At least now Kin is back and he can adjust your wings for you. This contraption looks ready to fall apart. How long until you molt?
YOU CHANGE THE SUBJECT AS ARTFULLY AS YOU LIE.
You’re becoming quite the master at avoiding questions, though.
The thunder tiger growled in the back of his throat.
I WILL HAVE NO NEW PLUMAGE FOR MONTHS. NOT UNTIL MY WINTER COAT GROWS IN.
Yukiko curled her fingers through sleek feathers, right where neck and shoulder met. His favorite spot.
And then what?
I DO NOT TAKE YOUR MEANING.
I mean what will you do after you can fly again under your own power?
WHAT DO YOU EXPECT ME TO DO?
I don’t know. Go home, maybe? Leave this place behind.
LEAVE YOU, IS YOUR MEANING.
… Yes.
AFTER ALL WE HAVE BEEN THROUGH?
This isn’t your fight. This isn’t your home. You could fly away right now and forget any of this ever happened.
YOU KNOW THAT IS A LIE.
Do I?
YOU KNOW ME. AS YOU KNOW YOURSELF.
I don’t know anything, Buruu.
THEN KNOW THIS. BETWEEN AND BENEATH AND BEYOND ANYTHING ELSE I MAY BE, I AM YOURS. I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU. NEVER FORSAKE YOU. YOU MAY RELY UPON ME AS YOU RELY UPON SUN TO RISE AND MOON TO FALL. FOR YOU ARE THE HEART OF ME.
She rested her head on his neck, wrapped her arms around him and breathed. The burn scar on her shoulder was a distant, nagging ache. The last few weeks with Buruu had been like something from a dream—flying to the clan capitals and speaking to the people, watching the fire grow in their eyes as she spoke. In Kigen, the citizens had laid out hundreds of spirit stones in the place where her father died. In the Dragon capital of Kawa, their arrival had kicked off five days of rioting. In Yama city, home of her own clan, the Kitsune, they had been treated like heroes. The whole country felt ready to rise. To throw off the shackles of the old Imperium and forge something new.
And still, the memory remained. Grief turning to slow and smoldering rage. Her father’s death. His blood on her hands. Dying in her arms. She hadn’t attended his funeral pyre. Hadn’t watched the flames consume the swollen, bloated thing his body had become. Hadn’t visited his grave in the days since, to burn incense or pray or fall to her knees and weep.
She hadn’t shed a tear since the day he died.
She glanced over her shoulder at the boy pressed against her, his breath soft, eyelashes fluttering against smooth cheeks. One hand seeking his, the other pressed to Buruu’s feathers. Surrounded by those who cared for her. And still …
And still …
Part of me feels like I’m still trapped in Kigen, you know. I can see Yoritomo looking at me over the barrel of that iron-thrower. Hands stained with his own sister’s blood. It makes me want to scream. To reach inside his head and kill him all over again.
YORITOMO CAN HURT NO ONE NOW. HE IS DEAD. GONE.
He’s still all around us. In red skies and black rivers. In soldiers’ graves and blood lotus fields and dying soil. The Kazumitsu Dynasty is shattered, but even without a Shōgun, there’s still the Lotus Guild. They’re the cancer at this nation’s heart.
She shook her head, felt the warm swell of rage in her breast. Sudden and seething, curling her hands to fists. Remembering the heat of conflagration on her skin, the screams of dying Guildsmen as the sky rained ironclads. Because of them. Because of her.
And it felt right.
Daichi and the Kagé speak the truth. The Guild needs to be burned away.
AND YOU WILL BE THE SPARK? A HANDFUL OF WEEKS AGO, THE ACT OF TAKING A SINGLE LIFE WAS UNTHINKABLE FOR YOU. AND NOW— A handful of weeks ago, my father was still alive.
THERE IS BLOOD DOWN THIS ROAD, SISTER. BLOOD LIKE A RIVER. AND THOUGH I SWIM IT GLADLY, I DO NOT WISH TO SEE YOU DROWN.
He bled out into my arms, Buruu. You don’t know what that’s like.
I KNOW THE SHAPE OF LOSS, YUKIKO. ALL TOO WELL.
Then you know what I have to do.
The thunder tiger sighed. His stare fixed on the ancient forest below, glazed and distant, staring into a future stained a deeper scarlet than the poisoned sky above.
WHAT WE HAVE TO DO.
We?
ALWAYS.
Buruu banked down into murmuring gloom.
ALWAYS.
*
Her bedroom trembled in the midnight hush, candles flickering on the walls like dawn through rippling autumn leaves. Yukiko watched the shadows play through the blur of her lashes, eyelids made of lead, the same blood-drenched pain that had plagued her for weeks pounding inside her skull. Fists to temples, breathing deep. Teeth clenched, focusing on the aching scar at her shoulder to stop her mind drifting back into the dark. The place where her father lay, cold and dead, the ashes of his funeral offerings caked on his face. The place where she was helpless. The little one. The frightened one.
She drew the back of her fist across her mouth.