Chapter 3
Chapter three
Lost in Translation
Kenji
I slid the door open and stepped onto the balcony. The stone was cold beneath my feet.
I pulled the door closed behind me with a soft click.
The balcony stretched wide around me with a stone railing that was barely waist-high and offered nothing between me and the drop.
From here, I could see everything the night had consumed—the villas reduced to silhouettes, the sea moving in slow dark waves.
The island slept, not one window was lit in the distant villas.
The sky, however, pulsed with restless energy. Stars burned in reckless clusters above, scattered like shattered glass across black velvet.
Too bright.
Too many.
Constantly sparkling as if death never occurred.
I should have turned to my visitor and spoken.
Instead, I walked over to the stone railing and lowered my gaze to where the pyre had stood days ago. There’d been a mountain of over a hundred burning bodies, fire consuming flesh, cloth, and bones. Rising smoke had whipped and twisted in columns, carrying human skin snowflakes.
Now only a flat, massive black circle remained, pressed into the ground like a wound that had closed over itself. The Scales had raked the dead’s ash and shoveled it under.
I looked at that dark circle for several silent minutes.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
I gripped the railing and turned right.
What’s wrong with him tonight?
Rin sat on the railing with his legs hung over the edge like a kid sitting on a dock and watching the water below with zero concern for the drop.
His back was to me.
His long dark hair fell unbraided down his spine, rippling in the breeze, strand by strand. Moving the way water did and showing hints of the masterpiece etched on his back.
The tattoo was a crown that ran the full width of his shoulders and tapered at the base of his spine. The majority of the crown was done in black with blood red cracks splitting through it.
At the top of the crown, charcoal-black roses grew with thorned stems.
Rin had a joint between his fingers. The paper was gold.
Without turning my way, he brought it to his lips. The tip brightened and held for a long breath. Then he lowered his hand and exhaled slowly, releasing two thin columns of blue smoke from his nostrils that the breeze immediately took and unraveled into nothing.
His hair rippled across his back. The roses disappeared beneath it for a second and then reappeared when the wind returned.
He stared out at the sleeping island like I wasn't there.
Rin had been appearing on my balconies since the night I met him. And the way he sat now—shoulders low, jaw tight, eyes fixed on something in the distance that didn't exist—was the same way he'd sat the first time I met him.
Long ago, Rin had fled the palace in the middle of the night with nothing but his expensive clothes and a few heirlooms wrapped in silk and stuffed in his pockets. Somehow, he’d been able to get past the royal guards and escorts.
He'd appeared on the third-floor balcony of my mansion’s bedroom in Tokyo, bypassing the armed guards and surveillance and tapping on my glass.
I'd walked out to greet him with a gun to his face.
Rin had put those sad eyes on me and said his father had always told him we were related.
Sixth cousins.
Generations and generations back.
Our great-great-great-great-great-grandfathers were brothers.
I'd heard the same from my mother, but never put much into it.
I lowered my gun, curious as to why a man of royalty—who lived in ancient rooms made of gold and slept on sheets that cost more than my men earned in a year—was sitting on my balcony at three in the morning looking like the world had already ended.
Rin had lowered to his knees and it was probably the first time he’d ever done so in his life.
He held his hands together and looked up at me. “Please take me in.”
I laughed. “Why would I? You’re spoiled, probably can't fight or know the first thing about surviving outside palace walls.”
“I can fight. And I know poison. I can kill without exerting any energy at all.”
Later, I brought him into the yakuza. Hiro didn't trust Rin. My brother circled him for months, watching, testing, and waiting for the betrayal. It never came.
Reo thought the move was good and claimed that a man who could escape a palace undetected was a man worth keeping close.
Rin earned every inch of trust from my Fangs and Claws.
And over time I understood why he'd come to me specifically. Anywhere else, any other clan, any other city, any other powerful man. . .the palace would have dragged him back with no mercy. The emperor's reach was long and his pride was longer.
But even the emperor was afraid of the Dragon.
My world was the only place on earth where Rin could safely exist without being reclaimed.
I never asked him why he ran, but he told me years later, on a drunken night. . .again on my balcony. He’d had nightmares and appeared to confess his sins.
Still looking off in the distance, Rin extended his hand to me and offered the joint.
“I shouldn’t. Hiro already got me pretty high.”
“I heard about the battle in Yoshiwara Depths.” Rin didn’t move his hand. “You need it.”
Sighing, I took it and brought it to my lips. The gold paper crackled with a metallic sound as it burned. The smoke tasted different from Hiro's.
Heavier.
Sweeter.
Warmer in my chest and going down like laced honey.
Blue smoke left my nose.
My head instantly swam and I blinked. “What’s in this? It’s not just marijuana.”
Rin turned his head just enough that I caught his profile—the clean line of his jaw and long sweep of his lashes. "Blue lotus for warm euphoria. Mugwort for circulation and vivid dreams.”
I thought of my dream last night, the black lake and white flowers growing out of my chest. “I don’t want any vivid dreams.”
“Dreams are good. They give you a vision into the future.”
I tensed.
"There’s mullein leaf in there too."
“Why?”
"It will repair any damage the smoke caused to your lungs.” The breeze moved through his hair again. "And lion's mane to make sure your mind is sharp.”
I looked at the joint in my hand.
He built this for me.
I took another hit, but this time I held the sweetness longer before exhaling. Even more blue smoke left my nose.
“Thank you.” I passed the joint back. “Kaoru told me that you kidnapped my Tiger’s stylist.”
“He’s wrong about that.”
“How?”
He took the joint, brought it to his lips, and pulled. The gold paper sparkled against the dark. He blew out blue smoke. “I walked Deja back to the villa and asked her if I could take her to dinner. She said no.”
I grinned, knowing Rin was not used to anyone saying no to him.
“And then. . .when we got to her door. . .I told her to touch my braid."
I closed my eyes and shook my head.
Everyone knew what lived on Rin's braid. A poison he cultivated himself that was smoothly refined, odorless, and absorbed through the pores on contact.
One touch and the nervous system folded and consciousness left with no warning nor pain.
In a fight, Rin swung that braid like a blade made of sleep. With one graze across the skin, the enemy dropped and he simply shot them in the head. It was elegant, terrifying, and completely Rin.
Nyomi is going to be fucking pissed.
I opened my eyes and frowned at him. “That’s kidnapping.”
“I saw it as transferring her—”
“What did you fucking do with her?”
"Once she passed out, I took her to my villa. And when I woke her up with the antidote, she was on the roof of the villa. I'd set it up while she slept. Roses everywhere. The cliffs, the ocean, the sunset coming down. Lobster. Champagne. I gave her diamonds."
"You kidnapped my Tiger's stylist, poisoned her with your braid, and then set up a dinner date?"
“I transferred her to a dreamy luxury experience and she liked the surprise, after. . ."
“After what?”
“After cursing me out and slapping me once.” He pulled on the joint. The gold paper burned down another inch. "Once she was calm. . .we talked. She's. . .”
He paused and looked down at the sleeping island below us. "She's nothing like any woman I've ever met. Nothing. I don't even know what to do with her, Kenji. She doesn't understand how powerful, rich, or deadly I am. She treats me like I'm a servant and. . .that makes me hard."
I blinked and looked up at the sky.
“Why, Kenji?”
“Men like us want to be seen in our true form. As the human. Not the power or the violence.”
He turned the joint between his fingers. “She said something odd to me once the sun set.”
“What?”
"She looked at me and said, ‘Why does your shadow look like a snake swirling around in the air?’”
I widened my eyes.
“Then she asked if the poison I gave her had made her crazy."
My chest tightened.
I thought about Nyomi. The first time she'd described my dragon-shadow.
“Kenji. . .you know the legend. My father pushed in my head over and over, but I never believed him.” He handed me the joint and looked at me. “But. . .what if it’s true? My mother always said I had the power of the serpent. I hate her so much, but. . .that is one thing that has stuck with me.”
“I think it’s true.”
Rin's bloodline and mine had split centuries ago. Two brothers that had both been Shinigami Hunters. When the demons died or retreated and Shinigami Hunters were no longer needed, those two brothers separated and walked different paths.
My ancestor became a samurai.
Rin's ancestor wanted power, fame, and the throne. He worked his way up, killed the emperor of that time and took the seat.
The brothers never reunited, but apparently the blood remembered and. . .perhaps the shadows too.
And now a woman from across the world was looking at Rin and seeing a serpent twisting in the air behind him like it had been waiting to be noticed.
I swallowed. "She could be your true love."
"I don't know if I even have that."
I took another hit of the joint. When I exhaled this time, the smoke curled between us, blue-tinged and shimmering in the moonlight.