Red Winter (The Red Winter Trilogy Book 1)

  Dishes clattered loudly. “Serve her royal highness yourself then,” the woman hissed as she stomped away.

  When it was once again silent, Emi cleared her throat softly. “Katsuo?”

  The door slid open a crack and Katsuo peered in. Seeing her sitting up, he pushed the door open, balancing the tray on his arm. He stepped in, his gaze sweeping across the room and a blush touching his cheeks over trespassing on forbidden ground. He left the door open as he crossed to her bed and set the tray beside her.

  “Your lunch,” he mumbled. “How do you feel?”

  “Exhausted,” she admitted, glancing listlessly at the covered plate. She should have been starving but her appetite was conspicuously absent. Even though Amaterasu had replenished her ki, she felt hollowed out. Had she used up her ki removing the onenju binding from Shiro or had Yumei’s blood spell caused this awful fatigue?

  Katsuo glanced around the room once more, then sat cross-legged beside her.

  “What the hell happened, Emi?” he said, voice low and intense. “What happened this morning? You disappeared from the shrine and left that stupid note, then you show up with two dead yokai and that kitsune again?”

  “The yokai weren’t dead when I arrived.” She sighed. “I don’t understand how they got into the shrine. Why didn’t the torii stop them?”

  He clenched his jaw. “They broke the torii barrier. Kannushi Fujimoto has been working all morning to rebuild it, but it’s still weak.”

  “They broke it? I didn’t know that was possible.”

  “No minor yokai could do it. How did they find out about you?”

  She covered her eyes with one hand. How? Ameonna had been fulfilling a favor she owed a kami. And the only kami Emi had a connection with besides Amaterasu was Koyane.

  She’d told Koyane where she was staying. He must have sent Ameonna to wait for her at her home. But why? Why? It didn’t make any sense. Shiro had called the kami opportunistic for wanting to steal her ki but that didn’t explain why he would send yokai to kill her. Why was he so determined that she die? Yokai were supposed to be the ones bent on eliminating kamigakari, not kami. Koyane should have protected her to support the Amatsukami, not sent assassins after her.

  “Yesterday,” she murmured, keeping her hand over her face, not wanting to see his reaction, “I went to a shrine in Kigiku to talk to a kami.”

  “You—what? Why?”

  “I had a question I needed answered, and that required speaking with an actual kami.”

  “What question? What could you need to know that badly?”

  She lowered her hand and looked at him. Concern wrinkled his brow. His dark eyes drilled into her as though his gaze alone could unbury the truth. Her lower lip trembled and she bit it.

  “I … I …” The words wouldn’t come. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to tell him, but seeing his reaction to her inevitable fate would make it too real. Seeing his horror and despair would unleash her own, tightly bound inside her, and she would lose all composure.

  She shook her head and let out a long breath. “The kami tried to kill me. I don’t understand why.”

  “The kami tried to kill you?”

  “I escaped, but those two yokai were waiting here for me. The woman told me that a kami had sent her to kill me. It had to be the same one.”

  “A kami?” he repeated in utter disbelief.

  “I don’t understand it either. Why? Shouldn’t he want to help keep a kamigakari alive?”

  Katsuo pressed his hands against his knees. “Maybe that particular kami has a grudge against Amaterasu.”

  “Maybe,” she mumbled doubtfully. The idea of a kami holding a personal grievance against another kami seemed so … unpleasantly human.

  “So you sought out this kami, and, he … what? Sent two yokai to ambush you at the shrine?” His expression hardened. “What about the other two yokai, Emi? How long have you been in contact with that kitsune?”

  “Since we brought him back to the shrine,” she whispered, avoiding his disapproving glare.

  “And that other one?”

  “Yumei … I met him the next night.”

  “He didn’t come here,” Katsuo said flatly. “With ki like that, he would have shattered the torii barrier all on his own. You went to him, didn’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you understand at all what kind of yokai you’re messing with? The raven one alone is—”

  “The Tengu,” she mumbled.

  “The Tengu?”

  “Apparently, there’s only one.” She twisted the blankets in her hands. “I think he rules these mountains.”

  Katsuo went silent. She peeked through her hair, draped around her shoulders. He had his hands pressed over his face as he inhaled deeply.

  “Neither the Tengu nor the kitsune know you’re the kamigakari, do they?” he asked through his fingers.

  “No.”

  He dropped his hands into his lap like the swing of a judge’s gavel. “Explain this to me. Explain what the hell is going through your head, because I don’t get it. The kitsune, the Tengu, the kami in Kigiku. Why are you putting your life in danger like this?”

  How could she explain? What explanation could she offer without telling him every single thing that had happened since she’d opened the kannushi manual?

  “I—I promise to tell you everything,” she said softly. “But I can’t right now. I just … I just can’t handle it.”

  He stared hard at her, then reluctantly nodded.

  “What happened after I left yesterday?” She didn’t really want to know, but it would prepare her for the inevitable confrontation with Fujimoto.

  “Once we noticed you were gone, we started searching. We found your note, but Kannushi Fujimoto sent me into the woods and Minoru to the town to search for you anyway. We looked all day but couldn’t find a trace of you. I think he would have made us search all night but Nanako yelled at him that we’d end up dead if we kept wandering aimlessly around the forest in the dark.”

  She winced guiltily.

  “We were resting before starting up the search again,” he continued, “but I couldn’t sleep, so I did another circle around the grounds. That’s when I discovered the torii’s protection had been broken, but I couldn’t sense any yokai nearby. I ran for the shrine and discovered the yokai’s barrier. I was about to go wake the others when I heard your voice, very faintly. The barrier muffled the sound and I couldn’t see through it, but I knew you were in there, so I waited for it to fall.”

  His jaw tightened. “When the barrier dropped, I was so sure I’d see your mangled body. But you were alive.”

  “Shiro defeated them. They almost killed him.”

  “Shiro is the kitsune? You got lucky. Next time, it will be him killing you.”

  “He almost died protecting me.”

  “Because he owes you?” Katsuo asked sternly. “Because he wants something from you? He’s a yokai, Emi. They are never altruistic. If they help a human, it’s because they’re getting something out of it.”

  She looked away, saying nothing.

  “The Tengu took him away before Fujimoto and Minoru came running. I didn’t know what to tell them.” His mouth turned down in a heavy frown. “They jumped to the conclusion that I’d killed the dead yokai and I … I didn’t correct them.”

  Her gaze shot to his. “Why not?”

  “I didn’t understand what had happened or who the other two yokai were. You called them allies, but … I didn’t know how to explain to the others that you’d been attacked and defended by two different sets of yokai, so I just didn’t mention the other two.”

  Tears stung her eyes. Katsuo had lied to protect her so she wouldn’t get into even more trouble for consorting with yokai.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  He mumbled something and picked up the tray of food, setting it on her lap. “You should eat before it gets cold.”

  She meekly pulled the cover off the bo
wl and picked up the spoon. The broth, thick noodles, and cubes of tofu were already cold but she ate anyway, tasting nothing. Thoughts spun through her head, emotions swirling darkly beneath them. Her hope had died with her visit to Koyane, leaving the bitter taste of ash in her mouth. All that was left for her to do was fulfill her promise to remove Shiro’s onenju. After that, she faced nothing but an empty march toward her destined end.

  She pushed the tray away. “I … I’d like to pray.”

  “Pray?” he repeated blankly.

  “At the shrine.”

  “Oh.” He hesitated, then picked up the tray. “Kannushi Fujimoto is working on the torii barrier, but he’ll be back soon. If we hurry, we can visit the shrine first.”

  She almost asked if she could go alone, then realized that wasn’t happening—ever. They wouldn’t leave her alone again until the solstice. Katsuo hadn’t been waiting outside her room because he was worried about her or waiting for her, but because he’d been ordered to stand guard. Fujimoto wouldn’t risk her running away again.

  “I just need to change,” she told him.

  He retreated into the hallway while she dragged her weary body out of bed and stumbled to her closet. Exhaustion pulled at her eyelids and fuzzed her thoughts. When she was dressed in her miko uniform, with her hair brushed and tied back, she joined Katsuo and they left the house. The sun beamed down on them as they crossed the bridge, warm enough to make the day pleasant, but not warm enough to do more than soften the snow that filled the garden and coated the trees. Its bright warmth seemed to mock the cold shadows gathered inside her.

  Emi stopped at the edge of the courtyard. Puddles of water, no doubt courtesy of the Lady of the Rain, and scorch marks marred the stones. She stared at the black marks, imagining how they’d gotten there. Had Shiro done that? His use of foxfire—what she’d witnessed anyway—had been minimal, but she had no idea what new abilities she had unlocked by removing the second loop of the onenju.

  “What happened to the yokai bodies?” she asked.

  “Disappeared.” He noticed her startled look and shrugged. “All yokai bodies sort of … dissolve into nothing. Even the blood is gone, see? An old sohei trainer told us the spirit realm absorbs the yokai after death. In the spirit realm, the ki of the most powerful will slowly gather and gain strength until the yokai returns to the living realm to walk the earth once more. He even suggested that there’s a finite number of yokai who are continually reborn, some reviving after a few years, others reviving only after centuries.”

  “When they come back, do they remember their previous lives? Or is it like being born again?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Lost in thought, she crossed the courtyard to the water fountain to rinse her hands and mouth. Katsuo followed a few steps behind, respectfully quiet as she approached the main hall and ascended the wide steps. There she stopped, staring at the rope that hung from the bell. She hadn’t prayed to Amaterasu since the day she’d read the kannushi manual.

  She pulled the rope to ring the bell. Then she bowed twice, clapped twice, put her hands together, and bent her head over them, her eyes squeezed shut.

  No words came to her. No thoughts, no questions. She stood, unmoving, unable to speak to her kami for the first time in her life. She didn’t know what to say. She could ask why she’d been lied to, why she’d never been given a choice. She could ask why Amaterasu had chosen her from among all the young miko begging to be selected. She could ask Amaterasu if she regretted all she would steal from Emi—all the experiences, the memories, the years she otherwise would have lived. She could ask a thousand questions … but none of them mattered anymore.

  Seconds passed, turning to minutes as she stood there, lost in the darkness of her mind, before the faintest warmth bloomed in her chest, right over her heart. The heat swirled slowly through her, brushing aside the shadows and warming the cold ice of despair and grief. Amaterasu’s gentle warmth spread through her, threaded with soft emotions that Emi couldn’t name but that lessened the weight on her shoulders and in her heart.

  Sadness and regret whispered through her, then the Amatsukami’s presence faded, leaving Emi wrapped once more in wintry grief.

  She stood for several long minutes before lifting a hand to her cheek, finding it wet with tears. Wiping her face with her sleeve, she gave her final bow. With a shaky sigh, she turned around.

  Katsuo was waiting at the bottom of the steps as she’d expected. What she hadn’t expected to see was Fujimoto and Minoru standing beside him. Nanako was at the far end of the courtyard, supervising Rina and Yui. The two girls were on their hands and knees, scrubbing at the blackened stones with brushes and buckets of soapy water. How long had she been bent in prayer?

  Fujimoto drew himself up to his full, unimpressive height, his face already red with fury.

  “Have you prayed for Amaterasu’s forgiveness?” he asked, his tone deceptively calm.

  Emi cautiously descended the steps. When she reached the bottom, she bent forward in a deep bow.

  “Kannushi Fujimoto,” she said, speaking to the ground, “please allow me to apologize for leaving the shrine grounds without permission. I’m very sorry for the worry and trouble I caused.”

  Silence was her only answer. Even more wary, she straightened.

  “Is that all you have to say, Kamigakari Kimura?” His calm vanished as fury took over. “Never in my life have I heard such an inadequate apology.”

  She flinched. “I—”

  “Have you apologized for the hours upon hours that we searched for you?” he asked venomously. “For the danger your sohei faced while searching the mountains? Have you apologized for the disgrace you brought upon them, as well as me, for leaving the shrine and our protection? Have you apologized for deliberately and contemptuously disobeying my order that you remain within the house?”

  Blinking rapidly, she took a small step back. “I didn’t—”

  “Not only did you leave the shrine alone, but you drew two vicious yokai into the grounds upon your return. You put every life in this shrine in danger! A yokai has broken the torii barrier, revoking the protection of this shrine for all who come here. You may leave, but we will suffer from the danger you have put us in for many weeks to come!”

  She cringed away from his acid tone, his rage breaking over her like an arctic wave.

  “You have no honor, Kamigakari Kimura. You have no respect for your position or for the sacrifices of those who care for you and protect you. You’re a disgrace to Amaterasu, to Shion and Guji Ishida, to me, and to all the kamigakari who lost their lives before you. They died trying to reach their ten-year solstice, yet you throw your safety aside with nothing but contempt for the responsibility you hold.”

  He thrust a finger at her, his face glowing red and veins bulging in his temples. “The future of an Amatsukami is in your hands, and do you care? The future of this world, of thousands of lives that Amaterasu could change, is in your hands, and do you care? A hundred years, Kimura! Amaterasu has waited a hundred years, and she put her faith in you. Will you betray her faith with your petty, rebellious disobedience?”

  Emi’s shoulders hunched, but her guilt fizzled as a stronger emotion rose from the darkness of her grief: violent, searing rage.

  “Do not speak to me of betrayal,” she whispered.

  “What did you say?” he demanded.

  “Do not speak to me of betrayal!” The words burst from her in a furious shout.

  Fujimoto took half a step away, shock splashing across his face before outrage replaced it.

  “How dare you—”

  “How dare you!” Her voice rose to a wild shriek as a hundred emotions tore through her, cresting on the waves of her sudden wrath. “How dare you speak to me of betrayal! How dare you speak to me of responsibility! What of the betrayal against me? What of your responsibility to the truth?”

  His jaw bobbed up and down as he was struck speechless.

  “What about the lie
s, Fujimoto?” she demanded, stepping toward him. “The lies you and the other kannushi tell all the little miko girls? Become the kamigakari, you tell them! Let Amaterasu choose you and you will become a kami! You will wield amazing power alongside her! You will change the world!” She laughed bitterly, a note of hysteria creeping in.

  Fujimoto flexed his jaw, but it was Katsuo who spoke.

  “What are you talking about, Emi?”

  “Why don’t you tell him, Fujimoto?” she mocked, her voice shaking. “Tell him the truth. Tell them the truth.” She waved her hand at Nanako and the girls, frozen in place at the other end of the courtyard as they watched the shouting match. “You talk about all the sacrifices everyone makes to protect the kamigakari, but why don’t you tell them the truth about the kamigakari and her sacrifice?”

  “The—the kamigakari, by necessity, gives up—”

  “On the solstice, Fujimoto. Tell them what happens on the solstice.”

  His jaw flexed. “Amaterasu will descend from the heavenly realm and—”

  “And destroy me!” Emi yelled. “She’ll burn up my mind and soul and take my body for herself, won’t she? That’s the truth you and Ishida and all the other kannushi hide! I won’t become a kami or change the world. I’ll cease to exist from the moment she descends. Now tell me again how I’m betraying her faith!”

  Katsuo stared at her, his mouth hanging open in horror. Minoru’s face was almost a mirror image, but Fujimoto didn’t flinch.

  “You are a selfish child, Kimura,” he said. “In what world do you think your single life is more important than an Amatsukami’s?”

  “You lied to me!” she shouted. “You all lied to me! I didn’t get a choice about—”

  He stepped forward and backhanded her across the face.

  She gasped, staggering as her hand flew to her cheek. Minoru grabbed Katsuo’s arm, pulling him back before he could reach her.

  “Enough theatrics,” Fujimoto barked. “I will hear no more of your hysterical angst. You are the kamigakari and that cannot, and will not, change. I will tell you again: you are selfish. You see only what you will lose. Do you think you are so important? Will you be responsible for the suffering of thousands of people whom Amaterasu will be unable to help without a vessel in this realm? Do you think your single life is more important than all others? You will make a great sacrifice for an even greater cause, and you should be honored that you, an otherwise worthless mortal, have the opportunity to accomplish so much.”