"I didn't mean easy easy." Erin looked annoyed. Shaunee thought that it seemed these days Erin always looked annoyed. "I just meant that when you really get into your element other things don't bother you so much. But maybe you're just not that into your element."

"That's bullshit." Shaunee felt the heat of building anger. "My affinity for fire isn't any less than yours for water."

Erin shrugged. "Whatever. I was just trying to help you out. From now on I'll quit trying." She turned to Damien, who was looking from one to the other of them as if he wasn't sure whether he should jump in between them or run in the opposite direction. "I'm gonna go to the stables. Lenobia will be glad to see water, and I don't have an issue with using my element." Without another word, Erin walked away.

"Has she always been like that?" Shaunee heard herself asking Damien the question that had been circling around in her mind for days.

"You'll have to define that."

"Heartless."

"Honestly?"

"Yeah. Has Erin always been so heartless?"

"That's really difficult for me to answer, Shaunee." Damien was speaking softly, as if he thought he needed to be careful his words didn't bruise her.

"Just tell me the truth, even if it is hard," she said.

"Well, then, honestly until the two of you broke up it was mostly impossible to tell what each of you was like individually. I'd never known one of you without the other. You two finished each other's sentences. It was like you were two halves of a whole."

"But not now?" Shaunee prodded when he hesitated.

"No, now it's different. Now you're individuals with your own personalities." He smiled at her. "The nicest way I can put this is that it's pretty obvious to most of us that your personality is the one with the heart."

Shaunee stared after Erin. "I knew it before, and it bugged me. You know, the way she could be so sarcastic and gossipy and mean. But she could also be so funny and cool to hang out with."

"Funny usually at other people's expense," Damien said. "Cool because she excluded others to make herself seem better than everyone else."

Shaunee met his gaze. "I know. I see it now. Back then all I could see was that we were best friends, and I needed a best friend."

"What about now?" he asked.

"Now I need to be able to like myself, and I can't do that if I'm only one half of a whole person. I'm also tired of always having to say something sarcastic or witty or just downright hateful." She shook her head, feeling sad and really old. "That doesn't mean I think Erin's awful. Actually, I want her to be as cool and funny and great as I used to believe she was. I guess I've just come to realize that she has to either be, or not be, those things on her own. It doesn't have anything to do with me."

"You're smarter than I thought you were," Damien admitted.

"I'm still crap at school."

He smiled. "There are other kinds of smart."

"That's good news for me."

"Hey, don't underestimate yourself. You might actually be good at school if you tried a little."

"I know that sounds like a good thing to you, but I'm fine with the 'other kinds of smart' part." Damien laughed, and Shaunee added, "I'm gonna head to the pyre. Maybe hanging around there will help."

"Help you or the Warriors?"

"Either. Both. I don't know," Shaunee said with a sigh.

"I'm going to believe that it'll help both," he said. "I'm going to move around-like air. I'll try to blow away some of the Darkness that's clinging to this place."

"You feel it, too?"

He nodded. "I can feel that the energy here is bad. Too much negative has happened in too short a time." Damien cocked his head, studying Shaunee. "Now that I've considered it more, I don't think you should stay away from the stables. Fire isn't bad. You're not bad. Lenobia knows that. Remember how you made the horses' hooves heat up so that we could ride them through the ice storm?"

"I remember." Shaunee did, and the memory made her feel lighter.

"Then go to the pyre-help there-but go to the stables, as well. Remind everyone that fire can do a lot more than destroy. It's how it's wielded that's important."

"I'm guessing you mean something like it's how fire is used that's important?"