A/N: The latest break was a little longer than my usual I must say! I became unemployed so I am not as busy as I used to be, but in all honesty, I have been putting my time toward writing my original work. I have two novels completed, with a completely separate third one in the works. I read some excellent books: "Leviathan Wakes" (Sci fi by someone named Corey I think) and "The Desert Spear" by someone named Brett. But mostly I have been submitting queries to various publishers and agents without success I'm afraid. :-( But what's a girl to do except keep on trying! My hubby is very supportive and encourages me constantly. He is a huge blessing! No babies for us yet (though that would have been an excellent excuse for my prolonged absence, but it would be a lie). We're too selfish for rug rats just yet. I have more than enough children relying on me in fictional worlds! (LOL). But yeah, trying very hard to be published. The closest thing to luck I had was when Samhain Publishing (love them) rejected me and said they really liked my voice and found my characters and plot compelling, but the novel I submitted didn't have enough romance! Believe it or not, my family actually believes I can't write romance and sometimes I even believed them in the last month or two, but then I came back to this story and whacked myself in the head and said, "DUH!". If this story didn't have some romance in it well...then I guess I don't know what romance is! (LOL).

Anyway, this is the last chapter I believe. Hardly feels like it, probably because this story doesn't really end. If I get a lot of reviewers upset by this ending I can be convinced to add more to this story, but at this point I really felt like it needed to end. Last chapter was almost a good ending point on its own, but I wanted to capture more time, gill in a few little gaps. Things like, Where was Sessmom during the anime/manga? How did Sessmom know what to do when she healed Rin in the anime/manga? I also wanted to hint at and take in some of my own loose ends from Runaway, Return, Innocence, With Our Arms Wide Open and so forth. Those stories are all connected and I wanted to make sure it was clear that this story is connected to them as well. At the end of this chapter I'll share a few more notes, but for now, please enjoy.

Also, I wanted to thank everyone who's written to me with encouragement and praise in this story and all my others. I reread some of your kind words tonight and had a good laugh and felt so much better about the really depressing and impossible publishing business and most importantly about myself. To date I've sent 36 submissions querying agents and publishers for two different novels and had no success except for that really nice rejection by Samhain. Your reviews encouraged me more than you'll know, reassuring me that I really do have talent and that others could someday accept me and fulfill my dream of making a living this way. :-D

Disclaimer: I own almost nothing.

Last Chapter: Izayoi learned some details of Inuyasha's inheritance, as did Sess. Sess banished Shiroihana and she reluctantly obeyed with the promise that one day she would return. Sess, angry that the tomb is somehow tied to Inuyasha and will never be found without letting the pup have time to grow and mature, took out some vengeance by giving Izayoi and Inuyasha to Ijimeru Setsuna, Takemaru's older brother and head of the clan if you recall, so Izayoi's brother-in-law and now master.

What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found in the son the unveiled secret of the father. ~Friedrich Nietzsche

Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it. ~Mark Twain

Izayoi
(Letter to Sesshomaru)

Most Honorable Lord Sesshomaru,

This lowly human woman wishes to thank you for your protection and your mercy. This lowly woman will always be obedient and grateful. This weak and puny mortal woman will raise her child in obedience and gratitude and loyalty to the Lord of the Western Lands. She begs that you do not forget either herself or her son.

Lady Izayoi

The Peace of Fate

Ijimeru Setsuna accepted Izayoi as his concubine in a simple, bland ceremony similar to a marriage. Sesshomaru represented her family by controlling the unruly Inuyasha throughout the ceremony. He sat at the back of the audience room, glaring through hawkish golden orbs at Izayoi's back as he pointedly ignored the squirming and whimpering of his half-brother in his lap.

Though Inuyasha was very young and would not recall this ceremony and would never glean its meaning—the insult to his mother and the fact that this had been inflicted on her by Sesshomaru—he was already laying down scent memories. Scent was a deeper, primeval sense tied to memory, especially for inuyoukai. Currently Inuyasha was laying a foundation of distrust and discomfort in association with Sesshomaru's scent. He knew instinctively that this was a creature closely related to him, so his gut reaction was one of trust, but reality betrayed that as untruthful. He was a confused, unhappy pup and not shy about letting others know about it.

"Let go! Let go!" he said and then dissolved into growls. He was issuing a warning and even the humans could interpret the child's noises and words as such. For Sesshomaru it had greater meaning. Not only was Inuyasha going to shriek, holler, and cry—but he would use his claws.

The pup's patience wore out. He scratched at Sesshomaru's clothing, deliberately getting beneath it so that he could claw skin. When Inuyasha drew a faint scratch of blood, Sesshomaru pinched the child's ear and then the nape of his neck simultaneously. These were motions that Shiroihana had used to subdue Sesshomaru as a pup and they worked amazingly well on the hanyou, silencing him as his little body tensed with instinctive obedience.

But only a few minutes passed before the next outburst came. Soon Sesshomaru did not bother waiting to administer the punishments. Izayoi watched helplessly out of the corner of her eye throughout the ceremony as Sesshomaru quietly and dispassionately controlled her son. She could see Inuyasha's face, bright red and streaked with tears. His little nose was running with a fluid snot. She longed to leave the ceremony and wipe it all away. She was aware of all of Ijimeru's retainers, his wife Rini, and other high members of the clan looking with curiosity and disdain at the hanyou—and at her.

Ijimeru was calm and unconcerned throughout the ceremony, meeting Izayoi's gaze only occasionally. To Izayoi's surprise and horror she saw warmth in his eyes and face and dreaded being forced to have sex with him. She searched frantically inside herself, seeking the inner strength that had always sustained her, through Shiroihana's cruelty, through her lovesickness, her pregnancy, her captivity as Takemaru's wife. Now she would endure again, as Ijimeru's concubine, a woman whose bed he visited while Rini was heavy with his child, a woman he used for his own selfish pleasures, a woman that he possessed simply because he could.

And of course, because Sesshomaru had forced him to take her. This much Izayoi had unraveled for herself. She did not know the payment, what had been exchanged for his sacrifice to take her in, but she knew something had passed from Sesshomaru to Ijimeru. She was tainted, dishonorable. Ijimeru risked being mocked, and by laying with her, sharing the same bed, he could pick up her curse and dishonor like a virus.

When the ceremony ended Izayoi was not free to go attend her son as she wished. Instead she left with Ijimeru, presumably to consummate their new relationship, to get to know one another in the most private of ways. Izayoi made no attempt to hide where her true interest lied as she left the large audience room. She stared over her shoulder, straining her neck, gazing longingly at her son as Ijimeru led her out of the room.

As soon as she was out of the room, with the door closed behind, Izayoi tugged against Ijimeru's grip on her wrist and demanded, "What about Inuyasha? I must go to him."

"My wife and the other women of the clan will care for him," Ijimeru replied.

"Forgive me," Izayoi said, knowing what she was about to say would likely insult and anger him. "I do not trust them with my son."

Instead of reacting with anger, Ijimeru laughed. He released her wrist and stopped walking, turning to face her. His smile was pleasant and warm, friendly. Yet there was a mild incursion of lust in the way his eyes moved over her body and his jaw slackened. "I can assure you no harm will come to your son," he said. "Lord Sesshomaru was very clear about that. Your son's life has bought us protection from the youkai that we never expected or dreamed. My wife and the other women know if harm comes to your son that the entire clan will pay for it as Lord Sesshomaru's hands."

The gratitude in his voice and the realization that Sesshomaru was that desperate to keep Inuyasha alive took Izayoi completely by surprise. She stood silent and mute with shock for a few moments before bowing from the waist. "Lord Ijimeru."

He laughed with a sort of grunting sound. "Come with me and we'll discuss our situation."

He led her to a large bedroom that Izayoi immediately saw had been laid out with fresh linens, tea, and light snacks. It was a fairly lavish room, well decorated and pleasant. Izayoi tried and failed to relax as she sat down on the padded floor at the foot of the futon. Ijimeru sat just a foot away, close enough that she could reach out and touch him. He cleared his throat as he settled and motioned to the tray of food and tea that had been left at the end of the futon. "We might as well make this pleasant," he said and Izayoi realized he was asking her to serve the tea.

She pulled two teacups from the tray, turned them upright, and then poured the green, frothy tea into them. Ijimeru took the first cup and drank it rapidly. Izayoi refilled it unquestioningly and then set the teakettle down, ignoring her own cup. She was anxious, tense, and unsure that anything she ate or drank would stay down.

Ijimeru sighed finally and began to speak. "I can see you're nervous, but there's no need to be."

Izayoi said nothing, merely waited.

"Personally I am not opposed to this situation. You are a lovely woman. I envied Takemaru from the moment I met you." He paused and Izayoi read his discomfort for a moment. She guessed that he didn't like talking so openly about his rebellious, dead brother. He cleared his throat and went on. "I was of course especially unhappy when I heard that you were carrying his child." He stopped and smirked in a completely unpleasant way, dark and unrepentant.

Izayoi knew with a jolt that Ijimeru had at least considered calling for her assassination. Now he reveled in the knowledge that it had never been needed and all had turned out in his favor. Heaven itself had frowned on his brother, delivering a wife that carried an abomination, a woman who belonged to someone else. A harlot who'd slept with a demon.

"But of course that fear proved ill-founded," Ijimeru said, still smiling. "My brother was a fine man, unfortunately he was not a trustworthy one. I don't know how much you know of his plans to overthrow me as clan leader, but much of his power rode on the hope that you would give him a son while my wife seemed unfruitful at the time."

Since Inuyasha's birth Rini's misfortune had reversed itself, a fact that Izayoi didn't begrudge at all. She had not had a chance to speak to Rini in an informal, personal way yet, but Izayoi had already seen the nursemaid who accompanied Rini everywhere, carrying the young clan heir, a boy whose name Izayoi had not yet learned. He was younger than Inuyasha, still clumsy and hardly speaking, but already Rini was round with another child. Izayoi wished her nothing but success.

Izayoi risked speaking then, eager to share her happiness that Rini had finally had a living child. "Lord Ijimeru, I wish to offer my congratulations to yourself and Lady Rini. I was very glad to see your young son in the arms of his nursemaid."

Ijimeru grunted. "Thank you. His birth was a blessing, indeed. One of many that came after Takemaru got himself killed at the hands of your…" He paused, scowling, seeking a proper term before giving up and saying, "Lord Inutaisho."

Izayoi avoided his gaze, staring back at the tea tray.

"You understand that my retainers, my people, my wife and her women—hell, even the servants think I am mad and cowed by Lord Sesshomaru into taking you and your son into my household. I cannot protect you from harsh words, angry looks, that sort of thing. I expect you know that, you aren't an empty-headed woman, in fact I think you are deviously clever to have survived as you have."

Izayoi continued staring at the tea tray, but she felt her face flush with heat.

"Hopefully over time others will come to accept you, but it will certainly take some time. As for you and I—" He broke off and laughed in another grunt. "Well, there won't really be a you and I. You and I did not come to this arrangement willingly. You don't want me to take you to bed and I don't want to take you to bed because it would tarnish my own reputation. I also believe it might anger the spirits of the dead. Takemaru, and…" He cleared his throat and swallowed thickly. "Inutaisho."

Izayoi frowned, trying to stop herself from tearing up at the name of her dead lover and false husband. She inhaled sharply and flicked irritably at her eyelashes, clearing them of moisture.

"Therefore we will spend this required time chatting as we are now, but we won't touch each other. I have already promised my retainers and my wife that I would not touch you. The bed will stay pristine and our clothes exactly as they were when we entered. From time to time I will summon you like this, to talk, to discuss your son or Lord Sesshomaru or some other youkai."

When Izayoi cocked her head quizzically, Ijimeru explained himself. "I believe you are more knowledgeable regarding these youkai than any of my men. It would be foolish of me not to utilize such experience."

Izayoi bowed, instantly realizing that this was a compliment. "You honor me more than I deserve, Lord Ijimeru," she said, using the formal phrase.

He nodded his head in acknowledgement and then sat upright and drank again from the teacup. As Izayoi refilled his teacup yet again, Ijimeru asked, "Well, now that all that's out of the way, tell me how your journey was? How do you like this weather we've been having, hmm?"

Their time together drifted on, filled with inane, unimportant topics, shallow but reassuring. Ijimeru left after a little less than an hour and Izayoi followed swiftly, led by maids to where Rini and several other Setsuna clan women were waiting together, chatting and sewing while the clan's youth, boys and girls alike, toddled around them.

As she took her place among the other women and reunited with Inuyasha, saving him from a harried, uncomfortable looking nursemaid, Izayoi felt the hostility of their glares, but she didn't care. This existence would not be ideal, but Izayoi had never known a life that wasn't fraught with difficulty or emotional trauma of one kind or another. This one would have its troubles and threats, but Izayoi already felt it was a good place to be, far better than she'd imagined in the long, arduous months of her pregnancy. She would be an outsider among her own kind, kinless except for Inuyasha—but her son alone made this worthwhile.

She held him close, blind to the scornful stares of the Setsuna women, and opened her robe to let him snuggle close to her and nurse. His eyelids were heavy, drooping as he gazed up at her, content and satisfied while in her arms. Izayoi smiled down at him tenderly and rubbed his little ears, stroked his silky white hair. Already he looked so much like his father and half-brother. He was growing up so quickly and although Izayoi never wanted him to leave her arms where she couldn't protect him from the hurtful, cruel world, she wondered what his future held. Would he grow powerful enough to challenge Sesshomaru? Would he become a warrior, a scholar, or something else? She banished the pessimistic voice that spoke out in her mind, whispering, He will become an outcast.

Regardless of the future awaiting both of them, Izayoi clung to the present, embracing it the same way she hugged Inuyasha close to her. We're safe, for now, little one.

Shiroihana

I have been watching my son, waiting for my time to come again. As the centuries pass, I can feel my mother and the Queens, my ancestors from the beginning of our line, pressing on my back. They challenge me to step back onto the rightful path of my heritage. I cannot leave this pathetic impermanent existence just yet.

I have one last duty to see to, before the end. Though he no longer remembers his heritage, or his oath to me in both lives as my son and my brother, Sesshomaru has kept his promises. Unlike Inutaisho, whose seed was purely male, my son has given me granddaughters who can carry the line of the Queens into Eternity. Sesshomaru has been a short break in this long chain of maternal ancestors. In spite of himself, my son has been given multiple daughters when his only desire was a son.

But even though he has no use for these daughters, he will never turn them over to me. I remain ostracized, the unfairly hated mother, the female scourge in a world of masculine rule. Yet I will prevail in time. Sesshomaru is Fated to give me the daughters that I could not produce. One day I will determine which one of them is meant to become Queen, and she will become my heir.

Then and only then will my time in this wretched world come to an end.

Once a year, like clockwork, as predictable as sunrise and sunset, a messenger arrived with letters for Shiroihana. They were always written in the same script, the same coarse calligraphy and almost unreadable shorthand. Shiroihana had learned to read these warped characters and their frustratingly incomplete phrasing centuries earlier, during the panther demon war. Daken had always been a diligent record keeper, noting losses and gains in wartime, supplies, numbers of troops, areas where combat had taken place or enemies spotted and so on.

Shiroihana always made sure that she was at the same place, in the deep, remote mountains of China beside an ancient monastery filled with warrior monks who regarded her with awe. The monks started to anticipate her arrival and gathered at the same time each year at midsummer, when they knew she would come, observing her. Their respect surprised Shiroihana, impressing her. She never attacked them and never interacted with them except by returning their curious or wary stares with her own looks of casual, detached amusement. With her keen ears she knew they called her The White Lady.

The reverence of the humans in the monastery made her recall her youth, when her mother Queen Samidare had enchanted the people of Kosetsu into thinking she was a goddess. The line of Queens had begun that way, with humans and some weaker demons elevating the dog demon women of Shiroihana's family above them as goddesses. The rest of the world became male-dominated, but the people of the Kosetsu held onto their belief right up until Shiroihana named Sesshomaru as her heir. After that the godhood of the monarchs fell swiftly into doubt and the male-dominated world outside quickly devoured the belief.

Enough time had passed since those events that now every human who'd once believed Shiroihana was a goddess was dead and buried. Long ago. Forgotten.

Exiled. Banished.

Shiroihana's punishment at Sesshomaru's hands continued to weigh on her heart, her very soul. Yet it was also healthy. Alone in the wilds of another country, Shiroihana found that her grief diminished. She walked through a part of the world that knew nothing of her or her history. The men of the monastery probably could not fathom where she had come from and never would have thought she'd been a Queen once, married to an otherworldly warrior, and birthed a son who now ruled most of Japan. The men probably thought she was little more than an apparition.

The messenger arrived. It was always the same kitsune, a servant Shiroihana had brought from Kosetsu for this express purpose. As the years passed, Shiroihana watched the kitsune grow and change, eventually taking on a mate somewhere along the way until soon its child, a young son, accompanied him for the voyage.

Daken was a perfect spy. Shiroihana had no illusions that Sesshomaru didn't know that his servant sent these messages. Sesshomaru would know, certainly. That meant there were probably things Shiroihana didn't learn about because Sesshomaru hid them from Daken. At first this thought terrified Shiroihana. She imagined, almost childishly, that Sesshomaru would marry or take lovers secretly, spawning dozens of illegitimate children—daughters , she was sure—and she would never know about it. But soon she realized that even if Daken didn't know about something and didn't send word to her across the sea, she had the power to find out almost anything.

Inutaisho's gift to her at his death was the meidou-seki. At first Shiroihana despised the thing and brought it only to offer in trade if she needed something from local demons or even humans that she could not simply take by force. But after a few months she discovered the meidou-seki was useful in its own ways. Eerie voices sometimes called to her, beckoning. Shiroihana ignored them, irritated rather than intrigued, but eventually the voices began to speak fragments of coherency, things that she recognized because they were about people or places she knew.

"Izayoi has died today," the voices hissed from the center of the necklace and Shiroihana's skin prickled with gooseflesh at both the words it spoke as well as the cold sensation the necklace exuded. Alone amongst the dark, high altitude forest, in the depth of winter, Shiroihana paused and tried to count how many years had passed since she'd last seen the girl. How old had she been? A decade and a half when she birthed the abomination half-breed? Or was it more like two decades? How long did humans live? It seemed a pathetically short time, but even so, Shiroihana thought too little time had passed for Izayoi to have died just yet.

She let out a short, harsh laugh. "Ha." An animal squeaked somewhere above her, alarmed by her sudden vocalization. Suddenly hungry and ripe with triumph at simply the possibility of outliving the wretched girl, Shiroihana sent her whip out and snatched the animal out of the high tree to her side. It made a wet gurgling squawk and then perished before hitting the snowy ground at Shiroihana's feet.

It was a bird of some kind. Shiroihana ate it, feathers and all.

She did not believe the meidou-seki's news completely until almost a half a year later at midsummer when Daken's messages came by way of the kitsune again. She read through his notes of the year without any thought of the mortal woman at all until she found a note made during the long winter. In his crude shorthand, Daken had written:

Word arrived from Takeyabu province. Izayoi died. Sestuna clan claimed the death was of natural causes. Illness. Her heart gave out. Sesshomaru concluded the death was murder. Poison. He could still smell the poison at the gravesite.

Shiroihana paused, slightly stunned. Again she tried to calculate how many years had passed, but time was inconsequential to her in the wilderness. She read on, curious to see how much more Daken and Sesshomaru had discovered and also dreading that the next lines would say her son had taken in the half-breed abomination as an adopted child.

Inutaisho's hanyou son unharmed in attack on Izayoi. Setsuna clan asked Sesshomaru to take the child. The hanyou was difficult and unfriendly. Sesshomaru hates him but will not kill him because of Inutaisho's tomb.

Hanyou child is aged approximately 16. He appears to be aging as a pureblooded inuyoukai. Except for his scent and some strange features resulting from his dual ancestry, the child is remarkably similar to a pureblooded inuyoukai.

Sixteen in inuyoukai years equaled a human child of about eight. Shiroihana imagined Sesshomaru at that age: strong, willful, and proud. She doubted this child was any of those things. He would be brutish, thickheaded and stupid, as well as being ignorant and self-centered, like all creatures associated so closely with humans would be.

His resemblance to Inutaisho is almost unsettling. His name is Inuyasha.

Shiroihana scowled at the name, snorting with how stupid it sounded. It was a name Inutaisho would have chosen, certainly. As idiotic as his own incorrect name. She quickly noted and memorized Daken's notes after this fully spelled out name. Whenever a new idea or name was expressed in his letters, Daken invented shorthand for it and noted it beside the new entry for her. The new terminology Daken used for Inutaisho's bastard son made Shiroihana wrinkle her nose in disgust. Dog ears. She had heard of half-breeds coming out with twisted body forms. Apparently Inutaisho's spawn came out with dog ears. She read on.

Sesshomaru sent child to remote location with tutor and servants.

She continued going through the year's report, through the winter and into the last reports of the spring before Daken would have boxed up the letters and sent them with a messenger for the coast to be shipped by sea to China. In the springtime reports the hanyou appeared numerous times. Daken reported the child's poor performance with human and youkai teachers alike, that he dismissed the maids, flying into rages that made them fear for their lives. He demanded to see Sesshomaru, expecting that his brother should be closer to him, that they should see one another daily, living in the same household. Sesshomaru's response was swift and bitter in its decisiveness. He turned the ungrateful brat out of his property, banishing the half-breed to the wilderness, shunning and denying him just as Inutaisho had done to him.

I do not like this outcome, Daken admitted in his letters. It endangers the child and with him any chance of Sesshomaru claiming Tetsusaiga. But I believe Sesshomaru has pushed that concern aside. He cannot withstand this child's behavior. My interpretation is different from his. I believe the child is gravely wounded by the loss of his only kin and rebels to seek attention, not knowing that this will only further isolate him from Sesshomaru. If Lady Shiroihana were present she could claim the child from the wilderness and keep him safe and out of Sesshomaru's sight. It is my belief that if the child received affection from Lady Shiroihana or better still from Sesshomaru himself, the child will easily become a servant or spy or warrior for the Western Lands…

This was an invitation to Shiroihana, a discrete plead for her to intervene to help Sesshomaru. Yet Shiroihana foresaw how disastrous such an action would be to herself. Sesshomaru would despise both her and the hanyou for her actions. Besides, Shiroihana had no interest in saving or befriending Inutaisho's foul bastard.

She thought very little and heard almost nothing more about the half-breed scum until many years later when Daken wrote casually that Inuyasha had been pinned to a tree by a priestess's arrow and put under some type of spell. He updated his description of the hanyou as well, recording his age at roughly 100 to 150 years old—an age range that for inuyoukai marked sexual and physical maturity. That was what Inutaisho's riddles about the tomb had called for. Daken reported that the hanyou was as good as dead, left in suspended animation with no sign of revival—and Sesshomaru had tried to revive his brother, albeit weakly. He wanted the hanyou healthy and alive to fulfill his part as "the key" to Inutaisho's tomb, but was swift to give up on it too, trying his own means to find and access the tomb.

It was amusing to hear how little the abomination had amounted to thus far in his worthless life, though Shiroihana was surprised to know that he hadn't died as a child out in the wild. She was also taken aback by his aging. Shouldn't he have been weaker, old and dead by now?

No matter. He would rot on the tree and someday Shiroihana imagined she would find that spot where his bones were held up by the arrow and she would chew on his bones, a final, twisted triumph over Inutaisho. But she couldn't do that unless Sesshomaru forgave her, summoning her back to Japan…

The meidou-seki spoke to her, whispering periodically. Shiroihana always listened to it, stopping whatever she was doing to strain her ears, trying to decipher the voices into recognizable speech. She realized over time that the meidou-seki spoke with multiple voices and in innumerable languages. Some were guttural and harsh, with patterns and intonations that made her cringe. Others were reminiscent of Chinese with tonal sounds identifying the different words from one another. Still more made noises that weren't words at all to Shiroihana, but clicks or grunts.

The useless, mocking trinket of Inutaisho's now became a source of fascination for Shiroihana. She did not have the resources or the influence to research the necklace, but she suspected that Inutaisho had found the tool in China. She began directing her energies in the months between her midsummer rendezvous toward uncovering the meidou-seki's secrets, its origins and its purpose. She sought information from the local kitsune and any other youkai she could find. When she encountered resistance—which was almost constant because her informants were always male and expected payment often in body once they'd had a look at her—Shiroihana used her spectral whip to force something from them or kill them outright.

Eventually she realized that the meidou-seki was unknown to demon kind. This answer made so much sense that Shiroihana felt duped and humiliated yet again by Inutaisho. From the grave Inutaisho had cleverly managed to make her miserable over and over again. Shiroihana both despised and admired him. As the years continued to pass, flowing as easily and smoothly and carelessly as water, Shiroihana began to feel her inner rage, despair, and hate cool. By the time she realized that the meidou-seki's secrets were known only to the humans of China—a fact that should have been easily puzzled out but hadn't been because Shiroihana despised humans so much and refused to learn anything about them—she'd come to a point emotionally where she could actually laugh at her own foolishness. More astonishingly, she could admire Inutaisho's cleverness. He had known she would be banished to China, and he'd given her the meidou-seki as much to taunt her as to challenge her. He'd known her so well that he could predict her moves even long after he was dead.

After she was able to embrace this knowledge without bitterness, Shiroihana found that the meidou-seki began to speak more often to her and in languages she could understand. One night, during a new moon when the dry, hot Chinese-Mongolian plains stretched out for uncountable miles, treeless and barren to Shiroihana's eyes, a voice emerged from the meidou-seki that sent chills through her, violent and unstoppable. She was inuyoukai, a Queen, one of the most powerful and experienced of her entire clan and the dog demon clan as a whole, but she had never before bothered much with the dead. Now, so it seemed, they had come to her.

"Daughter," a female voice called from the necklace. "Daughter."

Shiroihana had not heard the voice in centuries, but immediately she was transported back to Japan in her memories, to her luxurious palace atop its misty, mysterious mountains. She remembered vividly the scent of her mother Queen Samidare, the sweet taste of her milk, the comfort of her touch, unrivaled by everyone and everything else in her long lifetime.

She had long since taken to wearing the meidou-seki about her neck, sometimes hidden under her robes and the thick white fur Koshoshiro had given her, but more often than not exposed to the sun and the moon while she waited for it to speak. Now she brought trembling fingers to the metal of the necklace and clutched it. The surface was unnaturally cold, sending more shivers through her body as she responded to the abnormality of it. The world around her was stiflingly hot with the deepest summer heat, but the meidou-seki was so chilled that her fingers came away wet with condensation.

Casting around quickly, searching the black night for anyone at all, animal, demon, or human who would overhear her or the necklace, Shiroihana hesitated. She had never interacted with the necklace, merely listened to it. She felt foolish as she lifted it up and over her head and turned the pendent to face her, lifting it cautiously to her lips. "Mother?" she asked, tentatively.

"Daughter," Samidare said. "Have you finally silenced your hate and opened your heart? Will you listen to the call of your ancestors? Will you obey as a good child, or continue to rebel and run from your Fate?"

The cold of the metal seemed to bite into Shiroihana's hands. She gripped it harder, trying to push aside the uncanny discomfort, the unnatural freeze-burn in her fingertips. "Mother, I have always listened to you."

"We are as ants to Fate," Samidare said.

Shiroihana closed her eyes, breathing deeply in the dusty, unclean air. "I know. What was I to do, Mother? I could not create a daughter. I tried so many times…"

It was true. So many times she had tested the prophecy around Inutaisho's seed, but always she had conceived a boy. How many pups had she carried briefly in her womb, praying desperately that the child would be female? But each one had been only another sign to her that Inutaisho was a liar, a cheat, a scoundrel who'd gone to her bed with no intention of honoring the line of Queens, only of ruining it. Her suspicions had been confirmed when she had the affair with Koshoshiro and conceived his child for the second and last time in her life—and it had been a girl. But Sesshomaru had stolen it away from her…

"You live still. You are Queen. No one can strip that title from you. Listen Daughter—across the sea, back in the islands, your daughters-in-law have been born."

Shiroihana frowned. "Daughters in law?"

Samidare did not elaborate. "Great trials are coming. You must be prepared to return to the islands. There is a child you must save."

Immediately Shiroihana thought of Inutaisho's spawn, the half-breed pup Daken liked to refer to as "Dog Ears." Although Shiroihana had mellowed in her two centuries of banishment there was still a limit to her patience. "I will not save such an abomination."

"He has no need of your help. The child you must save will be Sesshomaru's ward, a human girl. You must use the meidou-seki on her by placing it around her neck. You will know the right time."

The meidou-seki flared suddenly hot in Shiroihana's hands. She fumbled with it, trying to cover her fingers protectively in her sleeves. While she struggled, Samidare went on, "Hold fast, be patient. Sesshomaru will send for you soon."

"Mother?" Shiroihana called at the necklace. "Mother?"

But Samidare had gone. The middle of the necklace, which had darkened to black while Samidare was speaking, now changed into a deep purple and seemed to solidify, becoming inactive. Shiroihana held it in her clawed hands, gazing at the necklace in consternation for a time before securing it back around her neck and moving on her way.

The following year on the eve of the midsummer as usual, Shiroihana met the kitsune and saw with a sigh that he was aging rapidly, deteriorating quickly as he approached his elder years. She took up the letters from Daken with more reserve and trepidation than nromal and found the bizarre news that she'd been waiting for.

Sesshomaru has taken in an orphan girl. He saved her from death with Tenseiga. She is very loyal to him, bright and fearless. I have not seen such blind devotion since the girl Izayoi. Sesshomaru neither encourages her nor pushes her away.

Reclining in the shade of a large tree in the mountains just within hearing range of the monastery where the Chinese monks were chanting sutras, Shiroihana closed her eyes. Her body tingled with relief. Weight left her that she hadn't known she was carrying, invisible and heavy on her strong but narrow shoulders. The meidou-seki was not incorrect and not a hallucination of her own under-stimulated, bored mind. It was the voices of the dead, calling out to her, guiding her.

As she read on below, she sneered unhappily at the unexpected, insulting news that had just been revealed to Daken but had actually happened earlier in the year but had been hidden by Sesshomaru. Dog Ears has claimed Tetsusaiga and severed Sesshomaru's left arm with it. I cannot account for such power in a hanyou. He broke his seal from the tree and the arrow some time ago, but Sesshomaru has been traveling a great deal and left me behind to attend his estates. He visits only rarely and no foxes had brought me news of Dog Ears as he has been asleep and as good as dead for fifty years now. No one expected this. Sesshomaru is well and undeterred from travel and battle in spite of his loss.

Finally, after the report of the half-breed's whereabouts and doings—chasing some kind of misfit demon called Naraku and hunting "Sacred Jewel shards" in the company of several humans and small, weak demons—Daken requested Shiroihana's return to the islands. Sesshomaru was a fool to send you away. He needs you, but will not admit it. You must come back to him.

Samidare's voice from the meidou-seki echoed powerfully inside Shiroihana's mind: "Hold fast and be patient." Sesshomaru had not yet sent for her. This was Daken, subverting Sesshomaru's orders and wishes. Shiroihana knew if she came back now the rift between herself and Sesshomaru would likely widen. Although she was eager to return to her son, Shiroihana found she was surprisingly at peace with the knowledge that she would have to wait a little longer.

We are as ants to Fate, she thought, but I am a Queen among ants and soon I will be back inside the safety of my hive.

She laughed, light and musical and let her head thump back against the bark of the tree. She smiled up through the dappled light and darks of the leaves overhead, content.

At her neck she felt rather than truly heard Inutaisho's voice, whispering from the necklace. "If you allow it, we will guide you. You will be like a fish to Fate, swimming with full knowledge of the river's path and its current. We will help you navigate."

"Why should I trust you?" Shiroihana asked the air without opening her eyes. "You are not one of the Queens."

"But I speak with them beside all of your mothers and fathers. I could not forgive you in life, but in death I yearn only to know that those I love are safe. Your ancestors and mine are united in Sesshomaru and I knew when I left you meidou-seki that you would be the best guardian for him and the only one strong enough to control him and check his growing power."

It had been so long since Shiroihana had heard Inutaisho speak without menace in his voice. Much longer than two centuries. She had not been raised to trust the dead, but she did know that what he'd said was true. What more could the dead want than to oversee the living? It was strange, but inside her she felt something foreign inside, building and changing. She didn't have a name for the emotion. Was it regret? Shame? Loss?

"Where is Sesshomaru's spirit?" she asked. "Where is my brother? Why hasn't he spoken to me?"

"You know the answer to that question already," Inutaisho replied.

The dead always lie, she thought, but could not be certain. Was it true then that Sesshomaru—her son across the ocean—was truly her brother as well? Was it the same soul? Or was Inutaisho manipulating her from the grave as he already had several times?

"If that's true why would you want to protect my brother's soul?" she demanded.

"Because it is no longer your brother. He is my son. He is your son—our son."

Again Shiroihana felt the strange emotion rippling within her. She recalled her blind, poisonous hate for Inutaisho, her possessiveness of Sesshomaru, the constant tenseness and unhappiness as she manipulated, lied, and jockeyed to control everyone around her. She'd known as a princess that the life of a Queen would be hard and difficult, filled with the doubt of others and the constant need to reassert her dominance over men who questioned her authority and power. Yet she'd thought she could handle it, that she'd possessed a strong spirit capable of matching any man's. Now she felt the burden of those centuries and knew they had aged her, not physically, but emotionally and mentally. What would life have been like if she'd reconciled with Inutaisho? If she'd adopted a distant cousin to replace her as Queen instead of constantly holding onto Inutaisho's prophecy as a deep grievance, embittering her and fueling their constant internal warfare?

She couldn't fathom the answers to those questions and found she didn't want to know.

"I cannot forgive you for everything," she murmured. "But I can admit now that I have much to thank you for." First and foremost of those things was Sesshomaru himself.

"Will you work with us?" Samidare asked.

Hearing her mother's voice again, Shiroihana felt tears suddenly in her eyes but she blinked them away. She knew instinctively that she had passed some sort of tests and been found acceptable—redeemable.

"If it benefits my son and the Queens," Shiroihana whispered and opened her eyes to find them briefly blinded by the sunlight streaming in directly overhead. "I will do anything," she vowed.

"We knew you would," Inutaisho said and Shiroihana could almost hear him chuckle.

Endnote: WAAAaaah! I killed Izayoi. We all know it happened. I didn't want to do it, but the evidence for her dying is kinda foolproof. We see Inuyasha as a young child with her, never as an adolescent or older child. When we see him fighting for his life in the wilderness (I can't remember what episode or anything) he's still very young and hiding from demons. Now I could have legitimately said that Inuyasha simply outlived her and aged so slowly that he still looked like a child during that scene in the woods while he's being chased by monsters and whatnot, but it's kinda damning that we never see his mother aged. We only see him as a young child with her at no more than like 30 years old. She never looks old, so I can only conclude that she never grew old and died well before Inuyasha could outlive her. This was why I did cover her death here, but it still hurt to do.

Now I could be wrong, but I also recall hearing that there was evidence to suggest Izayoi was murdered. That could all be hearsay though. I took that route though ultimately because I thought it was realistic. In an earlier draft of this chapter I had Izayoi meet with the Setsuna clan women and realize that the clan could kill her and then use that to get out of their agreement with Sess. I thought it was entirely likely that eventually it would happen. Plus, it explains, in my head anyway, some of Inuyasha's later behavior. Since it's clear he was raised by humans, why does he long so much to be pureblooded demon and not human? He wants power sure, just like Sess, but I think he'd need some extra motive for feeling that way, and I thought if humans murdered his mother that would explain his hostility toward humans when we first meet him. Being Inuyasha, he won't tell us what he's really feeling so who's to say we have the whole story? Anyway...

As for Shiroihana and Sess...well, Shiroihana hasn't changed all that much. She's plotting and manipulating in favor of Sess constantly, and just as she says, she will do anything to keep her son in power and on a path she prefers. This is demonstrated very well in Return. If you want to read more on her, check that one out. Innocence as well. She's such an enjoyable character to write and for some reason just flows out of me so easily. Sess is also a very important character in my other stories too. Ah...

Not sure what my next project will be. I've had requests for Koinu and Akisame. Any others?

Again, THANK YOU ALL. Happy New Year! I'll see you all later. ;-)