Her mouth upon his, gifting him the kiss he’d sought as he shuddered beneath her.
“I love you,” he breathed. “Gods help me, I do.”
This is not real.
A voice in her head. The voice of a girl who watched her family butchered in Daiyakawa square. Who had grown hard and cold and fierce in the shadow of the Iishi. Who lived only to see Aisha freed, the wedding stopped, the Guild’s plans turned to ash and ruin. Who hated this man, his masters, the entire Imperium with everything she had inside her.
This is not real.
But as they rolled amidst the silk, his hands on her skin and his breath in her lungs, she almost forgot who she was, where she was from, why she was here. The little girl from Daiyakawa evaporating, scorched away beneath the fire of his touch, the heat of his skin, the flame of his tongue, leaving only her; a woman, loved and beloved, pure and unscarred and unafraid beneath a choking sky.
This is not real.
She almost forgot.
This is not …
Almost.
This
is
…
25
IMPETUS
Blood.
On his talons. On his tongue.
Buruu awoke on black glass, howling wind pushing sea spray into his eyes, his wounds, bringing a bitter, antiseptic sting. The gash on his belly ached, and he licked the matted, bloody fur, grateful that the gouge wasn’t gut-deep. His metal wings had borne the worst of it.
The very worst.
A deadweight on his shoulders, snapped pivots and shredded canvas, groaning as he moved. The harness and frame had protected him from the blindside, at least—if he’d been mere flesh and bone, he would never have had the opportunity to fight back, to give as hard as he’d received, rending and tearing, knuckle-deep, locked together with his foe and plummeting from the sky. But in the aftermath, the wreckage of his false wings was a handicap, a twisted snarl hampering movement, bereft of any former synthetic grace.
He was weak. Hungry. The island around him was barren stone, jet-black and cruel, as if Susano-ō had seized a fistful of obsidian and squeezed. A strange spire of coiled metal rose at the promontory, twelve feet high, twin lengths of thick iron cable connected to its core and trailing out over thrashing water.
And off in the distance, Buruu could smell him: the other male, crashed onto the same outcropping as he, torn from rib cage to haunches by his hind claws. Dying? Vengeful? Or yet overcome with lust for the prize?
The female’s scent still clouded Buruu’s senses, now tempered by pain and the stink of his own blood. And amidst the rolling dark and howling rain and copper tang in his mouth, one thought swam above the mud of pheromones and endorphins. One thought to make his chest ache more fiercely than any wound from beak or claw.
The thought that he had lost himself again.
The thought that he had failed her.
Just like he had failed them.
YUKIKO?
*
“Buruu!”
Yukiko shouted his name, lurching upright in the cot, pulled up short by the leather bindings at her wrists. For a second she thought she was back in the Iishi; wondered at the salt in the air, the absence of wisteria and mountain wind. And then she recalled where she was, the shape of him in her dream, feeling a flood of relief so deep she almost burst into tears.
He’s still alive.
She stretched out the Kenning, straining to her limits, heedless of the pain and growing nausea in her belly. She felt Red’s small warm glow, dimmed near to nothing in slumber. The gaijin around her, like a storm of fireflies. Far in the distance, she felt the heat and shape of the female arashitora wheeling amongst the thunderclaps, glowing in her mind like fireworks. She could feel cold flickering beneath her, the sheen of scales under the water, eons deep. But out on the edges, she found a newly awakened heat, so distant it was simply a blur, almost too soft to see. And yet she knew it all the same.
Yukiko pushed her voice out into the black, screaming as loud as she could.
Buruu!
No answer. No flicker of acknowledgement. She whispered a prayer to Kitsune, begging for the Nine-Tailed Fox’s fortune. Screwing her eyes shut, she reached down inside herself, heart straining, tearing away her wall to expose herself utterly, pain arcing at the base of her skull and crackling toward her temples. Something warm and sticky dripped from her nostrils, painted her lips in salt.
Hello?
Nothing save the rolling black, the empty, howling wind.
Hello?
—YōKAI-KIN. YOU YET LIVE.—
The female’s voice was small, fragmented, as if she were shouting over some great distance into barking, snapping wind. Yukiko sighed, felt relief threatening to spill over once more into grateful tears.
I’m alive, yes.
—STRONG SWIMMER.—
I need your help.
—WITH?—
My friend. The arashitora I came here with. He’s hurt. Can you help him?
—WOULD HELP HIM WHY?—
He’s arashitora like you. One of the last ones left. You can’t just let him die!
—WRONG.—
Please!