His brother’s body hit the water amidst the flash of silvered tails, sea dragons grinning with translucent katana teeth. Buruu turned to the Khan’s throne below, the sibling lying curled in a puddle of tepid red, torn from throat to belly by their father’s claws.
The Everstorm pack had gathered to watch the brothers clash, roaring outrage as Buruu dropped screaming from the skies. Shai’s cry was a gentle murmur under the pulse in his ears, the madness filling and flooding and pushing all else aside. He landed atop his brother, Esh too weak from blood loss to even struggle, the fear of death already gleaming in his one good eye. Broken wings flapping feebly, a croak spilling from his bleeding throat.
Mercy.
He dared?
Mercy, brother.
Better to ask the sun not to rise and set. To ask mighty Raijin to still his endless drums. No father. No mother. No mate. No pack. No storm. No light. No dark. Only death. Filling his veins, stealing reason and sight and sound. And Buruu tore and bit until there was nothing left, until nothing remained of Esh but a bloody smear of feathers and broken bones. Drenching himself. Drowning in it. Mouthful after bloody mouthful.
Thunder in the aftermath. The percussion of his own pulse.
The cries of the pack.
Madness, they roared. Madness had taken the Khan-sons, and brought all to ruin.
The Elders looked down, no pity in their gaze. Exile they called him. Outcast. Thunder tigers did not slay one another. Such had been the law since the exodus from Shima. Especially not their own blood. Their own kin. Wretched murderers though they themselves might be.
Other voices were raised. Shai’s in Buruu’s defense. Kouu and Kaiah also. Buruu was Khan now, they claimed. He was the law.
Arashitora do not kill arashitora, the Elders cried.
Who claims Khan is Khan, the response.
And the taste of blood hung thick on Buruu’s tongue, the taste of the brothers he’d laid to rest. And his father’s words hung heavy in the air, stained with copper’s tang.
One day you rule, my Triumph. One day you understand. To think not of one, but all.
Buruu closed his eyes. His father’s ghost standing beside him, turning his back in shame.
I choose a future. For all our kind.
And this was the future his sons had wrought.
He could have claimed it. The seat of Khan. He’d challenged, and he’d won. But the law was the law. Death had come to Everstorm, not in the guise of Father Time or happenstance, but of brothers and sons. Of hatred and vengeance. No true Khan would have it so. No Triumph.
They took his name. Cast him out. Drenched in his kin’s blood. He and his brothers, murderers all, would never be spoken of in Everstorm again. And through the grief, beyond the beast he’d succumbed to, he knew it right. He knew it just. Shai begged him to stay. Kouu and Kaiah also. What would happen when the Morcheban blacks returned? With so many of Everstorm’s warriors slain or gone? What if Torr claimed Everstorm for his own?
What of me? Shai asked. What of us?
No answer. No voice. Only shame. The memory of his father’s words and the taste of his brothers on his tongue. He’d lost himself. Become nothing but a beast. Wretched. Broken. And he turned his back on Everstorm, everything inside it. The Elders’ words ringing in his ears, the name they’d given to replace the one his father had bestowed.
No Roahh. No Triumph.
Only Kinslayer.
… ONLY KINSLAYER.
*
There were no words. No words for miles.
Tears in Yukiko’s eyes. Arms wrapped around his neck. All this time he’d kept it hidden. The shame. The guilt. She’d had no idea what she was asking when she’d begged him to come back here. No idea what he’d be returning to. Torr had come, just as Kaiah feared. And the Everstorm bucks who stood against him had been killed, along with their cubs, the Morcheban Khan laying claim to the Everstorm throne. Yukiko could see why Kaiah hated him. At last, she understood the female’s seething animosity.
But …
It wasn’t your fault.
OF COURSE IT WAS.
You weren’t yourself. You weren’t thinking.
THAT EXCUSES NOTHING. I MURDERED MY OWN BROTHERS.
You avenged your father.
AND FOUND IN VENGEANCE NOT ONE MOMENT’S PEACE. I BECAME AS THEY. JUST AS GUILTY. JUST AS STAINED. NOTHING BUT BEASTS, ALL.
In the distance, she could see islands; dark, gleaming stone, spewing fire and smoke into the endless chaos above. Cinders falling incandescent between the raindrops, clouds built of ashes and storms. Reaching out into the tempest, she could feel shapes—predatory and prideful. Arashitora, black and white, calling across the roiling clouds, roaring warning to their Khan.
The Kinslayer comes.
She felt helpless. There was nothing she could do to make him feel better. To make it all right. This shadow that hung about his shoulders, this loathing that had settled on his insides.
SO NOW YOU KNOW. THE TRUTH OF WHO I AM.
My brother.
BEAST.
My best friend.
MURDERER.
You’re my everything.
She pushed her cheek into his neck, squeezed her eyes shut tight. Willing the pain gone, trying to fill him with warmth and light.
I love you.
… STILL?