He opened his eyes again, saw Yukiko beside him, hair framing her face and draped across her shoulders like a wave of black velvet. His pulse quickened, tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth. And then he looked lower, to the small swelling beneath her kimono, cold rising to still the lurch of his heart, twisting and tearing it wide open.
“That was the future you’d never speak of,” she said. “Your What Will Be.”
He frowned. “You can see my dreams?”
“If I try hard enough. I can see the thoughts of everyone in this palace.”
“A wondrous gift.”
“To some.”
“A shame you didn’t use it before you tried to kill me.”
“I’m sorry, Kin. I thought—”
“Don’t,” he sighed. “Don’t make excuses. At every turn, you’ve thought the worst of me.”
“Gods, can you blame me? You fooled everyone, Kin. People who’ve known you your entire life. How can you hold it against me that I believed you too?”
“Because I promised I would never betray you.”
“I know.” She knelt beside him. “And I’m sorry. I swear I’ll never doubt you again.”
“Even when my dreams show you I will one day lead the Guild?”
She reached out, brushing his bandaged fingertips. “I swear it, Kin.”
“No one can stop What Will Be, Yukiko.”
“You will,” she insisted. “You won’t let it be. I believe in you.”
“Gods, I wish I understood you.” He blinked at the ceiling. “I wish I could see inside your head the way you see in mine.”
“Be careful what you wish for.”
He glanced at her stomach, then to her eyes. She met his stare, unashamed and unafraid.
“… Ask me. I know you want to. I can feel it.”
“It’s none of my business.”
“I thought I loved him.”
“You don’t owe me explanations, Yukiko.”
“You said you loved me once.”
He said nothing. Felt nothing. Nothing at all.
“You don’t feel that way anymore?” Yukiko asked.
“… Do you care?”
“Of course I care…”
Kin sighed, ran a hand over his stubbled scalp. “General Ginjiro came to me earlier. He told me you want us to march south and detonate the Earthcrusher. Incinerate the demons already born from the hellgate.”
“What does—”
“I already agreed to help. You don’t need to maneuver me onto your side. You don’t need to pretend.”
She shrank back as if he’d raised a hand to strike her. “… You think I’d do that?”
“Honestly?” He met her horrified stare. “I don’t know what you’d do. I don’t know what you’re thinking. I don’t know you, Yukiko. And it’s obvious you don’t know me, either. So I don’t know why every time I close my eyes I see you there. But still, I do.”
“So you do love me. Still.”
He looked down at his bandaged hands, licking at cracked lips. “I think I love the idea of you. The thing you represent. The life I could never have. The person I could never be.”
“… And that’s all?”
“I don’t know.” His gaze roamed her face. “I don’t know.”
“I know when I thought you’d gone back to the Guild, it felt like someone had cut my heart out.” Her voice was small in the dark, as if a weight crushed the breath from her chest. “I know you risked everything for us. I know you’re the most courageous person I’ve met. I know there is a strength in you that puts me to shame. I know you make ten of me.”
She touched a patch of bare skin on his arm, the brush of her fingertips bringing up goose bumps on his flesh.
“I know I’m sorry we left things … the way we did.”
He looked up into her eyes, wide and hopeful.
“I know I missed you,” she whispered.
He looked at her fingertips, the static electricity crackling between her flesh and his. The pain of his burns a distant memory. The pain in his chest too real to believe.
“I don’t know how all this is going to end, Kin. I know I’m not the person you wanted me to be. I know I made mistakes. But they’re my mistakes. I chose them. I own them. But I know I don’t want to add to them by leaving us like this. Because if I did, I know I’d never forgive myself. I’ve lost enough today. Enough in the telling of this story. I can’t lose you too.”
It seemed an age passed, there in the guttering light, as the wind sang in the rafters and the black snow danced in the clouds above. The weight of yesterday and the threat of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and the clutch of his chest and the tightness in his throat and the thought that all of it might be over soon—that they both could be skirting the edge of their last dawn, discolored by the anger and disappointment and pain of it all. But he looked up, and there she was, in full and blinding color. This girl who’d been just a dream—the promise of a life he could never live. But beneath that impossible, shattered facade, there she was still, pale as Iishi snow and stronger than folded steel, standing tall no matter how small she felt inside. Beautiful and frail and flawed and perfect. And just a heartbeat away.
His hand found hers; a feather-light touch of his fingers on her skin.
“I missed you too,” he said.