She walked alongside him under the stars, keeping her voice pitched low so that it would not carry. The night air was cool, and insects sang in the grasses all around them. It would be a perfect night to share their love for the first time-if what she had guessed proved to be the truth. "The other night, you kept starting to say something about a-a man for Wara, and stopped before you got very far," she said, feeling her skin turning so hot she was surprised she didn't glow like a fire-coal. Now that she had come to this point, she was rather surprised at how embarrassed she felt about it all. "What was it that you didn't say? Is there a man you were thinking of somewhere out here? In this realm? I know you said before that you were born here and that you visited here fairly often; it seemed to me that if you were here a great deal you might have found this-this man who is a match for your succubus side."
He did not reply for a long moment, but when he did, his voice was full of surprise. "Just when I think that I know all there is about you, Xylina, you amaze me again. I had not thought I had revealed that. Either I am far more transparent than I had thought, or you are more observant. On the whole, I am inclined to think it is the latter."
"Well?" she persisted, now feeling her very ears afire. "Is there such a man? And is he within reasonable distance of us? Would he consent to join us?"
Another long silence, while off in the distance some sort of dog-pack howled at the full moon above them. It was a very mournful sound, and it made the hair on the back of her neck rise.
"Yes, there is someone who might be suitable," he said at last. "I have known him for several years, and he knows what I am, and my dual nature. People in this realm are more familiar with what a demon is, and what their natures are. He is a close friend, or as close a friend as a demon may have and not be a lover. And I think he may have considered this kind of a liaison himself, with me. The last time I saw him, he said something that was half in jest and half in earnest-that while he loved me as a dear male friend, he could love me better as a female friend, and he would not be loathe to do so."
Xylina digested that for a moment. "That sounds promising," she ventured. "In fact, that sounds better than I had thought. Is he far from here? Could you reach him by foot-travel?"
"Several days' journey and all in the wrong direction," Ware said ruefully. "Although I will grant you that I can probably dematerialize and steal some kind of mount before I have to go too far afoot. But there are other considerations. For one thing, I have not seen him for over a year. Many things could have changed in his life. He could have changed his mind. He could have found a mortal he loved and married. He could even have died; this is a violent realm, and that is quite likely, in fact. He was not the oldest son, but the oldest might have died, forcing him to consider the family before he considers his own desires."
"But if none of these have happened-what prevents you from offering him what you offered me?" she replied, stiffly. It was very difficult for her even to say the words, yet she did not want Ware to know that. She did not want to share him. She knew that. But if sharing him was the only way she could have him, then she would.
"Nothing," Ware admitted. "Nothing. Only..."
"Then go and find him, Ware!" she said, keeping herself from shouting by an act of great self-discipline. "Go and find him and bring him back here! Why should we wait forever to find a male, when there is one that you already want right here? That makes no sense at all!"
"I will have to first love you," he warned. "I will have to make the change, then go to him in female form, or he might not believe the offer is genuine. It will take time- even if I dematerialize, I cannot fly, I must move as any ordinary being can, even if I can steal a mount-it would still be better to wait until we have returned home, and we can look in the slave markets together. Such a male would be subservient to you, and a male from this realm never would be. You might not find him to your liking, even though he is to mine."
But now she burned with a deeper emotion than embarrassment. "No," she said firmly. "I may die tomorrow-or the next day, or on the way back. Perhaps you are immortal, but I am not, and I do not wish to waste a single hour. And I do wish to have your love before another hour is over! Share love with me now, and go and find this man of yours-"
"Thesius," Ware interjected. "His name is Thesius. And he is very, very like you." He smiled. "Just as stubborn and willful."
"This Thesius of yours, then." She raised her head and looked at him, challengingly. If he was going to call her "stubborn" and "willful," he was going to find out just how stubborn she really was! "If you have not changed your mind, then I will be in my tent. And Faro will not be there; I will send him elsewhere, so you need not fear betraying our secret even to him."
Without waiting for a reply, she turned and walked back to her tent, her back stiff, and her neck aching with the tension she tried not to show. He said nothing; she reached the circle of the camp and eventually the door of her tent without knowing whether he would come to her.
But she unbraided her hair, conjured jasmine scent and soft, silken sheets, and waited for him by the light of a single glowstone, aching with need and anticipation. She felt as tight as a bowstring, and jumped at every little sound, thinking that he had come. Half the time she burned for him, certain that he was going to arrive at any moment, and half the time she was quite sure that he was not going to come at all.
But in the end, he appeared with no sound whatsoever, materializing just as he had in her tiny office so many months ago. He was simply there, standing beside her bed of soft pillowy shapes and silken sheets, staring down at her with his own need naked in his eyes. Very discreet of him, she thought absently. And then, as he sank down beside her, there was no room for thought at all.
Xylina woke as the sun peeked over the horizon, and the first birds began to sing out in the grasslands. The red light of dawn was not what woke her; it was the stirring of the body in the bed beside her. But as was her habit since beginning this quest, she woke instantly, and so he-no,she -was not able to slip out without her knowing. In fact, she had not even awakened when Xylina herself woke.
Her eyes widened with amazement, as the lovely eyes opened and looked deeply into hers from beneath a tangled tumble of shoulder-length black hair.
"So," said a gentle, husky soprano voice, a voice with just a hint of chagrin in it, "you have caught me in my other guise. I had not intended for you to see this just yet."
It was quite obvious why Ware had not even bothered to mention the possibility of assuming a masculine disguise when discussing how his alternate form must vanish. Tales of women posing as men to infiltrate the enemy were legion among the Mazonites, but this woman could never pull such a ruse off with any kind of success-not unless the men in question were blind and never touched her. There would be no way in which Wara could be disguised as a man. She was, in every way, a dark, exotic copy of Xylina; full-breasted, small-waisted, with long, slender legs, a sinuous curve of spine and hip, and a graceful neck that could bring only the adjective "swan-like" to mind. If Xylina had not known that this was Ware, she would never have guessed it-although she would have assumed that Wara was some land of relative. If demons had relatives. The eyes remained the same, the strange, wine-red eyes with their golden flecks-looking at her with wry amusement from a feminized version of Ware's face. But no amount of binding or padding was going to make the succubus look like Ware.
"So I see," Xylina replied, and chuckled a little, despite her disappointment at discovering that some miracle had not saved them from their plight. "You are really quite pretty as a girl. Although the Mazonites wouldnot approve of the way you look, I fear."