"You didn't answer the question."

"I'm thirty-six, Serena. Now get some rest." She was smiling. "All right. Good night."

"Good night. Sleep well."

Serena thought she probably would, even if she did dream about doppelgangers.

Disgusted, Varian finally conjured himself a warm fire and hunkered down beside it, wrapping his coat around him for added warmth as the chill of the night increased.

Goddamn that Merlin! The younger wizard had somehow managed to elude Varian despite all his efforts, taking his redheaded bitch and going to ground with her somewhere up here. Not that Varian could blame him for being selfish by keeping her to himself, but it was terribly frustrating nevertheless.

He considered making his way to Justin's palace and spending the rest of the night there, but discarded the thought quickly; he was never at ease around other male wizards except in the fortress of his own palace. He also considered conjuring a shelter for himself, but decided against that, as well, because he preferred not to alert Justin to his presence by expending that amount of energy.

So he was condemned to spending an uncomfortably chilly night up here, an indignity he laid at Merlin's door. Still, he felt a certain amount of respect. The wizard of Seattle was dearly both canny and skilled, and he obviously intended to protect his concubine however it was necessary.

Couldn't blame him for that, either, Varian acknowledged silently. One look at that vibrant red hair, luscious, ripe body, and beautiful face, and most any man would be caught even before he got close enough to meet those snapping green eyes and hear her pleasing voice…

He shifted on the hard ground, suddenly uncomfortable as his manly parts swelled and throbbed and protested the constriction of his trousers. God rot the bitch, just the thought of her was enough to have him randy and ready to ride her! He wanted her, and he intended to have her-no matter how vigilantly Merlin protected her.

In the meantime a long and decidedly chilly night lay ahead of him.

It was just after dawn when Serena woke and crawled out of her lean-to. The fire was still burning, and Merlin was asleep on a pallet nearby, his coat wrapped around him and his lean face peaceful. Serena crept close and knelt down, careful not to disturb him. He was incredibly handsome, she thought, admiring the perfection of his strong features. The liquid dark eyes were hidden from her by thick lashes, but even those were sexy in a way she couldn't define.

Compulsively she reached out a hand and very softly touched his tumbled black hair-and her senses nearly went into overload. Soft, thick, a bit damp from the morning dew. Alive under her fingers. All of him was so alive. Even without his intense black eyes radiating power, his strength was obvious. Serena brushed a curl off his wide forehead and wondered if she could heal him.

The vague thoughts coalesced, and her fingers stilled, lightly touching his hair. Could she heal him? He hadn't said no, she remembered. In fact, he hadn't commented at all when she had asked him to let her try.

The problem was, Serena didn't know how to try. This wasn't a relatively simple case of healing a burn or mending a broken bone or sealing a tear in the flesh. Nor was it as exacting as the deft manipulation of a virus. This was something almost abstract. Merlin's wound was emotional, maybe even psychic-as that word pertained to the soul. His deepest instincts had been… maimed, his natural responses curbed and repressed.

There was no way she could repair all that damage; much of it he would simply have to do himself through the natural course of time and positive experience, the way humans had always cured their inner wounds. But perhaps she could make a start, she thought. Drive a gentle wedge to prop open a door-just a small door, carefully chosen.

She tried to focus, tried to single out one thing on which she could concentrate all her ability, and when she found it, she directed a narrow, careful flow of positive energy and healing wishes.

She wanted him to heal, wanted it desperately, and that determination infused the brief stream of energy with a strength that made it even more positive.

Was it successful? Serena didn't know. She sat back on her heels at last and gazed down at him, still sleeping deeply, his handsome face relaxed. If she had done it, then the door was open now for him to begin trusting her; the inclination toward mistrust that had been seared into his instincts would be softened, blurred a bit, more receptive to his intellect's desire to change. A beginning, no more.

If she had done it.

Serena eased up and away from him, still not wanting to disturb his sleep. But she was wide awake and restless, and the faint gurgle of a nearby stream (created by one of the wizards on this mountain, Merlin had noted when they'd climbed up here; the fresh water was undoubtedly careless runoff from some pleasure pool higher on the mountain) sounded awfully tempting. The bathing facilities in Sanctuary were adequate, though hardly inspiring, and the idea of bathing under the brightening sky of Atlantis appealed to Serena.

Why not? With a little luck Merlin would wake up and come looking for her, finding her rising up out of the water like… like who? Neptune (or Poseidon) was the malegod of the sea, she remembered, but who was the femalegod? Anyway, she'd be rising out of the water like the femalegod of the sea, all naked and wet and tempting and-and she'd probably be draped with the decidedly unattractive freshwater equivalent of seaweed, because that was just her luck…

Smothering a laugh at her own absurd thoughts, Serena went to take a bath.

Tremayne reached Sanctuary in early afternoon after having parted from Merlin at the base of Varian's mountain hours before. He would normally have volunteered to accompany Merlin-more of a stranger here than himself-to the Old City, but after what he had learned of Roxanne's experience, he was anxious to see her, to try to convince her that he had no intention of harming her in any way. Tremayne hadn't needed Merlin's warning to know she was unlikely to put much trust in any male, even less a wizard, but he was determined to do whatever he could to win her trust. And there was so little time before he had to leave…

He was no more than a hundred yards from the gate and approaching from the southwest when he saw Roxanne pass through it, pause to speak briefly to one of the female wizard Sentinels, and then begin walking due west away from the city. She had a small backpack and used a walking stick nearly as tall as she was, around which her fingers whitened tensely when Tremayne approached her quickly.

She halted, knowing they were within view of the gate and that the Sentinels undoubtedly watched. Oddly, she wasn't afraid of the tall male wizard striding toward her, but her heart pounded erratically and she felt very nervous. She hadn't expected to see him… No, that was wrong. She had been expecting him ever since their last encounter, when he had said those incredible, stunning things she hadn't been able to believe. Something inside her had insisted he would return.

Especially after Serena had told her that Tremayne had invited Merlin to meet his distant kinsman Varian. She wondered dimly if only she among all of them felt this strange sense of fate weaving connections like an inescapable web.

Tremayne stopped several feet away and stared at her with a hunger that was alien to everything she knew and yet awoke sensations in her body she instinctively understood, however much they shocked her. For a moment he seemed unsure what to say. When he did speak, his voice was abrupt but not hard or harsh. "What in hell are you doing leaving the city this late in the day?"