Chapter 21
Chapter twenty-one
Magic
Nyomi
For a long while we held still.
His chest rose under my cheek.
Fell.
Rose again.
The ocean's hush returned to the open window. The drapes lifted in a slow breath of breeze. Somewhere down the hall, a soft footstep passed and faded.
The mansion was settling back into morning around us, and the staff was surely cleaning everything up from the party.
I wonder if Hiro actually slept under that claw last night.
I made a note to ask him.
Kenji adjusted his hold on me. Those muscular arms closed around me again, slow and unhurried. One curling under my neck. The other heavy across my waist. His thigh slid between mine. His hand at my hip traced a slow circle.
Over and over.
Anchoring me.
I was inside him again and it was a cocoon of passion and protection, warm, healing love and deadly obsession.
I shut my eyes and let the heat of him soak into my skin.
For some foolish reason, I saw a slow, soft-bodied caterpillar in my mind, disappearing into a cocoon it had spun out of itself.
And the cocoon sealed shut.
And inside, its old body came apart in the dark so something else could be built from the same material.
I had read about that once. Caterpillars didn't simply grow wings. They dissolved themselves first. The whole time the cocoon kept them safe while everything they used to be turned into a soup of cells. And then, inside that warm darkness, the new body began to assemble.
Wings.
Antennae.
A tongue made for nectar instead of leaves.
A creature that could no longer crawl.
A creature that had to fly.
Maybe, I was still tipsy from the party last night.
Still a bit. . .intoxicated.
But I still felt like I was changing and Kenji was holding me through my dissolving.
I was the caterpillar.
He was the cocoon.
And what would come out the other side of this. . .I didn't know yet.
My fingers came up and found the dragon tattoo on his chest. I moved my fingertips along its inked spine.
His heartbeat was slowing.
Mine was slowing with it.
Several silent minutes passed.
I tilted my face away from his chest, turned my eyes to the ceiling.
The dragon-shadow was completely gone. The ceiling was just plaster and the soft morning shadows from the drapes again.
The corners of the room were corners again.
The wings that had stretched along the walls had folded back into wherever they had come from.
The gold eyes had closed. The obsidian tail had withdrawn from the foot of the bed.
The whole beast had returned to Kenji.
I stared at the empty space above us for a long moment.
Kenji's voice rumbled under my cheek. "What do you see, Tora?"
I turned to him.
He was watching me. His head was tilted slightly against the pillow so he could see my face. His brown eyes—Kenji's eyes again, not the Dragon's—were patient, loving, and curious.
"Your dragon-shadow was here. He was above us when we were talking."
His brow lifted. "Only when we were talking about Kiko?”
"Yes. It's gone now. Back inside you, I guess. But it was there."
“Why do you think it came out?”
“From what I’m seeing. . .he comes out when you have intense emotion. Anger. Grief. Serious horniness.” I glanced up again at the ceiling, then back at him. "I don’t know. I’m still figuring this out, but this morning. . .he was fucking huge."
The slow grin started at one corner of his mouth and spread. "Huge?"
"Yes."
His chest puffed under my cheek. Just slightly. Enough that I could feel how pleased he was. "How huge?"
"He took up the whole ceiling. Almost the whole room. So big that his wings were on the walls. Tail across the foot of the bed."
“Hmmm.” Kenji hummed, completely satisfied.
I tilted my head and studied him. "And I think it got bigger, by the way, because you cried at your mother's altar. It had something to do with the strong emotional release."
The grin paused. His eyebrows came down. "I did not cry."
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean you cried.” I rolled my eyes. "You sobbed."
"Tora."
"You did. I was there. I saw it. Hiro was there. Reo was there. The Claws were there. The monks were there. I'm pretty sure even Bunzō saw it from the kitchen."
"No tears left my eyes."
I lifted my head off his chest and propped my chin on my fist. I looked down at him with the most exaggerated innocence I could manage. "Oh, really?"
"Yes."
"Not one tear?"
"Not one."
"Hmm." I nodded slowly. "Because I could've sworn I saw tears on your face."
"You imagined it."
"Kenji."
"Tora."
"I saw tears."
"You saw moisture due to the candle light and the fact that I had strong alcohol."
“Ah. That’s what it was.” I burst out laughing.
He grinned wider, holding his composure for about two seconds before he started laughing too—that low, warm laugh of his that I had not heard nearly enough of.
The laugh moved through his chest and into mine because I was lying on it.
The laugh made his stomach flex against me.
The laugh made his arm tighten around my shoulders.
And that laugh told me that our love was getting stronger and stronger.
"Moisture?" I snickered. "Moisture, Kenji?"
"That is what was on my face."
"It was on your face because it came out of your eyes. Which is the definition of crying."
"It was very humid in the ballroom."
"Oh my God."
He shrugged against the pillow. "The body produces saline for many reasons."
“Ah. Well thanks for teaching me.” I laughed so hard I had to bury my face against his chest. He laughed with me, and his hand stroked the back of my head, and the entire bedroom—which had been an intense space several minutes ago—became the warmest place I had ever been in my life.
When the laughter softened, I lifted my head and kissed him.
Soft.
Slow.
Yearning.
A kiss that said, thank you. Thank you for choosing the DNA test, instead of death. Thank you for letting the murderous Dragon go back inside. Thank you for laughing about your tears with me when most men would have closed up and avoided it all.
He kissed me back the same way.
When I pulled away, I rested my forehead against his and stayed there.
His thumb traced the line of my jaw. "Tora."
"Yes?"
He went quiet.
I felt the shift before he spoke. Not a Dragon-shift this time. A different kind. Something serious that wasn't violent. Something that had been sitting on his chest while I had been laughing on it.
"I have to ask you something."
I lifted my head off his and looked at him properly. That was when I saw it. Worry rose within his gaze. I thought about the dream. “Kenji, what's wrong?"
His hand came up and traced my cheekbone with his thumb. "You can see my dragon-shadow."
"Yes."
"Rin told me that Deja can see his serpent-shadow."
“What?!” I left him and completely sat up straight. "When did he tell you that? I don't remember you two talking at the party. Deja had him leashed and close to her."
"When we talked about this is not important."
"But—"
"What's important is that it made me want to go deeper into researching my mother's bloodline. And from that research. . .I found something interesting and had Reo look into a process called the Burial Ritual."
“Okay.”
“And. . .I think I want to do it, but it would involve you too.”
“Me?”
“Yes.”
“What would I need to do?”
“It could be dangerous for you, Tora.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “But what would I need to do?”
And then Kenji told me everything. He explained that the rite came out of his mother's people—the old Shinigami hunters from the mountains of Japan, who believed the earth itself was a living body. Soil was flesh. Roots were veins. The lotus was the earth's heart flowering upward.
He explained that the ritual had to be performed on a full moon night, with the moon at its peak. A large hole had to be dug into the earth, big enough for two bodies. There would be nine lotus blossoms placed inside for me to lie upon.
He told me about the two bindings. He would cut his palm. I would cut mine. Because both of us would need to bleed into the soil.
That was the first binding—blood to earth.
Then I would lie down on the nine lotus blossoms inside the hole, and he would come into the hole with me, and we would make love under the moonlight. That was the second binding—flesh to flesh to earth.
He told me about the gifts.
The first gift was that his dragon-shadow would be permanently bound to him. During battle, the beast would fight beside him, feeding on his enemies and weakening them before he struck.
The second gift was called Death-sight. During battle, he would see the moment of a man's death two minutes before it happened. Two minutes of warning. How exactly he would see it—whether as a vision, a shadow, a feeling—Reo hadn't found any specific information.
Then he told me the cost and a cold shiver ran through me.
"The rite braids your soul to mine, and it cannot be undone." He studied me. "If I die, you die. No matter where you are. I get shot in the battle and you die right here on this island."
I swallowed. "And the same goes the other way?”
“Yes. If something happens to you, I die too."
I sat there, taking it in.
The sheet was cool against my legs. His hand stayed warm at my hip. The ocean kept up its relentless rhythm outside the window. The world had no idea what was being decided in this bed.
If I die, you die.
The sentence sat in the middle of my chest like a stone. I didn't push it away. I let it sit there, and I let myself look at it from every angle a woman could look at a thing like that.
I didn't want to die.
I had a whole life I loved.
I had my grandmother, friends, and a future where I would continue to write books that educated people, yet entertained too.
And loving him had finally healed up the broken parts of my heart. I loved the idea of giving this new healed spirit a spin.
Fuck. . .but the gifts. . .if this is true. . .he would be safe.
I looked at him.