The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(100)
I emerged from the water, which had rapidly started to cool, then clambered out of the bathtub and picked up the scrubbing brush from the floor. Shards of broken mirror sliced into my feet, but I didn’t even feel them. I stood before what was left of the mirror and scrubbed the rest of my skin until I felt like a serpent ready to molt. I kept scrubbing, even when the brush began to pick up blood. I would heal long before the wedding, so it wouldn’t matter if I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed down to the bone.
Neven is wrong, I thought, scrubbing harder. He’s wrong, and I am a Death Goddess, and everything is going to be fine.
The servants dressed me in my wedding kimono, wrapping me in layers and layers of heavy snow-white fabric.
They pinned my long hair up with clips and combs, then hid their efforts under a great white hat, a semi-circle resembling a moon. I had never worn anything remotely formal in my nearly two centuries of life, and suddenly having my hair tied in elaborate knots and my lips painted with a fine brush felt like a bizarre masquerade. But I let the servants do as they had been instructed, feeling too empty to protest.
The ceremony itself mattered little to me. I’d never dreamed of my wedding day as the humans did—I had never entertained the thought of getting married. But for Hiro, I could play the part of a bride for a few hours, before I finally assumed my role as a goddess.
As the servants rolled white socks onto my feet, I began to worry about what, exactly, the wedding ceremony would entail. The last thing I wanted was to humiliate myself in front of a royal court. But Hiro knew I wasn’t Shintoist and hadn’t seemed concerned, so it couldn’t be anything too onerous.
One servant girl tucked a small purse, a dagger, and a fan into my belt, then hid them beneath folds of fabric. She couldn’t have been much older than the Yokai.
“What are these for?” I said.
She jumped at the sound of my voice, then straightened and bowed.
“They’re tradition, Your Majesty,” the girl said. “The purse is for beauty, the fan is for happiness, and the knife is to protect your husband.”
I doubted Hiro needed protection from anyone, but I nodded and let her finish tying my dress. She led me to the throne room, where Hiro waited for me on his golden throne.
He stood up and smiled, bright and clear like the first day I’d met him.
I had never seen Hiro in anything but his blue fishing clothes. Now, he wore a formal kimono with a shirt and jacket of clean and unwrinkled black, deep as all of Yomi. From the waist down, the fabric of his kimono was embroidered with long gray and silver stripes, elongating his silhouette, like a birch tree in the dark of winter. How could someone like this—more breathtaking than all the constellations in a clear sky—want me? Hiro looked like a true god, someone carved from the first light of the universe, every part of him so impossibly beautiful that he didn’t seem real. I crossed the distance between us as if pulled by an invisible string, and when he took my hand and pressed a scalding kiss to it, I had to stop myself from melting into his arms to preserve my dignity in front of all the servants, no matter how much I wanted to grab hold of him and never let go.
“You look lovely,” he said.
I thought I looked rather like a walking egg, but I kept the comment to myself.
In the short time since last night, the throne room had been repaired, the floorboards once again smooth and wallpaper replaced, every trace of Izanami scrubbed away. Remembering Neven’s clock, I turned away from Hiro and looked around the room for any trace of silver or gold, but no metals reflected the dim light.
“Hiro,” I said. “Where is—”
His hands cupped my face, turning me toward him. “Later,” he said, smiling. Then he took my hand, pulling me to the door. “Come. They’re waiting for us.”
All the dead of Yomi had come to see the wedding of their new god.
A sea of stoic faces in white kimonos stood in reverent silence across the palace courtyard. The crowds spanned so far back that they disappeared in the fog of darkness, which even a Shinigami’s eyes couldn’t penetrate.
These will be my subjects, I thought. All of the dead who had ever died and ever would. My knees began to shake under their unrelenting gaze, but before I could fall, Hiro put his hand on the small of my back and ushered me forward. The procession curved around the back of the palace to a shrine dripping with darkness like wet paint, open to the air and exposing us to the endless crowds.
“First, we must be purified,” Hiro said.
Nothing on Earth or Yomi could ever make me pure, but I didn’t voice the thought. This was important to Hiro, after all.
A man with white robes and a tall black hat, who I assumed to be a priest, bowed as we entered. He lit several ceremonial candles, the sudden light illuminating the round shape of his glasses. I thought of Neven in the shadow guard’s hold, glasses askew on his face, and tore my gaze away as the priest began a half-spoken and half-sung incantation.
His words sounded vaguely Japanese, but I understood none of them. I looked to Hiro in confusion, and he took my cold hand and squeezed it.
“The words are ancient,” he whispered. “He’s asking for the blessing of the gods.”
What futility for a human to beseech the gods to bless a different god, I thought.
When the priest finally stopped, a shrine maiden in long red skirts offered him a bough. She looked far too young to be a priestess, her whole form swallowed by the shadows. The priest continued his chant and waved the bough over both Hiro and I, but I kept staring at the young girl. I must have stared far too intently, for she looked up and jolted back at the eye contact, quickly bowing and stepping back into the shadows.