Hino Rei felt like she was being watched.

As she knelt before the fire, the feeling whispered along her nerve endings and kept buzzing at her senses like a pesky little annoying mosquito. But with nothing to slap at, it merely kept her senses atingle. Then nerve-wrackingly ajangle.

At first she'd thought it was a warning…her psychic gift cluing her into the coming of a new threat. But repeated trips to the fire had revealed nothing remotely evil.

Throwing up her hands in frustration, Rei indulged herself in an uncharacteristic screech that made even the sacred normally steady fire before her flicker erratically, throwing dark shadows around the room. A set of prayer beads smacked against a wall.

It was driving her mad.

All day long she'd suffered the feeling: While she'd swept the courtyard, when she'd fed a strangely silent Phobos and Deimos, when she'd cooked her lunch –curry for one was so depressing– and done her chores, while she'd meditated, or at least tried to, before the sacred fire.

The only time it had eased had been for the short hour she'd gone to the hospital to check in on Ojii-chan and update Yuichiro on the doctor's prognosis. Caught up in fretful worry over the declining health of the only family she willingly acknowledged, she'd been able to push the feeling aside. But as soon as she'd returned to the temple, she'd sensed eyes on her again. Yet every time she looked, there was nothing.

Dammit!

The strictly rational side of Rei's mind insisted on blaming the sensation on the dreams and the nightmares. Of course she'd seen nothing. After all, he couldn't be watching her…he was dead.

Jadeite.

A vision of eyes, warm and blue-green as Caribbean seas, danced in her mind, paired with a lazy genial smile. A finger crooked in beckoning. Kiss me little fire princess…

The image was replaced with another. The azure eyes were now cold and hate-filled, holding no more warmth than polar ice, and the winning smile twisted into a mocking smirk. There was no welcome for her now. Bleed and die for me little fire princess…

She'd been so very stupid and blind!

It had to have been some sort of blessed magic of Queen Selenity's, wiping the slate blank so that she could start life anew on Earth without being haunted by the memory of the Shitennou of the East. Even when she'd come face to face with him again, seen his wheaten curls and handsome face, she hadn't remembered him. Hadn't recalled either the warm strength of his embraces or the aching icy coldness of his sword piercing her heart.

But now everything was different. It had to be the fault of that blasted fortune's talk of love that had dredged it up, and not for the first time, Rei wished she'd burned the silly thing. Like it was some sort of trigger switch, her memories had returned not little by little as they had over the years, but in a rush. Now every time she closed her eyes she saw another one, playing out like a grotesque spectral cabaret. It was no wonder then that she hadn't been sleeping in more than fifteen minute increments since then. But even refusing to sleep hadn't warded off the memories.

Realizing she'd again been unconsciously mouthing a prayer for the repose of the soul of the dead, Rei dashed at her reddened eyes roughly with the back of her hand, swearing when she felt moisture there. She refused to cry. Her tears had all been shed in the Moon Kingdom when she'd first learned of his defection to Beryl's side.

The child of a dead mother and a distant, unloving father, raised as a religious outcast in her own school, and regarded by the public as a psychic curiosity at best, if not an outright spooky witch, Hino Rei did not need anyone to tell her that life wasn't fair. That bone deep knowledge had only been underscored when her destiny had been revealed to her, already shaped by an oath taken a thousand years previous. She'd lived for that oath, fought for it and suffered for it and thrice died for it. She knew she would again.

So why now did she feel like rebelling and railing against the unfairness of life? Why did she want to pull her hair and scream herself hoarse and kick and throw herself on the floor?

A harsh, unpleasant sound rose up in her throat and she fisted her hands in her lap, twisting her scarlet hakama, crushing the crisp linen.

Who was she kidding? People like herself didn't get happy endings. Those were for innocent, unspoiled hearts like Usagi's.

Not that she resented the other girl. On the contrary, she loved her dearly…more than her own grandfather even. Only one other person had ever come as close. But it was sometimes hard to watch an epic love story of the ages play out before one's eyes and not feel at least slightly wistful.

For a moment in time during the Silver Millennium she thought she'd found her own happily-ever-after fairy tale…and her prince. One of the four Heavenly Kings of Terra. Even though she'd nearly flambéed him at their first meeting, she'd loved him quite unreasonably…and fought against it as hard as she could, but in the end he'd slipped into her besieged heart and taken it for his own. He hadn't been calculating, pursuing her, but just terribly persistent and self-assured, wearing down her defenses at every turn. Cocky wonderful bastard. He'd even said, just before he kissed her senseless, that it wasn't his fault but that he'd had no choice since she'd captivated him so.

So typical of Jadeite to blame it on someone else.

In a single abrupt motion she leapt to her feet. It was insane to sit here, her front scorched by the white-hot embers of a dying flame while her back was chilled by the dampness from outside.

With the swift and sure motions of one who'd done the task a thousand times before, she set about banking the fire so that it would not die out before morning. The small chore done, she moved toward her bedroom. The steady drumming of the rain on the tile roof would, she hoped, along with a sleeping pill, provide her with an escape from the memories and a dreamless sleep.

Catching sight of a bucket of dirty wash water in the hall, Rei sighed. She'd forgotten to empty it after she'd finished her chores, an unheard of departure for the normally conscientious-to-a-fault miko.

"I must be losing my mind from sleep-deprivation," she muttered, sliding fully open the nearest shoji screen and hurling the bucket's contents out toward the bushes.

A masculine sputter of outrage startled her into dropping the bucket before she bristled. The pail spun, playing a tinny metallic song before it slowly died away.

"Is someone out there? Show yourself!"

The shrubs rustled and shook and a dark, dripping figure stepped forward from the shadows and straight out of her dreams, the light from the temple making his damp waves gleam with the rich luster of old gold. A shirt of peacock blue silk clung moistly to the planes of a broad chest. Heartbreakingly familiar, his lips were again twisted in a smirk, but this time it was self-deprecatory.

Calculating the odds of total immolation, he decided to risk it, capturing her pale smooth hand in his own rougher tanned and shockingly warm one, brushing his thumb lightly over her flesh and leaving a trail of flame in its wake. With his other hand he stroked strands of ebony silk back, tucking the lock of hair behind her ear and caressing the sensitive spot behind her ear.

Plum colored eyes widened in shock. Crimson lips worked but she made no sound.

Someone had to speak and since she seemed unable, he began, muttering feverishly. "I'd pictured this meeting at least a thousand times before, Divinity Raye, and I'd imagined a thousand different scenarios. At least half of them saw you either roasting me or slapping me silly. So I wasn't surprised to be attacked and Gaia knows I can't blame you. You've always kept me on my toes."

"But I have to say, little Firebird," a wonderfully wicked light flamed up in his vibrant cerulean gaze as he smiled, "your attacking me…with water of all unlikely things…was the last thing I ever expected." His lips descended purposefully a heartbeat later.

"AKURYOU TAISAN!"

"Itai! Now that's more like it…"