Its fury was terrible.
Yukiko sat on the sodden deck and stared as the beast clawed its way back to waking. Its eyes were the color of honey, crystallized, pupils dilated in the blacksleep hangover. She was struck by the complexity of its thoughts; a fierce intelligence and sense of self she’d not encountered in a beast before. She could sense its confusion, the weight of its wings lessened, a strange sense of vertigo as it flapped them for balance and regained its feet.
It thrashed its wings again, staring at the blade’s work, glancing down to the severed feathers beneath its feet. And then it roared, an ear-splitting scream of rage and hatred, a fury that tore its throat and flecked its tongue with blood. It cracked its pinions but no Raijin song would come, electricity sputtering and dying on the butchered tips of its quills. It slammed its body against the bars, once, twice, the dull sound of flesh on iron drowned out by the raging storm.
I’m sorry.
Yukiko poured the thought into its mind to comfort, to console. The beast recoiled from her touch, a howl of psychic fury almost knocking her senseless. It smashed itself against the cage again, tearing at the iron impotently with claw and beak, giving voice to its rage, the violation it had suffered at the hands of these wretched men.
KILL YOU.
I did not want this. If I could undo it, I would.
RELEASE ME.
I can’t.
LOOK AT WHAT THEY HAVE DONE.
I’m so sorry.
DESPOILERS. USURPERS. LOOK AT THE COLOR OF MY SKY. THE SCARS ON THE GREEN BELOW. PARASITES, ALL OF YOU.
The beast fixed her in its furious gaze, and she felt tiny and afraid reflected in that bottomless black. She knew how pathetic her overtures must sound. She had stood by and let her father mutilate this magnificent creature, hadn’t lifted a finger to stop him. And for what? A spoiled princeling’s command? A dream born of ego and blind hubris?
This, the last great yōkai beast on the whole of Shima. And what had they done to him?
The beast shut off its mind, forcing her out into empty blackness. Its hate was palpable, a dark radiance than burned like the summer sun. It stared in unblinking, wordless challenge, and though it said not a thing, she could read every thought as surely as if it had spoken them aloud.
Look at what they have done to me. At what you allowed them to do. Look me in the eye, be you not ashamed of yourself and your entire wretched race. Thunder rolled cold fingers down her spine.
Shuddering, Yukiko lowered her eyes and looked away.
Her father was lying in his hammock when she returned, staring at the ceiling. His sodden clothes hung on the walls, an old hakama tied about his waist, tattoos crawling on his arms and chest. The ink was old, black running to blue, edges blurred under the press of time. His flesh was hard, but carved from sickly chalk, gleaming with fresh sweat and the stink of lotus.
He didn’t look at her as she entered.
She closed the door and sat beside the hammocks on a small wooden stool, rocking it back on its hind legs. Her eyes glittered in the lamplight, hooded, almond-shaped; the one gift she’d been allowed to keep from the mother who had abandoned her all those years ago. The eyes that had welled with tears in the Shōgun’s gardens, staring at her father with dumb disbelief as he told her that her mother was gone.
“I wish I had gone with her.” She kept her voice low, calm; she refused to allow him to think that this all came from hysterics. But the words were intended to make him bleed. “I wish I were anywhere but here with you.”
A long pause, pregnant with anger and the sound of falling rain.
“Wishing for the impossible,” Masaru said softly. “You get that from her.”
“I pray that’s not all I get.”
Another pause. Masaru took a deep breath. “If you’re going to hate me, at least hate me for the mistakes I could have avoided.”
“Like mutilating that poor thing?”
“Its feathers will grow back. Like any other bird. It will moult soon enough.”
“You’re going to give it to him, aren’t you? The Shōgun.”
Masaru sighed. “Of course I am, Yukiko. I swore I would.”
“He’s just a greedy boy. He doesn’t deserve anything that beautiful.”
“Sometimes we don’t get what we deserve. We play the cards we are dealt instead of whining about what might’ve been. Therein lies the difference between an adult and a child.”
But I am a child, she wanted to scream.
“I know about you and Kasumi,” she said.
He nodded, eyes never leaving the ceiling. “Your mother told you?”
“No. I see the way you look at her.”
“Kasumi and I are over. I ended it when your mother—”
“Is that why she left? Without even saying goodbye to me?”
He paused for a long moment, licking at dry lips.
“Your mother left for many reasons.”