Kinslayer (The Lotus War #2)

I FEEL THE RAGE IN YOU. GROWING BY THE DAY. IF YOU ALLOW IT, IT WILL BURN EVERYTHING AROUND YOU TO ASHES. EVERYTHING.

Am I supposed to be weeping? Crying for my da like some frightened little girl?

IT TAKES COURAGE TO SAY GOOD-BYE. TO STARE AT A THING LOST AND KNOW IT IS GONE FOREVER. SOME TEARS ARE IRON-FORGED.

She stared at the grave, sighed like the wind through the trees.

“Hiro is alive.”

“What?” Kin whispered, eyes growing wide.

“The Guild is backing him as Daimyo of the Tora clan. He’s going to marry Lady Aisha. Claim the Shōgun’s throne. We have to stop him.”

“Hiro.” Kin swallowed. “As Shōgun…”

She pictured a boy with sea-green eyes, remembered the way her stomach tumbled upward into the clouds when he smiled. All the sweet nothings he’d whispered in the long hours between dusk and dawn, touching her in ways and places no one ever had before. Holding her close, arm wrapped around her naked shoulders. That same arm they’d torn from his body, those beautiful eyes staring up at her in disbelief as she lay him on the stone, her tantō in his ribs.

If only she’d twisted it.

If only she’d torn it loose and opened up the smooth skin at his throat …

“Do you still love him?”

Yukiko blinked in surprise. Kin was watching her closely, eyes clothed in shadow. His fingers strayed to his wrist, fidgeted with the metal input stud in his flesh. She was reminded of the day they first met on the Thunder Child. The night they’d stood on the prow and breathed in the storm, let the rain wash their fear away.

“Hiro?”

“Hiro.”

“Of course I don’t, Kin. I thought I killed that bastard. I wish I had.”

“I…” His fingers twitched, and he stuffed his hands into his tool belt, scuffing dead leaves beneath his feet. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

Yukiko heaved an impatient sigh. The headache squeezed tight, the pulse of the lives around her was thunder in her ears. Soaking wet. Miserable. And he wants to play games?

“Kin, say what you mean, godsdammit.”

“I’m going to sound like an idiot. I’m no good at this.” He waved at the spirit stones around them. “And a graveyard probably isn’t the best place for this conversation.”

“Izanagi’s balls, what conversation?”

He sucked his lip, looked into her eyes. She could see the words welling up in his throat, a flood pressing at a crumbling levy, bursting over in a tumble.

“Traveling here after Yoritomo died … on a road that long, you have a lot of time to think about what matters to you. And I know everyone is looking to you now. This war isn’t over, and I understand that. I don’t know how any of this is supposed to work. I spent my whole life in the Guild. I don’t know what … happens between men and women…”

Yukiko raised an eyebrow.

“I mean, I know what happens happens,” Kin added hastily. “I mean, I know what goes where and that there’s supposed to be flowers, and poetry fits in somehow too, but…”

Yukiko pressed her lips together, trying to smother a smile that somehow felt traitorous and out of place. She felt a lightness in her chest, breathing just a tiny bit easier. The simplicity of it. The sweet and awkward stumbling of it. The beauty of it.

She remembered.

The boy ran his hand across his scalp, threw a pleading glance to the heavens.

“I told you I’d sound like an idiot…”

“No, you don’t.”

YES, HE DOES.

Hush.

THIS IS MY HELL, I SWEAR IT. WHEN I PASS INTO THE AFTERLIFE AND AM PUNISHED FOR MY SINS, THIS WILL BE MY TORMENT. SURROUNDED BY A SEA OF MOONING, ADOLESCENT MONKEY-BOYS. MUDDLING ABOUT IN PUDDLES OF THEIR OWN DRIBBLE.

Her smile emerged, bright in its victory.

Kin was looking into her eyes. A soft stare full of silent hope. A hope that had made him betray everything he was—his family, his Guild, his way of life. A hope that had bid him gift Buruu with mechanical wings, that had freed them both from their prisons. Without him, Buruu would still be Yoritomo’s slave. Without him, she’d probably be dead. What had it taken, for him to throw everything he was away? To cast aside the metal he’d worn his entire life, trek all the way here just to find her? Not just hope.

Courage.

“I just want you to know…”

Strength.

“… I missed you.”

Love?

Yukiko blinked, opened her mouth to speak. She felt rooted to the spot, stomach lurching, heart thundering in her chest and echoing the storm above.

With a small huffing sound, Buruu stalked off into the forest.

“Kin, I…”

“It’s all right. There’s no rule saying you need to feel the same way I do.”

“… I don’t know how I feel. I haven’t had time to even think about it.”

“If you felt something, you’d know it. You wouldn’t need to think.”

“Kin, the last person I thought I loved tried to murder me.” The words tasted copperish, the bleed of an old wound reopening. The first boy she’d ever loved. The first she’d ever …

“I’d never hurt you,” he said. “Never betray you. Never.”

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