Red Winter (The Red Winter Trilogy Book 1)

  He pressed his mouth harder against hers, the kiss deepening with a demanding kind of hunger. Hot desire pulsed through her and she gasped wildly against his mouth, her hand tightening in his hair.

  He jerked back, his head snapping up. She blinked dazedly.

  Yumei swept out of the shadows, a dozen crows rushing past him in a frenzy of flapping wings.

  “I have delayed them,” he said brusquely, “but they hunt with determination. The lesser kami are weak, but their leader is too powerful to easily defeat. We must retreat to safe ground.”

  Shiro scooped her into his arms. “Where?”

  “Follow me.”

  Yumei darted into the trees, as fast as one of his crows even without wings. Shiro launched after him in a bounding run. Emi clutched his shoulders, her head a mess of thoughts that soon dissolved into a sort of confused, wordless buzzing. The surge of adrenaline from her revival waned, leaving an aching, feverish weakness in its place. Her head bobbed listlessly with each running stride he took until she buried her face against his shoulder.

  So exhausted. So weak. So hard to keep her eyes open.

  The forest faded as Shiro ran on.

  Chapter 16

  Voices filtered sluggishly through the haze of sleep.

  “… definitely wasn’t Izanami,” Shiro was saying. “He was powerful though.”

  “He must be a vassal of Izanami,” Yumei replied, equally quiet, the words scarcely more than a whisper. “The Amatsukami have numerous generals and vassals to do their bidding. Even the Kunitsukami keep a handful of vassals, though they normally eschew direct rule.”

  A growl roughened Shiro’s voice. “Whoever he is, why would he kill the miko of another Amatsukami?”

  “Perhaps the girl broke some protocol,” Yumei said, not sounding particularly interested. “Perhaps her mysterious need to meet an Amatsukami offended him.”

  “But to kill her for it?”

  “Perhaps he lusted for her pure ki. His was not well balanced from what I could sense.”

  “Stealing from a mere miko is a waste of effort,” Shiro disagreed. “For a kami like him, her ki would be but a drop in the well of his power.”

  As they spoke, Emi struggled toward consciousness, feeling as though she were anchored in the depths of an ocean of exhaustion.

  After a moment, Shiro asked, “This doesn’t arouse your curiosity at all? A kami murdering miko?”

  “Greed and ambition are not uncommon among the kami. I am more interested in what the miko asked of him.”

  Shiro grunted.

  As her awareness sharpened, she realized she was curled around something warm. Only when he shifted did she recognize it as Shiro. She was using his leg as a pillow, her arm flopped across his lap.

  “The miko is awake,” Yumei observed.

  She forced her eyes open, squinting wearily. Yumei sat cross-legged on the floor a couple feet away. They were in a tiny, dusty room, empty except for a largish shrine on one wall with a dust-coated stone as a shintai. She pushed herself up, her cheeks heating. She couldn’t look at Shiro as she scooted a foot over and slumped against the wall. She’d been sleeping almost in his lap. And before that … Her mind shied away from the thought and she stared determinedly at the floor.

  “Where are we?” she whispered.

  “An Inari shrine on the outskirts of the city,” Shiro answered. “The kami are unlikely to search here, and Yumei’s crows are keeping watch.”

  Alarm flashed through her and she looked up. A Kunitsukami shrine wasn’t a smart place for a kamigakari to be. “Is it safe here? I’m a—an Amatsukami miko and Inari is—”

  “There is no Kunitsukami power here,” Yumei interrupted impatiently. “Inari’s presence faded long ago and only the meager ofuda of the human kannushi protect it now. However, reputation and habit will keep the kami away.”

  “Oh,” she said weakly, leaning her head back against the wall. She pressed her wrist to her forehead. “I don’t feel well.”

  “The kami drained most of your ki,” Shiro said, sounding almost sympathetic. “It wasn’t safe for me to give you more than I did.”

  Her cheeks flushed all over again at the reminder. “How long until I’m back to normal?”

  “I don’t know. A few days?” He looked hopefully at Yumei for an answer, but the Tengu merely shrugged.

  Emi stifled a groan and closed her eyes. Her muscles felt weak and shaky, and every inch of her throbbed as if she had a high fever. It would take days for her to recover?

  Still, she was grateful Shiro had been cautious. Kami and yokai ki were incompatible, and unbeknownst to him, Emi had been attuning herself to kami ki for months, perhaps years. If Koyane hadn’t drained all of Amaterasu’s ki from her body … well, she didn’t want to know what Shiro’s ki would have done to her.

  Quiet amazement filtered through her tired thoughts. Yokai ki was flowing through her. How strange that Shiro’s life force was inside her, keeping her alive.

  Despite her efforts to keep her thoughts away from it, the memory of that sharing of power reared up in her mind. The way the touch of his mouth on hers had transformed from necessity to intimacy. The way he’d kissed her, softness evolving into hunger. And the craving he in turn had awoken in her. Sensations and desires she’d never felt before. A need that still ached quietly within her.

  She shoved the memories away, unwilling to consider the logical questions that inevitably followed, like what it meant that he had kissed her, how he felt about her, how she felt about him. It didn’t mean anything. She should be angry that he had taken advantage of her helpless state by stealing a kiss when she couldn’t stop him—except she wasn’t sure he had stolen that kiss. Maybe she could have stopped him. She hadn’t actually tried.

  She was also, maybe, a little angry that her first ever kiss had been with a yokai. Then again, it was likely the only kiss she would ever receive. Despair stirred beneath her heart but she quickly suppressed it; she couldn’t face it, not here.

  “Why did the kami try to kill you?” Shiro asked her, drawing her out of her thoughts.

  She opened her eyes. “I’m not sure. He said it looked like I was suffering and he would ‘free me of my burdens,’ which I guess meant killing me.”

  “I’m surprised one of Izanami’s vassals was so malicious,” Shiro mused. “I assumed an Amatsukami had better taste in subordinates.”

  “As soon as I realized he wasn’t Izanami,” she mumbled, “I should have left. Will he come after me again?”

  “An opportunist like him is unlikely to keep hunting you,” Shiro replied. “He probably assumes you died and that we ran off with you to eat your body.”

  “Eat … my …?”

  He shrugged. “Kami always assume the worst of us.”

  “Oh.”

  “I would have let my crows eat you,” Yumei said tonelessly, “had you died.”

  She stared at him incredulously, then shook her head and sagged back against the wall, too exhausted to decide how she was supposed to respond to that.

  “Well, since the Izanami shrine turned out to be a death trap, we’ll have to try again.” Shiro regarded Yumei. “What do you think? Any leads on a different Amatsukami?”

  “Another can be found,” Yumei said dismissively. “All the Amatsukami are gathering in this area for the solstice. Once it passes, they will disperse across the lands once again.”

  “The s-solstice?” she stuttered, quashing her panic. They knew about the kamigakari ceremony?

  “They’ve come for their yearly ritual … thing,” Shiro said. “And if there’s a descension, they protect the kamigakari.”

  She nodded, careful not to betray anything. Yumei and Shiro didn’t seem to suspect she was Amaterasu’s kamigakari. And why would they? As far as they knew—and as Koyane had assumed—the kamigakari always lived in the main shrine of her kami until the ceremony, which was the only time she would be exposed to the dangers of the outside world. They would never ex
pect to find a kamigakari at a tiny, shabby shrine in the middle of nowhere.

  “You are a miko,” Yumei said flatly. “Do you not know of this?”

  “I … yes, I heard about it. I just didn’t know yokai knew so much …”

  “The Kunitsukami gather for the solstice as well.”

  She inhaled sharply. “They do?”

  “They used to,” Shiro corrected.

  She desperately wanted to ask why the Kunitsukami would gather along with the Amatsukami. She suspected it was to attempt to kill the kamigakari. Why else would they be around for an Amatsukami ceremony? But if the conversation lingered on the solstice for too long, she might unintentionally reveal one too many clues about her true identity.

  “Do you know anything about the missing Kunitsukami?” she asked Yumei quickly, diverting the topic. “Have you tried finding them with your crows?”

  His silver eyes drifted to her. “I have searched, to no avail.”

  “It’s hard to find a powerful yokai who doesn’t want to be found,” Shiro said, leaning his head back against the wall and closing his eyes. “We don’t know where the Kunitsukami are, what they look like, or how to find them. They most certainly have the ability to hide or disguise their ki, which means it is impossible to find them unless they want to be found.”

  “You don’t know what they look like?” she asked skeptically. “No yokai you know has ever met one?”

  “I have encountered them all at various times,” Yumei said, “but I do not recall their faces.”

  “You … you don’t?” How could he forget the faces of his ultimate leaders?

  “The greater your spiritual power,” Shiro said without opening his eyes, “the more ‘other’ you are. Kunitsukami exist so far into the spiritual realm that the minds of a lesser being can’t entirely comprehend them. It makes it difficult to remember them.”

  He opened one ruby eye to look at her. “Remember how those humans didn’t see what I really was? They could only perceive what they were able to understand and their minds filled in the rest based on expectations. Most of them will soon forget they ever saw me. If you never saw Yumei again, you would forget his face in a week or two. With me, it would take longer because I’m far less powerful and you’ve spent more time with me. But you’d eventually forget my face as well.”

  Forget him? Forget those ruby eyes and his irritating, sly grin? Not likely.

  “I knew all the Kunitsukami once,” Yumei said. “Sarutahiko is tall and powerfully built. He speaks carefully, giving thought and authority to every word. His will is unyielding steel but he is always fair and honorable.”

  “You remember all that but not his face?” She glanced between the two yokai. “What about Inari? What do you remember?”

  “Nothing,” Yumei answered. “Well over a hundred years have come and gone since I last laid eyes on the Kunitsukami of the Fire.”

  A hundred years? When Shiro mentioned that Inari had been missing for decades, she hadn’t thought he’d meant over a century. No wonder Shiro couldn’t find the patron of the kitsune.

  Shiro stifled a long yawn. “You’ll forget the face of that kami too.”

  “But he’s not a yokai,” she protested. “His face is the human face of his host.”

  Yumei tilted his head to one side, stretching his neck. “When a kami inhabits a human vessel, his ki merges with the human flesh, eventually transforming the mortal body into something closer to a kami. The kamigakari will even take on the likeness of the kami as time passes.”

  Another thing about kamigakari she hadn’t known.

  “Does it bother you that the Kunitsukami are gone?” she asked, again steering the conversation away from her secrets. “Or do you enjoy the freedom the way the oni do?”

  Shiro sighed. “You’re thinking like a kami, little miko. I told you the Kunitsukami don’t rule us like the Amatsukami rule.”

  “You say that like yokai are better than kami.”

  “No, but at least we’re honest about what we are.”

  “Are you?” She met his eyes, trying to see the truths he kept so carefully hidden. “Who are you then? Why are you bound by a curse so powerful only a Kunitsukami can remove it? Who bound you?”

  He returned her stare, unblinking. Then he gave her a lazy grin. “Such intensity, little miko. Is it your desire to know me so intimately?”

  Her cheeks burned. She looked down at her lap and curled her hands into fists. Why had he kissed her? As another way to manipulate and trick her?

  “The absence of the Kunitsukami is harmful in unexpected ways,” Yumei murmured. His soft tone, devoid of impatience or irritation and instead tinged with unease, surprised her.

  His silver eyes slipped out of focus, seeing something besides the walls of the inner shrine. “As their power fades from the land, all suffer. The forests dwindle without Uzume’s nurturing presence. The mountains crumble. Fires rage. The rain ceases to fall for too long, and the snow comes before its time. We weaken as kami power seeps into our lands, and the air tastes of fear. Where are they? Why have they abandoned us?”

  His gaze refocused and he rose to his feet. “The night is short. I will return you to the Amaterasu shrine.”

  She watched him glide out the door, her skin prickling. The air tastes of fear. How bad was it that the Kunitsukami were missing? Not just for the yokai, but for the entire world? The kami and yokai were opposites that balanced each other, and the world could not exist without both. As much as she loved the sun, a never-ending day would be just as destructive as a never-ending night. Did the kami know this? Did they care? Power and ambition aside, the Amatsukami must realize that the world needed the Kunitsukami.

  Fatigue dragged at her like heavy chains.

  Emi walked beside Shiro as they followed the long road toward the Shirayuri Shrine. Yumei, in his raven form, had dropped them a mile from the shrine before flying off. When she’d complained that he could have brought them a lot closer, Shiro had explained that the Tengu’s teleportation wasn’t a skill of precision; it was only accurate within a couple miles of a specific location. And when she’d inquired why he couldn’t fly them closer the old-fashioned way, Shiro had smirked and asked if she really thought Yumei wanted to carry them around like a feathered pack mule.

  After fifteen minutes of walking, the clear sky was just beginning to lighten from black to deep blue. Dawn would arrive in the next hour. Her apprehension increased with each step. She was less than optimistic that her absence had gone unnoticed. Fujimoto and Nanako would be furious, but it was the thought of Katsuo’s reaction that shrunk her innards with guilt. Maybe she should have told him she was leaving, but he would have tried to come with her—or stop her. She hadn’t been able to chance either.

  She would face the consequences when she arrived, just as she had to face the truth. She couldn’t dodge it any longer or hide behind the flimsy hope that the kannushi manual was a lie.

  Finally, she knew the absolute truth. Even though Koyane had tried to kill her, he had no reason to deceive her. The only lies were those she’d been told her whole life. She wondered whether the truth would surprise Yumei or Shiro.

  On the solstice, her life would end. There was no escape, no way to change her future. All that remained was accepting it. Despair lapped at her mind, seeking her surrender to the darkness of grief and fear, but she resisted its pull. She would make peace with her fate. She had to.

  She peeked at Shiro. He walked beside her, lost in his own thoughts. She would have to tell him that their bargain was complete. He didn’t need to risk his life or fall further into Yumei’s debt to arrange another Amatsukami meeting. She had what she needed and she owed it to him to fulfill her end of the deal. She probably should have said something earlier but she hadn’t wanted to speak in front of Yumei. This bargain had begun between her and Shiro alone and that was how she wanted it to end.

  As she watched him, her gaze dropped to his mouth, to the lips that had touched hers
. A slow wave of heat uncurled in her middle as a blush crept into her cheeks. He’d kissed her. Why? She wanted to believe it didn’t mean anything. He’d had the opportunity and he’d taken it because that’s what yokai did. That was all … wasn’t it?

  “Shiro?”

  He looked at her, his ruby eyes gleaming in the darkness.

  “Um. Thank you. For … for saving me.”

  A corner of his mouth turned up. “You should choose your words more carefully, little miko. Thanking me implies a debt.”

  “But … I do owe you a debt. You didn’t have to … to do that.”

  “I need you alive to complete our bargain.” He shook his wrist; the onenju should have rattled but the beads were eerily silent and unmoving. “Do not acknowledge a debt when you can avoid it.”

  She knew—she knew—he’d saved her so she could remove the onenju, so why did his words send a sharp pain shooting through her? Maybe it was the way he’d whispered against her cheek that he wouldn’t let her die. Maybe it had been the gentle touch of his hands, the warmth of his ki, the delicate touch of his lips. Maybe she was just a stupid, naïve girl to think he might actually care about her.

  Shiro didn’t seem to notice her tension. He kept his attention on the road, his stride lengthening just enough that she had to work to keep up, her exhausted muscles protesting the increased exertion. She walked beside him, bullying her heart with cold logic. He was a yokai. She was nothing more to him than a way out of his curse, just as he’d been nothing to her but a way to find out the truth about her fate. She should tell him his end of the deal was complete.

  “Why?” she asked instead, the word hard and somewhat hostile.

  “Why what?”

  “Why did you acknowledge your debt to me when I saved you from the oni?” she asked. “If it’s better not to, why put yourself in my debt?”

  His eyebrows drew together. “That was different. I saved your life tonight because I need you alive. You gained nothing from saving me.”