“… What?”
Ichizo was watching the ceiling, one arm behind his head, the other wrapped around her shoulder. Her body was pressed tight against him, the swell of her hips and breasts, the leg thrown over his thigh, like puzzle pieces made to interlock perfectly with his own.
Like all men and women interlock, foolish girl …
“I said I wonder what you would say, if I asked you to marry me.”
A slow blink.
“You are asking me to marry you?”
“No,” he smiled. “I simply wonder what you would say.”
“I would say you were crazed, my Lord,” she scoffed, resting her head back against his chest. “I would say you have only known me for a handful of heartbeats. I would say the lotus you were smoking must be of a rare breed indeed, and wonder if you might lend me your pipe when you were done.”
A soft chuckle. “That is what I thought you might say.”
“A good thing, then, you did not ask.”
Ichizo was silent a moment, a frown slowly creeping into his voice.
“What do you mean I do not know you? I have known you since last spring festival.”
“You knew me after a glance across a crowded room and a three-minute conversation about poetry?”
“I knew you were beautiful. Intelligent. Possessed of a keen wit and a romantic soul.”
“Oh, indeed? A romantic, am I?”
“Poetry calls not to a heart of stone, Michi-chan.”
She was silent, one finger tracing the lines of muscle down his stomach, a landscape of hard foothills and deep valleys, traversed by a thousand goosebumps.
“And why should we not be married?” Ichizo was truly frowning now, rolling her off his chest, raising himself up to stare into her eyes. “I know you better than Hiro knows Lady Aisha, and they are to be wed.”
“To prevent the entire nation falling into chaos,” Michi replied. “To reforge a dynasty two centuries deep. I hardly think the Imperium will come crashing to an end or spring miraculously back to life if we make our little fling official, my Lord. Not to mention the difficulties we might face squeezing our guests inside this pleasant little prison cell of mine.”
“A fling?” He blinked. “Is that what you think of me?”
“Better that than the alternative.”
“What, that I love you true?”
She stared deep into his eyes, watching his pupils for fight or flight response.
“That you still believe me part of the Kagé rebellion,” she said. “That all this is simply a magistrate interrogating a suspect.” A small smile, just the right mix of hopeful and afraid. “That at the end of all this, you will break my heart.”
Warning in his eyes. Pupils dilating. Fear? Suspicion? She had struck true, surely …
“I might say the same about you.”
Too much, silly girl. Too far. Pull away. Swiftly.
She pushed him back with a long kiss, straddling him, pinning his wrists above his head, long dark hair draped about her face. Leaning in close, swathed in perfume and fresh sweat, feeling him stir as she breathed the words, lips brushing as if feathers against his own.
“Say it then, my Lord. Say you do not trust me. Say all this is a lie.”
“But that would be the greatest lie of all,” he whispered, leaning in for a kiss, denied as she drew back out of reach. “I am yours, my Lady. At your mercy. Ask anything. Give voice to any question and I will answer.”
His smile seemed true. No veiled intent behind his eyes. He was so good at this.
So good it frightens you.
“Do you love me, then?” She moved her hips, the simplest gesture, shifting the entire world. He sighed with her, muscles flexed as she pressed at his wrists, leaned in close again, breathing into his ear. “Love me true?”
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.