LVIII

Malum Discordae

In the morning, there is snow. Darkness stretches over them, clouds perpetuating the night. Kouga shrugs and brings Kagome back with him into the onsen, reminds her that he warned Ginta and Hakkaku that they would be delayed if there was snow.

"Think of it as a holiday, Kagome. The food is good, and the water is hot – that's nothing to complain about."

How can she argue with that? Kouki brings them meat and fruit and rice, beautifully arranged; hot sake on floating trays for while they're bathing; cold sake in elegant bottles with their meals. Strange sweets and liquors, rich desserts and fine robes appear in the beautiful rooms she shares with Kouga.

For three days, Kagome loses herself in exploration of this unaccustomed decadence. They are days of hot water and new pleasures; it becomes a game for him, to find new ways to surprise her, new ways to redden her cheeks – new ways to draw the sounds past her lips that he finds so enticing.

She is not fully prepared for the way Kouga responds to her new allowance – to what he interprets as new freedoms. It was what she meant – what she intended, in one sense. An escalation...the wolfish signal he has been waiting for, that tells him she is pleased with his courting.

Yet now in the morning he wakes her with the tickling of his unbound hair between her thighs, warm breath on warm flesh, the tongue she still cannot decide is divine or demonic. He wakes her with pleasure, with the pressure of his fingers on her thighs, urging them apart – the second morning she is dreaming of him, dreaming of the way he touches her, and the dream merges into reality so subtly, so cleanly, that she doesn't know if she's come undone in his arms or the dream.

Sometimes he lets her wake a little first.

Sometimes he holds her still and doesn't stop until her trembling nerves no longer respond.

Sometimes she holds him there, begging him to go on.

Morning and night, she feels the throbbing emptiness inside her more, the emptiness she knows he'll fill the day he mates her. Internally, she moves a little closer to saying yes, to giving in.

Only one word stops her – forever – and what that might really mean.

On the fourth day, things happen that change Kagome's world forever. The previous night her dreams were restless, disturbed with visions of red and gold, snow and cold and a face she thought she should recognize, a face that disappeared as soon as she woke.

Kouga, too, slept poorly – but in the morning he knows why, has concrete reasons for his disturbance that escape Kagome's senses. The smell of dog that troubled him on the way here is thick and omnipresent, and he knows that whatever Inu was near, it has come here, to this place.

He wrinkles his nose and stays well away from the center of that scent, comforts Kagome when she wakes and distracts himself with her. He is distracted, irritated, and she can't but help to notice his feelings – when she asks, he has to answer or risk her thinking she's upset him.

"It's an Inu, Kagome. Mutts and wolves don't get along, and I don't want trouble when I've got you with me."

"And any other time?"

He smiles. Some of the tension leaves him, and he brings Kagome into the water with him.

"One last bath – and then I think we should get ready and go."

"What about the snow?"

"Stopping, I think – now come here, woman. My woman...weather's not what I want to worry about."

Inuyasha is not worried about bathing, even if the warmth is welcome after the snow that's dogged his steps the last few days. He is alone in the water, alone behind the steam – he is thinking about the words of the Tanuki that had greeted him.

"Another miko, so like the first...what an interesting week this is."

With his eyes closed and his senses drifting outward, Inuyasha can feel the truth of this statement, the repressed glow that is Kikyou and the brighter glow that is...someone else. The taste of that other power is familiar to him, and that is why he lingers here, feeling it. He doesn't know how he knows it, or why – only that he does. It is as familiar to him as Kikyou – it almost is Kikyou, but denser, more brilliant, sharper...

Who are you, miko?

Abruptly he stands and lets the water sluice from his body, takes his towel and dries himself roughly, quickly. That power is in motion, and so is Kikyou. He can hear her retreating from the room beside the baths, the rustle of her silks, her distinctive footsteps. He pulls his kosode onto damp skin and curses it for clinging, drags on the robe of the fire rat and runs out after Kikyou, still in the process of tying it closed.

He finds her in the hallway, standing still as a statue, staring forward with her hand outstretched. Before her, like a mirror image, stands another woman – another miko -

She is Kikyou's twin in all but the blue of her eyes and the greater glow of her power. That she is alive, a human woman with a beating heart, makes her look more like the memory of Kikyou than the strange version of his old lover that he has traveled with.

He remember Kaede's warning, about a woman who looked like her sister, a woman who wasn't her but - but how? Behind her is a wolf, Ookami with blazing eyes more blue than the woman's. What was the name? What was the name Kaede had said -

Kouga.

The eyes of this Kouga are on him, dark and displeased, but in a moment both he and Inuyasha are distracted by their women.

Kikyou is reaching out her fingers, and so too her blue-eyed twin – from the touch between them comes a spark of light, and they speak in the same moment, voices alike but different.

"You – you are me."

"I was dreaming of you!"

There is a moment in which everything is still but the stare between them, Kikyou and the woman whose name Inuyasha does not know.

Then they fall, the two of them together, and he learns it even as he moves forward with his arms outreached.

"Kagome!"

A/N: Ah, bad I am...but let's see if I can get back into the swing of things. I work on the next chapter as we speak, so at least that you can look forward to tomorrow! This chapter's title, "malum discordae", translates to Apple of Discord...a little bit of doom, a little bit at a time. Bwaha! Many thanks to all of you, and my apologies for the long delay...onward!

Please Review!