She was silent, staring at him across the fire.

"Is she even alive?"

"No. She died when I was small."

He sighed softly. "I was hoping you'd tell me yourself, but it appears you aren't going to. So I'll have to confess. I told Merlin how I felt about you, and out of concern for you, he thought I should know about the attack."

"Out of concern for me?" Her voice was brittle.

"Yes. I was so eager for you, I probably would have been impatient and reckless in trying to persuade you I could be trusted-which would have had the opposite effect, as well as quite possibly harming you. Merlin wanted to warn me that you'd been so badly hurt by men, it would take time for you to heal."

He was able to speak calmly only because he had already grappled with his rage and pain at what had been done to her. But he knew that given the chance, he would kill the men who had hurt her. Slowly.

Roxanne looked away from his intent gaze, filled with the oddest combination of emotions. "Do you… I'm surprised you still find me… acceptable."

"Why would I not?"

"You know very well why."

Tremayne waited patiently until her gaze returned to his, and then he said, "Roxanne, if I could, I would make it so that you had never been hurt in any way by any man. What they did to you was terrible, but it certainly wasn't your fault, and it doesn't change how I feel about you."

She didn't believe him, but didn't protest.

He hadn't expected anything else; she was still too wary. Quietly he said, "You mean to find those men, don't you? To destroy them."

"Yes," she answered flatly.

"Will that give you back whatever you feel you lost?"

"I don't know. All I do know is that I can't live knowing they haven't been punished for what they did to me."

Tremayne was silent for a moment. Did he have any right to tell her what she intended to do was wrong? No, not really, not when he wanted to destroy them himself. He couldn't begin to understand how she felt; perhaps a sense of justice would help her to heal completely. But he was very much afraid that killing her rapists would change Roxanne far more deeply and irrevocably than the attack itself.

"Let me do it," he said at last. "Point them out to me, and let me destroy them."

That was the last thing she had expected. "You? But… but why?"

Because I want to. "Because you shouldn't do it. If you kill them, they'll always be with you. If I do it, you'll have the satisfaction of knowing they were punished for what they did to you without the blood on your hands. Or your soul."

"What about your soul?"

Tremayne never got the chance to answer that, because both of them were frozen by the chilling sound of Kerry's shrieks coming from somewhere in the dark woods to the east.

"Roxanne! Roxanne!"

Their stillness lasted only a second or two. Both of them leaped up and raced off in the direction of the child's hysterical screams. The Curtain provided some light for them to see their way even as it sapped their energy, and both Tremayne and Roxanne were breathless by the time they burst into a clearing.

They saw Kerry struggling in the brutal embrace of two village men, her small face white with terror as they tore at her clothing and began to shove her toward the ground.

Roxanne cried out in anguished protest, and even as she was stretching her hand instinctively toward them, she recognized one of the two men as one of her own attackers. Then everything happened so quickly that afterward she was never sure if her recognition of the man in any way changed what seemed fated to be.

At her side Tremayne stretched out his own hand, despite the danger of the Curtain, his only thought to save the child. The pulsing streams of energy that left his hand and Roxanne's met and twined together, forming one stream. With no interference from the Curtain, the energy obliterated first one of the men and then the other-with no sound at all except the sharp pops of air rushing in to fill the voids left by two bodies that were there one instant… and gone the next.

Roxanne rushed to gather Kerry into her arms, holding the sobbing child tightly against her. "It's all right," she murmured. "It's all right."

"I-I just wanted to-to be with you, Roxanne," Kerry wailed, shaking violently. "I didn't mean to do- anything wrong, I p-promise!"

"I know you didn't, sweetheart. It's all right, don't cry. It's over now. You're safe." Roxanne looked at Tremayne as he knelt beside her, both of them only now wondering how and why their power had combined, and how they'd been able to use it despite the Curtain.

Tremayne gazed into Roxanne's wide, darkened eyes for a moment, and then reached out and very gently placed his hand on Kerry's head in a comforting gesture. Roxanne looked at it, large and strong, and remembered how instantly and unhesitatingly he had moved to help the child. Something inside her that had been closed seemed to open up a bit, and she lifted her own hand to cover his.

"It's your fetal charm," Serena said gravely as she followed Merlin up a narrow mountain path.

"I doubt that," he retorted, throwing the words over his shoulder. "What it is, is a power play, pure and simple. Antonia has her own agenda, and my part would have been something like… the mate of a black widow spider."

"Yuk. Don't the females-"

"Yes. They do. That's how they got the name."

Serena thought about that as they climbed, then objected. "But she wouldn't kill her mate, would she? Antonia, I mean. A wizard's power dies with him or her, so she'd need her mate alive if it's power she's after. Wouldn't she?"

"How very prosaic you are."

She couldn't help laughing a little, even as she reflected that he must have found the interview with Antonia distinctly unnerving. She was only grateful that he had emerged apparently without having been dragged back into the struggle between his instincts and his intellect; his attitude toward Antonia seemed more to do with the lady's own personality than any prohibition his ancestors had decreed.

"Well," she said finally, "it's true, isn't it? A dead mate wouldn't be much good to Antonia."

"I suppose not. Though I'm sure she has every intention of being the dominant partner in any… merger. She's for too ambitious to be willing to share power, despite what she said to me."

The sun went down about then, and the first flickering haze of the Curtain began forming over the valley, but they were high enough to escape the effects. They had chosen a mountain at random and were at the east end of the valley above Sanctuary; they could see the scattered lights of the city, though as the night wore on and the Curtain thickened, those would become less visible.

They were heading for a spot halfway up this mountain, where there appeared to be a clearing. They could have covered the distance far more quickly than they had by simply transporting once out of sight of the gates of Sanctuary, but both enjoyed walking, and they had gotten used to more primitive means of travel in Atlantis.

"I won't know how to drive when we get back," Serena had commented somewhat ruefully. "Has it only been two weeks?"

Now, glancing across the valley, she saw the moon rise between two peaks and shivered slightly. Just a sliver now, but within a few days it would be a quarter, then a half… and eventually, in barely two weeks, the moon would be round and full-the final warning of the destruction of Atlantis.

"Serena?"

Realizing she had come to a stop, she turned her back to the valley and quickly caught up with him. "Sorry."

Merlin had stopped to wait for her, and looked down at her with a slight frown. "What's wrong?"

With forced lightness she replied, "I was just thinking how soon the fireworks are due to start around here."