A/N: Wah, I'm depressed while writing this chapter. Don't worry, you'll see why when you read...

So, I had a reviewer say that they almost forgot about me. I know, I'm a horrible author...I disappear forever and never update. I'm sorry, I promise I won't do it again. Honest. Besides, like I said, it was my first bout of Writer's Block on this story, and I got over it AND have the rest of the story planned, so I don't think I will have any trouble for the rest of the story. So, yeah. Feel free to verbally beat me up over not updating for near a month or two.

Anyways, I've got nothing to do today (sister is at a friend's house and I haven't found any new fanfics to read yet), so I'll probably just post this and start working on the next chapter. After all, it wouldn't be nice for me to end this right now and not update for another week, would it?

Somehow, in the middle of reading, both Kagome and Youko fell asleep from their exhausting day. It was then that Keiko walked in on them; Kagome curled up against Youko, both oblivious to their positioning. It was so adorable, the young brunette wished she could just capture that moment to blackmail her prince later!

Keiko shook her head. She would just have to have fun telling the boys later; at the moment, she had a message to deliver. The immortal thanked any diety who decided to listen for Shizuru's forethought of placing an eye over the young lovers earlier in the day. Otherwise, they wouldn't have this perfect oppurtunity to get them to admit to their feelings!

Keiko hid a smile as she debated who to wake up first. Shrugging, as it really wouldn't matter in the long run (whomever woke up first would most definately raise enough of a ruckas to wake the other, after all), she cleared her throat. "Your majesty?" she inquired.

Youko's delicately shaped kitsune ears twitched, and Keiko could just see the cogs beginning to run inside his much-too-inflated head. His eyes, a goldenrod still dulled from sleep, opened slowly. He mumbled incoherantly, and then looked down on his chest. Where Kagome, so innocent and angelic in her restful state, currently resided.

Youko took in a breath of surprise, then his head shot up to glare at Keiko. "What the hell is going on? Is this some sort of joke?" he accused.

Keiko shook her head, smiling sweetly. "Nope, you were like that when I came up here. Imagine my surprise, too. Here I was, expecting you to be at each other's throats. Instead, I find you all snuggled up on the couch. I can't wait to tell Yuusuke!" she added for amusement.

Youko groaned, his head flopping back on the back of the silk-covered lounge. "There's no way I can get you to not tell him, is there?" He said it as a statement, not a question. Keiko snickered as she heard him mutter about 'annoying, canniving women turning perfectly respectable men into soft-hearted ninny's'.

Youko sat forward again, shifting slightly. Kagome's eyes fluttered with the movement, and she slowly cracked her eyes open. Keiko waved and bid her a good morning while the brunette gathered her wits.

The prince narrowed his eyes in frustration. "Would you please get off me?" he asked her. Keiko thought it was highly amusing when Kagome's eyes widened into saucers. "I'd like to be able to feel my legs again."

Kagome sat up with an 'eep', her face doing its best to imitate a tomato.

Keiko 'tsk-ed' at Youko. "You shouldn't have woken her up like that. I think you've traumatized her," she pointed out.

Kagome's shifted her gaze from the ground to Keiko. "He has not! It'd take a lot more than the likes of him to give me nightmares. Although, he came close that one time I saw him after just waking up," she drawled with a smirk.

Keiko laughed aloud. "I know what you mean. Just wait until you get Yuusuke like that; he's ten times worse, and doesn't do a thing about it if I don't nag him all morning."

Kurama stood, blood rushing to his oxygen-starved limbs. "What is it, 'pick on the helpless males' day?" A look shared between the two women had the silver-haired fox answering his own question. "Don't tell me, I don't think I want to know. What did you want, Keiko, besides trying to put me into my grave earlier than I had planned?"

Keiko shook her head. "You are no fun, you know that?" Under her breath, she added, "Can't see how Kagome puts up with a boyfriend like you." Luckily for her, it was said quiet enough so that Youko didn't hear her. "I came to ask you if, even after all these years of rejecting it, you would like to hold the annual winter's day ball this year?"

Keiko's eyebrow raised as she saw her leige actually considering it. Kagome, on the other hand, just looked confused.

"Winter's day ball?" she asked nobody in particular.

Youko absently answered her. "When I was growing up, every winter my mother held a ball in the palace to celebrate the winter season. It was her favorite time of the year, and she never missed planning one. I continued the tradition for a while, but after a while I stopped. I think it'd be a nice idea to hold it again this year, though, seeing as we haven't had one for quite some time." He nodded to Keiko. "Go ahead and plan something, then."

Keiko curtsied. "As the lord wishes," she mumbled, smiling. Yes, everything was coming along nicely. Yukina really hit a gold-mine when she remembered the Lady's traditional ball.

Two days later, everything was planned to the tiniest detail. The only thing missing were the two participants, as the staff would still be working- meaning they purposedly made a huge mess in the preparations to have a reason for not going and interrupting the two lovebirds.

Inside Kagome's room, the young woman was pacing nervously back and forth as Yukina tried to get her to calm down and into her new gown. They only had an hour before the ball was due to begin; it wasn't much time.

"Kagome-san, would you please let me help you dress while you worry yourself into a frenzy, at least? Then you'd still be able to go, instead of being late and possibly insulting the only other person who will be there to keep you company."

Kagome looked up. "Yukina, please don't remind me. I'm going to be stuck with him for hours, and I'm still trying to figure out how we won't be insulting each other at each and every turn. It's been nearly impossible before, so why is this time different?" Kagome was standing next to her bed, and chose that moment to flop onto it in a very un-ladylike manner.

Yukina hid a smile behind her hand, the gown clutched softly in the other. Because you and Ouji-sama will be too busy staring at each other to act like children, she thought. Aloud, she said, "I can promise you that if he does insult you, he'll have to answer to the rest of the castle. We worked too hard to put this together after all these years to have him mess it up."

Kagome nodded and stood. "Alright, alright. What am I wearing again?" she asked. She turned to the young maiden, holding up her outfit, and gasped. "It's beautiful," she said with awe. Yukina nodded and walked forward to begin helping Kagome prepare for the Winter's day ball.

On the other side of the castle, Youko was pacing around his study. The only difference was that he was completely ready for the coming dance, as he had been for the past hour or so. He had done everything imagionable to get ready for that night, but now that he didn't have anything else to do to take his mind off of what was going to be happening in a short time, he allowed himself to stress out and pace.

"You're going to wear a whole in the carpet," Hiei commented from the corner. The fire demon had tried to get the stubborn pince to calm down for the entire night, ever since the man had decided that he was going to royally muck things up. Youko just growled at him and ignored his comment. "Will you at least take a different path? We don't need to replace this thing as well as all the other things we need to do, you know."

Kurama complied without a word. After a few minutes of silence, he growled again. "Please, remind me again why I'm not going to mess this up?" He wasn't really expecting an answer, since he had asked the same question nearly twenty times in the past two hours.

Hiei shrugged. "You won't."

Youko shook his head. He knew he was worrying over nothing, but he couldn't help it. This would officially be the first time in nearly a century that he had to interact with a woman, the staff not included, on a formal level. Before, all of the arguing and stuff with Kagome had been fairly informal and childish- not that he would admit that he had acted like a child-, and so this would be the first time that it would be mutual acting on both their parts for civility. Blinking, Youko absently wondered if any of that made sense, or if it was just his frazzled mind trying to explain away meaningless nerves.

It didn't help that it was also the first time in a long time that he had worn anything outside of his usual ensemble of silver silk. For tonight, all of the men in his service had decided that he desperately needed a wardrobe change. They had dug through his entire store of clothing, hunting through dust and old, musky trunks to find what they deemed fit for tonight.

So now, Youko was sporting a deep blue tunic over a lighter colored shirt. It was apparently chosen to represent the changing winter, dark nights becoming lighter as the season came to a close. Kurama personally thought it was a load of shit, but that was just him. They had also spent hours searching for the breeches he was forced into, matching within a shade to the sky-colored shirt. His boots, which reached to his knees with a folded-down top, were matched perfectly to his tunic.

According to Keiko, who had had the final say over what Youko would wear, the silver embroidery, done over the every article of clothing except the boots, would adjust for Youko's silver hair and fur. And they couldn't have even left his hair alone, either! They had forced him into having the entire top layer pulled back into a small tail, 'to show what a pretty face' he was allegedly born with.

All in all, even if the others said he looked dashing, Youko felt like a fool. He wasn't used to so much color!

"If you don't leave now, you're going to be late," Hiei pointed out. He shifted his gaze to the closed door.

Youko hesitated for a moment, then yelled at himself. What was he, a mature prince or a young boy at his first gathering with a grown woman? He continued to yell at himself as he made his way to where he would wait, at the bottom of the staircase, for Kagome to join him.

When he got there, however, all of his second guessing returned. He wondered if this was all a horribly bad idea, if he would make a fool of himself and never be able to live it down.

He was saved from working himself into a nervous wreck by the door opening ominously. Youko fixed his gaze onto Kagome as she entered into the room, gowned in a breath-taking dress. A small part of Youko's mind wondered if Keiko had any choice in Kagome's outfit as well as he watched her walk towards him, descending the marble staircase.

Her gown seemed to be the silvery moonlight itself. It flowed with her every movement, the skirts so loose that they could probably be cut up and used to make another two outfits and still have material left over. The sleeves were designed to hang off of her shoulders, with excess material used to widen the sleeves as they approached her wrists. Her hair had been re-curled, with half gathered into a knot at the back of her head and the rest hanging loosely about her shoulders.

As she approached, the stunned prince could pick out white embroidery where the bodice would have normally been. She came to stand in front of him, and Youko let out a shaky breath that he hadn't realised he had been holding in.

Kagome smiled nervously. "Um, so what now?" she asked. After all, she had never been to a ball before; she didn't know what came next.

Youko held out his arm. "Would you care to dance?" he asked her in a very gentlemanly tone of voice. Somewhere music began to play, a drifting waltz. Kagome took the proffered arm and they walked, side by side, to the middle of the dance floor. Neither said a word as they began to spin and dance across the shining floor.

There was no reason for either to say anything. They came to a silent agreement to just take in the sight of the other and not ruin the moment with meaningless chatter when they would have months ahead of them to fill with idle talks. The music continued to weave itself about the couple, drawing them deeper into the spell it cast over unknowing hearts year after year.

The peace was shattered late into the night, after Kagome and Youko had been dancing for hours and completely oblivious to how long they had been alone together. The doors that led to the rest of the castle burst open and crashed to the wall, startling the dancers and causing them to jump apart.

A young boy, his hair a mess of twigs and old leaves, soaked to the bone, panted heavily. Various scratches and bruises dotted his skin. His threadbare breeches were torn, but they were in better shape then his shirt, which had become rags held together by small bridges of string. He leaned heavily against the door, the telltale signs of bone deep exhaustion wrought over his face.

Kagome gasped and ran forward. "Souta!" she cried. Youko followed her after a moment. The young woman caught her brother in time as his knees collapsed under his wieght. Up close, Kagome could see just how beat up he was. She didn't care, however, and didn't flinch as blood began to stain her dress.

Souta clutched his sister, his eyes welling up with tears. "Kag'me, 's da! 'E's fallen right sick, coughin' and wheezin' and spittin' up blood. Kag, 'e needs 'elp! I wus sent ta get ye, since ye always seeming teh know what herbs te use on sick folk." Kagome soothed her hysterical brother as he sobbed and stammered out what had happened.

After seperating panicked rambling from truth, Kagome picked out that her father had fallen ill to the winter version of the Cold Fever, the same illness that had killed her mother and stuck both Kagome and Souta when they were a lot younger. Souta, worried for the father he adored and looked up to, had gotten Kenshin, the baker, to watch and care for Mr. Higurashii while Souta went after Kagome.

What surprised Kagome was that all of his wounds were from natural obsticals in his way and not from one of the last three cursed beings that dwelled in the forest. That was expained away when he told her that he hadn't stopped for anything. It also explained his current state. And, when her young brother had come up on the castle, he claimed to hear Buka's bray and know that Kagome was there. After that, he had gotten one of the staff members- Yukina, by the description- to tell him where he could find his elder sibling.

Kagome sat back on her heels after laying her brother on the floor gently. She worried at her lip, emotions battling inside her chest. She desperately needed to go, she knew that.

Apparently Youko knew that as well, as he sighed slowly. "You need to go help him, Kagome," he said gently. Kagome looked up and met his eyes. "Your father is dying, and no matter what kind of past you had with him, he's still your own flesh and blood. Knowing you, if he dies without you doing everything you possibly can, it'll eat you from the inside out."

Kagome blinked. "But...why?" She couldn't understand this, the shock of everything that Souta had said and his prescence were preventing her from fully comprehending the reasoning behind Youko's words.

The prince stood and held out a hand. "Come with me for a moment." When she hesitated, he added. "I'll have someone come and take care of your brother. Please?"

Kagome nodded and put her hand into Youko's. He helped her up, then began leading her towards the western wing of the castle. The only time he stopped was to tell Yuusuke about Souta.

Kurama led Kagome all the way to his private study. When he let her in, he went immediately to the fireplace. Lifting and setting aside the vase, which held the cursed rose, he picked up the mirror. Turning to Kagome, he tried to ignore the sliver of fear that settled over him every time he saw the rose in its current state- a single, velvety petal, hanging on by sheer will alone.

He held the silver mirror out to Kagome. "Here, take this." Kagome took it gently, looking at it curiously. "If you look into it and wish to see something enough, it will show it to you. It was my mother's, and she used it to keep an eye on my father whenever he went out on business."

Kagome shook her head. "Youko, I can't take this! This was your mother's, and it must mean a lot to you for you to keep it in here..."

Kurama cut her off. "It doesn't matter. It's mine to give, and I'm giving it to you. I want you to take it, and use it to remember everyone." He had a finality in his voice that brooked no arguement. "Just promise that you won't forget us all."

Kagome nodded, looking up at Youko with watery eyes. The fox was surprised when Kagome leaped forward and enveloped him into a hug. He could feel her trembling with tears, whether from sadness at going or relief of being let go to tend to her father, he didn't know. He brought his arms up and returned the embrace.

The only problem was, he didn't want her to go. He wanted to keep her there, in his arms, forever. She felt so right with him. He had never felt like this with anyone, he had never wanted someone so much that it hurt to think of losing her forever. He wanted to be able to spend long nights, arguing over meaningless things. He wanted to wake up with her laying next to him, to watch her as she slept peacefully beside him.

Which is what made letting her go so much harder. It was the last thing he wanted to do, yet he knew he couldn't keep her with him. They didn't belong together, no matter how right she felt in his arms. It would kill her if her father died without her there, and both Youko and Kagome knew it. Youko wouldn't be able to bear seeing her with dull eyes, day after day, knowing that he had prevented her from being next to her dad when he died.

It was that thought that finally forced him to pull out of her arms. Kagome looked up at him, her eyes catching the dull torchlight. With a heavy heart, Youko watched Kagome turn around and run from the room, no doubt to gather her things and take her brother back to her home.

Youko could feel his heart shattering. Somehow, he knew that this would be the last time he saw her like this. And it hurt, it hurt him so much. How could this have happened to him, falling in love only to realize what he had a moment too late?

Kagome quickly left, leading Buka at a run. Souta was half-concious and tied to the donkey so he didn't fall off. Kagome wished she could have had time to say goodbye to the others, but her father needed her as soon as possible. So she ran, spurred on by a sorrow filled roar that followed her into the dark depths of the forest.

End Chapter
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