe you'll see. I have promised Celia here that I will not harm her." He smiled at the sleeping girl. "Now from your point of view you probably think of taking a little bit of her blood, a sip perhaps, as a tiny thing, certainly not worth dying over. But tell me, I assume you took from my wife, yes? That is what prompted you to begin to regret?" At his twin's nod he continued "There is no difference between what you did to her, and what I would be doing to this girl if I took so much as a drop from her, because once I'd taken a drop, that's where it would end up, one way or another. The little sip seems so innocent, but once you've started, could you stop? If you stopped this time, what about next time? You broke your word this one time, and the world didn't end, surely breaking it once more if you really need to isn't that bad. Nothing bad happened last time, after all. And before you know it you've gone too far and killed her. Suddenly this tiny thing that was not worth your life has become something that's claimed someone else's life. Is her life worth less than yours? Is her life worth less than your comfort? I don't think a vampire can die of starvation, though I'm not sure, but if it's a matter of being hungry, or being a murderer, I'll take being hungry, no matter how bad it gets, even if it does end up costing my life."

There was a long silence. Eventually Aidan said, "Sorry if I sermonized too much."

"No. You've given me something to think about. Though I don't know if it will do me any good at this point. I think I may have gone too far to turn back. Just look at Celia, how she reacted to me. She couldn't be more afraid of Count Dracula himself. I'm a monster. I could almost wish you two hadn't come along and I could just have gone on being damned without ever having to think about it. But now... I keep saying 'what if.' I see you, and you're almost me, so alike, but you're so much stronger than I am. And yet you say you started out worse off than I did. What if I hadn't taken the first step? What if I hadn't already damned myself? I keep thinking about it, and it's driving me crazy."

Aidan looked at his twin. He’d never seen that heartbroken expression on his own features, but that was only because by the time he’d had cause for that kind of sorrow he’d ceased to show up in mirrors. He could sympathize rather closely with his double’s fears, though he was sure he’d never done a lot of the things his twin had done. But still, his own past was far from unspotted. “I don’t think it’s too late. If I can turn over a new leaf after some of the things I’ve done, then maybe you can too.”

"You don't know what I've done."

"I have some idea. But tell me, and don't just answer, think about it. Do you regret it? Do you regret all of it, the big things and the small things?"

Aidan's double shuddered, and suddenly tears started streaming down his cheeks. "Gods. I regret so much that I could be crushed under it. I had gone forward and never looked back, and now I'm forced to look back, to see where I started. What I've done would have sickened me then! It sickens me now, and I almost don't know how I could have done those things, but I do know, because I remember what I thought when I did them, and I wish I hadn't. I would give anything to take them back, to undo them! So yes I regret. I regret them so much that it feels like I could die of it, and I almost want to, to just kill myself and take my evil out of the world." He lowered his head, still crying, shaking with sobs.

Aidan felt any last bits of anger or hatred he might have felt towards this other self, this person who might have been him if not for the love of his wife, fade away. He gently eased Celia down from his shoulder, the girl so soundly asleep that she didn't even stir, and crossed over to where his twin sat. He knelt next to him and put his hand on the other's shoulder. "The fact that you can feel regret, and can hurt like this, means that you're not damned yet. There's still hope. Maybe you can't undo what you've done, but you can still change."

"I hope you're right." It was almost a whisper, choked with sobs. "Gods I hope you're right."

Aidan sat down next to him. After a while, when his twin's sobs had faded, he said, "Well... you may have a chance to find out if I'm right if we're here much longer."

"What do you mean?"

He gestured at the sleeping girl. "Her. I don't know when you last fed, but I'm pretty sure that your wife isn't going to let us out of here until one or the other of us has bitten her. Which in my case means never, but what does it mean in yours?"

He lifted his head, looked over at Celia. "I'm... not sure. I fed last night on my way home, so for now I'm fine, but I've never even tried to go without before. I have no idea how long is even possible."

"Six days, for certain," said Aidan. "That's the longest it's ever been for me, though it's not much fun." He mentally tallied up. "I'm at three right now, which is okay, if a bit annoying. Given how I felt at six, things are going to get... interesting if it's any longer than that. But I know I can do it."

His twin shook his head. "I don't know... but I guess when it's been six for you it will only have been three for me." He was silent again for a while, thinking. "Yes. If you can, I can too. We're the same person, after all. Right? I'll do it."

Aidan smiled. "I'm glad. And I'm sure you can. As you say, we're the same person."

"I sure hope so, anyhow."

"Hey, have a little faith."

"Faith isn't something I'm used to having. But I'll try."

Aidan suddenly laughed. "I'm giving myself a pep talk. Gods this is surreal!"

"Tell me about it."

"Okay. I'm sitting here talking to my self, and it is all kinds of surreal."

His twin laughed. "That's not what I meant."

Aidan put on an exaggerated expression of surprise. "It's not?"

"No."

They looked at each other and then they both dissolved into laughter. It was perhaps a little hysterical, but real laughter all the same. After quite a while they managed to calm down and Aidan's twin said, "Gods, I needed that. I haven't laughed like that in I don't even know how long! I think I like you."

"Well, they say you have to start by learning to like yourself."

"I thought it was learning to love yourself?"

"I'm not sure self-loving is what we need just now."

His double snickered. "No? I dunno, self-loving sounds like fun to me."

"No, I don't think so. I don't swing that way!"

He snickered even more, but also turned a little red. "Actually, if you really are me, yes you do."

"Uh..." Aidan eyed him. "Okay, that was more than I really wanted to know. But I don't think I do."

"Heh. I suppose it could be one of our differences, though other than the magic those are seeming more and more like they're circumstantial rather than real personality differences. But given how I used to feel about it..." He grinned wickedly. "You're probably so far into the closet your home address is in Narnia. I certainly was."

"Uh..." Aidan was red to his roots. "I really don't think so. Though I suppose it doesn't matter. Even if I did swing that way, I'm very much committed to my wife."

The other sighed at that, his grin fading a bit. "Yes, there is that. And I hope you know how incredibly lucky you are to have her."

"I do."

Flame Song awoke to find herself in a soft bed with sunlight streaming in through a wide-open window. For a moment she entertained the fantasy that last night had been a dream, but then she raised her hand to her neck and found the two little puncture marks there. So, it hadn’t been a dream after all. She tried to sit up but when she did her head swam and she had to lie back down. She felt horribly weak. She hadn’t been lying there long when the door to the room opened and a young man she didn’t know stepped in.

"Oh, you're awake. That's good. How do you feel?"

"Awful," she said, surprised at how thin and weak her voice sounded.

"I'm sorry. I'm not really a very good healer. I've done what I can, and you'll be all right, but it's going to be a while."

"Is Radu okay?"

"We all hope so. But it's too soon to be sure. He was hurt pretty badly and he hasn't woken yet."

"There isn't anyone who can heal him? I thought you were a healing order?"

The man shook his head. "No. Well, not exactly. Healing is the foundation of what we do, but it's spiritual as much as physical. We do have a lot of good healers, but they're elsewhere, where they can serve others. Radu was always here to heal anyone who needed it, so we never worried about it." He looked worried now, his face drawn. He also looked very tired. "There are only two of us who can heal at all here. The better of us is seeing to him. I'm sorry. I wish I could do more for you, but blood loss is hard. I can't just make more, your body has to do it, and I don't know how to help it, other than just to give you strength."

Is that why he looks so tired? "Well, thank you for that."

"Are you hungry at all?" he asked.

She was suddenly aware of her stomach growling. "Yes! Very."

He smiled. "That's good! I'll go see about getting you some food then. There are things you can eat that build the blood faster."

"Yes, I know," she said with a smile."This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve lost a lot of blood, though…” she stopped as the memory of what had taken pace hit her again. “Though never quite like this,” she finished at last. She hadn’t really sorted out her feelings about last night. They were mixed, to say the least.

She had dozed off again when the young healer returned with her food. But she was more than happy to be woken up. He helped her to sit up so that she could eat. She attacked her food ravenously, and he smiled. "Looks like you're going to be fine."

"How long will it be before I'm back to normal?" she asked.

"Well... probably a week. Maybe a little more, maybe a little less."

She sighed. A whole week. She wanted to get up and dash out the door after her husband right now. But she knew if she did she'd just fall over. She felt incredibly weak. But then she might well have died if it weren't for this healer. “You know, I don’t even know your name?”

“Damien,” he replied with a smile. “And you are Flame Song, though you’re also not Flame Song. I didn’t believe there were two of you at first, it seemed too wild a story.”

A flicker of old pain crossed her face. That name carried quite a bit of baggage with it... She shook off the past and turned her attention to the rest of his statement. "If you didn't believe that I wasn't the Flame Song from this world, then why did you help me heal?"

He shrugged. "I'm a healer. That's what I do. It doesn't matter if someone is good or bad, when I see hurt I have to heal it. I wish I were better. I know Radu could probably have you back to full health in an instant, and all I can do is offer a tiny bit of help."

"Well thank you again all the same. I could wish I could go find my Aidan right now, but I suppose wishing won't do me any good."

"Your Aidan? Then there are two of him as well?"

She nodded. "Yes. The one that escaped from here, and the one who came with me, who's still a prisoner of my other self."

"Very strange. But... you said you're going after your Aidan. Do you not want to get revenge on the other one, for trying to kill you?"

She chuckled. "I would think that here, of all places, people would know the futility of revenge. No, I don't want revenge on him. And…” she paused, trying to find the words for her feelings. “I think if he’s still feeling what he was feeling when he left here, he’s being punished enough. I think his conscience is waking up, and that isn’t a very easy experience.”

"I've never been the kind to take revenge myself," he said. "But I wouldn't have blamed you for wanting it. I could almost want to see him taken down myself, after what he did to Radu, and to you. I guess I'm not that good after all."

"You healed me, thinking I was just as evil," she said. "That's an amazing thing, really. I don't know if I could do the same." She felt tired suddenly. She was still so weak. "I think I need to sleep," she said.

"Oh! Sorry, I should know better. Yes, you need rest." He helped ease her back down to lie flat on the bed. "I'll be nearby if you wake and need anything," he said, but by the time he'd finished saying it, she was sound asleep.

The following days dragged by far more slowly than she would have liked. She gradually stopped feeling dizzy and weak any time she sat up or stood, and was soon able to walk around, but she knew she still wasn't back to full strength. But after four days she could wait no longer. Damien was reluctant to let her go, but she was insistent, and he didn't know how he could stop her anyway. So on the fifth day she set off from the monastery. Radu had promised her help, but he still had not woken, and she wasn't going to wait around until he did, so she went on her own.

She was feeling much better, but she wasn't sure she was up to flying. Any mistake could lead to a crash, and to serious injury or even death. So instead she took her own natural form and loped down the road on four feet. That first day she made fairly good time, following the road through the forested hills. But when she stopped for the night, she realized that she had probably pushed too hard. She was trembling, exhausted. She found a hollow to curl up and slept without bothering to make any kind of camp. When she woke the sun was already well up. She stretched, feeling sore and still a bit weak, but rested. She set a slower pace now as she continued onwards.

The second night she wasn't quite so exhausted, but she judged she'd gone only perhaps a third of the distance she would need to cover. She wanted to go faster, but didn't want to kill herself getting there. Feeling frustrated and impatient, she once again curled up and slept.

She hadn't bothered with a fire this second night either. Though the night was chill her thick fur was more than sufficient to protect her. So when she woke in the morning and smelled smoke she knew it wasn’t from her little campsite. For a moment she thought about looking for the source of the scent, but she was in too much of a hurry. So she continued down the road.

She hadn’t gotten far before a distant sound caught her attention. It was a human sound, and a distressed human sound at that. Flame debated with herself whether she should do anything about it. Time was of the essence and she was going to rescue her husband, but somewhere nearby somebody needed help, and in the end Flame couldn’t just pass them by. A narrow track turned off of the main road in the direction of the cries she had heard, so she followed it deeper into the woods.

Soon she could hear a second sound underlying the first. It was a roaring crackle of flames, and the smoky scent was getting stronger by the second. She could make out words now; a man’s voice was calling for help alternately with shouting someone’s name. Then Flame Song came around a corner and saw the scene. There was a house, that caught her attention first, and it was on fire. It was a cottage, really. Small and no doubt cozy before the fire ruined that. Flames licked out the lower windows and crept upward. In front of the house stood a young man. He looked disheveled and distressed. His clothing was marked with burns and blackened by smoke, but he didn’t seem to care. All of his attention was directed toward the house.

Flame Song didn’t need to see anything more to guess what was going on. The man had noticed the fire and gotten out, but someone he cared for was still inside. Perhaps he had tried to go in after whoever it was only to be driven back by the unbearable heat of the flames. She dashed up to the man and said, “Is there someone still in there?”

He was so upset he wasn’t even startled by the appearance of a huge white and orange cat, he just said, “Yes! My wife is in there!”

Flame didn’t wait to hear more, she launched herself at the burning house. As she entered the flame-filled doorway she held her breath. He fire immunity would protect her from the heat, but it did not extend to immunity from the problems associated with smoke inhalation, so she would have to be quick.

She made her way through the lower floor, checking every room and pausing every so often to put her nose to the ground to breathe in the clearer air found near the floor. The lower part of the house was filled with fire, but in the rooms beneath the eaves upstairs the flames were still getting a foothold, though the smoke was bad. In one room Flame found the woman she was looking for. She was out cold on the floor, probably a victim of smoke inhalation herself. Flame coughed a few times. Up here there was no clear air by the floor. She would have to get out fast.

Flame Song quickly ran her options through her mind. She couldn’t take the woman back the way she’d come. Flame had no way of sharing her fire immunity, and the downstairs was full of flames. They were licking upwards and very soon the upstairs would be similarly engulfed. So, out a window was her only option then. She shifted into aerian form and scooped the unconscious woman up in her arms, glad that the woman had a small build. Then Flame went to the window and, spreading her wings, jumped out. With the doubled weight she couldn’t actually fly, but she managed a kind of controlled fall that saw them both safely to the ground.

The man rushed up and took his wife from Flame’s arms. Out in the fresh air she was already starting to come around. She coughed violently several times before opening her eyes. Flame Song too was still coughing. She’d inhaled more smoke than was good for her. She sat down wearily on the ground. All that excitement hadn’t been good for her weakened system either.

The young man came over and began thanking her profusely. Flame Song shook her head. “I only did what anyone would have done if they could have. And she’s not safe yet. You’re going to want to get a good healer to see to her. She inhaled a lot of smoke, and that’s not good.”

The man nodded and thanked her again. Flame felt a little bit uncomfortable. She really hadn’t done anything that unusual! She got to her feet, saying again, “I’m sure you would have done the same thing in my place. But I need to get going. Don’t forget to see a healer.” She waved and set off into the woods, shifting into firecat from as she went.

When she stopped that night she was at the edge of the forest. She took the time to give herself a thorough grooming. Her fur was stained with soot and smoke. It took a long time before it was clean and white again.

When she awoke in the morning she still felt tired and drained. She knew she should rest longer, but she couldn’t bring herself to. It had been far too long since she’d left her husband behind at the doubles’ castle. Anything could have happened in that time.

She set off the next morning through settled lands. But now there were signs of traffic on the road. Flame had hardly emerged from the eaves of the forest when she saw a man on horseback coming her direction. The bow slung behind his back identified him as a hunter, probably headed for the forest in search of game. He pulled his horse to a halt when he saw her. Then he grabbed his bow and set an arrow to it. Flame spun and darted off the road. She leaped over the low hedge that ran along it here. The first arrow thudded into the dirt, but a second followed after it, and then the archer jumped his horse over the hedge after her.

It took her far too long to lose him, and when she did she was exhausted again. She dropped down in the middle of a field of something or other, she didn't know much about crops, that was high enough to hide her while lying down. Once she had caught her breath she realized what must have happened. She'd been mistaken for her double. She was still two days' journey from the castle, but that was close enough that the other had probably terrorized the people here at least a little. Though obviously not enough to make them fear her more than they hated her, or she wouldn't have been shot at. So she couldn't continue in this form, and her human and aerian forms were both out as well. What else? She sighed. In farm country, with the size restrictions she had, there was only one form that would pass unremarked and without any serious attempt to kill or capture. So she wore canine form when she took to the road again. She went slowly, already tired and worn before the day had properly begun. She made it through the small village nearby and out into open fields again, but that was half the distance she'd meant to cover. And to make things worse, as the sun started to sink down to the horizon, it started to rain.

She had seldom been so miserable in her life. She was wet, she stunk of wet dog, she was utterly exhausted, and she was worried and afraid for her husband. She was also still coughing, and that worried her. By this time all the smoke should be out of her lungs. She tried to find a dry place to spend the night, at last finding an abandoned shed with a mostly intact roof not too far off the road. She curled up inside, still in canine form. She didn’t want somebody to stumble on her during the night. She was far too tired to deal with any further attacks.

But when she woke in the morning to see the rain still coming down she found she’d spontaneously changed back to her natural form. That was not a good sign. She felt even worse than she had when she’d fallen asleep. She tried to shift back into a dog’s shape, but nothing happened. She tried human form, and felt something start to happen, after all these years human form was nearly as natural to her as her firecat shape, but still she stayed unchanged. She tried to get to her feet, but a violent coughing fit hit her and she collapsed back onto the dirt floor of the shack. No, this was not good at all.

She coughed again weakly and shivered. She prayed that nobody would find her, sick as she was. She would be easy prey for any irate farmer that stumbled onto her hiding place. She couldn’t think of anything to do to prevent it, though, so prayer was the only option she had. With that happy thought to keep her company she put her head on her paws and fell into an uneasy and feverish doze.

“So… how much longer do you think we’ll be in here?”

Aidan looked up at his twin and shrugged. "I don't know."

“You’re sure that your Flame Song will come for you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I hope she gets here soon.”

“Me too.”

It had been seven days now since Aidan had last fed. Four since his twin had. Aidan was feeling very weak, but he was clearer-headed than he had feared he would be. They’d done a lot of talking over the last few days. There wasn’t anything else to do. The only interruptions to their complete isolation were the regular visits of the gnoll, who had started bringing Celia meals, and the not quite so regular visits of Flame Song, who looked in on them once or twice a day. Lately her habitual expression of sardonic amusement had been banished by something that was almost certainly frustration. Aidan's twin had grinned at that. "You've managed to get to her more in a week than I've done in all the years I've known her. I don't think she expected this much self-restraint from you."

He was surprised at his own self-restraint. After all, four days was still twice as long as he usually went, but he found he wasn’t tempted as badly as he had feared. Still… there were times when it was only the knowledge that his twin had already gone three days more than he that kept him firm in his promise.

Some hours after her last visit they heard Flame approaching again, with the gnoll at her side. The door swung open and the gnoll stepped in. He took Aidan by the arm. Aidan didn't resist, but he wasn't getting to his feet either. He wasn't going to use any more energy than he had to. When he didn't stand, the gnoll simply picked him up and carried him out of the room. They repeated the path that they had taken the last time Aidan had been led from his cell. The gnoll set him on his feet in Flame Song's bedroom. He managed to stay standing, but only just. This time the gnoll didn't leave, but stepped back to stand by the door.

"You are being far more stubborn that I had anticipated," said Flame. He could tell that she was trying to sound as though it didn't particularly bother her, but she couldn't quite hide her anger.

He said nothing in response.

"Well, if you won't take that child's blood," she said, "Perhaps you would like a little more of mine? You seemed to enjoy it well enough last time."

She probably expected him to look guilty, or hurt, or angry, but he simply stood there, looking at her. His calm was still with him. His hunger was incredible, he could acutely smell her blood, hear her heartbeat, but that didn't matter. Only his confusion and lack of pure resolve last time had made him give in. Now he was not confused at all, and his resolve was as pure and strong as it could possibly be. He might very well die right here, but that didn't matter. Nothing else mattered but keeping his word and honoring his love for his wife.

"Nothing to say to that? It must be true then. Here, I'll remind you." And once again she dug her nails into her skin, hard enough to draw the merest drop of blood. The scent of it filled the room. Even though he wasn't breathing, Aidan could smell it anyway. He looked away from her, turning his gaze past her to the mirror on the wall behind, where he could see the back of her head, and the gnoll by the door, but no one else. He was not there. I guess I really am not here, he thought to himself with a small smile. My body is here, but my spirit is with my Flame Song, and always will be.

"What are you smiling at?" The anger was starting to show now. "You're going to die here, you know. If you don't take what I offer, then you'll get no other options. Are you going to just stand there and die?"

He smiled a little more at that, and looked back at her. "Yes," he said softly.

Her eyes flashed with anger and she raised her hand and hit him. It was not a feminine slap, she hit him hard enough that, weak as he was, he stumbled to the side and fell. He didn't particularly feel like getting up, so he just lay there.

"Pick him up," she snapped to the gnoll. It stepped forward and pulled him upright. He didn't resist. The gnoll stepped back again, though only a single step this time, looming behind him.

"I could torture you. Weak as you are you probably couldn't even heal, you'd just have to be in pain."

"I'm sure you could."

Her eyes flashed again. "And do you like pain, that the idea doesn't bother you?"

He said nothing.

"Answer me!" she snapped. He looked beyond her again. She clenched her teeth, completely enraged. "Fine! I don't have time to take care of you properly right now, so you can just sit and starve to death. And when you do finally come to your senses and realize that living is better than dying slowly in pain, you will end up killing the girl that you seem so fond of. Think on that, why don't you? If you'd done as I intended right away, she wouldn't have been permanently damaged, but now she's going to die because of you, and if you don't kill her I'm quite certain my Aidan will! Go throw him back in his cell," she snapped to the gnoll.

It picked him up again and carried him back the way they'd come. It didn't pitch him into the cell as it had his twin, it simply set him down just inside and shut the door.

"What was that all about?" asked his twin.

Aidan shrugged and sat down wearily next to him. They were both keeping a good distance from Celia now, it was easier and safer that way. "Apparently she's bored with waiting for us," he said with a chuckle. "She seemed very upset that I didn't care about her one way or another. I suspect she's not used to that."

"Heh. No, she's not. She's the center of everyone's attention, that's what she's used to."

"This must be quite a shock then."

"Oh yes. I wish you'd come along long ago. I wish I'd had an ounce of sense. I tried for so many years to get the upper hand by winning her games. And here the real way to do it was by refusing to play at all."

"Aidan..." Aidan's voice was weak. He was leaning against the wall now not because it was comfortable, but because he couldn't stand. "How long has it been?"

His twin blinked at him. "You're not counting?"

"I was, but... lately I find I’m losing time. I close my eyes for one moment, and when I open them it’s been hours.” Aidan shook his head. “It’s kind of worrying.”

"Well, I've been here seven days now."

"Ten then."

"That's a long time..."

"Tell me about it."

"You're sure your Flame Song will come?"

"I'm sure."

"She'd better come soon."

"Yeah..."

Flame wasn’t sure how long she’d lain feverish in the little shack. Long enough for the rain to stop. Long enough for the sun to rise and set more than once. Was it two days, three, even four? She didn’t know. But at last the fever had passed. She awoke weak but clear-headed to see bright moonlight steaming into the shack. She was thirsty, though she’d lapped up the rainwater that had puddled just outside the door. She got to her feet, managing not to stagger. She followed her ears, finding a babbling brook not far off. When she’d drunk her fill she turned her attention to her hunger. She knew she needed food, and for her there was one good way to get it. But here in settled lands she wasn’t going to find wild game, she would have to resort to thievery. Her nose led the way this time as she crept silently into a farmyard. Her sensitive ears picked up human snores from the farmhouse, but her attention was elsewhere. Her nose soon led her to a chicken coop. With one dexterous paw she opened the latch as silently as possible. She was glad to see there were plenty of chickens. The farmers wouldn’t suffer too badly for the loss of a few. She didn’t even wake the other chickens as she quickly killed three and carried them out. She paused to latch the door again behind her. That’ll confuse them to no end, she thought with a touch of humor.

Some distance off she left a scatter of feathers and a few clean-picked bones. She returned to the shack then. If it had hidden her this long it would hid her a little longer. She knew she’d been a fool to leave the monastery before she was completely recovered. She wouldn’t make that mistake again. She would need her full strength to deal with her double, after all.

Three more days saw her feeling pretty much her old self again. She’d recovered enough to shift shape, so it was a mongrel dog that trotted down the road with her belly full of stolen chicken. Another day saw her nearly all the way to her destination. She paused to rest for a few hours while the sun sank and continued on once it was dark. She had realized that the other Aidan would probably still have her husband’s sun-protection amulet, so any rescue needed to be at night. By the time the moon rose she had come within sight of the crumbling castle.

No point in delaying any more now, she thought, and approached the castle’s fallen gates. She took her own form and crept on silent paws through deserted and ruined corridors. Room after empty room was inspected and rejected. There were no signs of life anywhere, just dust and cobwebs and crumbling stone.

Flame Song was passing through a huge hall when she caught something out of the corner of her eye. The ceiling had fallen in at one end of the hall, letting the moonlight into the room. In the dim rafters ancient banners so covered with dust and cobwebs that their designs weren’t visible hung immobile in the still air. A single lonely suit of armor was silently rusting away along the wall. A worm-eaten table that must once have been impressive but was now literally falling apart ran down the center of the room, its surface thick with dust. Flame’s own footsteps stirred up puffs of dust, but the floor wasn’t as thickly covered, as if someone occasionally came through here.

When Flame Song saw the flicker of motion, she spun around, and so her double hit her face on instead of bowling her over from the side. Sharp claws raked across her shoulders and she snarled in pain. She reared back and her own claws came out. The next few moments were a confusion of claws and snarls and yowls as the two identical cats fought. They were, of course, evenly matched, but Flame Song's twin was comparatively fresh, while she herself was worn out from illness, travel, and blood loss.

The other Flame got a further advantage when she shouldered her double sideways into the big table. It went to splinters, but not before knocking the breath out of Flame Song completely. Her feet went out from under her and she found herself tangled in a pile of wooden debris. Her twin loomed over her, fangs bared in a victorious smile. And then something whooshed out of the darkness and thudded into the mirror Flame’s head. She collapsed limply onto the dusty floor. Her snarling feline face was replaced in her double’s field of vision by an unreadable canine visage. Flame blinked at this unlikely savior. What was a gnoll doing here? And why had it hit the other Flame? She cautiously extracted herself from the ruins of the table. She was bruised, and blood still seeped out of the scratches across her shoulders, but nothing seemed to be broken.

“Who are you?” she asked the gnoll.

“Aldro,” was its brief response

“Why did you do that?”

“She was not a kind mistress. This was a good opportunity.”

“Oh. But how did you know which one to hit?”

“I knew,” it said. Then it added, “You are looking for Aidan, yes?”

“Yes! For my Aidan, that is.”

“Follow me.”

Flame Song, unable to think of any other response, followed silently. Aldro led the way across the hall and down a set of broad stone stairs. The gnoll went down another corridor and through a very unsettling chamber full of various devices, before stopping at a locked door. It pulled out a six-sided rod and touched it to a spot on the lock plate. The door swung open. The room inside was dim, and she couldn’t see who was inside clearly. “Aidan?” she called softly. One huddled shape in a corner of the room stretched upward and resolved itself into the familiar form of a young-looking, raven-haired aerian.

He came a few steps closer, moving into the light that filtered in from the hallway. He looked at her suspiciously and she realized he must think she was her double.

“It’s all right, I’m not the Flame from here. I’ve come to rescue you.”

He laughed softly, with a touch of bitterness in it. “How can I be sure you’re not just playing a trick on me?”

“Ask me something. Surely there are things about me that my double wouldn’t know.”

He smiled then and said, “I would, but I’m afraid I wouldn’t know them either. I'm not your Aidan.”

She blinked in surprise, unable to think of any response. Why would the mirror Aidan be locked up here? “Where’s my husband then?”

The mirror Aidan gestured to a second huddled form. Flame Song started forward, but he raised one hand and said, “Stop. Don’t go near him.”

She showed her teeth in a feline snarl of suspicion and said, “Why not?”

“Because it’s not safe.” He closed his eyes for a moment and a shudder went though him. The bloodsmell from Flame Song’s wounded shoulder was dangerously strong. “I’m having trouble restraining the urge to jump on you and drain you dry, and he’s been here a lot longer than I have. He might not harm you, I’ve come to admire his self-control very much, but even he has limits.”

“Well, wake him up or whatever. I’m getting him out of here right now.”

The mirror Aidan nodded. He walked over to where his twin was curled up on his side. He had been spending more and more time in a kind of coma. They had decided it was natural; a method of conserving energy when no food was available, but it was still alarming. When a person doesn’t breathe or have a heartbeat it’s hard to be sure if they are alive. The mirror Aidan reached down and shook his twin’s shoulder. “Aidan, wake up. She came.” But the unconscious aerian didn’t stir.

“What’s wrong?” asked Flame Song from the doorway.

“He’s in some kind of coma, like he’s hibernating. I can’t wake him.”

“Then can you carry him? We need to get out of here!”

“I still don’t trust you. My Flame is a very good actress. I need to wake him to make sure you’re really you. But don’t worry, I have an idea.”

If his twin was hibernating because he had no food, then there was one sure way to wake him up. Aidan brought his wrist to his mouth and tore his sharp fangs across it. Blood welled up sluggishly, teasing sharply at the mirror Aidan’s own huger. He ignored it and held his wrist over his twin’s mouth, letting a few drops fall on his lips. His twin licked them off. Then he opened his eyes. For a moment they were unfocused, with no sign of intelligence in them. Gradually Aidan blinked again and began to come all the way awake. His double put his wrist to his own mouth and sucked off the last few drops of blood, not wanting to waste any. Blood was blood, after all, even if it was his own.

“What…?” asked Aidan weakly.

“Your wife is here, but I need to be sure it’s her. What can you ask her that her double wouldn’t know?”

“Children’s names…” said Aidan.

“Littlespark, Firedart, and Phoenixflare,” answered Flame immediately.

Aidan's twin shook his head. “My Flame could have overheard us talking abut them. I can’t be sure.”

“One more…” said Aidan, his voice a weak whisper. “Mine, not hers. Haven’t mentioned…”

The mirror Aidan looked from his twin to Flame questioningly.

“Damien,” said Flame, a soft trace of sorrow in her voice. “He means Damien.”

“Yes, it’s her," said Aidan, and his eyes closed again.

His double held in his sudden questions, though he was quite curious. Did that “mine, not hers” remark mean what he thought it did? Dismissing the thought for the moment, he picked up his twin, staggering slightly. The weight shouldn’t have been heavy, considering his vampiric strength, but though he hadn’t been without sustenance as long as his twin, it had still been a long time. The last day he’d begun to suspect he was blacking out for short periods as well. In his eagerness to get out of the cell however, he hadn’t forgotten the third prisoner.

“Celia,” he said. “Are you awake?”

“Yes,” came her soft-voiced response. She got to her feet. Flame Song started. She hadn’t even noticed the girl.

“Who…?” She didn’t finish the question, but she didn’t need to.

“My name’s Celia. The other you put me in here.”

Flame nodded. “I can guess the reason why.” She looked at the mirror Aidan with a touch more warmth in her eyes. “Things have changed since the last time I saw you, haven’t they?”

He just nodded. “Let’s get out of here.”

The little group left the castle, the laconic Aldro leading the way with Aidan and his double following and Flame and Celia bringing up the rear. It didn’t take them long to get out of the castle and into the night.

“Where to now?” asked Flame, not sure who to direct the question to.

“Somewhere where your husband and I can get some food,” said Aidan. “He’s in bad shape, and I’m not doing so well myself. But I don’t know where. My usual feeding habits are no longer an option for me I think.”

“There’s a farm maybe half a mile from here,” said Celia.

“What good will that do?” asked Aidan.

“Well, farms usually have cows and horses, don’t they? Won’t cow blood do almost as well as human?”

“Celia, I could kiss you! I didn’t even think of that.”

“Neither did I,” said Flame, “and I should have. Guess I’m just too tired to think straight.”

The journey to the nearest farm wasn’t a long one but to the mirror Aidan it felt like forever. Carrying his double and feeling weaker than he’d ever felt he kept staggering. Flame offered to help him, but he only told her to stay back. He was hyper-aware of the heartbeats and blood scent of the three breathing people that accompanied him. It was all he could do to cling to his newfound resolve.

He needed to occupy his mind, distract it from the hunger. He thought of a rather important question all of the sudden. “Flame Song, did you have to kill your double?”

“No. She was still alive when I left her, though no doubt she’ll have one huge headache when she wakes up.”

“What happened?”

“Aldro hit her on the head, actually. She was about ready to tear me to shreds, but he thumped her before she could.”

“Ah. You know you probably should have killed her while you had the chance.”

“I know. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it, not in cold blood like that. And I was more concerned about my husband anyhow. Are you sorry that she’s alive?”

He thought about that one for a while. "After everything she's done I should be. But find that I'm not. Although it's probably going to complicate my life a good bit."

“Maybe she can change. If you can change as much as you have in just a week or so, why not?”

He snorted. "She's... not like me. I suppose anything is possible, but I'm not going to hold my breath." He flashed her a grin. "And I can hold it a good long time."

At last they reached a silent farm. Aidan walked openly into the farmyard and approached the barn. “Shouldn’t we be sneaking?” asked Flame in a soft whisper. “What if the farmer wakes up and comes out after us?”

Aidan gave a little laugh. “We’re less than a mile from my castle. I may have turned over a new leaf this past week, but I doubt the people here have heard. They won’t set foot outside after dark for anything less than a matter of life or death.”

“Oh.”

He didn’t waste any more time on conversation, but pushed open the barn door and went inside. It was dark inside, but her could hear and smell several animals, probably horses, moving around. His eyes quickly adjusted to the gloom and he picked out a big draft horse standing in a stall along one wall of the barn. He slipped open the stall door and put his twin down on the straw inside. Aidan came partly awake, no doubt aware of the rush of blood beneath the horse’s skin. His double took hold of the horse’s halter and stoked its cheek to keep it calm. Aidan had gotten to his knees and grabbed onto the horse’s leg. The animal gave a start at the unexpected contact, then calmed under the mirror Aidan’s soothing touch. It didn’t even twitch when the other vampire’s fangs cut through the skin over the big vein on its leg.

The mirror Aidan left his twin feeding. The horse wouldn’t be going anywhere now, and he needed to get his own nourishment. A second stall next to the first housed a somewhat smaller animal. Aidan stroked it to calm it. Then he knelt next to it, his fingers tracing the veins that ran just under the skin. He chose his spot and bit through the tough skin to reach the rushing blood beneath. The sensation as it flowed into his mouth was wonderful. Hot life ran into him, filling him up and flooding him with energy. He drank more deeply than he ever had, reveling in the feast after the famine. At last he was full and he pulled back. A little trickle of blood oozed down the horse’s skin, but otherwise it seemed fine. It was a large animal; the amount of blood he’d taken wouldn’t be enough to cause it any difficulty.

He emerged from the stall, latching the door again behind him. He found his double just closing the other door. They looked at each other for a long moment, then his twin said, “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

They left the barn together. Flame Song was grooming the blood out of her fur; cleaning out the shallow wounds her double had left with her rough tongue. She looked from one aerian to the other, then picked out the right one and went to her husband’s side. She shimmered into human form and hugged him. “Are you all right?”

He hugged her back tightly. “I am now. Thanks for bailing me out again.”

She shrugged. “What else could I do?” Then she looked at the other Aidan. “Thank you,” she said simply

He shook his head. “Don’t thank me. This doesn’t even begin to make up for what I’ve done. After what I did to you, you don’t owe me any thanks.” Then he added, curious, “How did you know which one of us was the right one?”

Flame Song grinned. “My Aidan would be the one without his shirt on. He has a positive talent for losing them somehow. And,” she added, “maybe I don’t owe you any thanks, but thank you anyway. Now, what next? I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m ready to head back to the monastery and see if Radu can send us home.”

"He's alive then?" asked Aidan's twin, looking more than a little guilty.

"Yes. He was still badly injured when I left, but I'm fairly certain he'll be all right."

"I'm glad."

"Are you going to come with us?" she asked him.

He blinked. The thought hadn't even occurred to him. “I… I have some thinking to do, and some decisions to make. Maybe I will go to the monastery, but not just yet.”

“Where will you go then?”

“There’s plenty of places to hole up around here. Speaking of which, I should return this. You don’t know all the spots where you can get out of the sun, so you’re going to need it.” He took the sun-protection amulet off of his neck and handed it to his double with more than a touch of regret. He would miss the sun. “I’m afraid I can’t return your daggers. I… left them behind at the monastery.”

Aidan put the medallion’s chain around his neck. The blood red stone looked black in the moonlight as it rested on his bare chest. “I have others back home,” he said with a shrug.

"There's a trail that goes through the woods rather than through farmlands, if you want to avoid any trouble that might come from being mistaken for me. Follow this road and you'll find it heading north a mile or so on," he said.

“Thanks,” said Aidan.

“No, I’m the one who needs to thank you. I think there may be hope for me after all, and if it hadn’t been for you two I’d never have gotten up the courage to try changing.” With a last wave he turned and spread his wings. He launched himself into the clear night air and flew off without looking back.

"I will go now," said Aldro.

"You're not coming with us to the monastery?" asked Flame.

The gnoll shook it's head. "No. Humans do not like me much. I will find my own people. Goodbye."

Aldro turned and headed into the forest, going due east, not following any road. Flame stared after the gnoll for a few minutes, wondering what its story was. It wasn't much like any other gnolls she'd ever met. But her curiosity would have to remain unsatisfied.

They followed the mirror Aidan's directions and soon were walking along a clear, if narrow track that led almost due north through the trees. They traveled slowly. Flame Song was still a little weak, and Celia wasn’t in good shape for traveling either. Aidan was almost completely recovered from his ordeal, his system having made good use of the fresh blood he’d drunk, but there was little reason to hurry. They made camp while it was still dark, deciding to travel by day for Celia's sake. They took turns standing sentry, aware that the mirror Flame Song was still out there somewhere and might well be bent on revenge, but the night passed without incident.

Some distance off the mirror Aidan was sitting in a quiet forest clearing and thinking. He had a great many questions in his mind, but all his thoughts circled back to one single idea. He didn’t really know what love was like. He felt little love for his Flame Song, and he didn’t think she loved him either. He had stayed with her this long for other reasons. She had given him a certain amount of pleasure, and power as well, but those things were not love. And… he found his feelings toward this other version of her differed greatly from anything he’d ever felt. Was it love? He’d seen real love, the love that his twin shared with his wife, and he found he wanted that. And yet… where could he find that kind of love? Who was there that could love such a creature as he was? He felt as though he was engulfed in hopeless darkness. What hope did he have? And yet, and yet… an idea kept coming to him. A way to know, however briefly, what real love was like. He shook it off time and time again. It was wrong. To so abuse the kindness he’d been shown… But the thought wouldn’t go away. And he wanted so desperately to know, even if it was only once, what love felt like.

The little group didn’t get far the next day. But since there was no sign of pursuit, they weren’t overly concerned. Flame Song was enjoying the easy pace. She shifted back to human form so she could more easily converse with Aidan, and they strolled along, hand in hand. At last there was no hurry, no rush, and she could recuperate without any worries. By the time they set up camp on the second night she was feeling almost like her old self again.

Aidan volunteered for the first watch, so she curled up on the deep grass under the trees and fell asleep, too tired to bother shape-shifting. Aidan leaned his back against a tree and looked out into the night. All was still and quiet. There was no sound but the normal, familiar noises of the forest. He never heard the soft whoosh of wings overhead as his double flew over the camp. And he certainly didn’t hear the perfectly inaudible sound of a sleep spell settling softly over him. He just closed his eyes and slumped to the ground. Celia too slipped even deeper into sleep. Nothing would wake them. Only Flame Song was left unenchanted. The mirror Aidan landed softly near her. His hands wove a pattern and he whispered a few soft words. The spell that settled over the sleeping woman was only a gentle thought, a suggestion that whatever situation she found was not unusual, coupled with a resistance to remembering the existence of a second Aidan. She would think only of her husband. He felt a twinge of guilt as the spell settled into place. And yet he felt that he could do nothing else.

For a long time he simply sat next to her and watched her breathing. She was so beautiful. Her double was beautiful too, but she had none of the innocence and purity that added immeasurably to this woman’s attractiveness. Again Aidan had second thoughts. Perhaps he should leave. It was not too late after all… and then Flame Song stirred and opened her eyes.

“Aidan?” she said softly, questioningly.

He was mute. He could suddenly think of nothing to say, but what he felt must have shown in his eyes, for Flame Song sat up and put her arms around him wordlessly. He looked into her eyes, gone dark in the moonlight, and softly touched her cheek. She looked back at him with love, and though he knew it was false, that her love wasn’t for him, still he drank it in more eagerly than blood.

There were no words between them, only tender touches and softly passionate kisses. Aidan surrendered his heart to her fully, and gave his body to her touch. As they came together he found in himself a gentleness that he had never suspected. And even when, at just the right moment, his lips found her neck and his teeth broke through the soft skin, even that was as gentle as he could make it.

He drank the red, rushing life of her slowly, taking one electrifying drop at a time. And as he did their hearts came together even as their bodies met and he was awash in the gentle warmth of her love. His own heart felt like it might burst from the joy, the wonder, even the awe he felt. He hadn’t known such depth of love was possible. And even though he knew it wasn't real, and could never happen again, somehow that didn't matter. He answered it without reservation, sending his own love, for he knew now he did love her, back to her in return.

He came back to himself after a long time spent floating in the mutual warmth that flowed between them. He softly kissed away the tiny trickle of blood from her neck. Her eyes were closed, her breathing even, but he knew she was still awake.

He extracted himself from her embrace and began to get dressed again. He needed to go before the spell he’d cast on her broke. She too sat up and got her shirt and trousers back on. He rose to go, but made the mistake of looking back. She stood there in the moonlight, looking at him with an expression he couldn’t read. He couldn’t do what he had just done to her and then go without a word. He had to tell her. He turned back.

“Flame Song, I… I’m not…”

“I know,” she said before he could find the words to say what he needed to say.

“You … you know?”

She smiled, a smile both sad and warm. “Yes. The heart doesn’t lie. The blood-bond is still there, and though even in the heart you are much like my Aidan, you are not him.”

He turned away from her, unable to bear the kindness of her eyes after what he’d done. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“For my husband’s sake,” she replied, “so am I, and for the wrong of it, because it was wrong. But for your sake I’m not. What did she do to you, my other self, that left you so hurt?”

Unexpectedly tears gathered in his eyes. All at once he found himself forced to face a truth he had never wanted to see. The truth that, for all the long, dark years he had been with her, for all he abuse he’d taken, he had still somewhere inside hoped for real love from her. For all the power games he’d played, for all the evil he’d done, the real reason he’d stayed with her was that faint hope that someday she might say she loved him. And a deeper truth lay beneath that, for despite the hatred he had for her, he loved her too. And that was why she could hurt him. That was why each betrayal stabbed as deeply as the first. He’d ignored the pain, putting it from his mind, telling himself he was just using her the way she was using him, but it had all been a lie.

He found that Flame had put her arms around him and he was crying on her shoulder. He sobbed for a long time, letting out a decade’s worth of hurt and anguish in a flood of tears. At last he wiped his eyes and looked up at her. She smiled. “I wish there was more I could do for you.”

“How can you say that? After all you’ve done already. After all I’ve done to you…”

“My Aidan will always be first in my heart. I love him more than anything. But, well… I love you too.”

Aidan stared at her, disbelieving. “You… you do?”

In answer she hugged him close and said softly, “Yes. The heart doesn’t lie, remember?” And he knew it was true. The blood-bond still lingered between them. He could feel the warmth in her heart as she held him close, and realized that she'd somehow known all along, that what he'd felt before had been real, had been for him.

He put his own arms around her. He found he was crying again. He’d never shed so many tears, but these weren’t tears of sorrow, they were tears of joy. How long they stood there he didn’t know but eventually the moment came to an end. Aidan hesitated. He couldn’t stay, but he didn’t want to leave. “I should go,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. They still stood close together, both reluctant to end it, but finally Aidan stepped back.

“Goodbye,” he said, walking slowly backward, his eyes still fixed on her face.

“Goodbye,” she replied, and lifted her hand and waved. He turned and launched himself into the sky. It was only a moment before he vanished utterly into the darkness, but Flame Song stood and stared after him for a long time, until a soft sound behind her drew her back from her thoughts. It would be an understatement to say her feelings were mixed when she turned around and found her husband standing there.

“How long have you been awake?” asked Flame Song softly.

“Not long… but long enough.”

“Aidan, I…” she looked for a way to explain what had happened.

He held up one hand and she fell silent. He looked at her, but though his expression was sad, it was also loving. “Flame…” he sighed. “You don’t need to explain, and you don’t need to apologize. After all the pain I’ve caused you in the past, you don’t owe me any apologies now.”

“Aidan… I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

He came forward and he put his arms around her, and wrapped his wings around her too, so that they were both encircled in soft white feathers. “I know,” he said simply. “I know.”

When they reached the monastery they found that Radu was awake, if still somewhat weak. They told him what had happened, though they left out certain details that weren't really of any concern to him. He welcomed them back with profuse thanks, and profuse apologies for having been unable to help them more.

They stayed at the monastery for another week before Radu was strong enough to send them home.

"Can't you just heal yourself?" asked Flame.

"Ah, if only it were that easy. But the healing gift does not work that way. You can't use it on yourself, only on others. The gods' way of reminding us of our calling."

"Oh."

While they were there, Flame was able to find out what the friends she had made the last time she'd been here were doing. Seymore was the king here now, and ruled fairly well. Lavasida and Brianna had finally managed to have a child, a little girl they had named Hope. Lon had actually found a girl and settled down. He was, apparently, only getting into rowdy bar fights once every few weeks now. Flame chuckled at that. She was glad to hear they were all doing so well, especially Lavasida. She almost wanted to take the time to go and visit him, but she had been away from her own children far too long already.

At last it was time for them to leave. Radu had promised that he would have the demon-slaying dagger ready for them within the year. "I already have the knife to cast it on. I'm very personally acquainted with it by now, in fact," he said, with a wry smile.

"I will send it as soon as it's done. But for now... for now thank you for everything you've done."

"You're welcome," said Aidan. "And I guess at this point we can probably call it even between us, really."

"Quite possibly. Though if there is ever any way I can help you... I'm not sure how easy it is for you to reach my world, but I will always be willing to assist you."

"Thank you."

"And now I'm sure you are more than ready to go home."

"Oh yes."

It took much longer than it had when Jordanis had cast the spell, but eventually Radu was done and the rainbow shimmer hung in the air in front of the monastery.

"Goodbye," said Flame Song.

"Goodbye," Radu replied.

And then they stepped through and were in their own house again. Almost instantly they were in the center of a flurry of hugs and questions. They'd been able to see the portal forming, so all three children were there to welcome them home, with Corinne smiling warmly at them from the couch. It felt like the best thing ever, to be home, to be with their family again, and they both hugged all three children several times before all the hugging was done.

In response to the chorus of questions, Aidan told the children a dramatic, but heavily edited version of the story. They were all suitably impressed, particularly Firedart.

Corinne said her goodbyes and headed home. The rest of that day they passed in ordinary, everyday family activities, and it seemed like heaven to both of them. And when the children had at last been put to bed, they sat together by the fire in warm, comfortable silence for a long time. Flame sat on the low couch and Aidan sat at her feet, his head in her lap.

“It's almost hard to believe that we're home, that this is real.,” Aidan said eventually.

"Yes. It feels like we were gone for years," she replied.

“So much happened,” said Aidan. “And though I might do it over if I had the choice to make again, there’s a few things I could do without.”

“Like…?” asked Flame.

He sighed. “Like, well… when your opposite caught me, she…” he hesitated, wanting to tell her and yet not wanting to. “I… I don’t know how to say this....”

“Knowing what I know about her I can guess. Your double said she would use you like a new toy, and try to break you like one too. But you didn’t break did you?”

“No. She managed to bend me a bit though. I…” he hesitated again. He felt she deserved to know exactly what had happened, but he somehow couldn’t find the words.

She stroked his hair gently, reassuringly, and said softly, “It’s all right. Whatever it is, it’s all right.”

Gradually the story came out. How she had seduced him, used his hunger against him. When he finished he said, “There’s been a lot of wrong done and a lot of forgiveness asked lately, but I need to ask again, can you ever forgive me?”

She continued to stroke his hair as she answered, “If you can forgive me.”

“Of course,” he said softly.

"I'm not sure it should be 'of course,' what you did you didn't really want to do. What I did..." She trailed off. “I found that somehow I had come to love him.” She looked down at her husband whose hair she was still stroking. “Not the same way I love you, not nearly, but I do still love him. Maybe I’ve been human too long, that I can love twice. I’ve told you before that a firecat can give her heart but once. And yet I do love you both.”

He lifted his head and smiled up at her. And if his smile was a little sad, it was also loving, without reservation. “It hurts a little bit, thinking of you with him… but I can’t love you any less because of it.”

“I am sorry. And you are first in my heart, now and always, no matter what.”

“Then nothing else matters,” he said.

There was a long comfortable silence. Both of them just sat there enjoying the peacefulness of the moment. They had reaffirmed their love, and though both might be scarred, both would be able to find healing in each other.

“This whole thing sounds like some wild bard’s tale,” said Flame after a while, “but I can’t decide if it’s a comedy, a tragedy, or a romance.”

“If it’s a romance, it’s the strangest one I ever heard of. My vote would be for comedy. Mistaken identity is a staple of comedic tales, after all. And it ended with us all still alive, so it can't be a tragedy, in a proper tragedy everyone's dead by the end."

Flame Song laughed. “True.”

Aidan sighed again and said, “It really does feel like it’s been forever. I feel like I’m a different person now than the person who was sitting here when that portal interrupted us.”

Flame Song nodded. “Yes, I know what you mean.”

Aidan turned so that he was kneeling in front of her, facing her, and picked up her hand. He kissed it gently, first on the back and then on the palm, and said, “Perhaps we could finish what we were doing when we were so rudely interrupted?”

Flame had closed her eyes at his touch. He could hear her heart begin to beat faster and she answered, “Yes. Yes I think we could.” And when Aidan’s slow and gentle kisses worked their way up her arm, reached the place where the blood rushed close under the soft skin of her neck, and he found the two little marks there that he had not made he hesitated only a moment before he kissed her there too.

It was just short of a year later when they found a packet sitting on the couch, with a small card attached that read "For Aidan and Flame Song, from Radu." Aidan shifted the baby from one arm to the other, and went to pick it up, but stopped just before he touched it. He could feel a kind of prickling heat radiating from it. "I think you'd better unwrap it. I get the feeling that I don't want to touch it any more than I have to."

Flame chuckled and walked over. She opened the packet up. Inside was Aidan's dagger, looking just the same as it always had. There was also a folded sheet of paper. Flame set the dagger aside and opened it.

My dear friends,
I write to tell you some news I thought you might like to know. Aidan and Celia have both joined my order and are both, each in their own way, proving to be invaluable. Aidan has done more than I can say for us, though at first I was suspicious of his change of heart. But when he willingly consented to be tested by truth spell I quickly became convinced. It is amazing how much he has changed. Flame Song, I am sad to say, has not, but without his help she has done much less harm. Some nine months after you left she had a child, a little girl. Aidan tells me he is fairly certain it isn't his, but as the girl is his spitting image I can perhaps guess at her parentage. Aidan and Celia mounted an expedition to kidnap the child, and while I ordinarily would not approve of taking an infant from its mother, in this case I felt it was the right thing to do. No child should have to grow up in the care of such evil. So the girl is here. Her mother named her Shadowfire.

Celia has been mothering her. She has also been giving Aidan a great many significant looks, which he seems to be oblivious to. Eventually, however, he is bound to notice, and I think I may be performing a wedding before long. If you want to make the trip between worlds again you will certainly be invited. I hope all is well with you. May all the gods bless you.

Sincerely,
Radu cel Stranic

“Well,” said Aidan, “much as I’d like to see that wedding, I have no desire to go back there. I hope he’s happy with her though.”

“Do you think he will be?”

He shrugged. “I could never be happy with anyone but you, but in his case who knows?”

"I wonder if it means anything, that the girls both have the same name," said Flame. "I wonder if they'll be opposites too?"

“Who knows? Maybe someday they’ll meet and find out.” He gently bounced the little dark-haired aerian girl. She giggled happily and grinned toothlessly.

“Does it bother you, not being sure if she’s yours?” asked Flame Song. She’d been wondering that since they’d first discovered she was pregnant again, but somehow she’d never found the right time to ask.

“Not really. And there’s no way for us to tell anyhow, so why worry about it?” The peace he’d found a year ago in that little cell was still with him. It had been shaken, perhaps, by the events that followed so soon after, but had held and he found that he could take whatever life threw at him with surprising calm. Though that might be tested even further by what was to come.

He handed Shadowfire to Flame Song and looked down at the dagger. He didn't make any attempt to touch the blade, but he reached out to take the hilt. The warmth turned into a pricking, almost-but-not-quite burning sensation as he touched it. It was not exactly pleasant, but it wasn't unbearable either.

He pulled the dagger he'd been using from its sheath and set it aside. He sheathed this newly magical blade in its place. The pricking faded to that slightly uncomfortable warmth as he let go of it.

"Are you going to be able to use it?" asked Flame.

He nodded. "Looks like."

"So... you're going to have to go hunt down the demon then."

He nodded again, soberly. "Yes. But not right now," he added with a smile. "I want to be here for Shadowfire's first year, at least. We should be fine for that long, after how long we've lived with this. But then..."

She nodded. She looked worried, but she knew it had to be done.

“Hey Daddy!” Littlespark came running into the room, interrupting their conversation. “Look, I did a picture of us!” She brandished a sheet of paper. Aidan took the picture from his oldest daughter. Drawn in a childish but increasingly accurate hand was a picture of all six of them. There he was with his arm around Flame Song’s furry firecat shoulders. Littlespark had included herself in her half-and-half birth form, and Firedart was drawn the same way. Standing on all fours in front was Phoenixflare, his orange wings folded against his sides. And lastly there was little Shadowfire, cradled in Aidan’s other arm.

Aidan looked at it for a long time. Right there was everything in the whole world that mattered. His heart was suddenly full. He felt as though he’d come through the fire last year and now he appreciated what he had more than ever, because he’d come so close to losing it all. He might yet lose it, there was a long way yet to go, but for now he had everything he could possibly want.

“Do you like it Daddy?” asked Spark.

“Yes,” he replied, trying to keep his voice from choking up. “I like it very much.” Chapter 9