Kevil danced in the courtyard, practicing the old forms with speed and grace, the newer ones more slowly as he examined the feel of sinew and bone and muscle. Some three weeks gone, his mother had joined him as he danced in her yard, and she had clucked her tongue with dismay over the deterioration of his ability. Kevil was only grateful she had not done so in Lisl's presence. In exchange for his promise to practice more often, she had taught him the new forms.

He turned slowly, lifting his arms and bending his knees. He did not allow himself to wince as his joints creaked; it would be weeks before they re-adjusted to the damp climate here. He lowered one arm carefully, shaping his fingers as his mother had taught him, and felt the yet-unfamiliar muscles move.

Satisfied that he had completed the new forms correctly, he returned to the beginning, locking into positions so familiar he thought he could do them sleeping. Without the need to concentrate, his mind drifted...

Loria. Her name was like music. The things he had done, the things he had allowed done to her - and yet she loved him! It was astonishing beyond comprehension, and Kevil breathed a prayer of thanks to the Lady.

A memory arose: his lips against the soft curve of her hip; the scent of her surrounding him; her hands tangled in his hair; her voice tight with desire, whispering, "Kevil-lin..."

He almost stumbled in the dance as a wave of desire broke over him. The pet name had been charming from Darin, a joke shared between them as Darin discarded Karand silence for Alani exuberance. But dropping from Loria's lips, the impropriety hidden in a language few others spoke...

Kevil did stumble, then, and stopped. He stood, panting and sweating from his exertions, wanting nothing more than to find her now, to make love to her, to wrap her around him... Desire crested, and he shuddered as he forced it down. She was not here, and in any case he had duties on which pleasure must wait.

He wiped the sweat from his face and began again, determined to keep the promise he had made his mother.

Dehlia, his other mother, had liked Loria very well. More, he thought, than she had ever liked Zoya, though of course she would never admit to such a thing. She had scolded Kevil, in her gentle way. "Kevish, darling, if you're not going to bring her here to live, then you mustn't make her life so difficult. She loves you, that much is obvious. But if they have nothing but pairings where you live..." Dehlia's white head shook in Kevil's memory. "However she feels, whether or not she approves, it is going to be bad for her if you have a lover."

Kevil's mouth twisted in response. "Vin, you are asking me to give up the Lady's blessing!" he had protested. "I am a *Bard*-"

Dehlia had cut him off with uncharacteristic firmness. "Kevil Talarin, I hope I taught you better than that! The Lady's blessing is in the *heart*, not the loins!" She fixed him with a steady gaze, holding up a hand to close his mouth. "Yes, even lin. I will not believe that you have lived so long without learning that there is a difference between sex and lin!"

Kevil flushed again, remembering. That she had needed to speak so bluntly was shameful - that he had allowed himself to forget what it was to be a Bard, to hold the Lady's blessing...

Dehlia had smiled at that, and patted his hand, and spoken more gently. "Whether you love another, Kevil, is for your heart alone to know. But for her sake, what you *do* about it... That must be what is proper, whatever that means where you are."

Kevil thought vaguely, as the dance wound to an end, that Dehlia would be delighted to learn he had promised to marry her. He picked up his towel and mopped his face, grinning tiredly. She could be no more delighted than he.

He was soaking in the deserted bathing room when Darin surfaced. "Stolen my name for you, has she?" he teased. No image arose in Kevil's mind, but the voice was warm and slightly rough, entirely unfaded by the ravages of time.

Kevil felt his throat tighten. "N'shava," he began, whispering.

"Hush," Darin laughed. "I don't mind if she uses it. Someone should... You're terribly fretful, n'shava."

Kevil smiled at his own imagination - resurrecting a lover twenty years dead to talk him through the dark places in his mind. Briefly, as always, he entertained the fantasy that some piece of Darin was really there, hiding in his mind - waiting for him.

"There is much worthy of worry," he breathed to the nonexistant Darin.

A faint memory: Darin's strong hands massaging his shoulders. Kevil sank deeper into the tub and allowed the memory to relax him somewhat. "Tell me," Darin whispered.

Kevil said nothing, but an image flickered behind his eyelids: The Red Serpent retreating, Vhin Silverhair holding a hand to the wound at her side but laughing, laughing as she made the awful invitation again...

"Let it go," suggested Darin matter-of-factly. "Loria forgave it, Zoya admitted she would do as much - *I* would do as much... Lisl saw the reason of it, and her feelings for slavers very nearly approaches yours." A memory of a caress. "Leave off, n'shava. It is over and done and the only one who hates you for it is yourself."

"It was reprehensible," Kevil muttered, trying to push away the ghostly hands. "I do not deserve-"

"Shhh..." Warm lips touched his, stopping his words. "Kevilin, idiot, hush." Kevil tried to open his eyes, but they felt heavy, and the water was warm like a lover's arms...

A feather-touch brushed his hair. "It's because of her, isn't it? Poor child, I don't blame her for being hysterical. And you love her enough to hate anything or anyone who hurts her - even yourself." Darin chuckled. "Noble sentiment, n'shava, but you've got to stop it now. She can't love you if you hate yourself."

Kevil dragged his eyes open to find his surroundings much changed - no longer the tastefully luxurious bathing room at the Dragon's Den, but the cramped room of an inn best described as "squalid". He was sitting on the narrow bed, and beside him - his heart crawled into his throat - Darin lounged, half-dressed, touseled as if they had just made love. It was not a memory, though surely the inn was, but Darin's face had aged, a full beard on the chin that had always in Kevil's knowledge been bare.

"D-darin?" he whispered hoarsely. He itched to stroke that face, to feel if the beard matched imagination. And yet - a haunt? He felt langourous, unwilling to move, but fought it.

"Shhh..." Darin reached and took Kevil's hand, and his touch was firm and warm. "You're only dreaming, n'shava. It's all right. I won't hurt you." Green eyes looked vaguely sorrowful. "I could never hurt you."

"A dream?" Kevil said doubtfully. It was so *real*...

A warm, calloused hand stroked his arm. "Move your foot a little, n'shava. You'll feel the water move. You've just fallen asleep in the tub." He smiled.

Kevil wiggled his toes. It seemed... He pushed his foot out and heard faintly, faintly, a slosh of water; felt briefly a cool breeze on his chest where the water had shifted. He sighed and relaxed.

Darin stroked his hair. "There. Just a dream. I'm no ghost. Certainly no haunt. But you needed more than the sound of my voice, and here I am."

Kevil didn't want to blink for fear he would awaken. "I... can't move, much," he said.

Darin nodded. "You're not entirely asleep yet. Give it a little time." He lifted Kevil's hand for him, rubbed his face against Kevil's fingers like a cat. The beard was soft, but not as soft as Kevil thought it might be.

He curled his fingers and tugged gently at the beard, grinning at Darin's wince. "It suits you," he mused.

Darin laughed and curled against Kevil's chest, and Kevil slowly wrapped his arms around his lover. "Remember this place? How scared we were that someone would catch us - and then wishing it had been the locals instead of Zoya?"

Kevil laughed softly. "Oh, yes. They would only have run us out of town. She was so angry..."

Darin nodded. "Angry isn't the word. She'd been angry all along. What she was when she caught us, I don't think there's a word for." He snuggled closer, and Kevil bent his head to kiss Darin's hair.

For a while, they laid together, content. "Did it ever bother you?" Darin asked finally. "What she did?"

Kevil hesitated. "I never really knew..." he began, hedging.

Darin sat up, twisting out of Kevil's embrace. "You knew enough," he said firmly, his green eyes boring into Kevil's.

Kevil swallowed, recalling things he thought he'd long since buried. He nodded. "I... yes. Some."

Darin nodded, not relenting in his intensity. "Yes." He waited.

Kevil paused, wondering where Darin was trying to go. "We couldn't have done anything to stop her," he ventured. "She would-"

Darin waved this away impatiently. "Of course not." He watched Kevil's confusion for a moment longer, then sighed and lifted a hand to his cheek. "But we still loved her, didn't we?"

Kevil thought about this. "I don't..." He shook his head and looked up at his lover. "No. We loved the Zoya who had been, and hoped that she would come back. The angry Zoya... implacable..." He shivered. "No, I do not think we loved her, Darin. We only accepted that she was the only route to the Zoya we loved."

Unexpectedly, Darin grinned. He leaned in and kissed Kevil thoroughly. "Very good!" he said, laughing at Kevil's renewed and redoubled confusion. "N'shava, the man you were, on the Red Serpent... That man deserved neither friendship nor love. But he was the only route, the only way to get where you had to go."

Kevil looked past Darin at the wall. Hoarsely, he said, "But it was me."

Darin shook his head. "No, n'shava, it wasn't. No more than Zoya gripped in the need for vengeance was *our* Zoya." He cocked his head curiously. "Or don't you think she ever regrets the things she did, then?"

Kevil met Darin's eyes again. "No... No, of course..."

Darin smiled slightly, and kissed him again, long and tenderly. Kevil closed his eyes and pulled Darin closer, aching with sorrow and love. Darin's hands stroked his hair, his face, his shoulders, and when the kiss broke, Kevil laid his head on Darin's shoulder and wept.

Very softly, Darin whispered, "Hush... I'm sorry, Kev, my Kevilin. So sorry I had to leave you. I wish it could have been different."

Kevil gasped, "Oh, Darin, if you had lived, it would all have been so different... So much better..."

Darin stroked his hair, gently loosening the tangles in the dark curls. "You can't say that, Kev. No one can. And you would never have met your Loria, d'va?"

Kevil smiled through his tears at that. Whatever the heartbreak of the last years, Loria was worth it all.